The Sheila Variations

This April:

Anne of Green Gables turns 100 years old.

Even with all of this I feel like I haven't scratched the surface of what Anne of Green gables means to me (and actually - it's larger than that - it's Lucy Maud Montgomery who is the obsession, not just her most famous book). I will be obsessed with Lucy Maud Montgomery until I die. The fact that her journals have been published are a great great gift - and this October a biography is coming out (written by the editor of the journals - I've corresponded with her, lovely woman). Her success is something an author can only dream of. She was successful during her lifetime - Anne was a huge hit - but nothing could have prepared her for the posthumous MANIA of today.

Margaret Atwood has written about her fellow Canadian's work on the dawn of this important centennial anniversary here.

An excerpt from the piece that made me cry - and made me think: Yes. Yes. THAT is the magic of the book ... THAT is what, after so many readings, still gets me:

There's another way of reading Anne of Green Gables, and that's to assume that the true central character is not Anne, but Marilla Cuthbert. Anne herself doesn't really change throughout the book. She grows taller, her hair turns from "carrots" to "a handsome auburn", her clothes get much prettier, due to the spirit of clothes competition she awakens in Marilla, she talks less, though more thoughtfully, but that's about it. As she herself says, she's still the same girl inside. Similarly, Matthew remains Matthew, and Anne's best chum Diana is equally static. Only Marilla unfolds into something unimaginable to us at the beginning of the book. Her growing love for Anne, and her growing ability to express that love - not Anne's duckling-to-swan act - is the real magic transformation.

I can barely get through that paragraph without sobbing.

Oh, and 2 days ago I was contacted by someone at Nowpublic - asking them if they could use one of my photos (the poster for Anne of Green Gables on the wall in the college theatre where I went to school - and played "Anne" when I was there) in their tribute page to Lucy Maud Montgomery and the anniversary of Anne of Green Gables' publication. I said of course!!

Slideshow of images here

Here's the post I wrote about Anne of Green Gables - and just from the tone in the comments you can tell how much that fictional character is loved.

And so. Happy birthday Anne with an E.

The Books: "Jane of Lantern Hill" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt series ...

And here is my last Lucy Maud book - and it's the second to last book she wrote: Jane of Lantern Hill. Published in 1937 ... only a couple of years after the Mistress Pat debacle - and interestingly enough, it has a lot of the same themes (the love of home, the need for a home - but this is always one of Lucy Maud's themes) - but Jane, in this book, spends the majority of her time separated from her father - who lives on Prince Edward Island - and she lives in Toronto - and seriously ACHES to get back to the island. The red roads, the ocean, the freedom of life there ... One of the reasons why this overwhelming love of home doesn't quite work with the "Pat" books is: Pat LIVES at home. She is not (like Anne, or Emily) an orphan, she barely spends a freakin' night away from her house - let alone her entire LIFE. She is not "in exile". She grows up in the same house, with two parents ... and so why this unbelievable attachment to the damn house? It makes no sense. That kind of displacement was very familiar to Lucy Maud - who did not grow up with her biological parents - who was basically abandoned by her father, who went out West, and created a new family from scratch - leaving Lucy Maud at home to be raised by grandparents. And then - once Lucy Maud married The Lunatic Husband - he whisked her off to various cities and towns far far away from Prince Edward Island, and - I don't know, this is just my impression - but I feel like she never ever reconciled herself to that geographical distance. She never got used to it. She never accepted it. Her entire soul and spirit yearned towards PEI and yet - til the end of her life - she never spent more than a month there at one time. People who experience their native land from exile often have a way deeper attachment to the soil than those who actually live there (see Joyce, see a bazillion others) ... Lucy Maud Montgomery was no exception. She lived far away from PEI for 30 years. And yet where did the majority of her books take place? Prince Edward Island. No one who has read her books can be indifferent to PEI. She writes about it with such love, such specificity - it's not a romanticized view, not exactly. To her, it felt like reality. There was no place on earth as beautiful or as desirable as PEI. So you wonder if she would have written about it so well if she had lived on PEI all that time. Perhaps exile sharpened her senses, her memory.

The story of Jane of Lantern Hill is actually kind of "modern", (for Lucy Maud anyway) - and touches on issues that were very personal for her, things she never spoke about or wrote about. Anne and Emily in her other books were both orphaned - which was not their fault (the very funny Oscar Wilde quote notwithstanding). Lucy Maud wrote about her sense of being alone in the world, thrown on the kindness of others - through these orphaned characters. But she never wrote a story from her own experience: her mother died, and her father felt he couldn't raise his daughter by himself - so he moved away, married someone else, started a family - and never sent for Lucy Maud. Even though he promised to. It's like he wiped her out of existence (I'm exaggerating - she did visit a couple of times, etc.) - but he had NO intention of "sending for" his young daughter. Which - if you really think about it - is pretty damn cold. But Lucy Maud coped - she accepted her life with very little bitterness, etc. - she didn't blame her father for this ... and yet in book after book after book she writes about orphaned girls. Girls with no parents. Parents do NOT exist in Lucy Maud's world. It's an indirect indictment of the lonely childhood her father left her to.

In Jane, the situation is: Jane's parents split up acrimoniously when she was still a baby. I don't think they got divorced - just separated. Her father, in a rage, moved back home to Prince Edward Island, where he grew up - and Jane's mother moved back in with HER mother, an imperious WITCH. The three of them live in a huge mansion in Toronto and Jane grows up in a rigid atmosphere of silence - her grandmother despises her, because of the resemblance to this hated and scorned ex-husband. Jane's mother is beautiful, and "modern" - much more modern than other mothers in Lucy Maud's books - and by that I mean, she wears makeup, perfume - she's an urban woman, going out to dinner parties, etc. But there's a sadness there. Jane is forbidden to ask questions about her father, whom she has never met.

Jane is a winning little child. You like her. She has spunk. She's not fanciful like Anne, or really really good at something like Emily - but she's the kind of person well liked by everyone. A person with the gift of human connection and friendship. Lucy Maud writes her well - you really GET her character. She's not a re-tread of Anne or Emily. She is her own person. For example: - Anne is a bumbling idiot at first when it comes to domestic issues - and puts salt into pancakes, and forgets the flour ... and Marilla has a hell of a time teaching her to cook. But Jane doesn't have that problem - she's kind of a brilliant cook, improvisational, enthusiastic, good at it - but - she doesn't even know this about herself - because her environment is so rigid, so "children should be seen and not heard" - that she isn't given a chance to discover who she is at ALL. She just tries to make herself as good and unobtrusive and unoffensive as possible - to avoid the wrath of her icy-eyed grandmother.

But then one day - out of the blue - her father writes to her mother demanding that Jane come stay with him for the summer. Jane is 10 or 11 years old. It is his "right" to see Jane, to meet her, he says. A huge family upset occurs. Jane doesn't want to go. She doesn't even KNOW her father! Her mother is a weakling, unable to stand up to her icy mother - and the grandmother is just a flat out witch. But eventually - fearful that he will turn it into a legal issue - they allow Jane to go. Jane goes reluctantly. Even though she is unhappy living in the big echoing marble mansion, with her grandmother - who hates her - she doesn't want to leave. She is afraid of the unknown. She doesn't know who she is yet.

So off she goes to Prince Edward Island. Fearful, hateful, cautious, resentful. Naturally - it turns out that her father is wonderful. You can see why he might not be a good husband - at least not to a woman like Jane's mother - he's a bit irresponsible with his money - you get that right away, he's unconventional - he's a writer - he doesn't care about material things - but you LOVE him. In my opinion, he is the only convincing father-figure Lucy Maud ever wrote. He accepts Jane as she stands. There are no preconceived notions about who she should be - she also is not expected to be a 'good little girl' - and follow the rules. She can swim all day if she wants to, she doesn't have to go to church if she doesn't want to - she can make the friends she wants to make - not have stupid "approved" friends. And he already loves her, because she is his daughter. So in that environment of acceptance - Jane just starts to blossom. She lives with her father in his little seaside cottage (called Lantern Hill, of course) - and she cooks - she's never had a chance to cook before - because the house in Toronto has servants doing everything for her. So after a couple of false starts - Jane becomes an awesome cook. It is the happiest summer of her life. She makes friends her own age for the first time - she has adventures - and she basically just falls in love with her dad. She comes alive. Even though she had never been to PEI before - by the end of the summer she knows: It is HOME.

Of course when it is time for her to return back to Toronto- and her mother - and her horrible grandmother - it ACHES. She doesn't know how to bear it. Jane has discovered her home soil. She must endure the back and forth - she misses her mother desperately - but her heart will always be in Prince Edward Island. It's kind of a complex little book - witih modern-era issues. And I personally think that some of her nature-writing in this book is her best ever - and that is quite a statement, because when she's writing about the natural world - she is always good.

In this excerpt - Jane is staying with her father - her relationship with him is new and fresh ... and she has announced to him that she finds the Bible boring. He feigns shock (but always in a humorous way) and tells her that the best place to read the Bible is in the great outdoors. God isn't meant to be contained in a man-made building. (Is this Lucy Maud digging at her stick-in-the-mud religious fanatic minister husband? Her books are FULL of hints that religion ruins God. Member Anne Shirley talking about how prayers shouldn't be in actual words - that she wanted to walk into the woods and feel a prayer? This would have been heretical to her husband, who feared the flames of hell to such an extent that he went mad. Anyway, I just wonder about that.) Jane's father feels that the Bible should only be read with the sound of the crashing waves in the air, etc. Jane is skeptical.

(Notice here how her father talks to Jane as though she is an intelligent person, not a little girl. He treats her like she is good company. Think back on being a little kid - and how much you cherished grown-ups who treated you like that - with respect. Lucy Maud really gets that.)

Also: notice the creativity and fluidity with which Jane's dad reads the Bible. It's unconventional. Can't you hear snippety know-it-all Christians arguing in a kneejerk way about where he gets it wrong? Which, of course, misses the entire point. Or - that IS the point. Jane has been turned off of religion through overly literal practice. Or, to be more blunt: Christians have turned her off God. Jane's dad couldn't give a shit about any of that. To him - God comes alive in nature. This was always true for Lucy Maud as well, who went to the ocean, the woods, to commune - (which is hugely ironic - seeing as she married an unimaginative unspiritually-minded minister.) Jane's father would probably be seen as a heathen by many. But Jane knows better. So does Lucy Maud. I love this whole passage. It's full of heart, it's smart ... and I can hear the two voices. (She re-uses a couple phrases here from other books. Any serious Lucy Maud fans will immediately recognize them.)

Excerpt from Jane of Lantern Hill by Lucy Maud Montgomery

After all Jane found it did not require a miracle to make her like the Bible. She and dad went to the shore every Sunday afternoon and he read to her from it. Jane loved those Sunday afternoons. They took their suppers with them and ate them squatted on the sand. She had an inborn love of the sea and all pertaining to it. She loved the dunes ... she loved the music of the winds that whistled along the silvery solitude of the sand-shore ... she loved the far dim shores that would be jewelled with home-lights on fine blue evenings. And she loved dad's voice reading the Bible to her. He had a voice that would make anything sound beautiful. Jane thought if dad had had no other good quality at all, she must have loved him for his voice. And she loved the little comments he made as he read ... things that made the verses come alive for her. She had never thought that there was anything like that in the Bible. But then, dad did not read about knops and taches.

"'When all the morning stars sang together' ... the essence of creation's joy is in that, Jane. Can't you hear that immortal music of the spheres? 'Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon and thou, moon, in the vale of Ajalon.' Such sublime arrogance, Jane ... Mussolini himself couldn't rival that. 'Here shall thy proud waves be stayed' ... look at them rolling in there, Jane ... 'so far and no further' ... the majestic law to which they yield obedience never falters or fails. 'Give me neither poverty nor riches' ... the prayer of Agar, son of Jakeh. A sensible man was Agar, my Jane. Didn't I tell you the Bible was full of common sense? 'A fool uttereth all his mind.' Proverbs is harder on the fool than on anybody else, Jane ... and rightly. It's the fools that make all the trouble in the world, not the wicked. 'Whither thou goest I will gol and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people and thy God my God; where thou diest will I die and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me and more also if aught but death part thee and me.' The high-water mark of the expression of emotion in any language that I'm acquainted with, Jane ... Ruth to Naomi ... and all such simple words. Hardly any of more than one syllable ... the writer of that verse knew how to marry words as no one else has ever done. And he knew enough not to use too many of them. Jane, the most awful as well as the most beautiful things in the world can be said in three words or less ... I love you ... he is gone ... he is come ... she is dead ... too late ... and life is illumined or ruined. 'All the daughters of music shall be brought low' ... aren't you a little sorry for them, Jane ... those foolish, light-footed daughters of music? Do you think they quite deserved such a humiliation? 'They have taken away my lord and I know not where they have laid him' ... that supreme cry of desolation! 'Ask for the old paths and walk therein and ye shall find rest.' Ah, Jane, the feet of some of us have strayed far from the old paths ... we can't find our way back to them, much as we may long to. 'As cold water to a thirsty soul so is good news from a far country.' Were you ever thirsty, Jane ... really thirsty ... burning with fever ... thinking of heaven in terms of cold water? I was, more than once. 'A thousand years in thy sight is but as yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night.' Think of a Being like that, Jane, when the little moments torture you. 'Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.' The most terrible and tremendous saying in the world, Jane ... because we are all afraid of truth and afraid of freedom ... that's why we murdered Jesus."

Jane did not understand all dad said, but she put it all away in her mind to grow up to. All her life she was to have recurring flashes of insight when she recalled something dad had said. Not only of the Bible but of all the poetry he read to her that summer. He taught her the loveliness of words ... dad read words as if he tasted them.

" 'Glimpses of the moon ...' one of the immortal phrases of literature, Jane. There are phrases with sheer magic in them ..."

"I know," said Jane. " 'On the road to Mandalay' ... I read that in one of Miss Colwin's books ... and 'horns of elfland faintly blowing.' That gives me a beautiful ache."

"You have the root of the matter in you, Jane. But, oh, my Jane, why ... why ... did Shakespeare leave his wife his second best bed?"

"Perhaps she liked it best," said Jane practically.

" 'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings' ... to be sure. I wonder if that eminently sane suggestion has ever occurred to the commentators who have agonised over it. Can you guess who the dark lady was, Jane? You know when a poet praises a woman she is immortal ... witness Beatrice ... Laura ... Lucasta ... Highland Mary. All talked about hundreds of years after they are dead because great poets loved them. The weeds are growing over Troy but we remember Helen."

"I suppose she didn't have a big mouth," said Jane wistfully.

Dad kept a straight face.

"Not too small a one, Jane. You couldn't imagine goddess Helen with a rosebud mouth, could you?"

"Is my mouth too big, dad?" implored Jane. "The girls at St. Agatha's said it was."

"Not too big, Jane. A generous mouth ... the mouth of a giver, not a taker ... a frank, friendly mouth ... with very well cut corners, Jane. Nno weakness about them ... you wouldn't have eloped with Paris, Jane, and made all that unholy mess. You would have been true to your vows, Jane ... in spirit as well as in letter; even in this upside-down world."

Jane had the oddest feeling that dad was thinking of mother, not of Argive Helen. But she was comforted by what he said about her mouth.

Dad did not always read from the masters. One day he took to the shore a thin little volume of poems by Bernard Freeman Trotter.

"I knew him overseas ... he was killed ... listen to his song about the poplars, Jane.

"'And so I sing the poplars and when I come to die
I will not look for jasper walls but cast about my eye
For a row of wind-blown poplars against an English sky.'

"What will you want to see when you get to heaven, Jane?"

"Lantern Hill," said Jane.

Dad laughed. It was so delightful to make dad laugh ... and so easy. Though a good many times Jane didn't know exactly what he was laughing at, Jane didn't mind that a bit ... but sometimes she wondered if mother had minded it.

One evening after dad had been spouting poetry until he was tired, Jane said timidly, "Would you like to hear me recite, dad?"

She recited The Little Baby of Mathieu. It was easy ... dad made such a good audience.

"You can do it, Jane. That was good. I must give you a bit of training along that line too. I used to be rather good at interpreting the habitant myself."

"Someone she did not like used to be rather good at reading habitant poetry" ... Jane remembered who had said that. She understood another thing now.

Dad had rolled over to where he could see their house in a gap in the twilit dunes.

"I see the Jimmy Johns' light ... and the Snowbeam light at Hungry Cove ... but our house is dark. Let's go home and light it up, Jane. And is there any of that applesauce you made for supper left?"

So they went home together and dad lighted his gasoline lamp and sat down at his desk to work on his epic of Methuselah ... or something else ... and Jane got a candle to light her to bed. She liked a candle better than a lamp. It went out so graciously ... the thin trail of smoke ... the smouldering wick, giving one wild little wink at you before it left you in the dark.

The Books: "Mistress Pat" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt series ...

Yawn. The second (and thankfully last) book in the Pat series. It's endless. Mistress Pat. Pat's fear of change begins to seem pathological here as she grows older. Like - her sister goes to college and Pat grieves for months the "loss". Every single thing that says "change" is resisted. Judy Plum wants to go home to visit Ireland - and Pat so dreads this that she can barely show an enthusiasm for her friend. Pat - you can't do without Judy Plum for 3 months? What the hell is your problem? Get a LIFE. Trees are cut down. Pat mourns. Her brother marries someone she despises. Yes, that sucks, it does ... but get over it. Your brother is not YOU, Pat. She has stupid love affairs which I, the reader, cannot get into because I know Pat's heart isn't in it. Naturally, on the very last page of the book - she "falls in love" with Jingle (yes, that is his name) - her childhood friend - a kind of Gilbert-ish character - and Pat insists, over YEARS, that she does not love him - even though Jingle loves her. Then - in one moment - she realizes she DOES love him. Pat - grownups learn how to deal with their emotions, learn how to know their own mind. It's boring to read. And again, you can feel Lucy Maud losing steam. For example, the book is broken up into "years" - which doesn't really make sense in the context. If it were the story of Pat going to college, then having chapters be titled "First Year", "Second Year", etc. would make sense. But in this context - it just seems like everyone is marking time. Another thing is the length of the chapters. The "First Year" chapter is 100 pages long. It goes on forEVER. And every chapter after that gets shorter and shorter and shorter ... there's one montage that starts one of the "years" that literally goes like this: "It was summer ... it was autumn ... it was winter ..." Lucy Maud must have been very tired. But she was obligated to finish the book. So she basically just sketched it in. And you can FEEL that, when you're reading it.

Bets, her childhood friend dies. A brother and sister move into Bets' old house. Pat, because she has mental problems, decides not to like them - because they have moved into Bets' old house. Yeah, that's a good reason not to like somebody. But eventually they become friends. David and Suzanne are her friends - and I guess she starts to "date" David - even though the way it's written you know it's never going to go anywhere. It's not like with Emily's other lovers - Jarback Priest, et al ... these are characters who are alive, and her relationship with these people could go somewhere. It's not a literary device to track time passing. It's a real relationship. But Pat "goes out" with David for EVER and then ... I guess she breaks it off with him, I don't know ... the whole thing seems so tired.

Here's an excerpt. There are a couple of lines here that I think are quite good. The whole description in the paragraph starting "Pat went up to the Long House ..." I do like the "silence kneeling like a grey nun" line. But other than that - what we are seeing here - is a woman full of pathologies who cannot accept reality.

Excerpt from Mistress Pat.

They heard about the Long House at Winnie's. It was to have new tenants. They had rented the house for the summer ... not the farm, which was still to be farmed by John Hammond, the owner, who had bought it from the successor of the Wilcoxes.

Pat heard the news with a feeling of distaste. The Long House had been vacant almost ever since Bets had died. A couple had bought the farm, lived there for a few months, then sold out to John Hammond. Pat had been glad of this. It was easier to fancy that Bets was still there when it was empty. In childhood she had resented it being empty and lonely, and had wanted to see it occupied and warmed and lighted. But it was different now. She preferred to think of it as tenanted only by the fragrance of old years and the little spectral joys of the past. Somehow, it seemed to belong to her as long as it was

"Abandoned to the lonely peace
Of bygone ghostly things."

Judy had more news the next morning. The newcomers were a man and his sister. Kirk was their name. He was a widower and had been until recently the editor of a paper in Halifax. And they had bought the house, not rented it.

"Wid the garden and the spruce bush thrown in," said Judy. "John Hammond do be still houlding to the farm. He was here last night, after ye wint away, complaining tarrible about the cost av his wife's operation. 'Oh, oh, what a pity,' sez I, sympathetic-like. 'Sure and a funeral wud have come chaper,' sez I. Patsy dear, did ye be hearing Lester Conway was married?"

"Somebody sent me a paper with the notice marked," laughed Pat. "I'm sure it was May Binnie. Fancy any one supposing it mattered to me."

It seemed a lifetime since she had been so wildly in love with Lester Conway. Why was it she never fell in love like that nowadays? Not that she wanted to ... but why? Was she getting too old? Nonsense!

She knew her clan was beginning to say she didn't know what she wanted but she knew quite well and couldn't find it in any of the men who wooed her. As far as they were concerned, she seemed possessed by a spirit of contrariness. No matter how nice they seemed while they were merely friends or acquaintances she could not bear them when they showed signs of developing into lovers. Silver Bush had no rival in her heart.

In the evening she stood in the garden and looked up at the Long House ... it was suddenly a delicate, aerial pink in the sunset light. Pat had never been enar it since the day of Bets' funeral. Now she had a strange whim to visit it once more before the strangers came and took it from her forever ... to go and keep a tryst with old, sacred memories.

Pat slipped into the house and flung a bright-hued scarf over her brown dress with its neck-frill of pleated pink chiffon. She always thought she looked nicer in that dress than any other. Somehow people seldom wondered whether Pat Gardiner was pretty or not ... she was so vital, so wholesome, so joyous, that nothing else mattered. Yet her dark-brown hair was wavy and lustrous, her golden-brown eyes held challenging lights and the corners of her mouth had such a jolly quirk. She was looking her best to-night with a little flush of excitement staining her round, creamy cheeks. She felt as if she were slipping back into the past.

Judy was in the kitchen, telling stories to a couple of Aunt Hazel's small fry who were visiting at Silver Bush. Pat caught a sentence or two as she went out. "Oh, oh, the ears av him, children dear! He cud hear the softest wind walking over the hills and what the grasses used to say to aich other at the sunrising." Dear old Judy! What a matchless storyteller she was!

"I remember how Joe and Win and Sid and I used to sit on the backdoor steps and listen to her telling fairy tales by moonlight," thought Pat, "and whatever she told you you felt had happened ... must have happened. That is the difference between her yarns and Tillytuck's. Oh, it is really awful to think of her going away in the fall for a whole winter."

Pat went up to the Long House by the old delightful short cut past Swallowfield and over the brook and up the hill fields. It was a long time since she had trodden that fairy path but it had not changed. The fields on the hill still looked as if they loved each other. The big silver birch still hung over the log bridge across the brook. The damp mint, crushed under her feet, still gave out its old haunting aroma, and all kinds of wild blossom filled the crevices of the stone dyke where she and Bets had picked wild strawberries. Its base was still lost in a wave of fern and bayberry. And on the hill the Watching Pine still watched and seemed to shake a hand meaningly at her. At the top was the old gate, fallen into ruin, and beyond it the path through the spruce bush where silence seemed to kneel like a grey nun and she felt that Bets had come to meet her, walking through the dusk with dreams in her eyes.

Past the bush she came out on the garden with the house in the midst. Pat stopped and gazed around her. Everything she looked on had some memory of pleasure or pain. The old garden was very eloquent ... that old garden that had once been so beloved by Bets. She seemed to come back again in the flowers she had tended and loved. The whole place was full of her. She had planted that row of lilies ... she had trained that vine over the trellis ... she had set out that rose-bush by the porch step. But most of it was now a festering mass of weeds and in its midst was the sad, empty house, with the little dormer window in its spruce-shadowed roof ... the window of the room where she had seen the sunrise light falling over Bets' dead face. A dreadful pang of loneliness tore her soul.

"I hate those people who are going to live in you," she told the house. "I daresay they'll tear you up and turn you inside out. That will break my heart. You won't be you then."

The Books: "Pat of Silver Bush" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt series ...

Three more Lucy Maud novels to go and then we will be done!! I have been saving the dad-blasted "Pat" books - mainly because the two "Pat" books stink up the field (to quote my sister's soccer coach from when she was little. "You stink up the field!") Pat of Silver Bush. It's truly bizarre to read them because they are both so bad. Lucy Maud didn't write bad books. I mean, she wrote so many of them - and with the exception of Kilmeny - they're all just GREAT. Kilmeny was one of her earlier books - it came out right after Anne of Green Gables [excerpt here] - but what's interesting about the two Pat books [this one and Mistress Pat] is that they were written so late in her career. Like - how did this amazing author who had written so much that was awesome - come up with 2 such stinkers?

Having read her journals, I know that that last decade of her life was hell on earth for her. The fact that she was able to write anything at all is quite something. And she did write other books during that decade - not just the Pat books. But she really lost her way with these two - and I have speculated as to why. Lucy Maud - living as she did far from Prince Edward Island - with her high-maintenance insane husband ... yearned, day and night, to go "home". She never really got used to living away from the sea, and whenever she would go back to PEI for a visit, her writing in her journals about the island, and the sea, and the fields of her home, and all that .... are so lush and so nostalgic and so full of yearning that they are almost painful to read. It's like - her real life, with her husband and her two kids, wasn't really the right life. She never should have moved from PEI. (But then again, if she had lived on PEI, she might not have written so eloquently and memorably about that island. Being in "exile" does wonders to someone's art. See Joyce.) But anyway, what I'm getting at here is that Lucy Maud Montgomery, a grown woman, a famous woman, lived in an almost constant state of agonizing homesickness. Like, it wasn't pleasant nostalgia - it hurt her - almost physically to be separated from PEI.

Now - anyone who has suffered through the Pat books knows - that's the whole theme of those books. Pat's love of her stupid home, Silver Bush. But the thing that doesn't work in the books is that: Pat LIVES at Silver Bush. She is not living out in, say, Manitoba, far from the red red roads of PEI. No. Pat is a little girl, LIVING at Silver Bush ... and she is so attached to her home that she literally gets sick - yes, sick - if she has to spend a night away from it. Or ... if a tree falls in a storm ... she grieves so much that she has to take to her bed. And this isn't just a childish attachment - the books start when Pat is 6 and ends when she's in her 20s - and this bullshit "Oh, how I love Silver Bush" thing never stops. And they're long books, too. Like - how many times do we, the reader, have to be told how intensely Pat loves her home? By the third chapter, I'm like, "Jesus. I get it. Okay? I get it. She loves her home." But it doesn't work for some reason.

