Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Author:Lucy Maud Montgomery [Montgomery, Lucy Maud]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-11-26T13:33:01.900000+00:00

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That night Nora lay beside her sisters in the tiny room that looked out on the harbour. The younger girls slept soundly, but Nora kept awake to listen to the laughter of the wind outside, and con over what she and Rob had said to each other. There was no blot on her happiness save a sorry wonder what the Camerons would say when they knew.

“They will think me ungrateful and fickle,” she sighed. “They don’t know that I can’t help it even if I would. They will never understand.”

Nor did they. When Nora told them that she was going back to Racicot, they laughed at her kindly at first, treating it as the passing whim of a homesick girl. Later, when they came to understand that she meant it, they were grieved and angry. There were scenes of pleading and tears and reproaches. Nora cried bitterly in Mrs. Cameron’s arms, but stood rock-firm. She could never go back to them—never.

They appealed to Nathan Shelley finally, but he refused to say anything.

“It can’t be altered,” he told them. “The sea has called her and she’ll listen to naught else. I’m sorry enough for the girl’s own sake. It would have been better for her if she could have cut loose from it all and lived your life, I dare say. But you’ve made a fair trial and it’s of no use. I know what’s in her heart—it was in mine once—and I’ll say no word of rebuke to her. She’s free to go or stay as she chooses—just as free as she was last year.”

Mrs. Cameron made one more appeal to Nora. She told the girl bitterly that she was ungrateful.

“I’m not that,” said Nora with quivering lips. “I love you, and I’m grateful to you. But your life isn’t for me, after all. I thought it was—I longed so for it. And I loved it, too—I love it yet. But there’s something stronger in me that holds me here.”

“I don’t think you realize what you are doing, Nora. You have been a little homesick and you are glad to be back. But after we have gone and you must settle into the old Racicot life again, you will not be contented. You will find that your life with us will have unfitted you for this. There will be no real place for you here—nothing for you to do. You will be as a stranger here.”

“Oh, no. I am going to marry Rob Fletcher,” said Nora proudly.

“Marry Rob Fletcher! And you might have married Clark Bryant, Nora!”

Nora shook her head. “That could never have been. I thought it might once—but I know better now. You see, I love Rob.”

There did not seem to be anything more to say after that. Mrs. Cameron did not try to say anything. She went away in sorrow.

Nora cried bitterly after she had gone. But there were no tears in her eyes that night when she walked on the shore with Rob Fletcher.

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