The Blythes Are Quoted (42 page)

Walter Blythe

DR. BLYTHE
,
thinking:
- “Commonplace verse ... but the boy had something in him. He always seemed older than his years. Why is it that young people always like to write poetry about being old and tired? Walter had all his mother’s love for nature.”

SUSAN BAKER
,
thinking:
- “I wish, too, that there was never a clock in the world. And I wish I’d never opened my mouth to scold Walter for writing poetry.”

JEM BLYTHE
(aside to Faith Meredith):
- “Mother reads a poem of Walter’s over to us every now and then. I wonder if it is good for her.”

FAITH
(aside):
- “Yes, it is. It helps an old ache. Do you think if you hadn’t come back from that German prison I wouldn’t have cherished and reread every letter you ever wrote me?”

I walked with Wind of Autumn across the upland airy,

Where canny eyes might hope to spy the little Men in Green,

By road of firs that should have led right on to land of faery,

Enchanted lands the sun and moon between.

I might have met the Olden Gods in those wild friendly places,

I think they peeped at me and laughed as I went on my way,

The little fauns and satyrs hid in all the haunted places

Where Wind of Autumn led me on that day.

The hemlock harp for music, immortal wine for drinking,

Oh, but we were rare good comrades, that gallant wind and I,

As hand in hand we wandered till roguish stars were winking

Between the scurrying cloudlets in the sky.

And oh, my sleep was sweet that night until the dawn came shyly,

And all the pretty dreams I had made haste to slip away,

For Wind of Autumn just outside was calling, calling, slyly,

“Come with me for another spendthrift day.”

Walter Blythe

RILLA
:- “That was Walter’s idea of the wind. He used to love to hear it whistling down Rainbow Valley. And I think he did believe in ‘the Men in Green,’ Susan ... when he was a child, anyhow.”

SUSAN
,
determinedly:
- “But not in the olden gods at any time, Rilla. You can never convince me that Walter was a pagan. He went to church and Sunday school every Sunday and liked it.”

DR. BLYTHE
:- “If he had had to drive through the wind as often as I did before cars came in! Well, when I was a boy I loved the wind, too. Do you remember how it used to purr in Lover’s Lane, Anne?”

ANNE
:- “As if I could ever forget anything connected with Lover’s Lane! And I remember, too, how it used to sweep up the Harbour some wild night while I was waiting for you to come home to our House of Dreams. Do you, Susan?”

SUSAN
,
fervently:
- “Indeed I do!”

Oh, here is joy that cannot be

In any market bought and sold,

Where forests beckon fold on fold

In a pale silver ecstasy,

And every hemlock is a spire

Of faint moon-fire.

For music we shall have the chill

Wild bugle of a vagrant wind,

Seeking for what it cannot find,

A lonely trumpet on the hill,

Or keening in the dear dim white

Chambers of night.

And there are colours in the wild ...

The royal purple of old kings ...

Rose-fire of secret dawn ... clear springs

Of emerald in valleys aisled

With red pine stems ... and tawny stir

Of dying fir.

And we shall know as lovers do

The wooing rain, the eternal lure

Of tricksy brook and beckoning moor,

The hidden laughters that pursue,

As if the gods of elder day

Were here at play.

For these wild places hold their own

Boon myths of faun and goblin still,

And have a lingering goodwill

For folk in green if truth were known ...

Oh, what an old delightful fear ...

Hush ... listen ... hear!

Walter Blythe

ANNE
,
sighing:
- “Walter always loved the wild places. How he adored Rainbow Valley and the Upper Glen barrens!”

SUSAN
,
under her breath:
- “I do not often question the purposes of the Almighty. But I should like to know why He makes a brain that can write things like that and then lets it be crushed to death.”

I cherish love but for its own sweet sake,

Not hoping to win thine, but holding yet

Deep-hidden in my heart its precious ache:

Nor, if I could forget,

Would I so choose. I willingly yield me

Pensioner of a pain all joys above:

For its own dole and sweetness I love Love

And would its bondsman be!

Anne Blythe

DR. BLYTHE
,
thinking:
- “I remember that expressed my feelings pretty well when I thought Anne was going to marry Roy Gardiner. Odd how Anne has taken to writing so much more verse since Walter’s death. It does seem as if in some queer way Walter’s gift had descended to her instead of the reverse. Well, I daresay it is some outlet for the pain we feel when we think of him.”

There is no difference this blithe morning

’Tween yesterday and today ...

The dim fringed poppies still are blowing

In sea fields misty and grey.

The west wind overhead in the beeches

Is the friend of lovers still,

And the river puts its arm as bluely

Around the beckoning hill.

The rose that laughed in the waning twilight

Laughs with the same delight,

But, pale and sweet as the lilies of Eden,

A little hope died last night.

Anne Blythe

DR. BLYTHE
:- “I remember the day my ‘little hope’ of winning you died, Anne.”

ANNE
:- “And I remember the same.”

UNA MEREDITH
,
thinking:
-“I remember when mine died ... when the news of Walter’s death came.”

SUSAN BAKER
,
thinking:
- “I remember the night I finally decided I had to be an old maid. I wonder if Whiskers-on-the-Moon felt any dead hopes after I chased him over the lawn with the dye pot. As far as I can understand it, writing poetry is just putting into rhyme what everyone feels. Why didn’t I think of those things when we lived in the House of Dreams? Ah me, there was no hint of war then and Walter was not even born or thought of. I wonder if Mrs. Dr. dear is thinking of Walter or little Joyce. No, she doesn’t look sad enough for either. That is just one of the poems she writes for her own amusement.”

I know a dell of violets, a sweet and starry splendour,

Beside a misty little brook a-singing to the wind,

Where poplars whisper silkily, and ivory birches slender

Will tell me tales of elfin things that no one else may find.

