CHAPTER III. THE INGLESIDE CHILDREN
In daytime the Blythe children liked very well to play in the rich, softgreens and glooms of the big maple grove between Ingleside and the GlenSt. Mary pond; but for evening revels there was no place like the littlevalley behind the maple grove. It was a fairy realm of romance to them.Once, looking from the attic windows of Ingleside, through the mistand aftermath of a summer thunderstorm, they had seen the beloved spotarched by a glorious rainbow, one end of which seemed to dip straightdown to where a corner of the pond ran up into the lower end of thevalley.
"Let us call it Rainbow Valley," said Walter delightedly, and RainbowValley thenceforth it was.
Outside of Rainbow Valley the wind might be rollicking and boisterous.Here it always went gently. Little, winding, fairy paths ran here andthere over spruce roots cushioned with moss. Wild cherry trees, that inblossom time would be misty white, were scattered all over the valley,mingling with the dark spruces. A little brook with amber watersran through it from the Glen village. The houses of the village werecomfortably far away; only at the upper end of the valley was a littletumble-down, deserted cottage, referred to as "the old Bailey house." Ithad not been occupied for many years, but a grass-grown dyke surroundedit and inside was an ancient garden where the Ingleside children couldfind violets and daisies and June lilies still blooming in season. Forthe rest, the garden was overgrown with caraway that swayed and foamedin the moonshine of summer eves like seas of silver.
To the sought lay the pond and beyond it the ripened distance lostitself in purple woods, save where, on a high hill, a solitary old grayhomestead looked down on glen and harbour. There was a certain wildwoodsiness and solitude about Rainbow Valley, in spite of its nearnessto the village, which endeared it to the children of Ingleside.
The valley was full of dear, friendly hollows and the largest of thesewas their favourite stamping ground. Here they were assembled on thisparticular evening. There was a grove of young spruces in this hollow,with a tiny, grassy glade in its heart, opening on the bank of thebrook. By the brook grew a silver birch-tree, a young, incrediblystraight thing which Walter had named the "White Lady." In this glade,too, were the "Tree Lovers," as Walter called a spruce and maplewhich grew so closely together that their boughs were inextricablyintertwined. Jem had hung an old string of sleigh-bells, given himby the Glen blacksmith, on the Tree Lovers, and every visitant breezecalled out sudden fairy tinkles from it.
"How nice it is to be back!" said Nan. "After all, none of the Avonleaplaces are quite as nice as Rainbow Valley."
But they were very fond of the Avonlea places for all that. A visit toGreen Gables was always considered a great treat. Aunt Marilla was verygood to them, and so was Mrs. Rachel Lynde, who was spending the leisureof her old age in knitting cotton-warp quilts against the day whenAnne's daughters should need a "setting-out." There were jolly playmatesthere, too--"Uncle" Davy's children and "Aunt" Diana's children. Theyknew all the spots their mother had loved so well in her girlhood at oldGreen Gables--the long Lover's Lane, that was pink-hedged in wild-rosetime, the always neat yard, with its willows and poplars, the Dryad'sBubble, lucent and lovely as of yore, the Lake of Shining Waters, andWillowmere. The twins had their mother's old porch-gable room, and AuntMarilla used to come in at night, when she thought they were asleep, togloat over them. But they all knew she loved Jem the best.
Jem was at present busily occupied in frying a mess of small trout whichhe had just caught in the pond. His stove consisted of a circle of redstones, with a fire kindled in it, and his culinary utensils were anold tin can, hammered out flat, and a fork with only one tine left.Nevertheless, ripping good meals had before now been thus prepared.
Jem was the child of the House of Dreams. All the others had been bornat Ingleside. He had curly red hair, like his mother's, and frank hazeleyes, like his father's; he had his mother's fine nose and his father'ssteady, humorous mouth. And he was the only one of the family who hadears nice enough to please Susan. But he had a standing feud with Susanbecause she would not give up calling him Little Jem. It was outrageous,thought thirteen-year-old Jem. Mother had more sense.
"I'm NOT little any more, Mother," he had cried indignantly, on hiseighth birthday. "I'm AWFUL big."
Mother had sighed and laughed and sighed again; and she never called himLittle Jem again--in his hearing at least.
He was and always had been a sturdy, reliable little chap. He neverbroke a promise. He was not a great talker. His teachers did not thinkhim brilliant, but he was a good, all-round student. He never tookthings on faith; he always liked to investigate the truth of a statementfor himself. Once Susan had told him that if he touched his tongue to afrosty latch all the skin would tear off it. Jem had promptly done it,"just to see if it was so." He found it was "so," at the cost of a verysore tongue for several days. But Jem did not grudge suffering in theinterests of science. By constant experiment and observation helearned a great deal and his brothers and sisters thought his extensiveknowledge of their little world quite wonderful. Jem always knew wherethe first and ripest berries grew, where the first pale violets shylywakened from their winter's sleep, and how many blue eggs were in agiven robin's nest in the maple grove. He could tell fortunes from daisypetals and suck honey from red clovers, and grub up all sorts of edibleroots on the banks of the pond, while Susan went in daily fear that theywould all be poisoned. He knew where the finest spruce-gum was to befound, in pale amber knots on the lichened bark, he knew where the nutsgrew thickest in the beechwoods around the Harbour Head, and where thebest trouting places up the brooks were. He could mimic the call of anywild bird or beast in Four Winds and he knew the haunt of every wildflower from spring to autumn.
