After Many Years: Twenty-One "Long-Lost" Stories by L.M. Montgomery.
Title: After Many Years: Twenty-One "Long-Lost" Stories.
Author: L.M. Montgomery.
Genre: Fiction, literature, short stories.
Country: Canada.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1900, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1918, 1919, 1921, 1923, 1926, 1931, 1934, 1936, 1938, 1939 (this collection 2017).
Summary: A collection of 21 short stories that have never been re-printed since their initial periodicals. In The Chivers Light (1900) (originally published under the title The Glenn's Light), against his father's instructions, Jack leaves the lighthouse he's responsible for and goes to the mainland, but is horrified to find out he is unable to get back in time when the weather takes the turn for the worse. In Elvie's Necklace (1906), when Elvie loses a valuable gold chain, the local errand boy Dannie is blamed for it, but the culprits may just be the last ones anyone would expect. In What Happened at Brixley's (1906), a local bully and braggart is challenged to explore a haunted house, but there is a harsh lesson in store for him. In Janie's Bouquet (1907), a little girl's gesture of love and well-wishes helps an ailing young woman find purpose and a will to live. In Jean's Birthday Party, when one of the girls in class can't afford to have a birthday party, her friends decide to make the day special for her nonetheless. In Maggie's Kitten (1907), a little girl's beloved secret kitten may just have the power to mend a long-standing rift between two families. In The Old Homestead (1907), an elderly couple retires from quiet farm life to a life in a busy, bustling city, but their happiness about the fact may not be as sincere as they would each like the other to believe. In The Pineapple Apron (1908), rivalry and jealously rear their ugly heads when girlfriends compete over the most unique and difficult apron patterns. In How Bobby Got to the Picnic (1909), when Bobby is heartbroken that he is unable to go to a picnic for lack of appropriate dress clothes, his friend Frank learns a lesson in the beauty of sacrificing for those less fortunate. In Peter of the Lane, a grave old judge and a bold young boy form an unlikely but firm friendship, but unbeknownst to them both, they have something, or someone, in common. In For the Good of Anthony (1910), a woman decides to meddle in the affairs of her impetuous and unforgiving sister, when she realizes the latter is about to lose the love of her life to stubbornness and empty pride. Our Neighbours at the Tansy Patch (1918) is a story that describes a family's eccentric, amusing, and unexpectedly delightful neighbours at the spot where they spend their summers. In The Matchmaker (1919), a bored Mrs. Churchill engages in many lies and manipulations for a very thorough matchmaking scheme, but she has a huge shock in store for all her seemingly effective efforts. In The Bloom of May: The Story of an Old Apple Tree and Those Who Loved It (1921), a beautiful tree beloved by the whole neighbourhood for many years witnesses love and joy, as well as tragedy and heartbreak. Hill o' the Winds (1923) is a romance story of Romney Cooper and Dorcas Edgelow, and the many things like false pride, century-old family feuds, mischievous meddling little boys and silly aunts, that stand in their way. In Jim's House (1926), Margaret spends her vacation away from the city helping Jim make a perfect house for his future wife, whom he has awaited five years, but her happiness turns to regret when she realizes how strongly she grows to feel for Jim and the house they made together. The Mirror (1931) is a story of a magic mirror, and of a bride who looks into it an hour before her wedding to make chilling discoveries about her husband-to-be. In Tomorrow Comes (1934), little Judy lives a strict and miserable life at her grandmother's house, constantly reminded that her and her mother were unloved and abandoned by her father, but when Judy encounters a mysterious man in a house on an island that makes her heart tighten, the story she's been told her whole life suddenly unravels. In The Use of Her Legs (1936), when a woman who hasn't used her legs in ten years and refuses to be happy because of it is faced with a religious zealot, she experiences a personal miracle in a moment of great distress. In Janet's Rebellion (1938), sixteen-year-old Janet is sick and tired of wearing hand-me-down dresses all her life, and decides to do something about it on the day of a friend's wedding. In More Blessed to Give (1939), when a brilliant and beloved student can't afford to return to her last year at college, one of the wealthy girls in her class decides to find a way to help which would be accepted.
My rating: 7.5/10
My review:
♥ Janie was down in the garden behind the sweet-pea trellis... crying! It was not often Janie cried, but when she did-and if it were summertime-she always hid behind the sweet-pea trellis and had it out. Nobody could see her there until it was all over, and the sweet peas were usually splendid comforters. They were always so bright and lighthearted and they simply cheered small girls up in spite of themselves.
But even the sweet peas could not comfort Janie this time; she didn't even want to see them, they looked so provokingly happy. They had never been disappointed in the dearest wish of their hearts; why, sweet peas simply did not know what trouble was!
♥ On the afternoon of the next day two of the hospital doctors were anxiously discussing the case of a patient in Ward Three.
"I'm not satisfied," one of them was saying. "She isn't making the progress she should. The operation was successful and there is no reason why she shouldn't recover rapidly; but there seems to be a lack of vitality. I should say the girl doesn't want to live... doesn't seem to have any interest in living, in fact. If she can't be roused soon there is no hope for her. Such a case is the hardest we have to deal with. When nature refuses to aid us we can do very little. The girl is dying simply because she isn't trying to live."
♥ Something glad and happy stirred in her heart. Somebody did care... somebody loved her... somebody thought of her. She must get well; she wanted to get well and go back to work and visit that dear old garden again. After all, life was worth living, worth striving for.
