The Blythes Are Quoted

by L. M. Montgomery

  “Think,” she told herself desperately, “how he used to bully the other boys ... how he once twisted Jack’s arm to make him apologize ... how he told Aunt Marian it was Jack who took the pie ... what he did to the kitten” ... That memory was intolerable. Susette buried her face in the pillow and groaned. She was glad to recall what Jem Blythe had done to him for it. Still, the memory was intolerable. She hated him ... she did hate him ... she would get up ever so early in the morning and sneak away before she saw him again.

  Suddenly Susette sat up in bed and shook her small white hand at the darkness. She had just remembered what had happened to her sensations when her fingers had happened to touch Dick’s as he gave her the second cup of tea.

  “I won’t fall in love with him! I won’t! I won’t!”

  She was aghast. When she put her danger into words it terrified her. There was nothing for it but an early morning flit back to safety and sanity and ... and Harvey.

  When Susette awoke she knew something she had not known when she went to sleep. She had only been afraid of knowing it. She got out of bed very softly and tiptoed to the window. The sun was not yet visible but the whole morning sky behind the eastern hill of spruces was rose-hued, with gossamer clouds of pale gold strewn over it. Little shivers were running over the silver-green pond. The distances were hung with pale blue mists. Susette knew she must drive instantly away through those lovely morning mists or she was a lost woman.

  Swiftly and noiselessly she dressed. Swiftly and noiselessly she crept down the stairs, opened the front door and stepped out. She looked about her and caught her breath with delight. The sun was up now and a new lovely world, with its face washed, was blinking its innocent baby eyes at it. She had forgotten what the farm was like at dawn. And she hadn’t seen all the dear spots she had loved. Wasn’t there time at least for a sneak down to the pond? Dick wouldn’t be up for an hour yet.

  She would take a stolen run through this golden world. She would slip down to the pond on the old pathway with the wind as a gallant companion. The grasses would bathe her feet in green coolness and the water would sing to her ... just once before she went back to Harvey.

  When she was almost at the pond a suspicious fragrance met her nostrils. Before she realized the truth she had broken through the trees and saw Dick squatted by a wood fire, broiling bacon, with a coffee pot beside him. A tablecloth was spread on the ground and ... what was on it? Wild strawberries! Wild strawberries on a green leaf! How long was it since she had eaten wild strawberries of any kind, much less the kind that grew on the farm? She recalled as in a dream that Jem Blythe had always claimed to know a secret place where they grew bigger and sweeter than anywhere else.

  Dick waved a fork with a piece of bacon on it at her. “Good girl! I was just going to call you. We’ve got to start soon to be in town in time. Besides, I didn’t want you to miss such a chance to bathe your soul in dawn as Anne Blythe used to say. Look what I have for you ... I found Jem Blythe’s old plot in the back pasture. Such amazing luck! But then this farm has always been noted for its good luck. Besides ... see ... a bunch of the little red columbines you used to love. Pick out a soft spot on that rock and sit down.”

  Susette did as she was told. She felt a little dazed. Dick poured her coffee and fed her on bacon and wild strawberries. Neither of them said much. There were zones of beautiful colour on the pond, with little pools of pellucid shadow here and there. Great white cloud-mountains with amber valleys rose up in the sky over Glen St. Mary way. Presently, she supposed, Dick would be flying over them. The idea drove her to the banality of offering him a penny for his thoughts.

  “I was wondering what would happen if I suddenly called you ‘darling,’” he said solemnly.

  “I should go away, of course,” said Susette. “I’m going anyway. We can’t sit here forever.”

  “Why not?” said Dick.

  “That is a silly question and of course not meant to be answered,” said Susette, getting up.

  Dick got up, too.

  “I’m going to answer it. We can’t sit here forever, heavenly as it would be, because the next bunch of big boys leaves the day after tomorrow. There isn’t a great deal of time for us to get a special licence and be married.”

  “You’re quite mad,” said Susette.

  “Do you remember Walter Blythe’s favourite quotation? Funny how the Walters in that family seem to run to poetry. I’ve been told his uncle would have been famous if he hadn’t stayed in France in the last show. Anyway, it’s a poor family that can’t afford one madman. I was never much of a one for poetry but didn’t somebody once write something like this? I’m sure I’ve heard Walter quoting it.

  There is a pleasure sure in being mad

  That none but madmen know.

  “I was never as intimate with the Blythes as you seem to have been,” said Susette coldly.

  “That was a pity. They were a delightful family.”

  “And I am going to the house to get my car and hurry back to Glenellyn,” said Susette firmly.

  “I know that’s what you intend to do but it won’t take long to change your mind.”

  Susette looked about her a bit helplessly. Then she happened to look at Dick. The next moment she was caught tightly in his arms and was being kissed ... one long, wild, rapturous, breathless kiss.

  “Sweetheart ... joy ... delight ... wonder. Don’t look so furious, darling. Don’t you know that when you look at a man with eyes like that you are simply asking him to kiss you? You are mine, Susette. I’ve made you mine with that kiss. You can never belong to anyone else.”

