In Orchard Glen Part 12

And he tramped straight up the aisle to the platform, his old plaid streaming from his shoulders, his pipes held like a drawn claymore.

The Chairman, like the rest of the crowd, had been listening to "All's Well" and did not dream that things had been going otherwise. He stood for a moment staring at the enraged Piper and then Gavin, who had just slipped into his seat in the choir, leaned forward, and touching the Chairman's elbow, strove to explain.

"Mr. McDonald went to the wrong meeting," he whispered, but he got no farther.

Old Lauchie slammed his pipes down on the Chairman's table, upsetting a gla.s.s of water and a big bouquet of flowers from Craig-Ellachie, and turned upon Gavin, his fists clenched.

"I would be going to the wrong meeting, would I?" he shouted, and Gavin backed away hastily. The old man pursued him hotly.

"It would be you and your fell tribe that would be sending me to the Messodis meeting house!" he shouted. "Ta Messodis," he repeated in withering scorn, "I'll Messodis you----"

Gavin was continuing to back away in a most ungallant fas.h.i.+on, till he got to the wall and there was no means of escape, when rescue came from an unexpected quarter.

Just at the end of the front row of seats, where the pursuit came to a halt, Wallace Sutherland was sitting with his mother. He had been the centre of many admiring glances, especially from the girls. And indeed he was a fine-looking young fellow and it was no wonder that his uncle was so proud of him and his mother so afraid. He was hugely enjoying the Piper's tumultuous entry, and his black eyes were dancing with delight, when the old man, his red blazing eyes fixed upon his supposed enemy, was backing Gavin into a corner.

But Mrs. Sutherland, for all that Orchard Glen p.r.o.nounced her proud and cold, was a timid, gentle woman, and Lauchie's appearance filled her with panic.

"Oh, Wallace, my dear," she whispered in alarm. "Oh, how dreadful.

He's going to strike him----"

Wallace was very loath to put an end to the fun, but he rose and touched the enraged Piper on the arm.

"Mr. McDonald," he whispered tactfully, "my uncle, Dr. McGarry, is the Chairman and he,--he's just a little bit nervous. Won't you get your pipes and play for us? He doesn't know what to do next, and we've been waiting anxiously to hear you."

Wallace Sutherland's charming manner seldom failed him and it did not now. The Piper looked at him and the fierce rage died from his eyes.

The clenched fists dropped to his side and Gavin slipped into a seat.

Wallace nodded to his uncle and Dr. McGarry hastily announced, without any embarra.s.sing explanations, that the Piper had been unavoidably delayed but that he was now ready to favour them with a selection for which they were all so anxiously waiting.

So Lauchie shouldered his instrument and took his place on the platform. The storm was abating but there were still thunderings and occasional flashes of lightning concerning the cra.s.s ignorance and stupidity of the people of Orchard Glen and Methodists the world over.

"Come up to Glenoro and we'll be learning you manners," came rumbling out of the thunder cloud. "We'll be showing you how they treat a Piper there."

But by this time the pipes were beginning to scream their opening note, and Lauchie was blowing his anger into the chanter. The tune rose on a shrill spiral and high and clear it poured forth the challenging notes of a fierce pibroch, the war song of the Clan McDonald. The player marched back and forth across the platform keeping quick step to the mad tune, that rose louder and faster and shriller at each step.

The audience began to clap, to stamp, to cheer, and still the war cry of the McDonalds went screaming to the roof; and finally when the walls were beginning to rock, and the women were becoming terrified, the Piper whirled down the aisle and swept out of the building on the high tide of his song. The young men in the back of the hall followed him in noisy hilarity, but he stopped for n.o.body. He went marching straight up the village street towards home, the defiant notes rising in a wild crescendo. And oh, how he blew with lungs of leather like fifty pipers together, when he was pa.s.sing the Methodist church!

Dr. McGarry called the audience to order with some difficulty, and the rest of the performance went on quite decorously. And when the last notes of the pipes died away in the hills, Marmaduke and Trooper crawled from their hiding place and sat on the hall steps till the programme was over, holding each other up.

"Gosh," whispered Marmaduke, wiping his eyes weakly. "Who'd 'a'

thought that a McDonald from Glenoro wouldn't know a Methodist church when he saw one?"

"It was the sight o' the Temperance hall that turned his stomach,"

lamented Trooper. "We might 'a' known he'd shy at it."

