L. M. Montgomery

“ To his latest day Eric Marshall will be able to recall vividly that scene as he saw it then—the velvet darkness of the spruce woods, the overarching sky of soft brilliance, the swaying lilac blossoms, and amid it all the girl on the old bench with the violin under her chin.
He had, in his twenty-four years of life, met hundreds of pretty women, scores of handsome women, a scant half dozen of really beautiful women. But he knew at once, beyond all possibility of question or doubt, that he had never seen or imagined anything so exquisite as this girl of the orchard. ”

“ Eric pulled them boyishly away.
“Kilmeny, do you think you are ugly now? This is a truer mirror than Aunt Janet’s silver sugar bowl! Look—look—look! Did you ever imagine anything fairer than yourself, dainty Kilmeny?”
She was blushing now, and stealing shy radiant glances at the mirror. With a smile she took her slate and wrote naively,
“I think I am pleasant to look upon. I cannot tell you how glad I am. It is so dreadful to believe one is ugly. You can get used to everything else, but you never get used to that. It hurts just the same every time you remember it. ”

“ Eric broke in vehemently. “It is not a fancy, Mr. Gordon. It is the love that comes once in a lifetime and once only. I may be but a lad, but I know that Kilmeny is the one woman in the world for me. There can never be any other. Oh, I’m not speaking rashly or inconsiderately. I have weighed the matter well and looked at it from every aspect. And it all comes to this—I love Kilmeny and I want what any decent man who loves a woman truly has the right to have—the chance to win her love in return.” ”

“ He left her playing there, and all the way through the dim resinous spruce wood her music followed him like an invisible guardian spirit.
“Kilmeny the Beautiful!” he murmured, “and yet, good heavens, the child thinks she is ugly—she with a face more lovely than ever an artist dreamed of! A girl of eighteen who has never looked in a mirror! I wonder if there is another such in any civilized country in the world. What could have possessed her mother to tell her such a falsehood? I wonder if Margaret Gordon could have been quite sane. It is strange that Neil has never told her the truth. ”

“ But then you never could guess what way a man’s fancy would jump when he set out to pick him a wife. They guessed Neil Gordon didn’t like it much. He seemed to have got dreadful moody and sulky of late and wouldn’t sing in the choir any more. Thus the buzz of comment and gossip ran.
To those two in the old orchard it mattered not a whit. Kilmeny knew nothing of gossip. To her, Lindsay was as much of an unknown world as the city of Eric’s home. Her thoughts strayed far and wide in the realm of her fancy, but they never wandered out to the little realities that hedged her strange life around. ”

“ Eastward, just over the fir woods, were clouds, white and high heaped like snow mountains, and the westernmost of them shone with a rosy glow as of sunset on an Alpine height.
The higher worlds of air were still full of light—perfect, stainless light, unmarred of earth shadow; but down in the orchard and under the spruces the light had almost gone, giving place to a green, dewy dusk, made passionately sweet with the breath of the apple blossoms and mint, and the balsamic odours that rained down upon them from the firs. ”

“ Their petals fell in silken heaps along the old paths or clung to the lush grasses among which Eric lay and dreamed, while Kilmeny played to him on her violin.
Eric promised himself that when she was his wife her wonderful gift for music should be cultivated to the utmost. Her powers of expression seemed to deepen and develop every day, growing as her soul grew, taking on new colour and richness from her ripening heart.
To Eric, the days were all pages in an inspired idyl. He had never dreamed that love could be so mighty or the world so beautiful. ”

“ Can it be possible that she is a Lindsay girl? And why in the name of all that’s provoking should she be so frightened at the mere sight of me? I have never thought I was a particularly hideous person, but certainly this adventure has not increased my vanity to any perceptible extent. Perhaps I have wandered into an enchanted orchard, and been outwardly transformed into an ogre. Now that I have come to think of it, there is something quite uncanny about the place. Anything might happen here. It is no common orchard for the production of marketable apples, that is plain to be seen. ”

