by Sarah McCoy
Matthew brought over the extra chairs in the wagon and helped Marilla arrange them in a circle, per Mrs. White’s recommendation.
“So no one squabbles over who’s in front or behind. All the ladies are equal—like King Arthur’s Round Table,” she’d explained.
Marilla did her best, but the Green Gables parlor was more oblong than round. Allowing for the furniture, the circle looked like a lopsided fried egg. She put out their best rosebud tea set and brewed four pots of Darjeeling, feeling glad it was summer so the ladies wouldn’t mind it at room temperature. She baked a vanilla cake the day ahead and slathered it an inch thick with butter frosting. Everything was ready.
In her room, she buttoned on the amaryllis dress. It’d been over a year since she’d dared to take it out of the wardrobe. She’d contemplated packing it away in her mother’s trunk, but she hadn’t another summer frock as nice. Buying material and making a new one seemed a waste of time and money when she’d only worn the dress once. Izzy had used such a fine brocade on the skirt, and Clara’s hand was in the stitching. To not wear it seemed a greater travesty.
It was still scented with the meadow lilies and clover she’d raced through with John. She was relieved that it held those memories and not the ones of later—iodine, vinegar, and blood. She turned her hair back into a soft chignon and wore her mother’s amethyst brooch over her heart. It twinkled like captive moonlight and gave her courage.
The ladies of Avonlea began arriving on the stroke of the tea hour. Mrs. White was first, of course, bringing with her a majority of the sewing circle. Mrs. Patterson and Mrs. Blair came next with many of the Sunday school women. Mrs. Sloane, Mrs. Gray, and Mrs. Barry also came, each with her girl in tow—mothers and daughters, two by two, as if Green Gables were Noah’s Ark. Marilla welcomed them as decorously as she imagined the ladies-in-waiting around the soon-to-be coronated Queen Victoria, only five years older than she. The newspapers were top to bottom with articles related to Lord Durham and the royal court. They claimed that spies were everywhere, taking notes and sending information back to England so Lord Durham could put together his final report on how best to resolve the fractured Canadian populace. The English law was clear: taking up arms against countrymen was rebellion. All those inciting or participating in such were to be hanged. But what was to be done when everyone in the colony was guilty? The answer had Avonlea folks polishing their teaspoons and attending church with uncustomary vigor. Even brazen Reformers, like the Whites, were keeping their carriage wheels shined to a sparkle, smiling and waving to their Tory neighbors as they passed by.
Best behavior was the masquerade of the moment, while rumors stirred that the Agora had doubled in members, minus one Matthew Cuthbert. He’d stopped attending the political meetings. There was too much to do on the farm. Besides, Marilla had said enough for all the Cuthberts at the town hall meeting.
For her part, Marilla was pleased to bring the women of Avonlea together while the men gathered in dissension. “‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts’”—she quoted Aristotle to start off the inaugural meeting and made sure everyone had tea and cake in their mouths, leaving them little choice but to nod in agreement. Mrs. Blair had given her the bylaws of the Aid Society and the rules of decorum. In her first act of governance, Marilla assigned a provisional vice president, secretary, and treasurer. If any of the volunteering women could not perform their duties, they were free to abdicate their role to another—with the permission of the group, naturally. Everyone seemed in favor of that, and they took a break to refill their glasses.
“I’d like to be vice president next,” said Rachel. “After Mrs. Barry gets tired of it. She’s the most cantankerous woman. I don’t know how you’ll manage, Marilla.”
No one else had volunteered for the position after Mrs. Barry put her hat in the ring. Her prickly demeanor was certainly a contributing factor. But then, Marilla secretly appreciated a churlish nature. You never had to wonder what Mrs. Barry really thought—no idle chatter or disingenuous smiles. She was the woman she was and solid in her opinions. Marilla admired that.
“I’ll serve our red currant wine next meeting. That’ll soften her around the edges,” she teased.
Rachel giggled and ate the butter frosting rosette off her second piece of cake.