The Piper played himself away up and out of Orchard Glen, vowing solemnly, like the Minstrel Boy, that he would tear the cords of his instrument asunder ere they should sound again within the hearing of that traitorous community, a vow that old Lauchie was to live to see broken, under very stirring circ.u.mstances.

But there were other cords torn asunder in Orchard Glen by the unfortunate contingency of that fatal evening. The Hendersons and the Browns, who had been lifelong friends, stopped speaking to each other; Mr. Sinclair and Mr. Wylie met on the most frigidly polite terms; the union choir, which was the pride of Tremendous K.'s heart and the glory of Orchard Glen, fell to pieces, and a line of demarkation was drawn carefully between the two denominations where so recently every one had talked about church union.

Mrs. Johnnie Dunn did not allow whatever part her nephew and his chum had in the affair to go unnoticed. She advertised it, and hinted that perhaps the Piper was not so much to blame after all. Indeed the past record of Trooper and Marmaduke afforded little weight in proving their innocence, and public suspicion fastened upon them. Neither of them took any pains to establish their innocence; indeed, Trooper secretly wondered why they had never thought of planning the affair, and was rather ashamed of his lack of enterprise.

But both he and Marmaduke felt that The Woman pressed the case against them just a little too strongly.

"We'll have to do something to make The Woman mind her own business, Troop," Marmaduke declared, as they sat by the roaring fire in the store one chilly afternoon. "She'll ruin our innocent and harmless reputations if we don't."

So the two put their heads together to plan a just retribution, but before it could be made to fall, The Woman astonished every one by an entirely new enterprise. She packed her trunk, and leaving Marthy and Trooper to take care of themselves, she went away to spend the Winter on a visit to a sister in California.

But to no one was the night of the concert such a great occasion as it was to Christina. Wallace Sutherland went back to his studies the next week, but the vision of his handsome smiling face and his gallant behaviour remained vividly with her. She was filled with dismay at the contrast Gavin Grant had presented to him that night. It did not dawn upon Christina's mind that Gavin would as soon have raised his hand to Auntie Elspie as to defend himself against poor old Piper Lauchie.

Tilly had whispered that Gavin was scared, and the other girls, with Joanna's able a.s.sistance, emphasised the shameful fact. So when she saw him after the concert, standing on the edge of the bar of light that streamed from the hall door, she slipped away as he turned towards her and escaped with John in the darkness. But Gavin noticed her haste and interpreted it aright.

The Aunties sent a gay message by John, when he was over at the Craig-Ellachie thres.h.i.+ng, to the effect that Elspie had broken off her engagement. She had heard that Piper Lauchie had taken to going to the Methodist church, and they had warned her that they would not abide a Methodist body in the family. But Christina could not joke about the Piper with Gavin, she felt he really must be humiliated, when, in fact, Gavin felt no more at fault than if he had backed out of the way of an enraged child and dodged his blows.

But indeed Christina was giving him and his affairs very little thought. Her Dream Knight had taken form, she even knew his name and his station in life. And though he still rode gaily beyond the horizon she could not but think of him and wonder when she might see him again.

CHAPTER VI

SAINT VALENTINE'S PRANK

But indeed there was no time for dreams with the days of preparation for Mary's wedding flying past. It had been set for the Christmas holidays when the boys would be home, and Annie Brown, who was the neighbourhood dressmaker, spent almost all her days at the Lindsays now, for Allister's cheque had bought many yards of silk and lace and Mary must be as fine as possible to go away and live in a house in town and be dressed up every afternoon of her life.

Christmas came with a rush on snow laden wings, and the boys came home and the old house was filled with noise and laughter. Sandy could not do enough for Christina, he followed her about, that she might not so much as lift a pail of water without his a.s.sistance, for he was always keenly conscious of all she was doing for him, and his conduct made Christina far happier than a college course could possibly make any human being. And then came the wedding before anybody was really ready, as weddings always do, with all the MacGillivrays from Port Stewart and all the McDonald relations from Glenoro. And then suddenly it was all over and Sandy and Neil were gone back to Toronto and Jimmie to Algonquin; and Christina awoke to the astonis.h.i.+ng and dismaying fact that Mary had left them and gone far away to live in a home of her own.

This last fact dwarfed all others and threw even Sandy's absence into lighter gloom.

