"Laws, yes, you can if you like. 'Twon't take you long -- there
ain't much of it. I keep at my man to build a new kitchen, but
he ain't one of your hustlers. The parlor's in there and there's
two rooms
upstairs. Just prowl about yourselves. I've got to
see to the baby. The east room was the one you were born in.
I remember your ma
saying she loved to see the
sunrise; and I
mind
hearing that you was born just as the sun was rising and
its light on your face was the first thing your ma saw."
Anne went up the narrow stairs and into that little east room
with a full heart. It was as a
shrine to her. Here her mother
had dreamed the
exquisite, happy dreams of anticipated motherhood;
here that red
sunrise light had fallen over them both in the
sacredhour of birth; here her mother had died. Anne looked about her
reverently, her eyes with tears. It was for her one of the jeweled
hours of life that gleam out radiantly forever in memory.
"Just to think of it -- mother was younger than I am now when I was born,"
she whispered.
When Anne went
downstairs the lady of the house met her in the hall.
She held out a dusty little
packet tied with faded blue ribbon.
"Here's a
bundle of old letters I found in that
closetupstairswhen I came here," she said. "I dunno what they are -- I never
bothered to look in 'em, but the address on the top one is
`Miss Bertha Willis,' and that was your ma's
maiden name.
You can take 'em if you'd keer to have 'em."
"Oh, thank you -- thank you," cried Anne, clasping the
packet rapturously.
"That was all that was in the house," said her
hostess. "The furniture
was all sold to pay the doctor bills, and Mrs. Thomas got your ma's
clothes and little things. I
reckon they didn't last long among that
drove of Thomas youngsters. They was
destructive young animals,
as I mind 'em."
"I haven't one thing that belonged to my mother," said Anne,
chokily. "I -- I can never thank you enough for these letters."
"You're quite
welcome. Laws, but your eyes is like your ma's.
She could just about talk with hers. Your father was sorter
homely but awful nice. I mind
hearing folks say when they was
married that there never was two people more in love with each
other -- Pore creatures, they didn't live much longer; but they
was awful happy while they was alive, and I s'pose that counts
for a good deal."
Anne longed to get home to read her precious letters; but she
made one little
pilgrimage first. She went alone to the green
corner of the "old" Bolingbroke
cemetery where her father and
mother were buried, and left on their grave the white flowers
she carried. Then she hastened back to Mount Holly, shut herself
up in her room, and read the letters. Some were written by her
father, some by her mother. There were not many -- only a dozen
in all -- for Walter and Bertha Shirley had not been often
separated during their
courtship. The letters were yellow
and faded and dim, blurred with the touch of passing years.
No
profound words of
wisdom were traced on the stained and
wrinkled pages, but only lines of love and trust. The sweetness
of forgotten things clung to them -- the
far-off, fond imaginings
of those long-dead lovers. Bertha Shirley had possessed the gift
of
writing letters which embodied the
charmingpersonality of
the
writer in words and thoughts that retained their beauty and
fragrance after the lapse of time. The letters were tender,
intimate,
sacred. To Anne, the sweetest of all was the one
written after her birth to the father on a brief
absence.
It was full of a proud young mother's accounts of "baby" --
her cleverness, her
brightness, her thousand sweetnesses.
"I love her best when she is asleep and better still when she is awake,"
Bertha Shirley had written in the
postscript. Probably it was the last
sentence she had ever penned. The end was very near for her.
"This has been the most beautiful day of my life," Anne said to Phil
that night. "I've FOUND my father and mother. Those letters have
made them REAL to me. I'm not an
orphan any longer. I feel as if
I had opened a book and found roses of
yesterday, sweet and beloved,
between its leaves."
Chapter XXII
Spring and Anne Return to Green Gables
The firelight shadows were dancing over the kitchen walls at
Green Gables, for the spring evening was
chilly; through the open
east window drifted in the subtly sweet voices of the night.
Marilla was sitting by the fire -- at least, in body. In spirit
she was roaming olden ways, with feet grown young. Of late
Marilla had thus spent many an hour, when she thought she should
have been
knitting for the twins.
"I suppose I'm growing old," she said.
Yet Marilla had changed but little in the past nine years, save
to grow something thinner, and even more angular; there was a
little more gray in the hair that was still twisted up in the
same hard knot, with two hairpins -- WERE they the same hairpins?
-- still stuck through it. But her expression was very different;
the something about the mouth which had hinted at a sense of humor
had developed
wonderfully; her eyes were gentler and milder, her
smile more
frequent and tender.
Marilla was thinking of her whole past life, her cramped but not
unhappy
childhood, the jealously
hidden dreams and the blighted
hopes of her girlhood, the long, gray, narrow,
monotonous years
of dull middle life that followed. And the coming of Anne --
the vivid,
imaginative,
impetuous child with her heart of love,
and her world of fancy, bringing with her color and
warmth and
radiance, until the
wilderness of
existence had blossomed like
the rose. Marilla felt that out of her sixty years she had
lived only the nine that had followed the
advent of Anne.
And Anne would be home tomorrow night.
The kitchen door opened. Marilla looked up expecting to see Mrs.
Lynde. Anne stood before her, tall and starry-eyed, with her
hands full of Mayflowers and violets.
"Anne Shirley!" exclaimed Marilla. For once in her life she was
surprised out of her reserve; she caught her girl in her arms and
crushed her and her flowers against her heart, kissing the bright
hair and sweet face warmly. "I never looked for you till
tomorrow night. How did you get from Carmody?"
