CRAIG-ELLACHIE
In spite of the high rapture of her sacrifice Christina found life
distinctly dull when Sandy and Neil went off to Toronto leaving her
behind. She felt as if she had been away on a long romantic journey
since Allister's return; a journey that gave glimpses of wonderful
countries still to be travelled, and then she had suddenly been dropped
back into Orchard Glen and forbidden to travel any more.
And here she was milking and churning and feeding the hens and
companying with Uncle in the barn yard. Of course Uncle Neil was the
excellent company he had always been, full of song and story, and
Christina could not find an opportunity to mourn over her lot even if
she had been so minded. She was not the sort to wear a martyr's robe.
She would play the part, but she refused to make up for it. So she
went about her daily tasks, singing as blithely as that Spring morning
when Allister opened the gate into a larger life for her, the gate
which she had voluntarily shut, with herself inside. She bore her
disappointment jauntily, walking erect as Eastern girls carry their
burdens on their heads, growing straight and graceful in the effort.
And then she was too busy to fret. There was Grandpa who needed more
help every morning with his dressing, and every evening with the
Hindmost Hymn. There was her mother, whose tasks must now grow lighter
each year, there was Jimmie to be helped with his lessons on Saturdays,
there was a Sunday school class with two of the bad Martin children in
it, and there was Mary's trousseau to help prepare against the wedding
at Christmastime. For the courtship of MacGillivray's man had
proceeded at a furious pace and through Ellen had been engaged for five
years, Mary was to be the first to marry. And so, Christina's hands
were very full, and John would often say to her, after an unusually
busy day, or when a letter came from Sandy bewailing her lot:
"Just wait, Christine. In another year who knows what will happen?"
And Christina's heart was content.
As Mary had to keep up her teaching until the Christmas holidays, and
her evenings were mostly spent with the young man who drove over from
Port Stewart quite a remarkable number of times a week, there was much
to do in the preparation of her clothes. Ellen had stopped her own
embroidering, to wait until Bruce was through college, and she took to
doing towels and table-napkins and doilies for Mary.
"I can't help thinking that it's a dreadful waste for you to get
married," declared Christina, one Saturday afternoon as they all sewed
furiously in the big roomy kitchen. "You're just throwing away a
teacher's certificate. My! If I had Greenwood school I'd never get
married!" And Mary and Ellen laughed and looked at each other
knowingly from their respective heights far above Christina's head.
She tried to keep up her studies by following Jimmie's course, and
stayed home on Friday nights from the Temperance meeting to help him
with his lessons.
One evening they had a long hunt through "The Lady of the Lake" for a
line about the Harebell which Jimmie must quote in an essay. They were
sitting around the long kitchen table, all except Mary who was out
driving in the moonlight. Ellen was at one end writing to Bruce as
usual, John at the other, reading the daily paper, Mrs. Lindsay was
knitting, and Uncle Neil was strumming out fragments of old songs on
his violin, his stockinged feet comfortable on the damper of the stove.
Even Uncle Neil's memory could not produce the Harebell, and Jimmie
went rummaging through the book impatiently.
"Gavin Grant would tell me if he was here," Jimmie said. "He knows all
this stuff off by heart."
"And plenty more," put in Uncle Neil to the tune of "Oh wert thou in
the cauld blast?" "Gavin's mind is well stored. Mr. Sinclair says he
reads Carlyle in the evenings with the Grant girls. I wonder if you
could match that anywhere in this country?"
Christina felt self-accusing, remembering her superior feeling in
Gavin's awkward presence. He had been very busy with the harvest and
she had not seen him except at church for a long time. He had never
attempted to walk home with her again, and she could not help wondering
whether it was because he was shy, or because he did not care.
Womanlike she would have given a good deal to know.
"I wish you would run over to Craig-Ellachie with that jar of black
currants I promised the Grant Girls, Christina," said her mother.
"That's the seventeenth time you've been reminded of that," said Jimmie
chidingly.
"I think John'll have to hitch up the team and take that jar over in
the hay wagon," said Uncle Neil, "Christine doesn't seem to be able to
manage it."
"She's shy about going to see Gavin," said John, looking at her with
twinkling eyes over his paper. For John alone knew her guilty secret.
