Anne of Green Gables
Ames decides to leave.”
Anne felt a queer little sensation of dismayed surprise. She had not
known this; she had expected that Gilbert would be going to Redmond
also. What would she do without their inspiring rivalry? Would not
work, even at a coeducational college with a real degree in prospect, be
rather flat without her friend the enemy?
The next morning at breakfast it suddenly struck Anne that Matthew was
not looking well. Surely he was much grayer than he had been a year
before.
“Marilla,” she said hesitatingly when he had gone out, “is Matthew quite
well?”
“No, he isn’t,” said Marilla in a troubled tone. “He’s had some real
bad spells with his heart this spring and he won’t spare himself a mite.
I’ve been real worried about him, but he’s some better this while back
and we’ve got a good hired man, so I’m hoping he’ll kind of rest and
pick up. Maybe he will now you’re home. You always cheer him up.”
Anne leaned across the table and took Marilla’s face in her hands.
“You are not looking as well yourself as I’d like to see you, Marilla.
You look tired. I’m afraid you’ve been working too hard. You must take
a rest, now that I’m home. I’m just going to take this one day off to
visit all the dear old spots and hunt up my old dreams, and then it will
be your turn to be lazy while I do the work.”
Marilla smiled affectionately at her girl.
“It’s not the work--it’s my head. I’ve got a pain so often now--behind
my eyes. Doctor Spencer’s been fussing with glasses, but they don’t do
me any good. There is a distinguished oculist coming to the Island the
last of June and the doctor says I must see him. I guess I’ll have to.
I can’t read or sew with any comfort now. Well, Anne, you’ve done real
well at Queen’s I must say. To take First Class License in one year and
win the Avery scholarship--well, well, Mrs. Lynde says pride goes before
a fall and she doesn’t believe in the higher education of women at all;
she says it unfits them for woman’s true sphere. I don’t believe a word
of it. Speaking of Rachel reminds me--did you hear anything about the
Abbey Bank lately, Anne?”
“I heard it was shaky,” answered Anne. “Why?”
“That is what Rachel said. She was up here one day last week and said
there was some talk about it. Matthew felt real worried. All we have
saved is in that bank--every penny. I wanted Matthew to put it in the
Savings Bank in the first place, but old Mr. Abbey was a great friend of
father’s and he’d always banked with him. Matthew said any bank with him
at the head of it was good enough for anybody.”
“I think he has only been its nominal head for many years,” said
Anne. “He is a very old man; his nephews are really at the head of the
institution.”
“Well, when Rachel told us that, I wanted Matthew to draw our money
right out and he said he’d think of it. But Mr. Russell told him
yesterday that the bank was all right.”
Anne had her good day in the companionship of the outdoor world. She
never forgot that day; it was so bright and golden and fair, so free
from shadow and so lavish of blossom. Anne spent some of its rich hours
in the orchard; she went to the Dryad’s Bubble and Willowmere and Violet
Vale; she called at the manse and had a satisfying talk with Mrs. Allan;
and finally in the evening she went with Matthew for the cows, through
Lovers’ Lane to the back pasture. The woods were all gloried through
with sunset and the warm splendor of it streamed down through the hill
gaps in the west. Matthew walked slowly with bent head; Anne, tall and
erect, suited her springing step to his.
“You’ve been working too hard today, Matthew,” she said reproachfully.
“Why won’t you take things easier?”
“Well now, I can’t seem to,” said Matthew, as he opened the yard gate
to let the cows through. “It’s only that I’m getting old, Anne, and keep
forgetting it. Well, well, I’ve always worked pretty hard and I’d rather
drop in harness.”
“If I had been the boy you sent for,” said Anne wistfully, “I’d be able
to help you so much now and spare you in a hundred ways. I could find it
in my heart to wish I had been, just for that.”
“Well now, I’d rather have you than a dozen boys, Anne,” said Matthew
patting her hand. “Just mind you that--rather than a dozen boys. Well
now, I guess it wasn’t a boy that took the Avery scholarship, was it? It
was a girl--my girl--my girl that I’m proud of.”
He smiled his shy smile at her as he went into the yard. Anne took the
memory of it with her when she went to her room that night and sat for a
long while at her open window, thinking of the past and dreaming of the
future. Outside the Snow Queen was mistily white in the moonshine;
the frogs were singing in the marsh beyond Orchard Slope. Anne always
remembered the silvery, peaceful beauty and fragrant calm of that night.
It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is
ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has
been laid upon it.
CHAPTER XXXVII. The Reaper Whose Name Is Death
MATTHEW--Matthew--what is the matter? Matthew, are you sick?”
It was Marilla who spoke, alarm in every jerky word. Anne came through
the hall, her hands full of white narcissus,--it was long before Anne
could love the sight or odor of white narcissus again,--in time to hear
her and to see Matthew standing in the porch doorway, a folded paper
in his hand, and his face strangely drawn and gray. Anne dropped her
flowers and sprang across the kitchen to him at the same moment as
Marilla. They were both too late; before they could reach him Matthew
had fallen across the threshold.
“He’s fainted,” gasped Marilla. “Anne, run for Martin--quick, quick!
He’s at the barn.”
Martin, the hired man, who had just driven home from the post office,
started at once for the doctor, calling at Orchard Slope on his way to
send Mr. and Mrs. Barry over. Mrs. Lynde, who was there on an errand,
came too. They found Anne and Marilla distractedly trying to restore
Matthew to consciousness.
Mrs. Lynde pushed them gently aside, tried his pulse, and then laid her
ear over his heart. She looked at their anxious faces sorrowfully and
the tears came into her eyes.
“Oh, Marilla,” she said gravely. “I don’t think--we can do anything for
him.”
“Mrs. Lynde, you don’t think--you can’t think Matthew is--is--” Anne
could not say the dreadful word; she turned sick and pallid.
“Child, yes, I’m afraid of it. Look at his face. When you’ve seen that
look as often as I have you’ll know what it means.”
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