Anne.
“Goodness, no, Miss Shirley, ma’am. I wouldn’t know who he meant if he did. Of course, when we got married he had to say, ‘I take thee, Leonora,’ and I declare to you, Miss Shirley, ma’am, I’ve had the most dreadful feeling ever since that it wasn’t me he was talking to and I haven’t been rightly married at all. And so you’re going to be married yourself, Miss Shirley, ma’am? I always thought I’d like to marry a doctor. It would be so handy when the children had measles and croup. Tom is only a bricklayer, but he’s real good-tempered. When I said to him, says I, ‘Tom, can I go to Miss Shirley’s wedding? I mean to go anyhow, but I’d like to have your consent,’ he just says, ‘Suit yourself, Charlotta, and you’ll suit me.’ That’s a real pleasant kind of husband to have, Miss Shirley, ma’am.”
Philippa and her Reverend Jo arrived at Green Gables the day before the wedding. Anne and Phil had a rapturous meeting which presently simmered down to a cosy, confidential chat over all that had been and was about to be.
“Queen Anne, you’re as queenly as ever. I’ve got fearfully thin since the babies came. I’m not half so goodlooking; but I think Jo likes it. There’s not such a contrast between us, you see. And oh, it’s perfectly magnificent that you’re going to marry Gilbert. Roy Gardner wouldn’t have done at all, at all. I can see that now, though I was horribly disappointed at the time. You know, Anne, you did treat Roy very badly.”
“He has recovered, I understand,” smiled Anne.
“Oh, yes. He is married and his wife is a sweet little thing and they’re perfectly happy. Everything works together for good. Jo and the Bible say that, and they are pretty good authorities.”
“Are Alec and Alonzo married yet?”
“Alec is, but Alonzo isn’t. How those dear old days at Patty’s Place come back when I’m talking to you, Anne! What fun we had!”
“Have you been to Patty’s Place lately?”
“Oh, yes, I go often. Miss Patty and Miss Maria still sit by the fireplace and knit. And that reminds me — we’ve brought you a wedding gift from them, Anne. Guess what it is.”
“I never could. How did they know I was going to be married?”
“Oh, I told them. I was there last week. And they were so interested. Two days ago Miss Patty wrote me a note asking me to call; and then she asked if I would take her gift to you. What would you wish most from Patty’s Place, Anne?”
“You can’t mean that Miss Patty has sent me her china dogs?”
“Go up head. They’re in my trunk this very moment. And I’ve a letter for you. Wait a moment and I’ll get it.”
“Dear Miss Shirley,” Miss Patty had written, “Maria and I were very much interested in hearing of your approaching nuptials. We send you our best wishes. Maria and I have never married, but we have no objection to other people doing so. We are sending you the china dogs. I intended to leave them to you in my will, because you seemed to have sincere affection for them. But Maria and I expect to live a good while yet (D.V.), so I have decided to give you the dogs while you are young. You will not have forgotten that Gog looks to the right and Magog to the left.”
“Just fancy those lovely old dogs sitting by the fireplace in my house of dreams,” said Anne rapturously. “I never expected anything so delightful.”
That evening Green Gables hummed with preparations for the following day; but in the twilight Anne slipped away. She had a little pilgrimage to make on this last day of her girlhood and she must make it alone. She went to Matthew’s grave, in the little poplar-shaded Avonlea graveyard, and there kept a silent tryst with old memories and immortal loves.
“How glad Matthew would be tomorrow if he were here,” she whispered. “But I believe he does know and is glad of it — somewhere else. I’ve read somewhere that ‘our dead are never dead until we have forgotten them.’ Matthew will never be dead to me, for I can never forget him.”
She left on his grave the flowers she had brought and walked slowly down the long hill. It was a gracious evening, full of delectable lights and shadows. In the west was a sky of mackerel clouds — crimson and amber-tinted, with long strips of apple-green sky between. Beyond was the glimmering radiance of a sunset sea, and the ceaseless voice of many waters came up from the tawny shore. All around her, lying in the fine, beautiful country silence, were the hills and fields and woods she had known and loved so long.
“History repeats itself,” said Gilbert, joining her as she passed the Blythe gate. “Do you remember our first walk down this hill, Anne — our first walk together anywhere, for that matter?”
“I was coming home in the twilight from Matthew’s grave — and you came out of the gate; and I swallowed the pride of years and spoke to you.”
“And all heaven opened before me,” supplemented Gilbert. “From that moment I looked forward to tomorrow. When I left you at your gate that night and walked home I was the happiest boy in the world. Anne had forgiven me.”
“I think you had the most to forgive. I was an ungrateful little wretch — and after you had really saved my life that day on the pond, too. How I loathed that load of obligation at first! I don’t deserve the happiness that has come to me.”
Gilbert laughed and clasped tighter the girlish hand that wore his ring. Anne’s engagement ring was a circlet of pearls. She had refused to wear a diamond.
“I’ve never really liked diamonds since I found out they weren’t the lovely purple I had dreamed. They will always suggest my old disappointment.”
“But pearls are for tears, the old legend says,” Gilbert had objected.
“I’m not afraid of that. And tears can be happy as well as sad. My very happiest moments have been when I had tears in my eyes — when Marilla told me I might stay at Green Gables — when Matthew gave me the first pretty dress I ever had — when I heard that you were going to recover from the fever. So give me pearls for our troth ring, Gilbert, and I’ll willingly accept the sorrow of life with its joy.”
But tonight our lovers thought only of joy and never of sorrow. For the morrow was their wedding day, and their house of dreams awaited them on the misty, purple shore of Four Winds Harbor.
Chapter IV.
The First Bride of Green Gables
Anne wakened on the morning of her wedding day to find the sunshine winking in at the window of the little porch gable and a September breeze frolicking with her curtains.
“I’m so glad the sun will shine on me,” she thought happily.
She recalled the first morning she had wakened in that little porch room, when the sunshine had crept in on her through the blossom-drift of the old Snow Queen. That had not been a happy wakening, for it brought with it the bitter disappointment of the preceding night. But since then the little room had been endeared and consecrated by years of happy childhood dreams and maiden visions. To it she had come back joyfully after all her absences; at its window she had knelt through that night of bitter agony when she
