Robert Turner's Revenge

"Robert Turner's Revenge" is a lesser-known work by Lucy Maud Montgomery, best known for her classic novel "Anne of Green Gables." This story delves into themes of love, revenge, and redemption, following the character of Robert Turner as he navigates the complexities of his relationships and seeks to overcome past grievances. With Montgomery's signature blend of rich character development and evocative prose, the narrative explores the consequences of choices made in the heat of emotion and the possibility of forgiveness. It captures the essence of human experiences and the enduring struggle between hurt and healing.

• Short story

								
When Robert Turner came to the green, ferny triangle where the station
road forked to the right and left under the birches, he hesitated as
to which direction he would take. The left led out to the old Turner
homestead, where he had spent his boyhood and where his cousin still
lived; the right led down to the Cove shore where the Jameson property
was situated. Since he had stopped off at Chiswick for the purpose of
looking this property over before foreclosing the mortgage on it he
concluded that he might as well take the Cove road; he could go around
by the shore afterward--he had not forgotten the way even in forty
years--and so on up through the old spruce wood in Alec Martin's
field--if the spruces were there still and the field still Alec
Martin's--to his cousin's place. He would just about have time to make
the round before the early country supper hour. Then a brief visit
with Tom--Tom had always been a good sort of a fellow although
woefully dull and slow-going--and the evening express for Montreal. He
swung with a businesslike stride into the Cove road.

As he went on, however, the stride insensibly slackened into an
unaccustomed saunter. How well he remembered that old road, although
it was forty years since he had last traversed it, a set-lipped boy of
fifteen, cast on the world by the indifference of an uncle. The years
had made surprisingly little difference in it or in the surrounding
scenery. True, the hills and fields and lanes seemed lower and smaller
and narrower than he remembered them; there were some new houses along
the road, and the belt of woods along the back of the farms had become
thinner in most places. But that was all. He had no difficulty in
picking out the old familiar spots. There was the big cherry orchard
on the Milligan place which had been so famous in his boyhood. It was
snow-white with blossoms, as if the trees were possessed of eternal
youth; they had been in blossom the last time he had seen them. Well,
time had not stood still with him as it had with Luke Milligan's
cherry orchard, he reflected grimly. His springtime had long gone by.

The few people he met on the road looked at him curiously, for
strangers were not commonplace in Chiswick. He recognized some of the
older among them but none of them knew him. He had been an awkward,
long-limbed lad with fresh boyish colour and crisp black curls when he
had left Chiswick. He returned to it a somewhat portly figure of a
man, with close-cropped, grizzled hair, and a face that looked as if
it might be carved out of granite, so immobile and unyielding it
was--the face of a man who never faltered or wavered, who stuck at
nothing that might advance his plans and purposes, a face known and
dreaded in the business world where he reigned master. It was a cold,
hard, selfish face, but the face of the boy of forty years ago had
been neither cold nor hard nor selfish.

Presently the homesteads and orchard lands grew fewer and then ceased
altogether. The fields were long and low-lying, sloping down to the
misty blue rim of sea. A turn of the road brought him in sudden sight
of the Cove, and there below him was the old Jameson homestead, built
almost within wave-lap of the pebbly shore and shut away into a lonely
grey world of its own by the sea and sands and those long slopes of
tenantless fields.

He paused at the sagging gate that opened into the long, deep-rutted
lane and, folding his arms on it, looked earnestly and scrutinizingly
over the buildings. They were grey and faded, lacking the prosperous
appearance that had characterized them once. There was an air of
failure about the whole place as if the very land had become
disheartened and discouraged.

Long ago, Neil Jameson, senior, had been a well-to-do man. The big
Cove farm had been one of the best in Chiswick then. As for Neil
Jameson, Junior, Robert Turner's face always grew something grimmer
when he recalled him--the one person, boy and man, whom he had really
hated in the world. They had been enemies from childhood, and once in
a bout of wrestling at the Chiswick school Neil had thrown him by an
unfair trick and taunted him continually thereafter on his defeat.
Robert had made a compact with himself that some day he would pay Neil
Jameson back. He had not forgotten it--he never forgot such
things--but he had never seen or heard of Neil Jameson after leaving
Chiswick. He might have been dead for anything Robert Turner knew.
Then, when John Kesley failed and his effects turned over to his
creditors, of whom Robert Turner was the chief, a mortgage on the Cove
farm at Chiswick, owned by Neil Jameson, had been found among his
assets. Inquiry revealed the fact that Neil Jameson was dead and that
the farm was run by his widow. Turner felt a pang of disappointment.
What satisfaction was there in wreaking revenge on a dead man? But at
least his wife and children should suffer. That debt of his to Jameson
for an ill-won victory and many a sneer must be paid in full, if not
to him, why, then to his heirs.

His lawyers reported that Mrs. Jameson was two years behind with her
interest. Turner instructed them to foreclose the mortgage promptly.
Then he took it into his head to revisit Chiswick and have a good look
at the Cove farm and other places he knew so well. He had a notion
that it might be a decent place to spend a summer month or two in. His
wife went to seaside and mountain resorts, but he liked something
quieter. There was good fishing at the Cove and in Chiswick pond, as
he remembered. If he liked the farm as well as his memory promised him
he would do, he would bid it in himself. It would make Neil Jameson
turn in his grave if the penniless lad he had jeered at came into the
possession of his old ancestral property that had been owned by a
Jameson for over one hundred years. There was a flavour in such a
revenge that pleased Robert Turner. He smiled one of his occasional
grim smiles over it. When Robert Turner smiled, weather prophets of
the business sky foretold squalls.

Presently he opened the gate and went through. Halfway down the lane
forked, one branch going over to the house, the other slanting across
the field to the cove. Turner took the latter and soon found himself
on the grey shore where the waves were tumbling in creamy foam just as
he remembered them long ago. Nothing about the old cove had changed;
he walked around a knobby headland, weather-worn with the wind and
spray of years, which cut him off from sight of the Jameson house, and
sat down on a rock. He thought himself alone and was annoyed to find a
boy sitting on the opposite ledge with a book on his knee.

The lad lifted his eyes and looked Turner over with a clear, direct
gaze. He was about twelve years old, tall for his age, slight, with a
delicate, clear-cut face--a face that was oddly familiar to Turner,
although he was sure he had never seen it before. The boy had oval
cheeks, finely tinted with colour, big, shy blue eyes quilled about
with long black lashes, and silvery-golden hair lying over his head in

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