Rainbow Valley by Lucy Maud Montgomery (rooftoppers txt) 📖

Miss Cornelia descended upon the manse the next day and cross-questioned Mary, who, being a young person of considerable discernment and astuteness, told her story simple and truthfully, with an entire absence of complaint or bravado. Miss Cornelia was more favourably impressed than she had expected to be, but deemed it her duty to be severe.

“Do you think,” she said sternly, “that you showed your gratitude to this family, who have been far too kind to you, by insulting and chasing one of their little friends as you did yesterday?”

“Say, it was rotten mean of me,” admitted Mary easily. “I dunno what possessed me. That old codfish seemed to come in so blamed handy. But I was awful sorry—I cried last night after I went to bed about it, honest I did. You ask Una if I didn’t. I wouldn’t tell her what for ‘cause I was ashamed of it, and then she cried, too, because she was afraid someone had hurt my feelings. Laws, I ain’t got any feelings to hurt worth speaking of. What worries me is why Mrs. Wiley hain’t been hunting for me. It ain’t like her.”

Miss Cornelia herself thought it rather peculiar, but she merely admonished Mary sharply not to take any further liberties with the minister’s codfish, and went to report progress at Ingleside.

“If the child’s story is true the matter ought to be looked into,” she said. “I know something about that Wiley woman, believe ME. Marshall used to be well acquainted with her when he lived over-harbour. I heard him say something last summer about her and a home child she had—likely this very Mary-creature. He said some one told him she was working the child to death and not half feeding and clothing it. You know, Anne dearie, it has always been my habit neither to make nor meddle with those over-harbour folks. But I shall send Marshall over to-morrow to find out the rights of this if he can. And THEN I’ll speak to the minister. Mind you, Anne dearie, the Merediths found this girl literally starving in James Taylor’s old hay barn. She had been there all night, cold and hungry and alone. And us sleeping warm in our beds after good suppers.”

“The poor little thing,” said Anne, picturing one of her own dear babies, cold and hungry and alone in such circumstances. “If she has been ill-used, Miss Cornelia, she mustn’t be taken back to such a place. I was an orphan once in a very similar situation.”

“We’ll have to consult the Hopetown asylum folks,” said Miss Cornelia. “Anyway, she can’t be left at the manse. Dear knows what those poor children might learn from her. I understand that she has been known to swear. But just think of her being there two whole weeks and Mr Meredith never waking up to it! What business has a man like that to have a family? Why, Anne dearie, he ought to be a monk.”

Two evenings later Miss Cornelia was back at Ingleside.

“It’s the most amazing thing!” she said. “Mrs. Wiley was found dead in her bed the very morning after this Mary-creature ran away. She has had a bad heart for years and the doctor had warned her it might happen at any time. She had sent away her hired man and there was nobody in the house. Some neighbours found her the next day. They missed the child, it seems, but supposed Mrs. Wiley had sent her to her cousin near Charlottetown as she had said she was going to do. The cousin didn’t come to the funeral and so nobody ever knew that Mary wasn’t with her. The people Marshall talked to told him some things about the way Mrs. Wiley used this Mary that made his blood boil, so he declares. You know, it puts Marshall in a regular fury to hear of a child being ill-used. They said she whipped her mercilessly for every little fault or mistake. Some folks talked of writing to the asylum authorities but everybody’s business is nobody’s business and it was never done.”

“I am sorry that Wiley person is dead,” said Susan fiercely. “I should like to go over-harbour and give her a piece of my mind. Starving and beating a child, Mrs. Dr. dear! As you know, I hold with lawful spanking, but I go no further. And what is to become of this poor child now, Mrs. Marshall Elliott?”

“I suppose she must be sent back to Hopetown,” said Miss Cornelia. “I think every one hereabouts who wants a home child has one. I’ll see Mr. Meredith to-morrow and tell him my opinion of the whole affair.”

“And no doubt she will, Mrs. Dr. dear,” said Susan, after Miss Cornelia had gone. “She would stick at nothing, not even at shingling the church spire if she took it into her head. But I cannot understand how even Cornelia Bryant can talk to a minister as she does. You would think he was just any common person.”

