The Blythes Are Quoted (40 page)

“Yes, of course ... if you do.”

In the evening they went for the swim ... much to Clack’s silent but evident disapproval.

Afterwards they sat on an old upturned dory and watched the moon make patterns on the water. The wind rustled in the dune grasses and there was a thin, silvery wash of little
waves on the shore. Far up Four Winds Harbour were mists like dancing witches.

Who could suppose that Ashburn was so short a distance away? It seemed on another planet.

Dad had told her there would be nothing to look at but sunsets. Sunsets! Why, there was Don’s profile to look at. And his slim, sloping shoulders and long, steel-muscled, golden-brown arms.

She thought of George’s awful, plump white body in a bathing suit and shuddered.

“I wonder what would happen if I tried to hold your hand,” said Don.

Nothing happened ... at least nothing that anyone could see. Chrissie shuddered again to imagine what Clack would say if she saw. As for Aunty Clark ... well, she just would not think about
that
.

But she knew that the touch of Don’s fingers was sending little thrills up her arm like the waves of some delicate spirit fire. She wondered if other girls felt like that when their friends touched them. It seemed impossible. No one but Don could make anyone feel like that. And yet she had met him only the night before.

“Oh, if I only weren’t a Clark!” she thought. “Well, Don is only having a little flirtation just as I am. It means nothing more to him. He thinks I am Clack’s niece and a nursery governess and in his own class. I wish it hadn’t been necessary to tell him those fibs.
Was
it necessary? Why did I care what he thought I was? Just to save the Clark pride, I suppose. And I’ve always laughed at it. I’m as bad as Aunty. But Don will soon forget me and Aunty and dad will find they can’t marry me off just as they like and meanwhile I will have had a delicious month with darling Clack.”

Clack sometimes feared Chrissie had forgotten she was a Clark in the weeks that followed. But she could only fall back on her belief that her lamb could do no wrong. She had to have some amusement, hadn’t she? Mowbray Narrows was a very quiet place.

Don Glynne and Chrissie went swimming together every evening ... and soon every morning. There were no more breakfast trays. Don used to come and whistle outside her window ... which Clack thought indelicate, to say the least of it. What business had he to know which was her window?

Then they were off to the sandshore, which was all pale golden in the thin, translucent glow of the sunrise.

Clack thought it was worse going swimming in the morning than in the evening. The other young folks of Glen St. Mary and the Upper Glen and a few from Mowbray Narrows went in the evening and Clack had got resigned to it: but she could not resign herself to the morning expeditions. Nobody else went swimming in the morning ... except some of the summer colony ... but they were not Clarks. Clack’s only consolation was what old Mrs. Clark would say if she knew.

But she did not know. Or did she? Clack could not lose her belief that you could not get ahead of old Mrs. Clark, no matter what you did. As for Adam, he was as easily befooled as any other man.

Sometimes Chrissie brought Don in to breakfast with her and Clack could not help being civil to him ... could not help liking him. She knew Miss Merrion said she had never had a gardener like him. One who really seemed to take an interest in his work.

After breakfast Don and Chrissie used to go into the garden and eat red currants until it was time for him to show
up at Miss Merrion’s, when all the other servants would be just getting up. Don declared the cook was worried because he didn’t seem to be hungry some mornings.

“How could I eat two breakfasts?” he asked Clack.

He and Chrissie did a great deal of laughing and talking as they ate red currants. Clack often wondered what it was all about but she was too well-bred to listen. Old Mrs. Clark would have listened without scruple, she knew. But she was not going to imitate
her
.

They went on picnics on his afternoons off, rattling away in his old Ford to some lonely place among the hills. These picnics worried Clack more than the swimming expeditions. Now and then she warned Chrissie, who only laughed at her warnings.

“You say Aunty will be sure to get her way and if so I’ll have to marry George,” she would say.

“I am thinking of the poor young man,” Clack would say with dignity.

So was Chrissie, although she would never have admitted it. She knew quite well that Don Glynne was in love with her and that it was the real thing. She knew she ought to break with him at once ... but, to her dismay, she found she could not do it. And yet she could never marry him.

