Rainbow Valley
“I’m going up to see what it is,” said Jerry resolutely.
“Oh, don’t,” begged Una, catching his arm.
“I’m going.”
“We’ll all go, too, then,” said Faith.
The whole four climbed the shaky ladder, Jerry and Faith quite
dauntless, Una pale from fright, and Carl rather absent-mindedly
speculating on the possibility of finding a bat up in the loft. He
longed to see a bat in daylight.
When they stepped off the ladder they saw what had made the rustle and
the sight struck them dumb for a few moments.
In a little nest in the hay a girl was curled up, looking as if she had
just wakened from sleep. When she saw them she stood up, rather
shakily, as it seemed, and in the bright sunlight that streamed through
the cobwebbed window behind her, they saw that her thin, sunburned face
was very pale under its tan. She had two braids of lank, thick,
tow-coloured hair and very odd eyes—“white eyes,” the manse children
thought, as she stared at them half defiantly, half piteously. They
were really of so pale a blue that they did seem almost white,
especially when contrasted with the narrow black ring that circled the
iris. She was barefooted and bareheaded, and was clad in a faded,
ragged, old plaid dress, much too short and tight for her. As for
years, she might have been almost any age, judging from her wizened
little face, but her height seemed to be somewhere in the neighbourhood
of twelve.
“Who are you?” asked Jerry.
The girl looked about her as if seeking a way of escape. Then she
seemed to give in with a little shiver of despair.
“I’m Mary Vance,” she said.
“Where’d you come from?” pursued Jerry.
Mary, instead of replying, suddenly sat, or fell, down on the hay and
began to cry. Instantly Faith had flung herself down beside her and put
her arm around the thin, shaking shoulders.
“You stop bothering her,” she commanded Jerry. Then she hugged the
waif. “Don’t cry, dear. Just tell us what’s the matter. _We’re_
friends.”
“I’m so—so—hungry,” wailed Mary. “I—I hain’t had a thing to eat since
Thursday morning, ‘cept a little water from the brook out there.”
The manse children gazed at each other in horror. Faith sprang up.
“You come right up to the manse and get something to eat before you say
another word.”
Mary shrank.
“Oh—I can’t. What will your pa and ma say? Besides, they’d send me
back.”
“We’ve no mother, and father won’t bother about you. Neither will Aunt
Martha. Come, I say.” Faith stamped her foot impatiently. Was this
queer girl going to insist on starving to death almost at their very
door?
Mary yielded. She was so weak that she could hardly climb down the
ladder, but somehow they got her down and over the field and into the
manse kitchen. Aunt Martha, muddling through her Saturday cooking, took
no notice of her. Faith and Una flew to the pantry and ransacked it for
such eatables as it contained—some “ditto,” bread, butter, milk and a
doubtful pie. Mary Vance attacked the food ravenously and uncritically,
while the manse children stood around and watched her. Jerry noticed
that she had a pretty mouth and very nice, even, white teeth. Faith
decided, with secret horror, that Mary had not one stitch on her except
that ragged, faded dress. Una was full of pure pity, Carl of amused
wonder, and all of them of curiosity.
“Now come out to the graveyard and tell us about yourself,” ordered
Faith, when Mary’s appetite showed signs of failing her. Mary was now
nothing loath. Food had restored her natural vivacity and unloosed her
by no means reluctant tongue.
“You won’t tell your pa or anybody if I tell you?” she stipulated, when
she was enthroned on Mr. Pollock’s tombstone. Opposite her the manse
children lined up on another. Here was spice and mystery and adventure.
Something _had_ happened.
“No, we won’t.”
“Cross your hearts?”
“Cross our hearts.”
“Well, I’ve run away. I was living with Mrs. Wiley over-harbour. Do you
know Mrs. Wiley?”
“No.”
“Well, you don’t want to know her. She’s an awful woman. My, how I hate
her! She worked me to death and wouldn’t give me half enough to eat,
and she used to larrup me ‘most every day. Look a-here.”
Mary rolled up her ragged sleeves, and held up her scrawny arms and
thin hands, chapped almost to rawness. They were black with bruises.
The manse children shivered. Faith flushed crimson with indignation.
Una’s blue eyes filled with tears.
“She licked me Wednesday night with a stick,” said Mary, indifferently.
“It was ‘cause I let the cow kick over a pail of milk. How’d I know the
darn old cow was going to kick?”
A not unpleasant thrill ran over her listeners. They would never dream
of using such dubious words, but it was rather titivating to hear
someone else use them—and a girl, at that. Certainly this Mary Vance
was an interesting creature.
“I don’t blame you for running away,” said Faith.
“Oh, I didn’t run away ‘cause she licked me. A licking was all in the
day’s work with me. I was darn well used to it. Nope, I’d meant to run
away for a week ‘cause I’d found out that Mrs. Wiley was going to rent
her farm and go to Lowbridge to live and give me to a cousin of hers up
Charlottetown way. I wasn’t going to stand for _that_. She was a worse
sort than Mrs. Wiley even. Mrs. Wiley lent me to her for a month last
summer and I’d rather live with the devil himself.”
Sensation number two. But Una looked doubtful.
“So I made up my mind I’d beat it. I had seventy cents saved up that
Mrs. John Crawford give me in the spring for planting potatoes for her.
Mrs. Wiley didn’t know about it. She was away visiting her cousin when
I planted them. I thought I’d sneak up here to the Glen and buy a
ticket to Charlottetown and try to get work there. I’m a hustler, let
me tell you. There ain’t a lazy bone in _my_ body. So I lit out
Thursday morning ‘fore Mrs. Wiley was up and walked to the Glen—six
miles. And when I got to the station I found I’d lost my money. Dunno
how—dunno where. Anyhow, it was gone. I didn’t know what to do. If I
went back to old Lady Wiley she’d take the hide off me. So I went and
hid in that old barn.”