She hastily promised to take the jar the very next day, and managed to
get the conversation back to the Harebell, which in time showed its shy
self and was set down in the essay.
It was nearly a week before Christina managed to get away on her
difficult errand. She did not want to go, certainly, but she was
afraid of attracting more comment from John and Uncle Neil by staying.
It was a golden September day when she went up over the hills with a
basket of apples from their best tree, and the special jar of her
mother's black currant jelly. The air was motionless, the sky a
perfect soft unclouded blue, the hills were amber, the hollows
amethyst. The branches of the orchard trees behind the village houses
sagged, heavy with their harvest, and gay as orchards gotten up for a
garden party, all hung with fairy lantern globes of yellow and red.
The gardens were filled with ripened corn and great golden pumpkins.
The wild asters along the fences glowed softly purple.
Christina stepped over the warm yellow stubble singing, and climbed the
hill to the old berry patch, where the briars grew more riotously every
year. Gavin's cows were straying through the green and yellow tangle
on his side of the fence and a bell rang musically through the still
aisles. The Wizard of Autumn had been up here on the hills with his
paints and had touched the sumachs along the fences till they looked
like trees of flame. And he had been working on a bit of woodbine that
now draped the old rail fence as with a scarlet curtain. A blue jay
flashed through the golden silence waking the echoes with his noisy
laughter and the flickers high up in the dead stumps called jeeringly
to each other.
Christina came out of the Slash into the yellow sunshine of Gavin's
fields, and as she did so, she suddenly dropped down behind the
raspberry bushes that fringed the fence, quite in a panic. For a loud
musical voice arose from the field just beyond the brow of the hill,
Gavin was ploughing the back meadow and singing, and the song made
Christina's heart heat hotly:
"Will ye gang to the Hielan's, Leezie Lindsay?
Will ye gang to the Hielan's wi' me?"
Hidden by the hill, and the screening bushes, she slipped away and took
a devious course down the valley. But there was a lump in her throat
as she went.
She ran past a clump of cedars and came out into view of
Craig-Ellachie. The Grant Girls had given their home this name because
of its association with their clan's history, but Nature had encouraged
them, for behind the house, set back against the dark pine woods, rose
a hill crowned by a towering rock. The cosy old white-washed house was
set in the centre of a saucer-like valley. It was the original log
house in which their parents had lived and had been added to here and
there till it was beautifully picturesque just as the home of the Grant
Girls should be.
But visitors to Craig-Ellachie never saw anything else after their
first glimpse of the garden.
Every one wondered how it was that the Grant Girls' garden should
outbloom all others, and that nobody else ever had any hope of first
prize at the Fall fairs. One said it was the sheltered location of the
place, others the low elevation, still others that it was the southern
slope that made the Craig-Ellachie garden unfold the earliest crocus in
Spring and hold safely the latest aster in Autumn. But wise folk, like
Christina's mother, always held that it was the tender care of the
three gardeners and the sunlight of their presence that made their
flowers the wonder of the countryside.
Christina drew a breath of delight as it came into view. Dahlias and
asters, rows and rows of them, clumps of feathery cosmos, hedges of
flaming gladioli, dazzling golden glow and a dozen others she did not
recognise made a glorious array. And the blooms were not confined to
the garden proper that was spread out on the south side of the house.
They overflowed into the vegetable garden at the back, and spread
around the lawn at the front. They strayed away along the fences and
completely hedged the orchard. They even encroached upon the barnyard;
the manure heap was screened from view by a wall of sunflowers and
golden glow and a rainbow avenue of late phlox led down to the pig-pens.
Christina entered by the barnyard and came up through the kitchen
garden where rows of cauliflower and cabbage and tomatoes alternated
with pansies and mignonette and scarlet salvia. Every bed of onions
was fringed with sweet alyssum, and rows of beets were flanked with
rosemary and lavender. She opened the little wire gate that led into
the garden proper and walked up under a long arched canopy of climbing
roses and sweet peas that seemed, like the Grant Girls, to take no heed
of the passing of time but bloomed on as though it were June. As she
disappeared into its green shade her eye caught a movement in one of
the brown fields behind the barn. The two younger sisters were there
digging potatoes.
