“Don’t, Mr. MacPherson,” said Aunt Olivia. She spoke as a woman who
has keyed herself up to the doing of some very distasteful task and is
anxious to have it over and done with as soon as possible. “There is
something I must say to you. I cannot marry you, Mr. MacPherson.”
There was a pause. I would have given much to have seen the pair of
them. When Mr. Malcolm MacPherson spoke his voice was that of blank,
uncomprehending amazement.
“Nillie, what is it you are meaning?” he said.
“I cannot marry you, Mr. MacPherson,” repeated Aunt Olivia.
“Why not?” Surprise was giving way to dismay.
“I don’t think you will understand, Mr. MacPherson,” said Aunt Olivia,
faintly. “You don’t realize what it means for a woman to give up
everything--her own home and friends and all her past life, so to speak,
and go far away with a stranger.”
“Why, I suppose it will be rather hard. But, Nillie, Avonlea isn’t very
far away--not more than twelve miles, if it will be that.”
“Twelve miles! It might as well be at the other side of the world to
all intents and purposes,” said Aunt Olivia obstinately. “I don’t know a
living soul there, except Rachel Lynde.”
“Why didn’t you say so before I bought the place, then? But it’s not too
late. I can be selling it and buying right here in East Grafton if that
will please you--though there isn’t half as nice a place to be had. But
I’ll fix it up somehow!”
“No, Mr. MacPherson,” said Aunt Olivia firmly, “that doesn’t cover the
difficulty. I knew you would not understand. My ways are not your ways
and I cannot make them over. For--you track mud in--and--and--you don’t
care whether things are tidy or not.”
Poor Aunt Olivia had to be Aunt Olivia; if she were being burned at the
stake I verily believe she would have dragged some grotesqueness into
the tragedy of the moment.
“The devil!” said Mr. Malcolm MacPherson--not profanely or angrily, but
as in sheer bewilderment. Then he added, “Nillie, you must be joking.
It’s careless enough I am--the west isn’t a good place to learn finicky
ways--but you can teach me. You’re not going to throw me over because I
track mud in!”
“I cannot marry you, Mr. MacPherson,” said Aunt Olivia again.
“You can’t be meaning it!” he exclaimed, because he was beginning to
understand that she did mean it, although it was impossible for his
man mind to understand anything else about the puzzle. “Nillie, it’s
breaking my heart you are! I’ll do anything--go anywhere--be anything
you want--only don’t be going back on me like this.”
“I cannot marry you, Mr. MacPherson,” said Aunt Olivia for the fourth
time.
“Nillie!” exclaimed Mr. Malcolm MacPherson. There was such real agony in
his tone that Peggy and I were suddenly stricken with contrition.
What were we doing? We had no right to be listening to this pitiful
interview. The pain and protest in his voice had suddenly banished all
the humour from it, and left naught but the bare, stark tragedy. We rose
and tiptoed out of the room, wholesomely ashamed of ourselves.
When Mr. Malcolm MacPherson had gone, after an hour of useless pleading,
Aunt Olivia came up to us, pale and prim and determined, and told us
that there was to be no wedding. We could not pretend surprise, but
Peggy ventured a faint protest.
“Oh, Aunt Olivia, do you think you have done right?”
“It was the only thing I could do,” said Aunt Olivia stonily. “I could
not marry Mr. Malcolm MacPherson and I told him so. Please tell your
father--and kindly say nothing more to me about the matter.”
Then Aunt Olivia went downstairs, got a broom, and swept up the mud Mr.
Malcolm MacPherson had tracked over the steps.
Peggy and I went home and told father. We felt very flat, but there was
nothing to be done or said. Father laughed at the whole thing, but I
could not laugh. I was sorry for Mr. Malcolm MacPherson and, though I
was angry with her, I was sorry for Aunt Olivia, too. Plainly she felt
badly enough over her vanished hopes and plans, but she had developed a
strange and baffling reserve which nothing could pierce.
“It’s nothing but a chronic case of old-maidism,” said father
impatiently.
Things were very dull for a week. We saw no more of Mr. Malcolm
MacPherson and we missed him dreadfully. Aunt Olivia was inscrutable,
and worked with fierceness at superfluous tasks.
One evening father came home with some news. “Malcolm MacPherson is
leaving on the 7:30 train for the west,” he said. “He has rented the
Avonlea place and he’s off. They say he is mad as a hatter at the trick
Olivia played on him.”
After tea Peggy and I went over to see Aunt Olivia, who had asked our
advice about a wrapper. She was sewing as for dear life, and her face
was primmer and colder than ever. I wondered if she knew of Mr. Malcolm
MacPherson’s departure. Delicacy forbade me to mention it but Peggy had
no such scruples.
