The Complete Short Stories of Lucy Maud Montgomery. Lucy Maud Montgomery
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from the house would all be stolen. But as yet there was no fruit, and when the time came for bearing there would be enough and to spare.
“Blossom and me’ll get all we want, and the boys can have the rest, if they want ‘em worse’n they want a good conscience,” said that unworldly, unbusinesslike Old Man Shaw.
On his way back home from his darling orchard he found a rare fern in the woods and dug it up for Sara — she had loved ferns. He planted it at the shady, sheltered side of the house and then sat down on the old bench by the garden gate to read her last letter — the letter that was only a note, because she was coming home soon. He knew every word of it by heart, but that did not spoil the pleasure of rereading it every half-hour.
Old Man Shaw had not married until late in life, and had, so White Sands people said, selected a wife with his usual judgment — which, being interpreted, meant no judgment at all; otherwise, he would never have married Sara Glover, a mere slip of a girl, with big brown eyes like a frightened wood creature’s, and the delicate, fleeting bloom of a spring Mayflower.
“The last woman in the world for a farmer’s wife — no strength or get-up about her.”
Neither could White Sands folk understand what on earth Sara Glover had married him for.
“Well, the fool crop was the only one that never failed.”
Old Man Shaw — he was Old Man Shaw even then, although he was only forty — and his girl bride had troubled themselves not at all about White Sands opinions. They had one year of perfect happiness, which is always worth living for, even if the rest of life be a dreary pilgrimage, and then Old Man Shaw found himself alone again, except for little Blossom. She was christened Sara, after her dead mother, but she was always Blossom to her father — the precious little blossom whose plucking had cost the mother her life.
Sara Glover’s people, especially a wealthy aunt in Montreal, had wanted to take the child, but Old Man Shaw grew almost fierce over the suggestion. He would give his baby to no one. A woman was hired to look after the house, but it was the father who cared for the baby in the main. He was as tender and faithful and deft as a woman. Sara never missed a mother’s care, and she grew up into a creature of life and light and beauty, a constant delight to all who knew her. She had a way of embroidering life with stars. She was dowered with all the charming characteristics of both parents, with a resilient vitality and activity which had pertained to neither of them. When she was ten years old she had packed all hirelings off, and kept house for her father for six delightful years — years in which they were father and daughter, brother and sister, and “chums.” Sara never went to school, but her father saw to her education after a fashion of his own. When their work was done they lived in the woods and fields, in the little garden they had made on the sheltered side of the house, or on the shore, where sunshine and storm were to them equally lovely and beloved. Never was comradeship more perfect or more wholly satisfactory.
“Just wrapped up in each other,” said White Sands folk, half-enviously, half-disapprovingly.
When Sara was sixteen Mrs. Adair, the wealthy aunt aforesaid, pounced down on White Sands in a glamour of fashion and culture and outer worldliness. She bombarded Old Man Shaw with such arguments that he had to succumb. It was a shame that a girl like Sara should grow up in a place like White Sands, “with no advantages and no education,” said Mrs. Adair scornfully, not understanding that wisdom and knowledge are two entirely different things.
“At least let me give my dear sister’s child what I would have given my own daughter if I had had one,” she pleaded tearfully. “Let me take her with me and send her to a good school for a few years. Then, if she wishes, she may come back to you, of course.”
Privately, Mrs. Adair did not for a moment believe that Sara would want to come back to White Sands, and her queer old father, after three years of the life she would give her.
Old Man Shaw yielded, influenced thereto not at all by Mrs. Adair’s readily flowing tears, but greatly by his conviction that justice to Sara demanded it. Sara herself did not want to go; she protested and pleaded; but her father, having become convinced that it was best for her to go, was inexorable. Everything, even her own feelings, must give way to that. But she was to come back to him without let or hindrance when her “schooling” was done. It was only on having this most clearly understood that Sara would consent to go at all. Her last words, called back to her father through her tears as she and her aunt drove down the lane, were,
“I’ll be back, daddy. In three years I’ll be back. Don’t cry, but just look forward to that.”
He had looked forward to it through the three long, lonely years that followed, in all of which he never saw his darling. Half a continent was between them and Mrs. Adair had vetoed vacation visits, under some specious pretense. But every week brought its letter from Sara. Old Man Shaw had every one of them, tied up with one of her old blue hair ribbons, and kept in her mother’s little rose-wood work-box in the parlour. He spent every Sunday afternoon rereading them, with her photograph before him. He lived alone, refusing to be pestered with kind help, but he kept the house in beautiful order.
“A better housekeeper than farmer,” said White Sands people. He would have nothing altered. When Sara came back she was not to be hurt by changes. It never occurred to him that she might be changed herself.
And now those three interminable years were gone, and Sara was coming home. She wrote him nothing of her aunt’s pleadings and reproaches and ready, futile tears; she wrote only that she would graduate in June and start for home a week later. Thenceforth Old Man Shaw went about in a state of beatitude, making ready for her homecoming. As he sat on the bench in the sunshine, with the blue sea sparkling and crinkling down at the foot of the green slope, he reflected with satisfaction that all was in perfect order. There was nothing left to do save count the hours until that beautiful, longed-for day after tomorrow. He gave himself over to a reverie, as sweet as a daydream in a haunted valley.
The red roses were out in bloom. Sara had always loved those red roses — they were as vivid as herself, with all her own fullness of life and joy of living. And, besides these, a miracle had happened in Old Man Shaw’s garden. In one corner was a rosebush which had never bloomed, despite all the coaxing they had given it—”the sulky rosebush,” Sara had been wont to call it. Lo! this summer had flung the hoarded sweetness of years into plentiful white blossoms, like shallow ivory cups with a haunting, spicy fragrance. It was in honour of Sara’s homecoming — so Old Man Shaw liked to fancy. All things, even the sulky rosebush, knew she was coming back, and were making glad because of it.
He was gloating over Sara’s letter when Mrs. Peter Blewett came. She told him she had run up to see how he was getting on, and if he wanted anything seen to before Sara came.
“No’m, thank you, ma’am. Everything is attended to. I couldn’t let anyone else prepare for Blossom. Only to think, ma’am, she’ll be home the day after tomorrow. I’m just filled clear through, body, soul, and spirit, with joy to think of having my little Blossom at home again.”
Mrs. Blewett smiled sourly. When Mrs. Blewett smiled it foretokened trouble, and wise people had learned to have sudden business elsewhere before the smile could be translated into words. But Old Man Shaw had never learned to be wise where Mrs. Blewett was concerned, although she had been his nearest neighbour for years, and had pestered his life out with advice and “neighbourly turns.”
Mrs. Blewett was one with whom life had gone awry. The effect on her was to render happiness to other people a personal insult. She resented Old Man Shaw’s beaming delight in his daughter’s return, and she “considered it her duty” to rub the bloom off straightway.
“Do you think Sary’ll be contented in White Sands now?” she asked.
Old Man Shaw looked slightly bewildered.
“Of course she’ll be contented,” he said slowly. “Isn’t it her home? And ain’t I here?”
Mrs. Blewett smiled again, with double distilled contempt for such simplicity.
“Well,