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Anne
looked at the still face and there beheld the seal of the Great Presence.
When
the doctor came he said that death had been instantaneous and probably
painless, caused in all likelihood by some sudden shock. The secret of the
shock was discovered to be in the paper Matthew had held and which Martin
had brought from the office that morning. It contained an account of the
failure of the Abbey Bank.
The
news spread quickly through Avonlea, and all day friends and neighbors
thronged Green Gables and came and went on errands of kindness for the dead
and living. For the first time shy, quiet Matthew Cuthbert was a person of
central importance; the white majesty of death had fallen on him and set him
apart as one crowned.
When
the calm night came softly down over Green Gables the old house was hushed
and tranquil. In the parlor lay
Matthew Cuthbert in his coffin, his long gray hair framing his placid face
on which there was a little kindly smile as if he but slept, dreaming
pleasant dreams. There were
flowers about him--sweet old-fashioned flowers which his mother had planted
in the homestead garden in her bridal days and for which Matthew had always
had a secret, wordless love. Anne had gathered them and brought them to him,
her anguished, tearless eyes burning in her white face.
It was the last thing she could do for him.
The
Barrys and Mrs. Lynde stayed with them that night. Diana, going to the east
gable, where Anne was standing at her window, said gently:
"Anne
dear, would you like to have me sleep with you tonight?"
"Thank
you, Diana." Anne looked
earnestly into her friend's face. "I think you won't misunderstand me
when I say I want to be alone. I'm not afraid.
I haven't been alone one minute since it happened-- and I want to be. I want to be quite silent and quiet and try to realize it.
I can't realize it. Half
the time it seems to me that Matthew can't be dead; and the other half it
seems as if he must have been dead for a long time and I've had this
horrible dull ache ever since."
Diana
did not quite understand. Marilla's
impassioned grief, breaking all the bounds of natural reserve and lifelong
habit in its stormy rush, she could comprehend better than Anne's tearless
agony. But she went away
kindly, leaving Anne alone to keep her first vigil with sorrow.
Anne
hoped that the tears would come in solitude.
It seemed to her a terrible thing that she could not shed a tear for
Matthew, whom she had loved so much and who had been so kind to her, Matthew
who had walked with her last evening at sunset and was now lying in the dim
room below with that awful peace on his brow.
But no tears came at first, even when she knelt by her window in the
darkness and prayed, looking up to the stars beyond the hills--no tears,
only the same horrible dull ache of misery that kept on aching until she
fell asleep, worn out with the day's pain and excitement.
In
the night she awakened, with the stillness and the darkness about her, and
the recollection of the day came over her like a wave of sorrow.
She could see Matthew's face smiling at her as he had smiled when
they parted at the gate that last evening--she could hear his voice saying,
"My girl--my girl that I'm proud of."
Then the tears came and Anne wept her heart out.
Marilla heard her and crept in to comfort her.
"There--there--don't
cry so, dearie. It can't bring
him back. It--it--isn't right to cry so.
I knew that today, but I couldn't help it then.
He'd always been such a good, kind brother to me--but God knows
best."
"Oh,
just let me cry, Marilla," sobbed Anne.
"The tears don't hurt me like that ache did.
Stay here for a little while with me and keep your arm round me--so. I couldn't have Diana stay, she's good and kind and
sweet--but it's not her sorrow--she's outside of it and she couldn't come
close enough to my heart to help me. It's
our sorrow-- yours and mine. Oh,
Marilla, what will we do without him?"
"We've
got each other, Anne. I don't
know what I'd do if you weren't here--if you'd never come.
Oh, Anne, I know I've been kind of strict and harsh with you maybe--
but you mustn't think I didn't love you as well as Matthew did, for all
that. I want to tell you now
when I can. It's never been
easy for me to say things out of my heart, but at times like this it's
easier. I love you as dear as if you were my own flesh and blood and
you've been my joy and comfort ever since you came to Green Gables."
Two
days afterwards they carried Matthew Cuthbert over his homestead threshold
and away from the fields he had tilled and the orchards he had loved and the
trees he had planted; and then Avonlea settled back to its usual placidity
and even at Green Gables affairs slipped into their old groove and work was
done and duties fulfilled with regularity as before, although always with
the aching sense of "loss in all familiar things."
Anne, new to grief, thought it almost sad that it could be so--that
they COULD go on in the old way without Matthew.
She felt something like shame and remorse when she discovered that
the sunrises behind the firs and the pale pink buds opening in the garden
gave her the old inrush of gladness when she saw them--that Diana's visits
were pleasant to her and that Diana's merry words and ways moved her to
laughter and smiles--that, in brief, the beautiful world of blossom and love
and friendship had lost none of its power to please her fancy and thrill her
heart, that life still called to her with many insistent voices.
