Chronicles of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery (interesting novels to read .txt) 📕

Mr. Leonard looked somewhat reproachfully at Janet Andrews, as if to ask her why Felix should have attained to this dubious knowledge of good and evil under her care; and Janet shot a dour look back which, being interpreted, meant that if Felix went to the district school she could not and would not be held responsible if he learned more there than arithmetic and Latin.

“What do you know of Naomi Clark to like or dislike?” she asked curiously. “Did you ever see her?”

“Oh, yes,” Felix replied, addressing himself to his cherry preserve with considerable gusto. “I was down at Spruce Cove one night last summer when a big thunderstorm came up. I went to Naomi’s house for shelter. The door was open, so I walked right in, because nobody answered my knock. Naomi Clark was at the window, watching the cloud coming up over the sea. She just looked at me once, but didn’t say anything, and then went on watching the cloud. I didn’t like to sit down because she hadn’t asked me to, so I went to the window by her and watched it, too. It was a dreadful sight—the cloud was so black and the water so green, and there was such a strange light between the cloud and the water; yet there was something splendid in it, too. Part of the time I watched the storm, and the other part I watched Naomi’s face. It was dreadful to see, like the storm, and yet I liked to see it.

“After the thunder was over it rained a while longer, and Naomi sat down and talked to me. She asked me who I was, and when I told her she asked me to play something for her on her violin,”—Felix shot a deprecating glance at Mr. Leonard— “because, she said, she’d heard I was a great hand at it. She wanted something lively, and I tried just as hard as I could to play something like that. But I couldn’t. I played something that was terrible—it just played itself—it seemed as if something was lost that could never be found again. And before I got through, Naomi came at me, and tore the violin from me, and—SWORE. And she said, ‘You big-eyed brat, how did you know THAT?’ Then she took me by the arm— and she hurt me, too, I can tell you—and she put me right out in the rain and slammed the door.”

“The rude, unmannerly creature!” said Janet indignantly.

“Oh, no, she was quite in the right,” said Felix composedly. “It served me right for what I played. You see, she didn’t know I couldn’t help playing it. I suppose she thought I did it on purpose.”

“What on earth did you play, child?”

“I don’t know.” Felix shivered. “It was awful—it was dreadful. It was fit to break you heart. But it HAD to be played, if I played anything at all.”

“I don’t understand what you mean—I declare I don’t,” said Janet in bewilderment.

“I think we’ll change the subject of conversation,” said Mr. Leonard.

It was a month later when “the simple creature, Maggie” appeared at the manse door one evening and asked for the preached.

“Naomi wants ter see yer,” she mumbled. “Naomi sent Maggie ter tell yer ter come at onct.”

“I shall go, certainly,” said Mr. Leonard gently. “Is she very ill?”

“Her’s dying,” said Maggie with a broad grin. “And her’s awful skeered of hell. Her just knew ter-day her was dying. Maggie told her—her wouldn’t believe the harbour women, but her believed Maggie. Her yelled awful.”

Maggie chuckled to herself over the gruesome remembrance. Mr. Leonard, his heart filled with pity, called Janet and told her to give the poor creature some refreshment. But Maggie shook her head.

“No, no, preacher, Maggie must get right back to Naomi. Maggie’ll tell her the preacher’s coming ter save her from hell.”

She uttered an eerie cry, and ran at full speed shoreward through the spruce woods.

“The Lord save us!” said Janet in an awed tone. “I knew the poor girl was simple, but I didn’t know she was like THAT. And are you going, sir?”

“Yes, of course. I pray God I may be able to help the poor soul,” said Mr. Leonard sincerely. He was a man who never shirked what he believed to be his duty; but duty had sometimes presented itself to him in pleasanter guise than this summons to Naomi Clark’s death-bed.

The woman had been the plague spot of Lower Carmody and Carmody Harbour for a generation. In the earlier days of his ministry to the congregation he had tried to reclaim her, and Naomi had mocked and flouted him to his face. Then, for the sake of those to whom she was a snare or a heartbreak, he had endeavoured to set the law in motion against her, and Naomi had laughed the law to scorn. Finally, he had been compelled to let her alone.

Yet Naomi had not always been an outcast. Her girlhood had been innocent; but she was the possessor of a dangerous beauty, and her mother was dead. Her father was a man notorious for his harshness and violence of temper. When Naomi made the fatal mistake of trusting to a false love that betrayed and deserted, he drove her from his door with taunts and curses.

Naomi took up her quarters in a little deserted house at Spruce Cove. Had her child lived it might have saved her. But it died at birth, and with its little life went her last chance of worldly redemption. From that time forth, her feet were set in the way that takes hold on hell.

For the past five years, however, Naomi had lived a tolerably respectable life. When Janet Peterson had died, her idiot daughter, Maggie, had been left with no kin in the world. Nobody knew what was to be done with her, for nobody wanted to be bothered with her. Naomi Clark went to the girl and offered her a home. People said she was no fit person to have charge of Maggie, but everybody shirked the unpleasant task of interfering in the matter, except Mr. Leonard, who went to expostulate with Naomi, and, as Janet said, for his pains got her door shut in his face.