“I couldn’t have believed the Clark pride was so strong in me,” she reflected miserably. “I’m really as bad as Aunty. Well, suppose I give them all the shock of their lives ... including Aunty Clack ... and marry Don? I
can
make him ask me to ... easily ... he thinks I am only a nursery governess. I believe I could do it anyhow. And a fig for George!”

Sometimes they dug for clams at low tide and Clack made excellent chowders ... and enjoyed seeing them eat them ... unhappy though she was. For this month, to which she had looked forward so happily, was very unhappy for her. Her only consolation was that old Mrs. Clark always got her own way.

“To think I should have come to finding comfort in that,” she reflected sadly.

Why, Don and Chrissie even went to the dances at the Walk Inn ... the summer colony dance house ... and Clack knew, through Susan Baker, that often as not they never went inside but danced alone out under the trees to the music that drifted out from the Inn, while the moonlight sifted down on them. The moons that summer were simply wonderful. At least, Don and Chrissie would have told you so. To other people they seemed much like ordinary moons.

Once poor Clack heard a wild tale from a neighbour that Chrissie had been seen helping Don mow the Merrion lawns but she refused to believe it ... or even ask Susan Baker about it.

She might as well have believed it because it was true. And whatever happened the roses had to be sprayed. Also Chrissie helped Don with his weeding and learned a good deal about gardening as well as about other things. There was no doubt that Don understood his trade. She didn’t know another thing about him ... and never tried to find out ... but she gathered that he had an uncle somewhere who was a farmer or an apple grower or something like that, and no other relatives worth mentioning.

Poor Clack was the most unhappy woman in the world just then. She tried to find out something about Don Glynne but nobody seemed to know anything about him ... not even Susan Baker. And what Susan Baker didn’t know about anybody within a radius of thirty miles was not worth knowing, as Dr. Blythe was in the habit of saying. He had even been known to accuse his wife ... good-humouredly, of course ... of listening to Susan.

“How else am I to hear the news?” Anne defended herself. “Miss Cornelia isn’t in it when it comes to Susan. And Susan says Miss Clark is flirting shamefully with that gardener of Miss Merrion’s and poor Polly Claxton is worrying herself to death.”

“Miss Claxton may spare herself her worries,” said the doctor. “Don Glynne can look out for himself. No woman is going to make a fool of him. If that Clark girl thinks she is, she is going to find herself badly mistaken. As for the rest, Anne-girl, keep your fingers out of it if you don’t want them burned. Remember your last attempt at matchmaking.”

“I shall never hear the last of that from you,” said Anne ruefully. “And I certainly am not going to make any attempt at matchmaking between Miss Clark and Don Glynne. Why, she is Adam Clark’s daughter.”

“She is none the better for that,” said Gilbert. “And here is a piece of gossip that everybody knows. Adam Clark is on the verge of bankruptcy. And his sister says his daughter is going to marry some man out west. So you may be sure there is no question of anything serious between Miss Clark and Don Glynne.”

“Girls have been known to do foolish things before now,” said Anne.

“As when you married a poor young doctor and went to live with him in a tumble-down house you persisted in calling your House of Dreams.”

“Gilbert Blythe! I told Susan to make your favourite lemon pie for dinner but now I shall tell her not to.”

“If you do ...”

“I’ll make it myself,” said Anne, with a laugh ... the old laugh that had never failed her yet. For the Great War had not come and there was no shadow on her face. As for Don Glynne and Miss Clark, they could look after themselves. Mowbray Narrows people were too far away to bother with.

Don Glynne seemed to know all about all the gardens of history and romance and legend in the world, from Eden down. He told Chrissie much about them as they weeded or picnicked or chased night moths in the orchard. Once Chrissie stumbled over a root and Don caught her. She knew he held her a little longer than was necessary ... and she knew she liked it ... and she knew that he knew she liked it. And she knew she would
never
marry George.

Which would not have comforted Clack much if she had known it. It
would
be a triumph to get the better of old Mrs. Clark for once; but she did not want Chrissie to marry Miss Merrion’s gardener.