Early in the Winter she paid a short visit to Mary's new home in Port Stewart. It was a wonderful place, with slippery hardwood floors that had to be polished instead of scrubbed, and s.h.i.+ny new furniture, and electric lights all over--you could press a little b.u.t.ton in the hall at the front door and the light would flash up in the cellar; and hot water upstairs in the bathroom; and a telephone that rang your own number only, and through which no one could overhear what you were saying; and a piano, and Mary taking music lessons, and she a married woman! All these wonders had to be shouted again and again to Grandpa on Christina's return, and he always ended the recital by clapping her on the back and declaring,--

"Och, och, indeed, and it is our own electric light that will be back again, and it will jist be darkness when she is away."

If Christina came home filled with the wonder of Mary's new house she was secretly much more impressed with the wonder of Mary's new life.

Surely it was having all your dreams come true to be married to a handsome man who adored you and go to live with him in a fine house with a piano and polished floors. This must be the Great Adventure, not second even to a college course. What if the road out of Orchard Glen, which she had sought so persistently, and as yet without success, should not be the steep Path up Helicon, after all, but the rose hedged lane along which Mary had gone? Christina's heart left her no doubt as to which road she would choose, were the choice hers. But when one's True Knight was far away and merely nodded carelessly to one when he was near, what chance had one? She longed more keenly than ever to get out into the world of wider opportunity.

The only excitement of the Winter was going to the post office for the boys' letters. They always came on Tuesday. Neil wrote home every Sunday of his life and his letter reached Orchard Glen post office on Tuesday afternoon. And Sandy wrote Sundays, too, or if he missed he sent a hurried note or post card later in the week. Then there was Mary's weekly letter, an occasional one from Allister, and generally Bruce's. At first Bruce was as faithful as Neil, but as the Winter advanced he occasionally missed a Tuesday.

"None from your beau to-day," Christina called out one bl.u.s.tery February afternoon when she brought in the mail, and handed out letters from Sandy and Neil. "He's likely got another girl in Toronto and forgotten all about you."

She was surprised to see that Ellen did not take her nonsense in her usual smooth good-natured way. She flushed and said nothing.

Thereafter Christina kept a strict censors.h.i.+p over Bruce's letters, and was slightly troubled to find that they were rather irregular. Ellen's answer always went back the very next day, and Christina could not help seeing that her sister was anxious and worried until another came. And occasionally a wearisome time elapsed before it did come.

At first Christina's unconquerable cheerfulness forbade its troubling her much. Bruce was probably working very hard as this was his first year. Sandy sometimes missed a week altogether and even Neil was known to delay a day or two when examinations were near. As for Jimmie, he declared that when he went to college he wouldn't write to them at all except when he was home for the holidays. After all it must really be a great deal of trouble to have a sweetheart, as much care and worry, one seemed, as young Mrs. Martin's cross baby. She just couldn't understand anybody fretting over one, and she went round the house, putting wood in the stoves and seeing that Grandpa was kept warm, and singing,

"Oh, I'm glad my heart's my ain yet, And I'll keep it sae all my life, Till some bonny laddie comes by That has wits that can wile a guid wife!"

On Valentine's Day she brought home a whole armful of letters. There was one for her from Allister, and she tore it open first, while Ellen eagerly opened one she had received. Allister had enclosed a valentine for Christina, a horrible picture of a tall, thin, frowsy woman sweeping a house, and beneath an atrocious rhyme about the cross old maid who always stayed at home and swept and scrubbed. Christina remembered with glee that she had sent him one, quite as ugly, a fat old farmer, mean and tight-fisted, growing rich out of his ill-gotten gains. She read his letter, even before she took time to show the valentine to Grandpa, and it sent her dancing through the house in a way that alarmed her mother. For Allister's letter had, once more, opened up the door into the big outside world.

"I have to go back East on business next Summer some time," he wrote, "and I'm going to make you come back here for a visit. The rich bachelors are as thick as gophers out here and I think I ought to do something for them, even if I can't get a wife for myself. So I'm going to get all the Orchard Glen girls out here, one by one, and I think you'll do all right for a start. Campbell and his wife are on my place now and they'll be fine folks for you to stay with...." There was more about the details of her visit, but Christina could not read it for very joy. She went flying around the kitchen waving the letter over her head.

"Hurrah!" she cried, "I'm going out West! I'm going to Alberta! My Valentine's sent for me!"