THE ADVENT OF MARY VANCE
“This is just the sort of day you feel as if things might happen,” said
Faith, responsive to the lure of crystal air and blue hills. She hugged
herself with delight and danced a hornpipe on old Hezekiah Pollock’s
bench tombstone, much to the horror of two ancient maidens who happened
to be driving past just as Faith hopped on one foot around the stone,
waving the other and her arms in the air.
“And that,” groaned one ancient maiden, “is our minister’s daughter.”
“What else could you expect of a widower’s family?” groaned the other
ancient maiden. And then they both shook their heads.
It was early on Saturday morning and the Merediths were out in the
dew-drenched world with a delightful consciousness of the holiday. They
had never had anything to do on a holiday. Even Nan and Di Blythe had
certain household tasks for Saturday mornings, but the daughters of the
manse were free to roam from blushing morn to dewy eve if so it pleased
them. It _did_ please Faith, but Una felt a secret, bitter humiliation
because they never learned to do anything. The other girls in her class
at school could cook and sew and knit; she only was a little ignoramus.
Jerry suggested that they go exploring; so they went lingeringly
through the fir grove, picking up Carl on the way, who was on his knees
in the dripping grass studying his darling ants. Beyond the grove they
came out in Mr. Taylor’s pasture field, sprinkled over with the white
ghosts of dandelions; in a remote corner was an old tumbledown barn,
where Mr. Taylor sometimes stored his surplus hay crop but which was
never used for any other purpose. Thither the Meredith children
trooped, and prowled about the ground floor for several minutes.
“What was that?” whispered Una suddenly.
They all listened. There was a faint but distinct rustle in the hayloft
above. The Merediths looked at each other.
“There’s something up there,” breathed Faith.
“I’m going up to see what it is,” said Jerry resolutely.
“Oh, don’t,” begged Una, catching his arm.
“I’m going.”
“We’ll all go, too, then,” said Faith.
The whole four climbed the shaky ladder, Jerry and Faith quite
dauntless, Una pale from fright, and Carl rather absent-mindedly
speculating on the possibility of finding a bat up in the loft. He
longed to see a bat in daylight.
When they stepped off the ladder they saw what had made the rustle and
the sight struck them dumb for a few moments.
In a little nest in the hay a girl was curled up, looking as if she had
just wakened from sleep. When she saw them she stood up, rather
shakily, as it seemed, and in the bright sunlight that streamed through
the cobwebbed window behind her, they saw that her thin, sunburned face
was very pale under its tan. She had two braids of lank, thick,
tow-coloured hair and very odd eyes—“white eyes,” the manse children
thought, as she stared at them half defiantly, half piteously. They
were really of so pale a blue that they did seem almost white,
especially when contrasted with the narrow black ring that circled the
iris. She was barefooted and bareheaded, and was clad in a faded,
ragged, old plaid dress, much too short and tight for her. As for
years, she might have been almost any age, judging from her wizened
little face, but her height seemed to be somewhere in the neighbourhood
of twelve.
“Who are you?” asked Jerry.
The girl looked about her as if seeking a way of escape. Then she
seemed to give in with a little shiver of despair.
“I’m Mary Vance,” she said.
“Where’d you come from?” pursued Jerry.
Mary, instead of replying, suddenly sat, or fell, down on the hay and
began to cry. Instantly Faith had flung herself down beside her and put
her arm around the thin, shaking shoulders.
“You stop bothering her,” she commanded Jerry. Then she hugged the
waif. “Don’t cry, dear. Just tell us what’s the matter. _We’re_
friends.”
“I’m so—so—hungry,” wailed Mary. “I—I hain’t had a thing to eat since
Thursday morning, ‘cept a little water from the brook out there.”
The manse children gazed at each other in horror. Faith sprang up.
“You come right up to the manse and get something to eat before you say
another word.”
Mary shrank.
“Oh—I can’t. What will your pa and ma say? Besides, they’d send me
back.”
“We’ve no mother, and father won’t bother about you. Neither will Aunt
Martha. Come, I say.” Faith stamped her foot impatiently. Was this
queer girl going to insist on starving to death almost at their very
door?
Mary yielded. She was so weak that she could hardly climb down the
ladder, but somehow they got her down and over the field and into the
manse kitchen. Aunt Martha, muddling through her Saturday cooking, took
no notice of her. Faith and Una flew to the pantry and ransacked it for
such eatables as it contained—some “ditto,” bread, butter, milk and a
doubtful pie. Mary Vance attacked the food ravenously and uncritically,
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 wouldn’t,” said Mary positively. “No matter how bad I was I wouldn’t
want to be burned and burned. _I_ know what it’s like. I picked up a
red hot poker once by accident. What must you do to be good?”
“You must go to church and Sunday School and read your Bible and pray
every night and give to missions,” said Una.
“It sounds like a large order,” said Mary. “Anything else?”
“You must ask God to forgive the sins you’ve committed.
