Kilmeny of the Orchard
Kilmeny of the Orchard CHAPTER I. THE THOUGHTS OF YOUTHCHAPTER II. A LETTER OF DESTINYCHAPTER III. THE MASTER OF LINDSAY SCHOOLCHAPTER IV. A TEA TABLE CONVERSATIONCHAPTER V. A PHANTOM OF DELIGHTCHAPTER VI. THE STORY OF KILMENYCHAPTER VII. A ROSE OF WOMANHOODCHAPTER VIII. AT THE GATE OF EDENCHAPTER IX. THE STRAIGHT SIMPLICITY OF EVECHAPTER X. A TROUBLING OF THE WATERSCHAPTER XI. A LOVER AND HIS LASSCHAPTER XII. A PRISONER OF LOVECHAPTER XIII. A SWEETER WOMAN NE’ER DREW BREATHCHAPTER XIV. IN HER SELFLESS MOODCHAPTER XV. AN OLD, UNHAPPY, FAR-OFF THINGCHAPTER XVI. DAVID BAKER’S OPINIONCHAPTER XVII. A BROKEN FETTERCHAPTER XVIII. NEIL GORDON SOLVES HIS OWN PROBLEMNotesCopyright
Kilmeny of the Orchard
L. M. Montgomery
CHAPTER I. THE THOUGHTS OF YOUTH
The sunshine of a day in early spring, honey pale and honey
sweet, was showering over the red brick buildings of Queenslea
College and the grounds about them, throwing through the bare,
budding maples and elms, delicate, evasive etchings of gold and
brown on the paths, and coaxing into life the daffodils that were
peering greenly and perkily up under the windows of the co-eds’
dressing-room.A young April wind, as fresh and sweet as if it had been
blowing over the fields of memory instead of through dingy streets,
was purring in the tree-tops and whipping the loose tendrils of the
ivy network which covered the front of the main building. It was a
wind that sang of many things, but what it sang to each listener
was only what was in that listener’s heart. To the college students
who had just been capped and diplomad by “Old Charlie,” the grave
president of Queenslea, in the presence of an admiring throng of
parents and sisters, sweethearts and friends, it sang, perchance,
of glad hope and shining success and high achievement. It sang of
the dreams of youth that may never be quite fulfilled, but are well
worth the dreaming for all that. God help the man who has never
known such dreams—who, as he leaves his alma mater, is not already
rich in aerial castles, the proprietor of many a spacious estate in
Spain. He has missed his birthright.The crowd streamed out of the entrance hall and scattered
over the campus, fraying off into the many streets beyond. Eric
Marshall and David Baker walked away together. The former had
graduated in Arts that day at the head of his class; the latter had
come to see the graduation, nearly bursting with pride in Eric’s
success.Between these two was an old and tried and enduring
friendship, although David was ten years older than Eric, as the
mere tale of years goes, and a hundred years older in knowledge of
the struggles and difficulties of life which age a man far more
quickly and effectually than the passing of time.Physically the two men bore no resemblance to one another,
although they were second cousins. Eric Marshall, tall,
broad-shouldered, sinewy, walking with a free, easy stride, which
was somehow suggestive of reserve strength and power, was one of
those men regarding whom less-favoured mortals are tempted
seriously to wonder why all the gifts of fortune should be showered
on one individual. He was not only clever and good to look upon,
but he possessed that indefinable charm of personality which is
quite independent of physical beauty or mental ability. He had
steady, grayish-blue eyes, dark chestnut hair with a glint of gold
in its waves when the sunlight struck it, and a chin that gave the
world assurance of a chin. He was a rich man’s son, with a clean
young manhood behind him and splendid prospects before him. He was
considered a practical sort of fellow, utterly guiltless of
romantic dreams and visions of any sort.
“ I am afraid Eric Marshall will never do one quixotic
thing,” said a Queenslea professor, who had a habit of uttering
rather mysterious epigrams, “but if he ever does it will supply the
one thing lacking in him.”David Baker was a short, stocky fellow with an ugly,
irregular, charming face; his eyes were brown and keen and
secretive; his mouth had a comical twist which became sarcastic, or
teasing, or winning, as he willed. His voice was generally as soft
and musical as a woman’s; but some few who had seen David Baker
righteously angry and heard the tones which then issued from his
lips were in no hurry to have the experience repeated.He was a doctor—a specialist in troubles of the throat and
voice—and he was beginning to have a national reputation. He was on
the staff of the Queenslea Medical College and it was whispered
that before long he would be called to fill an important vacancy at
McGill.He had won his way to success through difficulties and
drawbacks which would have daunted most men. In the year Eric was
born David Baker was an errand boy in the big department store of
Marshall & Company. Thirteen years later he graduated with high
honors from Queenslea Medical College. Mr. Marshall had given him
all the help which David’s sturdy pride could be induced to accept,
and now he insisted on sending the young man abroad for a
post-graduate course in London and Germany. David Baker had
eventually repaid every cent Mr. Marshall had expended on him; but
he never ceased to cherish a passionate gratitude to the kind and
generous man; and he loved that man’s son with a love surpassing
that of brothers.He had followed Eric’s college course with keen, watchful
interest. It was his wish that Eric should take up the study of law
or medicine now that he was through Arts; and he was greatly
disappointed that Eric should have finally made up his mind to go
into business with his father.