There had been a day when the Grant Girls did all the work of field and
farmyard, and their hands were hard and their backs bent. But since
Gavin had grown to man's estate their lives had been easier. Indeed
they were never done telling tales of how Gavie had forbidden their
going into the fields. They boasted of his high handed airs, for
hadn't he even chased Janet out of the barnyard, with the pitchfork,
mind you, when she was determined to help him in with the hay. Eh
indeed he was a thrawn lad, and nobody could manage oor Gavie!
And now that they had fallen upon easier days and Gavin's strong arms
had taken up the heavier work, they had resumed many of the older tasks
that long ago most farm women had gladly handed over to factory or
mill. No cheese factory or creamery received a drop of milk or cream
from Craig-Ellachie; and the Grant Girls still spun their own wool from
their own sheep, and knit it into good stout socks for themselves and
Gavin, and cousin Hughie Reid, and his big family of boys.
So this afternoon, Auntie Elspie, the eldest of the three, was sitting
at the open kitchen door in the sunshine spinning. The soft September
breeze swayed her white apron and pink-dotted calico dress. Behind her
the wide, low-ceiled old kitchen fairly glittered in its cleanliness.
The high dresser with its blue plates, and the old chairs and table
were varnished till they shone like mirrors. And the kitchen stove,
used only in winter, for the wood-shed was the summer kitchen, blazed
as it never had on a winter night, for on it stood a great blue pitcher
filled with flaming gladioli.
Around Auntie Elspie were arranged the household pets, all sleeping in
the sunshine; Auntie Flora's cat and two kittens, Auntie Janet's
spaniel, and Gavin's fox terrier and two collies. The four dogs set up
a loud clamour at the sight of the visitor, and went gambolling down
the walk to meet her. At the sound the two workers in the field paused
to look, and stood gazing until Christina disappeared indoors.
Auntie Elspie dropped her thread and came hurrying down the steps,
saying in mild reproach, "Hoots, toots, what a noise!" And then in
glad welcome, "Eh, eh, and it's little Christina! Eh, now, and wasn't
it jist grand o' ye to come away over here--well--well--well--well!"
Mrs. Lindsay was the Grant Girls' oldest and dearest friend, and a
visit from any of her family was an occasion of great rejoicing.
"Eh, well, well!" Auntie Elspie was patting Christina on the back, and
taking off her hat in exuberant hospitality, mingling her words of
welcome with admonitions to the riotous dogs which were bounding about
making a joyous din.
"Eh, well, now, and your poor mother, she would be well! Hut, tut,
Wallace! Bruce! Yon's no way to act. And wee Mary'll be getting
married--Princie! Did ye ever see the like o' that? They're jist that
glad to see ye. Wallace! Down, sir, down! Jist wait till Gavie gits
home, Bruce, then ye'll mind! And Sandy's away to the college too.
Well, well, you Lindsays were all great for the books--come away in,
hinny, come away. Down with ye, down!"
They went into the house, the dogs still bounding joyously about, for
they knew that a guest at Craig-Ellachie was a great and glad event and
that they must express their joy in a fitting manner.
Auntie Elspie was tall and thin and stooped. Her thin fair hair,
almost white, was combed up in the fashion that had obtained when she
was a girl. She wore a voluminous old dress of some ancient pattern of
"print," that had been quite fashionable some twenty years earlier, but
she was also clothed in the gay garment of youth which the Grant Girls
always wore.
She managed to eject the joyous, scrambling quartette from the kitchen
and led the visitor through the dusk of the parlour where Auntie
Flora's organ stood with Gavin's fiddle on top of it, on into the gloom
of the spare room, heaping welcomes upon her all the way, and asking
after everything on the Lindsay farm from Grandpa's rheumatism to
Christina's black kitten.
When Christina's hat was laid upon the high white crest of the
billowing feather bed, and her hair smoothed before the little mirror
on the dresser, Auntie Elspie led her away beyond the parlour into a
close, hushed room, where the mother had lain an invalid for many
years, and which was kept sacred to her memory. Here the Grant Girls
hoarded all their mother's treasures: the photographs in oval frames on
the wall, the high old dresser and the big sea chest filled with
keepsakes, tenderly associated with her life; the Paisley shawl she
wore to church, the sea shells she had brought from the old country,
even the old china tea set that had been her one wedding gift.
