Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:
Further Chronicles of Avonlea
This is a great little story. David and Isabella Spencer were married and they had a baby girl. (The story starts on the eve of this baby girl’s wedding – so she’s an adult now) But there is a past full of pain between the two parents. David is a sailor (this is a big theme in Lucy Maud’s work – “going to sea”) – which makes sense, seeing as where she grew up, and the whole maritime culture of it). But there was something shameful (to some) about those who wanted to ‘go to sea’ – it wasn’t respectable – and also, in other of her stories – it’s tragic – because anyone who “goes to sea” usually isn’t seen for years on end. So mothers weep, wives mourn, etc. Usually, in Lucy Maud’s world, a guy who “goes to sea” does so secretly – sneaking off in the night – to avoid the weeping and wailing. In “Her Father’s Daughter”, though – Isabella Spencer is flat out prejudicial against sailors, and anyone who works off of the ocean. (Uhm, then why do you live on PEI, Isabella??). She thinks it’s not respectable work, only reprobates are sailors – you should stay and work on the LAND, like her forefathers, THAT is respectable work. (I may not be remembering this quite clearly – it’s been a while – but that’s what I recall) She told him to give up the sea. He (and Lucy Maud understands this so well) feels that it will break his heart. There are just those who cannot LIVE without being on the ocean everyday. I myself grew up in a state with a maritime culture – and I can attest to that personality type. It still exists. These fishermen, yes, they make great money – but many of them do it for other reasons as well. They MUST be out on the ocean every day. There is no other possible life for these people. They would crumple up and die, emotionally, in Kansas. David Spencer is that kind of person. So Isabella makes a completely unreasonable request of him. But he’s in love, they’re newlyweds, and he says yes. For 6 years all goes well – until suddenly – he starts to get the call again. An old sea-captain friend of his comes back into his life – and offers him a job And suddenly he knows. Not only does he know he must take the job – he also knows that Isabella has been WAY too hard … and he cannot go so against his own nature like that. They have had a baby girl named Rachel, love of David’s life – but he MUST take the job with the captain. Isabella, a hard woman, says, “If you take this job, don’t come back.” David takes the job. He doesn’t come back. Or – he does come back, eventually, but not to Isabella’s house. He lives in a small shanty on the shore. It is a huge scandal in the town. Isabella raises Rachel alone. She is bitter and hard – she does not allow Rachel to see her father – as a matter of fact, I think Rachel doesn’t even know if her father is alive or dead – even though he lives just across the fields. She is raised as though he does not exist.
During her childhood – she has a couple of encounters on a beach with a kindly smiling man – who seems to take an interest in her. She is just a little girl so she doesn’t think too much of it – but later, much later, she remembers his eyes – how they looked at her – and she just knows. That was her father.
Rachel grows up – and is now engaged to be married. She is in love. OAs she and her mother write out invitations, Rachel drops her bomb. Her father must be allowed to come to the wedding. Isabella – who has lived a life where she never admits she has been wrong, never yields, ever – says Absolutely not – I will not allow that man in our lives again. Rachel insists. Isabella argues. And you realize that Rachel, as pretty and sweet and young as she is, has some of her mother’s unyielding nature in her. She is willing to NOT get married at ALL if her father is not allowed to be there. It’s that important to her. Isabella is beyond frustrated – having met her match in her own daughter. She says “fine, whatever” and flounces out of the room. The invitation goes out to David Spencer.
On the eve of the wedding – Rachel stands up in her room in her wedding dress. A note has been sent to her from her father saying “I cannot enter the house I was turned out of.” (2 stubborn people – David and Isabella!) “But I wish you all the happiness in the world.” Guests awill be arriving any moment.
The wedding is minutes away. But Rachel – reading this note – suddenly is filled with a sense of purpose. No. No. Her father MUST attend.
So she basically sneaks out of the house – in her wedding dress – and runs across the fields to get him. That’s the excerpt.
And can I just say this? I love Frank.
Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea
It was quite dark when she reached the Cove. In the crystal cup of the sky over her the stars were blinking. The sound of rippling waves, lapping on the shore, broke the stillness. A soft little wind was crooning about the eaves of the little gray house where David Spencer was sitting, alone in the twilight, his violin on his knee. He had been trying to play, but could not. His heart yearned after his daughter – yes, and after a long-estranged bride of his youth. His love of the sea was sated forever; his love for wife and child still cried for its own under all his old anger and stubbornness.
The door opened suddenly, and the very Rachel of whom he was dreaming came suddenly in, flinging off her wraps and standing forth in her young beauty and bridal adornments, a splendid creature, almost lighting up the gloom with her radiance.
“Father,” she cried brokenly, and her father’s eager arms closed around her.
Back in the house she had left, the guests were coming to the wedding. There were jests and laughter and friendly greeting. The bridegroom came, too, a slim, dark-eyed lad who tiptoed bashfully upstairs to the spare room, from which he presently emerged to confront Mrs. Spencer on the landing.
“I want to see Racherl before we go down,” he said, blushing.
