by Sarah McCoy
“The Blythes are just back from visiting cousins in Charlottetown,” Matthew said from behind his newspaper sheaf one evening.
“I wondered where they’d gone to,” replied Hugh from behind his. “I’ve been meaning to have John come take a look at Starling. Reckon she’d make a good match with one of their bull calves.”
Marilla flushed, sitting between the two, her fingers clumsy with the darning. She was relieved that John’s absence had a reason and a coming solution.
A day later, she was practically tripping over herself when she spotted him trotting down Green Gables lane. She rushed upstairs to put her hair in a horn comb and crushed dried geranium petals against her wrists.
He arrived by the front door, and she opened at his knock.
“Hello, John, nice to see you.”
He took off his cap with a solemn nod. “Miss Cuthbert.” His tone was cold. Dark shadows spooned his eyes.
She frowned to see him so formal.
“I’ve come on behalf of my father—on your father’s request—on the business of your heifer Starling.”
Heat rose to her cheeks, and she felt foolish for thinking he’d come for other reasons.
“I believe Father is in the barn.”
He cleared his throat. “While I’m here, I wanted to have a word with you, if I may.”
Here it was: he’d apologize, she’d apologize, and they’d move on without this unsociableness between them. Maybe they could even go for a walk later. The maple lane was dripping with spring crimson florets, and she wanted to tell him about her new idea for the Ladies’ Aid Society’s market booth.
“I’m sorry if I offended you and your family with my liberal opinions, Miss Cuthbert. I wrongfully assumed I could speak with familiarity. But I assure you, I won’t make that mistake again.”
It was the cynicism in his tone and the way his eyes darted to the side when he alluded to their affinity. A provocation trumped up as an apology. She squared her shoulders hard.
“You must learn that impudence has consequence, Mr. Blythe.”
He made a sound between a sniff and a grunt.
“Good day to you then.”
Marilla inhaled sharply, ire in her lungs. “Good day, Mr. Blythe.”
She shut the door and stood with her back against it for so long that John walked to the barn to speak with her father and returned before she moved. When she heard him out front again, she took the doorknob. If she opened it, he’d see her and stop. They’d really talk. That’s all it would take.
You’ve got to be discerning, Matthew had told her. Her unleashed tongue seemed to be tied up again.
John gave his horse a yup, and she listened as he rode away, each hoofbeat trampling her heart as he went. Matthew was right. You couldn’t take back words . . . the spoken or the unspoken.
She picked up her broom and went out to sweep the yard until every provincial speck of dirt was in its place. She would do it again tomorrow and the day after for as long as it took.
Part Three
Marilla’s House of Dreams
XXVI.
A Child Is Born
November 1860
A frigid but snowless November settled over the island, still awash in the bright golden-scarlets of autumn. The trees clung to their colors despite the bite and snap of wind. The sun was a mellow haze through the canopy of unseen ice.
Marilla sat alone in the kitchen, mending a pair of Matthew’s wool socks by the stove fire, when Rachel’s oldest son Robert came sprinting down the lane from Lynde’s Hollow. He was built like a fox, short and spry, and he moved at a pace that made Marilla’s knees ache. He reminded her of Rachel in their youth—had Rachel been born a boy and allowed to run as free as she wished.
“Marilla!” he called as he came closer. “Miss Marilla, the baby’s here!”
Marilla untied her apron and hung it on the hook over the wood box so Matthew would see it when he came in from the field and know she’d gone out. Marilla had been up to Lynde’s Hollow the day before to bring the family as many apples as she could salvage from their orchard. It still wouldn’t be enough to fill all nine of the Lynde babies’ bellies.
True to his word, Thomas Lynde had worked steadily until Rachel was eighteen and he had enough to buy a farm in Avonlea. There was a beautiful piece of property for sale at the end of the main road where most folks thought Hugh should’ve set his homestead but hadn’t. It was the more sociable choice. And so, on Rachel’s suggestion, Thomas purchased the acreage to the north of Green Gables, making the Lyndes and Cuthberts proper neighbors. It was a quick jaunt up the lane to arrive at Rachel’s front door.