But from the day when Maggie Peterson went to live with her, Naomi ceased to be the harbour Magdalen.

The sun had set when Mr. Leonard reached Spruce Cove, and the harbour was veiling itself in a wondrous twilight splendour. Afar out, the sea lay throbbing and purple, and the moan of the bar came through the sweet, chill spring air with its burden of hopeless, endless longing and seeking. The sky was blossoming into stars above the afterglow; out to the east the moon was rising, and the sea beneath it was a thing of radiance and silver and glamour; and a little harbour boat that went sailing across it was transmuted into an elfin shallop from the coast of fairyland.

Mr. Leonard sighed as he turned from the sinless beauty of the sea and sky to the threshold of Naomi Clark’s house. It was very small—one room below, and a sleeping-loft above; but a bed had been made up for the sick woman by the downstairs window looking out on the harbour; and Naomi lay on it, with a lamp burning at her head and another at her side, although it was not yet dark. A great dread of darkness had always been one of Naomi’s peculiarities.

She was tossing restlessly on her poor couch, while Maggie crouched on a box at the foot. Mr. Leonard had not seen her for five years, and he was shocked at the change in her. She was much wasted; her clear-cut, aquiline features had been of the type which becomes indescribably witch-like in old age, and, though Naomi Clark was barely sixty, she looked as if she might be a hundred. Her hair streamed over the pillow in white, uncared-for tresses, and the hands that plucked at the bed-clothes were like wrinkled claws. Only her eyes were unchanged; they were as blue and brilliant as ever, but now filled with such agonized terror and appeal that Mr. Leonard’s gentle heart almost stood still with the horror of them. They were the eyes of a creature driven wild with torture, hounded by furies, clutched by unutterable fear.

Naomi sat up and dragged at his arm.

“Can you help me? Can you help me?” she gasped imploringly. “Oh, I thought you’d never come! I was skeered I’d die before you got here—die and go to hell. I didn’t know before today that I was dying. None of those cowards would tell me. Can you help me?”

“If I cannot, God can,” said Mr. Leonard gently. He felt himself very helpless and inefficient before this awful terror and frenzy. He had seen sad death-beds—troubled death-beds—ay, and despairing death-beds, but never anything like this. “God!” Naomi’s voice shrilled terribly as she uttered the name. “I can’t go to God for help. Oh, I’m skeered of hell, but I’m skeereder still of God. I’d rather go to hell a thousand times over than face God after the life I’ve lived. I tell you, I’m sorry for living wicked— I was always sorry for it all the time. There ain’t never been a moment I wasn’t sorry, though nobody would believe it. I was driven on by fiends of hell. Oh, you don’t understand— you CAN’T understand—but I was always sorry!”

“If you repent, that is all that is necessary. God will forgive you if you ask Him.”

“No, He can’t! Sins like mine can’t be forgiven. He can’t— and He won’t.”

“He can and He will. He is a God of love, Naomi.”

“No,” said Naomi with stubborn conviction. “He isn’t a God of love at all. That’s why I’m skeered of him. No, no. He’s a God of wrath and justice and punishment. Love! There ain’t no such thing as love! I’ve never found it on earth, and I don’t believe it’s to be found in God.”

“Naomi, God loves us like a father.”

“Like MY father?” Naomi’s shrill laughter, pealing through the still room, was hideous to hear.

The old minister shuddered.

“No—no! As a kind, tender, all-wise father, Naomi—as you would have loved your little child if it had lived.”

Naomi cowered and moaned.

“Oh, I wish I could believe THAT. I wouldn’t be frightened if I could believe that. MAKE me believe it. Surely you can make me believe that there’s love and forgiveness in God if you believe it yourself.”

“Jesus Christ forgave and loved the Magdalen, Naomi.”

“Jesus Christ? Oh, I ain’t afraid of HIM. Yes, HE could understand and forgive. He was half human. I tell you, it’s God I’m skeered of.”

“They are one and the same,” said Mr. Leonard helplessly. He knew he could not make Naomi realize it. This anguished death-bed was no place for a theological exposition on the mysteries of the Trinity.

“Christ died for you, Naomi. He bore your sins in His own body on the cross.”

“We bear our own sins,” said Naomi fiercely. “I’ve borne mine all my life—and I’ll bear them for all eternity. I can’t believe anything else. I CAN’T believe God can forgive me. I’ve ruined people body and soul—I’ve broken hearts and poisoned homes— I’m worse than a murderess. No—no—no, there’s no hope for me.” Her voice rose again into that shrill, intolerable shriek. “I’ve got to go to hell. It ain’t so much the fire I’m skeered of as the outer darkness. I’ve always been so skeered of darkness— it’s so full of awful things and thoughts. Oh, there ain’t nobody to help me! Man ain’t no good and I’m too skeered