Her Father's Daughter Page #2

"Her Father's Daughter" by Lucy Maud Montgomery is a semi-autobiographical novel that tells the story of Ellen, a young woman navigating her complex relationships with her father and the world around her. Set in the early 20th century, the narrative explores themes of identity, familial bonds, and the struggle for independence. Through Ellen's journey, the novel delves into her experiences of love, loss, and the quest for self-discovery, all while capturing the beauty and challenges of rural life in Canada. Montgomery's lyrical prose and deep characterizations bring to life the emotional landscape of a young woman coming of age amidst societal expectations and personal aspirations.

• Short story

								

anger, amazement, incredulity, the last predominating.

The final name on the list of wedding guests was the name of
David Spencer.  David Spencer lived alone in a little cottage
down at the Cove.  He was a combination of sailor and fisherman.
He was also Isabella Spencer's husband and Rachel's father.

"Rachel Spencer, have you taken leave of your senses?  What do
you mean by such nonsense as this?"

"I simply mean that I am going to invite my father to my
wedding," answered Rachel quietly.

"Not in my house," cried Mrs. Spencer, her lips as white as if
her fiery tone had scathed them.

Rachel leaned forward, folded her large, capable hands
deliberately on the table, and gazed unflinchingly into her
mother's bitter face.  Her fright and nervousness were gone.  Now
that the conflict was actually on she found herself rather
enjoying it.  She wondered a little at herself, and thought that
she must be wicked.  She was not given to self-analysis, or she
might have concluded that it was the sudden assertion of her own
personality, so long dominated by her mother's, which she was
finding so agreeable.

"Then there will be no wedding, mother," she said.  "Frank and I
will simply go to the manse, be married, and go home.  If I
cannot invite my father to see me married, no one else shall be
invited."

Her lips narrowed tightly.  For the first time in her life
Isabella Spencer saw a reflection of herself looking back at her
from her daughter's face--a strange, indefinable resemblance that
was more of soul and spirit than of flesh and blood.  In spite of
her anger her heart thrilled to it.  As never before, she
realized that this girl was her own and her husband's child, a
living bond between them wherein their conflicting natures
mingled and were reconciled.  She realized too, that Rachel, so
long sweetly meek and obedient, meant to have her own way in this
case--and would have it.

"I must say that I can't see why you are so set on having your
father see you married," she said with a bitter sneer.  "HE has
never remembered that he is your father.  He cares nothing about
you--never did care."

Rachel took no notice of this taunt.  It had no power to hurt
her, its venom being neutralized by a secret knowledge of her own
in which her mother had no share.

"Either I shall invite my father to my wedding, or I shall not
have a wedding," she repeated steadily, adopting her mother's own
effective tactics of repetition undistracted by argument.

"Invite him then," snapped Mrs. Spencer, with the ungraceful
anger of a woman, long accustomed to having her own way,
compelled for once to yield.  "It'll be like chips in porridge
anyhow--neither good nor harm.  He won't come."

Rachel made no response.  Now that the battle was over, and the
victory won, she found herself tremulously on the verge of tears.
She rose quickly and went upstairs to her own room, a dim little
place shadowed by the white birches growing thickly outside--a
virginal room, where everything bespoke the maiden.  She lay down
on the blue and white patchwork quilt on her bed, and cried
softly and bitterly.

Her heart, at this crisis in her life, yearned for her father,
who was almost a stranger to her.  She knew that her mother had
probably spoken the truth when she said that he would not come.
Rachel felt that her marriage vows would be lacking in some
indefinable sacredness if her father were not by to hear them
spoken.

Twenty-five years before this, David Spencer and Isabella
Chiswick had been married.  Spiteful people said there could be
no doubt that Isabella had married David for love, since he had
neither lands nor money to tempt her into a match of bargain and
sale.  David was a handsome fellow, with the blood of a seafaring
race in his veins.

He had been a sailor, like his father and grandfather before him;
but, when he married Isabella, she induced him to give up the sea
and settle down with her on a snug farm her father had left her.
Isabella liked farming, and loved her fertile acres and opulent
orchards.  She abhorred the sea and all that pertained to it,
less from any dread of its dangers than from an inbred conviction
that sailors were "low" in the social scale--a species of
necessary vagabonds.  In her eyes there was a taint of disgrace
in such a calling.  David must be transformed into a respectable,
home-abiding tiller of broad lands.

For five years all went well enough.  If, at times, David's
longing for the sea troubled him, he stifled it, and listened not
to its luring voice.  He and Isabella were very happy; the only
drawback to their happiness lay in the regretted fact that they
were childless.

Then, in the sixth year, came a crisis and a change.  Captain
Barrett, an old crony of David's, wanted him to go with him on a
voyage as mate.  At the suggestion all David's long-repressed
craving for the wide blue wastes of the ocean, and the wind
whistling through the spars with the salt foam in its breath,
broke forth with a passion all the more intense for that very
repression.  He must go on that voyage with James Barrett--he
MUST!  That over, he would be contented again; but go he must.
His soul struggled within him like a fettered thing.

Isabella opposed the scheme vehemently and unwisely, with mordant
sarcasm and unjust reproaches.  The latent obstinacy of David's
character came to the support of his longing--a longing which
Isabella, with five generations of land-loving ancestry behind
her, could not understand at all.

He was determined to go, and he told Isabella so.

"I'm sick of plowing and milking cows," he said hotly.

"You mean that you are sick of a respectable life," sneered
Isabella.

"Perhaps," said David, with a contemptuous shrug of his
shoulders.  "Anyway, I'm going."

"If you go on this voyage, David Spencer, you need never come
back here," said Isabella resolutely.

David had gone; he did not believe that she meant it.  Isabella
believed that he did not care whether she meant it or not.  David
Spencer left behind him a woman, calm outwardly, inwardly a
seething volcano of anger, wounded pride, and thwarted will.

He found precisely the same woman when he came home, tanned,
joyous, tamed for a while of his wanderlust, ready, with
something of real affection, to go back to the farm fields and
the stock-yard.

Isabella met him at the door, smileless, cold-eyed, set-lipped.

"What do you want here?" she said, in the tone she was accustomed
to use to tramps and Syrian peddlers.

"Want!" David's surprise left him at a loss for words.  "Want!
Why, I--I--want my wife.  I've come home."

"This is not your home.  I'm no wife of yours.  You made your
choice when you went away," Isabella had replied.  Then she had
gone in, shut the door, and locked it in his face.
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