♥ She and Janie had delightful times together and Janie learned, to her delight and astonishment, the part her flowers had played in Miss Edna's recovery.
"O," she said happily. "I'm so glad that I have an Aunt Maggie. She suggested it, you know. It's a splendid thing to have an Aunt Maggie in the family."
"Yes; and it's a splendid thing to have a little girl with a warm loving heart in a family, too," said Miss Edna with a kiss.
~~Janie's Bouquet.
♥ "I wish the day were over," she thought. "A birthday like this seems as if it would never end. Maybe when it is yesterday I won't mind not having a party any more."
~~Jean's Birthday Party.
♥ He stood with his arms on the yard gate, feasting his eyes on the gray buildings and gardens. There was a lonely, deserted look about the place that hurt him, but it was home. He would spend the whole afternoon here. He would go over the farm in its length and breadth and visit every field and nook.
.."..I didn't think you were hankering for Roseneath. You seemed so taken up with everything in town and as busy and happy as if you were just in the place that fitted you," cried Priscilla. "I-I-couldn't bear to admit how disappointed I was after being so sure of myself. I wanted to be back here. Why, Father, I missed the loneliness of it! I just wanted to feel lonely again, with all my heart. And the worst of it was, it came between us. I was determined you should not suspect what I felt like. I don't care now, when you're feeling the same way. So I came out to-day.I brought a lunch with me, and I mean to stay all night at the Hendersons'. I've been all over the farm already. I wish I'd never left it. We were old fools to run after new things at our time in life."
~~The Old Homestead.
♥ Bobby was lying prone among the lush grasses behind the dairy, crying as if his heart would break. The maple trees over him were whispering softly, and sunbeams flickered down through their boughs to dance over Bobby's tow-coloured hair and play bo-peep with each other; a robin perched on a bough and twittered an invitation to Bobby to cheer up; and a big, golden bee hummed in the air above him. But Bobby refused to be comforted.
Now, who was Bobby, and why was he crying behind the dairy on such a lovely, sunshiny summer morning, when everything in the world-boys, birds, and bees-ought to have been as happy as the sunshine?
Bobby had been Bobby, and nothing else, as long as he could remember.
~~How Bobby Got to the Picnic.
♥ It was a fine old lane, running just back of Elmcroft, under big chestnuts, and debouching into a sunny by-street below, whereon lived people whom to know was to be unknown. None of them ever ventured into the lane, for it was parer of the Elmcroft estate, and everybody in Marsden knew that the judge did not like trespassers. He had never met anyone there in his morning walks, and he had come to look upon the lane as the one place where he was perfectly safe from all interruption; consequently he carried there his griefs and anxieties and walked them off or wrestled them down, going back to the world the same suave, courtly man of iron it thought it knew so well.
♥ "..Very wet and muddy, sir. Peter made me carry it into the kitchen and lay it on the rug, because he said his aunt had told him on no account to dirty his clean clothes, and be always obeyed her when he could because there were often times when he couldn't."
♥ "Where did you live before you came here?" asked the judge.
"In Westville."
The judge frowned. He had his own reasons for disliking the name of Westville but Peter, striding blithely along with his hands in his pockets, did not see the frown, and perhaps would not have cared in the least if he had.
♥ "..It's a terrible thing to part with your friends, isn't it? It hurts your feelings so much, doesn't it?"
"Yes, it hurts them so much that they sometimes never get over it," said the judge gruffly. Perhaps he was gruff because he was so unaccustomed to talking about his feelings. Marsden people would have said he hadn't any to talk about.
♥ "..She was laughing all the time. I like a girl who laughs, don't you?"
"I suppose it is pleasanter," conceded the judge.
♥ "Averil has sent you a kiss," said Peter on another day. "I wrote her about you and what good friends we were and how you helped with the spelling, and that's why she sent it. If you will stoop down I'll give it to you."
For a moment the judge looked as if he meant to refuse; then he stooped down and Peter gave him a hearty smack.
♥ "Are you very bad often?" queried the judge with a twinkle.
"Quite often," said Peter candidly. "Aunt Mary Ellen says I'm awful stubborn. Aunt Mary Ellen is stubborn, too-but she calls it determined-so, of course, there's bound to be trouble when we don't have the same opinion. But I tell you Aunt Mary Ellen is a fine woman, a very fine woman."
♥ "I'm sorry got that little girl if you hate her, because she has missed a splendid grandfather," said Peter. "You would make a splendid grandfather, you know, if you had a little practice."
"How would you like to have me for your grandfather?" asked the judge.
"I think I'd like it very much, but it can't be. Grandfathers have to be born."
♥ "-and tell Averil-tell Averil..."
But the little knight's message to his lady went with him into the shadow.
~~Peter of the Lane.
♥ "..You are setting the feet of your pride on the neck of your happiness, Dearest."
~~For the Good of Anthony.
♥ On another occasion Granny touted an automobile. One, filled with gay hotel guests, had stopped at the gate. Its driver had intended to ask for some water, but Granny did not allow him to utter a word.
"Get out of this with your demon machine," she yelled. She caught up the nearest missile, which happened to be her dinner plate, and hurled it at him. It missed his face by a hair's breadth and landed squarely, grease and all, in a fashionable lady's silken lap. Granny followed this up by a series of fearsome yells and maledictions, of which the mildest were "May ye never have a night without a bad dream," and "May ye always be looking for something and never finding it," and-finally-"May ye all die tonight. I'll pray for that, I will.
The dismayed driver got his car away as quickly as possible and Granny laughed loud and long.