I'd be eager to hear from other Lucy Maud fans what they think of this book. Does it work for you? Why? And if it doesn't work for you - why do you think?? Like - what is missing here, in your opinion? Where did Lucy Maud go wrong?

I believe that Lucy Maud was creating an outlet for her own homesickness ... which, of course, is a completely valid thing ... but she didn't do it in a way that makes a compelling book. She is somehow trying to make ME, the reader, love Silver Bush as much as Pat does. But the opposite occurs. Her narration keeps going back to the "how much Pat loves Silver Bush" thing that it actually starts seeming like a neuroses than anything else. I start to think that Pat could benefit from psychotropic drugs. Something is wrong with Pat. Like - why is she so homesick for her house when she lives there??? GET OVER IT, PAT. Get a LIFE, Pat. Lucy Maud also - unlike her other heroines - doesn't give us anything else about Pat to latch onto. It's not like Emily, or Anne, or Valancy ... characters who are three-dimensional, who have all KINDS of responses to things, who are complex people, and yet logical - by that I mean, Lucy Maud has made these people seem so real that their responses to things - in all different kinds of situations - seem life-like. These are not cardboard cutouts. These are not people with One Theme Only, One Theme Only, come on, sweet baby, come on ... Pat has ONE THEME. "I love my home." And you expect me to give a crap about that for 600 pages? No. I'm glad you love your home, Pat, I hope you're happy, but honestly - I think your attachment to your house (and, by extension, to things never changing) is actually neurotic - and I think you should, oh, go away to college. Go travel in Europe for a couple of months. Do SOMEthing that doesn't have to do with your stupid house. Lucy Maud makes a fetish of the house. It is described in such detail that I could probably draw a floor plan, and list every single pillow in every window seat, every dish in the cupboards .... Now, details are fine ... I mean, Lucy Maud described Green Gables in detail. Who of us can't remember that spare room? Or at New Moon, too? Each room has its own vibe, its own character ... but for some reason in those books it works, because - although the house is very important - it is, in the end, just background. In Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat - the house is the thing. The house comes to life more than PAT does. And why should I care about a house? I don't. Or I might - but not just because Lucy Maud TELLS me to. I love Green Gables because it feels like a vibrant other character in those books - and I love it because Anne loves it. It is background to other things.

But it's just interesting to me because Lucy Maud wrote so much and as far as I'm concerned she rarely faltered. Here she does. Her own powers of creativity failed her (the journals mention it briefly - how hard she found it to write these two books) - you can really feel it in Mistress Pat - where she completely runs out of steam maybe 150 pages before the book finally ends. The chapters get shorter and shorter and shorter as the book goes on ... Lucy Maud just has nothing else to give by the end of that book.

And because I know the background - the horror of grief and anxiety that she lived in, day after day after day ... the books end do end up seeming like a small triumph. Perhaps not of art - but of the WILL. (heh heh triumph of the will) No but I mean: she didn't WANT to write a book at that point. She wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for 5 months. Oblivion. But since she couldn't do that ... she forced herself to sit at her desk every day, with her madman husband down the hall, causing all kinds of problems, and black clouds of war gathering over Europe again - much to her horror - her ongoing horror ... and she ploddingly, determinedly, kept at it - and kept writing - until these two books were done. These were the books she had in her in those moments. And so she wrote them. And worked on them, and sweated over them ... she knew something was off. She knew that it wasn't a good sign that the books were so hard for her to write. But she just kept going.

I find that so admirable.

But still. The books stink up the field. It's okay. Lucy Maud wrote so many books that will be read by generations to come .... it's okay that a couple of them, only a couple, are stinkers.

So. The excerpt. Pat has made a friend - Bets Wilcox. Oh, and here's another thing that is bad about these books. Everything is foreshadowed WAY too clearly. In her other books, when you get those moments of the future - it can be either chilling, or exciting ... but here? You know from the first what will happen ... Like stupid Jingle, Pat's "boy"friend. You know that the childhood friends will grow up and Jingle will be a Gilbert-esque suitor, and Pat - with her neurotic horror of change - will not see Jingle "in that way". It's all basically set up from their first meeting - and Judy Plum, the gabby Irish servant, with her keen eyes - sees everything. But I think she sees too much because it leaves nothing to the reader. So Bets. Pat's dear friend. Who is barely developed as a character - we just hear what she looks like, and we know - basically because Judy Plum makes a cryptic comment - that Bets is not long for this world. And oh no, boo hoo, Pat will lose her best friend. The book is full of "foreshadowing" like this - but it's too obvious - so Lucy Maud doesn't develop things - it feels more like events march to some inevitable conclusion. VERY un-Lucy-Maud-like. She really lost her way here.

Okay - so Pat - who is 11 or 12 here - has a sleepover at Bets' house right across the way. But oh no! How on earth will neurotic dipshit Pat handle sleeping away from her beloved house for one night?? Because, as we have been told on every damn page, Pat loves her house with a passion. We, the reader, are supposed to sympathize with Pat. But no. THIS reader thinks, "It's about time to start to cut the ol' apron strings, Pat - because you're starting to sound like One-Note Johnny and that is very neurotic. Get a life, hon. Things DO change in the world. And you better start to get used to it." So Pat and Bets have their sleepover and the world, unbelievably, DOESN'T end ... so Pat starts to go spend the night there even more, now that she knows that her house will not cease to exist just because she is not there.

See? Neurotic.

Oh, and one other bad thing about these books: Lucy Maud relies too much on montage to get us from event to event. It's the Lucy Maud equivalent of Rocky IV. Way too many chapters have sections that read like: "So summer turned to fall. The leaves began to turn, the air began to get chilly, the maple leaves fell ..." etc etc etc etc. Long chapters with two-page montage sequences at the beginning - basically skipping over huge chunks of time. Lucy Maud couldn't get us from A to B without a montage in these books - and again, that is so unlike her. I mean, she would use such a device in other books too - but it never felt so ... imposed in the other books. Here you can tell she's running out of steam.

Lastly - in the excerpt below - when we hear about Pat's milestone - her "soul's awakening" - I just don't feel like Lucy Maud's heart is in it. Compare it to the moment when Emily lies awake all night in the haystack - staring up at the stars - and has a truly spiritual experience, a soul's expansion that will last her the rest of her life. THAT is what Lucy Maud is trying to do here - only in Pat of Silver Bush's world - not Emily's ... and it just doesn't ... quite ... work ...

Excerpt from Pat of Silver Bush by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Pat went up to the Long House over a silver road of new-fallen snow. Every time she turned to look down on home the world was a little whiter. Bets, who had not been in school that day, was waiting for her under the pine. Just above them the Long House, amid its fir trees, was like a little dark island in a sea of snow.

There was something about the long, low-eaved house with the dormer windows in its roof, that pleased Pat. And Bets' room was a delightful one with two dormers along the side and one at each end. It was very grand, Pat told Judy, with a real "set of furniture" and a long mirror in which the delighted girls could see themselves from top to toe. The west window was covered with vines, leafless now but a green dappled curtain in summer, and the east looked right out into a big apple tree. Pat and Bets sat by the little stove and ate apples until any one might have expected them to burst. Then they crept into bed and cuddled down for one of those talks dear to the hearts of small school-girls from time immemorial.

"It's so much easier to be confidential in the dark," Pat had told Judy. "I can tell Bets everything then."

"Oh, oh, I wudn't tell iverything to innybody," warned Judy. "Not iverything, me jewel."

"Not to anybody but Bets," agreed Pat. "Bets is different."

"Too different," Judy sighed. But she did not let Pat hear it.

To lie there, with the soft swish of the fir trees sounding just outside, and talk "secrets" with Bets ... lovely secrets, not like May Binnie's ... was delightful. Bets had recently been to some wedding in the Wilcox clan and Pat had to hear all about it ... the mysterious pearl-white bride, the bridesmaids' lovely dresses, the flowers, the feast.

"Do you suppose we will ever get married?" whispered Bets.

"I won't," said Pat. "I couldn't ever go away from Silver Bush."

"But you wouldn't like to be an old maid, would you?" said Bets. "Besides, you could get him to come and live with you at Silver Bush, couldn't you?"

This was a new idea for Pat. It seemed quite attractive. Somehow, when you were with Bets, everything seemed possible. Perhaps that was another part of her charm.

"We were born on the same day," went on Bets, "so if we're ever married we must try to be married the same day."

"And die the same day. Oh, wouldn't it be romantic?" breathed Pat in ecstasy.

Pat woke in the night with just a little pang of homesickness. Was Silver Bush all right? She slipped out of her bed and stole across to the nearest dormer window. She breathed on its frosty stars until she had made clear a space to peer t hrough ... then caught her breath with delight. The snow had ceased and a big moon was shining down on the cold, snowy hills. The powdered fir trees seemed to be covered with flowers spun from moonshine, the apple trees seemed picked out in silver filigree. The open space of the lawn was sparkling with enormous diamonds. How beautiful Silver Bush looked when you gazed down on it on a moonlit winter night! Was darling Cuddles covered up warm? She did kick the clothes off so. Was mother's headache better? Away over beyond Silver Bush was the poor, lean, ugly Gordon house which nobody had ever loved. Jingle would be sleeping in his kitchen loft now. All summer he had slept in the haw-mow with McGinty. Poor Jingle, whose mother never wrote to him! How could a mother be like that? Pat almost hated to go back to sleep again and lose so much beauty. It had always seemed a shame to sleep through a moonlit night. Somehow those far hills looked so different in moonlight. A verse she and Bets had learned "off by heart", in school that day came to her mind:

Come, for the night is cold,
And the frosty moonlight fills
Hollow and rift and fold
Of the eerie Ardise hills.

She repeated it to herself with a strange, deep exquisite thrill of delight, such as she had never felt before ... something that went deeper than body or brain and touched some inner sanctum of being of which the child had never been conscious. Perhaps that moment was for Patricia Gardiner the "soul's awakening" of the old picture. All her life she was to look back to it as a sort of milestone ... that brief, silvery vigil at the dormer window of the Long House.

The Books: "A Tangled Web" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt series ...

Almost done with Lucy Maud! I'm skipping the rest of the short stories ... well, for now, anyway. Thank you, Melissa, for encouraging me in this direction. Ha!

But I couldn't skip A Tangled Web. Like Blue Castle [excerpt here] - this book kind of stands alone, in the canon of Lucy Maud. It's an adult comedy - rather soap opera-ish - and in my opinion Lucy Maud is in full command of all of her powers in this book. It's chock-full of characters - this book doesn't have a "lead" - which is one of the reasons why it stands alone. The "leads" of the book are two sprawling intermarried families - with a cast of a hundred characters - all of whom we get to know. Some better than others - but still, there isn't one journey that dominates. The story of this book is: ancient Aunt Becky Dark (nee Penhallow) is dying. She's a bazillion years old and she knows she's dying. Everyone is terrified of Aunt Becky - not because she's cruel (although her comments sometimes are) - but because she always says exactly what is on her mind. She is the terrifying "matriarch" of a tangled clan - and every single person is afraid of her, because she will not hesitate to tell the truth, right to their face. Big truths - like "I know you are not in love with your husband" or little truths, like "You wear too much makeup". Anyway, Becky has, in her possession, a family heirloom: this old heinous JUG - and this is the catalyst for the entire book. The jug has been in the family for generations. Stories are told about it. It has crossed the Atlantic. It has been in glass display cases. It has also been in pantries filled with blackberry jame. It is a jug. Becky knows she is going to die and so she gathers the entire clan in her sick-room ... they are all there, crowded inside, and spilling out onto the porch ... all of them with their private griefs and hopes and hatreds ... Lucy Maud is at her best in this kind of situation - You can't believe how many balls she keeps in the air here. There are so many characters! And Becky reads out her will to the group, knowing it is going to cause ruptions and fractures and feuds ... and she cackles with glee at the thought of it, the old trouble-maker. But the big thing is the jug. Everybody wants to know: who is going to get the jug? It's basically like - the LEADERship of the family will be passed on through this jug ... and so they all sit there, in that crowded room, and we get to know each one, as they sit there ... and everybody wants it for different reasons, and everybody feels that they, personally, are the ONLY true heir of the jug ...

What ends up happening is fantastic. It's a great premise for a book. Basically, Becky announces at this meeting that the recipient of the jug will not be announced until exactly a year from that date. And she has a list of stipulations of the type of person it will NOT be given to. No drinking, no swearing, no whatever ... the list goes on and on. Naturally the vices cover pretty much everybody in the room. So over the next year, desperate to be good enough to get the jug, everyone begins to change their behavior, subtly, in order to be worthy to get the jug. Drunkards stop drinking. Etc. etc. And of course, with a clan like this one - a "tangled web" - any tiny change will have resounding implications. So shit starts to hit the fan, left and right.

It's a wonderful book - I love it.

Here's the section at the beginning of the book where Becky reads out her will. I am just amazed at how many characters she can keep going, and how - with one or 2 lines apiece, we know everything we need to know about everybody. I love, too, Lucy Maud's sense of humor. I just respond to it.

Excerpt from A Tangled Web. by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Aunt Becky unfolded her will, and settled her owlish, shell-ringed glasses on her beaky nose.

"I've left my little bit of money to Camilla for her life," she said. "After her death its to go to the hospital in Charlottetown."

Aunt Becky looked sharply over the throng. But she did not see any particular disappointment. To do the Darks and Penhallows justice, they were not money-grubbers. No one grudged Camilla Jackson her legacy. Money was a thing one could and should earn for oneself; but old family heirlooms, crusted with the sentiment of dead and gone hopes and fears for generations, were different matters. Suppose Aunt Becky left the jug to some rank outsider? Or a museum? She was quite capable of it. If she did, William Y. Penhallow mentally registered a vow that he would see his lawyer about it.

"Any debts are to be paid," continued Aunt Becky, "and my grave is to be heaped up - not left flat. I insist on that. Make a note of it, Artemas."

Artemas Dark nodded uncomfortable. He was caretaker of the Rose River graveyard, and he knew he would have trouble with the cemetery committee about that. Besides, it made it so confoundedly difficult to mow. Aunt Becky probaby read his thoughts, for she said,

"I won't have a lawn-mower running over me. You can clip my grave nicely with the shears. I've left directions for my tombstone, too. I want one as big as anybody else's. And I want my lace shawl draped around me in my coffin. It's the only thing I mean to take with me. Theodore gave it to me when Ronald was born. There were times when Theodore could do as graceful a thing as anybody. It's as good as new. I've always kept it wrapped in silver paper at the bottom of my thrid bureau drawer. Remember, Camilla."

Camilla nodded. The first sign of disappointment appeared on Mrs. Clifford Penhallow's face. She had set her heart on getting the lace shawl, for she feared she had very little chance of getting the jug. The shawl was siad to have cost Theodore Dark two hundred dollars. To think of burying two hundred dollars!

Mrs. Toynbee Dark, who had been waiting all the afternoon for an opportunity to cry, thought she saw it at the mention of Aunt Becky's baby son who had been dead for sixty years, and got out her handkerchief. But Aunt Becky headed her off.

"Don't start crying yet, Alicia. By the way, while I think of it, will you tell me something? I've always wanted to know and I'll never have another chance. Which of your three husbands did you like best - Morton Dark, Edgar Penhallow, or Toynbee Dark? Come now, make a clean breast of it."

Mrs. Toynbee put her handkerchief back in her bag and shut the latter with a vicious snap.

"I had a deep affection for all my partners," she said.

Aunt Becky wagged her head.

"Why didn't you say 'deceased' parters? You were thinking it, you know. You have that type of mind. Also, tell me honestly, don't you think you ought to have been more economical with husbands? Three! And poor Mercy and Margaret there haven't been able even to get one."

Mercy reflected bitterly that if she had employed the methods Alicia Dark had, she might have had husbands and to spare, too. Margaret coloured softly and looked piteous. Why, oh why, must cruel old Aunt Becky hold her up to public ridicule like this?

"I've divided all my belongings among you," said Aunt Becky. "I hate the thought of dying and leaving all my nice things. But since it must be, I'm not going to have any quarreling over them before I'm cold in my grave. Everything's down here in black and white. I've just left the things according to my own whims. I'll read the list. And let me say that the fact that any one of you gets something doesn't mean that you've no chance for the jug as well. I'm coming to that later."

Aunt Becky took off her spectacles, polished them, put them back on again, and took a drink of water. Drowned John nearly groaned with impatience. Heaven only knew how long it would be before she would get to the jug. He had no interest in her other paltry knick-knacks.

"Mrs. Denzil Penhallow is to have my pink china candlesticks," announced Aunt Becky. "I know you'll be delighted at this, Martha dear. You've given me so many hints about candlesticks."

Mrs. Denzil had wanted Aunt Becky's beautiful silver Georgian candlesticks. And now she was saddled with a pair of unspeakable china horrors, in colour a deep magenta pink with what looked like black worms wriggling all over them. But she tried to look pleased, because if she didn't it might spoil her chances for the jug. Denzil scowled, jug or no jug, and Aunt Becky saw it. Pompous old Denzil. She would get even with him.

"I remember when Denzil was about five years old he came down to my place with his mother, one day, and our old turkey gobbler took after him. I suppose the poor bird thought no one else had a right to be strutting around there. 'Member, Denzil? Lord, how you ran and blubbered! You certainly thought Old Nick was after you. Do you know, Denzil, I've never seen you parading up the church aisle since but I've thought of that."

Well, it had to be endured. Denzil cleared his throat and endured it.

"I haven't much jewellry," Aunt Becky was saying. "Two rings. One is an opal. I'm giving that to Virginia Powell. They say it brings bad luck, but you're too modern to believe that old superstition, Virginia. Though I never had any luck after I got it."

Virginia tried to look happy, though she had wanted the Chinese screen. As for luck or no luck, how could that matter? Life was over for her. Nobody grudged her the opal, but when Aunt Becky mentioned rings many ears were pricked up. Who would get her diamond ring? It was a fine one and worth several hundreds of dollars.

"Ambrosine Wentworth is to have my diamond ring," said Aunt becky.

Half those present could not repress a gasp of disapproval and the collective effect was quite pronounced. This, thought the gaspers, was absurd. Ambrosine Wentworth had no right whatever to that ring. And what good would it do her - an old broken-down servant? Really, Aunt Becky's brain must be softening.

"Here it is, Ambrosine," said Aunt Becky, taking it from her bony finger and handing it to the trembling Ambrosine. "I'll give it to you now, so there'll be no mistake. Put it on."

Ambrosine obeyed. Her old wrinkled face was aglow with the joy of a long-cherished dream suddenly and unexpectedly realized. Ambrosine Winkworth, through a drab life spent in other people's kitchens, had hankered all through that life for a diamond ring. She had never hoped to have it, and now here it was on her hand, a great starry wonderful thing, glittering in the June sunshine that fell through the window. Everything came true for Ambrosine in that moment. She asked no more of fate.

Perhaps Aunt Becky had divined that wistful dream of the old woman. Or perhaps she had just given Ambrosine the ring to annoy the clan. If the latter, she had certainly succeeded. Nan Penhallow was especially furious. She should have the diamond ring. Thekla Penhallow felt the same way. Joscelyn, who once had had a diamond ring, Donna, who still had one, and Gay, who expected she soon would have one, looked amused and indifferent. Chuckling to herself Aunt Becky picked up her will and gave Mrs. Clifford Penhallow her Chinese screen.

"As if I wanted her old Chinese screen," thought Mrs. Clifford, almost on the point of tears.

Margaret Penhallow was the only one whom nobody envied. She got Aunt Becky's Pilgrim's Progress, a very old, battered book. The covers had been sewed on, the leaves were yellow with age. One was afraid to touch it lest it might fall to pieces. It was a most disreputable old volume which Theodore Dark, for some unknown reason, had prized when alive. Since his death, Aunt Becky had kept it in an old box in the garret, where it had got musty and dusty. But Margaret was not disappointed. She had expected nothing.

"My green pickle leaf is to go to Rachel Penhallow," said Aunt Becky.

Rachel's long face grew longer. She had wanted the Apostle spoons. But Gay Penhallow got the Apostle spoons to her surprise and delight. They were quaint and lovely and would accord charmingly with a certain little house of dreams that was faintly taking place in her imagination. Aunt Becky looked at Gay's sparkling face with less grimness than she usually showed and proceeded to give her dinner set to Mrs. Howard Penhallow, who wanted the Chippendale sideboard.

"It was my wedding-set," said Aunt Becky. "There's only one piece broken. Theodore brought his fist down on the cover of one of the tureens one day when he got excited in an argument at dinner. I won out in the argument, though - at leats I got my own way, tureen or no tureen. Emily, you're to have the bed."

Mrs. Emily Frost, nee Dark, a gentle, faded little person, who also had yearned for the Apostle spoons, tried to look grateful for a bed that was too big for any of her tiny rooms. And Mrs. Alpheus Penhallow, who wanted the bed, had to put up with the Chippendale sideboard. Donna Dark got an old egg dish in the guise of a gaily coloure china hen sitting on a yellow china nest, and was glad because she had liked the old thing when she was a child. Joscelyn Dark got the claw-footed mahogany talbe Mrs. Palmer Dark had hope for, and Roger Dark got the Georgian candlesticks and Mrs. Denzil's eternal hatred. The beautiful old Queen Anne bookcase went to Murray Dark, who never read books, and Hugh Dark got the old hour-glass - early eighteenth century - and wondered bitterly what use it would be to a man for whom time had stopped ten years ago. He knew, none better, how long an hour can be and what devastating things can happen in it.

"Crosby, you're to have my old cut-glass whiskey decanter," Aunt Becky was saying. "There hasn't been any whiskey in it for many a year, more's the pity. It'll hold the water you're always drinking in the night. I heard you admire it once."

Old Crosby Penhallow, who had been nodding, wakened up and looked pleased. He really hadn't expected anything. It was kind of Becky to remember him. They had been young togehter.

Aunt Becky looked at him - at his smooth, shining bald head, his sunken blue eyes, his toothless mouth. Old Crosby would never have false teeth. Yet in spite of the bald head and faded eyes and shrunken mouth, Crosby Dark was not an ill-looking old man - quite the reverse.

"I have a mind to tell you something, Crosby," said Aunt Becky. "You never knew it - nobody ever knew it - but you were the only man I ever loved."

The announcement made a sensation. Everybody - so ridiculous is outworn passion - wanted to laugh but dared not. Crosby blushed painfully all over his wrinkled face. Hang it all, was old Becky making fun of him? And whether or no, how dared she make a show of him like this before everybody?

"I was quite mad about you," said Aunt Becky musingly. "Why? I don't know. You were handsomer sixty years ago than any man has a right to be, but you had no brains. Yet you were the man for me. And you never looked at me. You married Annette Dark - and I married Theodore. Nobody knows how much I hated him when I married him. But I got quite fond of him after a while. That's life, you know - though those three romantic young geese there - Gay and Donna and Virginia, think I'm telling rank heresy. I got over caring for you in time, even though for years after I did, my heart used to beat like mad everey time I saw you walk up the church aisle with your meek little Annette trotting behind you. I got a lot of thrills out of loving you, Crosby - many more I don't doubt than if I'd married you. And Theodore was really a much better husband for me than you'd have been - he had a sense of humour. And it doesnt' matter now whether he was or wasn't. I don't even wish now that you had loved me, though I wished it for so many years. Lord, the nights I couldn't sleep for thinking of you - and Theordore snoring beside me. But there it is. Somehow, I've always wanted you to know it and at last I've had the courage to tell you."

Old Crosby wiped his brow with his handkerchief. Erasmus would never let him hear the last of this - never. And suppose it got into the papers! If he had dreamed anything like this was going to happen, he would never have come to the levee. He glowered at the jug. It was to blame, durn it.

"I wonder how many of us will get out of this alive," whispered Stanton Grundy to Uncle Pippin.

But Aunt Becky had switched over to Penny Dark and was giving him her bottle of Jordan water.

"What the deuce do I care for Jordan water," thought Penny. Perhaps his face was too expressive, for Aunt Becky suddenly grinned dangerously.

"Mind the time, Penny, you moved a vote of thanks to Rob Dufferin on the death of his wife?"

There was a chorus of laughter of varying timbre, among which Drowned John's boomed like an earthquake. Penny's thoughts were as profane as the others' had been. That a little mistake betweent hanks and condolence, made in the nervousness of public speaking, should be everlastingly coming up against a man like this. From old Aunt Becky, too, who had just confessed that most of her life she had loved a man who wasn't her husband, the scandalous old body.

Mercy Penhallow sighed. She would have liked the Jordan water. Rachel Penhallow had one and Mercy had always envied her for it. There must be a blessing in any household that had a bottle of Jordan water. ASunt Becky heard the sigh and looked at Mercy.

"Mercy," she said apropos of nothing, "do you remember that forgotten pie you brought out after everybody had finished eating at the Stanley Penhallow's silver-wedding dinner?"

But Mercy was not afraid of Aunt Becky. She had a spirit of her own.

"Yes, I do. And do you remember, Aunt Becky, that the first time you killed and roasted a chicken after you were married, you brought it to the table with the insides still in it?"

Nobody dared to laugh but everybody was glad Mercy had the spunk. Aunt Becky nodded unperturbed.

"Yes, and I remember how it smelled! We had company, too. I don't think Theodore ever fully forgave me. I thoguht that had forgotten years ago. Is anything ever forgotten? Can people ever live anything down? The honours are to you, Mercy, but I must get square with somebody. Junius Penhallow, do you remember - since Mercy has started digging up the past - how drunk you were at your wedding?"

Junius Penhallow turned a violent crimson but couldn't deny it. Of what use was it, with Mrs. Junius at his elbow, to plead that he had been in such a blue funk on his wedding-morning that he'd never had had the courage to go throughwith it if he hadn't got drunk? He had never been drunk since, and it was hard to have it raked up now, when he was an elder in the church and noted for his avowed temperance principles.

"I'm not the only one who ever got drunk in this clan," he dared to mutter, despite the jug.

"No, to be sure. There's Artemas over there. Do you remember, Artemas, the evening you waled up the church aisle in your nightshirt?"

Artemas, a tall, raw-boned, red-haired fellow, had been too drunk on that occasion to remember it, but he always roared when reminded of it. He thought it the best joke ever.

"You should have all been thankful I had that much on myeslf," he said with a chuckle.