“ It’s a clean waste of your talents,” he grumbled, as they
walked home from the college. “You’d win fame and distinction in
law—that glib tongue of yours was meant for a lawyer and it is
sheer flying in the face of Providence to devote it to commercial
uses—a flat crossing of the purposes of destiny. Where is your
ambition, man?”
“ In the right place,” answered Eric, with his ready laugh.
“It is not your kind, perhaps, but there is room and need for all
kinds in this lusty young country of ours. Yes, I am going into the
business. In the first place, it has been father’s cherished desire
ever since I was born, and it would hurt him pretty badly if I
backed out now. He wished me to take an Arts course because he
believed that every man should have as liberal an education as he
can afford to get, but now that I have had it he wants me in the
firm.”
“ He wouldn’t oppose you if he thought you really wanted to
go in for something else.”
“ Not he. 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.
There, I’m waxing eloquent, so I’d better stop. But ambition, man!
Why, I’m full of it—it’s bubbling in every pore of me. I mean to
make the department store of Marshall & Company famous from
ocean to ocean. Father started in life as a poor boy from a Nova
Scotian farm. He has built up a business that has a provincial
reputation. I mean to carry it on. In five years it shall have a
maritime reputation, in ten, a Canadian. I want to make the firm of
Marshall & Company stand for something big in the commercial
interests of Canada. Isn’t that as honourable an ambition as trying
to make black seem white in a court of law, or discovering some new
disease with a harrowing name to torment poor creatures who might
otherwise die peacefully in blissful ignorance of what ailed
them?”
“ When you begin to make poor jokes it is time to stop
arguing with you,” said David, with a shrug of his fat shoulders.
“Go your own gait and dree your own weird. I’d as soon expect
success in trying to storm the citadel single-handed as in trying
to turn you from any course about which you had once made up your
mind. Whew, this street takes it out of a fellow! What could have
possessed our ancestors to run a town up the side of a hill? I’m
not so slim and active as I was on MY graduation day ten years ago.
By the way, what a lot of co-eds were in your class—twenty, if I
counted right. When I graduated there were only two ladies in our
class and they were the pioneers of their sex at Queenslea. They
were well past their first youth, very grim and angular and
serious; and they could never have been on speaking terms with a
mirror in their best days. But mark you, they were excellent
females—oh, very excellent. Times have changed with a vengeance,
judging from the line-up of co-eds to-day. 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?”
“ I DID notice her,” said David emphatically, darting a keen
side glance at his friend. “I noticed her most particularly and
critically—for someone whispered her name behind me and coupled it
with the exceedingly interesting information that Miss Campion was
supposed to be the future Mrs. Eric Marshall. Whereupon I stared at
her with all my eyes.”
“ There is no truth in that report,” said Eric in a tone of
annoyance. “Agnes and I are the best of friends and nothing more. I
like and admire her more than any woman I know; but if the future
Mrs. Eric Marshall exists in the flesh I haven’t met her yet. I
haven’t even started out to look for her—and don’t intend to for
some years to come. I have something else to think of,” he
concluded, in a tone of contempt, for which anyone might have known
he would be punished sometime if Cupid were not deaf as well as
blind.
“ You’ll meet the lady of the future some day,” said David
dryly. “And in spite of your scorn I venture to predict that if
fate doesn’t bring her before long you’ll very soon start out to
look for her. A word of advice, oh, son of your mother. When you go
courting take your common sense with you.”
“ Do you think I shall be likely to leave it behind?” asked
Eric amusedly.
“ Well, I mistrust you,” said David, sagely wagging his head.
“The Lowland Scotch part of you is all right, but there’s a Celtic
streak in you, from that little Highland grandmother of yours, and
when a man has that there’s never any knowing where it will break
out, or what dance it will lead him, especially when it comes to
this love-making business. You are just as likely as not to lose
your head over some little fool or shrew for the sake of her
outward favour and make yourself miserable for life. 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. But the tenth always has to be reckoned
with.”
“ You are as bad asClever Alicein the fairy tale who worried over the future of her unborn
children,” protested Eric.
“ Clever Alicehas been very unjustly
laughed at,” said David gravely. “We doctors know that. Perhaps she
overdid the worrying business a little, but she was perfectly right
in principle. If people worried a little more about their unborn
children—at least, to the extent of providing a proper heritage,
physically, mentally, and morally, for them—and then stopped
worrying about them after they ARE born, this world would be a very
much pleasanter place to live in, and the human race would make
more progress in a generation than it has done in recorded
history.”
“ Oh, if you are going to mount your dearly beloved hobby of
heredity I am not going to argue with you, David, man. But as for
the matter of urging me to hasten and marry me a wife, why don’t
you”—It was on Eric’s lips to say, “Why don’t you get married to a
girl of the right sort yourself and set me a good example?” But he
checked himself. He knew that there was an old sorrow in David
Baker’s life which was not to be unduly jarred by the jests even of
privileged friendship. He changed his question to, “Why don’t you
leave this on the knees of the gods where it properly belongs? I
thought you were a firm believer in predestination,
David.”