"It
seems like disloyalty to Matthew, somehow, to find pleasure in these things
now that he has gone," she said wistfully to Mrs. Allan one evening
when they were together in the manse garden.
"I miss him so much--all the time-- and yet, Mrs. Allan, the
world and life seem very beautiful and interesting to me for all.
Today Diana said something funny and I found myself laughing.
I thought when it happened I could never laugh again. And it somehow seems as if I oughtn't to."
"When
Matthew was here he liked to hear you laugh and he liked to know that you
found pleasure in the pleasant things around you," said Mrs. Allan
gently. "He is just away now; and he likes to know it just the same. I
am sure we should not shut our hearts against the healing influences that
nature offers us. But I can
understand your feeling. I
think we all experience the same thing. We resent the thought that anything
can please us when someone we love is no longer here to share the pleasure
with us, and we almost feel as if we were unfaithful to our sorrow when we
find our interest in life returning to us."
"I
was down to the graveyard to plant a rosebush on Matthew's grave this
afternoon," said Anne dreamily. "I took a slip of the little white
Scotch rosebush his mother brought out from Scotland long ago; Matthew
always liked those roses the best--they were so small and sweet on their
thorny stems. It made me feel
glad that I could plant it by his grave--as if I were doing something that
must please him in taking it there to be near him.
I hope he has roses like them in heaven.
Perhaps the souls of all those little white roses that he has loved
so many summers were all there to meet him.
I must go home now. Marilla
is all alone and she gets lonely at twilight."
"She
will be lonelier still, I fear, when you go away again to college,"
said Mrs. Allan.
Anne
did not reply; she said good night and went slowly back to green Gables.
Marilla was sitting on the front door-steps and Anne sat down beside
her. The door was open behind
them, held back by a big pink conch shell with hints of sea sunsets in its
smooth inner convolutions.
Anne
gathered some sprays of pale-yellow honeysuckle and put them in her hair.
She liked the delicious hint of fragrance, as some aerial
benediction, above her every time she moved.
"Doctor
Spencer was here while you were away," Marilla said. "He says that
the specialist will be in town tomorrow and he insists that I must go in and
have my eyes examined. I suppose I'd better go and have it over.
I'll be more than thankful if the man can give me the right kind of
glasses to suit my eyes. You
won't mind staying here alone while I'm away, will you?
Martin will have to drive me in and there's ironing and baking to
do."
"I
shall be all right. Diana will
come over for company for me. I
shall attend to the ironing and baking beautifully-- you needn't fear that
I'll starch the handkerchiefs or flavor the cake with liniment."
Marilla
laughed.
"What
a girl you were for making mistakes in them days, Anne. You were always
getting into scrapes. I did use
to think you were possessed. Do
you mind the time you dyed your hair?"
"Yes,
indeed. I shall never forget
it," smiled Anne, touching the heavy braid of hair that was wound about
her shapely head. "I laugh
a little now sometimes when I think what a worry my hair used to be to
me--but I don't laugh MUCH, because it was a very real trouble then. I did
suffer terribly over my hair and my freckles. My freckles are really gone;
and people are nice enough to tell me my hair is auburn now--all but Josie
Pye. She informed me yesterday that she really thought it was redder than
ever, or at least my black dress made it look redder, and she asked me if
people who had red hair ever got used to having it. Marilla, I've almost decided to give up trying to like Josie
Pye. I've made what I would
once have called a heroic effort to like her, but Josie Pye won't BE
liked."
"Josie
is a Pye," said Marilla sharply, "so she can't help being
disagreeable. I suppose people
of that kind serve some useful purpose in society, but I must say I don't
know what it is any more than I know the use of thistles. Is Josie going to
teach?"
"No,
she is going back to Queen's next year.
So are Moody Spurgeon and Charlie Sloane.
Jane and Ruby are going to teach and they have both got schools--Jane
at Newbridge and Ruby at some place up west."
"Gilbert
Blythe is going to teach too, isn't he?"
"Yes"--briefly.
"What
a nice-looking fellow he is," said Marilla absently. "I saw him in
church last Sunday and he seemed so tall and manly. He looks a lot like his
father did at the same age. John
Blythe was a nice boy. We used
to be real good friends, he and I. People called him my beau."
Anne
looked up with swift interest.
"Oh,
Marilla--and what happened?--why didn't you--"
"We
had a quarrel. I wouldn't forgive him when he asked me to. I meant to, after
awhile--but I was sulky and angry and I wanted to punish him first.
He never came back--the Blythes were all mighty independent.
But I always felt--rather sorry.
I've always kind of wished I'd forgiven him when I had the
chance."
"So
you've had a bit of romance in your life, too," said Anne softly.
"Yes,
I suppose you might call it that. You
wouldn't think so to look at me, would you?
But you never can tell about people from their outsides.
Everybody has forgot about me and John. I'd forgotten myself. But it all came back to me when I saw Gilbert last Sunday."
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