Mrs. Artemas wished she were dead. What was a joke to Artemas was a tragedy to her. She had never forgotten - could never forget - the humiliation of that unspeakable evening. She had forgiven Artemas certain violations of her marriage vow of which every one was aware. But she had never forgiven - could never forgive - the episode of the nightshirt. If it had been pajamas, it would not have been quite so terrible. But in those days pajamas were unknown.

Aunt Becky was at Mrs. Conrad Dark.

"I'm giving you my silver saltcellars. Alec Dark's mother gave them to me for a wedding-present. Do you remember the time your and Mrs. Clifford there quarreled over Alec Dark and she slapped your face? And neither of you got Alec after all. There, there, don't crack the spectrum. It's all dead and vanished, just like my affair with Crosby."

("As if there was ever any affair," thought Crosby piteously.)

"Pippin's to have my grandfather clock. Mrs. Digby Dark thinks she should have that because her father gave it to me. But no. Do you remember, Fanny, that you once put a tract in a book you leant me? Do you know what I did with it? I used it for curl papers. I've never forgive you for the insult. Tracts, indeed. Did I need tracts?"

"You -- weren't a member of the church," said Mrs. Digby, on the point of tears.

"No - nor am yet. Theodore and I could never agree which church to join. I wanted Rose River and he wanted Bay Silver. And after he died it seemed sort of disrespectful to his memory to join Rose River. Besides, I was so old than it would have seemed funny. Marrying and church-joining should be done in youth. But I was as good a Christian as any one. Naomi Dark."

Naomi, who had been fanning Lawson, looked up with a start as Aunt Becky hurled her name at her.

"You're to get my Wedgwood teapot. It's a pretty thing. Cauliflower pattern, as it's called, picked out with gold lustre. It's the only thing it really hurts me to give up. Letty gave it to me - she bought it at a sale in town with some of her first quarter's salary. Have you all forgotten Letty? It's forty years since she died. She would have been sixty if she were living now - as old as you, Fanny. Oh, I know you don't own to more than fifty, but you and Letty were born within three weeks of each other. IT seems funny to think of Letty being sixty - she was always so young - she was the youngest thing I ever knew. I used to wonder how Theodore and I ever produced her. She couldn't have been sixty ever - that's why she had to die. After all, it was better. It hurt me to have her die - but I think it would have hurt me more to see her sixty - wrinkled - faded - grey-haired - my pretty Letty, like a rose tossing in a breeze. Have you all forgotten that golden hair of hers - such living hair. Be good to her teapot, Naomi."

The Books: The Doctor's Sweetheart: The Girl and the Wild Race' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories - by L.M. Montgomery. This is another collection of short stories - all selected by Catherine McLay - in general these have higher quality than some of the other collections, which are made up of juvenilia, or things that Montgomery obviously wrote for money. The stories in this collection (with a couple exceptions) are juicy - the characters memorable, and her writing superb.

The story I'm excerpting today is one of Lucy Maud's amusing romantic comedies. Judith is 27 years old and lives with her aunt. Judith has never been married - which basically causes her aunt conniption fits every time she thinks about. 27! And never married! It's not that Judith isn't pretty, or wifely, or a good match ... it's that the guy she has been secretly in love with since she was a kid - is not approved of by her aunt - who has chosen somebody else for her. Judith will not settle - and it's not like the guy she loves has ever declared himself. So it's a stalemate. Judith - a lovely laughing pretty girl - sits at home with her aunt, listening to her aunt bemoan the shame of being 27 and unmarried. Judith takes it all rather philosophically - she's not a gloom and doom type.

But then one day - Judith snaps. She declares to her complaining aunt that she will "marry the first man who asks". Word gets out in the little town - and word eventually reaches the guy Judith secretly loves - as well as the suitor her aunt approves of (as a matter of fact, her aunt sends the man an urgent message telling him to COME OVER HERE QUICK). And the two men end up having a race to get to Judith first - involving buggies racing across fields and fording streams, etc. The entire town gets involved - people rooting for one or the other - and Judith, who made a big show of saying she didn't care WHO she married - of course waits, with baited breath, to see if HER chosen one will reach her first.

It's a fun story - and I really like Judith's spunky personality.

Anyway - here's the moment where Judith finally snaps!

Excerpt from The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories - 'The Girl and the Wild Race' - by L.M. Montgomery.

The afternoon that Mrs. Tony Mack came in Mrs. Theodora felt more aggrieved than ever. Ellie McGregor had been married the previous week - Ellie, who was the same age as Judith and not half so good looking. Mrs. Theodora had been nagging Judith ever since.

"But I might as well talk to the trees down there in that hollow," she complained to Mrs. Tony. "That girl is so set and contrary minded. She doesn't care a bit for my feelings."

This was not said behind Judith's back. The girl herself was standing at the open door, drinking in all the delicate, evasive beauty of the spring afternoon. The Whitney house crested a bare hill that looked down on misty intervals, feathered with young firs that were golden green in the pale sunlight. The fields were bare and smoking, although the lanes and shadowy places were full of moist snow. Judith's face was aglow with the delight of mere life and she bent out to front the brisk, dancing wind that blew up from the valley, resinous with the odors of firs and damp mosses.

At her aunt's words the glow went out of her face. She listened with her eyes brooding on the hollow and a glowing flame of temper smouldering in them./ Judith's long patience was giving way. She had been flicked on the raw too often of late. And now her aunt was confiding her grievances to Mrs. Tony Mack - the most notorious gossip in Ramble Valley or out of it!

"I can't sleep at nights for worrying over what will become of her when I'm gone," went on Mrs. Theodora dismally. "She'll just have to live on alone here - a lonesome withered-up old maid. And her that might have had her pick, MRs. Tony, though I do say it as shouldn't. You must feel real thankful to have all your girls married off - especially when none of them was extry good-looking. Some people have all the luck. I'm tired of talking to Judith. Folks'll be saying soon that nobody ever really wanted her, for all her flirting. But she just won't marry."

"I will!"

Judith whirled about on the sun warm door step and came in. Her black eyes were flushing and her round cheeks were crimson.

"Such a temper you never saw!" reported Mrs. Tony afterwards. "Though 'tweren't to be wondered at. Theodora was most awful aggravating."

"I will," repeated Judith stormily. "I'm tired of being nagged day in and day out. I'll marry - and what is more I'll marry the first man that asks me - that I will, if it is old Widower Delane himself! How does that suit you, Aunt Theodora?"

Mrs. Theodora's mental processes were never slow. She dropped her knitting ball and stooped for it. In that time she had decided what to do. She knew that Judith would stick to her word, Stewart-like, and she must trim her sails to catch this new wind.

"It suits me real well, Judith," she said calmly, "you can marry the first man that asks you and I'll say no word to hinder."

The color went out of Judith's face, leaving it pale as ashes. Her hasty assertion had no sooner been uttered than it was repented of, but she must stand by it now. She went out of the kitchen without another glance at her aunt or the delighted Mrs. Tony and dashed up the stairs to her own little room which looked out over the whole of Ramble Valley. It was warm with the March sunshine and the leafless boughs of the creeper that covered the end of the house were tapping a gay tattoo on the window panes to the music of the wind.

Judith sat in her little rocker and dropped her pointed chin in her hands.

The Books: The Doctor's Sweetheart: 'Emily's Husband' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories - by L.M. Montgomery. This is another collection of short stories - all selected by Catherine McLay - in general these have higher quality than some of the other collections, which are made up of juvenilia, or things that Montgomery obviously wrote for money. The stories in this collection (with a couple exceptions) are juicy - the characters memorable, and her writing superb. I like this collection a lot.

First story I'll excerpt from is the one called "Emily's Husband". I like this one because of the characters. Emily is one of those classic Lucy Maud leads: she's a woman for whom pride is everything. This (of course) takes her into pretty much sinful territory. She's not just proud. She is hard. Who knows why. But that's the way she is. Lucy Maud writes such people so well - they're a common type in her work. She GETS the damage that such pride can wreak. She paid a price herself for her own pride - a price that she never stopped paying. Pride in these Lucy Maud archetypes often manifests itself in an imperious manner - a cold and haughty indifference ... even when beneath, the person is experiencing turmoil, rage, lust, whatever. The self-control that it takes - for these characters to save face - is often wrenching. You ache for them to just let go!

Emily's price that she paid is this: She married a man she loved - Stephen Fair. Stephen's mother lived with them - and this ended up being the thing that drove Emily away. Mrs. Fair was supposedly sweet and nice - but she was one of those types that Lucy Maud despises: sweet and kitteny on the outside, but vicious on the inside. Mrs. Fair set out to make Emily's life miserable - and she did. I don't remember what the issue was - maybe she thought Emily wasn't good enough for her son - but every word to Emily contained a barb, a dig, a hidden claw. Emily, with all her pride, and her sensitivity to insult - suffered in silence. Stephen felt the tension but didn't take sides. Of course Emily felt that in not taking sides - he was choosing his mother. So finally Emily burst - and told him to choose. Choose your mother or me. I refuse to live with that bitch one more second. (Of course she didn't say that, but it was implied!) Stephen, who was no slouch in the pride department, said - "Fine. Go home. If you leave though - don't come back!" Emily - in a rage - stalked across the fields to her family home, where she had grown up, and where her older sister now lived. And Emily never returned to her husband's home. 5 years went by. And over those years, Emily's rage did not soften - but hardened. It hardened her character. She became unyielding, unforgiving, and rather terrifying. It was her way of protection. Lucy Maud writes that Emily KNEW she had been in the wrong - but there was something in her that just could not give in. Lucy Maud, instead of judging such people, always has compassion for them. She aches for those who cannot express themselves, who let themselves harden up. She knows that pain. So it's a classic Lucy Maud situation. A fight leads to a long freeze. Even though the main parties live just across the way from each other - they never see each other, reference each other ... until ...

One day Emily comes home and gets some news ... I am excerpting the beginning of the story. I just like how Lucy Maud sets Emily up here - the voice, the haughtiness, the pale skin, the superior attitude ... It makes the end (which has Emily running over to her long-estranged husband's house - in a frenzy - through a rain storm - with branches slicing across her face - her hair tangled in the wind - and bursting in the door, begging him for forgiveness ...) SO much more satisfying. Because we know that she has never EVER let herself go like that.

Excerpt from The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories - "Emily's Husband" - by L.M. Montgomery.

Emily Fair got out of Hiram Jameson's wagon at the gate. She took out her satchel and parasol and, in her clear, musical tones, thanked him for bringing her home. Emily had a very distinctive voice. It was very sweet always and very cold generally; sometimes it softened to tenderness with those she loved, but in it there was always an undertone of inflexibility and reserve. Nobody had ever heard Emily Fair's voice tremble.

"You are more than welcome, Mrs. Fair," said Hiram Jameson, with a glance of bold admiration. Emily met it with an unflinching indifference. She disliked Hiram Jameson. She had been furious under all her external composure because he had been at the station when she left the train.

Jameson perceived her scorn, but chose to disregard it.

"Proud as Lucifer," he thought as he drove away. "Well, she's none the worse of that. I don't like your weak women -- they're always sly. If Stephen Fair doesn't get better she'll be free and then --"

He did not round out the thought, but he gloated over the memory of Emily, standing by the gate in the harsh, crude light of the autumn sunset, with her tawny, brown hair curling about her pale, oval face and the scornful glint in her large, dark-grey eyes.

Emily stood at the gate for some time after Jameson's waggon had disappeared. When the brief burst of sunset splendour had faded out she turned and went into the garden where late asters and chrysanthemums still bloomed. She gathered some of the more perfect ones here and there. She loved flowers, but to-night the asters seemed to hurt her, for she presently dropped those she had gathered and deliberately set her foot on them.

A sudden gust of wind came over the brown, sodden fields and the ragged maples around the garden writhed and wailed. The air was raw and chill. The rain that had threatened all day was very near. Emily shivered and went into the house.

Amelia Phillips was bending over the fire. She came forward and took Emily's parcels and wraps with a certain gentleness that sat oddly on her grim personality.

"Are you tired? I'm glad you're back. Did you walk from the station?"

"No. Hiram Jameson was there and offered to drive me home. I'd rather have walked. It's going to be a storm, I think. Where is John?"

"He went to the village after supper," answered Amelia, lighting a lamp. "We needed some things from the store."

The light flared up as she spoke and brought out her strong, almost harsh features and deep-set black eyes. Amelia Phillips looked like an overdone sketch in charcoal.

"Has anything happened in Woodford while I've been away?" asked Emily indifferently. Plainly she did not expect an affirmative answer. Woodford life was not eventful.

Amelia glanced at her sharply. So she had not heard! Amelia had expected that Hiram Jameson would have told her. She wished that he had, for she never felt sure of Emily. The older sister knew that beneath that surface reserve was a passionate nature, brooking no restraint when once it overleaped the bounds of her Puritan self-control. Amelia Phillips, with all her naturally keen insight and her acquired knowledge of Emily's character, had never been able to fathom the latter's attitude of mind towards her husband. From the time that Emily had come back to her girlhood home, five years before, Stephen Fair's name had never crossed her lips.

"I suppose you haven't heard that Stephen is very ill," said Amelia shortly.

Not a feature of Emily's face changed. Only in her voice when she spoke was a curious jarring, as if a false note had been struck in a silver melody.

"What is the matter with him?"

"Typhoid," answered Amelia briefly. She felt relieved that Emily had taken it so calmly. Amelia hated Stephen Fair with all the intensity of her nature because she believed that he had treated Emily ill, but she had always been distrustful that Emily in her heart of hearts loved her husband still. That, in Amelia Phillips' opinion, would have betrayed a weakness not to be tolerated.

Emily looked at the lamp unwinkingly.

"That wick needs trimming," she said. Then, with a sudden recurrence of the untuneful note:

"Is he dangerously ill?"

"We haven't heard for three days. The doctors were not anxious about him Monday, though they said it was a pretty severe case."

A faint, wraith-like change of expression drifted over Emily's beautiful face and was gone in a moment. What was it - relief? Regret? It would have been impossible to say. When she next spoke her vibrant voice was as perfectly melodious as usual.

"I think I will go to bed, Amelia. John will not be back until late I suppose, and I am very tired. There comes the rain. I suppose it will spoil all the flowers. They will be beaten to pieces."

In the dark hall Emily paused for a moment and opened the front door to be cut in the face with a whip-like dash of rain. She peered out into the thickly gathering gloom. Beyond, in the garden, she saw the asters tossed about, phantom-like. The wind around the many-cornered old farmhouse was full of wails and sobs.

The clock in the sitting-room struck eight. Emily shivered and shut the door. She remembered that she had been married at eight o'clock that very morning seven years ago. She thought she could see herself coming down the stairs in her white dress with her bouquet of asters. For a moment she was glad that those mocking flowers in the garden would be all beaten to death before morning by the lash of wind and rain.

Then she recovered her mental poise and put the hateful memories away from her as she went steadily up the narrow stairs and along the hall with its curious slant as the house had settled, to her own room under the north-western eaves.

When she had put out the light and gone to bed she found that she could not sleep. She pretended to believe that it was the noise of the storm that kept her awake. Not even to herself would Emily confess that she was waiting and listening nervously for John's return home. That would have been to admit a weakness, and Emily Fair, like Amelia, despised weakness.

Every few minutes a gust of wind smote the house, with a roar as of a wild beast, and bombarded Emily's window with a volley of rattling drops. In the silences that came between the gusts she heard the soft, steady pouring of the rain on the garden paths below, mingled with a faint murmur that came up from the creek beyond the barns where the pine boughs were thrashing in the storm. Emily suddenly thought of a weird story she had once read years before and long forgotten - a story of a soul that went out in a night of storm and blackness and lost its way between earth and heaven. She shuddered and drew the counterpane over her face.

"Of all things I hate a fall storm most," she muttered. "It frightens me."

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery. Another excerpt! It will be the last. Sniff. We must leave our Blue Castle behind. Valancy and Barney go along with their lives - in a montage of the seasons ... and then comes the big moment. The revelation moment. Valancy had been told by her doctor that her heart was so bad that any sudden shock could kill her instantly. She is always aware of keeping her stress level down - which, of course, on Barney's island, is not hard at all. But one day - Valancy and Barney are walking home from town, along the railroad tracks, and Valancy's heel gets caught in the rails ... and naturally, at that moment, a train decides to suddenly appear around the corner, bearing down right at them. Valancy is stuck! Damsel in distress! She calls out to Barney - who drops everything and runs to her, desperately trying to get her heel loose. Valancy, panicked, begs Barney to save himself - let her die - she who is going to die soon anyway - but to save himself! Barney, of course, ignores this and keeps tugging at her foot. With seconds to spare - or milliseconds - Barney frees Valancy's foot and pulls her away - just as the train races by. Okay, so this is the big moment. The two of them stroll home, lost in their own thoughts. Valancy is thinking, with a sick kind of realization: I can't have a bad heart ... because if that moment didn't kill me ... if that moment wasn't a "sudden shock" I don't know what is ... the doctor must have made a mistake ... This makes her sick to her stomach because her whole marriage to Barney is based on the fact that she is going to die in about a year. If she's not going to die? Would Barney think she had tricked him into marrying her? Etc. Valancy feels ill. And Barney is lost in thought, too. Valancy assumes that he is thinking what she is thinking: If THAT didn't kill her, then she can't be all that sick ... However, it turns out (we find this out later) - that Barney is actually lost in thought, and kind of distant - because he realized, in a flash, at the prospect of losing Valancy - that he was in love with her. Instead of declaring himself, he instead becomes consumed by the thought that he must go talk to doctors about her heart condition, get the best specialists, try to save her, do anything ... ANYthing to save her! But he doesn't tell Valancy any of this. He just disappears into the night. The next day, Valancy goes to visit the doctor who gave her the diagnosis - and she asks him if there could be any error ... and blah blah ... turns out, he was flustered on that day he saw her - for personal reasons - and gave her the diagnosis meant for another woman, who had a similar name. Valancy had nothing wrong with her heart, then. And would probably live a very long and healthy life. Instead of jumping for joy at this news, Valancy is horrified. Full of dread. To avoid the confrontation with Barney, she writes him a note - telling him what happened - and that she didn't mean to trick him - and leaves her Blue Castle, and goes home to live with her horrible mother. Valancy is so changed now - she has known love and freedom - she has shed her old dowdy skin. She bobbed her hair. She bought a bathing suit. She tramps through the woods on snowshoes. She reads all day long if she feels like it. But now, there is nothing for her to do but go home. Her heart is broken. It is a defeat of her spirit. And her mother is so smugly self-satisfied when "Doss" returns. Her mother is a "serves you right" type of moron.

This last excerpt is Valancy, staring around her old room, saying good-bye to her happy life with Barney.

Naturally - through twists and turns of the plot - it all works out in the end ... but those chapters are more plot-driven than character-driven (as well they should be) ... and so not as excerpt-able, in my opinion.

Here is Valancy. "Home" again. Knowing she will not live a long long life ... and yet without Barney, without the beautiful island ... she will live a long life, trapped in the bosom of her horrible family. The dream is over.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

Valancy looked dully about her old room. It, too, was so exactly the same that it seemed almost impossible to believe in the changes that had come to her since she had last slept in it. It seemed - somehow - indecent that it should be so much the same. There was Queen Louise everlastingly coming down the stairway, and nobody had let the forlorn puppy in out of the rain. Here was the purple paper blind and the greenish mirror. Outside, the old carriage-shop with its blatant advertisements. Beyond it, the station with the same derelicts and flirtatious flappers.

Here the old life waited for her, like some grim ogre that bided his time and licked his chops. A monstrous horror of it suddenly possessed her. When night fell and she had undressed and got into bed, the merciful numbness passed away and she lay in anguish and thought of her island under the stars. The camp-fires - all their little household jokes and phrases and catch words - their furry beautiful cats - the lights agleam on the fairy islands - canoes skimming over Mistawis in the magic of morning - white birches shining among the dark spruces like beautiful women's bodies - winter snows and rose-red sunset fires - lakes drunken with moonshine - all the delights of her lost paradise. She would not let herself think of Barney. Only of these lesser things. She could not endure to think of Barney.

Then she thought of him inescapably. She ached for him. She wanted his arms around her - his face against hers - his whispers in her ear. She recalled all his friendly looks and quips and jests - his little compliments - his caresses. She counted them all over as a woman might count her jewels - not one did she miss from the first day they had met. These memories were all she could have now. She shut her eyes and prayed.

"Let me remember every one. God! Let me never forget one of them!"

Yet it would be better to forget. This agony of longing and loneliness would not be so terrible if one could forget. And Ethel Traverse. That shimmering witch woman with her white skin and black eyes and shining hair. The woman Barney had loved. The woman whom he still loved. Hadn't he told her he never changed his mind? Who was waiting for him in Montreal. Who was the right wife for a rich and famous man. Barney would marry her, of course, when he got his divorce. How Valancy hated her! And envied her! Barney had said, "I love you," to her. Valancy had wondered what tone Barney would say "I love you" in - how his dark-blue eyes would look when he said it. Ethel Traverse knew. Valancy hated her for the knowledge - hated and envied her.

"She can never have those hours in the Blue Castle. They are mine," thought Valancy savagely. Ethel would never make strawberry jam or dance to old Abel's fiddle or fry bacon for Barney over a camp-fire. She would never come to the little Mistawis shack at all.

What was Barney doing - thinking - feeling now? Had he come home and found her letter? Was he still angry with her? Or a little pitiful. Was he lying on their bed looking out on stormy Mistawis and listening to the rain streaming down on the roof? Or was he still wandering in the wilderness, raging at the predicament in which he found himself? Hating her? Pain took her and wrung her like some great pitiless giant. She got up and walked the floor. Would morning never come to end this hideous night? And yet what could morning bring her? The old life without the old stagnation that was at least bearable. The old life with the new memories, the new longings, the new anguish.

"Oh, why can't I die?" moaned Valancy.

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery. Another excerpt!

Yet another Valancy/Barney montage.

I love this one because ... with the crisis at the end of the excerpt - you can see that Barney basically lets Valancy love him with all her heart. He may not love her back in the same way (not yet anyway) - and he may kind of tease her about her intensity - but he doesn't try to hold her back, or make her not love him, or keep her calm, or talk her down from her feelings ... I guess I'm just speaking from my own experience where ... you know. When I'm in love, I am in LOVE, man. I'm an old-fashioned girl. I am not a modern woman. And so it is devastating when a guy - who also has feelings for me - tries to get me to calm down, be more cool about it, and not "let" me just go there. Go hot and cold, put on the brakes, whatever. Perhaps Barney feels safe in letting Valancy "go there" because as far as the two of them are concerned - this is not for a lifetime. Valancy will soon die ... so maybe he figures: "in the meantime, I'll just let her be in love with me. It's okay that she loves me that way."

Oh, and girls: in this excerpt it is quite explicit that they sleep in the same bed. I can't imagine either of them could lie there and not ... you know. Not that it's all about the sex, but I know it's on ALL of our minds!!!

(I love the cat Banjo. Lucky's cool, too - but I especially love psychotic split-personality cats like Banjo. They crack me up.)

Also, sorry, one more thing:

"empery of silence"

Lucy Maud's words. Jesusmaryandjoseph, that is gorgeous. It gives me the "flash". "Empery of silence". I wish I had come up with that.

Oops, one last thing: Knowing the misery of Lucy Maud's marriage, the unrelenting misery, passages like these make me ache with sympathy. She never sat around and talked with her husband, for hours on end, about books, and the world, and life. He was barely interested in anything outside of his own feverish conviction that he would burn for eternity in hell. He was, obviously, a barrel of laughs. She married him because ... uhm ... why? But he was no companion. He was no mate. He had ZERO sense of humor. He resented her writing. Etc. The guy was a jackass, sorry. I know he was ill, but man. I'm on her side, completely. So these long passages of companionship have an intensity to them that perhaps might not have existed if that part of Lucy Maud were satisfied in her real life. At least that's what I like to believe. Lucy Maud's life was hell - in many ways. But if it had been easier, perhaps she wouldn't have written so much or so poetically? She taps right into our deepest longings, dreams ... and maybe that's because she lived mainly in her dream-land in her head, too.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

New year. The old, shabby, inglorious outlived calendar came down. The new one went up. January was a month of storms. It snowed for three weeks on end. The thermometer went miles below zero and stayed there. But, as Barney and Valancy pointed out to each other, there were no mosquitoes. And the roar and crackle of their big fire drowned the howls of the north wind. Good Luck and Banjo waxed fat and developed resplendent coats of thick, silky fur. Nip and Tuck had gone.

"But they'll come back in spring," promised Barney.

There was no monotony. Sometimes they had dramatic little private spats that never even thought of becoming quarrels. Sometimes Roaring Abel dropped in - for an evening or a whole day - with his old tartan cap and his long red beard coated with snow. He generally brought his fiddle and played for them, to the delight of all except Banjo, who would go temporarily insane and retreat under Valancy's bed. Sometimes Abel and barney talked while Valancy made candy for them; sometimes they sat and smoked in silence a la Tennyson and Carlyle, until the Blue Castle reeked and Valancy fled to the open. Sometimes they played checkers fiercely and silently the whole night through. Sometimes they all ate the russet apples Abel had brought, while the jolly old clock ticked the delightful minutes away.

"A plate of apples, an open fire, and 'a jolly goode booke' are a fair substitute for heaven," vowed Barney. "Any one can have the streets of gold. Let's have another whack at Carman."

It was easier now for the Stirlings to believe Valancy of the dead. Not even dim rumours of her having been over at the Port came to trouble them, though she and Barney used to skate there occasionally to see a moive and eat hot dogs shamelessly at the corner stand afterwards. Presumably none of the Stirlings ever thought about her - except Cousin Georgiana, who used to lie awake worrying about poor Doss. Did she have enough to eat? Was that dreadful creature good to her? Was she warm enough at nights?

Valancy was quite warm at nights. She used to wake up and revel silently in the cosiness of those winter nights on that little island in the frozen lake. The nights of other winters had been so cold and long. Valancy hated to wake up in them and think about the bleakness and emptiness of the day that had passed and the bleakness and emptiness of the day that would come. Now she almost counted that night lost on which she didn't wake up and lie awake for half an hour just being happy, while Barney's regular breathing went on beside her, and through the open door the smouldering brands in the fireplace winked at her in the gloom. It was very nice to feel a little Lucky cat jump up on your bed in the darkness and snuggle down at your feet, purring; but Banjo would be sitting dourly by himself out in front of the fire like a brooding demon. At such moments Banjo was anything but canny, but Valancy loved his uncanniness.

