Chapter 14
Well, I watched and Stephen watched, and Mr. Leonard was in the plot, too. Prissy was always a favourite of his, and he would have been more than human, saint as he is, if he’d had any love for Emmeline, after the way she was always trying to brew up strife in the church.
But Emmeline was a match for us all. She never let Prissy out of her sight. Everywhere she went she toted Prissy, too. When a month had gone by, I was almost in despair. Mr. Leonard had to leave for the Assembly in another week and Stephen’s neighbours were beginning to talk about him. They said that a man who spent all his time hanging around the yard with a spyglass, and trusting everything to a hired boy, couldn’t be altogether right in his mind.
I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw Emmeline driving away one day alone. As soon as she was out of sight I whisked over, and Anne Shirley and Diana Barry went with me.
They were visiting me that afternoon. Diana’s mother was my second cousin, and, as we visited back and forth frequently, I’d often seen Diana. But I’d never seen her chum, Anne Shirley, although I’d heard enough about her to drive anyone frantic with curiosity. So when she came home from Redmond College that summer I asked Diana to take pity on me and bring her over some afternoon.
I wasn’t disappointed in her. I considered her a beauty, though some people couldn’t see it. She had the most magnificent red hair and the biggest, shiningest eyes I ever saw in a girl’s head. As for her laugh, it made me feel young again to hear it. She and Diana both laughed enough that afternoon, for I told them, under solemn promise of secrecy, all about poor Prissy’s love affair. So nothing would do them but they must go over with me.
The appearance of the house amazed me. All the shutters were closed and the door locked. I knocked and knocked, but there was no answer. Then I walked around the house to the only window that hadn’t shutters--a tiny one upstairs. I knew it was the window in the closet off the room where the girls slept. I stopped under it and called Prissy. Before long Prissy came and opened it. She was so pale and woe-begone looking that I pitied her with all my heart.
“Prissy, where has Emmeline gone?” I asked.
“Down to Avonlea to see the Roger Pyes. They’re sick with measles, and Emmeline couldn’t take me because I’ve never had measles.”
Poor Prissy! She had never had anything a body ought to have.
“Then you just come and unfasten a shutter, and come right over to my house,” I said exultantly. “We’ll have Stephen and the minister here in no time.”
“I can’t--Em’line has locked me in here,” said Prissy woefully.
I was posed. No living mortal bigger than a baby could have got in or out of that closet window.
“Well,” I said finally, “I’ll put the signal up for Stephen anyhow, and we’ll see what can be done when he gets here.”
I didn’t know how I was ever to get the signal up on that ventilator, for it was one of the days I take dizzy spells; and if I took one up on the ladder there’d probably be a funeral instead of a wedding. But Anne Shirley said she’d put it up for me, and she did. I had never seen that girl before, and I’ve never seen her since, but it’s my opinion that there wasn’t much she couldn’t do if she made up her mind to do it.
Stephen wasn’t long in getting there and he brought the minister with him. Then we all, including Thomas--who was beginning to get interested in the affair in spite of himself--went over and held council of war beneath the closet window.
Thomas suggested breaking in doors and carrying Prissy off boldly, but I could see that Mr. Leonard looked very dubious over that, and even Stephen said he thought it could only be done as a last resort. I agreed with him. I knew Emmeline Strong would bring an action against him for housebreaking as likely as not. She’d be so furious she’d stick at nothing if we gave her any excuse. Then Anne Shirley, who couldn’t have been more excited if she was getting married herself, came to the rescue again.
“Couldn’t you put a ladder up to the closet window,” she said, “And Mr. Clark can go up it and they can be married there. Can’t they, Mr. Leonard?”
Mr. Leonard agreed that they could. He was always the most saintly looking man, but I know I saw a twinkle in his eye.
“Thomas, go over and bring our little ladder over here,” I said.
Thomas forgot he was an elder, and he brought the ladder as quick as it was possible for a fat man to do it. After all it was too short to reach the window, but there was no time to go for another. Stephen went up to the top of it, and he reached up and Prissy reached down, and they could just barely clasp hands so. I shall never forget the look of Prissy. The window was so small she could only get her head and one arm out of it. Besides, she was almost frightened to death.
