“Little Joyce,” she murmured, when Marilla came in to see the baby. “We planned to call her that if she were a girlie. There were so many we would have liked to name her for; we couldn’t choose between them, so we decided on Joyce — we can call her Joy for short — Joy — it suits so well. Oh, Marilla, I thought I was happy before. Now I know that I just dreamed a pleasant dream of happiness. THIS is the reality.”
“You mustn’t talk, Anne — wait till you’re stronger,” said Marilla warningly.
“You know how hard it is for me NOT to talk,” smiled Anne.
At first she was too weak and too happy to notice that Gilbert and the nurse looked grave and Marilla sorrowful. Then, as subtly, and coldly, and remorselessly as a sea-fog stealing landward, fear crept into her heart. Why was not Gilbert gladder? Why would he not talk about the baby? Why would they not let her have it with her after that first heavenly — happy hour? Was — was there anything wrong?
“Gilbert,” whispered Anne imploringly, “the baby — is all right — isn’t she? Tell me — tell me.”
Gilbert was a long while in turning round; then he bent over Anne and looked in her eyes. Marilla, listening fearfully outside the door, heard a pitiful, heartbroken moan, and fled to the kitchen where Susan was weeping.
“Oh, the poor lamb — the poor lamb! How can she bear it, Miss Cuthbert? I am afraid it will kill her. She has been that built up and happy, longing for that baby, and planning for it. Cannot anything be done nohow, Miss Cuthbert?”
“I’m afraid not, Susan. Gilbert says there is no hope. He knew from the first the little thing couldn’t live.”
“And it is such a sweet baby,” sobbed Susan. “I never saw one so white — they are mostly red or yallow. And it opened its big eyes as if it was months old. The little, little thing! Oh, the poor, young Mrs. Doctor!”
At sunset the little soul that had come with the dawning went away, leaving heartbreak behind it. Miss Cornelia took the wee, white lady from the kindly but stranger hands of the nurse, and dressed the tiny waxen form in the beautiful dress Leslie had made for it. Leslie had asked her to do that. Then she took it back and laid it beside the poor, broken, tear-blinded little mother.
“The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away, dearie,” she said through her own tears. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Then she went away, leaving Anne and Gilbert alone together with their dead.
The next day, the small white Joy was laid in a velvet casket which Leslie had lined with apple-blossoms, and taken to the graveyard of the church across the harbor. Miss Cornelia and Marilla put all the little love-made garments away, together with the ruffled basket which had been befrilled and belaced for dimpled limbs and downy head. Little Joy was never to sleep there; she had found a colder, narrower bed.
“This has been an awful disappointment to me,” sighed Miss Cornelia. “I’ve looked forward to this baby — and I did want it to be a girl, too.”
“I can only be thankful that Anne’s life was spared,” said Marilla, with a shiver, recalling those hours of darkness when the girl she loved was passing through the valley of the shadow.
“Poor, poor lamb! Her heart is broken,” said Susan.
“I ENVY Anne,” said Leslie suddenly and fiercely, “and I’d envy her even if she had died! She was a mother for one beautiful day. I’d gladly give my life for THAT!”
“I wouldn’t talk like that, Leslie, dearie,” said Miss Cornelia deprecatingly. She was afraid that the dignified Miss Cuthbert would think Leslie quite terrible.
Anne’s convalescence was long, and made bitter for her by many things. The bloom and sunshine of the Four Winds world grated harshly on her; and yet, when the rain fell heavily, she pictured it beating so mercilessly down on that little grave across the harbor; and when the wind blew around the eaves she heard sad voices in it she had never heard before.
Kindly callers hurt her, too, with the well-meant platitudes with which they strove to cover the nakedness of bereavement. A letter from Phil Blake was an added sting. Phil had heard of the baby’s birth, but not of its death, and she wrote Anne a congratulatory letter of sweet mirth which hurt her horribly.
“I would have laughed over it so happily if I had my baby,” she sobbed to Marilla. “But when I haven’t it just seems like wanton cruelty — though I know Phil wouldn’t hurt me for the world. Oh, Marilla, I don’t see how I can EVER be happy again — EVERYTHING will hurt me all the rest of my life.”
“Time will help you,” said Marilla, who was racked with sympathy but could never learn to express it in other than age-worn formulas.