The side of the bed had to be right against the window. There was no other place for it in the tiny room. Valancy, lying there, could look out of the window, through the big pine boughs that actually touched it, away up Mistawis, white and lustrous as a pavement of pearl, or dark and terrible in the storm. Sometimes the pine boughs tapped against the panes with friendly signals. Sometimes she heard the little whisper of snow against them right at her side. Some nights the whole outer world seemed given over to the empery of silence; then came nights when there would be a majestic sweep of wind in the pines; nights of dear starlight when it whistled freakishly and joyously around the Blue Castle; brooding nights before storm when it crept along the floor of the lake with a low, wailing cry of brooding and mystery. Valancy wasted many perfectly good sleeping hours in these delightful communings. But she could sleep as long in the morning as she wanted to. Nobody cared. Barney cooked his own breakfast of bacon and eggs and then shut himself up in Bluebeard's Chamber till supper time. Then they had an evening of reading and talk. They talked about everything in this world and a good many things in other worlds. They laughed over their own jokes until the Blue Castle reechoed.

"You do laugh beautifully," Barney told her once. "It makes me want to laugh just to hear you laugh. There's a trick about your laugh - as if there were so much more fun back of it that you wouldn't let out. Did you laugh like that before you came to Mistawis, Moonlight?"

"I never laughed at all - really. I used to giggle foolishly when I felt I was expected to. But now - the laugh just comes."

It struck Valancy more than once that Barney himself laughed a great deal oftener than he used to and that his laugh had changed. It had become wholesome. She rarely heard the little cynical note in it now. Could a man laugh like that who had crimes on his conscience? Yet Barney must have done something. Valancy had indifferently made up her mind as to what he had done. She concluded he was a defaulting bank cashier. She had found in one of Barney's books an old clipping cut from a Montreal paper in which a vanishing, defaulting cashier was described. The description applied to Barney - as well as to half a dozen other men Valancy knew - and from some casual remarks he had dropped from time to time she concluded he knew Montreal rather well. Valancy had it all figured out in the back of her mind. Barney had been in a bank. He was tempted to take some money to speculate - meaning, of course, to put it back. He had got in deeper and deeper, until he found there was nothing for it but flight. It had happened so to scores of men. He had, Valancy was absolutely certain, never meant to do wrong. Of course, the name of the man in the clipping was Bernard Craig. But Valancy had always thought Snaith was an alias. Not that it mattered.

Valancy had only one unhappy night that winter. It came in late March when most of the snow had gone and Nip and Tuck had returned. Barney had gone off in the afternoon for a long, woodland tramp, saying he would be back by dark if all went well. Soon after he had gone it had begun to snow. The wind rose and presently Mistawis was in the grip of one of the worst storms of the winter. It tore up the lake and struck at the little house. The dark angry woods on the mainland scowled at Valancy, menace in the toss of their boughs, threats in their windy gloom, terror in the roar of their hearts. The trees of the island crouched in fear. Valancy spent the night huddled on the rug before the fire, her face buried in her hands, when she was not vainly peering from the oriel in a futile effort to see through the furious smoke of wind and snow that had once been blue-dimpled Mistawis. Where was Barney? Lost on the merciless lakes? Sinking exhausted in the drifts of the pathless woods? Valancy died a hundred deaths that night and paid in full for all the happiness of her Blue Castle. When morning came the storm broke and cleared; the sun shone gloriously over Mistawis; and at noon Barney came home. Valancy saw him from the oriel as he came around a wooded point, slender and black against the glistening white world. She did not run to meet him. Something happened to her knees and she dropped down on Banjo's chair. Luckily Banjo got out from under in time, his whiskers bristling with indignation. Barney found her there, her head buried in her hands.

"Barney, I thought you were dead," she whispered.

Barney hooted.

"After two years of the Klondike did you think a baby storm like this could get me? I spent the night in that old lumber shanty over by Muskoka. A bit cold but snug enough. Little goose! Your eyes look like burnt holes in a blanket. Did you sit up here all night worrying over an old woodsman like me?"

"Yes," said Valancy. "I -- couldn't help it. The storm seemed so wild. Anybody might have been lost in it. When -- I saw you -- come round the point -- there -- something happened to me. I don't know what. It was as if I had died and come back to life. I can't describe it any other way."

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery. Another excerpt!

The heavenly third act of the book (first act: Valancy at home with her family, second act: Valancy living with Abel and Cissy) is when she moves out to Barney's island, after the death of Cissy Gay. It's shocking. Cissy dies - and so Valancy is faced with a choice. Or, seemingly, she has no choice. She has to go home and live with her disapproving family again. Go back to her old cringing shy spinster self. But too much has changed. She now only has 8 months to live, or whatever it is ... and so ... she makes up her mind. And she asks Barney Snaith to marry her. I mean - go, Lucy Maud, with the shocking-ness!! Valancy tells the truth to Barney: Look, I only have 8 months left to live, and I love you. I know you don't love me ... but would you be willing to marry me and be with me until I die? Would you do that for me? And he contemplates it ... and he finally says to her, "You know I don't love you ... I've never thought of being in love. But you do that I have always thought you were a bit of a dear." And he agrees. So Valancy marries Barney Snaith. To the absolute HORROR of her family, who all remain convinced that Snaith is some sort of embezzler, or murderer, or man on the run. Lucy Maud does not, of course, take us into the marriage bed - but she suggests it ... and it's an interesting situation because: Valancy loves Barney but Barney does not love Valancy. However, he accepts her fully into his life - there's one room in his cottage that he will not allow her to go into (this all becomes clear later - he calls it Bluebeard's Chamber, as a joke) - but other than that - Valancy is perfectly free to do whatever she wants. And they obviously have a romantic relationship. Her family catches glimpses of her riding around town in the jalopy with Barney. Or - HORRORS! - eating out at a Chinese restaurant. There is a whimsy in the relationship ... which just comes off as so appealing. It reminds me a bit (without the neuroses and the torture, of course) of the love affair in Notorious. Ingrid Bergman says to Cary Grant, "This is a very interesting love affair." He asks, "Why?" She says, "Because you don't love me." He says, "Actions speak louder than words." Valancy and Barney are unconventional. Completely.

So here's an excerpt (the book has a lot of chapters like this ... almost like montage shots ... Valancy's time on the island, her marriage to Barney, what the two of them do together, how easy it is between them - but Lucy Maud is so good at this kind of writing - It's a montage, yes - but it never loses its specificity. We never feel like, as in some montages, that this is an author being LAZY, being unable to get us from point A to point B logically - so they resort to a montage. Lucy Maud uses these montage sequences very deliberately - and you really get the sense of this relationship. Of the seasons passing, of their feeling for each other growing, etc.)

These montage-chapters are absolutely sensuous.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

Valancy toiled not, neither did she spin. There was really very little work to do. She cooked their meals on a coal-oil stove, performing all her little domestic rites carefully and exultingly, and they ate out on the verandah that almost overhung the lake. Before them lay Mistawis, like a scene out of some fairy tale of old time. And Barney smiling his twisted, enigmatical smile at her across the table.

"What a view old Tom picked out when he built this shack!" Barney would say exultantly.

Supper was the meal Valancy liked best. The faint laughter of winds was always about them and the colours of Mistawis, imperial and spiritual, under the changing clouds, were something that cannot be expressed in mere words. Shadows, too. Clustering in the pines until a wind shook them out and pursued them over Mistawis. They lay all day along the shores, threaded by ferns and wild blossoms. They stole around the headlands in the glow of the sunset, until twilight wove them all into one great web of dusk.

The cats, with their wise, innocent little faces, would sit on the verandah railing and eat the tidbits Barney flung them. And how good everything tasted! Valancy, amid all the romance of Mistwis, never forgot that men had stomachs. Barney paid her no end of compliments on her cooking.

"After all," he admitted, "there's something to be said for square meals. I've mostly got along by boiling two or three dozen eggs hard at once and eating a few when I got hungry, with a slice of bacon once in a while and a jorum of tea."

Balancy poured tea out of Barney's little battered old pewter teapot of incredible age. She had not even a set of dishes - only Barney's mismatched chipped bits - and a dear, big, pobby old jug of robin's-egg blue.

After the meal was over they would sit there and talk for hours - or sit and say nothing, in all the languages of the world, Barney pulling away at his pipe, Valancy dreaming idly and deliciously, gazing at the far-off hills beyond Mistawis where the spires of firs came out against the sunset. The moonlight would begin to silver the Mistawis. Bats would begin to swoop darkly against the pale, western gold. The little waterfall that came down on the high bank not far away would, by some whim of the wildwood gods, begin to look like a wonderful white woman beckoning through the spicy, fragrant evergreens. And Leander would begin to chuckle diabolically on the mainland shore. How sweet it was to sit there and do nothing in the beautiful silence, with Barney at the other side of the table, smoking!

There were plenty of other islands in sight, though none were near enough to be troublesome as neighbours. There was one little group of islets far off to the west which they called the Fortunate Isles. At sunrise they looked like a cluster of emeralds, at sunset like a cluster of amethysts. They were too small for houses; but the lights on the larger islands would bloom out all over the lake, and bonfires would be lighted on their shores, streaming up into the wood shadows and throwing great, blood-red ribbons over the waters. Music would drift to them alluringly from boats here and there, or from the verandahs on the big house of the millionaire on the biggest island.

"Would you like a house like that, Moonlight?" Barney asked her once, waving his hand at it. He had taken to calling her Moonlight, and Valancy loved it.

"No," said Valancy, who had once dreamed of a mountain castle ten times the size of the rich man's "cottage" and now pitied the poor inhabitants of palaces. "No. It's too elegant. I would have to carry it with me everywhere I went. On my back like a snail. It would own me - possess me, body and soul. I like a house I can love and cuddle and boss. Just like ours here. I don't envy Hamilton Gossard 'the finest summer residence in Canada.' It is magnificent, but it isn't my Blue Castle."

Away down the far end of the lake they got every night a glimpse of a big, continual train rushing through a clearing. Valancy liked to watch its lighted windows flash by and wonder who was on it and what hopes and fears it carried. She also amused herself by picturing Barney and herself going to the dances and dinners at the houses on the islands, but she did not want to go in reality. Once they did go to a masquerade dance in the pavilion at one of the hotels up the lake, and had a glorious evening, but slipped away in their canoe, before unmasking time, back to the Blue Castle.

"It was lovely - but I don't want to go again," said Valancy.

So many hours a day Barney shut himself up in Bluebeard's Chamber. Valancy never saw the inside of it. From the smells that filtered through at times she concluded he must be conducting chemical experiments - or counterfeiting money. Valancy supposed there must be smelly processes in counterfeiting money. But she did not trouble herself about it. She had no desire to peer into the locked chambers of Barney's house of life. His past and his future concerned her not. Only this rapturous present. Nothing else matterred.

Once he went away and stayed away two days and nights. He had asked Valancy if she would be afraid to stay alone and she had said she would not. He never told her where he had been. She was not afraid to be alone, but she was horribly lonely. The sweetest sound she had ever heard was Lady Jane's clatter through the woods when Barney returned. And then his signal whistle from the shore. She ran down to the landing rock to greet him - to nestle herself into his eager arms - they did seem eager.

"Have you missed me, Moonlight?" Barney was whispering.

"It seems a hundred years since you went away," said Valancy.

"I won't leave you again."

"You must," protested Valancy, "if you want to. I'd be miserable if I thought you wanted to go and didn't because of me. I want you to feel perfectly free."

Barney laughed - a little cynically.

"There is no such thing as freedom on earth," he said. "Only different kinds of bondages. And comparative bondages. You think you are free now because you've escaped from a peculiarly unbearable kind of bondage. But are you? You love me - that's a bondage."

"Who said or wrote that 'the prison unto which we doom ourselves no prison is'?" asked Valancy dreamily, clinging to his arm as they climbed up the rock steps.

"Ah, now you have it," said Barney. "That's all the freedom we can hope for - the freedom to choose our prison. But, Moonlight" -- he stopped at the door of the Blue Castle and looked about him - at the glorious lake, the great, shadowy woods, the bonfires, the twinkling lights -- "Moonlight, I'm glad to be home again. When I came down through the woods and saw my home lights - mine - gleaming out under the old pines - something I'd never seen before - oh, girl, I was glad - glad!"

But in spite of Barney's doctrine of bondage, Valancy thought they were splendidly free. It was amazing to be able to sit up half the night and look at the moon if you wanted to. To be late for meals if you wanted to - she who had always been rebuked so sharply by her mother and so reproachfully by Cousin Stickles if she were one minute late. Dawdle over meals as long as you wanted to. Leave your crusts if you wanted to. Not come home at all for meals if you wanted to. Sit on a sun-warm rock and paddle your bare feet in the hot sand if you wanted to. Just sit and do nothing in the beautiful silence if you wanted to. In short, do any fool thing you wanted to whenever the notion took you. If that wasn't freedom, what was?

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

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The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery. Another excerpt!

One of my favorite parts of the book is the following excerpt. It stands out, as far as I'm concerned - in Lucy Maud's work. It's pure conversation ... meandering ... nowhere to go, nowhere to be ... and yet you can feel something blossoming beneath the words. It's beautiful.

Valancy is at a dance "up back" - meaning: "rough" - and things get a bit crazy and, in the world of Lucy Maud, scary. A bunch of drunken rowdy guys show up - and they all start wanting to dance with her, and she starts to feel a little bit threatened actually. (This is actually one of the only times that any threat of male violence against women ever shows up in her books. Rape is just not a thing discussed in Lucy Maud's books ... but the threat of it is there at the dance in Blue Castle.) And thank goodness - Barney Snaith, Valancy's secret crush, shows up - and basically drags her away to take her home. Abel Gay has to stay on, because he's part of the "band" (basically a trio of fiddlers) - so Snaith rescues her. And drives her home in his beat-up jalopy that he calls "Lady Jane" who, naturally, breaks down. So they sit and wait for another car to drive by (they're in the woods, basically) - and they have never been alone before, these two ... and Valancy obviously has a huge crush on the guy (in a kind of adolescent fan-worship way - his life, and how he bucks convention, really means something to her).

The excerpt below is the two of them sitting in the car, waiting. I find this excerpt strangely sad. Or maybe it's just my mood. Perhaps bittersweet is a better word choice than "sad".

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

"We'll just sit here," said Barney, "and if we think of anything worthwhile saying we'll say it. Otherwise, not. Don't imagine you're bound to talk to me."

"John Foster says," quoted Valance, " 'If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you'll never be and you need not waste time in trying."

"Evidently John Foster says a sensible thing once in a while," conceded Barney.

They sat in silence for a long while. Little rabbits hopped across the road. once or twice an owl laughed out delightfully. The road beyond them was fringed with the woven shadow lace of trees. Away off to the southwest the sky was full of silvery little cirrus clouds above the spot where Barney's island must be.

Valancy was perfectly happy. Some things dawn on you slowly. Some things come by lightning flashes. Valancy had had a lightning flash.

She knew quite well now that she loved Barney. Yesterday she had been all her own. Now she was this man's. Yet he had done nothing - said nothing. He had not even looked at her as a woman. But that didn't matter. Nor did it matter what he was or what he had done. She loved him without any reservations. Everything in her went out wholly to him. She had no wish to stifle or disown her love. She seemed to be his so absolutely that thought apart from him - thought in which he did not predominate - was an impossibility.

She had realised, quite simply and fully, that she loved him, in the moment when he was leaning on the car door, explaining that Lady Jane had no gas. She had looked deep into his eyes in the moonlight and had known. In just that infinitesimal space of time everything was changed. Old things passed away and all things became new.

She was no longer unimportant, little old maid Valancy Stirling. She was a woman, full of love and therefore rich and significant - justified to herself. Life was no longer empty and futile, and death could cheat her of nothing. Love had cast out her last fear.

Love! What a searing, torturing, intolerably sweet thing it was - this possession of body, soul and mind! With something at its core as fine and remote and purely spiritual as the tiny blue spark in the heart of the unbreakable diamond. No dream had ever been like this. She was no longer solitary. She was one of a vast sisterhood - all the women who had ever loved in the world.

Barney need never know it - though she would not in the least have minded his knowing. But she knew it and it made a tremendous difference to her. Just to love! She did not ask to be loved. It was rapture enough just to sit there beside him in silence, alone in the summer night in the white splendour of moonshine, with the wind blowing down on them out of the pine woods. She had always envied the wind. So free. Blowing where it listed. Through the hills. Over the lakes. What a tang, what a zip it had! What a magic of adventure! Valancy felt as if she had exchanged her shop-worn soul for a fresh one, fire-new from the workshop of the gods. As far back as she could look, life had been dull - colourless - savourless. Now she had come to a little patch of violets, purple and fragrant - hers for the plucking. No matter who or what had been in Barney's past - no matter who or what might be in his future - no one else could ever have this perfect hour. She surrendered herself utterly to the charm of the moment.

"Ever dream of ballooning?" said Barney suddenly.

"No," said Valancy.

"I do - often. Dream of sailing through the clouds - seeing the glories of sunset - spending hours in the midst of a terrific storm with lightning playing above and below you - skimming above a silver cloud floor under a full moon - wonderful!"

"It does sound so," said Valancy. "I've stayed on earth in my dreams."

She told him about her Blue Castle. It was so easy to tell Barney things. One felt he understood everything - even the things you didn't tell him. And then she told him a little of her existence before she came to Roaring Abel's. She wanted him to see why she had gone to the dance "up back".

"You see - I've never had any real life," she said. "I've just - breathed. Every door has always been shut to me."

"But you're still young," said Barney.

"Oh, I know. Yes, I'm 'still young' - but that's so different from young," said Valancy bitterly. For a moment she was tempted to tell Barney why her years had nothing to do with her future; but she did not. She was not going to think of death tonight.

"Though I never was really young," she went on - "until tonight," she added in her heart. "I never had a life like other girls. You couldn't understand. Why" -- she had a desperate desire that Barney should know the worst about her -- "I didn't even love my mother. Isn't it awful that I don't love my mother?"

"Rather awful -- for her," said Barney drily.

"Oh, she didn't know it. She took my love for granted. And I wasn't any use or comfort to her or anybody. I was just a -- a -- vegetable. And I got tired of it. That's why I came to keep house for Mr. Gay and look after Cissy."

"And I suppose your people thought you'd gone mad."

"They did -- and do -- literally," said Valancy. "But it's a comfort to them. They'd rather believe me mad than bad. There's no other alternative. But I've been living since I came to Mr. Gay's. It's been a delightful experience. I suppose I'll pay for it when I have to go back -- but I'll have had it."

"That's true," said Barney. "If you buy your experience it's your own. So it's no matter how much you pay for it. Somebody else's experience can never be yours. Well, it's a funny old world."

"Do you think it really is old?" asked Valancy dreamily. "I never believe that in June. It seems so young tonight - somehow. In that quivering moonlight - like a young, white girl - waiting."

"Moonlight here on the verge of up back is different from moonlight anywhere else," agreed Barney. "It always makes me feel so clean, somehow - body and soul. And of course the age of gold always comes back in spring."

It was ten o'clock now. A dragon of black cloud ate up the moon. The spring air grew chill -- Valancy shivered. Barney reached back into the innards of Lady Jane and clawed up an old, tobacco-scented overcoat.

"Put that on," he ordered.

"Don't you want it yourself?" protested Valancy.

"No. I'm not going to have you catching cold on my hands."

"Oh, I won't catch cold. I haven't had a cold since I came to Mr. Gay's - though I've done the foolishest things. It's funny, too - I used to have them all the time. I feel so selfish taking your coat."

"You've sneezed three times. No use winding up your 'experience' up back with grippe or pneumonia."

He pulled it up tight about her throat and buttoned it on her. Valancy submitted with secret delight. How nice it was to have some one look after you so! She snuggled down into the tobaccoey folds and wished the night could last forever.

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

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The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery. Another excerpt! So. Valancy is now behaving like a lunatic (according to her family). She is (gasp) speaking her mind, doing what she wants, not living by her mother's silly rules. But this is not even the beginning of the upset precipiated by Valancy learning she only has one year to live. Valancy is vaguely fascinated by a man named Abel Gay - a drunken free-spirit - who careens thru the upstanding town in his smoking bellowing jalopy. She somehow likes him. He seems to not live by society's rules. Valancy is jealous. Abel Gay (nicknamed "Roaring Abel" for obvious reasons) has a daughter - a young woman - who is dying of tuberculosis. Her name is Cissy. Cissy is a "fallen" woman - had a child out of wedlock (nobody knows who the father was) - and the child died. Because of this "sin" - Abel cannot get a nurse to come out and take care of Cissy. He does the best he can, in between bacchanalian binges. In conversing briefly with Abel - an idea suddenly comes into Valancy's head. She will go live with Abel and Cissy, and take care of Cissy in her final illness. And so that is what she does. Her family is beyond shocked. It's almost like - they didn't notice her for 29 years - and now she is all they can think about.

Valancy, meanwhile, goes off to the cabin in the woods - and settles in to her new free life. Barney Snaith (a supposed reprobate - mysterious, handsome) is a common visitor - he's as much of an outcast as Abel Gay. Valancy has had a crush-from-afar on Snaith for a while ... so suddenly she finds herself in his company and finds herself really falling for him. He remains mysterious, the opposite of an open book ... but even that Valancy doesn't mind. She's never had a beau. And she doesn't want one now - because she's dying. But she finally allows herself to just fantasize like crazy about Barney. She no longer is ashamed of imagining what he's thinking about, or what it would be like to kiss him ...

Valancy really starts to blossom, out there in the woods with the rejects.

And she just loves Cissy. A sweet bed-ridden woman, who just loves having Valancy there - loves the female company, and loves Valancy's sympathetic presence.

Here's an excerpt from the "living with Abel Gay" section of the book.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

When Abel Gay paid Valancy her first month's wages - which he did promptly, in bills reeking with the odour of tobacco and whiskey - Valancy went into Deerwood and spent every cent of it. She got a pretty green crepe dress with a girdle of crimson beads, at a bargain sale, a pair of silk stockings to match, and a little crinkled green hat with a crimson rose in it. She even bought a foolish little beribboned and belaced nightgown.

She passed the house on Elm Street twice - Valancy never even thought about it as "home" - but saw no one. No doubt her mother was sitting in the room this lovely June evening playing solitaire - and cheating. Valancy knew that Mrs. Frederick always cheated. She never lost a game. Most of the people Valancy met looked at her seriously and passed her with a cool nod. Nobody stopped to speak to her.

Valancy put on her green dress when she got home. Then she took it off again. She felt so miserably undressed in its low neck and short sleeves. And that low, crimson girdle around the hips seemed positively indecent. She hung it up in the closet, feeling flatly that she had wasted her money. She would never have the courage to wear that dress. John Foster's arraignment of fear had no power to stiffen her against this. In this one thing habit and custom were still all-powerful. Yet she sighed as she went down to meet Barney Snaith in her old snuff-brown silk. That green thing had been very becoming - she had seen so much in her one ashamed glance. Above it her eyes had looked like odd brown jewels and the girdle had given her flat figure an entirely different appearance. She wished she could have left it on. But there were some things John Foster did not know.

Every Sunday evening Valancy went to the little Free Methodist church in a valley on the edge of "up back" - a spireless little grey building among the pines, with a few sunken graves and mossy gravestones in the small, paling-encircled, grass-grown square beside it. She liked the minister who preached there. He was so simple and sincere. An old man, who lived in Port Lawrence and came out by the lake in a little disappearing propeller boat to give free service to the people of the small, stony farms back of the hills, who would otherwise never have heard any gospel message. She liked the simple service and the fervent singing. She liked to sit by the open window and look out into the pine woods. The congregation was always small. The Free Methodists were few in number, poor and generally illiterate. But Valancy loved those Sunday evenings. For the first time in her life she liked going to church. The rumour reached Deerwood that she had "turned Free Methodist" and sent Mrs. Frederick to bed for a day. But Valancy had not turned anything. She went to the church because she liked it and because in some inexplicable way it did her good. Old Mr. Towers believed exactly what he preached and somehow it made a tremendous difference.

Oddly enough, Roaring Abel disapproved of her going to the hill church as strongly as Mrs. Frederick herself could have done. He had "no use for Free Methodists. He was a Presbyterian." But Valancy went in spite of him.

"We'll hear something worse than that about her soon," Uncle Benjamin predicted gloomily.

They did.

Valancy could not quite explain, even to herself, just why she wanted to go to that party. It was a dance "up back" at Chidley Corners; and dances at Chidley Corners were not, as a rule, the sort of assemblies where well-brought-up young ladies were found. Valancy knew it was coming off, for Roaring Abel had been engaged as one of the fiddlers.

But the idea of going had never occurred to her until Roaring Abel himself broached it at supper.

"You come with me to the dance," he ordered. "It'll do you good - put some colour in your face. You look peaked - you want something to liven you up."

Valancy found herself suddenly wanting to go. She knew nothing at all of what dances at Chidley Corners were apt to be like. Her idea of dances had been fashioned on the correct affairs that went by that name in Deerwood and Port Lawrence. Of course she knew the Corners' dance wouldn't be just like them. Much more informal, of course. But so much the more interesting. Why shouldn't she go? Cissy was in a week of apparent health and improvement. She wouldn't mind staying alone in the least. She entreated Valancy to go if she wanted to. And Valancy did want to go.

She went to her room to dress. A rage against the snuff-brown silk seized her. Wear that to a party! Never. She pulled her green crepe from its hanger and put it on feverishly. It was nonsense to feel so -- so -- naked -- just because her neck and arms were bare. That was just her old-maidishness. She would not be ridden by it. On went the dress - the slippers.

It was the first time she had worn a pretty dress since the organdies of her early teens. And they had never made her look like this.

If she only had a necklace or something. She wouldn't feel so bare then. She ran down to the garden. There were clovers there - great crimson things glrowing in the long grass. Valancy gathered handfuls of them and strung them on a cord. Fastened above her neck they gave her the comfortable sensation of a collar and were oddly becoming. Another circlet of them went round her hair, dressed in the low puffs that became her. Excitement brought those faint pink stains to her face. She flung on her coat and pulled the little, twisty hat over her hair.

"You look so nice and -- and -- different, dear," said Cissy. "Like a green moonbeam with a gleam of red in it, if there could be such a thing."

Valancy stooped to kiss her.

"I don't feel right about leaving you alone, Cissy."

"Oh, I'll be all right. I feel better tonight than I have for a long while. I've been feeling badly to see you sticking here so closely on my account. I hope you'll have a nice time. I never was at a party at the Corners, but I used to go sometimes, long ago, to dances up back. We always had good times. And you needn't be afraid of Father being drunk tonight. He never drinks when he engages to play for a party. But -- there may be -- liquor. What will you do if it gets rough?"

