Her Father's Daughter Page #3

"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

								


David had stood there for a few minutes like a man stunned.  Then
he had turned and walked away up the lane under the birches.  He
said nothing--then or at any other time.  From that day no
reference to his wife or her concerns ever crossed his lips.

He went directly to the harbor, and shipped with Captain Barrett
for another voyage.  When he came back from that in a month's
time, he bought a small house and had it hauled to the "Cove," a
lonely inlet from which no other human habitation was visible.
Between his sea voyages he lived there the life of a recluse;
fishing and playing his violin were his only employments.  He
went nowhere and encouraged no visitors.

Isabella Spencer also had adopted the tactics of silence.  When
the scandalized Chiswicks, Aunt Jane at their head, tried to
patch up the matter with argument and entreaty, Isabella met them
stonily, seeming not to hear what they said, and making no
response.  She worsted them totally.  As Aunt Jane said in
disgust, "What can you do with a woman who won't even TALK?"

Five months after David Spencer had been turned from his wife's
door, Rachel was born.  Perhaps, if David had come to them then,
with due penitence and humility, Isabella's heart, softened by
the pain and joy of her long and ardently desired motherhood
might have cast out the rankling venom of resentment that had
poisoned it and taken him back into it.  But David had not come;
he gave no sign of knowing or caring that his once longed-for
child had been born.

When Isabella was able to be about again, her pale face was
harder than ever; and, had there been about her any one
discerning enough to notice it, there was a subtle change in her
bearing and manner.  A certain nervous expectancy, a fluttering
restlessness was gone.  Isabella had ceased to hope secretly that
her husband would yet come back.  She had in her secret soul
thought he would; and she had meant to forgive him when she had
humbled him sufficiently, and when he had abased himself as she
considered he should.  But now she knew that he did not mean to
sue for her forgiveness; and the hate that sprang out of her old
love was a rank and speedy and persistent growth.

Rachel, from her earliest recollection, had been vaguely
conscious of a difference between her own life and the lives of
her playmates.  For a long time it puzzled her childish brain.
Finally, she reasoned it out that the difference consisted in the
fact that they had fathers and she, Rachel Spencer, had none--not
even in the graveyard, as Carrie Bell and Lilian Boulter had.
Why was this?  Rachel went straight to her mother, put one little
dimpled hand on Isabella Spencer's knee, looked up with great
searching blue eyes, and said gravely,

"Mother, why haven't I got a father like the other little girls?"

Isabella Spencer laid aside her work, took the seven year old
child on her lap, and told her the whole story in a few direct
and bitter words that imprinted themselves indelibly on Rachel's
remembrance.  She understood clearly and hopelessly that she
could never have a father--that, in this respect, she must always
be unlike other people.

"Your father cares nothing for you," said Isabella Spencer in
conclusion.  "He never did care.  You must never speak of him to
anybody again."

Rachel slipped silently from her mother's knee and ran out to the
Springtime garden with a full heart.  There she cried
passionately over her mother's last words.  It seemed to her a
terrible thing that her father should not love her, and a cruel
thing that she must never talk of him.

Oddly enough, Rachel's sympathies were all with her father, in as
far as she could understand the old quarrel.  She did not dream
of disobeying her mother and she did not disobey her.  Never
again did the child speak of her father; but Isabella had not
forbidden her to think of him, and thenceforth Rachel thought of
him constantly--so constantly that, in some strange way, he
seemed to become an unguessed-of part of her inner life--the
unseen, ever-present companion in all her experiences.

She was an imaginative child, and in fancy she made the
acquaintance of her father.  She had never seen him, but he was
more real to her than most of the people she had seen.  He played
and talked with her as her mother never did; he walked with her
in the orchard and field and garden; he sat by her pillow in the
twilight; to him she whispered secrets she told to none other.

Once her mother asked her impatiently why she talked so much to
herself.

"I am not talking to myself.  I am talking to a very dear friend
of mine," Rachel answered gravely.

"Silly child," laughed her mother, half tolerantly, half
disapprovingly.

Two years later something wonderful had happened to Rachel.  One
summer afternoon she had gone to the harbor with several of her
little playmates.  Such a jaunt was a rare treat to the child,
for Isabella Spencer seldom allowed her to go from home with
anybody but herself.  And Isabella was not an entertaining
companion.  Rachel never particularly enjoyed an outing with her
mother.

The children wandered far along the shore; at last they came to a
place that Rachel had never seen before.  It was a shallow cove
where the waters purred on the yellow sands.  Beyond it, the sea
was laughing and flashing and preening and alluring, like a
beautiful, coquettish woman.  Outside, the wind was boisterous
and rollicking; here, it was reverent and gentle.  A white boat
was hauled up on the skids, and there was a queer little house
close down to the sands, like a big shell tossed up by the waves.
Rachel looked on it all with secret delight; she, too, loved the
lonely places of sea and shore, as her father had done.  She
wanted to linger awhile in this dear spot and revel in it.

"I'm tired, girls," she announced.  "I'm going to stay here and
rest for a spell.  I don't want to go to Gull Point.  You go on
yourselves; I'll wait for you here."

"All alone?" asked Carrie Bell, wonderingly.

"I'm not so afraid of being alone as some people are," said
Rachel, with dignity.

The other girls went on, leaving Rachel sitting on the skids, in
the shadow of the big white boat.  She sat there for a time
dreaming happily, with her blue eyes on the far, pearly horizon,
and her golden head leaning against the boat.

Suddenly she heard a step behind her.  When she turned her head a
man was standing beside her, looking down at her with big, merry,
blue eyes.  Rachel was quite sure that she had never seen him
before; yet those eyes seemed to her to have a strangely familiar
look.  She liked him.  She felt no shyness nor timidity, such as
usually afflicted her in the presence of strangers.

He was a tall, stout man, dressed in a rough fishing suit, and
wearing an oilskin cap on his head.  His hair was very thick and
curly and fair; his cheeks were tanned and red; his teeth, when
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