“And what will you do now?” asked Jerry.
“Dunno. I s’pose I’ll have to go back and take my medicine. Now that
I’ve got some grub in my stomach I guess I can stand it.”
But there was fear behind the bravado in Mary’s eyes. Una suddenly
slipped from the one tombstone to the other and put her arm about Mary.
“Don’t go back. Just stay here with us.”
“Oh, Mrs. Wiley’ll hunt me up,” said Mary. “It’s likely she’s on my
trail before this. I might stay here till she finds me, I s’pose, if
your folks don’t mind. I was a darn fool ever to think of skipping out.
She’d run a weasel to earth. But I was so misrebul.”
Mary’s voice quivered, but she was ashamed of showing her weakness.
“I hain’t had the life of a dog for these four years,” she explained
defiantly.
“You’ve been four years with Mrs. Wiley?”
“Yip. She took me out of the asylum over in Hopetown when I was eight.”
“That’s the same place Mrs. Blythe came from,” exclaimed Faith.
“I was two years in the asylum. I was put there when I was six. My ma
had hung herself and my pa had cut his throat.”
“Holy cats! Why?” said Jerry.
“Booze,” said Mary laconically.
“And you’ve no relations?”
“Not a darn one that I know of. Must have had some once, though. I was
called after half a dozen of them. My full name is Mary Martha Lucilla
Moore Ball Vance. Can you beat that? My grandfather was a rich man.
I’ll bet he was richer than _your_ grandfather. But pa drunk it all up
and ma, she did her part. _They_ used to beat me, too. Laws, I’ve been
licked so much I kind of like it.”
Mary tossed her head. She divined that the manse children were pitying
her for her many stripes and she did not want pity. She wanted to be
envied. She looked gaily about her. Her strange eyes, now that the
dullness of famine was removed from them, were brilliant. She would
show these youngsters what a personage she was.
“I’ve been sick an awful lot,” she said proudly. “There’s not many kids
could have come through what I have. I’ve had scarlet fever and measles
and ersipelas and mumps and whooping cough and pewmonia.”
“Were you ever fatally sick?” asked Una.
“I don’t know,” said Mary doubtfully.
“Of course she wasn’t,” scoffed Jerry. “If you’re fatally sick you
die.”
“Oh, well, I never died exactly,” said Mary, “but I come blamed near it
once. They thought I was dead and they were getting ready to lay me out
when I up and come to.”
“What is it like to be half dead?” asked Jerry curiously.
“Like nothing. I didn’t know it for days afterwards. It was when I had
the pewmonia. Mrs. Wiley wouldn’t have the doctor—said she wasn’t going
to no such expense for a home girl. Old Aunt Christina MacAllister
nursed me with poultices. She brung me round. But sometimes I wish I’d
just died the other half and done with it. I’d been better off.”
“If you went to heaven I s’pose you would,” said Faith, rather
doubtfully.
“Well, what other place is there to go to?” demanded Mary in a puzzled
voice.
“There’s hell, you know,” said Una, dropping her voice and hugging Mary
to lessen the awfulness of the suggestion.
“Hell? What’s that?”
“Why, it’s where the devil lives,” said Jerry. “You’ve heard of him—you
spoke about him.”
“Oh, yes, but I didn’t know he lived anywhere. I thought he just roamed
round. Mr. Wiley used to mention hell when he was alive. He was always
telling folks to go there. I thought it was some place over in New
Brunswick where he come from.”
“Hell is an awful place,” said Faith, with the dramatic enjoyment that
is born of telling dreadful things. “Bad people go there when they die
and burn in fire for ever and ever and ever.”
“Who told you that?” demanded Mary incredulously.
“It’s in the Bible. And Mr. Isaac Crothers at Maywater told us, too, in
Sunday School. He was an elder and a pillar in the church and knew all
about it. But you needn’t worry. If you’re good you’ll go to heaven and
if you’re bad I guess you’d rather go to hell.”
“I wouldn’t,” said Mary positively. “No matter how bad I was I wouldn’t
want to be burned and burned. _I_ know what it’s like. I picked up a
red hot poker once by accident. What must you do to be good?”
“You must go to church and Sunday School and read your Bible and pray
every night and give to missions,” said Una.
“It sounds like a large order,” said Mary. “Anything else?”
“You must ask God to forgive the sins you’ve committed.
“But I’ve never com—committed any,” said Mary. “What’s a sin any way?”
“Oh, Mary, you must have. Everybody does. Did you never tell a lie?”
“Heaps of ‘em,” said Mary.
“That’s a dreadful sin,” said Una solemnly.
“Do you mean to tell me,” demanded Mary, “that I’d be sent to hell for
telling a lie now and then? Why, I _had_ to. Mr. Wiley would have
broken every bone in my body one time if I hadn’t told him a lie. Lies
have saved me many a whack, I can tell you.”
Una sighed. Here were too many difficulties for her to solve. She
shuddered as she thought of being cruelly whipped. Very likely she
would have lied too. She squeezed Mary’s little calloused hand.
“Is that the only dress you’ve got?” asked Faith, whose joyous nature
refused to dwell on disagreeable subjects.
“I just put on this dress because it was no good,” cried Mary flushing.
“Mrs. Wiley’d bought my clothes and I wasn’t going to be beholden to
her for anything. And I’m honest. If I was going to run away I wasn’t
going to take what belong to _her_ that was worth anything. When I grow
up I’m going to have a blue sating dress. Your own clothes don’t look
so stylish. I thought ministers’ children were always dressed up.”
It was plain that Mary had a temper and was sensitive on some points.