Walter Blythe was sitting under the White Lady, with a volume of poemslying beside him, but he was not reading. He was gazing now at theemerald-misted willows by the pond, and now at a flock of clouds, likelittle silver sheep, herded by the wind, that were drifting over RainbowValley, with rapture in his wide splendid eyes. Walter's eyes werevery wonderful. All the joy and sorrow and laughter and loyalty andaspiration of many generations lying under the sod looked out of theirdark gray depths.
Walter was a "hop out of kin," as far as looks went. He did not resembleany known relative. He was quite the handsomest of the Inglesidechildren, with straight black hair and finely modelled features. But hehad all his mother's vivid imagination and passionate love of beauty.Frost of winter, invitation of spring, dream of summer and glamour ofautumn, all meant much to Walter.
In school, where Jem was a chieftain, Walter was not thought highly of.He was supposed to be "girly" and milk-soppish, because he never foughtand seldom joined in the school sports, preferring to herd by himself inout of the way corners and read books--especially "po'try books." Walterloved the poets and pored over their pages from the time he could firstread. Their music was woven into his growing soul--the music of theimmortals. Walter cherished the ambition to be a poet himself someday. The thing could be done. A certain Uncle Paul--so called out ofcourtesy--who lived now in that mysterious realm called "the States,"was Walter's model. Uncle Paul had once been a little school boy inAvonlea and now his poetry was read everywhere. But the Glen schoolboysdid not know of Walter's dreams and would not have been greatlyimpressed if they had. In spite of his lack of physical prowess,however, he commanded a certain unwilling respect because of his powerof "talking book talk." Nobody in Glen St. Mary school could talk likehim. He "sounded like a preacher," one boy said; and for this reason hewas generally left alone and not persecuted, as most boys were who weresuspected of disliking or fearing fisticuffs.
The ten year old Ingleside twins violated twin tradition by not lookingin the least alike. Anne, who was always called Nan, was very pretty,with velvety nut-brown eyes and silky nut-brown hair. She was a veryblithe and dainty little maiden--Blythe by name and blithe by nature,one of her teachers had said. Her complexion was quite faultless, muchto her mother's satisfaction.
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p; "I'm so glad I have one daughter who can wear pink," Mrs. Blythe waswont to say jubilantly.
Diana Blythe, known as Di, was very like her mother, with gray-greeneyes that always shone with a peculiar lustre and brilliancy in thedusk, and red hair. Perhaps this was why she was her father's favourite.She and Walter were especial chums; Di was the only one to whom he wouldever read the verses he wrote himself--the only one who knew that hewas secretly hard at work on an epic, strikingly resembling "Marmion" insome things, if not in others. She kept all his secrets, even from Nan,and told him all hers.
"Won't you soon have those fish ready, Jem?" said Nan, sniffing with herdainty nose. "The smell makes me awfully hungry."
"They're nearly ready," said Jem, giving one a dexterous turn. "Get outthe bread and the plates, girls. Walter, wake up."
"How the air shines to-night," said Walter dreamily. Not that hedespised fried trout either, by any means; but with Walter food for thesoul always took first place. "The flower angel has been walking overthe world to-day, calling to the flowers. I can see his blue wings onthat hill by the woods."
"Any angels' wings I ever saw were white," said Nan.
"The flower angel's aren't. They are a pale misty blue, just like thehaze in the valley. Oh, how I wish I could fly. It must be glorious."
"One does fly in dreams sometimes," said Di.
"I never dream that I'm flying exactly," said Walter. "But I often dreamthat I just rise up from the ground and float over the fences and thetrees. It's delightful--and I always think, 'This ISN'T a dream likeit's always been before. THIS is real'--and then I wake up after all,and it's heart-breaking."
"Hurry up, Nan," ordered Jem.
Nan had produced the banquet-board--a board literally as well asfiguratively--from which many a feast, seasoned as no viands wereelsewhere, had been eaten in Rainbow Valley. It was converted into atable by propping it on two large, mossy stones. Newspapers served astablecloth, and broken plates and handleless cups from Susan's discardfurnished the dishes. From a tin box secreted at the root of a sprucetree Nan brought forth bread and salt. The brook gave Adam's ale ofunsurpassed crystal. For the rest, there was a certain sauce, compoundedof fresh air and appetite of youth, which gave to everything a divineflavour. To sit in Rainbow Valley, steeped in a twilight half gold, halfamethyst, rife with the odours of balsam-fir and woodsy growing thingsin their springtime prime, with the pale stars of wild strawberryblossoms all around you, and with the sough of the wind and tinkle ofbells in the shaking tree tops, and eat fried trout and dry bread, wassomething which the mighty of earth might have envied them.
"Sit in," invited Nan, as Jem placed his sizzling tin platter of trouton the table. "It's your turn to say grace, Jem."
"I've done my part frying the trout," protested Jem, who hated sayinggrace. "Let Walter say it. He LIKES saying grace. And cut it short, too,Walt. I'm starving."
But Walter said no grace, short or long, just then. An interruptionoccurred.
"Who's coming down from the manse hill?" said Di.