"Nobody would molest me."

"Not seriously, I suppose. Father would see to that. But it might be noisy and -- and unpleasant."

"I won't mind. I'm only going as a looker-on. I don't expect to dance. I just want to see what a party up back is like. I've never seen anything except decorous Deerwood."

Cissy smiled rather dubiously. She knew much better than Valancy what a party "up back" might be like if there should be liquor. But again there mightn't be.

"I hope you'll enjoy it," she repeated.

Valancy enjoyed the drive there. They went early, for it was twelve miles to Chidley Corners, and they had to go in Abel's old, ragged top-buggy. The road was rough and rocky, like most Muskoka roads, but full of the austere charm of northern woods. It wound through beautiful, purring pines that were ranks of enchantment in the June sunset, and over the curious jade-green rivers of Muskoka, fringed by aspens that were always quivering with some supernal joy.

Roaring Abel was excellent company, too. He knew all the stories and legends of the wild, beautiful "up back," and he told them to Valancy as they drove along. Valancy had several fits of inward laughter over what Uncle Benjamin and Aunt Wellington, et al., would feel and think and say if they saw her driving with Roaring Abel in that terrible buggy to a dance at Chidley Corners.

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

Excerpt 2! Of our favorite book, ladies! Yay!!! Spinsters everywhere: take hope! Valancy finds her Blue Castle! So can we!

Okay. So the next excerpt is hilarious. Valancy has gotten her "you have one life to live" letter. She has told no one. She doesn't inform her horrible mother that she is deathly ill. And although Valancy is scared, and sad ... that her life will end ... she suddenly wakes up to her own misery. She is no longer a victim. She starts to do things she has always wanted to do. Small at first: like sliding down the bannister. Her family is uptight enough that they are horrified by things like that. Then comes some kind of big family dinner. This is the moment. The entire Stirling realizes, at this dinner, that "something is wrong with Valancy". Of course the funny thing is (for this reader) that you start to realize that no, nothing is wrong with Valancy - her behavior at this dinner is perfectly rational. These people are annoying repetitive bores. Any right-minded person would be bored by their pompous irritating personalities. Valancy suddenly, at this dinner, without being cruel - or vicious - stops "playing nice". It's just that she suddenly sees with clear eyes - she has always been afraid of her family. And looking around at this dinner, she realizes: I was afraid of these boobs? Are you kidding me?

The story of the dinner goes on for multiple chapters - it's so funny - so I'll excerpt just a part of it.

Oh - and one of the jokes here - is that every time Valancy sneezes - every time - her mother reprimands her. And says, "A person should always be able to suppress their sneezes." These people are morons.

The moment when Valancy calls her uncle "old dear" and the response that gets makes me laugh out loud. Again: Lucy Maud is merciless with these people. They do not deserve mercy, in the context of this story. We don't try to understand the Wicked Stepmother, or try to see her side of things. Nope. She's evil. Get away from the beeyotch. This is the kind of story Lucy Maud is telling here. I particularly despise Uncle James. I know people like that. Horrible.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

Meanwhile the dinner in its earlier stages was dragging its slow length along true to Stirling form. The room was chilly, in spite of the calendar, and Aunt Alberta had the gas-logs lighted. Everybody in the clan envied her those gas-logs, except Valancy. Glorious open fires blazed in every room of her Blue Castle when autumnal nights were cool, but she would have frozen to death in it before she would have committed the sacrilege of a gas-log. Uncle Herbert made his hardy perennial joke when he helped Aunt Wellington to the cold meat - "Mary, will you have a little lamb?" Aunt Mildred told the same old story of once finding a lost ring in a turkey's crop. Uncle Benjamin told his favourite prosy tale of how he had once chased and punished a now famous man for stealing apples. Second Cousin Jane described all her sufferings with an ulcerating tooth. Aunt Wellington admired the pattern of Aunt Alberta's silver teaspoons and lamented the fact that one of her own had been lost.

"It spoiled the set. I could never get it matched. And it was my wedding-present from dear old Aunt Matilda."

Aunt Isabel thought the seasons were changing and couldn't imagine what had become of our good, old-fashioned springs. Cousin Georgiana, as usual, discussed the last funeral and wondered, audibly, "which of us will be the next to pass away." Cousin Georgiana could never say anything as blunt as "die". Valancy thought she could tell her, but didn't. Cousin Gladys, likewise as usual, had a grievance. Her visiting nephew had nipped all the buds off her house-plants and chivied her brood of fancy chickens --"squeezed some of them to death, my dear."

"Boys will be boys," reminded Uncle Herbert tolerantly.

"But they needn't be ramping, rampageous animals," retorted Cousin Gladys, looking round the table for appreciation of her wit. Everybody smiled except Valancy. Cousin Gladys remembered that. A few minutes later, when Ellen Hamilton was being discussed, Cousin Gladys spoke of her as "one of those shy, plain girls who can't get husbands," and glanced significantly at Valancy.

Uncle James thought the conversation was sagging to a rather low plane of personal gossip. He tried to elevate it by starting an abstract discussion on "the greatest happiness." Everybody was asked to state his or her idea of "the greatest happiness".

Aunt Mildred thought the greatest happiness - for a woman - was to be "a loving and beloved wife and mother." Aunt Wellington thought it would be to travel in Europe. Olive thought it would be to a great singer like Tetrazzini. Cousin Gladys remarked mournfully that her greatest happiness would be to be free - absolutely free - from neuritis. Cousin Georgiana's greatest happiness would be "to have her dear, dead brother Richard back." Aunt Alberta remarked vaguely that the greatest happiness was to be found in "the poetry of life" and hastily gave some directions to her maid to prevent any one asking her what she meant. Mrs. Frederick said the greatst happiness was to spend your life in loving service for others, and Cousin Stickles and Aunt Isabel agreed with her - Aunt Isabel with a resentful air, as if she thought Mrs. Frederick had taken the wind out of her sails by saying it first. "We are all too prone," continued Mrs. Frederick, determined not to lose so good an opportunity, "to live in selfishness, worldliness, and sin." The other women all felt rebuked for their low ideals, and Uncle James had a conviction that the conversation had been uplifted with a vengeance.

"The greatest happiness," said Valancy suddenly and distinctly, "is to sneeze when you want to."

Everybody stared. Nobody felt it safe to say anything. Was Valancy trying to be funny? It was incredible. Mrs. Frederick, who had been breathing easier since the dinner had progressed so far without any outbreak on the part of Valancy began to tremble again. But she deemed it the part of prudence to say nothing. Uncle Benjamin was not so prudent. He rashly rushed in where Mrs. Frederick feared to tread.

"Doss," he chuckled, "what is the difference between a young girl and an old maid?"

"One is happy and careless and the other is cappy and hairless," said Valancy. "You have asked that riddle at least fifty times in my recollection, Uncle Ben. Why don't you hunt up some new riddles if riddle you must? It is such a fatal mistake to try to be funny if you don't succeed."

Uncle Benjamin stared foolishly. Never in his life had he, Benjamin Stirling, of Stirling and Frost, been spoken to so. And by Valancy of all people! He looked feebly around the table to see what the others thought of it. Everybody was looking rather blank. Poor Mrs. Frederick had shut her eyes. And her lips moved tremblingly - as if she were praying. Perhaps she was. The situation was so unprecedented that nobody knew how to meet it. Valancy went on calmly eating her salad as if nothing out of the usual had occurred.

Aunt Alberta, to save her dinner, plunged into an account of how a dog had bitten her recently. Uncle James, to back her up, asked her where the dog had bitten her.

"Just a little below the Catholic church," said Aunt Alberta.

At that point Valancy laughed. Nobody else laughed. What was there to laugh at?

"Is that a vital part?" asked Valancy.

"What do you mean?" said bewildered Aunt Alberta and Mrs. Frederick was almost driven to believe that she had served God all her years for naught.

Aunt Isabel concluded that it was up to her to suppress Valancy.

"Doss, you are horribly thin," she said. "You are all corners. Do you ever try to fatten up a little?"

"No." Valancy was not asking quarter or giving it. "But I can tell you where you'll find a beauty parlour in Port Lawrence where they can reduce the number of your chins."

"Val-an-cy!" The protest was wrung from Mrs. Frederick. She meant her tone to be stately and majestic, as usual but it sounded more like an imploring whine. And she did not say "Doss".

"She's feverish," said Cousin Stickles to Uncle Benjamin in an agonised whisper. "We've thought she seemed feverish for several days."

"She's gone dippy, in my opinion," growled Uncle Benjamin. "If not, she ought to be spanked. Yes, spanked."

"You can't spank her." Cousin Stickles was much agitated. "She's twenty-nine years old."

"So there is that advantage, at least, in being twenty-nine," said Valancy, whose ears had caught this aside.

"Doss," said Uncle Benjamin, "when I am dead you may say what you please. As long as I am alive I demand to be treated with respect."

"Oh, but you know we're all dead," said Valancy, "the whole Stirling clan. Some of us are buried and some aren't - yet. That is the only difference."

"Doss," said Uncle Benjamin, thinking it might cow Valancy, "do you remember the time you stole the raspberry jam?"

Valancy flushed scarlet - with suppressed laughter, not shame. She had been sure Uncle Benjamin would drag that jam in somehow.

"Of course I do," she said. "It was good jam. I've always been sorry I hadn't time to eat more of it before you found me. Oh, look at Aunt Isabel's profile on the wall. Did you ever see anything so funny?"

Everybody looked, including Aunt Isabel herself which, of course, destroyed it. But Uncle Herbert said kindly, "I -- I wouldn't eat any more if I were you, Doss. It isn't that I grudge it -- but don't you think it would be better for yourself? Your -- your stomach seems a little out of order."

"Don't worry about my stomach, old dear," said Valancy. "It is all right. I'm going to keep right on eating. It's seldom I get the chance of a satisfying meal."

It was the first time any one had been called "old dear" in Deerwood. The Stirlings thought Valancy had invented the phrase and they were afraid of her from that moment. There was something so uncanny about such an expression. But in poor Mrs. Frederick's opinion the reference to a satisfying meal was the worst thing Valancy had said yet. Valancy had always been a disappointment to her. Now she was a disgrace. She thought she would have to get up and go away from the table. Yet she dared not leave Valancy there.

Aunt Alberta's maid came in to remove the salad plates and bring in the dessert. It was a welcome diversion. Everybody brightened up with a determination to ignore Valancy and talk as if she wasn't there. Uncle Wellington mentioned Barney Snaith. Eventually somebody did mention Barney Snaith at every Stirling funciton, Valancy reflected. Whatever he was, he was an individual that could not be ignored. She resigned herself to listen. There was a subtle fascination in the subject for her, though she had not yet faced this face. She could feel her pulses beating to her finger-tips.

Of course they abused him. Nobody ever had a good word to say of Barney Snaith. All the old, wild tales were canvassed - the defaulting cashier-counterfeiter-infidel-murderer-in-hiding legends were thrashed out. Uncle Wellington was very indignant that such a creature should be allowed to exist at all in the neighbourhood of Deerwood. He didn't know what the police at Port Lawrence were thinking of. Everybody would be murdered in their beds some night. It was a shame that he should be allowed to be at large after all that he had done.

"What has he done?" asked Valancy suddenly.

Uncle Wellington stared at her, forgetting that she was to be ignored.

"Done! Done! He's done everything."

"What has he done?" repeated Valancy inexorably. "What do you know that he has done? You're always running him down. And what has ever been proved against him?"

"I don't argue with women," said Uncle Wellington. "And I don't need proof. When a man hides himself up there on an island in Muskoka, year in and year out, and nobody can find out where he came from or how he lives or what he does there, that's proof enough. Find a mystery and you find a crime."

"The very idea of a man named Snaith!" said Second Cousin Sarah. "Why, the name itself is enough to condemn him!"

"I wouldn't like to meet him in a dark lane," shivered Cousin Georgiana.

"Murder me," said Cousin Georgiana solemnly.

"Just for the fun of it?" suggested Valancy.

"Exactly," said Cousin Georgiana unsuspiciously. "When there is so much smoke there must be some fire. I was afraid he was a criminal when he came here first. I felt he had something to hide. I am not often mistaken in my intuitions."

"Criminal! Of course he's a criminal," said Uncle Wellington. "Nobody doubts it" -- glaring at Valancy. "Why, they say he served a term in the penitentiary for embezzlement. I don't doubt it. And they say he's in with that gang that are perpetrating all those bank robberies round the country."

"Who say?" asked Valancy.

Uncle Wellington knotted his ugly forehead at her. What had got into this confounded girl, anyway? He ignored the question.

"He has the identical look of a jail-bird," snapped Uncle Benjamin. "I noticed it the first time I saw him."

"'A fellow by the hand of nature marked,
Quoted and sighed to do a deed of shame.'"

declaimed Uncle James. He looked enormously pleased over the managing to work that quotation in at last. He had been waiting all his life for the chance.

"One of his eyebrows is an arch and the other is a triangle," said Valancy. "Is that why you think him so villainous?"

Uncle James lifted his eyebrows. Generally when Uncle James lifted his eyebrows the world came to an end. This time it continued to function.

"How do you know his eyebrows so well, Doss?" asked Olive, a trifle maliciously. Such a remark would have covered Valancy with confusion two weeks ago, and Olive knew it.

"Yes, how?" demanded Aunt Wellington.

"I've seen him twice and I looked at him closely," said Valancy composedly. "I thought his face the most interesting one I ever saw."

"There is no doubt there is something fishy in the creature's past life," said Olive, who began to think she was decidedly out of the conversation, which had centred so amazingly around Valancy. "But he can hardly be guilty of everything he's accused of, you know."

Valancy felt annoyed with Olive. Why should she speak up in even this qualified defence of Barney Snaith? What had she to do with him? For that matter, what had Valancy? But Valancy did not ask herself this question.

"They say he keeps dozens of cats in that hut up back on Mistawis," said Second Cousin Sarah Taylor, by way of appearing not entirely ignorant of him.

Cats. It sounded quite alluring to Valancy, in the plural. She pictured an island in Muskoka haunted by pussies.

"That alone shows there is something wrong with him," decreed Aunt Isabel.

"People who don't like cats," said Valancy, attacking her dessert with a relish, "always seem to think that there is some peculiar virtue in not liking them."

"The man hasn't a friend except Roaring Abel," said Uncle Wellington. "And if Roaring Abel had kept away from him, as everybody else did, it would have been better for - for some members of his family."

Uncle Wellington's rather lame conclusion was due to a marital glance from Aunt Wellington reminding him of what he had almost forgotten -- that there were girls at the table.

"If you mean," said Valancy passionately, "that Barney Snaith is the father of Cecily Gay's child, he isn't. It's a wicked lie."

In spite of her indignation Valancy was hugely amused at the expression of the faces around that festal table. She had not seen anything like it since the day, seventeen years ago, when at Cousin Gladys's thimble party, they discovered that she had got - SOMETHING - in her head at school. Lice in her head! Valancy was done with euphemisms.

Poor Mrs. Frederick was almost in a state of collapse. She had believed - or pretended to believe - that Valancy still supposed that children were found in parsley beds.

"Hush -- hush!" implored Cousin Stickles.

"I don't mean to hush," said Valancy perversely. "I've hush-hushed all my life. I'll scream if I want to. Don't make me want to. And stop talking nonsense about Barney Snaith."

Valancy didn't exactly understand her own indignation. What did Barney Snaith's imputed crimes and misdemeanors matter to her? And why, out of them all, did it seem most intolerable that he should have been poor, pitiful little Cecily Gay's false lover? For it did seem intolerable to her. She did not mind when they called him a thief and a counterfeiter and jail-bird; but she could not endure to think that he had loved and ruined Cecily Gay. She recalled his face on the two occasions of their chance meetings - his twisted, enigmatic, engaging smile, his twinkle, his think, sensitive, almost ascetic lips, his general air of daredeviltry. A man with such a smile and lips might have murdered or stolen but he could not have betrayed. She suddenly hated every one who said it or believed it of him.

"When I was a young girl I never thought or spoke about such matters, Doss," said Aunt Wellington, crushingly.

"But I'm not a young girl," retorted Valancy, uncrushed. "Aren't you always rubbing that into me? And you are all evil-minded, senseless gossips. Can't you leave poor Cissy Gay alone? She's dying. Whatever she did, God or the Devil has punished her enough for it. You needn't take a hand, too. As for Barney Snaith, the only crime he has been guilty of is living to himself and minding his own business. He can, it seems, get along without you. Which is an unpardonable sin, of course, in your little snobocracy." Valancy coined that concluding word suddenly and felt that it was an inspiration. That was exactly what they were and not one of them was fit to mend another.

"Valancy, your poor father would turn over in his grave if he could hear you," said Mrs. Frederick.

"I dare say he would like that for a change," said Valancy brazenly.

"Doss," said Uncle James heavily, "the Ten Commandments are fairly up to date still - especially the fifth. Have you forgotten that?"

"No," said Valancy, "but I thought you had - especially the ninth. Have you ever thought, Uncle James, how dull life would be without the Ten Commandments? It is only when things are forbidden that they become fascinating."

But her excitement had been too much for her. She knew, by certain unmistakable warnings, that one of her attacks of pain was coming on. It must not find her there. She rose from her chair.

"I am going home now. I only came for the dinner. It was very good, Aunt Alberta, although your salad-dressing is not salt enough and a dash of cayenne would improve it."

None of the flabbergasted silver wedding guests could think of anything to say until the lawn gate clanged behind Valancy in the dusk.

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf:

The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

OH, how I love this novel. OH GOD. It's one of my escapes, a true fairy-romance that I find transportive ... If I ever find myself stuck, or feeling sorry for myself, or like a spinster (ha! let's retire that word, please) - all I need to do is pick up this magical novel. I find it intensely pleasurable to read - and in a weird way, this is my favorite thing that Lucy Maud has ever written. It is singular. It is its own thing. She never wrote another book like it. It feels like an exorcism ... and it also feels like it transported her. I love the Emily books - but they don't do for me what Blue Castle does - it's just a different experience. I really want this to come out right - because I think Lucy Maud does some of her best writing in this book, and I don't want to make the book sound trivial. In Blue Castle, we have some of her funniest writing, her most intensely gorgeous nature writing, her most brilliant characterizations ... but for me, personally, this book works the way watching, say, Notting Hill does. Or ... Kate & Leopold. I'm listing these romantic comedies that I absolutely LOVE ... movies that have the ability to really put a little hope in my heart, a little ... pep-talk "hang in there, Sheila, hang in there" ... There are many movies that work on me on that primal level, the level that aches for a mate, that doesn't want to give up, that wants to hope ... and for me Blue Castle works on that level.

It makes me feel like a teenager. A lovesick teenager.

The story is simple. And also cliched. But the beauty of it is not in the plot points ... but in HOW we get to the end of the story, the people we meet, the twists and turns ... It's almost archetypal, like a folk tale - if that makes any sense.

Valancy Stirling (her family calls her "Doss" and she despises the name - but they won't stop) is an unhappy 29 year old woman - unmarried, seriously on the shelf, as it were ... and completely dominated by her thoroughly unpleasant family. God, has Lucy Maud ever created such a bunch of relentless ignorant boring nincompoops in her writing career? She's merciless (and yet in a very funny way - I laugh out loud reading about these terrible people). Usually "bad" characters have SOME redeeming qualities in Lucy Maud's world. It's rare the truly bad seed. Miss Browning in Emily of New Moon comes to mind - she is truly a nasty human being, and she balances out the more humanistic approach to other "villains". Because you know what? Some people really ARE just assholes. But in Blue Castle, Lucy Maud takes the gloves off and turns her viciousness on people like Valancy's horrendous family. They are prudish, thin-lipped with decency and decorum ... and look at any sign of individuality (especially in Valancy) as the sign of the coming apocalypse. The book takes place in the 1920s, obviously - because there are mentions of bobbed hair (also seen by her family as harbingers of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) and jalopies and stuff like that - but Valancy's stick-up-the-ass family clings to the Victorian ways. Valancy has zero freedom when the book opens. She doesn't have a job. She has to do everything her mother says, or else she will get the silent treatment, and Valancy has never before questioned the supremacy of her mother. Valancy is completely cowed by her family. She is who they say she is. She was always a plain little girl, never fit in, couldn't dance, had no social graces, was a dreamy odd-looking girl ... and was always compared unfavorably to her golden-haired smooth-mannered cousin Olive. Valancy could never win the Olive vs. Valancy battle - so she gave up. Valancy is, admittedly, quite a self-pitying thing when the book opens. She feels victimized by everything. And she has no sense of agency in her own destiny. She is victimized by her mother. She is victimized by her entire ridiculous judgmental family. She is single - and she feels victimized by this circumstance. She cannot imagine her way out of this kind of life. She is stuck. Big time. But she doesn't even see that she is stuck. According to Valancy, this is just her "lot" in life. This is the hand she has been dealt.

Until ...

She goes to the doctor (sneaking to the doctor SHE wants to go to, as opposed to going to the family doctor - who will then, naturally, gossip about her physical ailments to her whole family) to ask him about these shortness of breath "attacks" that she has. He examines her. And then tells her, via letter, that she is dying, she has some heart condition, and she only has a year to live. The letter is very blunt and perfunctory - but it is the catalyst. It is what, ironically, sets Valancy free.

She has a horrible night of the soul ... realizing that her life is going to end ... and suddenly she realizes how much she has wasted her life. All she has experienced (from parents, peers, men) has been rejection. She has had a second-hand life. Olive gets the beaux. Olive gets the pretty dresses. And Valancy sits on the sidelines. She has had ZERO first-hand experiences in her life. She has spent her entire time on the planet in a quivery state of fear and anxiety - fear of annoying her mother, fear of what people will say, fear of rejection .... And after that one "night of the soul" - Valancy literally throws out her old self, which was a lie anyway, erected to please her prudish ignorant mother, and begins to act like herself.

And it goes off like an atom bomb through the Stirling family.

Even small things - like Valancy not laughing at her uncle's stupid jokes ... It was always Valancy's role to laugh, obligingly - but she stops. Because she doesn't think the jokes are funny, and she actually thinks her uncle is kind of a stupid man who has never been particularly nice to her. Enough with conventions.

But the changes go deeper than internal ones ... Valancy starts taking some huge risks. She walks away from her family - without looking back - and goes out to live with Abel Gay and his daughter - Abel Gay is a drunken reprobate (and yet somehow a very likable character too) who spends his nights carousing and drinking and whoring (presumably) - and he needs help with his frail daughter, who had a baby out of wedlock - and is now dying (the daughter). So Valancy offers her services as a nursemaid - and goes out to live with these people who have been completely rejected and judged by society. And once she is in the bosom of these rejects, these supposed "losers" (who, naturally, are not that at all - they are warmer, more real, more "moral" than the nasty-minded Christians back home who have only JUDGED anjd shunned them - typical.) ... Valancy really starts to blossom.

It's a great story.

I'm going to do a bunch of excerpts, just because I love this book so much.

First excerpt is from the first chapter - where we meet the cast of characters - Valancy's horrible family.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

She was glad it was raining - or rather, she was drearily satisfied that it was raining. There would be no picnic that day. This annual picnic, whereby Aunt and Uncle Wellington - one always thought of them in that succession - inevitably celebrated their engagement at a picnic thirty years before, had been, of late years, a veritable nightmare to Valancy. By an impish coincidence it was the same day as her birthday and, after she had passed twenty-five, nobody let her forget it.

Much as she hated going to the picnic, it would never have occurred to her to rebel against it. There seemed to be nothing of the revolutionary in her nature. And she knew exactly what every one would say to her at the picnic. Uncle Wellington, whom she disliked and despised, even though he had fulfilled the highest Stirling aspiration, "marrying money," would say to her in a pig's whisper, "Not thinking of getting married yet, my dear?" and then go off into the bellow of laughter with which he invariably concluded his dull remarks. Aunt Wellington, of whom Valancy stood in abject awe, would tell her about Olive's new chiffon dress and Cecil's last devoted letter. Valancy would have to look as pleased and interested as if the dress and letter had been hers or else Aunt Wellington would be offended. And Valancy had long ago decided that she would rather offend God than Aunt Wellington, because God might forgive her but Aunt Wellington never would.

Aunt Alberta, enormously fat, with an amiable habit of always referring to her husband as "he", as if he were the only male creature in the world, who could never forget that she had been a great beauty in her youth, would condole with Valancy on her sallow skin --

"I don't know why all the girls of today are so sunburned. When I was a girl my skin was roses and cream. I was counted the prettiest girl in Canada, my dear."

Perhaps Uncle Herbert wouldn't say anything - or perhaps he would remark jocularly, "How fat you're getting, Doss!" And then everybody would laugh over the excessively humorous idea of poor, scrawny little Doss getting fat.

Handsome, solemn Uncle James, whom Valancy disliked but respected because he was reputed to be very clever and was therefore the clan oracle - brains being none too plentiful in the Stirling connection - would probably remark with the owl-like sarcasm that had won him his reputation, "I suppose you're busy with your hope-chest these days?"

And Uncle Benjamin would ask some of his abominable conundrums, between wheezy chuckles, and answer them himself.

"What is the difference between Doss and a mouse?"

"The mouse wishes to harm the cheese and Doss wishes to charm the he's."

Valancy had heard him ask that riddle fifty times and every time she wanted to throw something at him. But she never did. In the first place, the Stirlings simply did not throw things; in the second place, Uncle Benjamin was a wealthy and childless old widower and Valancy had been brought up in the fear and admonition of his money. If she offended him he would cut her out of his will - supposing she were in it. Valancy did not want to be cut out of Uncle Benjamin's will. She had been poor all her life and knew the galling bitterness of it. So she endured his riddles and even smiled tortured little smiles over him.

Aunt Isabel, downright and disagreeable as an east wind, would criticize her in some way - Valancy could not predict just how, for Aunt Isabel never repeated a criticism - she found something new with which to jab you every time. Aunt Isabel prided herself on saying what she thought, but didn't like it so well when other people said what they thought to her. Valancy never said what she thought.

Cousin Georgiana - named after her great-great-grandmother, who had been named after George the Fourth - would recount dolorously the names of all relatives and friends who had died since the last picnic and wonder "which of us will be the first to go next."