The first vote was next: choosing the Aid Society’s first philanthropic recipient. Since so many of the women were involved with the Sunday school already, she thought it a good time to call to attention the issue of the orphanage prayer shawls. They’d crocheted these for as long as she could remember, but having visited the Hopetown orphans, Marilla understood there was far more at stake than keeping off a spring chill. Prayer shawls were little help to a hungry belly, a fever, or an ex-slave’s freedom. The Sisters of Charity needed funding for food, medicine, and, yes, paperwork and passenger tickets should they be required. She’d thought it over for a long time and had decided that the good Lord had given her the Aid Society scepter so she could use it. But she had to be as wise as King Solomon in acquiring the endowment.
“Now, to vote on the Ladies’ Aid Society’s first order of business.” Marilla cleared her throat. “We are all familiar with the Sisters of Charity in Hopetown and their work with orphans. Since the Sunday school and the sewing circle so generously provide them with garments, I thought the Aid Society might collect a donation purse.”
A couple of the women harrumphed—such open talk of money displeased them. Unless, of course, they were boasting of how much their porcelain cups and saucers cost.
Marilla pressed on. “While I know all here would generously and freely give, I thought we might procure the monies through a fund-raiser booth at the weekly farmers’ market. All items would be made and sold by the Ladies’ Aid Society to benefit charities locally and abroad.”
“What did you have in mind for us to sell?” asked Mrs. Barry, already emboldened by her vice presidential title.
Marilla had thought that through too.
“Raspberry cordial,” she announced and sent the women into a carousel of chatter.
In passing, John had mentioned to Matthew that their raspberry bushes were becoming a menace to the Blythe farm. They couldn’t harvest the berries fast enough, and the thicket had become a safe haven for every crow on the island. Marilla was sure the Blythes would be happy to have the women pick the bushes clean at no charge. She’d hoped Mrs. Blythe would be at the meeting so they could ask her permission, but she was sixty years old and the Sunday school was as much socializing as she could take. John had been born late in his parents’ marriage. There’d been another child, a daughter who died of typhoid at age eleven. John’s birth had been the unexpected cure to their sorrow, and he was devoted to them.
“The Blythes have raspberry barrens, and we all have a recipe. It’s an easy and financially responsible commodity that many a thirsty shopper would enjoy. All proceeds would go to the orphanage, minus the cost of the sugar and bottles. Each member will be given a berry allotment to make her cordial. I can speak to the Blythes about their bushes. Shall we put it to the vote?”
And vote they did. A unanimous agreement.
“Well done,” Mrs. White said on her way out. “Your mother would be proud, Marilla.”
Rachel kissed her cheek. “The cake was scrumptious.”
“I knew you were the one to lead us,” Mrs. Blair crowed.
Marilla was glad the meeting had gone to form. The wink of the amethyst at her breast reminded her that she wasn’t alone. Her guardian angel had been there.
After the last member left, Marilla changed back into her everyday housedress. She washed the tea dishes, swept the living room of cake crumbs, and made a smelt stew for supper. Then she hung her apron on the hook and set off down the maple lane, through the evergreen woods, and over the violet meadow to the pond where she knew John led his herd for a drink before nightfall. Dusk-drowsy ducks and dragonflies took flight from the cattails on her approach. John’s lone f
igure stood tall and solid beside the shimmering waters.
“Well, hello there,” he said.
“Hello, John.”
“Passing through?”
He knew she wasn’t. Town was north and the Blythes’ place was west.
“I came to see a man about raspberries.”
“Raspberries?” He raised an eyebrow. “I know a fellow who’s got a few.”
She nodded. “I think we know the same fellow.”
The cows started back toward the barn on their own. Thirst quenched, they were ready for the soft silage of the barn.
John leaned his elbow out to her. “Care to walk a spell?”
She didn’t hesitate. After all, she was there on the business of the Ladies’ Aid Society. So if the Barrys, the Whites, the Blairs, or any of Avonlea happened to come down the road and see them ambling arm in arm through the field of frenzied buttercups, Marilla would have an explanation. They couldn’t see how his hand wrapped around hers or feel his thumb drawing slow circles against the inside of her wrist.