  Susette stood very still. She knew this was one of the rare splendid moments of life. She knew that she would never marry Harvey.

  “We’ll be on our way to Charlottetown in fifteen minutes,” Dick was saying. “It’ll take me that time to put away Mrs. Roddy’s frying pan and lock your car into Roddy’s barn.”

  Susette went back to her room for her watch, which she had left under her pillow. She supposed she was bewitched ... literally bewitched. Nothing else would account for it. She remembered that Dr. Gilbert Blythe had been rather laughed at because he had said there might be such a thing at the time of the goings-on at the old Field place. If she could only forget about the kitten! But so many boys were cruel at first.

  When she got back to the pond she could not see Dick anywhere at first. Then she saw him standing a little way off in the shadow of some spruces. His back was towards her and a red squirrel was perched on his shoulder. He was feeding it with something and the squirrel was chattering to him.

  Susette was very still. She knew another thing now. And she would have run if Dick had not wheeled round at that moment. The squirrel made a wild leap to the trees and Dick came striding to her.

  “Did you see that little chap? And do you remember how Jem Blythe always loved squirrels? They’ve always been fond of me, too ... the folk of fur and feathers.”

  “You are not Dick,” said Susette, in a low tone, looking up at him.

  Dick stopped.

  “No,” he said, “I’m not. I was wondering how I was going to tell you. But how did you find out?”

  “When I saw the squirrel on your shoulder. Animals always hated Dick ... he was so cruel to them. People don’t change as much as that. No squirrel would ever have climbed his shoulder ... that was why the Blythes hated him so much. And may I ask who you really are?”

  “Having promised to marry me you have a right to the information,” he said gravely. “I am Jerry Thornton, a second cousin of Dick’s through Aunt Marian, but no earthly relation to you. We lived in Charlottetown but I was here one or two summers when you weren’t. I heard all about you from the others ... especially Jem, with whom I was great pals and who had a youthful passion for you at the time. And remember you called me Dick first. I was afraid, if I undeceived you, you wouldn’t stay long enough to let me make you love me. I thought I’d a better chance as Dick ... even though you had such a grudge a
gainst him. We always looked alike ... our grandmothers were sisters ... but honest to goodness we aren’t alike under our skins. Besides, Dick is married ... as are most of the old gang.”

  “He would be,” said Susette.

  Jerry looked down at her a bit anxiously. “A little thing like a mistake in the man isn’t going to make any difference, is it, Susette?”

  “I don’t see why it should,” answered Susette. “But tell me two things. First, how did you know that Dick once kissed me?”

  “As if any boy wouldn’t kiss you if he ever got the chance!” scoffed Jerry.

  “And how did you know I loved wild columbines?”

  “Everybody loves wild columbines,” said Jerry.

  Au Revoir

  I Want

  I’m weary of the city’s noise ...

  I want to steal away

  To fields where moonlight loves to dream

  By brooks of yesterday.

  And where through many a waving pine

  The lights of an old house will shine.

  I want to feel a wind that blows

  From hilltops far and free

  O’er dewy clover fields that run

  Down to the merry sea,

  And hear again the muted roar

  Of breakers on a rocky shore.

  I’m tired of racket and of glare,

  I want a sweet dim night

  In an old tangled garden where

  Bloom lilies cool and white ...

  The scented darkness there will be

  A tried and trusted friend to me.

  I want the joyous rain to talk

  The way it talks in spring,

  And tell me as it used to do

  Some sweet forgotten thing,

  I want the cherry blossom snow

  On orchard paths I used to know.

  I want a little time to dream

  Away from haste and rush,

  I want to barter honk and scream

  For call of twilight thrush,

  I want a little time to play ...

  I’ll take the train back home today!

  Walter Blythe

  SUSAN:- “There are parts of that I can understand. But it must be mostly what Mrs. Dr. dear calls imagination. Walter was never long in any city when he wrote that poem ... I remember he was just in his early teens. You couldn’t call Lowbridge a city. Shall I ever forget the night he ran away from Dr. Parker’s and came home six miles in the dark?* And I am sure our garden was never tangled here or at the House of Dreams. The cherry blossoms seem whiter than usual this year. How he loved them, especially the ones that grew wild in Rainbow Valley. But he loved every pretty thing. ‘Susan,’ he would say to me, ‘the world is so full of beauty.’ He wasn’t old enough to know better. But there are some pretty things in it and tomorrow I must weed the pansy bed. We always did it together. ‘Look at the quaint faces of them, Susan,’ he would say. I’m not sure just what ‘quaint’ meant but the pansies have faces and that I will tie to.”

  *See Anne of Ingleside

  THE PILGRIM

  The wind is on the hill,

  Black rain clouds in the west,

  But I must hie me still

  Upon my ancient quest.

  For old enchantments weave

  The spell of stormy skies,

  And clouds will lift and leave

  A star of glad surprise.

  Or it may be a moon

  As slender as a ring,

  Will hang where birches croon

  Above a haunted spring.

  It may be I shall tread

  Some fair uncharted way,

  Where I shall meet my dead

  Dear dreams of yesterday.