Mrs. Spencer deposited a wedding present of linen on the table which was already laden with gifts, opened the door of Rachel’s room, and called her. There was no reply; the room was dark and still. In sudden alarm, Isabella Spencer snatched the lamp from the hall table and held it up. The little white room was empty. No blushing, white-clad bride tenanted it. But David Spencer’s letter was lying on the stand. She caught it up and read it
“Rachel is gone,” she gasped. A flash of intuition had revealed to her where and why the girl had gone.
“Gone!” echoed Frank, his face blanching. His pallid dismay recalled Mrs. Spencer to herself. She gave a bitter, ugly little laugh.
“Oh, you needn’t look so scared, Frank. She hasn’t run away from you. Hush; come in here – shut the door. Nobody must know of this. Nice gossip it would make! That little fool has gone to the Cove to see her — her father. I know she has. It’s just like what she would do. He sent her those presents – look – and this letter. Read it. She has gone to coax him to come and see her married. She was crazy about it. And the minister is here, and it is half-past seven. She’ll ruin her dress and shoes in the dust and dew. And what if someone has seen her! Was there ever such a little fool?”
Frank’s presence of mind had returned to him. He knew all about Rachel and her father. She had told him everything.
“I’ll go after her,” he said gently. “Get me my hat and coat. I’ll slip down the back stairs and over to the Cove.”
“You must get out of the pantry window, then,” said Mrs. Spencer firmly, mingling comedy and tragedy after her characteristic fashion. “The kitchen is full of women. I won’t have this known and talked about if it can possibly be helped.”
The bridegroom, wise beyond his years in the knowledge that it was well to yield to women in little things, crawled obediently out of the pantry window and darted through the birch wood. Mrs. Spencer had stood quakingly on guard until he had disappeared.
So Rachel had gone to her father! Like had broken the fetters of years and fled to like.
“It isn’t much use fighting against nature, I guess,” she thought grimly. “I’m beat. He must have thought something of her, after all, when he sent her that teapot and letter. And what does he mean about the ‘day they had such a good time’? Well, it just means that she’s been to see him before, sometime, I suppose, and kept me in ignorance of it all.”
Mrs. Spencer shut down the pantry window with a vicious thud.
“If only she’ll come quietly back with Frank in time to prevent gossip, I’ll forgive her,” she said, as she turned to the kitchen.
Rachel was sitting on her father’s knee, with both her white arms around his neck, when Frank came in. She sprang up, her face flushed and appealing, her eyes bright and dewy with tears. Frank thought he had never seen her look so lovely.
“Oh, Frank, is it very late? Oh, are you angry?” she exclaimed timidly.
“No, no, dear. Of course I’m not angry. But don’t you think you’d better come back now? It’s nearly eight and everybody is waiting.”
“I’ve been trying to coax father to come up and see me married,” said Rachel. “Help me, Frank.”
“You’d better come, sir,” said Frank heartily. “I’d like it as much as Rachel would.”
David Spencer shook his head stubbornly.
“No, I can’t go to that house. I was locked out of it. Never mind me. I’ve had my happiness in this half hour with my little girl. I’d like to see her married, but it isn’t to be.”
“Yes, it is to be – it shall be, ” said Rachel resolutely. “You shall see me married. Frank, I’m going to married here in my father’s house! That is the right place for a girl to be married. Go back and tell the guests so, and bring them all down.”
Frank looked rather dismayed. David Spencer said deprecatingly, “Little girl, don’t you think it would be –”
“I’m going to have my own way in this,” said Rachel, with a sort of tender finality. “Go, Frank. I’ll obey you all my life after, but you must do this for me. Try to understand,” she added beseechingly.
“Oh, I understand,” Frank reassured her. “Besides, I think you are right. But I was thinking of your mother. She won’t come.”
“Then you tell her that if she doesn’t come I shan’t be married at all,” said Rachel. She was betraying unsuspected ability to manage people. She knew that ultimatum would urge Frank to his best endeavors.
Frank, much to Mrs. Spencer’s dismay, marched boldly in at the front door upon his return. She pounced on him and whisked him out of sight into the supper room.
“Where’s Rachel? What made you come that way? Everybody saw you!”
“It makes no difference. They will all have to know, anyway. Rachel says she is going to be married from her father’s house, or not at all. I’ve come back to tell you so.”
Isabella’s face turned crimson.
“Rachel has gone crazy. I wash my hands of this affair. Do as you please. Take the guests – the supper, too, if you can carry it.”
“We’ll all come back here for supper,” said Frank, ignoring the sarcasm. “Come, Mrs. Spencer; let’s make the best of it.”
“Do you suppose that I am going to David Spencer’s house?” said Isabella Spencer violently.
“Oh, you must come, Mrs. Spencer,” cried poor Frank desperately. He began to fear that he would lose his bride past all finding in this maze of triple stubbornness. “Rachel says she won’t be married at all if you don’t go, too. Think what a talk it will make. You know she will keep her word.”
Isabella Spencer knew it. Amid all the conflict of anger and revolt in her soul was a strong desire not to make a worse scandal than must of necessity be made. The desire subdued and tamed her, as nothing else could have done.
“I will go, since I have to,” she said icily. “What can’t be cured must be endured. Go and tell them.”
Five minutes later the sixty wedding guests were all walking over the fields to the Cove, with the minister and the bridegroom in front of the procession. They were too amazed to even talk about the strange happening. Isabella Spencer walked behind, fiercely alone.