XXI.
Raspberry Cordial Secrets
So it was agreed upon, and the following week the Ladies’ Aid Society gathered at the Blythes’ farm. After two hours, their baskets were full, and they’d made great gains in trimming back the bushes, much to the chagrin of the crows that cawed from the birch trees.
After church that Sunday, Rachel came to Green Gables with her share of berries and bottles. Mrs. White was convinced that she had yellow fever, though Dr. Spencer said it was merely a cold. She’d put herself to bed with a cloth over her head and a mirror so she could check her color. The house was on quarantine, with every spoon scalded in soap and boiling water.
“I’ll never forgive myself if my only child contracts this peril!” she told Mr. White, who consented to Rachel going over to Green Gables for the day, if only to appease Mrs. White’s histrionics.
“Never can be too careful,” said Rachel. “You catch a sneeze today and—poof!—tomorrow you’re in the grave.”
Remembering herself in the Cuthbert kitchen, she quieted.
“Lawful heart, I’m sorry, Marilla. I always speak without thinking first. Mother says it’s my Achilles’ heel.”
A year ago, the mention might’ve cut her, but like the cherry sapling beside the Gables, Marilla had grown a new ring of bark. She felt sturdier.
“You’re only saying what’s true, Rachel. No need to apologize for it.” Marilla was at the stove, mashing raspberries with sugar.
Rachel picked up a lemon and rolled it between her palms so that the juices ran loose within.
“Let’s play Twenty Questions while we cook. I’ll start. I have a secret.”
Marilla usually wasn’t in the mood for Rachel’s games, but summer was seductive: the breeze played with the curtains, the sunny fields sparkled like the gulf, and the smell of raspberries filled the kitchen with sweetness. Why not indulge Rachel while they boiled and stirred? Especially if it was not Marilla’s secret being ferreted out.
“Is it a place?” asked Marilla.
“No.”
“A thing?”
“No.”
“A person?”
“Yes!” Rachel tossed the lemon from hand to hand.
“Hmm . . .” Marilla thought and put a kettle of water on the stovetop. “Someone in Avonlea?”
“No.”
“Someone in Carmody?”
“No.”
“White Sands?”
“No.”
“Well, how do I know this person?”
“Only yes or no questions!”
Marilla exhaled. “Okay, do I know this person?”
“No.”
“How on earth am I supposed to guess someone I don’t even know, Rachel?”
Rachel frowned and tapped her chin. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
Marilla shook her head. While skilled in many a thing, Rachel wasn’t the quickest of wit.
“We won’t make it to twenty questions, so you can go on and tell me.”
Rachel seemed fine with that. “I have a beau.”
Marilla spun round from the stove. “Rachel White!”
“It’s a secret. Mother would have a conniption if she knew.” She giggled. “I can hardly believe it’s finally happened to me. And he’s not even from Avonlea. He lives down in Spencervale.”
“How positively Romeo and Juliet of you.”
“I met him when we were driving back from visiting our old neighbors in East Grafton a couple months back—when that big storm came through and flooded all the roads, remember? Well, we had to stop the night in Spencervale. Friends of my father’s, Mr. Lynde and his wife, graciously offered us their spare room. Over dinner, I met their two daughters and elder son, Thomas.”
At the mention, she blushed. The kitchen kettle gurgled to a boil, and Marilla took it off the heat.
“We’ve been meeting off and on ever since. He drives up to see me. He’s four years older. Mother and Father have said I can’t marry anybody until I’m eighteen. Thomas being the honorable sort, he’s obliged to wait it out. He says by that time he’ll have earned enough to buy a farm in Avonlea. He wants to be financially set when he makes his proposal. His family doesn’t have heaps of money . . . but I don’t mind so much. He’s kind and pious and pleasant-looking. That’s more than most brides get. Rachel Lynde,” she said dreamily. “It has rather a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
Marilla was shocked speechless. Firstly, that Rachel had kept this hidden for as long as she had, and secondly, that it had progressed from beau to husband in less time than it took to make cordial!
“Marriage?”