Mr. Leonard stood at the foot of the ladder and married them. As a rule, he makes a very long and solemn thing of the marriage ceremony, but this time he cut out everything that wasn’t absolutely necessary; and it was well that he did, for just as he pronounced them man and wife, Emmeline drove into the lane.
She knew perfectly well what had happened when she saw the minister with his blue book in his hand. Never a word said she. She marched to the front door, unlocked it, and strode upstairs. I’ve always been convinced it was a mercy that closet window was so small, or I believe that she would have thrown Prissy out of it. As it was, she walked her downstairs by the arm and actually flung her at Stephen.
“There, take your wife,” she said, “and I’ll pack up every stitch she owns and send it after her; and I never want to see her or you again as long as I live.”
Then she turned to me and Thomas.
“As for you that have aided and abetted that weakminded fool in this, take yourselves out of my yard and never darken my door again.”
“Goodness, who wants to, you old spitfire?” said Thomas.
It wasn’t just the thing for him to say, perhaps, but we are all human, even elders.
The girls didn’t escape. Emmeline looked daggers at them.
“This will be something for you to carry back to Avonlea,” she said. “You gossips down there will have enough to talk about for a spell. That’s all you ever go out of Avonlea for--just to fetch and carry tales.”
Finally she finished up with the minister.
“I’m going to the Baptist church in Spencervale after this,” she said. Her tone and look said a hundred other things. She whirled into the house and slammed the door.
Mr. Leonard looked around on us with a pitying smile as Stephen put poor, half-fainting Prissy into the buggy.
“I am very sorry,” he said in that gently, saintly way of his, “for the Baptists.”
XI. The Miracle at Carmody
Salome looked out of the kitchen window, and a pucker of distress appeared on her smooth forehead.
“Dear, dear, what has Lionel Hezekiah been doing now?” she murmured anxiously.
Involuntarily she reached out for her crutch; but it was a little beyond her reach, having fallen on the floor, and without it Salome could not move a step.
“Well, anyway, Judith is bringing him in as fast as she can,” she reflected. “He must have been up to something terrible this time; for she looks very cross, and she never walks like that unless she is angry clear through. Dear me, I am sometimes tempted to think that Judith and I made a mistake in adopting the child. I suppose two old maids don’t know much about bringing up a boy properly. But he is NOT a bad child, and it really seems to me that there must be some way of making him behave better if we only knew what it was.”
Salome’s monologue was cut short by the entrance of her sister Judith, holding Lionel Hezekiah by his chubby wrist with a determined grip.
Judith Marsh was ten years older than Salome, and the two women were as different in appearance as night and day. Salome, in spite of her thirty-five years, looked almost girlish. She was small and pink and flower-like, with little rings of pale golden hair clustering all over her head in a most unspinster-like fashion, and her eyes were big and blue, and mild as a dove’s. Her face was perhaps a weak one, but it was very sweet and appealing.
Judith Marsh was tall and dark, with a plain, tragic face and iron-gray hair. Her eyes were black and sombre, and every feature bespoke unyielding will and determination. Just now she looked, as Salome had said, “angry clear through,” and the baleful glances she cast on the small mortal she held would have withered a more hardened criminal than six happy-go-lucky years had made of Lionel Hezekiah.
Lionel Hezekiah, whatever his shortcomings, did not look bad. Indeed, he was as engaging an urchin as ever beamed out on a jolly good world through a pair of big, velvet-brown eyes. He was chubby and firm-limbed, with a mop of beautiful golden curls, which were the despair of his heart and the pride and joy of Salome’s; and his round face was usually a lurking-place for dimples and smiles and sunshine.
But just now Lionel Hezekiah was under a blight; he had been caught red-handed in guilt, and was feeling much ashamed of himself. He hung his head and squirmed his toes under the mournful reproach in Salome’s eyes. When Salome looked at him like that, Lionel Hezekiah always felt that he was paying more for his fun than it was worth.