♥ One line, however, in a poem which Dorinda addressed to the returned soldiers of the Boer War, always shone like a star in our family memory: "Canada, like a maiden, welcomes back her sons."
♥ "T.B. would not allow Granny to abuse Aunt Lily."
"How did you stop it?" queried Salome anxiously.
"The first time she turned her tongue loose on Aunt Lily I went up to her and bit her," said T.B. coolly.
"You ought to bite her oftener," said Salome vindictively.
"There ain't none of the rest of us worth standing up for," said T.B. "Granny's tough biting."
♥ "..I could wish that T.B. used less slang. But English undefiled is seldom heard to-day. Alas, for it!"
~~Our Neighbours at the Tansy Patch.
♥ "..She told me so herself. Told me she went to the Bible-she's always "going to the Bible," you know-and turned up a verse, and every time it was a warning against Alden getting married. I've no patience with her and her odd ways. Why can't she go to church and be a decent creature like the rest of us in Lancaster? But no, she must set up a religion for herself, consisting of "going to the Bible." Last fall, when that valuable horse took sick-worth four hundred if he was a dollar-instead of sending for the Clancy vet as we all begged her to do, she "went to the Bible" and turned up a verse: 'The Lord gave and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord" So send for the vet she would not, and the horse died. Fancy applying that verse in such a way! I call it irreverent."
♥ Stella was a pale, slender thing, shy but intensely sweet. She had large, purplish-grey eyes, with very black lashes and brows, and when she was excited a wild-rise hue spread over her cheeks. She was not considered pretty but nobody ever forgot her face.
♥ "Do you know, Ellen," said Richard Chase solemnly, "I have a secret leaning towards evolution myself."
"So you've told me for the last thirty years," retorted Mrs. Churchill. "Well, believe what you like, Richard. Thank God nobody could ever make me believe that I was descended from a monkey."
"You don't look it, I confess, you comely woman," said Richard Chase. "I see no simian resemblances in your rosy, comfortable, eminently respectable physiognomy. Still, your great-grandmother a million times removed swung herself from branch to branch by her tail. Science proves that, Ellen, take it or leave it."
"I'll leave it then."
♥ She had burdened her conscience with innumerable fibs; she had confirmed her rheumatism; she had ruined her parlor carpet, destroyed two treasured heirlooms and spoiled her dining room ceiling; she had alienated the affections of her dearest friend, perhaps forever; she had given Richard Chase something to tease her about the rest of her life; she had put a weapon into Mary Churchill's merciless hand, which, if she, Mrs. Churchill, knew anything about human nature, Mary would not fail to use upon occasion; she had got in wrong with Alden and Stella and could only get out by a confession too humiliating to make. And all for what? To bring about a marriage between two people who were already engaged.
"I have had enough of matchmaking," said Mrs. Churchill firmly.
~~The Matchmaker.
♥ In Maytime "Miser Tom's tree" was a wonderful thing. The blossoms were snow white with no tint of rose, and they covered its boughs so thickly that hardly a leaf could be seen. It always bloomed; there were no "off" years for it. Old homesteads, sacred to the loves of the living and the memories of the dead, were all around it. Violets grew thickly in the grass at its roots, and the little cross-lots path ran by it and looped lightly up and over the hill-a little, lovable, red path over which the vagabond wandered and the lover went to his lady, and children to joy, and tired men home.
♥ ..but the seat remained, and almost every hour of the day some passer-by would step aside from the path to rest a while under the great tree, and look up into its fragrant arch of bloom with eyes that saw it or saw it not, according as they were or were not holden by human passion. The slim, pale girl, with the delicate air and the large wistful brown eyes, did not see it as she sat there with the young man who had overtaken her on the path. She had loved him always, it seemed to her; and there had been times when she thought he loved, or might love her. But now she knew he never would. He was joyously telling her of his coming marriage to another girl. She was so pale she could not turn any paler, and she kept her eyes down so that he might not see the anguish in them. She forced her lips to utter some words of good wishes, and he was so wrapped up in the egotism of his own happiness that he found nothing wanting; she had always been a quiet, dull little thing. When he was gone she sat there for a long time because she was too unhappy to move. "I shall hate this place forever" she said aloud, looking up at the beautiful tree.
♥ "How I shall always love this dear old tree," she said. "This place will always be sacred to me."
The old tree suddenly waved its boughs over them as if in blessing. So many lovers had sat beneath it; it had screened so many kisses. Many of the lips that had kissed were ashes now, but the miracle of love renewed itself every springtime.
♥ At sunset an old man came to the dim, spring valley and sat for a while, seeing visions and dreaming dreams. He was an ugly old man, but he had very clear, beautiful, blue eyes, which told you that he had kept the child heart. His neighbours thought that he was a failure; he had been tired down to farm drudgery all his life, he lived poorly, and was sometimes cold and sometimes hungry. But he dwelt in an ideal world of the imagination, of which none of his critics knew anything. He was a poet, and he had composed a great many pieces of poetry, but he had never written any of them down. They existed only in his mind and memory. He had recited them all a hundred times to the old tree. It was his only confidant. The ghosts of many springs haunted it for him; he always came there when it was in bloom. He was an odd, ridiculous figure enough, if anyone had seen him bent and warped and unkempt, gesticulating awkwardly as he recited his poems. But it was his hour, and he felt every inch a king in his own realm. For a little time he was strong and young and splendid and beautiful, an accredited master of song to a listening, enraptured world. None of his prosperous neighbours ever lived through such an hour; he would not have exchanged places with one of them.
