The Redemption of John Churchill

"The Redemption of John Churchill" by Lucy Maud Montgomery is a compelling short story that explores themes of forgiveness, redemption, and the complexity of human relationships. Set in a rural Canadian community, the narrative follows John Churchill, a man struggling with his past mistakes and the burden of his reputation. As he seeks to reconcile with his estranged family and the townsfolk who have judged him harshly, readers witness a poignant journey of self-discovery and the possibility of second chances. Montgomery's trademark lyrical prose highlights the emotional depth of her characters and the transformative power of love and understanding.

• Short story

								
John Churchill walked slowly, not as a man walks who is tired, or
content to saunter for the pleasure of it, but as one in no haste to
reach his destination through dread of it. The day was well on to late
afternoon in mid-spring, and the world was abloom. Before him and
behind him wound a road that ran like a red ribbon through fields of
lush clovery green. The orchards scattered along it were white and
fragrant, giving of their incense to a merry south-west wind;
fence-corner nooks were purple with patches of violets or golden-green
with the curly heads of young ferns. The roadside was sprinkled over
with the gold dust of dandelions and the pale stars of wild strawberry
blossoms. It seemed a day through which a man should walk lightly and
blithely, looking the world and his fellows frankly in the face, and
opening his heart to let the springtime in.

But John Churchill walked laggingly, with bent head. When he met other
wayfarers or was passed by them, he did not lift his face, but only
glanced up under his eyebrows with a furtive look that was replaced by
a sort of shamed relief when they had passed on without recognizing
him. Some of them he knew for friends of the old time. Ten years had
not changed them as he had been changed. They had spent those ten
years in freedom and good repute, under God's blue sky, in His glad
air and sunshine. He, John Churchill, had spent them behind the walls
of a prison.

His close-clipped hair was grey; his figure, encased in an ill-fitting
suit of coarse cloth, was stooped and shrunken; his face was deeply
lined; yet he was not an old man in years. He was only forty; he was
thirty when he had been convicted of embezzling the bank funds for
purposes of speculation and had been sent to prison, leaving behind a
wife and father who were broken-hearted and a sister whose pride had
suffered more than her heart.

He had never seen them since, but he knew what had happened in his
absence. His wife had died two months later, leaving behind her a baby
boy; his father had died within the year. He had killed them; he, John
Churchill, who loved them, had killed them as surely as though his
hand had struck them down in cold blood. His sister had taken the
baby, his little son whom he had never seen, but for whom he had
prepared such a birthright of dishonour. She had never forgiven her
brother and she never wrote to him. He knew that she would have
brought the boy up either in ignorance of his father's crime or in
utter detestation of it. When he came back to the world after his
imprisonment, there was not a single friendly hand to clasp his and
help him struggle up again. The best his friends had been able to do
for him was to forget him.

He was filled with bitterness and despair and a gnawing hatred of the
world of brightness around him. He had no place in it; he was an ugly
blot on it. He was a friendless, wifeless, homeless man who could not
so much as look his fellow men in the face, who must henceforth
consort with outcasts. In his extremity he hated God and man, burning
with futile resentment against both.

Only one feeling of tenderness yet remained in his heart; it centred
around the thought of his little son.

When he left the prison he had made up his mind what to do. He had a
little money which his father had left him, enough to take him west.
He would go there, under a new name. There would be novelty and
adventure to blot out the memories of the old years. He did not care
what became of him, since there was no one else to care. He knew in
his heart that his future career would probably lead him still further
and further downward, but that did not matter. If there had been
anybody to care, he might have thought it worthwhile to struggle back
to respectability and trample his shame under feet that should
henceforth walk only in the ways of honour and honesty. But there was
nobody to care. So he would go to his own place.

But first he must see little Joey, who must be quite a big boy now,
nearly ten years old. He would go home and see him just once, even
although he dreaded meeting aversion in the child's eyes. Then, when
he had bade him good-bye, and, with him, good-bye to all that remained
to make for good in his desolated existence, he would go out of his
life forever.

"I'll go straight to the devil then," he said sullenly. "That's where
I belong, a jail-bird at whom everybody except other jail-birds looks
askance. To think what I was once, and what I am now! It's enough to
drive a man mad! As for repenting, bah! Who'd believe that I really
repented, who'd give me a second chance on the faith of it? Not a
soul. Repentance won't blot out the past. It won't give me back my
wife whom I loved above everything on earth and whose heart I broke.
It won't restore me my unstained name and my right to a place among
honourable men. There's no chance for a man who has fallen as low as I
have. If Emily were living, I could struggle for her sake. But who'd
be fool enough to attempt such a fight with no motive and not one
chance of success in a hundred. Not I. I'm down and I'll stay down.
There's no climbing up again."

He celebrated his first day of freedom by getting drunk, although he
had never before been an intemperate man. Then, when the effects of
the debauch wore off, he took the train for Alliston; he would go home
and see little Joey once.

Nobody at the station where he alighted recognized him or paid any
attention to him. He was as a dead man who had come back to life to
find himself effaced from recollection and his place knowing him no
more. It was three miles from the station to where his sister lived,
and he resolved to walk the distance. Now that the critical moment
drew near, he shrank from it and wished to put it off as long as he
could.

When he reached his sister's home he halted on the road and surveyed
the place over its snug respectability of iron fence. His courage
failed him at the thought of walking over that trim lawn and knocking
at that closed front door. He would slip around by the back way;
perhaps, who knew, he might come upon Joey without running the
gauntlet of his sister's cold, offended eyes. If he might only find
the boy and talk to him for a little while without betraying his
identity, meet his son's clear gaze without the danger of finding
scorn or fear in it--his heart beat high at the thought.

He walked furtively up the back way between high, screening hedges of
spruce. When he came to the gate of the yard, he paused. He heard
voices just beyond the thick hedge, children's voices, and he crept as
near as he could to the sound and peered through the hedge, with a
choking sensation in his throat and a smart in his eyes. Was that
Joey, could that be his little son? Yes, it was; he would have known
him anywhere by his likeness to Emily. Their boy had her curly brown
hair, her sensitive mouth, above all, her clear-gazing, truthful grey
eyes, eyes in which there was never a shadow of falsehood or

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