“It is no use looking forward to anything,” thought poor Polly Claxton. “I looked forward to this month with Chrissie so much ... and see how it has turned out! I wonder if I ought to warn Adam Clark. But no. I will
not
play into old Mrs. Clark’s hands like that. I haven’t the least doubt she knows as much about it as I do anyway.”

Once Chrissie heard herself referred to as “Don Glynne’s girl” and was horrified to find that it thrilled her instead of annoying her. Clack heard a similar reference ... several of them in fact ... and it gave her a very bad quarter of an hour.

But after all, Chrissie was a Clark ... and Clarks didn’t marry gardeners ... it was impossible ... no matter how cloudy their blue eyes or how tall and broad-shouldered their figures.

Of course, anybody could see that Don Glynne was crazy about her ... but Clack fell back on the assurance that the men ought to be able to look after themselves. The best of them, she felt, needed a lesson quite frequently.

When she saw Don offering Chrissie the quarter of an apple on the point of his garden knife one day she felt much more at ease. It was a pity such a nice fellow should have such manners. And him looking so much like a gentleman, too!

Chrissie thought the apple the most delicious she had ever tasted. She knew the knife was clean ... Don had washed it in the brook before he carved up the apple.

But it was not until Don kissed her ... for the first time ... that night on the shore ... and just for one second was the centre of her universe ... that she knew something else.

“From now on you are mine,” he said, between his set teeth.

Chrissie knew there was only one way of escape ... and she took it.

“Let us be sane,” she said, as lightly as wave froth in the sand. “You know this can’t go on. I’ve liked you very much ... for the summer. But I must have a different beau for the wintertime. Really.”

“So ... that is how it is?” said Don.

“You knew it, didn’t you?”

“I suppose I ought to have known it,” said Don.

He laughed.

“Life is a joke,” he explained, “and what is a joke for but to be laughed at?”

He looked at Chrissie. She wore a silvery dress and looked like a mermaid just slipped out of the sea. She knew he thought her the loveliest thing in the world. This is one of the things a woman knows without being told.

“Suppose I just said,” went on Don, “‘You have got to marry me and no more nonsense about it’?”

“You wouldn’t like it,” said Chrissie still more frothily.

She knew by his face that she would have to tell the lie she had hoped to escape telling.

“You see ... I like you as a friend but I don’t care anything about you in any other way.”

“And that,” said Don, “is that.”

They went back through the scented moonshine in a very dreadful silence.

But at the corner of the spruce where the road branched off to Miss Merrion’s Don spoke again.

“I think you were lying when you said you didn’t love me. The real reason is ... you think a gardener is not good enough for a governess.”

“Don’t be absurd, Don.”

“So many true things are absurd.”

“Well, I am going to tell you the truth at last. I have been acting a lie all summer. Oh yes, I’m ashamed of it but that doesn’t make matters any better now. I am not a governess. I don’t know how you ever got the idea that I was.”

“I think you know very well ... and I think you intended me to think you were.”

“You could easily have found out by asking somebody.”

“Do you think I was going to discuss you with the people around here?”

“Well, I’m not Chrissie Dunbar either ... at least, I am Phyllis Christine Dunbar Clark ... the daughter of Adam Clark of Ashburn ... though that may not mean anything to you.”

“Oh, yes, it means something,” said Don, slowly and icily. “I know who Adam Clark is ... and what the Clarks are. I seem to have been nicely fooled all round. But then I am so easily fooled. I believe in people so readily. I even believed Mrs. Blythe when she told me ...”

“What did she tell you?” cried Chrissie.

“Never mind. Merely a harmless answer to a harmless question I asked her. Anyone could have told me ... it is common knowledge. It all comes back to the fact that I have been made an easy fool of. So easy. It really couldn’t have been easier, Miss Clark.”

“I am going away tomorrow,” said Chrissie coldly, her ignorance of what Mrs. Blythe could have told him still rankling in her heart. Not that it could have made any difference.

“So this is good-bye?”

“Yes.”

“Good-bye, Miss Clark.”

He was gone ... actually gone. At first she couldn’t believe it. Then she lied again in saying, “Thank Heaven.”

She went up to her room and made up her mind that she would cry till ten o’clock and then put Don Glynne out of her mind forever.