“Not always, lamb,” murmured Clack. “One of the best men I ever knew had what you call gooseberry green eyes ... and they bulged besides.”
“Well, I told you there were always exceptions. Clack, am I a spoiled baggage?”
“Of course you are not,” said Clack indignantly.
“Aunty says I am. And so does dad. Might as well have the game as the name. Besides, in the end I suppose I will really marry this George.”
“You’d never marry a man you didn’t love, lamb.”
“Well, we’ve always been a bit pinched for money, according to our standards of living, in spite of our Clarkism, and it’s not nice, Clack ... it really isn’t.”
“It’s better than marrying a man with gooseberry green eyes,” said Clack, swinging around easily.
“Oh, he may not have gooseberry eyes ... he may be as handsome as a god. Aunty told me once I wasn’t capable of anything but tissue paper emotions.”
“Then she told a fib,” said Clack indignantly.
“Well, it may be true, Clack. You are biased in my favour, you know. Anyhow, if it is true I might as well make the best market I can.”
“I don’t like to hear you talk like that, lamb,” said Clack uncomfortably. “It doesn’t sound like you.”
“That, as I’ve told you, darling, is because you have idealized me. I’m really just like other girls ... and I am full of Clark contrariness. If dad and Aunty had been opposed to the marriage I’d have been all for it. Anyhow, I’ve got this free, wonderful month before I have to decide, so don’t spoil it, Clackest of Clacks.”
“You were born that way,” said Clack resignedly. Apparently she washed her hands of things. Anyway, she knew Chrissie would do as she wanted to ... with everyone except old Mrs. Clark.
She had to go on washing her hands. There didn’t seem anything else she could do.
It wasn’t any use talking to Chrissie. She had even to snub poor Susan Baker who ventured to hint that it wasn’t quite the thing for a Clark of Ashburn to be running everywhere with Miss Merrion’s gardener.
Besides, she could not help liking Don Glynne himself, hard as she tried to hate him. He was very likeable and his eyes did things to you. Even when he wore overalls. For it was in overalls and the rackety Ford Miss Merrion kept for her hired help that he came to take Chrissie to town that afternoon.
Clack could only stand up to it by picturing old Mrs. Clark’s face, if she could have seen them as they whirled away, Chrissie cool and delicious in blue linen beside the faded overalls.
“Do you like me as well today as you did last night?” Don was asking, rather impudently.
The appalling thing was that she did, in spite of all the nonsense she had talked to Clack. She had thought the magic of the night before would vanish in broad daylight.
But he seemed even nicer in his overalls than in his party togs. As for magic ... why, magic seemed everywhere. It spilled all around them as they tore through the golden afternoon in the open car.
Chrissie’s curls blew back from her little face and stars came into her eyes. A cluster of roses from some part of Miss Merrion’s garden lay on her lap and their perfume seemed to go to her head.
Don Glynne hadn’t believed she could be as pretty as he had thought her at the dance ... and she was even prettier. They drove to town and Don got his sod edger and ordered his special snails for the water garden and then they drove home more slowly by a winding woodsy road under dark spruces. Don told her he liked his work and loved gardens.
“Some day I’m going to have a garden of my own ... a secret garden that very few people will ever see ... or criticize ... or admire.”
“Why?”
“Because they always admire the wrong things. The only people who have admired the right things in Miss Merrion’s gardens since I’ve been there were Dr. Blythe and his wife. They did seem to understand.”
Again Chrissie’s heart was torn by a pang of jealousy.
“Won’t you let anybody see it?” she asked wistfully. “I mean ... anybody you are not sure will admire the right things?”
Don looked sidewise at her.
“Oh, I can always tell the right kind. It’s a sort of instinct. But there will be no mobs. I’m fed up with sightseers at Miss Merrion’s in the short time I’ve been there. The tourists come there in shoals ... of course they’ve been told Miss Merrion’s gardens are one of the sights of the Island. I’d like to drown them in some of the pools. Miss Merrion likes it, though ... sometimes I think that is all she has a garden for ... for people to squeal over.”
