L. M. Montgomery

“ She sat on the stairs until she fell asleep herself, her head pillowed on her arm. Judith found her there when she came in, severe and triumphant, from her bout with the henhouse door. Her face softened into marvelous tenderness as she looked at Salome.
“She’s nothing but a child herself in spite of her age,” she thought pityingly. “A child that’s had her whole life thwarted and spoiled through no fault of her own. And yet folks say there is a God who is kind and good! If there is a God, he is a cruel, jealous tyrant, and I hate Him!” ”

“ But from the day when Maggie Peterson went to live with her, Naomi ceased to be the harbour Magdalen.
The sun had set when Mr. Leonard reached Spruce Cove, and the harbour was veiling itself in a wondrous twilight splendour. Afar out, the sea lay throbbing and purple, and the moan of the bar came through the sweet, chill spring air with its burden of hopeless, endless longing and seeking. The sky was blossoming into stars above the afterglow; out to the east the moon was rising, and the sea beneath it was a thing of radiance and silver and glamour ”

“ Malcolm MacPherson if he were not so much in love with her,” said Peggy. “But as he thinks that she is perfection he doesn’t need sympathy.”
“I am sorry for Aunt Olivia,” I said. “Yes, Peggy, I am. Mr. MacPherson is a splendid man, but Aunt Olivia is a born old maid, and it is outraging her very nature to be anything else. Don’t you see how it’s hurting her? His big, splendid man-ways are harrowing her very soul up—she can’t get out of her little, narrow groove, and it is killing her to be pulled out.” ”

“ There was one big beech there, in particular, which the Old Lady loved for reasons best known to herself—a great, tall beech with a trunk like the shaft of a gray marble column and a leafy spread of branches over the still, golden-brown pool made beneath it by the brook. It had been a young sapling in the days that were haloed by the vanished glory of the Old Lady’s life.
The Old Lady heard childish voices and laughter afar up the lane which led to William Spencer’s place just above the woods. ”

“ Old Lady Lloyd heard all the gossip about it from the egg pedlar, and listened to him with laughter glimmering far down in her eyes. The egg pedlar went away and vowed he’d never seen the Old Lady so spry as she was this spring; she seemed real interested in the young folk’s doings.
The Old Lady kept her secret and grew young in it. She walked back to the Mayflower hill as long as the Mayflowers lasted; and she always hid in the spruces to see Sylvia Gray go by. Every day she loved her more, and yearned after her more deeply. ”

“ Ludovic SPEED! Was there ever such a misfit of a name? Such a name for such a man is a delusion and a snare.”
Presently Ludovic got to the house, but stood so long on the doorstep in a brown study, gazing into the tangled green boskage of the cherry orchard, that Theodora finally went and opened the door before he knocked. As she brought him into the sitting-room she made a comical grimace at Anne over his shoulder.
Ludovic smiled pleasantly at Anne. He liked her; she was the only young girl he knew, for he generally avoided young girls—they made him feel awkward and out of place. ”

“ You never saw a more astonished dog than Mr. Riley. With a yell of terror he bolted out to the kitchen, out of the kitchen into the hall, through the hall into the room, and so into the kitchen and round again. With each circuit he went faster and faster, until he looked like a brindled streak with a dash of black and white on top. Such a racket and commotion I never heard, and I laughed until the tears came into my eyes. Mr. Riley flew around and around, and William Adolphus held on grimly and clawed. Alexander Abraham turned purple with rage. ”

“ Old memories trooped into their hearts like shining spirits.
“Baby Blossom,” said Old Man Shaw falteringly, “are you quite sure you’ll be contented here? Out there”—with a vague sweep of his hand towards horizons that shut out a world far removed from White Sands—“there’s pleasure and excitement and all that. Won’t you miss it? Won’t you get tired of your old father and White Sands?”
Sara patted his hand gently.
“The world out there is a good place,” she said thoughtfully, “I’ve had three splendid years and I hope they’ll enrich my whole life. ”

