The Complete Short Stories of Lucy Maud Montgomery. Lucy Maud Montgomery

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СКАЧАТЬ Roberts’ husband is dead,” said Mr. Patterson. “Died about two months ago, I understand, and she has a little baby six months old, and she thought perhaps Mrs. Wheeler would take it for old times’ sake—”

      “Did Charlotte ask you to call and tell me this?” demanded Miss

       Rosetta eagerly.

      “No; she just told me what was in the letter. She didn’t mention you; but I thought, perhaps, you ought to be told—”

      “I knew it,” said Miss Rosetta in a tone of bitter assurance. “I could have told you so. Charlotte wouldn’t even let me know that Jane was ill. Charlotte would be afraid I would want to get the baby, seeing that Jane and I were such intimate friends long ago. And who has a better right to it than me, I should like to know? Ain’t I the oldest? And haven’t I had experience in bringing up babies? Charlotte needn’t think she is going to run the affairs of our family just because she happened to get married. Jacob Wheeler—”

      “I must be going,” said Mr. Patterson, gathering up his reins thankfully.

      “I am much obliged to you for coming to tell me about Jane,” said Miss Rosetta, “even though you have wasted a lot of precious time getting it out. If it hadn’t been for you I suppose I should never have known it at all. As it is, I shall start for town just as soon as I can get ready.”

      “You’ll have to hurry if you want to get ahead of Mrs. Wheeler,” advised Mr. Patterson. “She’s packing her trunk and going on the morning train.”

      “I’ll pack a valise and go on the afternoon train,” retorted Miss

       Rosetta triumphantly. “I’ll show Charlotte she isn’t running the

       Ellis affairs. She married out of them into the Wheelers. She

       can attend to them. Jacob Wheeler was the most—”

      But Mr. Patterson had driven away. He felt that he had done his duty in the face of fearful odds, and he did not want to hear anything more about Jacob Wheeler.

      Rosetta Ellis and Charlotte Wheeler had not exchanged a word for ten years. Before that time they had been devoted to each other, living together in the little Ellis cottage on the White Sands road, as they had done ever since their parents’ death. The trouble began when Jacob Wheeler had commenced to pay attention to Charlotte, the younger and prettier of two women who had both ceased to be either very young or very pretty. Rosetta had been bitterly opposed to the match from the first. She vowed she had no use for Jacob Wheeler. There were not lacking malicious people to hint that this was because the aforesaid Jacob Wheeler had selected the wrong sister upon whom to bestow his affections. Be that as it might, Miss Rosetta certainly continued to render the course of Jacob Wheeler’s true love exceedingly rough and tumultuous. The end of it was that Charlotte had gone quietly away one morning and married Jacob Wheeler without Miss Rosetta’s knowing anything about it. Miss Rosetta had never forgiven her for it, and Charlotte had never forgiven the things Rosetta had said to her when she and Jacob returned to the Ellis cottage. Since then the sisters had been avowed and open foes, the only difference being that Miss Rosetta aired her grievances publicly, in season and out of season, while Charlotte was never heard to mention Rosetta’s name. Even the death of Jacob Wheeler, five years after the marriage, had not healed the breach.

      Miss Rosetta took out her curl-papers, packed her valise, and caught the late afternoon train for Charlottetown, as she had threatened. All the way there she sat rigidly upright in her seat and held imaginary dialogues with Charlotte in her mind, running something like this on her part: —

      “No, Charlotte Wheeler, you are not going to have Jane’s baby, and you’re very much mistaken if you think so. Oh, all right — we’ll see! You don’t know anything about babies, even if you are married. I do. Didn’t I take William Ellis’s baby, when his wife died? Tell me that, Charlotte Wheeler! And didn’t the little thing thrive with me, and grow strong and healthy? Yes, even you have to admit that it did, Charlotte Wheeler. And yet you have the presumption to think that you ought to have Jane’s baby! Yes, it is presumption, Charlotte Wheeler. And when William Ellis got married again, and took the baby, didn’t the child cling to me and cry as if I was its real mother? You know it did, Charlotte Wheeler. I’m going to get and keep Jane’s baby in spite of you, Charlotte Wheeler, and I’d like to see you try to prevent me — you that went and got married and never so much as let your own sister know of it! If I had got married in such a fashion, Charlotte Wheeler, I’d be ashamed to look anybody in the face for the rest of my natural life!”

      Miss Rosetta was so interested in thus laying down the law to Charlotte, and in planning out the future life of Jane’s baby, that she didn’t find the journey to Charlottetown so long or tedious as might have been expected, considering her haste. She soon found her way to the house where her cousin lived. There, to her dismay and real sorrow, she learned that Mrs. Roberts had died at four o’clock that afternoon.

      “She seemed dreadful anxious to live until she heard from some of her folks out in Avonlea,” said the woman who gave Miss Rosetta the information. “She had written to them about her little girl. She was my sister-in-law, and she lived with me ever since her husband died. I’ve done my best for her; but I’ve a big family of my own and I can’t see how I’m to keep the child. Poor Jane looked and longed for some one to come from Avonlea, but she couldn’t hold out. A patient, suffering creature she was!”

      “I’m her cousin,” said Miss Rosetta, wiping her eyes, “and I have come for the baby. I’ll take it home with me after the funeral; and, if you please, Mrs. Gordon, let me see it right away, so it can get accustomed to me. Poor Jane! I wish I could have got here in time to see her, she and I were such friends long ago. We were far more intimate and confidential than ever her and Charlotte was. Charlotte knows that, too!”

      The vim with which Miss Rosetta snapped this out rather amazed

       Mrs. Gordon, who couldn’t understand it at all. But she took

       Miss Rosetta upstairs to the room where the baby was sleeping.

      “Oh, the little darling,” cried Miss Rosetta, all her old maidishness and oddity falling away from her like a garment, and all her innate and denied motherhood shining out in her face like a transforming illumination. “Oh, the sweet, dear, pretty little thing!”

      The baby was a darling — a six-months’ old beauty with little golden ringlets curling and glistening all over its tiny head. As Miss Rosetta hung over it, it opened its eyes and then held out its tiny hands to her with a gurgle of confidence.

      “Oh, you sweetest!” said Miss Rosetta rapturously, gathering it up in her arms. “You belong to me, darling — never, never, to that underhanded Charlotte! What is its name, Mrs. Gordon?”

      “It wasn’t named,” said Mrs. Gordon. “Guess you’ll have to name it yourself, Miss Ellis.”

      “Camilla Jane,” said Miss Rosetta without a moment’s hesitation. “Jane after its mother, of course; and I have always thought Camilla the prettiest name in the world. Charlotte would be sure to give it some perfectly heathenish name. I wouldn’t put it past her calling the poor innocent Mehitable.”

      Miss Rosetta decided to stay in Charlottetown until after the funeral. That night she lay with the baby on her arm, listening with joy to its soft little breathing. She did not sleep or wish to sleep. Her waking fancies were more alluring than any visions of dreamland. Moreover, she gave a spice to them by occasionally snapping some vicious sentences out СКАЧАТЬ