“Miss Merrion must love some of her flowers,” said Chrissie.
“Oh, she likes a bouquet for the dining room table, especially when she has company. But she doesn’t care a hoot for the garden itself. As Mrs. Blythe says, you have to work in a garden yourself or you miss its meaning.”
Always those Blythes! Chrissie took the bull by the horns.
“Do you admire the Blythe family so much?”
Don looked his astonishment. “I’ve only been here a week, don’t you know? I just met Jem at the dance last night and one day Dr. and Mrs. Blythe brought some of their friends here. But everybody speaks of them as charming. They wouldn’t look at a plain hired gardener, I suppose. Though they say Susan Baker is a member of the family. As for Miss Merrion’s garden, it is a divine place, whether she really cares for it or not. Will you come over and see it some day?”
“But I might admire the wrong things, too.”
“I’ll take a chance on that. I believe you’ll love all the right things ... and pass by the wrong things just as the Blythes did.”
“I suppose it takes a great deal of money to have a garden like that?”
“Scads. But it’s well spent. How could I make an honest living otherwise? And Miss Merrion is rolling in it, so they tell me. That is why she never married ... she told me she was afraid all her suitors were after her money. I daresay they were, too ... have you ever seen Miss Merrion?”
“No.”
“Well, she could have been no beauty at her best and youngest.”
“It must be abominable ... to be married for your money,” said Chrissie hotly.
“Rotten,” agreed Don. “Or to marry for money.”
“M ... m ... m,” said Chrissie. “Only ... do you think it is as bad in a woman as a man?”
“Just as bad in either,” said Don. “Of course long ago there wasn’t anything a woman could do. But now there is no excuse for her.”
“But if she hasn’t been brought up to do anything useful?”
“Then her parents or guardians ought to be soundly spanked,” said Don. “In my mind, there is one valid reason for marrying ... genuine, earnest love.”
“But sometimes people mistake infatuation for love,” said Chrissie.
“Ah, that is the tragedy of life,” said Don with a sigh. “It is hard to tell which is which. But if you would be willing to be poor ... horribly poor ... together, I think you might take the chance. And now we’ve got to get back, because I have to spray the roses before dinner. Miss Merrion is very particular about that. And a good servant must please his employer if he wants to hold his job. Do you still want to go for that evening swim?”
“Yes, of course ... if you do.”
In the evening they went for the swim ... much to Clack’s silent but evident disapproval.
Afterwards they sat on an old upturned dory and watched the moon make patterns on the water. The wind rustled in the dune grasses and there was a thin, silvery wash of little waves on the shore. Far up Four Winds Harbour were mists like dancing witches.
Who could suppose that Ashburn was so short a distance away? It seemed on another planet.
Dad had told her there would be nothing to look at but sunsets. Sunsets! Why, there was Don’s profile to look at. And his slim, sloping shoulders and long, steel-muscled, golden-brown arms.
She thought of George’s awful, plump white body in a bathing s
uit and shuddered.
“I wonder what would happen if I tried to hold your hand,” said Don.
Nothing happened ... at least nothing that anyone could see. Chrissie shuddered again to imagine what Clack would say if she saw. As for Aunty Clark ... well, she just would not think about that.
But she knew that the touch of Don’s fingers was sending little thrills up her arm like the waves of some delicate spirit fire. She wondered if other girls felt like that when their friends touched them. It seemed impossible. No one but Don could make anyone feel like that. And yet she had met him only the night before.
“Oh, if I only weren’t a Clark!” she thought. “Well, Don is only having a little flirtation just as I am. It means nothing more to him. He thinks I am Clack’s niece and a nursery governess and in his own class. I wish it hadn’t been necessary to tell him those fibs. Was it necessary? Why did I care what he thought I was? Just to save the Clark pride, I suppose. And I’ve always laughed at it. I’m as bad as Aunty. But Don will soon forget me and Aunty and dad will find they can’t marry me off just as they like and meanwhile I will have had a delicious month with darling Clack.”