“What do you suppose I caught him doing this time?” demanded Judith.
“I--I don’t know,” faltered Salome.
“Firing--at--a--mark--on--the--henhouse--door--with--new-laid--eggs,” said Judith with measured distinctness. “He has broken every egg that was laid to-day except three. And as for the state of that henhouse door--”
Judith paused, with an indignant gesture meant to convey that the state of the henhouse door must be left to Salome’s imagination, since the English language was not capable of depicting it.
“O Lionel Hezekiah, why will you do such things?” said Salome miserably.
“I--didn’t know it was wrong,” said Lionel Hezekiah, bursting into prompt tears. “I--I thought it would be bully fun. Seems’s if everything what’s fun ‘s wrong.”
Salome’s heart was not proof against tears, as Lionel Hezekiah very well knew. She put her arm about the sobbing culprit, and drew him to her side.
“He didn’t know it was wrong,” she said defiantly to Judith.
“He’s got to be taught, then,” was Judith’s retort. “No, you needn’t try to beg him off, Salome. He shall go right to bed without supper, and stay there till to-morrow morning.”
“Oh! not without his supper,” entreated Salome. “You--you won’t improve the child’s morals by injuring his stomach, Judith.”
“Without his supper, I say,” repeated Judith inexorably. “Lionel Hezekiah, go up-stairs to the south room, and go to bed at once.”
Lionel Hezekiah went up-stairs, and went to bed at once. He was never sulky or disobedient. Salome listened to him as he stumped patiently up-stairs with a sob at every step, and her own eyes filled with tears.
“Now don’t for pity’s sake go crying, Salome,” said Judith irritably. “I think I’ve let him off very easily. He is enough to try the patience of a saint, and I never was that,” she added with entire truth.
“But he isn’t bad,” pleaded Salome. “You know he never does anything the second time after he has been told it was wrong, never.”
“What good does that do when he is certain to do something new and twice as bad? I never saw anything like him for originating ideas of mischief. Just look at what he has done in the past fortnight--in one fortnight, Salome. He brought in a live snake, and nearly frightened you into fits; he drank up a bottle of liniment, and almost poisoned himself; he took three toads to bed with him; he climbed into the henhouse loft, and fell through on a hen and killed her; he painted his face all over with your water-colours; and now comes THIS exploit. And eggs at twenty-eight cents a dozen! I tell you, Salome, Lionel Hezekiah is an expensive luxury.”
“But we couldn’t do without him,” protested Salome.
“_I_ could. But as you can’t, or think you can’t, we’ll have to keep him, I suppose. But the only way to secure any peace of mind for ourselves, as far as I can see, is to tether him in the yard, and hire somebody to watch him.”
“There must be some way of managing him,” said Salome desperately. She thought Judith was in earnest about the tethering. Judith was generally so terribly in earnest in all she said. “Perhaps it is because he has no other employment that he invents so many unheard-of things. If he had anything to occupy himself with--perhaps if we sent him to school--”
“He’s too young to go to school. Father always said that no child should go to school until it was seven, and I don’t mean Lionel Hezekiah shall. Well, I’m going to take a pail of hot water and a brush, and see what I can do to that henhouse door. I’ve got my afternoon’s work cut out for me.”
Judith stood Salome’s crutch up beside her, and departed to purify the henhouse door. As soon as she was safely out of the way, Salome took her crutch, and limped slowly and painfully to the foot of the stairs. She could not go up and comfort Lionel Hezekiah as she yearned to do, which was the reason Judith had sent him up-stairs. Salome had not been up-stairs for fifteen years. Neither did she dare to call him out on the landing, lest Judith return. Besides, of course he must be punished; he had been very naughty.
