Rainbow Valley (Unabridged). Lucy Maud Montgomery
Читать онлайн книгу.
while the manse children stood around and watched her. Jerry noticed that she had a pretty mouth and very nice, even, white teeth. Faith decided, with secret horror, that Mary had not one stitch on her except that ragged, faded dress. Una was full of pure pity, Carl of amused wonder, and all of them of curiosity.
“Now come out to the graveyard and tell us about yourself,” ordered Faith, when Mary’s appetite showed signs of failing her. Mary was now nothing loath. Food had restored her natural vivacity and unloosed her by no means reluctant tongue.
“You won’t tell your pa or anybody if I tell you?” she stipulated, when she was enthroned on Mr. Pollock’s tombstone. Opposite her the manse children lined up on another. Here was spice and mystery and adventure. Something HAD happened.
“No, we won’t.”
“Cross your hearts?”
“Cross our hearts.”
“Well, I’ve run away. I was living with Mrs. Wiley over-harbour.
Do you know Mrs. Wiley?”
“No.”
“Well, you don’t want to know her. She’s an awful woman. My, how I hate her! She worked me to death and wouldn’t give me half enough to eat, and she used to larrup me ‘most every day. Look a-here.”
Mary rolled up her ragged sleeves, and held up her scrawny arms and thin hands, chapped almost to rawness. They were black with bruises. The manse children shivered. Faith flushed crimson with indignation. Una’s blue eyes filled with tears.
“She licked me Wednesday night with a stick,” said Mary, indifferently. “It was ‘cause I let the cow kick over a pail of milk. How’d I know the darn old cow was going to kick?”
A not unpleasant thrill ran over her listeners. They would never dream of using such dubious words, but it was rather titivating to hear someone else use them — and a girl, at that. Certainly this Mary Vance was an interesting creature.
“I don’t blame you for running away,” said Faith.
“Oh, I didn’t run away ‘cause she licked me. A licking was all in the day’s work with me. I was darn well used to it. Nope, I’d meant to run away for a week ‘cause I’d found out that Mrs. Wiley was going to rent her farm and go to Lowbridge to live and give me to a cousin of hers up Charlottetown way. I wasn’t going to stand for THAT. She was a worse sort than Mrs. Wiley even. Mrs. Wiley lent me to her for a month last summer and I’d rather live with the devil himself.”
Sensation number two. But Una looked doubtful.
“So I made up my mind I’d beat it. I had seventy cents saved up that Mrs. John Crawford give me in the spring for planting potatoes for her. Mrs. Wiley didn’t know about it. She was away visiting her cousin when I planted them. I thought I’d sneak up here to the Glen and buy a ticket to Charlottetown and try to get work there. I’m a hustler, let me tell you. There ain’t a lazy bone in MY body. So I lit out Thursday morning ‘fore Mrs. Wiley was up and walked to the Glen — six miles. And when I got to the station I found I’d lost my money. Dunno how — dunno where. Anyhow, it was gone. I didn’t know what to do. If I went back to old Lady Wiley she’d take the hide off me. So I went and hid in that old barn.”
“And what will you do now?” asked Jerry.
“Dunno. I s’pose I’ll have to go back and take my medicine. Now that I’ve got some grub in my stomach I guess I can stand it.”
But there was fear behind the bravado in Mary’s eyes. Una suddenly slipped from the one tombstone to the other and put her arm about Mary.
“Don’t go back. Just stay here with us.”
“Oh, Mrs. Wiley’ll hunt me up,” said Mary. “It’s likely she’s on my trail before this. I might stay here till she finds me, I s’pose, if your folks don’t mind. I was a darn fool ever to think of skipping out. She’d run a weasel to earth. But I was so misrebul.”
Mary’s voice quivered, but she was ashamed of showing her weakness.
“I hain’t had the life of a dog for these four years,” she explained defiantly.
“You’ve been four years with Mrs. Wiley?”
“Yip. She took me out of the asylum over in Hopetown when I was eight.”
“That’s the same place Mrs. Blythe came from,” exclaimed Faith.
“I was two years in the asylum. I was put there when I was six.
My ma had hung herself and my pa had cut his throat.”
“Holy cats! Why?” said Jerry.
“Booze,” said Mary laconically.
“And you’ve no relations?”
“Not a darn one that I know of. Must have had some once, though. I was called after half a dozen of them. My full name is Mary Martha Lucilla Moore Ball Vance. Can you beat that? My grandfather was a rich man. I’ll bet he was richer than YOUR grandfather. But pa drunk it all up and ma, she did her part. THEY used to beat me, too. Laws, I’ve been licked so much I kind of like it.”
Mary tossed her head. She divined that the manse children were pitying her for her many stripes and she did not want pity. She wanted to be envied. She looked gaily about her. Her strange eyes, now that the dullness of famine was removed from them, were brilliant. She would show these youngsters what a personage she was.
“I’ve been sick an awful lot,” she said proudly. “There’s not many kids could have come through what I have. I’ve had scarlet fever and measles and ersipelas and mumps and whooping cough and pewmonia.”
“Were you ever fatally sick?” asked Una.
“I don’t know,” said Mary doubtfully.
“Of course she wasn’t,” scoffed Jerry. “If you’re fatally sick you die.”
“Oh, well, I never died exactly,” said Mary, “but I come blamed near it once. They thought I was dead and they were getting ready to lay me out when I up and come to.”
“What is it like to be half dead?” asked Jerry curiously.
“Like nothing. I didn’t know it for days afterwards. It was when I had the pewmonia. Mrs. Wiley wouldn’t have the doctor — said she wasn’t going to no such expense for a home girl. Old Aunt Christina MacAllister nursed me with poultices. She brung me round. But sometimes I wish I’d just died the other half and done with it. I’d been better off.”
“If you went to heaven I s’pose you would,” said Faith, rather doubtfully.
“Well, what other place is there to go to?” demanded Mary in a puzzled voice.
“There’s hell, you know,” said Una, dropping her voice and hugging Mary to lessen the awfulness of the suggestion.
“Hell? What’s that?”
“Why, it’s where the devil lives,” said Jerry. “You’ve heard of him — you spoke about him.”
“Oh, yes, but I didn’t know he lived anywhere. I thought he just roamed round. Mr. Wiley used to mention hell when he was alive. He was always telling folks to go there. I thought it was some place over in New Brunswick where he come from.”
“Hell is an awful place,” said Faith, with the dramatic enjoyment that is born of telling dreadful things. “Bad people go there when they die and burn in fire for ever and ever and ever.”
“Who told you that?” demanded Mary incredulously.
“It’s in the Bible. And Mr. Isaac Crothers at Maywater told us, too, in Sunday School. He was an elder and a pillar in the church and knew all about it. But you needn’t worry. If you’re good you’ll go to heaven and if you’re bad I guess you’d rather go to hell.”
“I