Maud placed her hand on top of the book, then carefully opened it and read the inscription on the flyleaf: Miss Clara W. Macneill. Cavendish. April 11, 1872.
Her mother’s handwriting. Had she ever even seen it before? She opened the book and started to read through it.
There were poems: poems written by family members to her mother, and a few in what appeared to be Father’s handwriting. Maud couldn’t be sure.
“Your mother didn’t know how clever you would be or foresee your talent for writing, which I suspect you get from my side of the family—although I’d deny it if you said anything,” Grandma said. “Your grandfather is much too proud of the Macneill bloodline in that department.”
Maud froze. There were blank pages. Blank pages she could fill with her own words!
“Thank you, Grandma,” she whispered.
Grandma stood up, tapped Maud gently on her hand, and left.
Sitting in her mother’s bedroom, Maud turned each page as if the book were a long lost relic.
Picking up her pencil, Maud wrote one sentence and then another and another. It felt as though she and her mother were having a secret conversation, one that reached back in time and brought her to a deep understanding of who her mother was: a woman in love with a man her parents didn’t approve of.
—
As Maud crawled into bed that night, she thought of all that had happened in the last year, all that had changed. She realized that she would miss her grandparents, the constancy of them. She would miss the constancy of her friends nearby. The constancy of daily rituals and school days with Mollie and Jack and, yes, Nate. Would he write, as he’d promised?
And who would do the readings at next year’s lecture, or perform at Miss Gordon’s concerts? Would there be another Four Musketeers to take their place? Certainly the job could not be left to Clemmie and her ilk, but Mollie was still there. She would do her best to represent them.
And what of her favorite haunts? Would there be a Lover’s Lane, a Haunted Woods, or a Hole in the Wall in Prince Albert?
Maud had learned that Saskatchewan was being christened “A New Eden,” promising rich, fertile farmland, full of opportunity. Her father had also written about her going to high school. It was rare to have that opportunity—for a woman, anyway. It sounded as though it would be the perfect place to start over. Her grandparents wouldn’t be there to judge her; there would be no whispers from the townspeople, from families who claimed superiority.
She was proud of being part of the Island’s history; its forests and flowers were imprinted on her heart. And she was bringing with her Grandfather Macneill’s stories, her journal, and Mother’s Commonplace Book. They would connect her to a treasured past while she climbed to a bright new future.
BOOK TWO
Maud of Prince Albert
1890–1891
To be fully appreciated, Saskatchewan must be seen, for no pen, however gifted or graphic, can describe with anything like justice, the splendid natural resources, the unequalled fertility, and the rare beauty of the prairies of this Western Eden.
—L.M. Montgomery, “A Western Eden.”
CHAPTER ONE
As twilight descended upon the Saskatchewan prairie town of Prince Albert, exhaustion hung on Maud like the red caked dirt on her travel suit. She was in her new room in her father’s home, Eglintoune Villa; she had immediately christened the room “Southview,” as it looked south on the main road, which went uphill to the newly erected courthouse. It was all so different from her beloved Cavendish. She desperately missed the Tree Lovers, she missed the Gulf’s dull roar, she missed the Island’s red roads. Although she was a short walk from the North Saskatchewan River, and she thought the poplar trees here were beautiful, Maud hadn’t realized how much of the Island’s beauty she had taken for granted.
She had kept a record of the seven-day, three thousand–mile journey she had taken from Cavendish and had promised herself that she would copy it over into her regular journal when she arrived; she didn’t want to forget anything.
Although happy to be reunited with Father the previous day, a part of her wished to be back in Grandpa Montgomery’s grand house in Park Corner, where she had stayed for three days before they set out on their journey across the country. It had been a rainy and gray morning the day she and Grandpa left Park Corner. Uncle Cuthbert drove them south to Kensington Station, where they’d picked up the train to Summerside to catch the ferry the following day.
At Kensington Station, when Grandpa came back with the tickets, he had exciting news. Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald and his wife were on their way to Summerside for a political rally via Charlottetown. Grandpa wired a telegram to them, arranging for them all to travel together. How thrilling! Her first train ride and she was to meet one of the most powerful men in Canada, one of the Fathers of Confederation.
When the special car came, Maud followed Grandpa on board, and suddenly, there she was, standing next to the great man himself. He was spry-looking, not handsome, but with a pleasant enough face. Lady Macdonald was fairly quiet and—despite her beautiful silvery hair and imposing stature—was dressed quite dowdily in her high, laced collar and black cap.
The prime minister and Grandpa discussed shipyard closures, but Maud was too busy looking at the Macdonalds and the elegant furniture of their train car to pay attention to the exact nature of what they were saying.
About half an hour later, they arrived in Summerside and, after saying goodbye to the Macdonalds, were greeted at the station by Grandpa’s daughter, Maud’s Aunt Nancy, and her husband, Uncle Dan Campbell, who took them back to the hotel they ran. The next morning, Maud and Grandpa took the ferry to Pointe-du-Chêne and then the train to St. John, New Brunswick. Even now, copying down the moment she had left the island for the first time, Maud’s chin trembled as she remembered the boat floating away from the dock. As she stood on the deck, gripping the railing, tears whipping against her cheeks, she watched her beloved red earth fade from view.