Oppressively competent, Aunt Mildred would talk endlessly of her husband and her odious prodigies of babies to Valancy, because Valancy would be the only one she could find to put up with it. For the same reason, Cousin Gladys - really First Cousin Gladys once removed, according to the strict way in which the Stirlings tabulated relationship - a tall, thin lady who admitted she had a sensitive disposition, would describe minutely the tortures of her neuritis. And Olive, the wonder girl of the whole Stirling clan, who had everything Valancy had not - beauty, popularity, love - would show off her beauty and presume on her popularity and flaunt her diamond insignia of love in Valancy's dazzled envious eyes.

There would be none of all this today. And there would be no packing up of teaspoons. The packing up was always left for Valancy and Cousin Stickles. And once, six years ago, a silver teaspoon from Aunt Wellington's wedding set had been lost. Valancy never heard the last of that silver teaspoon. Its ghost appeared Banquo-like at every subsequent family feast.

Oh, yes, Valancy knew exactly what the picnic would be like and she blessed the rain that had saved her from it. There would be no picnic this year. If Aunt Wellington could not celebrate on the sacred day itself she would have no celebration at all. Thank whatever gods there were for that.

The Books: Akin to Anne: 'Jane Lavinia' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Akin to Anne - 'Jane Lavinia' by L.M. Montgomery

I like this story in the "orphan collection" as well. It doesn't rest its entire plot on an implausible coincidence ("Oh my lord, you have my mother's eyes ... oh my gosh, you must be my long-lost second cousin thrice removed!") This is a story of a young orphan named Jane Lavinia. She is 11 years old. She has some talent as an artist - her paintings have promise, and she loves to paint. It is something she does to lose herself in fantasy. She lives with her Aunt Rebecca - who is tough as nails (supposedly), unsympathetic towards artistic endeavors, and keeps Jane Lavinia very busy, milking cows, doing chores, etc. Jane Lavinia loves Aunt Rebecca, because she is family ... but Jane Lavinia is never sure if Rebecca loves her back. She has a sneaking suspicion that she might be a burden on her aunt ... that her aunt has taken her in as a duty. (Echoes of Emily here ... with her feelings about Aunt Elizabeth). 'Jane Lavinia' was published in 1906 - so it's pretty early, in terms of Lucy Maud's career - maybe 5 or 6 years in ... but there's a nice feel here, a really nice characterization - a dreamy sweet little orphan ... and a terrific literary character in Aunt Rebecca. It's all a cliche, of course - but whatever - the catharsis at the end always gets me.

Here's the ending. Jane Lavinia's artistic talents have been noticed by some city woman who offers to take Jane Lavinia away from Aunt Rebecca and get her to a good school in far off New York - get her art lessons - give her a chance to be a success. Jane Lavinia will have no shot at success if she stayed with Rebecca on the farm. Jane Lavinia is just a little girl but she decides to go with the city woman ... and Aunt Rebecca allows it.

Excerpt from Akin to Anne - 'Jane Lavinia' by L.M. Montgomery

On the morning of departure Jane Lavinia was up and ready early. Her trunk had been taken over to Mr. Whittaker's the night before, and she was to walk over in the morning and go with Mr. and Mrs. Stephens to the station. She put on her chiffon hat to travel in, and Aunt Rebecca did not say a word of protest. Jane Lavinia cried when she said good-by, but Aunt Rebecca did not cry. She shook hands and said stiffly, "Write when you get to New York. You needn't let Mrs. Stephens work you to death either."

Jane Lavinia went slowly over the bridge and up the lane. If only Aunt Rebecca had been a little sorry! But the morning was perfect and the air clear as crystal, and she was going to New York, and fame and fortune were to be hers for the working. Jane Lavinia's spirits rose and bubbled over in a little trill of song. Then she stopped in dismay. She had forgotten her watch - her mother's little gold watch; she had left it on her dressing table.

Jane Lavinia hurried down the lane and back to the house. In the open kitchen doorway she paused, standing on a mosaic of gold and shadow where the sunshine fell through the morning-glory vines. Nobody was in the ktichen, but Aunt Rebecca was in the little bedroom that opened off it, crying bitterly and talking aloud between her sobs, "Oh, she's gone and left me all alone - my girl has gone! Oh, what shall I do? And she didn't care - she was glad to go - glad to get away. Well, it ain't any wonder. I've always been too cranky with her. But I loved her so much all the time, and I was so proud of her! I liked her picture-making real well, even if I did complain of her wasting her time. Oh, I don't know how I'm ever going to keep on living now she's gone!"

Jane Lavinia listened with a face from which all the sparkle and excitement had gone. Yet amid all the wreck and ruin of her tumbling castles in air, a glad little thrill made itself felt. Aunt Rebecca was sorry - Aunt Rebecca did love her after all!

Jane Lavinia turned and walked noiselessly away. As she went swiftly up the wild plum lane, some tears brimmed up in her eyes, but there was a smile on her lips and a song in her heart. After all, it was nicer to be loved than to be rich and admired and famous.

When she reached Mr. Whittaker's, everybody was out in the yard ready to start.

"Hurry up, Jane Lavinia," said Mr. Whittaker. "Blest if we hadn't begun to think you weren't coming at all. Lively now."

"I am not going," said Jane Lavinia calmly.

"Not going?" they all exclaimed.

"No, I'm very sorry, and very grateful to you, Mr. Stephens, but I can't leave Aunt Rebecca. She'd miss me too much."

"Well, you little goose!" said Mrs. Whittaker.

Mrs. Stephens said nothing, but frowned codly. perhaps her thoughts were less of the loss to the world of art than of the difficulty of hunting up another housemaid. Mr. Stephens looked honestly regretful.

"I'm sorry, very sorry, Miss Slade," he said. "You have exceptional talent, and I think you ought to cultivate it."

"I am going to cultivate Aunt Rebecca," said Jane Lavinia.

Nobody knew just what she meant, but they all understood the firmness of her tone. Her trunk was taken down out of the express wagon, and Mr. and Mrs. Stephens drove away. Then Jane Lavinia went home. She found Aunt Rebecca washing the breakfast dishes, with big tears rolling down her face.

"Goodness me!" she cried, when Jane Lavinia walked in. 'What's the matter? You ain't gone and been too late!"

"No, I've just changed my mind, Aunt Rebecca. They've gone without me. I am not going to New York - I don't want to go. I'd rather stay at home with you."

For a moment Aunt Rebecca stared at her. Then she stepped forward anf flung her arms about the girl.

"Oh, Jane Lavinia," she said with a sob, "I'm so glad! I couldn't see how I was going to get along without you, but I thought you didn't care. You can wear that chiffon hat everywhere you want to, and I'll get you a pink organdy dress for Sundays."

The Books: Akin to Anne: 'Charlotte's Quest' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Akin to Anne - 'Charlotte's Quest' by L.M. Montgomery

Akin to Anne is a collection of Lucy Maud's stories - all having to do with orphans, people (mostly women) who are alone in the world and - at the end of a 10 page story - have discovered that their mother's second cousin is actually alive ... so ... family DOES exist. It's the same story (for the most part) over ... and over ... and over. It was one of Lucy Maud's ongoing themes, of course. The importance of family. This from a woman who was pretty much abandoned by her mother (who died) and then by her father (who left her behind with grandparents - moved out west - and started a new life out there, with a new wife - and never "called for" Lucy Maud) Lucy Maud was raised by stern cold grandparents - who ... sound rather exacting, and unsympathetic - and as they got older, much more difficult to deal with. Cranky, particular, aches and pains, demanding. Lucy Maud had an 11 year engagement because she was waiting for them to die - and her sense of duty would not let her abandon them. !!! Knowing what a disaster her marriage ended up being, I almost wish that Ewan had gotten sick of waiting. But no. He knew that he would never get another wife, because who the hell would marry that jackass except a woman who had had a disappointment in love when she was young, never got over it, and buried her heart forever? Nobody. So he waited. For 11 years. This just goes to show that Lucy Maud, even though she had a prickly relationship with her grandparents who probably would have preferred her to be a normal person - instead of a writer - horrors!! - she cherished them, because they were family. She was all alone in the world. She never dwelled on it, and she never said a bad word about her father in her journals. She made excuses for him. She rhapsodized over his rare letters. She went out there to visit his new family maybe ... twice? In her whole life? So he basically discarded his first child - started up again - and left her to fend for herself with the stern relatives of his dead first wife.

That dark belly underbelly of abandonment rarely makes it directly into Lucy Maud's stories. Anne is an orphan - but her imagination helps her to bear her years before Green Gables ... and her parents died when she was a baby, so she has romanticized them. She doesn't actively miss them. We don't have a depressive little Oliver Twist with Anne Shirley - we have a plucky little girl who has created an intense fantasy life to deal with her hard little life.

So these stories, monotonous as they can be when read all together, are very revealing. It's the most important thing in the world to know that you are not alone ... that you have people around you ... who are of your blood.

We have story after story about a poor work-hardened woman, living in a bleak boarding-house - (these characters are all the same, no individuality), and then discovering - through a random coincidence - that the rich man who just moved to town is actually her long lost brother - thought to be dead in the Klondike! So now she has family! Hooray!!! Etc. Over and over and over again ...

I won't bore you with those repetitive stories - only Lucy Maud die-hard fans would read all of them - but I actually find them kind of beautiful. I can really sense her personality, her concerns, her ... worries ... in these stories. There are a couple in the collection that do not follow the same pattern - and some that have a higher level of narrative prose - so I'll post excerpts from those.

The first story in the collection is "Charlotte's Quest" - published in the Family Herald in 1933. You can tell it was published at a late date. Her writing is strong, sure, and self-contained. The characters, while broad sketches, are clear, you know who they are ... They are individuals. They seem to have a breath of life to them, unlike the monotonous cardboard cutouts of many of the other stories.

Charlotte is 8 years old, and her mother is dead and her father only sees her as a "hindrance to his mountain-climbing". Her father has dropped her off at her aunt's and uncle's and has never been seen again. Charlotte is a serious rather ugly little girl with thick bushy black eyebrows - she is not cute, or sweet, like other little girls - she likes to read, and imagine things, and think by herself ...her aunt and uncle are loud, boisterous, social people and completely do not understand their niece. They want her to be like them. Charlotte has to share a bedroom with her loud cousins ... and she lives her life in complete misery. She is misunderstood, and totally alone in the world. She hears that there is a witch in the next town who will grant your wishes. So Charlotte sets out to find this witch - and ask the witch for a mother.

This is the scene where she finds the witch's house. I love the many levels in this scene. You can see where "Witch Penny" is coming from ... you can see the whole thing through her eyes too ... Very well done.

Oh, and also it's one of her rare sympathetic portraits of an Irish person. Normally they are drunk and filthy in her stories, little better than caricatures. Father Cassidy is a VERY sympathetic Irishman, in Emily of New Moon - and Judy Plum, in the interminable Pat books [excerpts here and here], is Irish - she's sympathetic too, even though gotta be honest: Judy Plum annoys me. If I had a housemaid like her, I'd want to slit my throat. Like: SHUT UP, PLUM. GIMME A MOMENT'S REST, FOR GOD'S SAKE. Speaking of "Pat" - this episode in the story below with the witch shows up in Pat of Silver Bush almost word for word, except that Pat is looking for a lost dog, not her mother.

Excerpt from Akin to Anne - 'Charlotte's Quest' by L.M. Montgomery

The Witch Penny's house was a little grey one nestling against the steep hill that rose from the pond about half a mile west of the small town. The gate hung slackly on its hinges. The house itself was shabby and old, with sunken window sills and a much-patched roof. Charlotte reflected that being a witch didn't seem to be a very profitable business.

For a moment Charlotte hesitated. She was not a timid child, but she did feel a little frightened. Then she thought of Mrs. Barrett rocking fiercely in her rocker and forever talking in her high, cheerful voice. "Mother is always so bright," Aunt Florence always said. Charlotte shuddered. No witch could be worse. She knocked resolutely on the door.

A thumping sound inside ceased. Had she interrupted Witch Penny in the weaving of a spell? ... and footsteps seemed to be coming down a stair. Then the door opened and Witch Penny appeared. Charlotte took her all in with one of her straight, deliberate looks.

She was grey as an owl, with a broad rosy face and tiny black eyes surrounded by cushions of fat. Charlotte thought she looked too jolly for a witch. But no doubt there were all kinds. Certainly the big black cat with fiery golden eyes that sat behind her on the lower step of the stair looked his reputed part.

"Now who may ye be and what may ye be wanting with me?" said Witch Penny a bit gruffly.

Charlotte never wasted breath, words or time. "I am Charlotte Laurence and I have come to ask you to find me a mother - that is, if you really are a witch. Are you?"

Witch Penny's look suddenly changed. It grew secretive and mysterious.

"Whist, child," she whispered. "Don't be talking of witches in the open daylight like this. Little ye know what might happen."

"But are you?" persisted Charlotte. If Witch Penny wasn't a witch, she wasn't going to bother with her.

"To be sure, I am. But come in, come in. Finding a mother ain't something to be done on the durestep. Better come right upstairs. I'm weaving a tablecloth for the fairies up there. All the witches in the countryside promised to do one apiece for them. The poor liddle shiftless craturs left all their tablecloths out in the frost last Tuesday night, and 'twas their ruination. But I've got far behind me comrades and mustn't be losing any more time. Ye'll excuse me if I kape on with me work while ye're telling me your troubles. It's the quane's own cloth I'm weaving, and it's looking sour enough her majesty will be if it's not finished on time."

Charlotte thought that Witch Penny's old loom looked very big and clumsy for the weaving of fairy tablecloths, and the web in it seemed strangely like rather coarse grey flannel. But no doubt witches had their own way of blinding the eyes of ordinary mortals. When Witch Penny finished it, she would weave a spell over it and it would become a thing of gossamer light and loveliness.

Witch Penny resumed her work and Charlotte sat down on a stool beside her. They were on a little landing above the stairs, with one low, cobwebby window and a stained ceiling with bunches of dried tansy and yarrow hanging from it. The cat had followed them up and sat on the top step, staring at Charlotte. Its eyes shone uncannily through the dusk of the staircase.

"Now, out with your story," said Witch Penny. "Ye're wanting a mother, ye tell me, and ye're Charlotte Laurence. Ye'll be having Edward Laurence for your father, I'm thinking?"

"Yes. But he's gone west to climb mountains," explained Charlotte. "He's always wanted to, but Mother died when I was three, and as long as I was small he couldn't. I'm eight now, so he's gone."

"And left ye with your Uncle Tom and your Aunt Florence. Oh, I've heard all about it. Your Aunt Florence's cat was after telling mine the whole story at the last dance we had. Your Aunt Florence do be too grand for the likes of us, but it's little she thinks where her cat do be going. Ye don't look like the Laurences - ye haven't got your father's laughing mouth - ye've got a proud mouth like your old Grandmother Jasper. Did ye ever see her?"

Charlotte shook her head. She knew nothing of her Grandmother Jasper beyond the fact of her existence, but all at once shhe knew who You-Know-Who was.

"No, it ain't likely ye would. She was real mad at your mother for marrying Ned Laurence. I've heard she never would forgive her, never would set foot in her house. But ye have her mouth. And what black hair ye've got. And what big eyes. And what little ears. And ye have a mole on your neck. 'Tis the witch's mark. Come now, child dear, wouldn't ye like to be a witch? 'Tis a far easier job than the one ye've set me. Think av the fun av riding on the broomstick."

Charlotte thought of it. Flying over the steeples and dark spruces at night. "I think I'm too young to be a witch," she said.

Witch Penny's eyes twinkled.

"Sure, child dear, 'tis the young witches that do be having the most power. Mind ye, everybody can't be a witch. We're that exclusive ye'd never belave. But I'll not press ye. And ye want me to find you a mother?"

"If you please. Nita Gresham got a new mother. So why can't I?"

"Well, the real mothers are hard to come by. All the same, mebbe it can be managed. It's lucky ye've come in the right time of the moon. I couldn't have done a think for ye next wake. And mind ye, child, I'm not after promising anything for sartin. But there's a chanct, there's a chanct ... seeing as ye've got your grandmother's mouth. If ye'd looked like your father, it wouldn't be Witch Penny as'd help ye to a mother. I'd no use for him."

Witch Penny chuckled. "What kind of a mother do ye be wanting?"

"A quiet mother who doesn't laugh too much or ask too many questions."

Witch Penny shook her head.

"A rare kind. It'll take some conniving. Here ..." Witch Penny dropped her shuttle, leaned forward and extracted from a box beside the loom a handful of raisins ... "stow these away in your liddle inside while I do a bit av thinking."

Charlotte ate her raisins with a relish while Witch Penny wove slowly and thoughtfully. She did not speak until Charlotte had finished the last raisin.

"It come into me mind," said Witch Penny, "that if ye go up the long hill ... and down it ... then turn yourself about three times, nather more nor less, ye'll find a road that goes west. Folly your nose along it till ye come to a gate with a liddle lane that leads down to the harbour shore. Turn yourself about three times more ... if ye forget that part of it, ye may look till your eyes fall out of your head, but niver a mother ye'll see. Then go down the lane to a stone house with a red door in it like a cat's tongue. Knock three times on the door. If there's a mother in the world for ye, ye'll find her there. That's all I can be doing for ye."

Charlotte got up briskly.

"Thank you very much. It sounds like a good long walk, so I ought to start. What am I to pay you for this?"

Witch Penny chuckled again. Something seemed to amuse her greatly.

"How much have ye got?" she asked.

"A dollar."

"How'd ye come by it?"

Charlotte thought witches were rather impertinent. However, if you dealt with them ...

"Mrs. Beckwith gave it to me before she went away."

"And how come ye didn't spend it for swaties and ice cream?"

"I like to feel I've something to fall back on," said Charlotte gravely.

Witch Penny chuckled for the third time.

"Says your grandmother. Oh, ye're Laurence be name but it goes no daper. Kape your liddle bit av a dollar. Ye've got a mole on your neck. We can't charge folks as have moles anything. It's clane against our rules. Now run along or it'll be getting too late."

"I'm very much obliged to you," said Charlotte, putting her money back in her pocket and offering her thin brown hand.

"Ye do be a mannerly child at that," said Witch Penny.

Witch Penny stood on her sunken doorstep and watched the little, erect figure out of sight.

"Sure, and I do be wondering if I've done right. But she'd never fit in up at the Laurences with their clatter. And once the old leddy lays eyes on her!"

Charlotte had disappeared around the bend in the road. Then Witch Penny said a queer thing for a witch. She said: "God bless the liddle cratur."

The Books: Magic for Marigold (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Magic for Marigold - by L.M. Montgomery

This is a novel - published in 1929. It is one of her few stand-alone novels, there is no Marigold: The Sequel. And you know, there are hints throughout the book that Marigold might not be made for adulthood. There's something fragile about her. She was a weak baby, and she takes everything very hard as a young girl. I can't remember where in the text Lucy Maud gives hints - but I know they were there.

All of that being said - I guess I'm not too wacky about Marigold. She just wasn't that compelling a heroine for me. She seemed to have a good imagination (which all of Lucy Maud's heroines do - except for stupid Pat of Silver Bush who couldn't imagine her way out of a paper sack. What a boring nitwit. She should be hospitalized. I think there's something actually wrong with her.) But anyway, back to Marigold. She sees the trees as creatures like fairies or wizards, she adores the hills on the horizon, she makes up a fantasy world - what is over that hill? A land of magic and rainbows and blah blah blah. I guess, to be honest, I've heard it all before. Lucy Maud has done this story - and much better - with Emily in the wind barrens in the spruce bush, and Anne with the White Way of Delight ... I guess Marigold just doesn't stand out, for me. However, there are some hilarious episodes in this book. Like when Marigold hears a missionary talk at a prayer meeting - and becomes so suffused with the desire to become holy - that she prays 14 hours a day, she stops eating, she wants to be pale and holy ... her family just tolerates this pious ridiculousness, knowing it's a fanatical phase. That's rather amusing. Some of the Lesley family members are quite memorable. I love Uncle Klondike. The woman-hater. Who then, naturally, turns around and marries the feisty female doctor named Marigold. Marigold is named after her. Marigold's mother is a pale sad nonentity. Lucy Maud didn't write parents very well. She had no experience with them herself - so whenever there are parents in her books - she either kills them off immediately (like in Emily) - or they are long dead by the time the book starts (like in Anne). In the few books where the parents live - Marigold, the Pat books - they're just ... not convincing. The mothers are usually saintly, sickly, and basically sit back and watch everyone else live their lives. And the fathers are jolly, twinkley, and rather detached from the main family action. The REAL characters are always people like the aunts, the uncles, the servants, the relatives, the extended family. Lucy Maud wrote about THEM like nobody's business. These people LIVE.

The excerpt I've chosen below is - well, it's a long one - and to be honest, it's some of my favorite writing that Lucy Maud has ever done. In her whole career. It's all just one woman talking - an extended monologue. But ... God, it's Lucy Maud shining, at her very very best.

Marigold, a little girl, is hanging out with her ancient great-grandmother - who is 99 years old. Great-Grandmother (referred to as "Old grandmother") is crotchety, bedridden, with laser-beam eyes that don't miss a thing, everyone lives in fear of her, she says what's on her mind, she is intolerant of foolishness, she is unpredictable ... and she has also lived for a bazillion years - so nobody can imagine her dying. It seems fine to let Marigold, a 6 year old, a 7 year old, stay at home with the great-grandmother while all the adults go out to a dinner party. Marigold can keep her company, and everything will be fine.

But Great-grandmother has other plans. She hasn't been outside for years. She is surrounded by younger generations, who all treat her as though she is ancient, and feeble and barely human. She hasn't been out in the garden for 20 years.

So when the house is empty - excpet for Marigold - Great-Grandmother decides. She wants to go out into the garden and see the moonlight. And not only that: but after she has done so, she will go back to her bed and die. With as little fuss as possible. By herself. She will choose her moment when she will go.

And that's what happens.

But it's the time in the garden - with Marigold, the 7 year old girl who is kind of afraid of her great-grandmother, and Great-Grandmother, the 99 year old terrifying bossy old fossil ... that I want to excerpt. The thing about it is: The Great-Grandmother has been set up in the chapters before this one as the opposite of a poetic or a ... contemplative personality. She's not mean - she's just hard as nails, she is not a lot of fun, she makes Marigold memorize Bible verses even though it's a bright sunny day out and Marigold wants to play - she's so old that everyone is alienated by her - and she tells the truth even if it's terrible - and everyone cowers when she is around. That is how she has been set up.

But now comes her last night on earth. She has decided it is going to be her last night. Marigold doesn't know this. But we, the reader, can tell. She's moving towards the boundary between life and death.

Lucy Maud shows her genius in this excerpt. Parts very poignant, parts laugh out loud funny (the bees at the wedding! the icing on the cake!), parts profound, and parts just plain old good story-telling ... It's what I find so damn compelling about her writing.

I only read Magic for Marigold in its entirety once. But I have read this excerpt many many many times. It's one of the pieces of writing I go to, regularly, if I need strength, or comfort, or perspective. I cherish it. And the last moment of the excerpt - the "Edith" moment - never fails to bring tears to my eyes.

Excerpt from Magic for Marigold - by L.M. Montgomery

Old Grandmother sank down on the stone bench with a grunt. She sat there silent and motionless for what seemed to Marigold a very long time. The moon rose over the cloud of spruce and the orchard became transfigured. A garden of flowers in moonlight is a strange, enchanted thing with a touch of diablerie, and Marigold, sensitive to every influence, felt its charm long years before she could define it. Nothing was the same as in daylight. She had never been out in the orchard so late as this before. The June lilies held up their cups of snow; the moonlight lay silver white on the stone steps. The perfume of the lilacs came in little puffs on the crystal air; beyond the orchard lay old fields she knew and loved, mysterious misty spaces of moonshine now. Far, far away was the murmur of the sea.

And still Old Grandmother dreamed on. Did she see faces long under the mould bright and vivid again? Were there flying feet, summoning voices, that only she could hear in that old moonlit orchard? What voices were calling to her out of the firs? Marigold felt a funny little prickling along her spine. She was perfectly sure that she and Old Grandmother were not alone in the orchard.

"Well, how have you been since we came out here?" demanded Old Grandmother at last.

"Pretty comf'able," said Marigold, rather startled.

"Good," said Old Grandmother. "It's a good test - the test of silence. If you can sit in silence with any one for half an hour and feel 'comfortable', you and that person can be friends. If not, friends you'll never be and you needn't waste time trying. I've brought you out here to-night for two reasons, Marigold. The first is to give you some hints about living, which may do you some good and may not. The second was to keep a tryst with the years. We haven't been alone here, child."

No; Marigold had known that. She drew a little closer to Old Grandmother.

"Don't be frightened, child. The ghosts that walk here are friendly, homey ghosts. They wouldn't hurt you. They are of your race and blood. Do you know you look strangely like a child who died seventy years before you were born? My husband's niece. Not a living soul remembers that little creature but me - her beauty - her charm - her wonder. But I remember her. You have her eyes and mouth - and that same air of listening to voices only she could hear. Is that a curse or a blessing I wonder. My children played in this orchard - and then my grandchildren - and my great-grandchildren. Such a lot of small ghosts! To think that in a house where there were once fourteen children there is now nobody but you."

"That isn't my fault," said Marigold, who felt as if Old Grandmother were blaming her.

"It's nobody's fault, just as it's nobody's fault that your father died of pneumonia before you were born. Cloud of Spruce will be yours some day, Marigold."

"Will it?" Marigold was startled. Such a thing had never occurred to her.

"And you must always love it. Places know when they're loved - just the same as people. I've seen houses whose hearts were actually broken. This house and I have always been good friends. I've always loved it from the day I came here as a bride. I planted most of those trees. You must marry some day, Marigold, and fill those old rooms again. But not too young - not too young. I married at seventeen and I was a grandmother at thirty-six. It was awful. Sometimes it seems to me that I've always been a grandmother.

"I could have been married at sixteen. But I was determined I wouldn't be married till I had finished knitting my apple-leaf bedspread. Your great-grandfather went off in such a rage I didn't know if he'd ever come back. But he did. He was only a boy himself. Two children - that's what we were. Two young fools. That's what everybody called us. And yet we were wiser then than I am now. We knew things then I don't know now. I've stayed up too late. Don't do that, Marigold - don't live till there's nothing left of life but the Pope's nose. Nobody will be sorry when I die."

Suddenly Marigold gasped.

"I will be sorry," she cried - and meant it. Why, it would be terrible. No Old Grandmother at Cloud of Spruce. How could the world go on at all?

"I don't mean that kind of sorriness," said Old Grandmother. "And even you won't be sorry long. Isn't it strange? I was once afraid of Death. He was a foe then - now he is a lover. Do you know, Marigold, it is thirty years since anyone has called me by my name? Do you know what my name is?"