“It doesn’t seem FAIR,” said Anne rebelliously. “Babies are born and live where they are not wanted — where they will be neglected — where they will have no chance. I would have loved my baby so — and cared for it so tenderly — and tried to give her every chance for good. And yet I wasn’t allowed to keep her.”
“It was God’s will, Anne,” said Marilla, helpless before the riddle of the universe — the WHY of undeserved pain. “And little Joy is better off.”
“I can’t believe THAT,” cried Anne bitterly. Then, seeing that Marilla looked shocked, she added passionately, “Why should she be born at all — why should any one be born at all — if she’s better off dead? I DON’T believe it is better for a child to die at birth than to live its life out — and love and be loved — and enjoy and suffer — and do its work — and develop a character that would give it a personality in eternity. And how do you know it was God’s will? Perhaps it was just a thwarting of His purpose by the Power of Evil. We can’t be expected to be resigned to THAT.”
“Oh, Anne, don’t talk so,” said Marilla, genuinely alarmed lest Anne were drifting into deep and dangerous waters. “We can’t understand — but we must have faith — we MUST believe that all is for the best. I know you find it hard to think so, just now. But try to be brave — for Gilbert’s sake. He’s so worried about you. You aren’t getting strong as fast as you should.”
“Oh, I know I’ve been very selfish,” sighed Anne. “I love Gilbert more than ever — and I want to live for his sake. But it seems as if part of me was buried over there in that little harbor graveyard — and it hurts so much that I’m afraid of life.”
“It won’t hurt so much always, Anne.”
“The thought that it may stop hurting sometimes hurts me worse than all else, Marilla.”
“Yes, I know, I’ve felt that too, about other things. But we all love you, Anne. Captain Jim has been up every day to ask for you — and Mrs. Moore haunts the place — and Miss Bryant spends most of her time, I think, cooking up nice things for you. Susan doesn’t like it very well. She thinks she can cook as well as Miss Bryant.”
“Dear Susan! Oh, everybody has been so dear and good and lovely to me, Marilla. I’m not ungrateful — and perhaps — when this horrible ache grows a little less — I’ll find that I can go on living.”
CHAPTER 20
LOST MARGARET
Anne found that she could go on living; the day came when she even smiled again over one of Miss Cornelia’s speeches. But there was something in the smile that had never been in Anne’s smile before and would never be absent from it again.
On the first day she was able to go for a drive Gilbert took her down to Four Winds Point, and left her there while he rowed over the channel to see a patient at the fishing village. A rollicking wind was scudding across the harbor and the dunes, whipping the water into white-caps and washing the sandshore with long lines of silvery breakers.
“I’m real proud to see you here again, Mistress Blythe,” said Captain Jim. “Sit down — sit down. I’m afeared it’s mighty dusty here today — but there’s no need of looking at dust when you can look at such scenery, is there?”
“I don’t mind the dust,” said Anne, “but Gilbert says I must keep in the open air. I think I’ll go and sit on the rocks down there.”
“Would you like company or would you
rather be alone?”
“If by company you mean yours I’d much rather have it than be alone,” said Anne, smiling. Then she sighed. She had never before minded being alone. Now she dreaded it. When she was alone now she felt so dreadfully alone.
“Here’s a nice little spot where the wind can’t get at you,” said Captain Jim, when they reached the rocks. “I often sit here. It’s a great place jest to sit and dream.”
“Oh — dreams,” sighed Anne. “I can’t dream now, Captain Jim — I’m done with dreams.”
“Oh, no, you’re not, Mistress Blythe — oh, no, you’re not,” said Captain Jim meditatively. “I know how you feel jest now — but if you keep on living you’ll get glad again, and the first thing you know you’ll be dreaming again — thank the good Lord for it! If it wasn’t for our dreams they might as well bury us. How’d we stand living if it wasn’t for our dream of immortality? And that’s a dream that’s BOUND to come true, Mistress Blythe. You’ll see your little Joyce again some day.”
“But she won’t be my baby,” said Anne, with trembling lips. “Oh, she may be, as Longfellow says, ‘a fair maiden clothed with celestial grace’ — but she’ll be a stranger to me.”