Clack sometimes feared Chrissie had forgotten she was a Clark in the weeks that followed. But she could only fall back on her belief that her lamb could do no wrong. She had to have some amusement, hadn’t she? Mowbray Narrows was a very quiet place.
Don Glynne and Chrissie went swimming together every evening ... and soon every morning. There were no more breakfast trays. Don used to come and whistle outside her window ... which Clack thought indelicate, to say the least of it. What business had he to know which was her window?
Then they were off to the sandshore, which was all pale golden in the thin, translucent glow of the sunrise.
Clack thought it was worse going swimming in the morning than in the evening. The other young folks of Glen St. Mary and the Upper Glen and a few from Mowbray Narrows went in the evening and Clack had got resigned to it: but she could not resign herself to the morning expeditions. Nobody else went swimming in the morning ... except some of the summer colony ... but they were not Clarks. Clack’s only consolation was what old Mrs. Clark would say if she knew.
But she did not know. Or did she? Clack could not lose her belief that you could not get ahead of old Mrs. Clark, no matter what you did. As for Adam, he was as easily befooled as any other man.
Sometimes Chrissie brought Don in to breakfast with her and Clack could not help being civil to him ... could not help liking him. She knew Miss Merrion said she had never had a gardener like him. One who really seemed to take an interest in his work.
After breakfast Don and Chrissie used to go into the garden and eat red currants until it was time for him to show up at Miss Merrion’s, when all the other servants would be just getting up. Don declared the cook was worried because he didn’t seem to be hungry some mornings.
“How could I eat two breakfasts?” he asked Clack.
He and Chrissie did a great deal of laughing and talking as they ate red currants. Clack often wondered what it was all about but she was too well-bred to listen. Old Mrs. Clark would have listened without scruple, she knew. But she was not going to imitate her.
They went on picnics on his afternoons off, rattling away in his old Ford to some lonely place among the hills. These picnics worried Clack more than the swimming expeditions. Now and then she warned Chrissie, who only laughed at her warnings.
“You say Aunty will be sure to get her way and if so I’ll have to marry George,” she would say.
“I am thinking of the poor young man,” Clack would say with dignity.
So was Chrissie, although she would never have admitted it. She knew quite well that Don Glynne was in love with her and that it was the real thing. She knew she ought to break with him at once ... but, to her dismay, she found she could not do it. And yet she could never marry him.
“I couldn’t have believed the Clark pride was so strong in me,” she reflected miserably. “I’m really as bad as Aunty. Well, suppose I give them all the shock of their lives ... including Aunty Clack ... and marry Don? I can make him ask me to ... easily ... he thinks I am only a nursery governess. I believe I could do it anyhow. And a fig for George!”
Sometimes they dug for clams at low tide and Clack made excellent chowders ... and enjoyed seeing them eat them ... unhappy though she was. For this month, to which she had looked forward so happily, was very unhappy for her. Her only consolation was that old Mrs. Clark always got her own way.
“To think I should have come to finding comfort in that,” she reflected sadly.
Why, Don and Chrissie even went to the dances at the Walk Inn ... the summer colony dance house ... and Clack knew, through Susan Baker, that often as not they never went inside but danced alone out under the trees to the music that drifted out from the Inn, while the moonlight sifted down on them. The moons that summer were simply wonderful. At least, Don and Chrissie would have told you so. To other people they seemed much like ordinary moons.
Once poor Clack heard a wild tale from a neighbour that Chrissie had been seen helping Don mow the Merrion lawns but she refused to believe it ... or even ask Susan Baker about it.
She might as well have believed it because it was true. And whatever happened the roses had to be sprayed. Also Chrissie helped Don with his weeding and learned a good deal about gardening as well as about other things. There was no doubt that Don understood his trade. She didn’t know another thing about him ... and never tried to find out ... but she gathered that he had an uncle somewhere who was a farmer or an apple grower or something like that, and no other relatives worth mentioning.
