L. M. MONTGOMERY – Premium Collection: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry & Memoir (Including Anne of Green Gables Series, Chronicles of Avonlea & The Story Girl Trilogy). Lucy Maud Montgomery
Читать онлайн книгу.
and aired. Three matches was broken up by it. And the meetings we had to try to settle the question! Cornelia, will you ever forget the one when old Luther Burns got up and made a speech? HE stated his opinions forcibly.”
“Call a spade a spade, Captain. You mean he got red-mad and raked them all, fore and aft. They deserved it too — a pack of incapables. But what would you expect of a committee of men? That building committee held twenty-seven meetings, and at the end of the twenty-seventh weren’t no nearer having a church than when they begun — not so near, for a fact, for in one fit of hurrying things along they’d gone to work and tore the old church down, so there we were, without a church, and no place but the hall to worship in.”
“The Methodists offered us their church, Cornelia.”
“The Glen St. Mary church wouldn’t have been built to this day,” went on Miss Cornelia, ignoring Captain Jim, “if we women hadn’t just started in and took charge. We said WE meant to have a church, if the men meant to quarrel till doomsday, and we were tired of being a laughing-stock for the Methodists. We held ONE meeting and elected a committee and canvassed for subscriptions. We got them, too. When any of the men tried to sass us we told them they’d tried for two years to build a church and it was our turn now. We shut them up close, believe ME, and in six months we had our church. Of course, when the men saw we were determined they stopped fighting and went to work, manlike, as soon as they saw they had to, or quit bossing. Oh, women can’t preach or be elders; but they can build churches and scare up the money for them.”
“The Methodists allow women to preach,” said Captain Jim.
Miss Cornelia glared at him.
“I never said the Methodists hadn’t common sense, Captain. What I say is, I doubt if they have much religion.”
“I suppose you are in favor of votes for women, Miss Cornelia,” said Gilbert.
“I’m not hankering after the vote, believe ME,” said Miss Cornelia scornfully. “I know what it is to clean up after the men. But some of these days, when the men realize they’ve got the world into a mess they can’t get it out of, they’ll be glad to give us the vote, and shoulder their troubles over on us. That’s THEIR scheme. Oh, it’s well that women are patient, believe ME!”
“What about Job?” suggested Captain Jim.
“Job! It was such a rare thing to find a patient man that when one was really discovered they were determined he shouldn’t be forgotten,” retorted Miss Cornelia triumphantly. “Anyhow, the virtue doesn’t go with the name. There never was such an impatient man born as old Job Taylor over harbor.”
“Well, you know, he had a good deal to try him, Cornelia. Even you can’t defend his wife. I always remember what old William MacAllister said of her at her funeral, ‘There’s nae doot she was a Chreestian wumman, but she had the de’il’s own temper.’”
“I suppose she WAS trying,” admitted Miss Cornelia reluctantly, “but that didn’t justify what Job said when she died. He rode home from the graveyard the day of the funeral with my father. He never said a word till they got near home. Then he heaved a big sigh and said, ‘You may not believe it, Stephen, but this is the happiest day of my life!’ Wasn’t that like a man?”
“I s’pose poor old Mrs. Job did make life kinder uneasy for him,” reflected Captain Jim.
“Well, there’s such a thing as decency, isn’t there? Even if a man is rejoicing in his heart over his wife being dead, he needn’t proclaim it to the four winds of heaven. And happy day or not, Job Taylor wasn’t long in marrying again, you might notice. His second wife could manage him. She made him walk Spanish, believe me! The first thing she did was to make him hustle round and put up a tombstone to the first Mrs. Job — and she had a place left on it for her own name. She said there’d be nobody to make Job put up a monument to HER.”
“Speaking of Taylors, how is Mrs. Lewis Taylor up at the Glen, doctor?” asked Captain Jim.
“She’s getting better slowly — but she has to work too hard,” replied Gilbert.
“Her husband works hard too — raising prize pigs,” said Miss Cornelia. “He’s noted for his beautiful pigs. He’s a heap prouder of his pigs than of his children. But then, to be sure, his pigs are the best pigs possible, while his children don’t amount to much. He picked a poor mother for them, and starved her while she was bearing and rearing them. His pigs got the cream and his children got the skim milk.
“There are times, Cornelia, when I have to agree with you, though it hurts me,” said Captain Jim. “That’s just exactly the truth about Lewis Taylor. When I see those poor, miserable children of his, robbed of all children ought to have, it p’isens my own bite and sup for days afterwards.”
Gilbert went out to the kitchen in response to Anne’s beckoning. Anne shut the door and gave him a connubial lecture.
“Gilbert, you and Captain Jim must stop baiting Miss Cornelia. Oh, I’ve been listening to you — and I just won’t allow it.”
‘Anne, Miss Cornelia is enjoying herself hugely. You know she is.’
“Well, never mind. You two needn’t egg her on like that. Dinner is ready now, and, Gilbert, DON’T let Mrs. Rachel carve the geese. I know she means to offer to do it because she doesn’t think you can do it properly. Show her you can.”
“I ought to be able to. I’ve been studying A-B-C-D diagrams of carving for the past month,” said Gilbert. “Only don’t talk to me while I’m doing it, Anne, for if you drive the letters out of my head I’ll be in a worse predicament than you were in old geometry days when the teacher changed them.”
Gilbert carved the geese beautifully. Even Mrs. Rachel had to admit that. And everybody ate of them and enjoyed them. Anne’s first Christmas dinner was a great success and she beamed with housewifely pride. Merry was the feast and long; and when it was over they gathered around the cheer of the red hearth flame and Captain Jim told them stories until the red sun swung low over Four Winds Harbor, and the long blue shadows of the Lombardies fell across the snow in the lane.
“I must be getting back to the light,” he said finally. “I’ll jest have time to walk home before sundown. Thank you for a beautiful Christmas, Mistress Blythe. Bring Master Davy down to the light some night before he goes home.
“I want to see those stone gods,” said Davy with a relish.
Chapter XVI.
New Year’s Eve at the Light
The Green Gables folk went home after Christmas, Marilla under solemn covenant to return for a month in the spring. More snow came before New Year’s, and the harbor froze over, but the gulf still was free, beyond the white, imprisoned fields. The last day of the old year was one of those bright, cold, dazzling winter days, which bombard us with their brilliancy, and command our admiration but never our love. The sky was sharp and blue; the snow diamonds sparkled insistently; the stark trees were bare and shameless, with a kind of brazen beauty; the hills shot assaulting lances of crystal. Even the shadows were sharp and stiff and clear-cut, as no proper shadows should be. Everything that was handsome seemed ten times handsomer and less attractive in the glaring splendor; and everything that was ugly seemed ten times uglier, and everything was either handsome or ugly. There was no soft blending, or kind obscurity, or elusive mistiness in that searching glitter. The only things that held their own individuality were the firs — for the fir is the tree of mystery and shadow, and yields never to the encroachments of crude radiance.
But finally the day began to realise that she was growing old. Then a certain pensiveness fell over her beauty which dimmed yet intensified it; sharp angles, glittering points, melted away into curves and enticing gleams. The white harbor put on soft grays and pinks; the faraway hills