Four Winds

"Four Winds" by Lucy Maud Montgomery is a touching collection of stories that explore themes of love, nature, and the human experience. Set against the backdrop of the Canadian landscape, Montgomery's prose beautifully captures the joys and struggles of her characters, often reflecting on the passage of time and the impact of the seasons. With her signature lyrical style, the author weaves tales that evoke emotion and contemplation, inviting readers to appreciate the nuances of life’s journey. Each story highlights the connection between individuals and the world around them, making it a poignant read for fans of Montgomery's evocative storytelling.

• Short story

								
Alan Douglas threw down his pen with an impatient exclamation. It was
high time his next Sunday's sermon was written, but he could not
concentrate his thoughts on his chosen text. For one thing he did not
like it and had selected it only because Elder Trewin, in his call of
the evening before, had hinted that it was time for a good stiff
doctrinal discourse, such as his predecessor in Rexton, the Rev. Jabez
Strong, had delighted in. Alan hated doctrines--"the soul's
staylaces," he called them--but Elder Trewin was a man to be reckoned
with and Alan preached an occasional sermon to please him.

"It's no use," he said wearily. "I could have written a sermon in
keeping with that text in November or midwinter, but now, when the
whole world is reawakening in a miracle of beauty and love, I can't do
it. If a northeast rainstorm doesn't set in before next Sunday, Mr.
Trewin will not have his sermon. I shall take as my text instead,
'The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds has
come.'"

He rose and went to his study window, outside of which a young vine
was glowing in soft tender green tints, its small dainty leaves
casting quivering shadows on the opposite wall where the portrait of
Alan's mother hung. She had a fine, strong, sweet face; the same face,
cast in a masculine mould, was repeated in her son, and the
resemblance was striking as he stood in the searching evening
sunshine. The black hair grew around his forehead in the same way; his
eyes were steel blue, like hers, with a similar expression, half
brooding, half tender, in their depths. He had the mobile, smiling
mouth of the picture, but his chin was deeper and squarer, dented with
a dimple which, combined with a certain occasional whimsicality of
opinion and glance, had caused Elder Trewin some qualms of doubt
regarding the fitness of this young man for his high and holy
vocation. The Rev. Jabez Strong had never indulged in dimples or
jokes; but then, as Elder Trewin, being a just man, had to admit, the
Rev. Jabez Strong had preached many a time and oft to more empty pews
than full ones, while now the church was crowded to its utmost
capacity on Sundays and people came to hear Mr. Douglas who had not
darkened a church door for years. All things considered, Elder Trewin
decided to overlook the dimple. There was sure to be some drawback in
every minister.

Alan from his study looked down on all the length of the Rexton
valley, at the head of which the manse was situated, and thought that
Eden might have looked so in its innocence, for all the orchards were
abloom and the distant hills were tremulous and aerial in springtime
gauzes of pale purple and pearl. But in any garden, despite its
beauty, is an element of tameness and domesticity, and Alan's eyes,
after a moment's delighted gazing, strayed wistfully off to the north
where the hills broke away into a long sloping lowland of pine and
fir. Beyond it stretched the wide expanse of the lake, flashing in the
molten gold and crimson of evening. Its lure was irresistible. Alan
had been born and bred beside a faraway sea and the love of it was
strong in his heart--so strong that he knew he must go back to it
sometime. Meanwhile, the great lake, mimicking the sea in its vast
expanse and the storms that often swept over it, was his comfort and
solace. As often as he could he stole away to its wild and lonely
shore, leaving the snug bounds of cultivated home lands behind him
with something like a sense of relief. Down there by the lake was a
primitive wilderness where man was as naught and man-made doctrines
had no place. There one might walk hand in hand with nature and so
come very close to God. Many of Alan's best sermons were written after
he had come home, rapt-eyed, from some long shore tramp where the
wilderness had opened its heart to him and the pines had called to him
in their soft, sibilant speech.

With a half guilty glance at the futile sermon, he took his hat and
went out. The sun of the cool spring evening was swinging low over the
lake as he turned into the unfrequented, deep-rutted road leading to
the shore. It was two miles to the lake, but half way there Alan came
to where another road branched off and struck down through the pines
in a northeasterly direction. He had sometimes wondered where it led
but he had never explored it. Now he had a sudden whim to do so and
turned into it. It was even rougher and lonelier than the other;
between the ruts the grasses grew long and thickly; sometimes the pine
boughs met overhead; again, the trees broke away to reveal wonderful
glimpses of gleaming water, purple islets, dark feathery coasts.
Still, the road seemed to lead nowhere and Alan was half repenting the
impulse which had led him to choose it when he suddenly came out from
the shadow of the pines and found himself gazing on a sight which
amazed him.

Before him was a small peninsula running out into the lake and
terminating in a long sandy point. Beyond it was a glorious sweep of
sunset water. The peninsula itself seemed barren and sandy, covered
for the most part with scrub firs and spruces, through which the
narrow road wound on to what was the astonishing; feature in the
landscape--a grey and weather-beaten house built almost at the
extremity of the point and shadowed from the western light by a thick
plantation of tall pines behind it.

It was the house which puzzled Alan. He had never known there was any
house near the lake shore--had never heard mention made of any; yet
here was one, and one which was evidently occupied, for a slender
spiral of smoke was curling upward from it on the chilly spring air.
It could not be a fisherman's dwelling, for it was large and built
after a quaint tasteful design. The longer Alan looked at it the more
his wonder grew. The people living here were in the bounds of his
congregation. How then was it that he had never seen or heard of them?

He sauntered slowly down the road until he saw that it led directly to
the house and ended in the yard. Then he turned off in a narrow path
to the shore. He was not far from the house now and he scanned it
observantly as he went past. The barrens swept almost up to its door
in front but at the side, sheltered from the lake winds by the pines,
was a garden where there was a fine show of gay tulips and golden
daffodils. No living creature was visible and, in spite of the
blossoming geraniums and muslin curtains at the windows and the homely
spiral of smoke, the place had a lonely, almost untenanted, look.

When Alan reached the shore he found that it was of a much more open
and less rocky nature than the part which he had been used to
frequent. The beach was of sand and the scrub barrens dwindled down to
it almost insensibly. To right and left fir-fringed points ran out
into the lake, shaping a little cove with the house in its curve.

Alan walked slowly towards the left headland, intending to follow the
shore around to the other road. As he passed the point he stopped

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