The Tryst of the White Lady

"The Tryst of the White Lady" is a short story by Lucy Maud Montgomery that explores themes of love, longing, and the supernatural. Set in a picturesque landscape, it follows the poignant and mysterious encounter between a young man and the ethereal White Lady, a ghostly figure steeped in local legend. As the narrative unfolds, Montgomery weaves together elements of romance and the mystical, ultimately exploring the nature of connections that transcend time and the boundaries between the living and the spirit world. The story reflects the author’s signature style of blending nostalgia with deeper emotional currents.

• Short story

								
"I wisht ye'd git married, Roger," said Catherine Ames. "I'm gitting
too old to work--seventy last April--and who's going to look after ye
when I'm gone. Git married, b'y--git married."

Roger Temple winced. His aunt's harsh, disagreeable voice always
jarred horribly on his sensitive nerves. He was fond of her after a
fashion, but always that voice made him wonder if there could be
anything harder to endure.

Then he gave a bitter little laugh.

"Who'd have me, Aunt Catherine?" he asked.

Catherine Ames looked at him critically across the supper table. She
loved him in her way, with all her heart, but she was not in the least
blind to his defects. She did not mince matters with herself or with
other people. Roger was a sallow, plain-featured fellow, small and
insignificant looking. And, as if this were not bad enough, he walked
with a slight limp and had one thin shoulder a little higher than the
other--"Jarback" Temple he had been called in school, and the name
still clung to him. To be sure, he had very fine grey eyes, but their
dreamy brilliance gave his dull face an uncanny look which girls did
not like, and so made matters rather worse than better. Of course
looks didn't matter so much in the case of a man; Steve Millar was
homely enough, and all marked up with smallpox to boot, yet he had got
for wife the prettiest and smartest girl in South Bay. But Steve was
rich. Roger was poor and always would be. He worked his stony little
farm, from which his father and grandfather had wrested a fair living,
after a fashion, but Nature had not cut him out for a successful
farmer. He hadn't the strength for it and his heart wasn't in it. He'd
rather be hanging over a book. Catherine secretly thought Roger's
matrimonial chances very poor, but it would not do to discourage the
b'y. What he needed was spurring on.

"Ye'll git someone if ye don't fly too high," she announced loudly and
cheerfully. "Thar's always a gal or two here and thar that's glad to
marry for a home. 'Tain't no use for you to be settin' your thoughts
on anyone young and pretty. Ye wouldn't git her and ye'd be worse off
if ye did. Your grandfather married for looks, and a nice useless wife
he got--sick half her time. Git a good strong girl that ain't afraid
of work, that'll hold things together when ye're reading
po'try--that's as much as you kin expect. And the sooner the better.
I'm done--last winter's rheumatiz has about finished me. An' we
can't afford hired help."

Roger felt as if his raw, quivering soul were being seared. He looked
at his aunt curiously--at her broad, flat face with the mole on the
end of her dumpy nose, the bristling hairs on her chin, the wrinkled
yellow neck, the pale, protruding eyes, the coarse, good-humoured
mouth. She was so extremely ugly--and he had seen her across the table
all his life. For twenty-five years he had looked at her so. Must he
continue to go on looking at ugliness in the shape of a wife all the
rest of his life--he, who worshipped beauty in everything?

"Did my mother look like you, Aunt Catherine?" he asked abruptly.

His aunt stared--and snorted. Her snort was meant to express kindly
amusement, but it sounded like derision and contempt.

"Yer ma wasn't so humly as me," she said cheerfully, "but she wan't no
beauty either. None of the Temples was ever better lookin' than was
necessary. We was workers. Yer pa wa'n't bad looking. You're humlier
than either of 'em. Some ways ye take after yer grandma--though she
was counted pretty at one time. She was yaller and spindlin' like you,
and you've got her eyes. What yer so int'rested in yer ma's looks all
at once fer?"

"I was wondering," said Roger coolly, "if Father ever looked at her
across the table and wished she were prettier."

Catherine giggled. Her giggle was ugly and disagreeable like
everything else about her--everything except a certain odd, loving,
loyal old heart buried deep in her bosom, for the sake of which Roger
endured the giggle and all the rest.

"Dessay he did--dessay he did. Men al'ays has a hankerin' for good
looks. But ye've got to cut yer coat 'cording to yer cloth. As for yer
poor ma, she didn't live long enough to git as ugly as me. When I
come here to keep house for yer pa, folks said as it wouldn't be long
'fore he married me. I wouldn't a-minded. But yer pa never hinted
it. S'pose he'd had enough of ugly women likely."

Catherine snorted amiably again. Roger got up--he couldn't endure any
more just then. He must escape.

"Now you think over what I've said," his aunt called after him. "Ye've
gotter git a wife soon, however ye manage it. 'Twon't be so hard if
ye're reasonable. Don't stay out as late as ye did last night. Ye
coughed all night. Where was ye--down at the shore?"

"No," said Roger, who always answered her questions even when he hated
to. "I was down at Aunt Isabel's grave."

"Till eleven o'clock! Ye ain't wise! I dunno what hankering ye have
after that unchancy place. I ain't been near it for twenty year. I
wonder ye ain't scairt. What'd ye think ye'd do if ye saw her ghost?"

Catherine looked curiously at Roger. She was very superstitious and
she believed firmly in ghosts, and saw no absurdity in her question.

"I wish I could see it," said Roger, his great eyes flashing. He
believed in ghosts too, at least in Isabel Temple's ghost. His uncle
had seen it; his grandfather had seen it; he believed he would see
it--the beautiful, bewitching, mocking, luring ghost of lovely Isabel
Temple.

"Don't wish such stuff," said Catherine. "Nobody ain't never the same
after they've seen her."

"Was Uncle different?" Roger had come back into the kitchen and was
looking curiously at his aunt.

"Diff'rent? He was another man. He didn't even look the same. Sich
eyes! Al'ays looking past ye at something behind ye. They'd give
anyone creeps. He never had any notion of flesh-and-blood women after
that--said a man wouldn't, after seeing Isabel. His life was plumb
ruined. Lucky he died young. I hated to be in the same room with
him--he wa'n't canny, that was all there was to it. You keep away
from that grave--you don't want to look odder than ye are by nature.
And when ye git married, ye'll have to give up roamin' about half the
night in graveyards. A wife wouldn't put up with it, as I've done."

"I'll never get as good a wife as you, Aunt Catherine," said Roger
with a little whimsical smile that gave him the look of an amused
gnome.

"Dessay you won't. But someone ye have to have. Why'n't ye try 'Liza
Adams. She might have ye--she's gittin' on."

"'Liza ... Adams!"

"That's what I said. Ye needn't repeat it--'Liza ... Adams--'s if I'd
mentioned a hippopotamus. I git out of patience with ye. I b'lieve in
my heart ye think ye ought to git a wife that'd look like a picter."

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