  The white spring shall be mine

  And mine the summer’s good,

  The tang of autumn wine,

  The winter’s solitude.

  Here, boughs shall hold me in

  With green possessive grace,

  There, where the dunes begin,

  Wave spray shall whip my face.

  I’ll wander far and wide

  With neither haste nor rest,

  All beauty for my guiding star

  And my eternal quest.

  Walter Blythe

  DIANA:- “He wrote that just before the beginning of the last war.”

  DR. BLYTHE:- “A child talking of his dreams of yesterday!”

  ANNE:- “That is the only time we can talk of them. It is too bitter when we get old.”

  SUSAN, indignantly:-“You and the doctor will never get old, Mrs. Dr. dear.”

  ANNE, sighing:-“I feel old enough sometimes—even older than I am.”

  FAITH BLYTHE:- “Beauty was Walter’s guiding star ... and we know he found it forever, Mother Blythe.”

  SPRING SONG

  O gypsy winds that pipe and sing

  In budding boughs of beech,

  I know I hear the laugh of spring

  In all your silver speech.

  O little mists that hide and curl

  In hollows wild and green,

  I know you come in gauze and pearl

  To wait upon your queen.

  O little seed in mellow earth

  Where rain and sunshine kiss,

  I know the quivering joy of birth

  Throbs in your chrysalis.

  O Hope, you blossom on my way

  Like violet from the clod,

  And Love makes rosy all the way

  When spring comes back from God.

  Walter Blythe

  DR. BLYTHE:- “Yes, God always sends the spring, thanks be.”

  SUSAN:- “It is late this year, though. The daffodils are only peeping through.” (To herself ) “How Walter loved daffodils!”

  ANNE:- “I used to love winter—even through the last twenty years. And now I wonder how we could live through it if it were not for the hope of spring.”

  DR. BLYTHE:- “Is life with me as hard as that, Anne-girl?”

  SUSAN, thinking:- “The dear man has to have his joke.”

  THE AFTERMATH

  I

  Yesterday we were young who now are old ...

  We fought hot-hearted under a sweet sky,

  The lust of blood made even cowards bold,

  And no one feared to die;

  We were all drunken with a horrid joy,

  We laughed as devils laugh from hell released,

  And, when the moon rose redly in the east,

  I killed a stripling boy!

  He might have been my brother slim and fair ...

  I killed him horribly and I was glad,

  It pleased me much to see his dabbled hair,

  The pale and pretty lad!

  I waved my bayonet aloft in glee ...

  He writhed there like a worm, and all around

  Dead men were scattered o’er the reeking ground ...

  Ours was the victory!

  II

  Now we are old who yesterday were young

  And cannot see the beauty of the skies,

  For we have gazed the pits of hell among

  And they have scorched our eyes.

  The dead are happier than we who live,

  For, dying, they have purged their memory thus

  And won forgetfulness; but what to us

  Can such oblivion give?

  We must remember always; evermore

  Must spring be hateful and the dawn a shame ...

  We shall not sleep as we have slept before

  That withering blast of flame.

  The wind has voices that may not be stilled ...

  The wind that yester morning was so blithe ...

  And everywhere I look I see him writhe,

  That pretty boy I killed!

  Walter Blythe

  This poem was written “somewhere in France” in the year of Courcelette and sent home to his mother with the rest of his papers. She has never read it to anyone but Jem Blythe who says,

  “Walter never bayo
netted anyone, mother. But he saw ... he saw ...”

  ANNE, steadily:- “I am thankful now, Jem, that Walter did not come back. He could never have lived with his memories ... and if he had seen the futility of the sacrifice they made then mirrored in this ghastly holocaust ...”

  JEM, thinking of Jem, Jr., and young Walter:- “I know ... I know. Even I who am a tougher brand than Walter ... but let us talk of something else. Who was it said, ‘We forget because we must’? He was right.”

  The End

  AFTERWORD

  by Benjamin Lefebvre

  When I first travelled to the University of Guelph archives in 1999 to read L.M. Montgomery’s typescript version of The Blythes Are Quoted, I had no way of knowing what literary discovery I was about to make. For a long time, I had taken for granted the reports of several commentators that The Blythes Are Quoted had been published in its entirety, minus a short introductory sketch, in 1974 as The Road to Yesterday. But then a colleague told me she had read Montgomery’s typescript herself and found that there was much more missing from The Road to Yesterday than these reports suggested. She generously sent me her notes summarizing the missing parts and encouraged me to take a look for myself. When I did, I realized that quite substantial portions of The Blythes Are Quoted had been cut: not only had vignettes and poems amounting to almost a hundred pages of text been removed from between the short stories, but as I glanced through the stories themselves I found several sections that I did not recall from my reading of the abridged book. Surely, I thought, there was more here than met the eye. And then, as I sat at my desk in the middle of the sunny afternoon, the archivists wheeled out two more typescripts of The Blythes Are Quoted, each a substantially different version of the text. I began to wonder if I had stumbled upon buried treasure. It occurred to me that this late project, completed near the end of Montgomery’s life in 1942, could change the way readers perceived the author and her work.