“But I’ve never com—committed any,” said Mary. “What’s a sin any way?”
“Oh, Mary, you must have. Everybody does. Did you never tell a lie?”
“Heaps of ‘em,” said Mary.
“That’s a dreadful sin,” said Una solemnly.
“Do you mean to tell me,” demanded Mary, “that I’d be sent to hell for
telling a lie now and then? Why, I _had_ to. Mr. Wiley would have
broken every bone in my body one time if I hadn’t told him a lie. Lies
have saved me many a whack, I can tell you.”
Una sighed. Here were too many difficulties for her to solve. She
shuddered as she thought of being cruelly whipped. Very likely she
would have lied too. She squeezed Mary’s little calloused hand.
“Is that the only dress you’ve got?” asked Faith, whose joyous nature
refused to dwell on disagreeable subjects.
“I just put on this dress because it was no good,” cried Mary flushing.
“Mrs. Wiley’d bought my clothes and I wasn’t going to be beholden to
her for anything. And I’m honest. If I was going to run away I wasn’t
going to take what belong to _her_ that was worth anything. When I grow
up I’m going to have a blue sating dress. Your own clothes don’t look
so stylish. I thought ministers’ children were always dressed up.”
It was plain that Mary had a temper and was sensitive on some points.
But there was a queer, wild charm about her which captivated them all.
She was taken to Rainbow Valley that afternoon and introduced to the
Blythes as “a friend of ours from over-harbour who is visiting us.” The
Blythes accepted her unquestioningly, perhaps because she was fairly
respectable now. After dinner—through which Aunt Martha had mumbled and
Mr. Meredith had been in a state of semi-unconsciousness while brooding
his Sunday sermon—Faith had prevailed on Mary to put on one of her
dresses, as well as certain other articles of clothing. With her hair
neatly braided Mary passed muster tolerably well. She was an acceptable
playmate, for she knew several new and exciting games, and her
conversation lacked not spice. In fact, some of her expressions made
Nan and Di look at her rather askance. They were not quite sure what
their mother would have thought of her, but they knew quite well what
Susan would. However, she was a visitor at the manse, so she must be
all right.
When bedtime came there was the problem of where Mary should sleep.
“We can’t put her in the spare room, you know,” said Faith perplexedly
to Una.
“I haven’t got anything in my head,” cried Mary in an injured tone.
“Oh, I didn’t mean _that_,” protested Faith. “The spare room is all
torn up. The mice have gnawed a big hole in the feather tick and made a
nest in it. We never found it out till Aunt Martha put the Rev. Mr.
Fisher from Charlottetown there to sleep last week. _He_ soon found it
out. Then father had to give him his bed and sleep on the study lounge.
Aunt Martha hasn’t had time to fix the spare room bed up yet, so she
says; so _nobody_ can sleep there, no matter how clean their heads are.
And our room is so small, and the bed so small you can’t sleep with
us.”
“I can go back to the hay in the old barn for the night if you’ll lend
me a quilt,” said Mary philosophically. “It was kind of chilly last
night, but ‘cept for that I’ve had worse beds.”
“Oh, no, no, you mustn’t do that,” said Una. “I’ve thought of a plan,
Faith. You know that little trestle bed in the garret room, with the
old mattress on it, that the last minister left there? Let’s take up
the spare room bedclothes and make Mary a bed there. You won’t mind
sleeping in the garret, will you, Mary? It’s just above our room.”
“Any place’ll do me. Laws, I never had a decent place to sleep in my
life. I slept in the loft over the kitchen at Mrs. Wiley’s. The roof
leaked rain in the summer and the snow druv in in winter. My bed was a
straw tick on the floor. You won’t find me a mite huffy about where _I_
sleep.”
The manse garret was a long, low, shadowy place, with one gable end
partitioned off. Here a bed was made up for Mary of the dainty
hemstitched sheets and embroidered spread which Cecilia Meredith had
once so proudly made for her spare-room, and which still survived Aunt
Martha’s uncertain washings. The good nights were said and silence fell
over the manse. Una was just falling asleep when she heard a sound in
the room just above that made her sit up suddenly.
“Listen, Faith—Mary’s crying,” she whispered. Faith replied not, being
already asleep. Una slipped out of bed, and made her way in her little
white gown down the hall and up the garret stairs. The creaking floor
gave ample notice of her coming, and when she reached the corner room
all was moonlit silence and the trestle bed showed only a hump in the
middle.
“Mary,” whispered Una.
There was no response.
Una crept close to the bed and pulled at the spread. “Mary, I know you
are crying. I heard you. Are you lonesome?”
Mary suddenly appeared to view but said nothing.
“Let me in beside you. I’m cold,” said Una shivering in the chilly air,
for the little garret window was open and the keen breath of the north
shore at night blew in.
Mary moved over and Una snuggled down beside her.
“_Now_ you won’t be lonesome. We shouldn’t have left you here alone the
first night.”