Christina was placed in an old rocker, while Auntie Elspie displayed
all the treasures as a girl shows her jewels to a companion, and
Christina knew she was being shown a great honour, for only special
friends were ever taken into Mother's Room.
The last jewel to be exhibited was the mother's photograph in an old
leather case, velvet lined.
"Folks say that after a person dies, the picture begins to fade,"
Auntie Elspie said, wiping the shining surface tenderly. "But mother's
picture is as bright as the day it was taken."
Christina looked at the strong, kindly face, with the white cap and the
little knitted shawl and felt her heart contract at the yearning in the
older woman's voice. Elspie was still a girl, longing for the touch of
her mother's hand, though that mother had been gone twenty-five years.
"Perhaps it's because you keep her memory so bright, that the picture
never fades," said Christina gently, and Auntie Elspie kissed her for
sheer gratitude.
When they came out into the sunshine of the kitchen again the other two
sisters were there to add their welcome. They had hurried in to see
who their visitor was and were overwhelmed with joy to find it was Mary
Lindsay's girl.
"I told you it was little Christina, Flora," cried Auntie Janet
triumphantly; "Flora said it was one o' the McKenzie girls!" And Flora
admitted herself beaten.
The two were in their farming costumes, old bits of past grandeur, a
purple velvet skirt for Janet and a sacque of ancient brocaded silk on
Flora, both accompanied by Gavin's cast off boots and wide straw hats.
But the wearers received Christina in her trim blue skirt and white
blouse, of the latest Algonquin style, with a high bred unconsciousness
of clothes.
"Oh, I'm that glad you've come," cried Janet, shaking her
fifteen-year-old ringlets from her big hat, "you've given us an excuse
for a rest. We were jist doin' a bit of _gardenin'_. Weren't we,
Flora?" she asked.
Auntie Flora's eyes twinkled, "Oh, yes, yes, jist _gardenin'_!" she
declared, and the three Aunties burst out laughing, and Auntie Janet
spread out her earth soiled hands with a comical gesture.
"We've been diggin' the potaties!" she whispered, her eyes dancing.
"But if Gavie caught us at it, we'd catch it! So we jist keep tellin'
him we've been _gardenin'_ an' he never suspects, an' he can't see us
from where he's ploughin'!"
"An' we'll be finished in another day if he doesn't find out!" cried
Auntie Flora exultingly.
"Aye, but jist wait, you'll get yer pay for yer pranks when he does
find out," admonished Auntie Elspie, like an indulgent mother
threatening her mischievous children with a father's punishment.
"Gavie jist won't let us put foot into the fields!" she added proudly.
But the two younger ones laughed recklessly. They would be up sides
with Gavie yet, for all his high-handed, bossy ways!
They washed their hands, changed their shoes and put away their big
hats, and all three bustled about getting tea. Christina would have
preferred to slip away before Gavin came in, but she well knew that no
human being had ever come to Craig-Ellachie and left again without
sitting down to eat, and knew it was no use to protest.
So she went out into the garden to help Flora gather a bouquet for the
table, and her hostess broke off armfuls of every sort of flowers she
admired, making a great sheaf to carry home to her mother. They put
the glorious mass into a shining tin pail to await her departure. Then
Christina ran about the kitchen and pantry, helping set the best blue
dishes on the table, and they all laughed and joked and had such a
time, as though all four had just turned nineteen last May.
"Did ye hear that Elspie has a fellow, Christina?" called Auntie Flora
from the cellar whither she had gone to fetch the cream.
"No," cried Christina, overcome with laughter, "she didn't tell me."
"She's just a wee bit shy about it yet," said Auntie Janet. "But when
she gets over it, you'll see them together in church."
"It's Piper Lauchie McDonald!" cried Auntie Flora, coming up to the
surface again; "he's been comin' here pretendin' he wanted to teach
Gavie the pipes, but we can see it's Elspie he's got in his eye."
Auntie Elspie's eyes were dancing. "They're both that jealous o' me,
there's no livin' with them," she confided.
They all joined Christina in a gale of laughter, none gayer than Elspie
herself.
Tea was all ready now, a perfect banquet set out with the blue dishes,
on the best white and blue tablecloth, with a tremendous glory of
asters and dahlias in a bronze jug in the middle of the table.