“But I wish I could smuggle a bit of supper up to him,” she mused, sitting down on the lowest step and listening. “I don’t hear a sound. I suppose he has cried himself to sleep, poor, dear baby. He certainly is dreadfully mischievous; but it seems to me that it shows an investigating turn of mind, and if it could only be directed into the proper channels--I wish Judith would let me have a talk with Mr. Leonard about Lionel Hezekiah. I wish Judith didn’t hate ministers so. I don’t mind so much her not letting me go to church, because I’m so lame that it would be painful anyhow; but I’d like to talk with Mr. Leonard now and then about some things. I can never believe that Judith and father were right; I am sure they were not. There is a God, and I’m afraid it’s terribly wicked not to go to church. But there, nothing short of a miracle would convince Judith; so there is no use in thinking about it. Yes, Lionel Hezekiah must have gone to sleep.”
Salome pictured him so, with his long, curling lashes brushing his rosy, tear-stained cheek and his chubby fists clasped tightly over his breast as was his habit; her heart grew warm and thrilling with the maternity the picture provoked.
A year previously Lionel Hezekiah’s parents, Abner and Martha Smith, had died, leaving a houseful of children and very little else. The children were adopted into various Carmody families, and Salome Marsh had amazed Judith by asking to be allowed to take the five-year-old “baby.” At first Judith had laughed at the idea; but, when she found that Salome was in earnest, she yielded. Judith always gave Salome her own way except on one point.
“If you want the child, I suppose you must have him,” she said finally. “I wish he had a civilized name, though. Hezekiah is bad, and Lionel is worse; but the two in combination, and tacked on to Smith at that, is something that only Martha Smith could have invented. Her judgment was the same clear through, from selecting husbands to names.”
So Lionel Hezekiah came into Judith’s home and Salome’s heart. The latter was permitted to love him all she pleased, but Judith overlooked his training with a critical eye. Possibly it was just as well, for Salome might otherwise have ruined him with indulgence. Salome, who always adopted Judith’s opinions, no matter how ill they fitted her, deferred to the former’s decrees meekly, and suffered far more than Lionel Hezekiah when he was punished.
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!”
Judith’s eyes were bitter and vindictive. She thought she had many grievances against the great Power that rules the universe, but the most intense was Salome’s helplessness--Salome, who fifteen years before had been the brightest, happiest of maidens, light of heart and foot, bubbling over with harmless, sparkling mirth and life. If Salome could only walk like other women, Judith told herself that she would not hate the great tyrannical Power.
Lionel Hezekiah was subdued and angelic for four days after that affair of the henhouse door. Then he broke out in a new place. One afternoon he came in sobbing, with his golden curls full of burrs. Judith was not in, but Salome dropped her crochet-work and gazed at him in dismay.
“Oh, Lionel Hezekiah, what have you gone and done now?”
“I--I just stuck the burrs in ‘cause I was playing I was a heathen chief,” sobbed Lionel Hezekiah. “It was great fun while it lasted; but, when I tried to take them out, it hurt awful.”
Neither Salome nor Lionel Hezekiah ever forgot the harrowing hour that followed. With the aid of comb and scissors, Salome eventually got the burrs out of Lionel Hezekiah’s crop of curls. It would be impossible to decide which of them suffered more in the process. Salome cried as hard as Lionel Hezekiah did, and every snip of the scissors or tug at the silken floss cut into her heart. She was almost exhausted when the performance was over; but she took the tired Lionel Hezekiah on her knee, and laid her wet cheek against his shining head.
“Oh, Lionel Hezekiah, what does make you get into mischief so constantly?” she sighed.
Lionel Hezekiah frowned reflectively.
“I don’t know,” he finally announced, “unless it’s because you don’t send me to Sunday school.”
Salome started as if an electric shock had passed through her frail body.
“Why, Lionel Hezekiah,” she stammered, “what put such and idea into your head?”
“Well, all the other boys go,” said Lionel Hezekiah defiantly; “and they’re all better’n me; so I guess that must be the reason. Teddy Markham says that all little boys should go to Sunday school, and that if they don’t they’re sure to go to the bad place. I don’t see how you can ‘spect me to behave well when you won’t send me to Sunday school.
“Would you like to go?” asked Salome, almost in a whisper.
“I’d like it bully,” said Lionel Hezekiah frankly and succinctly.
“Oh, don’t use such dreadful words,” sighed Salome helplessly. “I’ll see what can be done. Perhaps you can go. I’ll ask your Aunt Judith.”