♥ She had seen the old tree blossom white for many springs, and she knew she would never see it again. She had a deadly disease, and her doctor had told her that day that she had only a few more weeks to live. And she did not want to die; she was afraid of death.
A young moon set behind the dark hills, and the old tree was very wonderful in the starlight. It seemed to have a life and a speech of its own, and she felt as if it were talking to her, consoling her, encouraging her. The universe was full of love, it said, and spring came everywhere, and in death you opened and shut a door. There were beautiful things on the other side of the door-one need not be afraid. Then suddenly she was not afraid any longer. Love seemed all about her and around her, as if breathed out from some great, invisible, hovering Tenderness. One could not be afraid where love was-and love was everywhere. She laid her face against the trunk of the old tree and rested.
♥ He had a thin, pinched, merciless mouth, and he looked around him with eyes that held nothing in reverence. All the land he could see around him belonged to him-or he thought it did. Really it did not belong to him at all, but to the old dumb poet and the little orphan who loved it. Miser Tom thought he wads very rich, but he was horribly poor, for not only living creature loved him, not even a dog or a cat.
♥ She had brought him here once, when her tired old eyes had been young and eager and laughter-lighgted, and had sat with him on the grass under the tree, and he had rolled over in it and laughed, and clutched at the violets with his little dimpled hands. He had been dead for forty years, but he was still unforgotten. She always felt that he was very near her here by the old tree-nearer than anywhere else, by reason of that one day they had played together under it. When she went away she had an odd idea which she would not have uttered for the world-of which she was even a little ashamed, thinking it foolish and perhaps wicked-that she left him there, playing with the gypsies of the night, the little wandering, whispering, tricksy winds, the moths, the beetles, the shadows, in his eternal youth under the white, enfolding arms of Miser Tom's old apple tree.
~~The Bloom of May: The Story of an Old Apple Tree and Those Who Loved It.
♥ Few of Cousin Clorinda's associates would have supposed she could ever be in want of something to say. But she always found it very hard to talk to Elizabeth, that high-bred, stately, old maiden Lady of the Hill, who could-so Doctor John was wont to aver-be silent in all the languages of the world. At least Cousin Elizabeth never talked the language of gossip, and gossip was Cousin Clorinda's mother tongue."
♥ "An old ewe dressed like a lamb," she thought contemptuously.
She herself wore dark purple velvet with a real lace collar. It was old fashioned but very handsome. She returned to her embroidery with the comfortable feeling born of a justified contempt for somebody we have never really liked.
♥ "..I am not, never have been and never will be actually in love."
"Why?" said cousin Clorinda.
"Because I have an ideal.
"Shucks, we all have. I had an ideal forty years ago. He was tall, like you; gray-eyed, like you; curly-haired; musical. And I married Ned Wallace, who was short and had hair so straight it wouldn't even brush and who couldn't tell "God Save the King" from "Money Musk." As for his eyes, I've lived with him thirty-five years and I don't know even now what colour they are exactly. I think they're green. But I've been happy with him."
♥ "Cousin Clorinda," where is the sense of keeping it up?" he pleaded.
"There isn't any. But he's a good lasting passion. You get over love but never over hate. And as for the sense of it, there's no sense in heaps of things we do. There's no sense in your forswearing marriage and the comforts of home because you've got an impossible ideal. Still-you do it."
"Still-I do it," echoed Ronmney in a melancholy tone. "You're right, perfectly right, divine one. Man cannot live by bread alone; he must have either feuds or ideals. My ideal means everything to me, everything..."
♥ He whistled gayly and strode on. Everything was good. He felt like a boy again. The rice lilies were as thick as ever in the shore fields and the margin of the pond as pink with water witches. Beyond, in the dunes, was a wild, sweet loveliness of salt-withered grasses and piping breezes. Far out, the sea was dotted with sails that were silver in the magic of morning sunlight.
♥ And her voice was a sweet, throaty, summery drawl. What a voice for love making! Romney stood there and imagined her making love in it.
♥ This Edgelow girl had the smile of Mona Lisa, the everlasting lure and provocation that drives men mad and writes scarlet pages in dim historical records.
♥ "..Nevertheless, there are certain things I must remember henceforth."
Romney held up his left hand and checked them off on his fingers: "First, she is an Edgelow, therefore born to hate me; second, she is an heiress, therefore taboo; third, I am poor as a rat and likely to remain so, therefore out of the running; fourth, I think she is a bit of a coquette, therefore to be shunned; and fifth-" Romney paused for a moment. "And fifth, she is the sweetest, most adorable, most desirable thing that ever looked allurement at a man out of a pair of-of-of-heavens, I've forgotten after all to find out what colour her eyes were. Therefore, I am a besotted fool!"
♥ "Do you," said Romney shamelessly, "happen to know who the enchanted princess is who walks occasionally in yonder fair pleasance beyond the cedar hedge?"
"Meaning old Jim's harden?" asked Samuel, transferring a vicious-looking little brown snake from his pants pocket to his shirt pocket.
"Yes."
"Don't know nothin' of her. Watched her through the hedge last night. She'd be good looking if 'tweren't for her freckles. Gee, but they're thick!"
.."Then you have no information to give me concerning our mysterious stranger?"
"Nope. I kin find out all about her thought if you're so set on it. What," asked Samuel seriously, "what makes you like her so well?"