"No-o," admitted Marigold. It was the first time she had ever realised that Old Grandmother must have a name.

"My name is Edith. Do you know I have an odd fancy I want to hear some one call me that again. Just once. Call me by my name, Marigold."

Marigold gasped again. This was terrible. It was sacrilege. Why, one might almost as well be expected to call God by His name to His face.

"Say anything - anything - with my name in it," said Old Grandmother impatiently.

"I -- I don't know what to say, --- Edith," stammered Marigold. It sounded dreadful when she had said it. Old Grandmother sighed.

"It's no use. That isn't my name -- not as you say it. Of course it couldn't be. I should have known better." Suddenly she laughed.

"Marigold, I wish I could be present at my own funeral. Oh, wouldn't it be fun! The whole clan will be here to the last sixth cousin. They'll sit around and say all the usual kind, good, dull things about me instead of the interesting truth. The only true thing they'll say will be that I had a wonderful constitution. That's always said of any Lesley who lives to be over eighty. Marigold --" Old Grandmother's habit of swinging a conversation around by its ears was always startling, "what do you really think about the world?"

Marigold, though taken by surprise, knew exactly what she thought about the world.

"I think it's very int'resting," she said.

Old Grandmother stared at her, then laughed.

"You've hit it. 'Whether there be tongues they shall fail - whether there be prophecies they shall vanish away' -- but the pageant of human life goes on. I've never tired watching it. I've lived nearly a century - and when all's said and done there's nothing I'm more thankful for than that I've always found the world and people in it interesting. Yes, life's been worth living. Marigold, how many little boys are sweet on you?"

"Sweet on me." Marigold didn't understand.

"Haven't you any little beau?" explained Old Grandmother.

Marigold was quite shocked. "Of course not. I'm too small."

"Oh, are you? I had two beaux when I was your age. Can you imagine me being seven years old and having two little boys sweet on me?"

Marigold looked at Old Grandmother's laughter-filled and moonlight-softened black eyes and for the first time realised that Old Grandmother had not always been old. Why, she might even have been Edith.

"For that matter I had a beau when I was six," said Old Grandmother triumphantly. "Girls were born having beaux in my day. Little Jim Somebody - I've forgotten his last name if I ever knew it - walked three miles to buy a stick of candy for me. I was only six, but I knew what that meant. He has been dead for eighty years. And there was Charlie Snaith. He was nine. We always called him Froggy-face. I'll never forget his huge round eyes staring at me as he asked, 'Can I be your beau?' Or how he looked when I giggled and said 'no'. There were a good many 'no's' before I finally said 'yes'." Old Grandmother laughed reminiscently, with all the delight of a girl in her teens.

"It was Great-Grandfather you first said 'yes' to, wasn't it?" asked Marigold.

Old Grandmother nodded.

"But I had some narrow escapes. I was crazy about Frank Lister when I was fifteen. My parents wouldn't let me have him. He wanted me to run away with him. I've always been sorry I didn't. But then if I had I'd have been sorry for that, too. I was very near taking Bob Clancy - and now all I can remember about him was that he got drunk once and varnished his mother's kitchen with maple-syrup. Joe Benson was in love with me. I had told him I thought he was magnificent. If you tell a certain kind of man he's magnificent, you can have him - if you really want that kind of a man. Peter March was a nice fellow. He was thought to be dying of consumption, and he pleaded with me to marry him and give him a year of happiness. Just suppose I had. He got better and lived to be seventy. Never take a risk like that with a live man, Marigold. he married Hilda Stuart. A pretty girl but too self-conscious. And every time Hilda spent more than five cents a week Peter took neuralgia. He always sat ahead of me in church, and I was always tormented with a desire to slap a spot on his bald head that looked like a fly."

"Was Great-grandfather a handsome man?" asked Marigold.

"Handsome? Handsome? Everyone was handsome a hundred years ago. I don't know if he was handsome or not. I only know he was my man from the moment I first set eyes on him. It was at a dinner-party. He was there with Janet Churchill. She thought she had him hooked. She always hated me. I had gold slippers on that night that were too tight for me. I kicked them off under the table for a bit of ease. Never found one of them again. I knew Janet was responsible for it. But I got even with her. I took her beau. It wasn't hard. She was a black velvet beauty of a girl - far prettier than I was - but she kept all her goods in the show-window. Where there is no mystery there is no romance. Remember that, Marigold."

"Did you and Great-Grandfather live here when you were married?"

"Yes. He built Cloud of Spruce and brought me here. We were quite happy. Of course we quarreled now and then. And once he swore at me. I just swore back at him. It horrified him so he never set me such a bad example again. The worst quarrel we ever had was when he spilled soup over my purple silk dress. I always believed he did it on purpose because he didn't like the dress. He has been dead up there in South Harmony graveyard for forty years, but if he were here now I'd like to slap his face for that dress."

"How did you get even with him?" asked Marigold, knowing very well Old Grandmother had got even.

Old Grandmother laughed until she had hardly enough breath left to speak.

"I told him that since he had ruined my dress I'd go to church next Sunday in my petticoat. And I did."

"Oh, Grandmother." Marigold thought this was going too far.

"Oh, I wore a long silk coat over it. He never knew till we were in our pew. When he sat down the coat fell open in front and he saw the petticoat - a bright Paddy-green it was. Oh, his face - I can see it yet."

Old Grandmother rocked herself to and fro on the stone bench in a convulsion of mirth.

"I pulled the coat together. But I don't think your great-grandfather got much good of that sermon. When it was over he took me by the arm and marched me down the aisle and out to our buggy. No hanging round to talk gossip that day. He never spoke all the way home - sat there with his mouth primmed up. In face he never said a word about it at all - but he never could bear green the rest of his life. And it was my color. But the next time I got a green dress he gave our fat old waserwoman a dress off the same piece. So of course I couldn't wear the dress and I never dared to get green again. After all, it took a clever person to get the better of your great-grandfather in the long run. But that was the only serious quarrel we ever had, though we used to squabble for a few years over the bread. He wanted the slices cut thick and I wanted them thin. It spoiled a lot of meals for us."

"Why couldn't you have each cut them to suit yourselves?"

Old Grandmother chuckled.

"No, no. That would have been giving in on a trifle. It's harder to do that than give in on something big. Of course we worked it out like that after we had so many children the question was to get enough bread for the family, thick or thin. But to the end of his life there were times when he would snort when I cut a lovely think paper-like slice, and times when I honestly couldn't help sniffing wh en he carved off one an inch thick."

"I like bread thin," said Marigold, sympathising with Old Grandmother.

"But if you marry a man who likes it thick - and I know now that every proper man does - let him have it thick from the start. Don't stick on trifles, Marigold. The slices of bread didn't worry me when your great-grandfather fell in love with his second cousin, Mary Lesley. She always tried to flirt with every male craeture in sight. Simply couldn't leave the men alone. She wasn't handsome but she carried herself like a queen, so people thought she was one. It's a useful trick, Marigold. You might remember it. But don't flirt. Either you hurt yourself or your hurt some one else."

"Didn't you flirt?" asked Marigold slyly.

"Yes. That's why I'm telling you not to. For the rest - take what God sends you. That was a bad time while it lasted. But he came back. They generally come back if you have sense enough to keep still and wait - as I had, glory be. The only time I broke loose was the night of Charlie Blaisdell's wedding. Alec sat in a corner and talked to Mary all the evening. I flew out of the house and walked the six miles home in a thin evening dress and satin shoes. It was in March. It should have killed me, of course - but here I am at ninety-nine tough and tasty. And Alec never missed me! Thought I'd gone home with Abe Lesley's crowd. Oh, well, he came to his senses when Mary dropped him for something fresher. But I can't say I was ever very fond of Mary Lesley after that. She was a mischief-maker, anyhow, always blowing old jealousies into a flame for the fun of it.

"I got on very well with the rest of the clan, though my in-laws were mostly very stupid, poor things. Alec's mother didn't approve of us having such a big family. She said it kept Alec's nose to the grindstone. I had twins twice just to spite her, but we got on very well for all that. And Alec's brother Sam was a terrible bore. Nothing ever happened to him. He never even fell in love. Died when he was sixty, in his sleep. It used to make me mad to see any one wasting life like that. Paul was a black sheep. Always got drunk on every solemn or awful occasion. Got drunk at Ruth Lesley's wedding - she was married from here - and upset two stands of bees over there by the apple-barn just as the bridal party came out here to the orchard to be married. That was the liveliest wedding I was ever at. Never shall I forget old Minister Wood flying up those steps pursued by bees. Talk about ghosts!"

Old Grandmother laughed until she had to wipe tears from her eyes.

"Poor Ruth. She was so stung up she looked like a bride with the smallpox. Oh, well, she had only about half a brain, anyway. She always threw her arms about her husband in public when she wanted to ask him some small favor. How red and furious he got! And he always refused. You'd have thought she'd have learned some sense in time. Some women never do. Be sure you have some sense, Marigold, when it comes to handling the men."

"Tell me some more stories, Grandmother," entreated Marigold.

"Child, I could tell you stories all night. This orchard is full of them. Up there by the scabby apple-tree Bess Lesley swooned because Alexander McKay asked her to marry him too suddely. People 'swooned' in my day - 'fainted' in your grandmother's. Now they don't do either. But what a lot of fun they miss. Alexander thought Bess was dead - that he'd killed her with his abruptness. We found him on his knees by her, tearing his hair and shrieking blue murder. He thought I was a brute because I threw a dipperful of water over her. She came to very quickly - her curls were only paper ones - and such a looking creature as she was, with them hanging limp about her face and a complexion like a tallow candle. But she had a wonderful figure. It seems to me the girls look like sticks nowadays. Alexander clasped her in his arms and implored her to forgive him. She forgave him - and married him - but she never forgave me. Talking of ghosts - they had a haunted door in their house. Always found open no matter how it was shut and locked."

"Do you really believe that, Grandmother?"

"Of course. Always believe things like that. If you don't believe things you'll never have any fun. The more things you can believe the more interesting life is, as you say yourself. Too much incredulity makes it a poor thing. as for the ghosts, we had another haunted house in the clan - Garth Lesley's-over-the-bay. It was haunted by a white cat."

"Why?"

"Nobody knew. But there it was. The Garth Lesleys were rather proud of it. Lots of people saw it. I saw it. At least, I saw a white cat washing its face on the stairs."

"But was it the ghost cat?"

"Oh, there you go again. I prefer to believe it was. Otherwise I could never say I'd seen a real ghost. Over there in that corner where the three pines are, Hilary and Kate Lesley agreed to tell each other what they really thought of each other. They thought it would be fun - but they never 'spoke' again. Kate was engaged at one time to her third cousin, Ben Lesley-over-the-bay. It was broken off and later she found her photograph in his mother's album adorned with horns and a moustache. There was a terrible family row over that. In the tail of the day she married Dave Ridley. A harmless creature - only he would eat the icing off his wife's piece of cake whenever they went anywhere to tea. Kate didn't seem to mind - she hated icing - but I always wanted to choke him with gobs of icing until he had enough of it for once. Ben's sister Laura was jilted by Turner Reed. He married Josie Lesley and when they appeared out in church the first Sunday Laura Lesley went too, in the dress that was to have been her wedding one, and sat down on the other side of Ben. Alec said she should have been tarred and feathered, but I tell you I liked her spunk. There's a piece of that very dress in my silk log-cabin quilt in the green chest in the garret. You are to have it - and my pearl ring. Your great-grandfather found the pearl in an oyster the day we were engaged and had it set for me. It was reckoned worth five hundred dollars. I've left it to you in my will so none of the others can raise a rumpus or do you out of it. Edith-over-the-bay has had her eye on it for years. Thinks she should have it because she was my first namesake. She owes me more than her name if she but knew it. She wouldn't exist at all if it hadn't been for me. I made the match between her father and mother. I was quite a matchmaker in my time. They really didn't want to marry each other a bit but they were just as happy as if they had. All the same, Marigold, don't ever let any one make a match for you."

Old Grandmother was silent for a few moments, thinking over, maybe, more old, forgotten loves of the clan. The wind swayed the trees and the shadows danced madly. Were they only shadows ----?

"Annabel Lesley and I used to sit under the syrup apple-tree over there and talk," said Old Grandmother - in a different voice. A gentle, tender voice. "I loved Annabel. She was the only one of the Lesley clan I really loved. A sweet woman. The only woman I ever knew who would keep secrets. A woman who would really burn a letter if you asked her to. It was safe to empty your soul out to her. Learn to keep a secret, Marigold. And she was just. Learn to be just, Marigold. The hardest thing in the world is to be just. I never was just. It was so much easier to be generous."

"I could sit here all night and hear you tell about these people," whispered Marigold.

Old Grandmother sighed. "Once I could have stayed up all night - talking - dancing - and then laugh in the sunrise. But you can't do those things at ninety-nine. I must leave my ghosts and go in. After all they were a pretty decent lot. We've never had a real scandal in thhe clan. Unless that old affair about Adela's husband and the arsenic could be called one. You'll notice when Adela's books are spoken of, she's 'our cousin'. But when the porridge mystery comes up she's 'a third cousin'. Not that I ever believed she did it. Marigold, will you forgive me for all the pills I've made you take?"

"Oh, they were good for me," protested Marigold.

Old Grandmother chuckled.

"Those are the things we have to be forgiven for. But I don't ask you to forgive me for all the Bible verses I made you learn. You'll be grateful to me for them some day. It's amazing what beautiful things there are in the Bible. 'When all the morning stars sang together.' And that speech of Ruth's to Naomi. Only it always enraged me, too, because no daughter-in-law of mine would ever have said the like to me. Ah, well, they're all gone now except Marian. It's time - it's high time for me to go, too."

Marigold felt it was such a pity Old Grandmother had to die just when she had got really acquainted with her. And besides Marigold had something on her conscience.

"Grandmother," she whispered, "I -- I've made faces at you when you weren't looking."

Old Grandmother touched Marigold's little round cheek with the tip of her finger.

"Are you so sure I didn't see your faces? I did - often. They weren't quite as impish as the ones I made at your age. I'm glad I've lived long enough for you to remember me, little child. I'm leaving off - you're beginning. Live joyously, little child. Never mind the old traditions. Traditions don't matter in a day when queens have their pictures in magazine advertisements. But play the game of life according to the rules. You might as well, because you can't cheat life in the end.

"And don't think too much about what people will say. For years I wanted to do something but I was prevented by the thought of what my cousin Evelina would say. At last I did it. And she said, 'I really didn't think edith had so much spunk in her.' Do anything you want to, Marigold - as long as you can go to your looking-glass afterwards and look yourself in the face. The oracle has spoken. And after all, is it any use? You'll make your own mistakes and learn from them as we all do. Hand me my cane, child. I'm glad I came out. I haven't had a laugh for years till to-night when I thought of poor Minister Wood and the bees."

"Why, I've heard you laugh often, Grandmother," said Marigold, wonderingly.

"Cackling over the mistakes of poor humanity isn't laughing," said Old Grandmother. She rose easily to her feet and walked through the orchard, leaning very lightly on her cane. At the gate she paused and looked back, waving a kiss to the invisible presences behind her. The moonlight made jewels of her eyes. The black scarf wound tightly round her head looked like a cap of sleek black hair. Suddenly the years were bridged. She was Edith - Edith of the gold slippers and the Paddy-green petticoat. Before she thought, Marigold cried out,

"Oh - Edith - I know what you looked like now."

"That had the right sound," said Old Grandmother. "You've given me a moment of youth, Marigold. And now I'm old again and tired - very tired. Help me up the steps."

The Books: Against the Odds: 'The Strike at Putney' (L.M. Montgomery)

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Against the Odds - 'The Strike at Putney' - by L.M. Montgomery

This story is kind of cute. It's a relatively early one - 1903 - and it's pretty simple. It's about a small town - Putney - (kind of Avonlea-ish) - and it has to do with the ladies going on strike. The church in Putney is the pride of the area. It has a great minister, a devoted congregation, and it does a lot of good works. It has a Missions Aid society, a lecture series, a Ladies Aid society - it's very big on societies. Everyone is very involved.

Then comes the big tragedy.

I think a visiting minister was going to come and speak at an evening prayer meeting. He canceled at the last minute. Meanwhile: the Missions Aid Society had sent out an invitation for a female missionary, a famous one, to come speak at their meeting. Because the minister canceled - the Missions Aid Society voted to hold their meeting on that night - and have the missionary speak from the pulpit. It was going to be a great evening. But oh no no - to have a female in the pulpit? This cannot be!! (Sexist mo-fos. They deserve what they get.) All hell broke loose. The Missions Aid Society was told they could NOT hold their meeting that night ... and suddenly - the congregation ruptured. Men on one side, women on another.

So the women - just as devoted to their church as the men - decide to go on strike. Because naturally (naturally!!) all of the day to day stuff at the church (flowers, cleaning, supplies) is done by the women. Oh yes, it's fine for women to just serve men - but let them get out of line? Let them overstep their bounds? This cannot be! The ladies of Putney have had enough. They go on strike. Good. I wish they would have gone on strike forever. Get some REAL change going.

It's funny because Lucy Maud ended up marrying a minister - so all of this stuff ended up being her LIFE - not just her faith. She had to head up all of the societies, and missions aid teas, and luncheons ... Her life was almost totally taken up with that kind of stuff - a minister's wife was a big deal - she was always like a local celebrity (member Mrs. Allan in Anne of Green Gables??). So Lucy Maud is already writing about what she knows here.

It's a cute story.

Here's the moment when all the men realize that the women have struck.

Poor Eben Craig.

Against the Odds - 'The Strike at Putney' - by L.M. Montgomery

On Sunday morning the men were conscious of a bare, deserted appearance in the church. Mr. Sinclair perceived it himself. After some inward wondering he concluded that it was because there were no flowers anywhere. The table before the pulpit was bare. On the organ a vase held a sorry, faded bouquet left over from the previous week. The floor was unswept. Dust lay thickly on the pulpit Bible, the choir chairs, and the pew backs.

"This church looks disgraceful," said John Robbins in an angry undertone to his daughter Polly, who was president of the Flower Band. "What in the name of common sense is the good of your Flower Banders if you can't keep the place looking decent?"

"There is no Flower Band now, Father," whispered Polly in turn. "We've disbanded. Women haven't any business to meddle in church matters. You know the session said so."

It was well for Polly that she was too big to have her ears boxed. Even so, it might not have saved her if they had been anywhere else than in church.

Meanwhile the men who were sitting in the choir - two basses and two tenors - were beginning to dimly suspect that there was something amiss here too. Where were the sopranos and the altos? Myra Wilson and Alethea Craig and several other members of the choir were sitting down in their pews with perfectly unconscious faces. Myra was looking out of the window into the tangled sunlight and shadow of the great maples. Alethea Craig was reading her Bible.

Presently Frances Spenslow came in. Frances was organist, but today, instead of walking up to the platform, she slipped demurely into her father's pew at one side of the pulpit. Eben Craig, who was the Putney singing master and felt himself responsible for the choir, fidgeted uneasily. He tried to catch Frances's eye, but she was absorbed in reading the mission report she had found in the rack, and Eben was finally forced to tiptoe down to the Spenslow pew and whisper, "Miss Spenslow, the minister is waiting for the doxology. Aren't you going to take the organ?"

Frances looked up calmly. Her clear, placid voice was audible not only to those in the nearby pews, but to the minister.

"No, Mr. Craig. You know if a woman isn't fit to speak in the church she can't be fit to sing in it either."

Even Craig looked exceedingly foolish. He tiptoed gingerly back to his place. The minister, with an unusual flush on his thin, ascetic face, rose suddenly and gave out the opening hymn.

Nobody who heard the singing in Putney church that day ever forgot it. Untrained basses and tenors, unrelieved by a single female voice, are not inspiring.

There were no announcements of society meetings for the forthcoming week. On the way home from church that day irate husbands and fathers scolded, argued, or pleaded, according to their several dispositions. One and all met with the same calm statement that if a noble, self-sacrificing woman like Mrs. Cotterell were not good enough to speak in the Putney church, ordinary, everyday women could not be fit to take any part whatever in its work.

Sunday School that afternoon was a harrowing failure. Out of all the corps of teachers only one was a man, and he alone was at his post. In the Christian Endeavour meeting on Tuesday night the feminine element sat dumb and unresponsive. The Putney women never did things by halves.

The Books: Against the Odds: 'A Substitute Journalist' (L.M. Montgomery)

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Against the Odds - 'A Substitute Journalist' - by L.M. Montgomery

This is an example of one of the more plot-driven stories in the collection. It was published in 1903, I think, so it has more of a utilitarian feel to it than her later stories, which she could write just because she felt like it, being under no financial pressure. But still - there are some moments which have the true Lucy Maud stamp - it makes reading all of these stories really worthwhile, moments like these.

Clifford and Patty Baxter are brother and sister (adults). Only their mother is living - and she is a weak woman, weakened by too much hard work, and too much going it alone. They struggle to get by - and there is much anxiety. Lucy Maud writes about those folks as well - not just ancestral families with huge houses and a lot of pride (the Murrays). She writes about penny-pinching working girls who live in little flats, and have to scrimp and save. Clifford is in training with a local newspaper. No pay in the position - but it is expected that his internship as a journalist will lead to a salaried position. He's a reporter. Patty, the sister, is a homemaker at heart. She has no skills, and would like nothing more than to have the free time to cook, clean, sew, keep a nice house, etc. But during the course of this story, she is forced, by circumstances, to come out into the world ... and, naturally, it ends up working out very well for them. Clifford has a very important assignment for the newspaper - he has to go interview some big railroad magnate. Of course Lucy Maud puts the fire under the situation, upping the stakes. I can't remember exactly what the stakes are but it's something along the lines of: If Clifford doesn't interview this guy on this one particular day, then the moment will be lost. Maybe the guy is leaving town, who knows. So it's VERY important. Not just for the story - but for Clifford's future at the newspaper. If he can come through with this interview - then he will be added to the newspaper staff. And not sure what happens - but I do know that Clifford, who was out of town on some other story, missed his train - and wouldn't be able to get home until the next day - but that would be too late. He would miss his appointment to interview the railroad magnate. All will be lost! They NEED that potential income from the newspaper job - Clifford must not blow it! What should they do??? Well, little shy homemaker Patty makes a choice. A bold choice. She - who has no experience (with writing, journalism, or interviewing) will go and interview Railroad Man in Clifford's place. Patty doesn't even know the ISSUES behind the situation - like: why he needs to be interviewed, what questions to ask, what are the issues on the table ... but she figures that just showing up and feeling her way would be better than canceling outright.

So she picks up pen and paper and goes to meet the man at the appointed time.

Naturally, it all works out in the end. Not only does Clifford keep his job - but Patty's interview ends up being such a scoop that the newspaper offers HER a job as well. happy ending!

But here is the excerpt with the interview. I like how Lucy Maud draws character in quick bold strokes. They are immediately recognizable. And, in my opinion, even in a superficial story like this one - they have the breath of life. Like when Mr. Reefer suddenly looks at Patty - and recognizes her. Not like he knows her from somewhere - but that he SEES her. It's a beautiful moment.

Against the Odds - 'A Substitute Journalist' - by L.M. Montgomery

Patty had just time to seat herself at the table, spread out her paper imposingly, and assume a businesslike air when Mr. Reefer came in. He was a tall, handsome old man with white hair, jet-black eyes, and a mouth that made Patty hope she wouldn't stumble on any questions he wouldn't want to answer. Patty knew she would waste her breath if she did. A man with a mouth like that would never tell anything he didn't want to tell.

"Good afternoon. What can I do for you, madam?" inquired Mr. Reefer with the air and tone of a man who means to be courteous, but has no time or information to waste.

Patty was almost overcome by the "Madam". For a moment, she quailed. She couldn't ask that masculine sphinx questions! Then the thought of her mother's pale, careworn face flashed across her mind, and all her courage came back with an inspiriting rush. She bent forward to look eagerly into Mr. Reefer's carved, granite face, and said with a frank smile:

"I have come to interview you on behalf of the Chronicle about the railroad bill. It was my brother who had the assignment, but he has missed his train and I ahve come in his place because, you see, it is so important to us. So much depends on this assignment. Perhaps Mr. Harmer will give Clifford a permanent place on the staff if he turns in a good article about you. He is only a handyman now. I just couldn't let him miss the chance - he might never have another. And it means so much to us and Mother."

"Are you a member of the Chronicle staff yourself?" inquired Mr. Reefer with a shade more geniality in his tone.

"Oh, no! I've nothing to do with it, so you won't mind my being inexperienced, will you? I don't know just what I should ask you, so won't you please just tell me everything about the bill, and Mr. Harmer can cut out what doesn't matter?"

Mr. Reefer looked at Patty for a few moments with a face about as expressive as a graven image. Perhaps he was thinking about the bill, and perhaps he was thinking what a bright, vivid, pluckky little girl this was with her waiting pencil and her air that strove to be businesslike, and only succeeded in being eager and hopeful and anxious.

"I'm not used to being interviewed myself," he said slowly, "so I don't know very much about it. We're both green hands together, I imagine. But I'd like to help you out, so I don't mind telling you what I think about this bill, and its bearing on certain important interests."

Mr. Reefer proceeded to tell her, and Patty's pencil flew as she scribbled down his terse, pithy sentences. She found herself asking questions too, and enjoying it. For the first time, Patty thought she might rather like politics if she understood them - and they did not seem so hard to understand when a man like Mr. Reefer explained them. Patty was in full possession of his opinion on the famous railroad bill in all its aspects.

"There now, I'm talked out," said Mr. Reefer. "You can tell your news editor that you know as much about the railroad bill as Andrew Reefer knows. I hope you'll succeed in pleasing him, and that your brother will get the position he wants. But he shouldn't have missed that train. You tell him that. Boys with important things to do mustn't miss trains. Perhaps it's just as well he did in this case though, but tell him not to let it happen again."