Poor Clack was the most unhappy woman in the world just then. She tried to find out something about Don Glynne but nobody seemed to know anything about him ... not even Susan Baker. And what Susan Baker didn’t know about anybody within a radius of thirty miles was not worth knowing, as Dr. Blythe was in the habit of saying. He had even been known to accuse his wife ... good-humouredly, of course ... of listening to Susan.
“How else am I to hear the news?” Anne defended herself. “Miss Cornelia isn’t in it when it comes to Susan. And Susan says Miss Clark is flirting shamefully with that gardener of Miss Merrion’s and poor Polly Claxton is worrying herself to death.”
“Miss Claxton may spare herself her worries,” said the doctor. “Don Glynne can look out for himself. No woman is going to make a fool of him. If that Clark girl thinks she is, she is going to find herself badly mistaken. As for the rest, Anne-girl, keep your fingers out of it if you don’t want them burned. Remember your last attempt at matchmaking.”
“I shall never hear the last of that from you,” said Anne ruefully. “And I certainly am not going to make any attempt at matchmaking between Miss Clark and Don Glynne. Why, she is Adam Clark’s daughter.”
“She is none the better for that,” said Gilbert. “And here is a piece of gossip that everybody knows. Adam Clark is on the verge of bankruptcy. And his sister says his daughter is going to marry some man out west. So you may be sure there is no question of anything serious between Miss Clark and Don Glynne.”
“Girls have been known to do foolish things before now,” said Anne.
“As when you married a poor young doctor and went to live with him in a tumble-down house you persisted in calling your House of Dreams.”
“Gilbert Blythe! I told Susan to make your favourite lemon pie for dinner but now I shall tell her not to.”
“If you do ...”
“I’ll make it myself,” said Anne, with a laugh ... the old laugh that had never failed her yet. For the Great War had not come and there was no shadow on her face. As for Don Glynne and Miss Clark, they could look after themselves. Mowbray Narrows people were too far away to bother with.
Don Glynne seemed to know all about all the gardens of history and romance and legend in the world, from Eden down. He told Chrissie much about them as they weeded or picnicked or chased n
ight moths in the orchard. Once Chrissie stumbled over a root and Don caught her. She knew he held her a little longer than was necessary ... and she knew she liked it ... and she knew that he knew she liked it. And she knew she would never marry George.
Which would not have comforted Clack much if she had known it. It would be a triumph to get the better of old Mrs. Clark for once; but she did not want Chrissie to marry Miss Merrion’s gardener.
“It is no use looking forward to anything,” thought poor Polly Claxton. “I looked forward to this month with Chrissie so much ... and see how it has turned out! I wonder if I ought to warn Adam Clark. But no. I will not play into old Mrs. Clark’s hands like that. I haven’t the least doubt she knows as much about it as I do anyway.”
Once Chrissie heard herself referred to as “Don Glynne’s girl” and was horrified to find that it thrilled her instead of annoying her. Clack heard a similar reference ... several of them in fact ... and it gave her a very bad quarter of an hour.
But after all, Chrissie was a Clark ... and Clarks didn’t marry gardeners ... it was impossible ... no matter how cloudy their blue eyes or how tall and broad-shouldered their figures.
Of course, anybody could see that Don Glynne was crazy about her ... but Clack fell back on the assurance that the men ought to be able to look after themselves. The best of them, she felt, needed a lesson quite frequently.
When she saw Don offering Chrissie the quarter of an apple on the point of his garden knife one day she felt much more at ease. It was a pity such a nice fellow should have such manners. And him looking so much like a gentleman, too!
Chrissie thought the apple the most delicious she had ever tasted. She knew the knife was clean ... Don had washed it in the brook before he carved up the apple.
But it was not until Don kissed her ... for the first time ... that night on the shore ... and just for one second was the centre of her universe ... that she knew something else.
“From now on you are mine,” he said, between his set teeth.
Chrissie knew there was only one way of escape ... and she took it.
“Let us be sane,” she said, as lightly as wave froth in the sand. “You know this can’t go on. I’ve liked you very much ... for the summer. But I must have a different beau for the wintertime. Really.”