I know a little path that runs across an upland hazy

Where shy grey rabbits peer at me from under bracken fern,

Where there are hints and glints and gleams of butterflies gone crazy,

And some beguiling sight to see wherever I may turn.

I know a hill where I may hear the ancient fir trees calling,

To vale and shore and tawny dune and far eternal sea,

And I know a russet valley where when early dusk is falling,

There is a friendly little house with one to welcome me.

Walter Blythe

RILLA
:- “Walter wrote that with the thought of Rainbow Valley, too. It crept into almost every poem he wrote.”

JEM
:- “But what about ‘the little house’?”

RILLA
:- “Oh, that was really Ingleside and mums. But he thought ‘little house’ more romantic. You can’t tie yourself strictly down to facts in poetry.”

SUSAN
:- “Nor in anything, I do believe. I’ve lived long enough to learn that. There are some things that are truer than facts, as Mrs. Dr. dear once said to me.”

There had been no change in the Randebush household in the Upper Glen for fifteen years ... ever since Nancy, beloved wife of Amos Randebush, had died. Amos and his brother Timothy and Matilda Merry just jogged along peacefully and contentedly. At least Amos and Timothy were contented. If Matilda Merry ... who belied her name if ever a woman did ... was not contented it was her own fault. She had a good place as housekeeper and a pleasant grievance of chronic rheumatism. People said she was a fortune to Dr. Gilbert Blythe. Amos paid her fair wages and never growled when the biscuits were soggy or the roast was overdone. Sometimes, when he looked at her sitting at the head of his table and contrasted her skinny mouse-coloured hair and pessimistic countenance with Nancy’s glossy tresses and rosy face, he sighed. But he never said anything. As for the rheumatism, a woman must have something to talk about.

Timothy was more philosophic. Matilda suited him very well. Nancy had been good-looking and a good housekeeper but blue cats, how she made you toe the mark in everything! You had to wear the soles off your boots scraping them before you came in. Even the minister and Dr. Blythe were no exception. Amos had at times rebelled under her rule though he remembered only her good qualities now. That was what women did to you, even after they were dead. Timothy thanked his stars that none of them had ever succeeded in bamboozling him. No, thank you! He had always hated them all in general, except Mrs. Dr. Blythe, whom he tolerated, but how he hated the Winkworth woman in particular! Dimples, by gad! Airs and graces, by jiminy! Taffy-coloured hair and come-hither eyes! Blue cats! Could anyone have supposed that Amos could be such a fool? Wasn’t one lesson enough? Evidently not, when you had a spineless creature like Amos and a plotting, wheedling, designing, desperate hussy like the Winkworth woman to deal with! Hold your horses! Amos might be quite helpless before her fascinations and Mrs. Blythe might be helping things along ... hadn’t he heard she had a passion for matchmaking? ... but Amos had a brother to save him in spite of himself.

Miss Alma Winkworth was boarding with the Knapps at Glen St. Mary. It was reported through the Knapps that she worked in Hillier’s Beauty Shoppe in Boston, that she had had an operation and had to have a longer vacation than her usual two weeks before going back to work. Timothy hadn’t a speck of faith in that operation. Very likely the doctor and Mrs. Blythe were in the plot. Alma Winkworth wouldn’t look so blooming if she had had an operation. It was merely a play for sympathy. She had just come to Glen St. Mary to see if she couldn’t catch a man, and, by golly, she was on the point of succeeding. Would succeed if he, Timothy, didn’t put a spoke in her wheel.

They had seen her first in church, sitting in the Blythe pew in front of them ... Maria Knapp never went to church ... a smiling creature, looking, as far as hair and complexion went, like a remarkably good advertisement for a beauty shop. Amos had never been the same man since. Next evening he went down to the Knapps’ on some trumped-up excuse and that was the creature’s opportunity. Look what she had done to him already. For all it was harvest time, when men had to work and sleep, Amos mooned through the day and when night came shaved and dressed, touched up his moustache and went to the Glen on some excuse about a meeting of the Fox Breeders’ Association.

Another bad sign was that Amos had suddenly become sensitive about his age. When, on his fiftieth birthday, Timothy congratulated him on attaining the half-century mark Amos peevishly remarked that he didn’t feel a day over forty. The Winkworth woman had told the Blythes that
she
was forty, no doubt to encourage Amos, for would any single woman admit to being forty if she had no nefarious purpose in it?

It seemed to Timothy that nothing less than a miracle could prevent Amos from asking the Winkworth woman to marry him. He had not done it yet ... Timothy was sure of that, from Amos’ continual air of nervousness and uncertainty. But very soon he would screw his courage to the sticking point. He would have to do it before another ten days elapsed for then he had to leave for the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, in charge of a consignment of silver foxes the Fox Breeders’ Association was sending there. He would be absent for two weeks and the Winkworth woman’s vacation would be over before he returned. So Timothy felt quite sure Amos would propose to her before he went.

No, by gad, he wouldn’t! A lifelong, harmonious brotherhood was not going to be destroyed like this. Timothy had an inspiration from heaven. Joe’s Island! There was your answer to prayer!

The details caused Timothy considerable anxiety. Time pressed and, rack his brains as he might, he could think of no way to lure the Winkworth woman to Joe’s Island unbeknownst to anyone. But Providence opened a way. Mrs. Knapp came to the Upper Glen store and dropped in to have a visit with Matilda Merry. They sat on the back porch and rocked and gossiped until Timothy, lying on the kitchen sofa just inside the window, heard something that brought him to his feet in another flash of inspiration. Miss Winkworth, so Mrs. Knapp said, was going to Charlottetown to spend a day or two with a friend who lived there. She was going on the boat train. So was Mrs. Dr. Blythe, who was going up to Avonlea for a visit.