Before Robert had reached theirs, Marilla had her coat and mittens on. She was down the porch steps when, seeing her, he stopped, his face dewy and pink with exertion.
“Boy or girl?” asked Marilla.
Robert gulped to catch his breath. “A boy! Father and the midwife are taking care of him. Mother sent me to fetch you.”
“And where’s everybody else?”
“The littler ones have gone over to Grandmother White’s.”
“I bet she’s fit to be tied about that. Your grandmother was never one for a rumpus under her roof.”
He nodded in agreement. “No, ma’am. But they went on strictest orders not to set her temper off or there’d be Mrs. Winslow’s instead of tea before bed.”
Marilla bit back her smirk. “Well, you’ve got a tenth now. Let’s hope he inherited your father’s reticence and not your mother’s affinity for opinionating.”
He dared to smile as the two of them walked back up the lane at a proper pace. Marilla was never present for Rachel’s labor. She understood that births were as natural and common as the rains, and yet one strike of lightning could change everything forever. Her mother and their family had been struck. By God or luck? After all these years, the answer had only become more ambiguous. Rachel had been through this twelve times, with nine children standing as a reward for her suffering and two buried in the Avonlea cemetery as a reminder of the risk.
A baby girl named Patsy died of influenza at age two. All soft curls and dimples, Marilla could still see her cherub face in Rachel’s arms. An angel come to earth for a short time. The loss had nearly shattered Rachel, but she had the older children, and soon younger ones as well. Little by little, the split in her heart seemed to heal up. Then she had a stillborn boy. Marilla had thought it might be easier to lose a child that way, with less time to get to know the child’s personality, no time to hear the pattering of little feet, and less love poured out all around. But Marilla had been wrong. It had been nearly worse than Patsy’s death. Rachel couldn’t even bring herself to name him. She simply referred to him as “my sweet son” and buried him beside his elder sister. Marilla had come to cook for the family during their mourning. Rachel’s usual appetite was gone. She ate only meager bowls of porridge and grew so frightfully weak that Thomas worried she’d not live through the grief. But Marilla was determined. She baked more vanilla cakes and plum puddings than ever in her life, and Rachel slowly came round. It was one of the most sorrowful times Marilla had ever seen her friend through.
This twelfth child had surprised them all. Dr. Spencer had put Rachel on strict bed rest for nearly all of the pregnancy. Her body was weary, he warned, and if she wanted to mother the living, this should be her last. Marilla could only imagine how pregnancy and childbirth would exhaust the flesh. She’d not carried even one child, and yet the years had been like a vinegar in her bones, pickling her day by day.
Marilla liked children, but motherhood seemed outside her realm of possibility. She believed wholeheartedly in the “God giveth” tenet, and the good Lord had given her Matthew, Green Gables, health, and fields of harvest. She had more than many she knew. So instead of wishing for what she did not have, she was grateful that she’d not suffered like Rachel, or paid the ultimate price like her mother. The tariff for motherhood was too great when there was already so much d
epending on her. Besides, to bear a child one must first have a husband . . . on that account, Marilla could not deny the lingering weight of regret. She had hoped that Matthew would find a wife, but dared not say as much. They each held silent disappointments.
Matthew was forty-four years old now, and while his hair had gone salt-and-pepper at thirty, his beard had remained a dark bushy brown until that autumn, when it turned ash gray seemingly overnight. He’d begun having heart spells too—pangs in his chest that took his breath clean out of him and left him twice as tired. Dr. Spencer said Matthew needed to avoid heavy lifting, lay off the pipe, and eat more beans. None of which he had done.
Dr. Spencer had been a frequent visitor to Green Gables over the last few months. A summer cough had turned Hugh’s handkerchief crimson. Consumption. But even when he was so thin that his work gloves fell off with a flick of the wrist, he’d gone into the barn at sunrise to work the livestock with Matthew. Marilla couldn’t stop him even when she’d tried. So she too had gone on as if blind to the evidence of his end: frying eggs for their breakfast, sweeping the yard, feeding the chickens, harvesting the orchard, baking bread, setting the table for the two men, and dishing out stews aplenty. Life didn’t stop grinding time, even when their mill wheels slowed.