“I wasn’t lonesome,” sniffed Mary.
“What were you crying for then?”
“Oh, I just got to thinking of things when I was here alone. I thought
of having to go back to Mrs. Wiley—and of being licked for running
away—and—and—and of going to hell for telling lies. It all worried me
something scandalous.”
“Oh, Mary,” said poor Una in distress. “I don’t believe God will send
you to hell for telling lies when you didn’t know it was wrong. He
_couldn’t_. Why, He’s kind and good. Of course, you mustn’t tell any
more now that you know it’s wrong.”
“If I can’t tell lies what’s to become of me?” said Mary with a sob.
“_You_ don’t understand. You don’t know anything about it. You’ve got a
home and a kind father—though it does seem to me that he isn’t more’n
about half there. But anyway he doesn’t lick you, and you get enough to
eat such as it is—though that old aunt of yours doesn’t know _anything_
about cooking. Why, this is the first day I ever remember of feeling
‘sif I’d enough to eat. I’ve been knocked about all of my life, ‘cept
for the two years I was at the asylum. They didn’t lick me there and it
wasn’t too bad, though the matron was cross. She always looked ready to
bite my head off a nail. But Mrs. Wiley is a holy terror, that’s what
_she_ is, and I’m just scared stiff when I think of going back to her.”
“Perhaps you won’t have to. Perhaps we’ll be able to think of a way
out. Let’s both ask God to keep you from having to go back to Mrs.
Wiley. You say your prayers, don’t you Mary?”
“Oh, yes, I always go over an old rhyme ‘fore I get into bed,” said
Mary indifferently. “I never thought of asking for anything in
particular though. Nobody in this world ever bothered themselves about
me so I didn’t s’pose God would. He _might_ take more trouble for you,
seeing you’re a minister’s daughter.”
“He’d take every bit as much trouble for you, Mary, I’m sure,” said
Una. “It doesn’t matter whose child you are. You just ask Him—and I
will, too.”
“All right,” agreed Mary. “It won’t do any harm if it doesn’t do much
good. If you knew Mrs. Wiley as well as I do you wouldn’t think God
would want to meddle with her. Anyhow, I won’t cry any more about it.
This is a big sight better’n last night down in that old barn, with the
mice running about. Look at the Four Winds light. Ain’t it pretty?”
“This is the only window we can see it from,” said Una. “I love to
watch it.”
“Do you? So do I. I could see it from the Wiley loft and it was the
only comfort I had. When I was all sore from being licked I’d watch it
and forget about the places that hurt. I’d think of the ships sailing
away and away from it and wish I was on one of them sailing far away
too—away from everything. On winter nights when it didn’t shine, I just
felt real lonesome. Say, Una, what makes all you folks so kind to me
when I’m just a stranger?”
“Because it’s right to be. The bible tells us to be kind to everybody.”
“Does it? Well, I guess most folks don’t mind it much then. I never
remember of any one being kind to me before—true’s you live I don’t.
Say, Una, ain’t them shadows on the walls pretty? They look just like a
flock of little dancing birds. And say, Una, I like all you folks and
them Blythe boys and Di, but I don’t like that Nan. She’s a proud one.”
“Oh, no, Mary, she isn’t a bit proud,” said Una eagerly. “Not a single
bit.”
“Don’t tell me. Any one that holds her head like that _is_ proud. I
don’t like her.”
“_We_ all like her very much.”
“Oh, I s’pose you like her better’n me?” said Mary jealously. “Do you?”
“Why, Mary—we’ve known her for weeks and we’ve only known you a few
hours,” stammered Una.
“So you do like her better then?” said Mary in a rage. “All right! Like
her all you want to. _I_ don’t care. _I_ can get along without you.”
She flung herself over against the wall of the garret with a slam.
“Oh, Mary,” said Una, pushing a tender arm over Mary’s uncompromising
back, “don’t talk like that. I _do_ like you ever so much. And you make
me feel so bad.”
No answer. Presently Una gave a sob. Instantly Mary squirmed around
again and engulfed Una in a bear’s hug.
“Hush up,” she ordered. “Don’t go crying over what I said. I was as
mean as the devil to talk that way. I orter to be skinned alive—and you
all so good to me. I should think you _would_ like any one better’n me.
I deserve every licking I ever got. Hush, now. If you cry any more I’ll
go and walk right down to the harbour in this night-dress and drown
myself.”
This terrible threat made Una choke back her sobs. Her tears were wiped
away by Mary with the lace frill of the spare-room pillow and forgiver
and forgiven cuddled down together again, harmony restored, to watch
the shadows of the vine leaves on the moonlit wall until they fell
asleep.
And in the study below Rev. John Meredith walked the floor with rapt
face and shining eyes, thinking out his message of the morrow, and knew
not that under his own roof there was a little forlorn soul, stumbling
in darkness and ignorance, beset by terror and compassed about with
difficulties too great for it to grapple in its unequal struggle with a
big indifferent world.