“ Well, so I am, to a certain extent,” said David cautiously.
“I believe, as an excellent old aunt of mine used to say, that what
is to be will be and what isn’t to be happens sometimes. And it is
precisely such unchancy happenings that make the scheme of things
go wrong. 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’sArthur, 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. Moreover, she’s
well-born, well-bred, and well-educated—three very indispensable
things when it comes to choosing a woman to fill your mother’s
place, friend of mine!”
“ I agree with you,” said Eric carelessly. “I could not marry
any woman who did not fulfill those conditions. But, as I have
said, I am not in love with Agnes Campion—and it wouldn’t be of any
use if I were. She is as good as engaged to Larry West. You
remember West?”
“ That thin, leggy fellow you chummed with so much your first
two years in Queenslea? Yes, what has become of him?”
“ He had to drop out after his second year for financial
reasons. He is working his own way through college, you know. For
the past two years he has been teaching school in some
out-of-the-way place over in Prince Edward Island. He isn’t any too
well, poor fellow—never was very strong and has studied
remorselessly. I haven’t heard from him since February. He said
then that he was afraid he wasn’t going to be able to stick it out
till the end of the school year. I hope Larry won’t break down. He
is a fine fellow and worthy even of Agnes Campion. Well, here we
are. Coming in, David?”
“ Not this afternoon—haven’t got time. I must mosey up to the
North End to see a man who has got a lovely throat. Nobody can find
out what is the matter. He has puzzled all the doctors. He has
puzzled me, but I’ll find out what is wrong with him if he’ll only
live long enough.”
CHAPTER II. A LETTER OF DESTINY
Eric, finding that his father had not yet returned from the
college, went into the library and sat down to read a letter he had
picked up from the hall table. It was from Larry West, and after
the first few lines Eric’s face lost the absent look it had worn
and assumed an expression of interest.
“ I am writing to ask a favour of you, Marshall,” wrote West.
“The fact is, I’ve fallen into the hands of the Philistines—that is
to say, the doctors. I’ve not been feeling very fit all winter but
I’ve held on, hoping to finish out the year.
“ Last week my landlady—who is a saint in spectacles and
calico—looked at me one morning at the breakfast table and said,
VERY gently, ‘You must go to town to-morrow, Master, and see a
doctor about yourself.’
“ I went and did not stand upon the order of my going. Mrs.
Williamson is She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. She has an inconvenient habit
of making you realize that she is exactly right, and that you would
be all kinds of a fool if you didn’t take her advice. You feel that
what she thinks to-day you will think to-morrow.
“ In Charlottetown I consulted a doctor. He punched and
pounded me, and poked things at me and listened at the other end of
them; and finally he said I must stop work ‘immejutly and to onct’
and hie me straightway to a climate not afflicted with the
north-east winds of Prince Edward Island in the spring. I am not to
be allowed to do any work until the fall. Such was his dictum and
Mrs. Williamson enforces it.
“ I shall teach this week out and then the spring vacation of
three weeks begins. I want you to come over and take my place as
pedagogue in the Lindsay school for the last week in May and the
month of June. The school year ends then and there will be plenty
of teachers looking for the place, but just now I cannot get a
suitable substitute. I have a couple of pupils who are preparing to
try the Queen’s Academy entrance examinations, and I don’t like to
leave them in the lurch or hand them over to the tender mercies of
some third-class teacher who knows little Latin and less Greek.
Come over and take the school till the end of the term, you petted
son of luxury. It will do you a world of good to learn how rich a
man feels when he is earning twenty-five dollars a month by his own
unaided efforts!
“ Seriously, Marshall, I hope you can come, for I don’t know
any other fellow I can ask. The work isn’t hard, though you’ll
likely find it monotonous. Of course, this little north-shore
farming settlement isn’t a very lively place. The rising and
setting of the sun are the most exciting events of the average day.
But the people are very kind and hospitable; and Prince Edward
Island in the month of June is such a thing as you don’t often see
except in happy dreams. There are some trout in the pond and you’ll
always find an old salt at the harbour ready and willing to take
you out cod-fishing or lobstering.
“ I’ll bequeath you my boarding house. You’ll find it
comfortable and not further from the school than a good
constitutional. Mrs. Williamson is the dearest soul alive; and she
is one of those old-fashioned cooks who feed you on feasts of fat
things and whose price is above rubies.
“ Her husband, Robert, or Bob, as he is commonly called
despite his sixty years, is quite a character in his way. He is an
amusing old gossip, with a turn for racy comment and a finger in
everybody’s pie. He knows everything about everybody in Lindsay for
three generations back.
“ They have no living children, but Old Bob has a black cat
which is his especial pride and darling. The name of this animal is
Timothy and as such he must always be called and referred to.
Never, as you value Robert’s good opinion, let him hear you
speaking of his pet as ‘the cat,’ or even as ‘Tim.’ You will never
be forgiven and he will not consider you a fit person to have
charge of the school.