Romney was flabbergasted. He thought he had been very cool and impersonal and detached in his questions, and here was this imp.
"Samuel, my boy, you have a very vile habit of jumping at conclusions. Simply because I betray an entirely natural curiosity regarding a lady who is my next-door neighbour, why do you absurdly suppose that I have a deep personal interest in her?"
"Cause you don't talk English when you ask questions about her," rejoined Samuel, fishing up another snake, a very live one this time. "All them big words mean you're bashful talking about her."
♥ Miss Edgelow had, so it seemed, a "way" with boys. Samuel liked her but kept his head. After all he was the retainer of a clan that was at feud with hers. When he found out that shew was not afraid of snakes he respected her also, but for all that he had made up his mind that he was not going to have any "courting" between her and Romney.
Samuel wanted Romney wholly for himself; he loved him and he wanted him for chum and playfellow. This would, Samuel knew with a deadly, instinctive certainty, be all spoiled if he began running after a "skirt." Men were no good when they began running after skirts. Besides, this particular skirt was an Edgelow, and you couldn't trust an Edgelow. She would likely as not make a fool of Romney. Sarah Dean, down at Clifton, had made a fool of Homer Gibson and Homer had hanged himself. Samuel was not going to have any hangings at Hill o' the Winds. This Edgelow girl must have her claws clipped in time
♥ "I told you three o'clock would bring wisdom. Three o'clock in the morning is the wisest and most accursed hour of the lock. At three o'clock I saw clearly how impossible it all was."
"At three o'clock I saw that it was quite possible," averred Clorinda. "Why not?"
"She is, or will be, disgustingly rich."
"All the better. You can't live on love."
♥ "I won't discuss the matter if you're not going to be serious," said Cousin Clorinda, really annoyed. She had lain awake most of the night constructing a gorgeous castle in the air for Romney, and it was aggravating to find that he rescued to inhabit it, and refused so frivolously.
♥ It was starlight when Romney went home. A white filmy mist was hanging over the river valley. He crossed the sea fields and climbed Hill o' the Winds. The dew was cold and the night was full of mystery and wonder and sheer magic. The two houses on the hill and their old gardens were veiled in it. It was an expectant night, a night when things intended to happen.
..He kissed the rose.
"It's too dear a night to go to sleep," he said. "I will lay me down in the hammock and dream sweet, wonderful, foolish dreams that will be all the more wonderful and foolish and sweet because they can never be anything but dreams. I will dream of a world where there is no three o'clock in the morning."
♥ "..But he wrote a poem about the Rose of Eden. When Eve left Eden she contrived to carry off with her one of its roses, and wherever one of its blood-red petals fell sprang up a Rose-of-Eden tree. You find 'em here and there all over the world. And every daughter of Eve-and every son of Adam, though Kipling doesn't mention that-shall once at least "ere the tale of his years be done" smell the scent of an Eden rose, have his one glorious moment when he sees his dream, even though he may never grasp it. And that one moment, Aunt Elizabeth, makes life worthwhile, even though all the rest of it be roseless."
♥ "Throw myself away on him! Uncle, do you realize that I've just told you I hate the creature?"
"See that you keep on hating him then, miss. There's a proverb, if I remember aright, to the effect that hate is only love that has missed its way."
♥ They met face to face. They smiled at each other as if they had expected to meet. Romney said it was a lovely evening and Miss Edgelow said it looked like rain-it didn't-and then they walked on together because there was nothing else to do.
Each of them thoroughly distrusted the other but neither wanted to be anywhere else. Miss Edgelow told herself again that it would be a pleasant and righteous thing to teach this young man a lesson. Romney told himself that if Miss Edgelow wanted to flirt, well and good; he would play the game with zest and get as much amusement out of it as she did. So they were both ready to be surprisingly agreeable to each other and both of them felt suddenly that Hill o' the Winds was a dear, old, quaint, romantic spot, full of poetry and steeped in romance. Romney as he walked beside her felt perfectly happy and satisfied.
"Now why?" one part of him asked the other. "I've often walked in lanes before. It can't be the lane. Dorcas Edgelow is a beauty, but I've walked with women just as beautiful. Why?"
There was no answer so he gave up asking the question and enjoyed his satisfaction. The Whispering Lane was a delightful spot. The warm air was full of elusive wood fragrances that mingled distractingly with the faint perfume that exhaled from Sylvia's-no, confound it, Dorcas'-dress. Shafts of sunlight fell through it; now and then one struck athwart Sylvia's hair and intensified its blue-black sheen.
Robins whistled here and there. Little ferns brushed Sylvia's silken ankles. There were opening in the trees like green, arched windows, and one saw enchanting little landscapes through them.
♥ They watched the valley in a long, delicious silence. It was luminous in hazes of purple and pearl. Great clouds pulled themselves up in dazzling masses over the iridescent sea, thunderclouds with white crests and gorges of purple shadow.
Miss Edgelow did not try to talk much. She knew exactly the value of significant silences when you were teaching a certain kind of lesson. She knew that foolish women chattered too much, that wise ones let nature talk fore them.
♥ So he gave himself over to his memories of her and gloated over them, the delicate, half-mocking, half-alluring undertones in her voice, the delicious golden spots on her face, the charming gestures of her wonderful hands. O, she was quite perfect, just as he had always known she would be.
There was no danger of his falling in love with her. There were a score of indisputable reasons for safeguard. So there was no danger in dwelling on her perfection, no danger in recalling her ways and words and glances-but he had forgotten after all to find out the real colour of her eyes!-no danger in dreaming of what might have been when one knew it couldn't possibly be. In short, there was no danger in a skillful flirtation when both parties knew exactly what they were about.