On the morning of the first September frost, Marilla had gone to Hugh’s room with a fresh cloth and a warm basin of water. She was shocked to find him still in bed, his sleep uninterrupted by the sun’s rise and the rooster’s call. Dr. Spencer later said that Hugh’s lungs had frozen up in the night. He was gone. For two days, Marilla had stayed in bed, her pillow wet with tears and her stomach gnawing on nothing until Matthew dared to come into her room. He never came up to the second floor after their mother’s passing. So it had surprised her to hear him softly knock and enter with a bowl of potato soup he’d made himself.
“You’ve got to eat,” he’d said, his eyes as swollen as her own.
The soup had been terrible stuff. Bland and overcooked to mush, but it was good to have—to have him there as comfort.
“Everyone’s gone but us,” he’d said. “You’re the only Cuthbert on earth with me now.”
It was true. They’d had one aunt who’d died in their youth, but no uncles to carry on the name. There were the Keiths, their cousins in East Grafton, and the Johnsons, like Aunt Izzy in St. Catharines plus more in Scotland, but there were no other Cuthberts as far as they knew. Of course, it was still possible that Matthew would take a younger bride to have children. But the only men his age she’d seen do as such were widowers. There was also the problem of his diffidence. Not since the hour Johanna Andrews spurned him had he so much as looked at a woman twice. Saying women made him nervous, he stayed as far away from them as possible. Marilla argued that she was a woman and he seemed fine enough talking to her.
“I dunno, it’s different. You’re my sister who just happens to be a woman,” he’d explained, though Marilla still didn’t see the rationale in it.
Soon enough, the months rolled into years, and the years coupled together in decades. The idea of anyone else coming in to change one sprocket of their routine was inconceivable. They were a well-oiled clock. But with Hugh’s death, it seemed that they’d lost their pendulum. Matthew had always done the farming, Marilla attended to the house work, and Hugh handled all the commercial transactions. Matthew hadn’t a mind for bargaining, and while Marilla was adept at numbers, she was a woman and unwelcome at the all-male farmers’ meetings. Never mind that she couldn’t leave Green Gables as often as the business end required. Who would cook, clean, launder, mend, tend the garden, stock the pantry, and do all the other innumerable chores that went into the upkeep of Green Gables if she were off in Carmody? Matthew could barely attend to the crops and livestock without his heart coming out of his chest. He needed her there. She’d made a promise to her mother, and she’d kept it.
Hugh had brought in a hired hand and his wife for a little while, but they’d moved to Nova Scotia after the birth of their child. Then there was that time John Blythe worked for them. But they’d all been younger, practically schoolchildren, and it happened so long ago, it was hard to remember how it’d all come to be.
“How old are you now, Robert?” she asked as they trudged up the lane.
“Fourteen.”
She nodded. Maybe Rachel would let them hire him on while school was recessed. Robert was a smart boy and quick on his feet. However, the Lyndes had their own farm to run with ten children at the table. She dismissed the idea. It wouldn’t be right, especially now when the eldest boy was needed most. She and Matthew hadn’t much to pay him either.
In the Lyndes’ house, Robert waited downstairs while Marilla went up to the bedroom. The midwife was just laying the wrapped bundle in Rachel’s arms.
“Marilla! Come, see, it’s a boy—a boy!”
Marilla came to her side and pulled back the blanket from the flushed little face. “Another fine Lynde in the world. Congratulations, Rachel—Thomas.”
In the corner, Thomas blushed, bashful at the compliment.
“Well, don’t just stand there, Thomas. Get Marilla a chair!”
He went out to fetch one with a dazed grin.
Rachel shook her head. “Twelve times and still the man faints at a drop of blood. You’d think he’d know by now that babies don’t come in neat packages. But Thomas seems bent on being unconscious to the truth. He just woke up right before you walked in.”