“Oh, Aunt Judith won’t let me go,” said Lionel Hezekiah despondingly. “Aunt Judith doesn’t believe there is any God or any bad place. Teddy Markham says she doesn’t. He says she’s an awful wicked woman ‘cause she never goes to church. So you must be wicked too, Aunt Salome, ‘cause you never go. Why don’t you?”
“Your--your Aunt Judith won’t let me go,” faltered Salome, more perplexed than she had ever been before in her life.
“Well, it doesn’t seem to me that you have much fun on Sundays,” remarked Lionel Hezekiah ponderingly. “I’d have more if I was you. But I s’pose you can’t ‘cause you’re ladies. 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. Oh! was it too late to undo the evil? When Judith returned, Salome blurted out the whole story. “Lionel Hezekiah must go to Sunday school,” she concluded appealingly.
Judith’s face hardened until it was as if cut in stone.
“No, he shall not,” she said stubbornly. “No one living in my household shall ever go to church or Sunday school. I gave in to you when you wanted to teach him to say his prayers, though I knew it was only foolish superstition, but I sha’n’t yield another inch. You know exactly how I feel on this subject, Salome; I believe just as father did. You know he hated churches and churchgoing. And was there ever a better, kinder, more lovable man?”
“Mother believed in God; mother always went to church,” pleaded Salome.
“Mother was weak and superstitious, just as you are,” retorted Judith inflexibly. “I tell you, Salome, I don’t believe there is a God. But, if there is, He is cruel and unjust, and I hate Him.”
“Judith!” gasped Salome, aghast at the impiety. She half expected to see her sister struck dead at her feet.
“Don’t ‘Judith’ me!” said Judith passionately, in the strange anger that any discussion of the subject always roused in her. “I mean every word I say. Before you got lame I didn’t feel much about it one way or another; I’d just as soon have gone with mother as with father. But, when you were struck down like that, I knew father was right.”
For a moment Salome quailed. She felt that she could not, dare not, stand out against Judith. For her own sake she could not have done so, but the thought of Lionel Hezekiah nerved her to desperation. She struck her thin, bleached little hands wildly together.
“Judith, I’m going to church to-morrow,” she cried. “I tell you I am, I won’t set Lionel Hezekiah a bad example one day longer. I’ll not take him; I won’t go against you in that, for it is your bounty feeds and clothes him; but I’m going myself.”
“If you do, Salome Marsh, I’ll never forgive you,” said Judith, her harsh face dark with anger; and then, not trusting herself to discuss the subject any longer, she went out.
Salome dissolved into her ready tears, and cried most of the night. But her resolution did not fail. Go to church she would, for that dear baby’s sake.
Judith would not speak to her at breakfast, and this almost broke Salome’s heart; but she dared not yield. After breakfast, she limped painfully into her room, and still more painfully dressed herself. When she was ready, she took a little old worn Bible out of her box. It had been her mother’s, and Salome read a chapter in it every night, although she never dared to let Judith see her doing it.
When she limped out into the kitchen, Judith looked up with a hard face. A flame of sullen anger glowed in her dark eyes, and she went into the sitting-room and shut the door, as if by that act she were shutting her sister for evermore out of her heart and life. Salome, strung up to the last pitch of nervous tension, felt intuitively the significance of that closed door. For a moment she wavered--oh, she could not go against Judith! She was all but turning back to her room when Lionel Hezekiah came running in, and paused to look at her admiringly.
“You look just bully, Aunt Salome,” he said. “Where are you going?”
“Don’t use that word, Lionel Hezekiah,” pleaded Salome. “I’m going to church.”
“Take me with you,” said Lionel Hezekiah promptly. Salome shook her head.
“I can’t, dear. Your Aunt Judith wouldn’t like it. Perhaps she will let you go after a while. Now do be a good boy while I am away, won’t you? Don’t do any naughty things.” “I won’t do them if I know they’re naughty,” conceded Lionel Hezekiah. “But that’s just the trouble; I don’t know what’s naughty and what ain’t. Prob’ly if I went to Sunday school I’d find out.”