♥ "..I am kind and amiable when I feel like it. I never lose my temper, though I may mislay it occasionally. I got to bed early at least once a week. I bear other people's misfortunes with equanimity. And I never tell anyone that he has a cold. I'd really make an admirable husband."
♥ Now he, Romney, was not a fool
True, sometimes at three o'clock at night wisdom and prudence seemed rather ugly and sordid virtues, and Romney thought it might have been just as well to let himself go, to put his neck under her scornful little foot and let her play with his heart and throw it away, and spend all his wealth and power of loving in one splendid, unreasonable, unreasoning burst of folly. But around the rest of the clock he was complacent and kept telling himself he had done well to keep fast hold of his heart.
♥ "..And he made love so artistically. It was quite a pleasure to listen to him."
"he must have had heaps of practice"-still more viciously.
"The same idea occurred to me," said Miss Edgelow composedly. "I think that was why I didn't marry him. A man with a talent like that couldn't bury it in a napkin. He'd have to keep on using it. The second object of my affections was a professor of McGill. He was the cleverest man I ever met."
"Moon-face, pursy-mouth, tortoise-shell glasses! I can see him," said Romney.
"He was very intellectual looking," murmured Miss Edgelow. "And yet he asked my opinion about things. That was his way of making love. It was agreeable. But I had a presentiment that after we were married he would stop asking my opinions. That would not be agreeable."
♥ "..I have never forgotten Aunt Fanny's eyes. She died by inches through the years. Most of the the tragedies were sudden and speedy."
"Tell me about them-if you don't mind talking about them."
"O, I don't. I'm rather proud of my family ghosts and demons. I shall be one of them some day, and I shall come and haunt this old place. Our house in Montreal isn't really ghostable. I shall wander about this old garden and my ghost chum will be Thyra Edhgelow, Great-uncle Fairfax's bride. Just a few weeks after her marriage she went gayly out to those woods away over there to gather nuts an never returned."
♥ "At least she was in earnest. She didn't play at loving," he said, as they turned away.
"No; but wouldn't it have been better if she had?" retorted Miss Edgelow.
"Undoubtedly. Yet I think I rather like ladies who love in earnest."
♥ "Poor girl," repeated Cousin Clorinda.
"Why do you pity her?" cried Romney, aggrieved.
"Because it must be very hard to be as deeply in love as she is with a young man so utterly insensate and blind and pig-headed as you," said Cousin Clorinda calmly.
~~Hill O' the Winds.
♥ "I felt," Margaret said, responding to the challenge in Jim's eyes, "as if I wanted to get a broom and sweep off all the gingerbread and frippery and wooden lace."
Exactly! Any sensible woman would feel the same."
"It's an elegant house," said Mrs. Kennedy, a trifle warmly. Her brother had built it; the matter was slightly personal.
"It is elegant, with all the term implies," agreed Jim gravely. "Far too elegant for a humble schoolmaster like me. It would own me, body and soul. I'd have to carry it with me wherever I went-on my back, like a snail. I want a house I can love, and that Friend Cat can boss. O, I'll find one! I don't know where, but I feel it in my bones: luck's just waiting round the corner for me. My house is somewhere, wanting me as badly as I want it. Come, Friend Cat. We'll walk up the spruce road and talk it over."
♥ Margaret went out to the garden and lay in a hammock under the trees, doing nothing.
O, how sweet it was to do nothing in the beautiful silence! Margaret had been working in a department store for twelve years, and she hated it. She always felt that she was in the grip of an octopus that was slowly devouring her, and would never let her go as long as there was a bone left to crack. She had two weeks' vacation once a year, and had to spend it on a lonely farm with the grouchy old uncle and aunt who had brought her up and who expected her to work hard at weeding and milking and pie-baking, all her little two weeks.
She always felt more tired when she went back to work than when she had left it. But she had never rebelled. There was nothing of the revolutionary in her. She was a little brown thing; her dark brown eyes were too soft and shadowy to be black, and apart from her eyes she was neither pretty nor ugly, just insignificant. She had had two chances of marriage; but though in the abstract she had thought she would marry anybody who would take her out of that horrible transfer and change department, when it came to the concrete she found she couldn't do it. Nobody would ever marry her now.
♥ "..Never mind a hat-you don't want a hat on an evening like this. I like the thought of that smooth brown head of yours slipping through the gray-green trunks and the long green boughs. Your hair is just the brown that belongs to the woods."
♥ "..And bats! It's a great place for bats. I like 'em-nice, queer, creepy, mysterious creatures, coming out of nowhere. There's one now-s-s-woop!"
♥ "..And I want you to notice especially that little gate over yonder. It isn't really needed; it opens only into the woods. But isn't it a gate? I love a gate like that; it's full of promise. There may be something wonderful beyond. A gate is always a mystery anyhow: it lures, it is a symbol. That's a nice bit of garden, too, don't you think? Of course I haven't much land, but the sky is all mine."
♥ Margaret had laid the fire, meaning that Isabel should light it with her own hand the first evening she came as Jim's wife to Jim's house. But she made no effort to dissuade Jim. She only nestled down a little closer in her corner. She had come suddenly to the end of everything. Everything. Life seemed simply cut off. It sickened her to think of the transfer department. She would not think of it. For a little while she would think of her home-yes, her house-and of Jim. Not even of Isabel.