“God will manage better’n THAT, I believe,” said Captain Jim.
They were both silent for a little time. Then Captain Jim said very softly:
“Mistress Blythe, may I tell you about lost Margaret?”
“Of course,” said Anne gently. She did not know who “lost Margaret” was, but she felt that she was going to hear the romance of Captain Jim’s life.
“I’ve often wanted to tell you about her,” Captain Jim went on.
“Do you know why, Mistress Blythe? It’s because I want somebody to remember and think of her sometime after I’m gone. I can’t bear that her name should be forgotten by all living souls. And now nobody remembers lost Margaret but me.”
Then Captain Jim told the story — an old, old forgotten story, for it was over fifty years since Margaret had fallen asleep one day in her father’s dory and drifted — or so it was supposed, for nothing was ever certainly known as to her fate — out of the channel, beyond the bar, to perish in the black thundersquall which had come up so suddenly that long-ago summer afternoon. But to Captain Jim those fifty years were but as yesterday when it is past.
“I walked the shore for months after that,” he said sadly, “looking to find her dear, sweet little body; but the sea never give her back to me. But I’ll find her sometime, Mistress Blythe — I’ll find her sometime. She’s waiting for me. I wish I could tell you jest how she looked, but I can’t. I’ve seen a fine, silvery mist hanging over the bar at sunrise that seemed like her — and then again I’ve seen a white birch in the woods back yander that made me think of her. She had pale, brown hair and a little white, sweet face, and long slender fingers like yours, Mistress Blythe, only browner, for she was a shore girl. Sometimes I wake up in the night and hear the sea calling to me in the old way, and it seems as if lost Margaret called in it. And when there’s a storm and the waves are sobbing and moaning I hear her lamenting among them. And when they laugh on a gay day it’s HER laugh — lost Margaret’s sweet, roguish, little laugh. The sea took her from me, but some day I’ll find her. Mistress Blythe. It can’t keep us apart forever.”
“I am glad you have told me about her,” said Anne. “I have often wondered why you had lived all your life alone.”
“I couldn’t ever care for anyone else. Lost Margaret took my heart with her — out there,” said the old lover, who had been faithful for fifty years to his drowned sweetheart. “You won’t mind if I talk a good deal about her, will you, Mistress Blythe? It’s a pleasure to me — for all the pain went out of her memory years ago and jest left its blessing. I know you’ll never forget her, Mistress Blythe. And if the years, as I hope, bring other little folks to your home, I want you to promise me that you’ll tell THEM the story of lost Margaret, so that her name won’t be forgotten among humankind.”
CHAPTER 21
BARRIERS SWEPT AWAY
“Anne,” said Leslie, breaking abruptly a short
silence, “you don’t know how GOOD it is to be sitting here with you again — working — and talking — and being silent together.”
They were sitting among the blue-eyed grasses on the bank of the brook in Anne’s garden. The water sparkled and crooned past them; the birches threw dappled shadows over them; roses bloomed along the walks. The sun was beginning to be low, and the air was full of woven music. There was one music of the wind in the firs behind the house, and another of the waves on the bar, and still another from the distant bell of the church near which the wee, white lady slept. Anne loved that bell, though it brought sorrowful thoughts now.
She looked curiously at Leslie, who had thrown down her sewing and spoken with a lack of restraint that was very unusual with her.
“On that horrible night when you were so ill,” Leslie went on, “I kept thinking that perhaps we’d have no more talks and walks and WORKS together. And I realised just what your friendship had come to mean to me — just what YOU meant — and just what a hateful little beast I had been.”
“Leslie! Leslie! I never allow anyone to call my friends names.”
“It’s true. That’s exactly what I am — a hateful little beast. There’s something I’ve GOT to tell you, Anne. I suppose it will make you despise me, but I MUST confess it. Anne, there have been times this past winter and spring when I have HATED you.”
“I KNEW it,” said Anne calmly.
“You KNEW it?”
“Yes, I saw it in your eyes.”
“And yet you went on liking me and being my friend.”
“Well, it was only now and then you hated me, Leslie. Between times you loved me, I think.”