The baby gave a sigh and drew both women’s attention. He had the finest skin of pink gossamer. His lips were a perfect bow, and each finger seemed a miniature masterpiece, flexing and releasing at his mother’s breast. There came a flutter in Marilla. She’d felt it with Rachel’s other children too, but it inevitably grew fainter as the newborn dew cooled to sticky toddler.
“It was the oddest thing, Marilla. He was born hiccupping. Not one cry. What kind of child is born without hollering out, ‘I’m here’? But then I heard the steady chirping, so I knew he must be well.”
“A quiet spirit,” said Marilla. “I understand that sort.”
“Must be. That’s why it’s ever more fitting that you should name him.”
Marilla stepped back. “Name him? Oh no, I couldn’t. He’s your son. A name is too important a thing. It belongs to the mother and father.”
Rachel frowned. “You are my oldest, most trusted friend. Please don’t argue with me. I spent months trapped in this bed followed by hours of suffering.” She drew her chin down dramatically. “Won’t you do me the honor of naming the very last child I bear forth?”
What was she to say to that? Rachel had never been above using sentimentalism to get her way. Marilla was on the spot with hardly a minute to think.
“Well, I haven’t any idea . . .”
Rachel sighed, a blustery thing quite unlike her son’s. “Marilla, I’ve named ten children, and I simply don’t have any more to give. Please, just think of a name—whatever it is will be a gift. Save my tired head from the pondering.”
“Well, I . . .” Marilla’s mind jackrabbited about. A handsome baby boy, not given to fuss . . . “I suppose the only name that comes to mind is my father’s. How does Hughie suit?”
“Hughie Lynde?” asked the midwife.
Rachel adjusted the baby so his head sat up as best as possible. “Hughie Lynde. A good name in honor of a good man.”
The midwife penned it in neat cursive. Thomas returned with a chair.
“That took long enough. Marilla’s already given us a name.”
“Oh?” Thomas set the chair beside the bed.
“Meet our son Hughie.”
Thomas smiled and nodded. “Much obliged to you, Marilla. No better namesake.”
Marilla felt hot tears well up, though she thought she’d run out of them years ago. Taking a seat beside her friend, she drew her finger gently over the baby’s brow.
“Hello there, Hughie. Welcome to the world.”
XXVII.
A Co
ngratulation, an Offer, and a Wish
The next day Marilla was embroidering the initials HL on a baby smock when she heard the steady plunk-and-roll of a horse and carriage.
She thought it might be Dr. Spencer stopping in after giving Rachel a final examination. A number of guests had already been to Lyndes’ Hollow, with more to come. Marilla reckoned her eyeglasses were playing blurry tricks again when she saw that the driver coming down Green Gables lane seemed to be none other than John Blythe. While Matthew and John had remained friends, John had rarely come to call, and never without Matthew giving her forewarning. Then she’d made sure to set off for the post office, climb up an orchard ladder, or pluck every last string bean from her garden to avoid an awkward encounter. It was easier than one would have thought to steer clear of a person in a small town like Avonlea. All you had to do was keep busy looking the other way. So long as things stayed the same, nothing changed.
Now John came riding up to their front door as if it were any normal Friday afternoon, which it had been until he appeared. She made herself sit very still, concentrating on perfect stitches to form the smock’s L. She counted his footsteps, one-two-three-four, up the porch stairs. Then one-two-three-four to the door. A knock. She inhaled, counted one-two-three-four, then exhaled and rose all in one motion.
Hand to the doorknob, a moment of déjà vu: wasn’t she just here? While her eyesight might’ve been prematurely receding, she prided herself on having a sharp mind. Memory, however, was a slippery thing. Like a dawn mist that vanished by midday.
The knob turned. The door practically opened itself.
“Hello, John Blythe.”
He took off his hat, hair still a flap of curls, though lighter in shade. Or maybe it was Marilla’s eyes dulling the coloring.
“Hello,” he said as an inhalation. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”