If Armstrong had thought that Sylvia really loved him he would have
carried her off from the manse by main force rather than give her up.
But he reflected gloomily that she couldn’t care for him when she would
dismiss him with a note like that. There was no use in his making a fool
of himself any longer. He would go home and become a wise man. Therefore
he packed up and went back to the city.
After Armstrong’s departure Westlands manse became once more the abode
of peace—outwardly, at all events. The minister and his wife
congratulated themselves on an averted danger and sent the
missionary-elect an invitation to visit them.
Sylvia felt unhappy and was unhappier still because she was sure it was
wicked to feel so. She lost her appetite and her interest in Christian
Endeavor work. In short, she moped, and the Reverend Elisha Hastings and
his wife thought she was run down and got iron pills for her!
One afternoon, about two months after Armstrong’s Waterloo, a telegram
came to the manse. Sylvia was alone, her father and mother being away.
Telegrams were rarities and Sylvia turned pale when she saw that this
was for her. It read:
“148 Sherbourne Avenue, Trenton.
“Walter Armstrong dying. Wishes to see you. Come at once.
“IRENE GLOVER.”
Sylvia dropped the brutal thing and wrung her hands. What was she to do?
Her father and mother would not be back before night, and she had never
been to the city alone in her life.
Like an inspiration—in fact, I believe Sylvia thinks it was one—came
the thought of Aunt Lydia Lennox. Aunt Lydia was an aunt by marriage
only and the Reverend Elisha Hastings did not approve of her. She was of
the world, worldly, and she was almost a stranger to Sylvia.
Nevertheless the latter determined to go to her.
Fifteen minutes later Westlands people were amazed and scandalized to
see their minister’s daughter running breathlessly up the station road,
with her hat on crooked, her jacket fronts flying and a satchel in her
hand. It was a mile to the station and Sylvia barely caught the train.
In two hours she was in Trenton and ten minutes later a cab set her down
at Mrs. Lennox’s door. That good lady was not a little astonished when
her disheveled niece burst in upon her.
“Why, Sylvia Hastings! What on earth is the matter?”
Sylvia dropped into a chair and somehow sobbed out her story, or at
least enough of it to enlighten Aunt Lydia. Mrs. Lennox gasped.
“Walter Armstrong! I knew he was very sick—it is pneumonia, I
believe—but I didn’t know you knew him. Of course I’ll take you to him,
you poor kitten. He lives with his sister, Mrs. Glover. But you must
have some tea first.”
“I couldn’t eat a mouthful,” protested Sylvia. “Oh, don’t let us lose
any time, Aunt Lydia. Walter is dying and I must see him first—Oh,
indeed I must.”
Mrs. Lennox yielded, got ready and took Sylvia to a house whose
magnificence would have frightened her had she been in her normal state
of mind. Mrs. Glover greeted Sylvia with secret amazement. She had known
and wondered at Walter’s infatuation for some girl up the country, but
she wondered no longer. Any man might be excused for going mad over a
face like that.
“I am so glad you have come, Miss Hastings. Walter is longing to see
you. Yes, he is very low, poor boy. The doctor gave him up this morning,
but I can’t lose all hope yet. The disease itself is killed but he is so
very weak—and he doesn’t seem as if he wanted to get better.”
Armstrong turned his head eagerly on the pillow as the three women
entered.
“I thought you would come,” he said feebly.
Sylvia went down on her knees by the bed and caught at his hand.
“Oh, Walter, I love you—I love you—and you must not die—or I shall
die, too.”
Armstrong smiled in a species of rapture and the two older women went to
the window and studied the street.
When the doctor came that evening he found such an improvement in his
patient that his hopes went up with a rush. Everybody concerned was
happy, but Sylvia had begun to wonder what her father would say. When he
landed from a cab at Mrs. Lennox’s door the next morning she turned very
white.
“Just leave him to me, my dear,” said Aunt Lydia, comfortingly. “I’ll
make him listen to reason.”
[Illustration: “I thought you would come,” he said feebly.]
And she did. But how she did remains a mystery to this day. The Reverend
Elisha Hastings never told anyone, not even his wife, what his
sister-in-law said to him during that memorable interview, and the good
lady herself never went into details.
“But such a time as I had to bring that man to his senses,” she said
confidentially to a sympathetic friend. “Just think, my dear! Here was a
young man, the very finest fellow you could find if you went out to
search, of good family and worth half a million and that infatuated man
wouldn’t give Sylvia to him because he was ‘worldly and unregenerate.’
He did give in at last, however, and the child’s engagement is permitted
under protest. I mean to keep her with me a good deal of the time before
her marriage. It will be pleasanter for Walter.”
Sylvia was married in the fall, and the Reverend Elisha Hastings
performed the ceremony with more resignation than he had expected. In
his secret heart he still preferred the missionary, but he had the grace
not to say so; and Sylvia was so radiantly happy that he admitted that
it was doubtless ordered for the best after all.
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been fixed.
[The end of _The Minister’s Daughter_ by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery]
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