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

V. The September Chapter

In September the Old Lady looked back on the summer and owned to herself that it had been a strangely happy one, with Sundays and Sewing Circle days standing out like golden punctuation marks in a poem of life. She felt like an utterly different woman; and other people thought her different also. The Sewing Circle women found her so pleasant, and even friendly, that they began to think they had misjudged her, and that perhaps it was eccentricity after all, and not meanness, which accounted for her peculiar mode of living. Sylvia Gray always came and talked to her on Circle afternoons now, and the Old Lady treasured every word she said in her heart and repeated them over and over to her lonely self in the watches of the night.

Sylvia never talked of herself or her plans, unless asked about them; and the Old Lady’s self-consciousness prevented her from asking any personal questions: so their conversation kept to the surface of things, and it was not from Sylvia, but from the minister’s wife that the Old Lady finally discovered what her darling’s dearest ambition was.

The minister’s wife had dropped in at the old Lloyd place one evening late in September, when a chilly wind was blowing up from the northeast and moaning about the eaves of the house, as if the burden of its lay were “harvest is ended and summer is gone.” The Old Lady had been listening to it, as she plaited a little basket of sweet grass for Sylvia. She had walked all the way to Avonlea sandhills for it the day before, and she was very tired. And her heart was sad. This summer, which had so enriched her life, was almost over; and she knew that Sylvia Gray talked of leaving Spencervale at the end of October. The Old Lady’s heart felt like very lead within her at the thought, and she almost welcomed the advent of the minister’s wife as a distraction, although she was desperately afraid that the minister’s wife had called to ask for a subscription for the new vestry carpet, and the Old Lady simply could not afford to give one cent.

But the minister’s wife had merely dropped in on her way home from the Spencers’ and she did not make any embarrassing requests. Instead, she talked about Sylvia Gray, and her words fell on the Old Lady’s ears like separate pearl notes of unutterably sweet music. The minister’s wife had nothing but praise for Sylvia — she was so sweet and beautiful and winning.

“And with SUCH a voice,” said the minister’s wife enthusiastically, adding with a sigh, “It’s such a shame she can’t have it properly trained. She would certainly become a great singer — competent critics have told her so. But she is so poor she doesn’t think she can ever possibly manage it — unless she can get one of the Cameron scholarships, as they are called; and she has very little hope of that, although the professor of music who taught her has sent her name in.”

“What are the Cameron scholarships?” asked the Old Lady.

“Well, I suppose you have heard of Andrew Cameron, the millionaire?” said the minister’s wife, serenely unconscious that she was causing the very bones of the Old Lady’s family skeleton to jangle in their closet.

Into the Old Lady’s white face came a sudden faint stain of colour, as if a rough hand had struck her cheek.

“Yes, I’ve heard of him,” she said.

“Well, it seems that he had a daughter, who was a very beautiful girl, and whom he idolized. She had a fine voice, and he was going to send her abroad to have it trained. And she died. It nearly broke his heart, I understand. But ever since, he sends one young girl away to Europe every year for a thorough musical education under the best teachers — in memory of his daughter. He has sent nine or ten already; but I fear there isn’t much chance for Sylvia Gray, and she doesn’t think there is herself.”

“Why not?” asked the Old Lady spiritedly. “I am sure that there can be few voices equal to Miss Gray’s.”

“Very true. But you see, these so-called scholarships are private affairs, dependent solely on the whim and choice of Andrew Cameron himself. Of course, when a girl has friends who use their influence with him, he will often send her on their recommendation. They say he sent a girl last year who hadn’t much of a voice at all just because her father had been an old business crony of his. But Sylvia doesn’t know anyone at all who would, to use a slang term, have any ‘pull’ with Andrew Cameron, and she is not acquainted with him herself. Well, I must be going; we’ll see you at the Manse on Saturday, I hope, Miss Lloyd. The Circle meets there, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” said the Old Lady absently. When the minister’s wife had gone, she dropped her sweetgrass basket and sat for a long, long time with her hands lying idly in her lap, and her big black eyes staring unseeingly at the wall before her.

Old Lady Lloyd, so pitifully poor that she had to eat six crackers the less a week to pay her fee to the Sewing Circle, knew that it was in her power — HERS — to send Leslie Gray’s daughter to Europe for her musical education! If she chose to use her “pull” with Andrew Cameron — if she went to him and asked him to send Sylvia Gray abroad the next year — she had no doubt whatever that it would be done. It all lay with her — if — if — IF she could so far crush and conquer her pride as to stoop to ask a favour of the man who had wronged her and hers so bitterly.

Years ago, her father, acting under the advice and urgency of Andrew Cameron, had invested all his little fortune in an enterprise that had turned out a failure. Abraham Lloyd lost every dollar he possessed, and his family were reduced to utter poverty. Andrew Cameron might have been forgiven for a mistake; but there was a strong suspicion, amounting to almost certainty, that he had been guilty of something far worse than a mistake in regard to his uncle’s investment. Nothing could be legally proved; but it was certain that Andrew Cameron, already noted for his “sharp practices,” emerged with improved finances from an entanglement that had ruined many better men; and old Doctor Lloyd had died brokenhearted, believing that his nephew had deliberately victimized him.

Andrew Cameron had not quite done this; he had meant well enough by his uncle at first, and what he had finally done he tried to justify to himself by the doctrine that a man must look out for Number One.

Margaret Lloyd made no such excuses for him; she held him responsible, not only for her lost fortune, but for her father’s death, and never forgave him for it. When Abraham Lloyd had died, Andrew Cameron, perhaps pricked by his conscience, had come to her, sleekly and smoothly, to offer her financial aid. He would see, he told her, that she never suffered want.

Margaret Lloyd flung his offer back in his face after a fashion that left nothing to be desired in the way of plain speaking. She would die, she told him passionately, before she would accept a penny or a favour from him. He had preserved an unbroken show of good temper, expressed his heartfelt regret that she should cherish such an unjust opinion of him, and had left her with an oily assurance that he would always be her friend, and would always be delighted to render her any assistance in his power whenever she should choose to ask for it.

The Old Lady had lived for twenty years in the firm conviction that she would die in the poorhouse — as, indeed, seemed not unlikely — before she would ask a favour of Andrew Cameron. And so, in truth, she would have, had it been for herself. But for Sylvia! Could she so far humble herself for Sylvia’s sake?

The question was not easily or speedily settled, as had been the case in the matters of the grape jug and the book of poems. For a whole week the Old Lady fought her pride and bitterness. Sometimes, in the hours of sleepless night, when all human resentments and rancours seemed petty and contemptible, she thought she had conquered it. But in the daytime, with the picture of her father looking down at her from the wall, and the rustle of her unfashionable dresses, worn because of Andrew Cameron’s double dealing, in her ears, it got the better of her again.