The Blythes Are Quoted by L. M. Montgomery Read Free Book Online Page B

But Henry, who had fronted the northern silences, cold and terrors undauntedly, could not front the Field spooks. He flatly refused to spend another night in the house.
    “Preacher, this place is full of devils ... not a doubt of it. That Anna Marsh doesn’t stay in her proper grave. Dr. Blythe can laugh all he likes ... but she never would behave herself ... and she drags old Winthrop out with her. Alec’d better give the place away if anyone would take it. I know I wouldn’t. I wish I could get Alice ... and Lucia ... out of it. They’ll be found strangled like the kitten some night ...”
    Curtis was thoroughly exasperated. It seemed just as impossible that any one person in the house could have done all the things as that any person out of the house could have done them. Sometimes, so befuddled and bamboozled did he feel, that he was almost tempted to believe that the place was haunted. If not, he was being made a fool of. Either conclusion was intolerable. It was tacitly understood that the occurrences were not to be talked of outside, except with Dr. Blythe or Mr. Sheldon. He could never get any satisfaction out of the former and little out of Mr. Sheldon, who spent a good deal of his time with his books in the parsonage, sometimes reading there till late at night. But all his talks and guesses and researches left him exactly where he was at first ... except that he decided that Mr. Sheldon, recalling Epworth Rectory, did believe in the ghosts and that Dr. Blythe, for some undiscoverable reason, seemed to look upon the whole thing as a sort of joke ... heaven knew why.
    Curtis developed insomnia and couldn’t sleep even when the house was quiet. He lost his keen interest in his work ... he was under an obsession. Both Dr. Blythe and Mr. Sheldonnoticed it and advised him to find another boarding house. By this time Curtis knew he could not do this. For by now he knew he loved Lucia.
    He realized this one night when the banging of the big front door had aroused him from some late studies. He put his book aside and went downstairs. The door was shut but not locked as it had been when the household retired. As he tried the knob Lucia came out of the dining room, carrying a small lamp. She was crying ... he had never seen Lucia cry before, although once or twice he had suspected tears. Her hair hung over her shoulder in a thick braid. It made her look like a child ... a tired, broken-hearted child. And then all at once he knew what she meant to him.
    “What is the matter, Lucia?” he asked gently, unconscious that for the first time he had used her Christian name.
    “Look,” sobbed Lucia, holding the lamp up in the dining room doorway.
    At first Curtis could not exactly understand what had happened. The room seemed to be a perfect maze of ... of ... what was it? Coloured yarns! They crossed and recrossed it. They were wound in and out of the furniture ... around the chair rungs ... about the table legs. The room looked like a huge spider’s web.
    “My afghan,” said Lucia. “My new afghan! I finished it yesterday. It’s completely ravelled out ... I’ve been working at it since New Year’s. Oh, I’m a fool to mind this ... so many worse things have happened. But I have so little time to do anything like that. And the malice of it! Who is it that hates me so? Don’t tell me a ghost would do anything like this!”
    She broke away from Curtis’ outstretched hand and ran upstairs still sobbing. Curtis stood rather dazedly in the hall.He knew now that he had loved her from their first meeting. He could have laughed at himself for his long blindness. Love her ... of course he loved her ... he had known it the moment he had seen the tears in her brave, sweet eyes. Lucia in tears ... tears that he had no right or power to wipe away. The thought was unbearable.
    Alice called to him as he passed her door. He unlocked it and went in. The fresh, sweet wind of night was blowing through her window and a faint light was