When the fire blazed up, Jim came over and sat down on the settle beside her. Friend Cat hopped up and sat between them. Up blazed the merry flames; they shimmered over the old piano, they glistened on the brass candlesticks, they danced over the glass doors of the cupboard where the willowware dishes were, they darted through the kitchen door, and the row of brown and blue bowls Margaret had arranged on the dresser winked back at them. The room was full of the scent of the rose-jar in the sideboard-a haunting scent like all the lost perfumes of old, unutterable sweet years.
"This is home," said Jim softly. "It's lovelier than I ever dreamed it being. And it's your creation, Margaret."
Margaret did not answer. She was looking at Jim, as he gazed into the future-his black hair, his smiling eyes, his whimsical face. She was recalling all his friendly looks and jests and quips and subtle compliments. It was all she could ever have of him. For just this half hour she would give herself up to enchantment. The future was Isabel's, but this half hour was hers. She shut her eyes and prayed: "Help me to remember every moment of this-never to forget one single breath of it."
When she opened her eyes Jim was looking at her.
"We've been good friends," he said.
Margaret nodded.
"We'll just sit here and think about it all," he said. "We won't talk. But we'll think it all over-everything-until the fire burns out."
♥ "Anyway, Friend Cat doesn't like her. He knows-and I know-that she is the kind of woman who likes cats "in their place," said Margaret vindictively, and took immense satisfaction out of knowing it.
♥ It was a perfect evening, full of nice whispery sounds. Summer had stolen back for one more day of dream and glamour. When she reached the little house the Lombardy poplars were in dark purple silhouette against a crocus sky, and there was one milk-white star over the big pines, like a pearl on a silver-green lake.
The robins were whistling sleepily in the firs and the moist air was fragrant with the tang of balsam. O, how lovely and dear it all was. But the little house looked very pathetic to her: a casket rifled of its jewels, a lamp with the flame gone out.
♥ "Married!"
Margaret stopped squirming and stood quite still.
"Of course. You can't live here in this house with me unless we do. There'd be talk. And you've got to live here; it's your house! It's always been your house!"
"But-don't you care-Isabel-"
"Isabel's a darling," said Jim. "She's saved everybody heaps of trouble. I love her bushels. But you... you're mine! I knew that, way back in summer. That's why I lit that fire here that night. I didn't care a hoot whether the chimney drew or not. I just wanted to sit here with you and pretend we were a honeymoon couple.
"I thought it would be all I ever could have. I meant to do my duty and marry Isabel, of course. I was such a vain, besotted fool! I really believed she wanted me. Point of honour, and all that. That angel of a girl has solved everybody's problems. I'm going to give her a corking kiss for it when she comes back. And so will you-won't you now, Mrs. Jim Kennedy?"
"O, I will-I will," said Margaret, not knowing in the least what it was Jim had asked her to do.
"But give me one first-now," said Jim.
~~Jim's House.
♥ Why could she not help thinking about Star-Star who should have been here to drape her veil and arrange her roses; Star, who had died, nobody knew why, one dark, haunted November afternoon just like this three years ago. She wanted to think of Lester and their exquisite love and the wonderful life before them-and she could think of nothing but Star. She had thought of Star when she wakened that morning to see that wild red sunrise through the trees; she had thought of her all the forenoon of hurry and preparation; and now it almost seemed that Star was with her in the room.
Star, who kept everyone laughing; Star, with her body like a young sapling not to be broken, however it might bend; Star, with her eyes like brown marigolds flecked with glints of gold; Star, with her soul of fire and snow. Glenwood was full of Star; everything about it held some memory of her. Star, running out at bedtime to kiss the flowers good-night; Star, chasing the reflection of the moon along the wet sandshore; Star holding buttercups under her saucy chin; Star with the new red boots she hated, deliberately putting her feet in a pail of buttermilk to ruin them; Star, with a wreath of ox-eye daisies on her bronze hair; Strar, singing in the old Glenwood garden lying fragrant and velvety under the enchantment of a waning moon; Star, dancing-why, her very slippers would have danced by themselves the whole night through; lovely Star who loved everything beautiful; and now she was lying in the cold, damp grave in the churchyard and the long grasses and withered leaves must be blowing drearily around it.
♥ At first she could not bear Glenwood. She felt that it was a terrible house full of old tragedies. And it was so strangely empty since Star's laughter had gone out of it-that sweet laughter that had echoed so often through the twilights of the old place. O, surely Star could not be dead. Not Star. Would she not come stealing up by the birches or along the silvery solitude of the sandshore, wearing her youth like a golden rose? She could not have borne it had it not been for Alec. And after a while the pain grew a little less terrible and she loved Glenwood again with its mad galloping March winds, its winter birches with stars in their hair, its snow of cherry petals in spring and the low continuous thunder of the sea on the harbour bar. Life began to beckon once more; and there was always Alec.
♥ But is there not something strange about any room that has been long occupied? Death had lurked in it. Love had been rose-red in it. Births had been there-all the passions, all the hopes. It was full of wraiths. No wonder people saw things in the mirror.
~~The Mirror.