When Miss Cornelia had gone, Nan Blythe uncurled herself from the hammock where she had been studying her lessons and slipped away to Rainbow Valley. The others were already there. Jem and Jerry were playing quoits with old horseshoes borrowed from the Glen blacksmith. Carl was stalking ants on a sunny hillock. Walter, lying on his stomach among the fern, was reading aloud to Mary and Di and Faith and Una from a wonderful book of myths wherein were fascinating accounts of Prester John and the Wandering Jew, divining rods and tailed men, of Schamir, the worm that split rocks and opened the way to golden treasure, of Fortunate Isles and swan-maidens. It was a great shock to Walter to learn that William Tell and Gelert were myths also; and the story of Bishop Hatto was to keep him awake all that night; but best of all he loved the stories of the Pied Piper and the San Greal. He read them thrillingly, while the bells on the Tree Lovers tinkled in the summer wind and the coolness of the evening shadows crept across the valley.

“Say, ain’t them in’resting lies?” said Mary admiringly when Walter had closed the book.

“They aren’t lies,” said Di indignantly.

“You don’t mean they’re true?” asked Mary incredulously.

“No—not exactly. They’re like those ghost-stories of yours. They weren’t true—but you didn’t expect us to believe them, so they weren’t lies.”

“That yarn about the divining rod is no lie, anyhow,” said Mary. “Old Jake Crawford over-harbour can work it. They send for him from everywhere when they want to dig a well. And I believe I know the Wandering Jew.”

“Oh, Mary,” said Una, awe-struck.

“I do—true’s you’re alive. There was an old man at Mrs. Wiley’s one day last fall. He looked old enough to be ANYTHING. She was asking him about cedar posts, if he thought they’d last well. And he said, ‘Last well? They’ll last a thousand years. I know, for I’ve tried them twice.’ Now, if he was two thousand years old who was he but your Wandering Jew?”

“I don’t believe the Wandering Jew would associate with a person like Mrs. Wiley,” said Faith decidedly.

“I love the Pied Piper story,” said Di, “and so does mother. I always feel so sorry for the poor little lame boy who couldn’t keep up with the others and got shut out of the mountain. He must have been so disappointed. I think all the rest of his life he’d be wondering what wonderful thing he had missed and wishing he could have got in with the others.”

“But how glad his mother must have been,” said Una softly. “I think she had been sorry all her life that he was lame. Perhaps she even used to cry about it. But she would never be sorry again—never. She would be glad he was lame because that was why she hadn’t lost him.”

“Some day,” said Walter dreamily, looking afar into the sky, “the Pied Piper will come over the hill up there and down Rainbow Valley, piping merrily and sweetly. And I will follow him—follow him down to the shore—down to the sea—away from you all. I don’t think I’ll want to go—Jem will want to go—it will be such an adventure—but I won’t. Only I’ll HAVE to—the music will call and call and call me until I MUST follow.”

“We’ll all go,” cried Di, catching fire at the flame of Walter’s fancy, and half-believing she could see the mocking, retreating figure of the mystic piper in the far, dim end of the valley.

“No. You’ll sit here and wait,” said Walter, his great, splendid eyes full of strange glamour. “You’ll wait for us to come back. And we may not come—for we cannot come as long as the Piper plays. He may pipe us round the world. And still you’ll sit here and wait—and WAIT.”

“Oh, dry up,” said Mary, shivering. “Don’t look like that, Walter Blythe. You give me the creeps. Do you want to set me bawling? I could just see that horrid old Piper going away on, and you boys following him, and us girls sitting here waiting all alone. I dunno why it is—I never was one of the blubbering kind—but as soon as you start your spieling I always want to cry.”

Walter smiled in triumph. He liked to exercise this power of his over his companions—to play on their feelings, waken their fears, thrill their souls. It satisfied some dramatic instinct in him. But under his triumph was a queer little chill of some mysterious dread. The Pied Piper had seemed very real to him—as if the fluttering veil that hid the future had