When everything was ready, Auntie Janet ran to the foot of the front
lawn and called a long clear "Hoo-hoo!" and from far away in the fields
a faint halloo answered.
"Gavie's coming," the three cried together joyously, and Auntie Elspie
hurried out to the wood-shed to place the blue china teapot on the
stove to warm.
"He won't be long, he always knows there's company when the dogs bark
and he'll hurry in."
While they waited Auntie Flora took Christina into the parlour to show
her a new song-book Gavin had brought home the Saturday previous.
Christina's fascinated gaze went around the wonderful framed wreaths on
the wall, one made of cotton-batting flowers, another of coloured
feathers and the most interesting one fashioned of flowers made from
hair. Auntie Flora went over each blossom tenderly. This rose at the
top was made of mother's hair. Wasn't her hair beautiful and soft and
shining? Nobody in the family had hair like mother's. And the one
just beside it of darker grey, was father's. Father's hair was rich
and beautiful too. The dark brown one was Janet's and the fair one
Elspie's.
"And ye can tell whose is the mouse-coloured one," said Auntie Janet
teasingly.
"Aye," said Auntie Flora. "They're never done talkin' about my
mouse-coloured hair; but they'll soon have to stop because it's gettin'
white!" she added gaily.
And the next flower that beautiful brown, was made from Duncan's, the
only brother who died when he was in his first year in college. He was
to have been a minister. Mother had saved his curls from the time he
was just a wee laddie. Duncan had died twenty years ago but his
sisters could not yet speak of him without tears.
Then they brightened when Flora pointed out the next and the last--that
shiny black bit, it couldn't be anybody's but Gavie's; hair as black as
that. Did Christina mind what beautiful curly hair he had when they
got him first? And such a time as they had getting him to let it grow
long enough to get a piece for the wreath. It was just getting nice
once, but the boys teased him about it at school, and what did he do
but get the shears one night and cut it all off that close that he
nearly cut the skin, and a sight the rascal was, with bare white
patches all over his black head!
But Janet saved what was cut and they managed to make this little
flower and put it in the wreath next to Duncan's. Gavie was just such
another boy as Duncan was, and the Lord had been good indeed to give
him to them in their old age.
Gavin did not appear quite so soon as expected. He came up slowly from
the barn, and spent a very long time over the little wash-bench at the
wood-shed door. At last he came in, fondling the dogs that kept
circling about him, and shook hands with Christina very hurriedly, as
though he had been in great haste all the time.
They sat down to the table immediately, and for a while the rapture of
having Christina sitting at his right hand almost overcame him and he
had very little to say. But he shared the Aunties' spirit of
hospitality, Christina was his guest and he soon found courage to wait
on her and see she was well served. Auntie Elspie, sitting opposite
him with the tea-pot and the cups and saucers, understood, and did all
she could to make things easy for him. Though the three Aunties loved
Gavin with equal devotion, Auntie Elspie had been more of a mother to
him. She read her boy and had long ago guessed at his devotion to
Christina. She was sure of it now and was very happy. With the
optimism of youth she saw nothing but success ahead for Gavin and was
overjoyed that he had chosen so wisely and well--one of Mary Lindsay's
girls. What better could happen?
As for Christina, she was feeling strangely at home and yet in entirely
new surroundings. Gavin Grant at the head of his own table dispensing
hospitality to his guest was a different person from the shy boy she
knew. Here he was a man with an air of authority, strong and yet kind
and gentle.
He soon forgot his embarrassment in the joy of her presence. They grew
very merry over Auntie Elspie's beau again, Gavin taking great credit
to himself for having arranged the match.
"She'll be goin' off with him one o' these days," prophesied Auntie
Janet, "and indeed, we'll all leave ye, if you don't mind and let us
work out in the field when we like," she threatened.
"Indeed you ought to let the girls help you with that field of
potatoes, Gavie," said Auntie Elspie. "He won't let one of us do a
hand's turn beyond the house, Christina," she complained, turning to
her guest. "Did ye ever hear the like?"
A telegraphic message flashed across the table between Auntie Flora and
Auntie Janet which Gavin did not see.