“Well, Aunt Olivia, your beau is off,” she announced cheerfully. “You
won’t be bothered with him again. He is leaving on the mail train for
the west.”
Aunt Olivia dropped her sewing and stood up. I have never seen anything
like the transformation that came over her. It was so thorough and
sudden as to be almost uncanny. The old maid vanished completely, and in
her place was a woman, full to the lips with primitive emotion and pain.
“What shall I do?” she cried in a terrible voice. “Mary--Peggy--what
shall I do?”
It was almost a shriek. Peggy turned pale.
“Do you care?” she said stupidly.
“Care! Girls, I shall DIE if Malcolm MacPherson goes away! I have been
mad--I must have been mad. I have almost died of loneliness since I sent
him away. But I thought he would come back! I must see him--there is
time to reach the station before the train goes if I go by the fields.”
She took a wild step towards the door, but I caught her back with a
sudden mind-vision of Aunt Olivia flying bareheaded and distraught
across the fields.
“Wait a moment, Aunt Olivia. Peggy, run home and get father to harness
Dick in the buggy as quickly as he can. We’ll drive Aunt Olivia to the
station. We’ll get you there in time, Aunty.”
Peggy flew, and Aunt Olivia dashed upstairs. I lingered behind to pick
up her sewing, and when I got to her room she had her hat and cape on.
Spread out on the bed were all the boxes of gifts which Mr. Malcolm
MacPherson had brought her, and Aunt Olivia was stringing their contents
feverishly about her person. Rings, three brooches, a locket, three
chains and a watch all went on--anyway and anyhow. A wonderful sight it
was to see Aunt Olivia bedizened like that!
“I would never wear them before--but I’ll put them all on now to show
him I’m sorry,” she gasped, with trembling lips.
When the three of us crowded into the buggy, Aunt Olivia grasped the
whip before we could prevent her and, leaning out, gave poor Dick such
a lash as he had never felt in his life before. He went tearing down the
steep, stony, fast-darkening road in a fashion which made Peggy and me
cry out in alarm. Aunt Olivia was usually the most timid of women, but
now she didn’t seem to know what fear was. She kept whipping and
urging poor Dick the whole way to the station, quite oblivious to our
assurances that there was plenty of time. The people who met us that
night must have thought we were quite mad. I held on the reins, Peggy
gripped the swaying side of the buggy, and Aunt Olivia bent forward,
hat and hair blowing back from her set face with its strangely crimson
cheeks, and plied the whip. In such a guise did we whirl through the
village and over the two-mile station road.
When we drove up to the station, where the train was shunting amid the
shadows, Aunt Olivia made a flying leap from the buggy and ran along the
platform, with her cape streaming behind her and all her brooches and
chains glittering in the lights. I tossed the reins to a boy standing
near and we followed. Just under the glare of the station lamp we saw
Mr. Malcolm MacPherson, grip in hand. Fortunately no one else was very
near, but it would have been all the same had they been the centre of a
crowd. Aunt Olivia fairly flung herself against him.
“Malcolm,” she cried, “don’t go--don’t go--I’ll marry you--I’ll go
anywhere--and I don’t care how much mud you bring in!”
That truly Aunt Olivia touch relieved the tension of the situation a
little. Mr. MacPherson put his arm about her and drew her back into the
shadows.
“There, there,” he soothed. “Of course I won’t be going. Don’t cry,
Nillie-girl.”
“And you’ll come right back with me now?” implored Aunt Olivia, clinging
to him as if she feared he would be whisked away from her yet if she let
go for a moment.
“Of course, of course,” he said.
Peggy got a chance home with a friend, and Aunt Olivia and Mr. Malcolm
MacPherson and I drove back in the buggy. Mr. MacPherson held Aunt
Olivia on his knee because there was no room, but she would have sat
there, I think, had there been a dozen vacant seats. She clung to him in
the most barefaced fashion, and all her former primness and reserve were
swept away completely. She kissed him a dozen times or more and told him
she loved him--and I did not even smile, nor did I want to. Somehow, it
did not seem in the least funny to me then, nor does it now, although it
doubtless will to others. There was too much real intensity of feeling
in it all to leave any room for the ridiculous. So wrapped up in each
other were they that I did not even feel superfluous.
I set them safely down in Aunt Olivia’s yard and turned homeward,
completely forgotten by the pair. But in the moonlight, which flooded
the front of the house, I saw something that testified eloquently to the
transformation in Aunt Olivia. It had rained that afternoon and the
yard was muddy. Nevertheless, she went in at her front door and took Mr.
Malcolm MacPherson in with her without even a glance at the scraper!