“ In the week that followed Nancy enjoyed herself after her own fashion. She read and swung in the garden, having a hammock hung under the firs. She went far afield, in rambles to woods and lonely uplands.
“I like it much better than meeting people,” she said, when Louisa suggested going to see this one and that one, “especially the Avonlea people. All my old chums are gone, or hopelessly married and changed, and the young set who have come up know not Joseph, and make me feel uncomfortably middle-aged. It’s far worse to feel middle-aged than old, you know. ”

“ Felix shook his head.
“I know he wouldn’t, Abel. He wants me to be a minister. Ministers are good things to be, but I’m afraid I can’t be a minister.”
“Not a pulpit minister. There’s different kinds of ministers, and each must talk to men in his own tongue if he’s going to do ‘em any real good,” said old Abel meditatively. “YOUR tongue is music. Strange that your grandfather can’t see that for himself, and him such a broad-minded man! He’s the only minister I ever had much use for. He’s God’s own if ever a man was. And he loves you—yes, sir, he loves you like the apple of his eye.” ”

“ Presently, she resolutely put Andrew Cameron out of her mind. It was desecration to think of him and Sylvia together. When she laid her weary head on her pillow that night she was so happy that even the thought of the vacant shelf in the room below, where the grape jug had always been, gave her only a momentary pang.
“It’s sweet to sacrifice for one we love—it’s sweet to have someone to sacrifice for,” thought the Old Lady.
Desire grows by what it feeds on. The Old Lady thought she was content; but Friday evening came and found her in a perfect fever to see Sylvia in her party dress. ”

“ Leonard sincerely. He was a man who never shirked what he believed to be his duty; but duty had sometimes presented itself to him in pleasanter guise than this summons to Naomi Clark’s death-bed.
The woman had been the plague spot of Lower Carmody and Carmody Harbour for a generation. In the earlier days of his ministry to the congregation he had tried to reclaim her, and Naomi had mocked and flouted him to his face. Then, for the sake of those to whom she was a snare or a heart-break, he had endeavoured to set the law in motion against her, and Naomi had laughed the law to scorn. ”

“ She no longer hated the new days; on the contrary, she welcomed them.
“Every day is an uncommon day now,” she said jubilantly to herself—for did not almost every day bring her a glimpse of Sylvia? Even on rainy days the Old Lady gallantly braved rheumatism to hide behind her clump of dripping spruces and watch Sylvia pass. The only days she could not see her were Sundays; and no Sundays had ever seemed so long to Old Lady Lloyd as those June Sundays did.
One day the egg pedlar had news for her.
“The music teacher is going to sing a solo for a collection piece to-morrow,” he told her. ”

“ Sara Glover’s people, especially a wealthy aunt in Montreal, had wanted to take the child, but Old Man Shaw grew almost fierce over the suggestion. He would give his baby to no one. A woman was hired to look after the house, but it was the father who cared for the baby in the main. He was as tender and faithful and deft as a woman. Sara never missed a mother’s care, and she grew up into a creature of life and light and beauty, a constant delight to all who knew her. She had a way of embroidering life with stars. ”

“ But the Old Lady’s love for Sylvia had grown so strong and deep and tender that no other feeling could endure finally against it. Love is a great miracle worker; and never had its power been more strongly made manifest than on the cold, dull autumn morning when the Old Lady walked to Bright River railway station and took the train to Charlottetown, bent on an errand the very thought of which turned her soul sick within her. ”

“ Sylvia rose and came forward to Janet Moore’s side at the organ. The next moment her beautiful voice soared through the building like the very soul of melody—true, clear, powerful, sweet. Nobody in Spencervale had ever listened to such a voice, except Old Lady Lloyd herself, who, in her youth, had heard enough good singing to enable her to be a tolerable judge of it. She realized instantly that this girl of her heart had a great gift—a gift that would some day bring her fame and fortune, if it could be duly trained and developed. ”