"We jist have no life with him at all," said Auntie Flora, "he's that
thrawn."
"I think I'll jist have to take him in hand, myself," said the lively
Auntie Janet.
"I can manage them all but Auntie Janet," Gavin said brazenly. "I
didn't start early enough with her. I brought up the other two better.
But I'll get her broken in, in time."
The three Aunties went off into loud gay laughter that echoed far out
over the bright garden. They declared he was quite beyond them, and
how did Christina suppose they ever put up with such a rascal?
They lingered long at the table and after the gay supper was over
Christina was loath to go; she was having such a good time. So she did
not need much coaxing to prevail upon her to stay till the cows were
milked. They could surely do without her for once. It was Friday
night and Jimmie would help Uncle Neil and the girls, she admitted. So
she ran out to the barn with a pail, though Gavin was determined she
should not milk, and she helped with the separator, doing everything
with her usual swiftness, and the Aunties looked on in amazement and
admiration.
The short Autumn evening had descended in a soft purple haze and a
great round golden moon was riding up over Craig-Ellachie when
Christina put on her hat and declared reluctantly that she must leave.
She was ladened with gifts: a jar of tomato relish, a huge cake of
maple sugar, a bottle of a new kind of liniment for Grandpa, and such
an armful of dahlias and phlox and asters and gladioli as Christina had
never seen in her life.
The Aunties and Gavin all came with her as far as the pasture bars
where the tall ghosts of the corn stood whispering in the twilight.
The two younger sisters were for going all the way with her over the
hills, but Auntie Elspie, with her deeper insight, interfered.
"Gavie'll go and carry the flowers for you, Christina," she said.
"We'll have to be gettin' away back, girls." And the girls, being
young themselves, understood, and bade Christina good-night, with many
admonitions to come back again and warnings to Gavie to take good care
of her. Gavin put the bottle of liniment in one pocket and the catsup
in another, the relish and the maple sugar in a third and bundling the
bouquet under his arm in a fashion that made Auntie Flora scream with
dismay, walked by Christina's side across the dim pasture field, with
the golden and purple sunset ahead of them and the silver moonlight
behind coming down over Craig-Ellachie. The night was warm and still
and the endless song of the grass, the swan song of all that was left
of Summer, filled the air.
Christina felt perfectly happy and care-free. A career seemed a
far-off, nebulous thing that one need not fret over. It was very
pleasant to be walking up over the hills in the moonlight and sunset
with Gavin at her side carrying flowers for her. She felt it would be
beautiful to be able to always stroll around this way with the scent of
rosemary heavy in the air, and never to bother to look forward to a
college course. They chatted away happily and she told him about their
search for the Harebell, telling him that Uncle Neil said he would
know, and he quoted long stanzas from "The Lady of the Lake," and
"Marmion." And they discussed the new song-book he had bought and
quarrelled over their favourite Scotch song. And he did not confess
that his was the one she had heard him singing that afternoon as he
ploughed the back field.
They crossed the end of the Slash, where Gavin had to help her through
the tangle of bushes. And did she remember how she had given him her
berries that day, he asked.
Christina laughed, but Gavin was sober. "It was a beautiful thing to
do," he said, "and now you have done it again for Sandy."
"No, no," said Christina, "it was nothing; I could not be happy to go
and let Sandy stay."
"But you will go some day?" added Gavin, his voice sunk to a tremulous
whisper.
"Yes, perhaps next Fall, Allister and John both say, if the crops turn
out well next summer. But it's a long way to look ahead."
They had come down to the level again, along the back lane and up to
the little gate that led in from the barnyard.
Gavin put the flowers into her arms and handed her the many gifts.
"Won't you come in, Gavin?" she asked. "There might be a letter from
Sandy."
"Thank you," he said gratefully. "No, I must not be going in to-night,
Christine. Thank you for your visit. You made my Aunties very happy.
And you have made me very happy, too," he added in a whisper. He saw
the look of embarrassment on her face and instantly stopped. Gavin was
a true gentleman at heart and guessed when he was bordering on
forbidden ground. He walked away and Christina went slowly up the path.
Perhaps, after all, there was something in the saying that homekeeping
hearts are happiest, she reflected. It did not seem quite so dreary to
look forward to always living in Orchard Glen.