THE REAPER WHOSE NAME IS DEATH
“Matthew—Matthew—what is the matter? Matthew, are you sick?”
It was Marilla who spoke, alarm in every jerky word. Anne came through
the hall, her hands full of white narcissus,—it was long before Anne
could love the sight or odour of white narcissus again,—in time to hear
her and to see Matthew standing in the porch doorway, a folded paper in
his hand, and his face strangely drawn and gray. Anne dropped her
flowers and sprang across the kitchen to him at the same moment as
Marilla. They were both too late; before they could reach him Matthew
had fallen across the threshold.
“He’s fainted,” gasped Marilla. “Anne, run for Martin—quick, quick!
He’s at the barn.”
Martin, the hired man, who had just driven home from the post-office,
started at once for the doctor, calling at Orchard Slope on his way to
send Mr. and Mrs. Barry over. Mrs. Lynde, who was there on an errand,
came too. They found Anne and Marilla distractedly trying to restore
Matthew to consciousness.
Mrs. Lynde pushed them gently aside, tried his pulse, and then laid her
ear over his heart. She looked at their anxious faces sorrowfully and
the tears came into her eyes.
“Oh, Marilla,” she said gravely. “I don’t think—we can do anything for
him.”
“Mrs. Lynde, you don’t think—you can’t think Matthew is—is—” Anne could
not say the dreadful word; she turned sick and pallid.
“Child, yes, I’m afraid of it. Look at his face. When you’ve seen that
look as often as I have you’ll know what it means.”
Anne looked at the still face and there beheld the seal of the Great
Presence.
When the doctor came he said that death had been instantaneous and
probably painless, caused in all likelihood by some sudden shock. The
secret of the shock was discovered to be in the paper Matthew had held
and which Martin had brought from the office that morning. It contained
an account of the failure of the Abbey Bank.
The news spread quickly through Avonlea, and all day friends and
neighbours thronged Green Gables and came and went on errands of
kindness for the dead and living. For the first time shy, quiet Matthew
Cuthbert was a person of central importance; the white majesty of death
had fallen on him and set him apart as one crowned.
When the calm night came softly down over Green Gables the old house
was hushed and tranquil. In the parlour lay Matthew Cuthbert in his
coffin, his long gray hair framing his placid face on which there was a
little kindly smile as if he but slept, dreaming pleasant dreams. There
were flowers about him—sweet old-fashioned flowers which his mother had
planted in the homestead garden in her bridal days and for which
Matthew had always had a secret, wordless love. Anne had gathered them
and brought them to him, her anguished, tearless eyes burning in her
white face. It was the last thing she could do for him.
The Barrys and Mrs. Lynde stayed with them that night. Diana, going to
the east gable, where Anne was standing at her window, said gently:
“Anne dear, would you like to have me sleep with you to-night?”
“Thank you, Diana.” Anne looked earnestly into her friend’s face. “I
think you won’t misunderstand me when I say that I want to be alone.
I’m not afraid. I haven’t been alone one minute since it happened—and I
want to be. I want to be quite silent and quiet and try to realize it.
I _can’t_ realize it. Half the time it seems to me that Matthew can’t
be dead; and the other half it seems as if he must have been dead for a
long time and I’ve had this horrible dull ache ever since.”
Diana did not quite understand. Marilla’s impassioned grief, breaking
all the bounds of natural reserve and lifelong habit in its stormy
rush, she could comprehend better than Anne’s tearless agony. But she
went away kindly, leaving Anne alone to keep her first vigil with
sorrow.
Anne hoped that tears would come in solitude. It seemed to her a
terrible thing that she could not shed a tear for Matthew, whom she had
loved so much and who had been so kind to her, Matthew, who had walked
with her last evening at sunset and was now lying in the dim room below
with that awful peace on his brow. But no tears came at first, even
when she knelt by her window in the darkness and prayed, looking up to
the stars beyond the hills—no tears, only the same horrible dull ache
of misery that kept on aching until she fell asleep, worn out with the
day’s pain and excitement.
In the night she awakened, with the stillness and the darkness about
her, and the recollection of the day came over her like a wave of
sorrow. She could see Matthew’s face smiling at her as he had smiled
when they parted at the gate that last evening—she could hear his voice
saying, “My girl—my girl that I’m proud of.” Then the tears came and
Anne wept her heart out. Marilla heard her and crept in to comfort her.
“There—there—don’t cry so, dearie. It can’t bring him back. It—it—isn’t
right to cry so. I knew that to-day, but I couldn’t help it then. He’d
always been such a good, kind brother to me—but God knows best.”
“Oh, just let me cry, Marilla,” sobbed Anne. “The tears don’t hurt me
like that ache did. Stay here for a little while with me and keep your
arm round me—so. I couldn’t have Diana stay, she’s good and kind and
sweet—but it’s not her sorrow—she’s outside of it and she couldn’t come
close enough to my heart to help me. It’s our sorrow—yours and mine.
Oh, Marilla, what will we do without him?”
“We’ve got each other, Anne. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t
here—if you’d never come. Oh, Anne, I know I’ve been kind of strict and
harsh with you maybe—but you mustn’t think I didn’t love you as well as
Matthew did, for all that. I want to tell you now when I can. It’s
never been easy for me to say things out of my heart, but at times like
this it’s easier. I love you as dear as if you were my own flesh and
blood and you’ve been my joy and comfort ever since you came to Green
Gables.”