“ I pushed out past Alexander Abraham—who was looking as guilty as if he had been caught burglarizing—and came face to face with the man who had sprung from the buggy. It was old Dr. Blair, from Carmody, and he was looking at me as if he had found me shoplifting.
“My dear Peter,” he said gravely, “I am VERY sorry to see you here—very sorry indeed.”
I admit that this exasperated me. Besides, no man on earth, not even my own family doctor, has any right to “My dear Peter” me! ”

“ By the time they had crossed the field and reached the wild cherry lane beyond it, Lucinda’s anger was mastered by her saving sense of humour. She was even smiling a little maliciously under her fascinator.
The lane was a place of enchantment—a long, moonlit colonnade adown which beguiling wood nymphs might have footed it featly. The moonshine fell through the arching boughs and made a mosaic of silver light and clear-cut shadow for the unfriendly lovers to walk in. On either side was the hovering gloom of the woods, and around them was a great silence unstirred by wind or murmur. ”

“ When the three of us crowded into the buggy, Aunt Olivia grasped the whip before we could prevent her and, leaning out, gave poor Dick such a lash as he had never felt in his life before. He went tearing down the steep, stony, fast-darkening road in a fashion which made Peggy and me cry out in alarm. Aunt Olivia was usually the most timid of women, but now she didn’t seem to know what fear was. She kept whipping and urging poor Dick the whole way to the station, quite oblivious to our assurances that there was plenty of time. ”

“ The blueberries grew far away and the Old Lady had many a tramp after them. Sometimes her bones ached at night because of it; but what cared the Old Lady for that? Bone ache is easier to endure than soul ache; and the Old Lady’s soul had stopped aching for the first time in many year. It was being nourished with heavenly manna.
One evening Crooked Jack came up to fix something that had gone wrong with the Old Lady’s well. The Old Lady wandered affably out to him; for she knew he had been working at the Spencers’ all day, and there might be crumbs of information about Sylvia to be picked up. ”

“ The old doctor shrugged his shoulders again. Being a wise man, he knew when to hold his tongue.
“Well, put Salome to bed, and let her sleep the rest of the day. She’s worn out. And for pity’s sake let some one take that poor child and put some dry clothes on him before he catches his death of cold.”
That evening, as Salome Marsh lay in her bed in a glory of sunset light, her heart filled with unutterable gratitude and happiness, Judith came into the room. She wore her best hat and dress, and she held Lionel Hezekiah by the hand. ”

“ In that little book was immortal love—old laughter—old tears—old beauty which had bloomed like a rose years ago, holding still its sweetness like old rose leaves. She removed the telltale fly-leaf; and late on the night before Sylvia’s birthday, the Old Lady crept, under cover of the darkness, through byways and across fields, as if bent on some nefarious expedition, to the little Spencervale store where the post-office was kept. ”

“ When an Old Lady has a guilty conscience, it is apt to make her nervous and distract her thoughts from immediate pleasure. She wondered a little uneasily if Sylvia really did suspect her. Then she concluded that it was out of the question. Who would suspect a mean, unsociable Old Lady, who had no friends, and who gave only five cents to the Sewing Circle when everyone else gave ten or fifteen, to be a fairy godmother, the donor of beautiful party dresses, and the recipient of gifts from romantic, aspiring young poets? ”

“ I’m glad I’m a man. Look at Abel Blair, what splendid times he has on Sundays. He never goes to church, but he goes fishing, and has cock-fights, and gets drunk. When I grow up, I’m going to do that on Sundays too, since I won’t be going to church. I don’t want to go to church, but I’d like to go to Sunday school.”
Salome listened in agony. Every word of Lionel Hezekiah’s stung her conscience unbearably. So this was the result of her weak yielding to Judith; this innocent child looked upon her as a wicked woman, and, worse still, regarded old, depraved Abel Blair as a model to be imitated. ”