“I certainly did. But that other horrid feeling was always there, spoiling it, back in my heart. I kept it down — sometimes I forgot it — but sometimes it would surge up and take possession of me. I hated you because I ENVIED you — oh, I was sick with envy of you at times. You had a dear little home — and love — and happiness — and glad dreams — everything I wanted — and never had — and never could have. Oh, never could have! THAT was what stung. I wouldn’t have envied you, if I had had any HOPE that life would ever be different for me. But I hadn’t — I hadn’t — and it didn’t seem FAIR. It made me rebellious — and it hurt me — and so I hated you at times. Oh, I was so ashamed of it — I’m dying of shame now — but I couldn’t conquer it.
“That night, when I was afraid you mightn’t live — I thought I was going to be punished for my wickedness — and I loved you so then. Anne, Anne, I never had anything to love since my mother died, except Dick’s old dog — and it’s so dreadful to have nothing to love — life is so EMPTY — and there’s NOTHING worse than emptiness — and I might have loved you so much — and that horrible thing had spoiled it—”
Leslie was trembling and growing almost incoherent with the violence of her emotion.
“Don’t, Leslie,” implored Anne, “oh, don’t. I understand — don’t talk of it any more.”
“I must — I must. When I knew you were going to live I vowed that I would tell you as soon as you were well — that I wouldn’t go on accepting your friendship and companionship without telling you how unworthy I was of it. And I’ve been so afraid — it would turn you against me.”
“You needn’t fear that, Leslie.”
“Oh, I’m so glad — so glad, Anne.” Leslie clasped her brown, work-hardened hands tightly together to still their shaking. “But I want to tell you everything, now I’ve begun. You don’t remember the first time I saw you, I suppose — it wasn’t that night on the shore—”
“No, it was the night Gilbert and I came home. You were driving your geese down the hill. I should think I DO remember it! I thought you were so beautiful — I longed for weeks after to find out who you were.”
“I knew who YOU were, although I had never seen either
of you before. I had heard of the new doctor and his bride who were coming to live in Miss Russell’s little house. I — I hated you that very moment, Anne.”
“I felt the resentment in your eyes — then I doubted — I thought I must be mistaken — because WHY should it be?”
“It was because you looked so happy. Oh, you’ll agree with me now that I AM a hateful beast — to hate another woman just because she was happy, — and when her happiness didn’t take anything from me! That was why I never went to see you. I knew quite well I ought to go — even our simple Four Winds customs demanded that. But I couldn’t. I used to watch you from my window — I could see you and your husband strolling about your garden in the evening — or you running down the poplar lane to meet him. And it hurt me. And yet in another way I wanted to go over. I felt that, if I were not so miserable, I could have liked you and found in you what I’ve never had in my life — an intimate, REAL friend of my own age. And then you remember that night at the shore? You were afraid I would think you crazy. You must have thought I was.”
“No, but I couldn’t understand you, Leslie. One moment you drew me to you — the next you pushed me back.”
“I was very unhappy that evening. I had had a hard day. Dick had been very — very hard to manage that day. Generally he is quite good-natured and easily controlled, you know, Anne. But some days he is very different. I was so heartsick — I ran away to the shore as soon as he went to sleep. It was my only refuge. I sat there thinking of how my poor father had ended his life, and wondering if I wouldn’t be driven to it some day. Oh, my heart was full of black thoughts! And then you came dancing along the cove like a glad, light-hearted child. I — I hated you more then than I’ve ever done since. And yet I craved your friendship. The one feeling swayed me one moment; the other feeling the next. When I got home that night I cried for shame of what you must think of me. But it’s always been just the same when I came over here. Sometimes I’d be happy and enjoy my visit. And at other times that hideous feeling would mar it all. There were times when everything about you and your house hurt me. You had so many dear little things I couldn’t have. Do you know — it’s ridiculous — but I had an especial spite at those china dogs of yours. There were times when I wanted to catch up Gog and Magog and bang their pert black noses together! Oh, you smile, Anne — but it was never funny to me. I would come here and see you and Gilbert with your books and your flowers, and your household gods, and your little family jokes — and your love for each other showing in every look and word, even when you didn’t know it — and I would go home to — you know what I went home to! Oh, Anne, I don’t believe I’m jealous and envious by nature. When I was a girl I lacked many things my schoolmates had, but I never cared — I never disliked them for it. But I seem to have grown so hateful—”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 120