"Walked, dearest of Marillas. Haven't I done it a score of times
in the Queen's days? The mailman is to bring my trunk tomorrow;
I just got
homesick all at once, and came a day earlier. And oh!
I've had such a lovely walk in the May
twilight; I stopped by the
barrens and picked these Mayflowers; I came through Violet-Vale;
it's just a big bowlful of violets now -- the dear, sky-tinted
things. Smell them, Marilla -- drink them in."
Marilla sniffed obligingly, but she was more interested in Anne
than in drinking violets.
"Sit down, child. You must be real tired. I'm going to get you
some supper."
"There's a
darling moonrise behind the hills tonight, Marilla,
and oh, how the frogs sang me home from Carmody! I do love the
music of the frogs. It seems bound up with all my happiest
recollections of old spring evenings. And it always reminds me
of the night I came here first. Do you remember it, Marilla?"
"Well, yes," said Marilla with
emphasis. "I'm not likely to
forget it ever."
"They used to sing so madly in the marsh and brook that year.
I would listen to them at my window in the dusk, and wonder how
they could seem so glad and so sad at the same time. Oh, but
it's good to be home again! Redmond was splendid and Bolingbroke
delightful -- but Green Gables is HOME."
"Gilbert isn't coming home this summer, I hear," said Marilla.
"No." Something in Anne's tone made Marilla glance at her
sharply, but Anne was
apparently absorbed in arranging her
violets in a bowl. "See, aren't they sweet?" she went on
hurriedly. "The year is a book, isn't it, Marilla? Spring's
pages are written in Mayflowers and violets, summer's in roses,
autumn's in red maple leaves, and winter in holly and evergreen."
"Did Gilbert do well in his examinations?" persisted Marilla.
"Excellently well. He led his class. But where are the twins
and Mrs. Lynde?"
"Rachel and Dora are over at Mr. Harrison's. Davy is down at
Boulters'. I think I hear him coming now."
Davy burst in, saw Anne, stopped, and then hurled himself upon
her with a
joyful yell.
"Oh, Anne, ain't I glad to see you! Say, Anne, I've grown two inches
since last fall. Mrs. Lynde measured me with her tape today, and say,
Anne, see my front tooth. It's gone. Mrs. Lynde tied one end of a
string to it and the other end to the door, and then shut the door.
I sold it to Milty for two cents. Milty's collecting teeth."
"What in the world does he want teeth for?" asked Marilla.
"To make a
necklace for playing Indian Chief," explained Davy,
climbing upon Anne's lap. "He's got fifteen already, and
everybody's else's promised, so there's no use in the rest of us
starting to collect, too. I tell you the Boulters are great
business people."
"Were you a good boy at Mrs. Boulter's?" asked Marilla severely.
"Yes; but say, Marilla, I'm tired of being good."
"You'd get tired of being bad much sooner, Davy-boy," said Anne.
"Well, it'd be fun while it lasted, wouldn't it?" persisted Davy.
"I could be sorry for it afterwards, couldn't I?"
"Being sorry wouldn't do away with the consequences of being bad,
Davy. Don't you remember the Sunday last summer when you ran
away from Sunday School? You told me then that being bad wasn't
worth while. What were you and Milty doing today?"
"Oh, we fished and chased the cat, and hunted for eggs, and
yelled at the echo. There's a great echo in the bush behind the
Boulter barn. Say, what is echo, Anne; I want to know."
"Echo is a beautiful nymph, Davy, living far away in the woods,
and laughing at the world from among the hills."
"What does she look like?"
"Her hair and eyes are dark, but her neck and arms are white as snow.
No
mortal can ever see how fair she is. She is fleeter than a deer,
and that mocking voice of hers is all we can know of her. You can
hear her
calling at night; you can hear her laughing under the stars.
But you can never see her. She flies afar if you follow her, and
laughs at you always just over the next hill."
"Is that true, Anne? Or is it a whopper?" demanded Davy staring.
"Davy," said Anne despairingly, "haven't you sense enough to
distinguish between a fairytale and a falsehood?"
"Then what is it that sasses back from the Boulter bush? I want
to know," insisted Davy.
"When you are a little older, Davy, I'll explain it all to you."
The mention of age
evidently gave a new turn to Davy's thoughts
for after a few moments of
reflection, he whispered solemnly:
"Anne, I'm going to be married."
"When?" asked Anne with equal solemnity.
"Oh, not until I'm
grown-up, of course."
"Well, that's a
relief, Davy. Who is the lady?"
"Stella Fletcher; she's in my class at school. And say, Anne,
she's the prettiest girl you ever saw. If I die before I grow up
you'll keep an eye on her, won't you?"
"Davy Keith, do stop talking such nonsense," said Marilla severely.
" 'Tisn't nonsense," protested Davy in an injured tone. "She's
my promised wife, and if I was to die she'd be my promised widow,
wouldn't she? And she hasn't got a soul to look after her except
her old grandmother."
"Come and have your supper, Anne," said Marilla, "and don't
encourage that child in his
absurd talk."
Chapter XXIII
Paul Cannot Find the Rock People
Life was very pleasant in Avonlea that summer, although Anne,
amid all her
vacation joys, was
haunted by a sense of "something
gone which should be there." She would not admit, even in her
inmost
reflections, that this was caused by Gilbert's
absence.