“ The orchard kept its own strange attractiveness, as some women with youth long passed still preserve an atmosphere of remembered beauty and innate, indestructible charm.
Eric walked drearily and carelessly about it, and finally sat down on a half fallen fence panel in the shadow of the overhanging spruce boughs. There he gave himself up to a reverie, poignant and bitter sweet, in which he lived over again everything that had passed in the orchard since his first meeting there with Kilmeny. ”

“ But why should she hide them? They were as pure and beautiful as herself. Eric smiled back at her with equal frankness.
“I should like it more than I can say, and I shall be sure to come to-morrow evening if it is fine. But if it is at all damp or unpleasant you must not come. In that case another evening will do. And now won’t you give me some flowers?”
She nodded, with another little smile, and began to pick some of the June lilies, carefully selecting the most perfect among them. He watched her lithe, graceful motions with delight; every movement seemed poetry itself. ”

“ The sun had just set, and the whole world of green meadows beyond swam in golden light. Across a long valley brimmed with shadow were uplands of sunset, and great sky lakes of saffron and rose where a soul might lose itself in colour. The air was very fragrant with the baptism of the dew, and the odours of a bed of wild mint upon which he had trampled. Robins were whistling, clear and sweet and sudden, in the woods all about him.
“This is a veritable ‘haunt of ancient peace,’” quoted Eric, looking around with delighted eyes. “I could fall asleep here, dream dreams and see visions. ”

“ I dare say you think me an old fogy, Eric; but I know something more of the world than you do, and I believe, with Tennyson’s Arthur, that ‘there’s no more subtle master under heaven than is the maiden passion for a maid.’ I want to see you safely anchored to the love of some good woman as soon as may be, that’s all. I’m rather sorry Miss Campion isn’t your lady of the future. I liked her looks, that I did. She is good and strong and true—and has the eyes of a woman who could love in a way that would be worth while. ”

“ He and Janet together unpacked the mirror and hung it on the parlour wall.
“I never saw such a big one, Master,” said Janet rather doubtfully, as if, after all, she distrusted its gleaming, pearly depth and richly ornamented frame. “I hope it won’t make her vain. She is very bonny, but it may not do her any good to know it.”
“It won’t harm her,” said Eric confidently. “When a belief in her ugliness hasn’t spoiled a girl a belief in her beauty won’t.” ”

“ But I don’t really want to—that’s the point, David, man. You hate a business life so much yourself that you can’t get it into your blessed noddle that another man might like it. There are many lawyers in the world—too many, perhaps—but there are never too many good honest men of business, ready to do clean big things for the betterment of humanity and the upbuilding of their country, to plan great enterprises and carry them through with brain and courage, to manage and control, to aim high and strike one’s aim. ”

“ Thomas Gordon had shaken his head bodingly when he had looked at her that morning at the breakfast table.
“She won’t stand it,” he thought. “She isn’t long for this world. Maybe it is all for the best, poor lass. But I wish that young Master had never set foot in the Connors orchard, or in this house. Margaret, Margaret, it’s hard that your child should have to be paying the reckoning of a sin that was sinned before her birth.”
Kilmeny walked through the lane slowly and absently like a woman in a dream. ”

“ But he could not keep away from it, although the thought of it was an added torment, and he vibrated between a wild wish that he might never see it again, and a sick wonder how he could possibly go away and leave it—that strange old orchard where he had met and wooed his sweetheart, watching her develop and blossom under his eyes, like some rare flower, until in the space of three short months she had passed from exquisite childhood into still more exquisite womanhood. ”

“ Never mind about your looks, Kilmeny. Beauty isn’t everything.”
“Oh, it is a great deal,” she wrote naively. “But you do like me, even though I am so ugly, don’t you? You like me because of my beautiful music, don’t you?”
“I like you very much, Kilmeny,” answered Eric, laughing a little; but there was in his voice a tender note of which he was unconscious. Kilmeny was aware of it, however, and she picked up her violin with a pleased smile. ”