Rachel nodded enthusiastically. “Of course. Girls our age.” She shrugged. “It’s the natural thing. Wait too long and you’ll be past your bloom. Then nobody will want you. You could end up a spinster.”
Marilla frowned. “I guess I just never thought about marriage much.”
Then it was Rachel who looked shocked. “Never thought about it? Why Marilla Cuthbert, you know good and well that John Blythe is head over heels in love with you!”
A sweat flashed up and down Marilla.
Rachel didn’t notice. She was busy taking a paring knife to the lemon and squeezing out the juice. “Mother was engaged to Father at sixteen. We’re only a year from that age, give or take a few months. John’s bound to ask you to marry him, and then you’ll move over to the Blythes’ farm, and we’ll be neighbors. It’s ever so much closer to Avonlea than Green Gables.”
The tart citrus scent was the only thing keeping Marilla’s head from reeling. Leave Green Gables?
“No,” she said in such a tone that Rachel flinched. “I won’t leave Green Gables. Not now. Not ever. I promised my mother.”
She took the little bowl of lemon juice from Rachel and poured it into the pot with the raspberries. Then she stirred and strained until there wasn’t so much as a fleck of seed in the liquid. Rachel silently helped Marilla turn the puree into the boiling water and funnel the batch into bottles. She was so uncharacteristically quiet that Marilla knew she’d hurt her friend’s feelings.
“I’m sorry,” Marilla said while tucking corked cordial bottles into Rachel’s hamper. “I shouldn’t have been so selfish. This isn’t about me and—anybody. It’s about you and Thomas. I’m truly happy for you, Rachel.”
Rachel leaned into her side. “I think you’ll get on with my Thomas. He’s a listener, like you.” Then she picked up her basket. “Tell Matthew and Mr. Cuthbert I said hello. See you!”
“See you.”
Rachel ambled down Green Gables lane. With her hair pinned up under her straw hat, she could’ve been mistaken, Marilla thought, for one of the ladies of the Aid Society. It made something inside Marilla pinch with terror. When had they stopped wearing their hair in plaits? Age had come on quick and quiet like a leaf bud on a branch. She took in the bleary outline of herself in the window’s reflection. No matter how she searched th
e face, she couldn’t see a married woman staring back. She only saw herself: Marilla.
* * *
The Ladies’ Aid Society stand opened to grand success. They put out a pink striped awning to match the raspberry cordial. With ninety-eight of one hundred bottles sold at five pence each, bringing in a total of just over two pounds, they declared the fund-raiser an enormous success. Many of the women had left by way of the Blythes’ so they could pick what was left on the bushes for the following week. Marilla took the last two bottles home to keep for John. It was the least she could do. The Aid Society would have had nothing without his generosity, and she’d promised him a thank-you picnic.
The next day they went down behind the Green Gables barns where the grass was matted with starflowers and the wood line was edged with ruby red pokeweed lending a spice to the air. There they sat on a fallen maple trunk and sipped the cordials through rye straws that cut the sweetness with a reedy tang. Marilla told him of the Ladies’ Aid Society’s raspberry success, and he passed along his parents’ gratitude for their dispatching of the crows.
“A mutually beneficial proposal,” said John. “You were smart to suggest it.”
Proposal? The word stuck her like a pin. Marilla sipped hard. The heat of the day and the juice of the berries had quickly turned her straw to mush, leaving her fingers sticky.
“All the ladies are so very thankful to you and your parents.”
She wiped her hands together trying to remove the residue. A soapwort grew nearby. John rubbed the sappy leaves over her fingers to clean them. The tickle of his touch rose up her arm into her chest and made her think of him pressed against her in the brook. She pushed away those thoughts by talking about others.
“I was thinking that if we sell different homemades at the booth through autumn, we should have a presentable amount for the Reverend Mother in Hopetown. Mrs. White has everyone knitting wool caps too. Of course, we won’t have enough for all the orphans until next winter, but I don’t think they’ll mind a donation check instead.”
“Do you still think about Junie? With the red hat?” John asked, turning her smooth hand into his so that their fingers fell between one another’s.