♥ Judith Grayson-whose mother called her Judy and whose grandmother called her Hester-was born expecting things to happen. That they seldom did happen, even at Bartibog, under the watchful eyes of Grandmother and The Woman, never blighted her expectations in the least, especially at Bartibog. Things were just bound to happen at Bartibog. If not today then tomorrow. Of course The Woman had once said dourly, when Judy had promised to do something tomorrow: "Tomorrow never comes, Hester. But Judy knew better. Tomorrow would come sometimes. Some beautiful morning at Bartibog you would wake up and find it was Tomorrow. Not Today but Tomorrow. And then things would happen-wonderful things. You might even have a day when you would be free to do as you liked, unwatched by Grandmother and The Woman, though that seemed almost too good ever to happen, even in Tomorrow. Or you might find out what was along that road-that wandering, twisted road, like a nice red snake-which led to the End of the World. You might even discover that the Island of Happiness was at the End of the World. Judy had always, all through her seven years of life, felt sure that Island of Happiness was somewhere if one could but find it.
♥ The lighthouse down on the green point, painted in odd red-and-white rings, the dim blue shore where there were happy golden hollows among the dunes and the bones of folds vessels; the little silvery curving waves; the range-light that gleamed through the violet dusks... all have her so much delight that it hurt. And the sea sunsets! Judy always went up to the north dormer to watch them and the ships that sailed out of the harbour at the rising of the moon. Ships that came back, ships that never came back. Judy longed to go in one of them on a voyage to the Island of Happiness. The ships that never came back stayed there... where it was always Tomorrow.
She could see the harbour from the north dormer with its smoky islands and its misty bays. She had never seen it any closer but she knew the mysterious road ran in that direction and her feet itched to follow it. When Tomorrow really came she would fare forth on it and perhaps find an island all her own, where she and Mother could live alone and Grandmother and The Woman could never come. They both hated water and would not put foot on a boat for anything. Judy liked to picture herself, standing on her island and mocking them, as they stood vainly glowering on the mainland shore.
"This is Tomorrow," she would taunt them. "You can't catch me anymore. You are only in Today."
What fun it would be!
♥ How the wind blew! Thew waves sounded nearer, nearer... one of them was a great dark wave of sleep that rolled right over her... and Judy drowned in it with a delicious sigh of surrender.
♥ "..You come with me."
"O, I couldn't," gasped Judy.
"Why not? The old ladies are away."
Why not, indeed! Judy took a huge gulp of freedom.
♥ She just wanted to walk quietly on... on...on, towards that blueness at the end of the world, drinking in the loveliness all around her. Every turn and kink of the road revealed new beauties, and it turned and kinked interminably, following the twists of a tiny river that seemed to have appeared from nowhere.
On every side were fields of buttercups and clover where bees buzzed. Now and then they walked through a milky way of daisies. Away to the right the sea laughed at them in silver-tipped waves. On the left, the harbour, ever drawing nearer, was like watered silk. Judy liked it better that way than it was pale-blue satin. They drank the wind in. The very sky was glad. A sailor with gold rings in his ears-the kind of a person one would meet in Tomorrow-smiled as he passed them. Far out on the bar was a splendid low thunder. Judy through of a verse she had learned in Sunday School: "The little hills rejoice on every said." Did the man who wrote that mean the golden dunes at Bartibog?
"I think this road leads right to God," she said dreamily.
♥ "Who are you?" asked the man, smiling.
"I'm... I'm me," faltered Judy, still in a swither of various emotions.
"O, to be sure... you. Popped out of the sea, I suppose... come up from the dunes... no name known among mortals."
♥ "We were both young fools," Mother was saying when it steadied once more.
"Is it too late to be side, Elaine?" said the man.
~~Tomorrow Comes.
♥ "'All humanity are my bothers,' he boomed, big-like. And Jonas said, winking at me, 'That's too much of a family for the average man to carry, Daniel.' Daniel went off mad and has never been back since."
♥ "I don't care a hoot whether you've got the use of your legs or not," said Captain Jonas bitterly. She ought to know that by this time. It wasn't her legs he wanted her for... though they were shapely enough, at least, what he could see of them below the blue dress. Amanda did not hold with too brief dresses. At any rate he had a fine view of her ankles and he reflected that he had never seen finer ankles in his life, and he had been around a bit in his time.
But the ankles were only incidental. He wanted Amanda to be waiting for him when he came home from a voyage. He wanted to sit beside her when rain drifted over the gray sea beyond the bar, when fogs crept up the harbour and made everything-even the ugly old houses at the fishing village-lovely and mysterious. He wanted to watch the evening star with her and the silvery moonlight paths over the water, the far dim shores jeweled with home lights. He wanted her to admire his delphiniums and his gorgeous splashes of nasturtiums than which there was nothing finer in either of the Bartibogs. It would be wonderful just to have her living in his house-his fine new white house with its red roof and its dormers at Lower Bartibog. He liked to think of her sitting there at his fireside, warm and cosy, while the winter winds ravened outside and the shadows of wild black cloud tore over the sands. He could never get things like this to her. Every word he uttered sounded clumsy when he talked to her. But he had made it clear to her for many years that he wanted her and only her for a wife, and never could want any other woman. And to have her turn around and say coolly that if he hunted about a bit he could find himself another girl was really too much to endure. For the first time in his life Captain Jonas felt that he was mad at Amanda.
~~The Use of Her Legs.
♥ "And, Jink, it's always been the same. I've always had to wear my city cousins' dresses after they got through with them. They mean to be kind, Jink; I appreciate their good intentions and I love them dearly. But O, I'd so much rather have just one plain, cheap new dress of my very own than a dozen lovely second-hands. How would you feel, Jink, if you were a girl sixteen years old and had never had a dress of your very own in your life?
~~Janet's Rebellion.