Two days afterwards they carried Matthew Cuthbert over his homestead
threshold and away from the fields he had tilled and the orchards he
had loved and the trees he had planted; and then Avonlea settled back
to its usual placidity and even at Green Gables affairs slipped into
their old groove and work was done and duties fulfilled with regularity
as before, although always with the aching sense of “loss in all
familiar things.” Anne, new to grief, thought it almost sad that it
could be so—that they _could_ go on in the old way without Matthew. She
felt something like shame and remorse when she discovered that the
sunrises behind the firs and the pale pink buds opening in the garden
gave her the old inrush of gladness when she saw them—that Diana’s
visits were pleasant to her and that Diana’s merry words and ways moved
her to laughter and smiles—that, in brief, the beautiful world of
blossom and love and friendship had lost none of its power to please
her fancy and thrill her heart, that life still called to her with many
insistent voices.
“It seems like disloyalty to Matthew, somehow, to find pleasure in
these things now that he has gone,” she said wistfully to Mrs. Allan
one evening when they were together in the manse garden. “I miss him so
much—all the time—and yet, Mrs. Allan, the world and life seem very
beautiful and interesting to me for all. To-day Diana said something
funny and I found myself laughing. I thought when it happened I could
never laugh again. And it somehow seems as if I oughtn’t to.”
“When Matthew was here he liked to hear you laugh and he liked to know
that you found pleasure in the pleasant things around you,” said Mrs.
Allan gently. “He is just away now; and he likes to know it just the
same. I am sure we should not shut our hearts against the healing
influences that nature offers us. But I understand your feeling. I
think we all experience the same thing. We resent the thought that
anything can please us when some one we love is no longer here to share
the pleasure with us, and we almost feel as if we were unfaithful to
our sorrow when we find our interest in life returning to us.”
“I was down to the graveyard to plant a rose-bush on Matthew’s grave
this afternoon,” said Anne dreamily. “I took a slip of the little white
Scotch rose-bush his mother brought out from Scotland long ago; Matthew
always liked those roses the best—they were so small and sweet on their
thorny stems. It made me feel glad that I could plant it by his
grave—as if I were doing something that must please him in taking it
there to be near him. I hope he has roses like them in heaven. Perhaps
the souls of all those little white roses that he has loved so many
summers were all there to meet him. I must go home now. Marilla is all
alone and she gets lonely at twilight.”
“She will be lonelier still, I fear, when you go away again to
college,” said Mrs. Allan.
Anne did not reply; she said good night and went slowly back to Green
Gables. Marilla was sitting on the front door-steps and Anne sat down
beside her. The door was open behind them, held back by a big pink
conch shell with hints of sea sunsets in its smooth inner convolutions.
Anne gathered some sprays of pale yellow honeysuckle and put them in
her hair. She liked the delicious hint of fragrance, as of some aerial
benediction, above her every time she moved.
“Doctor Spencer was here while you were away,” Marilla said. “He says
that the specialist will be in town to-morrow and he insists that I
must go in and have my eyes examined. I suppose I’d better go and have
it over. I’ll be more than thankful if the man can give me the right
kind of glasses to suit my eyes. You won’t mind staying here alone
while I’m away, will you? Martin will have to drive me in and there’s
ironing and baking to do.”
“I shall be all right. Diana will come over for company for me. I shall
attend to the ironing and baking beautifully—you needn’t fear that I’ll
starch the handkerchiefs or flavour the cake with liniment.”
Marilla laughed.
“What a girl you were for making mistakes in them days, Anne. You were
always getting into scrapes. I did use to think you were possessed. Do
you mind the time you dyed your hair?”
“Yes, indeed. I shall never forget it,” smiled Anne, touching the heavy
braid of hair that was wound about her shapely head. “I laugh a little
now sometimes when I think what a worry my hair used to be to me—but I
don’t laugh _much_, because it was a very real trouble then. I did
suffer terribly over my hair and my freckles. My freckles are really
gone; and people are nice enough to tell me my hair is auburn now—all
but Josie Pye. She informed me yesterday that she really thought it was
redder than ever, or at least my black dress made it look redder, and
she asked me if people who had red hair ever got used to having it.
Marilla, I’ve almost decided to give up trying to like Josie Pye. I’ve
made what I would once have called a heroic effort to like her, but
Josie Pye won’t _be_ liked.”
“Josie is a Pye,” said Marilla sharply, “so she can’t help being
disagreeable. I suppose people of that kind serve some useful purpose
in society, but I must say I don’t know what it is any more than I know
the use of thistles. Is Josie going to teach?”
“No, she is going back to Queen’s next year. So are Moody Spurgeon and
Charlie Sloane. Jane and Ruby are going to teach and they have both got
schools—Jane at Newbridge and Ruby at some place up west.”
“Gilbert Blythe is going to teach too, isn’t he?”
“Yes”—briefly.
“What a nice-looking young fellow he is,” said Marilla absently. “I saw
him in church last Sunday and he seemed so tall and manly. He looks a
lot like his father did at the same age. John Blythe was a nice boy. We
used to be real good friends, he and I. People called him my beau.”
Anne looked up with swift interest.
“Oh, Marilla—and what happened?—why didn’t you—”
“We had a quarrel. I wouldn’t forgive him when he asked me to. I meant
to, after awhile—but I was sulky and angry and I wanted to punish him
first. He never came back—the Blythes were all mighty independent. But
I always felt—rather sorry. I’ve always kind of wished I’d forgiven him
when I had the chance.”
“So you’ve had a bit of romance in your life, too,” said Anne softly.
“Yes, I suppose you might call it that. You wouldn’t think so to look
at me, would you? But you never can tell about people from their
outsides. Everybody has forgot about me and John. I’d forgotten myself.
But it all came back to me when I saw Gilbert last Sunday.”