“ If it was Kilmeny you’ve seen what very few people in Lindsay have ever seen, Master. And those few have never seen her close by. I have never laid eyes on her myself. It’s no wonder she ran away, poor girl. She isn’t used to seeing strangers.”
“I’m rather glad if that was the sole reason of her flight,” said Eric. “I admit I didn’t like to see any girl so frightened of me as she appeared to be. She was as white as paper, and so terrified that she never uttered a word, but fled like a deer to cover.”
“Well, she couldn’t have spoken a word in any case,” said Mrs. Williamson quietly. ”

“ Eric sat in dismayed silence for a moment. That beautiful creature afflicted in such a fashion—why, it was horrible! Mingled with his dismay was a strange pang of personal regret and disappointment.
“It couldn’t have been Kilmeny Gordon, then,” he protested at last, remembering. “The girl I saw played on the violin exquisitely. I never heard anything like it. It is impossible that a deaf mute could play like that.” ”

“ Go now, lad, and God bless you.”
“Do you know what it is you are asking of me?” said Eric hoarsely.
“I know I am asking a hard thing for your own good, Master. It is not as if Kilmeny would ever change her mind. We have had some experience with a woman’s will ere this. Tush, Janet, woman, don’t be weeping. You women are foolish creatures. Do you think tears can wash such things away? No, they cannot blot out sin, or the consequences of sin. It’s awful how one sin can spread out and broaden, till it eats into innocent lives, sometimes long after the sinner has gone to his own accounting. ”

“ When you pick you a wife please remember that I shall reserve the right to pass a candid opinion on her.”
“Pass all the opinions you like, but it is MY opinion, and mine only, which will matter in the long run,” retorted Eric.
“Confound you, yes, you stubborn offshoot of a stubborn breed,” growled David, looking at him affectionately. “I know that, and that is why I’ll never feel at ease about you until I see you married to the right sort of a girl. She’s not hard to find. Nine out of ten girls in this country of ours are fit for kings’ palaces. ”

“ He stopped in dismay, for he suddenly realized that the expression on the girl’s face was one of terror—not merely the startled alarm of a shy, childlike creature who had thought herself alone, but absolute terror. It was betrayed in her blanched and quivering lips and in the widely distended blue eyes that stared back into his with the expression of some trapped wild thing.
It hurt him that any woman should look at him in such a fashion, at him who had always held womanhood in such reverence. ”

“ His opening sentence made Eric’s face twitch mutinously whenever he recalled it during the day. “Courting is a very pleasant thing which a great many people go too far with.”
The distant hills and wooded uplands were tremulous and aerial in delicate spring-time gauzes of pearl and purple. The young, green-leafed maples crowded thickly to the very edge of the road on either side, but beyond them were emerald fields basking in sunshine, over which cloud shadows rolled, broadened, and vanished. ”

“ Our ideals are always beautiful, whether they so translate themselves into realities or not. But the sun is going down. Time does certainly fly in this enchanted orchard. I believe you bewitch the moments away, Kilmeny. Your namesake of the poem was a somewhat uncanny maid, if I recollect aright, and thought as little of seven years in elfland as ordinary folk do of half an hour on upper earth. Some day I shall waken from a supposed hour’s lingering here and find myself an old man with white hair and ragged coat, as in that fairy tale we read the other night. ”

“ There was one girl there who can’t be a day over eighteen—and she looked as if she were made out of gold and roseleaves and dewdrops.”
“The oracle speaks in poetry,” laughed Eric. “That was Florence Percival, who led the class in mathematics, as I’m a living man. By many she is considered the beauty of her class. I can’t say that such is my opinion. I don’t greatly care for that blonde, babyish style of loveliness—I prefer Agnes Campion. Did you notice her—the tall, dark girl with the ropes of hair and a sort of crimson, velvety bloom on her face, who took honours in philosophy?” ”

“ The sky is so blue and the apple blossoms so sweet. The wind and I have been here alone together and the wind is a good companion, but still I am glad to see you. It is an evening on which it is good to be alive and to wander in an orchard that is fine and white. ”