The Books: Against the Odds: 'A Question of Acquaintance' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Against the Odds - 'A Question of Acquaintance' - by L.M. Montgomery

This story was written in 1929 and you can just feel Lucy Maud's mastery of the form. I mean, she's beyond a "master" - what I get from this is her absolute certainty and her seemingly effortless skill at telling a story. You don't see the strings here. This seems to be true from her short stories after a certain point (and makes this one stand out in this particular collection, which is full of creaky here-is-the-moral type stories). A lot of the stories in this collection, while they have the Lucy Maud tone that I love so much, are also little more than their plot structures. She wrote a lot of those. They paid the bills. But by 1929, her bills were more than taken care of, and she wrote what pleased her. Sadly, this means she also wrote Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat which I have yet to get to in this book excerpt series - but don't worry, we'll get there! Anyway, what I'm trying to say is - stories like 'A Question of Acquaintance' are a joy. It's about the characters. The plot is simple: A father with a daughter (no mother in the picture) - freaking out about his daughter's marriage prospects - and does NOT approve of his daughter flirting with the man next door. The father wants her to marry somone HE approves of. Naturally, the father is WAY out of date ... and is so crotchety and judgmental that everyone pretty much just humors him, and then goes ahead and does whatever they want to do.

Dr. Dimma lives with his daughter Merle. He is an old-fashioned man - and while he is scandalized by the fact that his daughter wears makeup, plays golf, and wears short skirts (it is, after all, the 1920s) - he knows that she is a CATCH and he has his heart set on a man named Clark Fairweather. The main thing that Dr. Dimma likes about Clark Fairweather is that he is a doctor, and Dr. Dimma thinks that it is the only profession worthy of respect. Merle, his lovely daughter, has a horrible habit of tossing roses over the fence at their next door neighbor - his roses! That he worked so hard at! She also goes to dances with the man, plays golf with him, and - in general - dates him. Dr. Dimma is out of his mind with apoplectic rage. Merle keeps trying to tell him the name of the next door neighbor (he just moved there) and how wonderful he is - but Dr Dimma will hear none of it. He doesn't like the next door neighbor because he isn't a doctor, also because he plays the violin at 2 in the morning, also because he is good-looking as a movie star, also because sometimes his pigs get loose and go into Dr. Dimma's yard, also because one day when Dr. Dimma came back from an unsuccessful fishing trip the neighbor called out from his porch, "Caught anything yet?" The nerve! But Merle, who is sweet and obliging, and yet obviously does whatever she wants, is now staying out at all hours of the night with the man ... and this must stop!! Dr. Dimma must stop it! She must marry Clark Fairweather!

Anyway, this whole thing ends up working itself out, of course ... but it's not about the plot - it's about the WAY Lucy Maud gets us to the conclusion. It's just fun, that's all.

Here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from Against the Odds - 'A Question of Acquaintance' - by L.M. Montgomery

Dr. Dimma worshiped his own profession. No other counted for much in his eyes. He had always hoped Merle would marry a doctor. To have a son-in-law with whom he could discuss germs and operations and cancers would have been the height of bliss in his eyes. And there had been no lack of candidates. Merle could even have had Cleaver Robinson, whose researches into various elusive bacilli had already put him in the limelight. To be sure, poor Cleaver looked rather like a magnified bacilli himself. No wonder Merle couldn't bear him. Dr. Dimma was not an unreasonable parent. But there was no fault to be found with Clark Fairweather personally, and it was high time Merle stopped her shilly-shallying with all the boys in Sangamo and settled down.

And no more roses over the fence. He'd see to that at once. Was he growing roses to see them wasted that way on a fellow who couldn't tell a Gloire de Dijon from a cabbage rose? Weren't they enough trouble and worriment without that? He didn't see why he wasted time and energy over the beastly things. Slugs - and spiders - and blight - and mildew! Any man was a fool who made a hobby of rose-growing. Any man was a fool to give his daughter so much of her own way. He'd show her!

And Dr. Dimma, who worshipped Merle and would have died if he couldn't grow roses, went down to breakfast in an atrocious humour with everything and everybody, and determined to make them feel it.

To make things worse, Merle was ten minutes late and told him his watch was wrong. It infuriated Dr. Dimma ever to be told his watch was wrong. He pounded the table and glared at her. Not that Merle cared. She was not in the least afraid of her father, though she had spent the most of her young life luring him to make up his mind as she wanted it made up, and explaining away his insulting remarks to her friends. Even now, behind his glare his pride in her was fairly sticking out of his bulging blue eyes. Not another girl in Sangamo was a patch on her. That trim, shining little black head of her! Those black eyebrows like little wings! Those fan-lashed velvety eyes! That dimple just below the red delightful mouth of her! That creamy throat above the linen collar of her pretty green sweater! A thoroughbred, every inch of her! Acres of family behind her. Showed her knees too much, of course. But at any rate they were knees that could be shown.

"My watch isn't wrong," he shouted. Dr. Dimma always believed that if he contradicted loud enough, people would be convinced. "Here I am, worn out after a sleepless night, and in a hurry to get down to the hospital. Do you realize that I have an important consultation at ten? And you keep me waiting for hours for my breakfast?"

Merle didn't ask why he didn't go ahead without her. She knew no meal had any pleasure for him if she were not facing him across the table. To him she was not only Merle - she was youth, beauty, mystery, romance - everything that had deserted the life of a rotund, bald-headed, elderly doctor. Instead, she went round and kissed him.

"Now, Daddy dearest, don't be cross," she pleaded.

Generally this placated the doctor. He liked to feel that his womankind felt the need of placating him. But the iron had bitten too deeply. A fiddle at three o'clock played by a nobody! "Caught any yet?"

"Never mind standing there in a skirt that is a sheer impertinence. Go and sit down."

Merle sat meekly enough. Trouble of some kind was brewing. Perhaps she, too had heard the fiddle! And understood better than the doctor what had been played.

"Did I," said Dr. Dimma impressively, "see you throwing a rose at that fellow next door last night?"

"You're only asking that for rhetorical effect, Daddy," said Merle coolly. "Of course you saw me throw a rose."

Dr. Dimma snorted ironically.

"Of course," he mimicked. "Well, this has got to stop."

"What has got to stop?"

"Everything - everything. I won't have you running around with that fellow. We don't know him."

"I do," said Merle.

"Ah, you do. What do you know about him, miss? What's his pedigree?"

"Daddy dear, he isn't a horse. He's very nice. He plays a beautiful game - such a pity you don't care for golf, Daddy - and - and - pehaps he's your future son-in-law. So you really ought to know him."

Dr. Dimma glared at her and banged the table. He knew Merle was only trying to tease him, but still!

"Son-in-law! No, thank you!" The doctor's sarcasm was terrible. "No son-in-law for me who plays the fiddle when decent people should be asleep."

"But, Daddy, he was overseas and he's been subject to insomnia ever since. Besides, it helps him to think."

"Oh, blame everything on the war. That fellow never smelled powder. As for thinking - don't tell me he thinks. A he-doll like that couldn't even try to think."

"You're unjust, Daddy. It isn't his fault that he's good-looking. And - and," Merle added dreamily, "you have no idea how divinely he can kiss!"

Dr. Dimma almost choked over the mouthful of coffee he had just taken in.

"What do you know - has he dared - has he dared -"

"Daddy, you'll have apoplexy. Now, dearest, stop spluttering. I haven't made up my mind yet that I really want him. But he's such a relief after Clark."

"What's the matter with Clark?" glared Dr. Dimma. "He's clever and rich and good-looking, isn't he? And he'll make you an affectionate husband."

"An affectionate husband. Oh, Daddy, you're so Victorian," groaned Merle. "Affectionate husbands are outmoded. We like the cavemen. The only thing I really have against Clark is the fact that his face demands side-whiskers a generation too late."

"Look here, Merle, I'm serious and I want you to be. You've got to stop associating with this - this -"

"His name is -"

"I know his name. It's all I do know about him, except the self-evident fact that he's an idler and a --"

"He's been -"

"Not a word. The Dimmas have been in Sangamo for six generations. You'll be good enough to remember what I say, Merle. I mean every word of it. And you'll find I'm firm."

Merle stood up. It was time to put an end to the interview. She felt a little anxious, though she didn't show it. There had been one or two times in her life when she couldn't wheedle her father. When Dr. Dimma really did make up his mind on any point, he had never been known to change it. And she knew his reverence for ancestry and pedigrees only too well.

"You'd be more convincing, Daddy love, if you weren't so cross. Being a tyrant isn't being firm, you know. Now, don't let's quarrel this lovely morning."

"Merle, remember what I say -"

"Of course I'll remember it. How can I help remembering when you're shouting at me like that! And glaring! You're such a nice-looking father when you don't glare. I've tried to bring you up properly, darling, but I can't seem to break you of glaring. Now, run along to your little hospital. I'm going out to the club with the Benson girls. We're the committee for the dance tomorrow night, you know."

Dr. Dimma snorted. He didn't approve of the Benson girls - though their pedigree equalled the Dimmas'. But for that matter he approved of none of those silky sophisticated creatures Merle ran with - snaky, hipless things, with shingle-bobs, and mouths that looked as if they had been making a meal of blood, and legs that might as well be naked, who powdered their noses publicly with the engaging unconcern of a cat washing its face in the gaze of thousands. Where were the girls of yesteryear? Girls that were girls - ah! But times had changed. Still, had a father no righst at all? This was all it came to - all your years of sacrifice and care. They flouted you - just flouted you in their slim insolence. Well, he'd show them - he'd show her, the darned little fool, playing fast and loose with a man like Clark Fairweather. It was time somebody brought her up with a round turn, even an outmoded father who had worshipped her and slaved for her, and was now told for his reward that a man he objected to could kiss divinely!

The Books: Against the Odds: 'Their Girl Josie' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Against the Odds - 'Their Girl Josie' - by L.M. Montgomery

Time to start with the daily excerpt again. More Lucy Maud. Another story from the collection Against All Odds (which is not my favorite of the posthumous collections.) It's not my favorite because many of the stories seem made to order. They're plot heavy, and many of them depend on a completely unbelievable coincidence for the resolution of the story. I'm more into her character-based stories ... of which today's excerpt is one.

Cyrus and Deborah Morgan were not only horrified when their son - THEIR SON - married an actress - AN ACTRESS - but it put in their staunch Presbyterian hearts a hatred of "play-acting" and theatre for all time. They are rigid, unforgiving - and although they have never actually gone to see a play, it doesn't matter. Anyone who is involved in theatre is pretty much evil and not respectable. They pretty much disowned their son - who went off in a huff - leaving them with silence, no news of him. Then came word that within a short period of time their son and his wife had died - and they left behind their child, now an orphan - a baby girl with the actress-y name of Joscelyn. Cyrus and Deborah, now elderly, stepped up - and took the child in. (The actress mother's actress sister had wanted to take the baby but the grandparents refused. Their grandchild should not be raised by an actress.) Their granddaughter. They did not approve of her parents - and they certainly did not approve of her name ... but they raised Joscelyn, and of course, they love her DEARLY. However, Cyrus has let Joscelyn know from a very early age that she will NOT be an actress, like her mother. He watches over Joscelyn nervously, for any signs of "play-acting" tendencies. It is his worst fear that she will go into the theatre. So Joscelyn was forced to have a very narrow rigid childhood - but even with those limitations, she blossomed into a beautiful young woman. She was a voracious reader. She had the signs of a great beauty. Cyrus and Deborah were proud of her, proud of her smarts, her cleverness ... they hemmed her in for her own good (or so they thought.)

Eventually, though, there is a revelation (and that's the scene below): Cyrus and Deborah surprise Joscelyn one day, they come home when they were not expected - and they find Joscelyn (age 17) dressed up in a costume of some kind - declaiming a monologue, acting up a storm through the old-fashioned sitting room - completely lost in her fantasy.

Cyrus and Deborah are HORRIFIED. You have to take this seriously. Theatre is still seen as a barely respectable way to spend your time, even when you make money at it. Even with all of their warnings and limits ... here is the "acting gene" come out.

Eventually there is a confrontation - and Joscelyn, who knows her own mind, runs away and goes into theatre. This, of course, means that Cyrus and Deborah completely cut her off, they want to hear no more of her, she has completely betrayed them. The end of the story comes, though, when Cyrus (not a bad old chap, really - he's just strict and kind of close-minded) hears that Joscelyn will be appearing in a play in a nearby town. She has since become famous ... and it is an event - Local girl come back to her hometown, etc. Cyrus, who has never been to a play, who truly thinks that theatre is Satanic, can't help himself. He buys a ticket and he goes to see it. And he sits in the theatre and watches Joscelyn - in this part - not a lascivious evil part, not a Satanic part - but a wife and mother, and instead of finding himself confronted with evil ... Cyrus gets swept away in the sweet normal story, about sweet normal people. He forgets that Joscelyn is Joscelyn. He roots for her. He weeps tears for her. He laughs when she gets the better of someone. He glowers with rage when she is treated badly. Etc. And by the end of the play, he is overwhelmed with pride for her gift ... and he sees what her gift is. That it is, indeed, a gift - and she MUST share it.

End of story.

I do like this story, of course, because of the theatrical nature of it - she's written a couple of stories about performers - usually singers - but there are a couple of stories about actresses (Sophie Sinclair in Windy Poplars?) - and I always love those - just because Lucy Maud "gets" it. She gets what the whole thing is about. It's a gift, like any other - like a painter, a writer, a poet.

So anyway, here's the moment when Cyrus and Deborah catch Joscelyn in the act.

Excerpt from Against the Odds - 'Their Girl Josie' - by L.M. Montgomery

When Joscelyn was seventeen Deborah Morgan noticed a change in her. The girl became quieter and more brooding, falling at times into strange, idle reveries, with her hands clasped over her knee and her big eyes fixed unseeingly on space; or she would creep away for solitary rambles in the beech wood, going away droopingly and returning with a dusky glowing cheeks and a nameless radiance, as of some newly discovered power, shining through every muscle and motion. Mrs. Morgan thought the child needed a tonic and gave her sulphur and molasses.

One day the revelation came. Cyrus and Deborah had driven across the valley to visit their married daughter. Not finding her at home they returned. Mrs. Morgan went into the house while her husband went to the stable. Joscelyn was not in the kitchen, but the grandmother heard the sound of voices and laughter in the sitting room across the hall.

"What company has Josie got?" she wondered, as she opened the hall door and paused for a moment on the threshold to listen. As she listened her old face grew grey and pinched; she turned noiselessly and left the house, and flew to her husband as one distracted.

"Cyrus, Josie is play-acting in the room ... laughing and reciting and going on. I heard her. Oh, I've always feared it would break out in her and it has! Come you and listen to her."

The old couple crept through the kitchen and across the hall to the open parlour door as if they were stalking a thief. Joscelyn's laugh rang out as they did so ... a mocking triumphant peal. Cyrus and Deborah shivered as if they had heard sacrilege.

Joscelyn had put on a trailing, clinging black skirt which her aunt had sent her a year ago and which she had never been permitted to wear. It transformed her into a woman. She had cast aside her waist of dark plum-coloured homespun and wrapped a silken shawk about herself until only her beautiful arms and shoulders were left bare. Her hair, glossy and brown, with burnished red lights where the rays of the dull autumn sun struck on it through the window, was heaped high on her head and held in place by a fillet of pearl beads. Her cheeks were crimson, her whole body from head to foot instinct and alive with a beauty that to Cyrus and Deborah, as they stood mute with horror in the open doorway, seemed akin to some devilish enchantment.

Joscelyn, rapt away from her surroundings, did not perceive her grandparents. Her face was turned from them and she was addressing an unseen auditor in passionate denunciation. She spoke, moved, posed, gesticulated, with an inborn genius shining through every motion and tone like an illuminating lamp.

"Josie, what are you doing?"

It was Cyrus who spoke, advancing into the room like a stern, hard impersonation of judgment. Joscelyn's outstretched arm fell to her side and she turned sharply around; fear came into her face and the light went out of it. A moment before she had been a woman, splendid, unafraid; now she was again the schoolgirl, too confused and shamed to speak.

"What are you doing, Josie?" asked her grandfather again, "dressed up in that indecent manner and talking and twisting to yourself?"

Joscelyn's face, that had grown pale, flamed scarlet again. She lifted her head proudly.

"I was trying Aunt Annice's part in her new play," she answered. "I have not been doing anything wrong, Grandfather."

'Wrong! It's your mother's blood coming out in you, girl, in spite of all our care! Where did you get that play?"

"Aunt Annice sent it to me," answered Joscelyn, casting a quick glance at the book on the table. Then, when her grandfather picked it up gingerly, as if he feared contamination, she added quickly, "Oh, give it to me, please, Grandfather. Don't take it away."

"I am going to burn it," said Cyrus Morgan sternly.

"Oh, don't, Grandfather," cried Joscelyn, with a sob in her voice. "Don't burn it, please. I ... I ... won't practise out of it anymore. I'm sorry I've displeased you. Please give me my book."

"No," was the stern reply. "Go to your room, girl, and take off that rig. There is to be no more play-acting in my house, remember that."

He flung the book into the fire that was burning in the grate. For the first time in her life Joscelyn flamed out into passionate defiance.

"You are cruel and unjust, Grandfather. I have done no wrong ... it is not doing wrong to develop the one gift I have. It's the only thing I can do ... and I am going to do it. My mother was an actress and a good woman. So is Aunt Annice. So I mean to be."

"Oh, Josie, Josie," said her grandmother in a scared voice. Her grandfather only repeated sternly, "Go, take that rig off, girl, and let us hear no more of this."

Joscelyn went but she left consternation behind her. Cyrus and Debirah could not have been more shocked if they had discovered the girl robbing her grandfather's desk. They talked the matter over bitterly at the kitchen hearth that night.

"We haven't been strict enough with the girl, Mother," said Cyrus angrily. "We'll have to be stricter if we don't want to have her disgracing us. Did you hear how she defied me? 'So I mean to be,' she says. Mother, we'll have trouble with that girl yet."

"Don't be too harsh with her, Pa ... it'll maybe only drive her to worse," sobbed Deborah.

"I ain't going to be harsh. What I do for her is for her own good, you know that, Mother. Josie is as dear to me as she is to you, but we've got to be stricter with her."

They were. From that day Josie was watched and distrusted. She was never permitted to be alone. There were no more solitary walks. She felt herself under the surveillance of cold, unsympathetic eyes every moment and her very soul writhed. Joscelyn Morgan, the high-spirited daughter of high-spirited parents, could not long submit to such treatment. It might have passed with a child; to a woman, thrilling with life and conscious power to her very fingertips, it was galling beyond measure. Joscelyn rebelled, but she did nothing secretly ... that was not her nature. She wrote to her Aunt Annice, and when she received her reply she went straight and fearlessly to her grandparents with it.

"Grandfather, this letter is from my aunt. She wishes me to go and live with her and prepare for the stage. I told her I wished to do so. I am going."

Cyrus and Deborah looked at her in mute dismay.

"I know you despise the profession of an actress," the girl went on with heightened colour. "I am sorry you think so about it because it is the only one open to me. I must go ... I must."

"Yes, you must," said Cyrus cruelly. "It's in your blood ... your bad blood, girl."

"My blood isn't bad," cried Joscelyn proudly. "My mother was a sweet, true, good woman. You are unjust, Grandfather. But I don't want you to be angry with me. I love you both and I am very grateful for all your kind ness to me. I wish that you could understand what ..."

"We understand enough," interrupted Cyrus harshly. "This is all I have to say. Go to your play-acting aunt if you want to. Your grandmother and me won't hinder you. But you'll come back here no more. We'll have nothing further to do with you. You can choose your own way and walk in it."

With this dictum Joscelyn went from Spring Valley. She clung to Deborah and wept at parting, but Cyrus did not even say goodbye to her.

The Books: Against the Odds: 'Dorinda's Desperate Deed' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Against the Odds - 'Dorinda's Desperate Deed' - by L.M. Montgomery

Against the Odds is yet another one of Rea Wilmhurst's edited collections. The focus of this book is "tales of achievement" - each story has something to do with bucking the odds, going for what you want despite difficulties, etc. Lucy Maud made a nice little living from selling short stories - to magazines in Canada, but also in the States. She would sometimes write stories to order. If she knew a certain magazine liked Sunday School morals, then she'd write in a Sunday school moral. If a magazine was read only by women, she'd go for the romance. If a magazine focused on ghost stories and paranormal stories, she'd write that. It's amazing the variety within these stories. Yes, she keeps coming back to some of the same characters, the archetypes, but still - reading them all, as a whole, I am just left with admiration at how much she actually DID. And this is along with being married to a bozo, having 2 kids, and having a role as a busy (busy busy) minister's wife. She didn't just sit in a garret and write all day long. She had other obligations. So it's amazing.

The first story I want to excerpt in this collection is called 'Dorinda's Desperate Deed' - it was written in 1906, and I think it's charming.

Dorinda Page is 15 years old. She has spent a couple of years away with her Aunt Mary - but she is now back with her mother and her 5 siblings. Her father is dead, and her mother has had a helluva time going it alone. Money troubles torment her. There are mouths to feed, schooling to consider ... clothes, etc. It's overwhelming. Dorinda has been out of the fray for a couple of years so she comes home and is kind of shocked at the change in her mother, how worn out she is, how worried. Dorinda is a young woman with a very good attitude, you can tell - she talks to her mother one day and says, "Okay - so let's talk about our priorities. What is the main list of things we have to pay for? And we'll figure something out ... but let's list them first." So Mrs. Page lists what she thinks is most important: Leicester Page's college tuition, Jean Page's music lessons, roof needs to be shingled ... and Dorinda also says that her mother needs a new coat. During this conversation, it comes up that they have a rich uncle Eugene - and Dorinda asks her mother why don't they borrow the money from him? Turns out that Eugene apparently hates this branch of the family - some old feud (you know, Lucy Maud is big on those) and has not spoken to Mrs. Page in a bazillion years. He's stubborn, he's scary, and apparently he hates the Pages. So that settles that. But Dorinda, determined to help her mother, decides to do the unthinkable - she decides to go to her Uncle Eugene's, and ask him to lend them the money. This is a terrifying prospect, but Dorinda is (as the title says) "desperate".

This is one of Lucy Maud's show-pieces: a young girl going to confront a supposedly terrifying crotchety old man. She uses it often to great effect.

Here's what happens.

Excerpt from Against the Odds - 'Dorinda's Desperate Deed' - by L.M. Montgomery

Oaklawn, where Uncle Eugene lived, was two miles away. It was a fine old place in beautiful grounds. But Dorinda did not quail before its splendours, nor did her heart fail her, even after she had rung the bell and had been shown by a maid inot a very handsome parlour, but it still continued to beat in that queer fashion halfway up her throat.

Presently Uncle Eugene came in, a tall, black-eyed old man, with a fine head of silver hair that should have framed a ruddy, benevolent face, instead of Uncle Eugene's hard-lipped, bushy-browed countenance.

Dorinda stood up, dusky and crimson, with brave, glowing eyes. Uncle Eugene looked at her sharply.

"Who are you?" he said bluntly.

"I am your niece, Dorinda Page," said Dorinda steadily.

"And what does my niece, Dorinda Page, want with me?" demanded Uncle Eugene, motioning to her to sit down and sitting down himself. But Dorinda remained standing. It is easier to fight on your feet.

"I want you to do four things, Uncle Eugene," she said, as calmly as if she were making the most natural and ordinary request in the world. "I want you to lend us the money to send Leicester to Blue Hill Academy, he will pay it back to you when he gets through college. I want you to lend Jean the money for music lessons, she will pay you back when she gets far enough along to give lessons herself. And I want you to lend me the money to shingle our house and get Mother a new dress and fur coat for the winter. I'll pay you back sometime for that, because I am going to set up as a dressmaker pretty soon."

"Anything more?" said Uncle Eugene, when Dorinda stopped.

"Nothing more just now, I think," said Dorinda reflectively.

"Why don't you ask for something for yourself?" said Uncle Eugene.

"I don't want anything for myself," said Dorinda promptly. "Or - yes, I do, too. I want your friendship, Uncle Eugene."

"Be kind enough to sit down," said Uncle Eugene.

Dorinda sat.

"You are a Page," said Uncle Eugene. "I saw that as soon as I came in. I will send Leicester to college and I shall not ask or expect to be paid back. Jean shall have her music lessons, and a piano to practise them on as well. The house shall be shingled, and the money for the new dress and coat shall be forthcoming. You and I will be friends."

"Thank you," gasped Dorinda, wondering if, after all, it wasn't a dream.

"I would have gladly assisted your mother before," said Uncle Eugene, "if she had asked me. I had determined that she must ask me first. I knew that half the money should have been your father's by rights. I was prepared to hand it over to him or his family, if I were asked for it. But I wished to humble his pride, and the Carter pride, to the point of asking for it. Not a very amiable temper, you will say? I admit it. I am not amiable and I never have been amiable. You must be prepared to find me very unamiable. I see that you are waiting for a chance to say something polite and pleasant on that score, but you may save yourself the trouble. I shall hope and expect to have you visit me often. If your mother and your brothers and sisters see fit to come with you, I shall welcome them also. I think that this is all it is necessary to say just now. Will you stay to tea with me this eveing?"

Dorinda stayed to tea, since she knew that Jean was at home to attend to matters there. She and Uncle Eugene got on famously. When she left, Uncle Eugene, grim and hard-lipped as ever, saw her to the door.

"Good evening, Niece Dorinda. You are a Page and I am proud of you. Tell your mother that many things in this life are lost through not asking for them. I don't think you are in need of the information for yourself."

The Books: At the Altar: 'What Aunt Marcella Would Have Called It' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

At the Altar - 'What Aunt Marcella Would Have Called It' - by L.M. Montgomery

This one was written in 1935 - I'm always interested to read Lucy Maud's short stories that she wrote AFTER she became an internationally known novelist. It's fascinating to read her stuff from before "Anne" as well - just to see her developing her craft - I love all of that - but she kept writing short stories throughout her life. It's amazing the output of this woman, it just boggles the mind. Once you get into the late 1930s, Lucy Maud is starting to break down. Her troubles begin to escalate (although I have to say - reading her journals - often I read her despair at this or that circumstance and I think: "WHY is this upsetting her so much??" That's totally not fair of me - I'm not justifying myself - I'm just saying that that's my response. So you had a fender-bender. Is that any reason to walk the floor at night, wringing your hands? So your son married someone you don't really like. Fine. That sucks. But is it an unspeakable tragedy?)

I'm not sure what was going on with Lucy Maud, I mean in an uber sense - I have a couple of theories, because - for the most part in her journals - she doesn't say: HERE is why I am so depressed all the time. Because who would say that? She was married to an imbecile (literally - he went mad a couple of years into their marriage and was never well again - she had to take care of him, almost like a baby). She had loved someone passionately in her youth - a hearty young handsome farmer - and it seems like she never really recovered from it (he died). Her kindred spirit cousin had died in 1918 in the influenza epidemic - and she basically decided to never have another friend. She was a once-in-a-lifetime type person. Also, World War I had completely changed her (as it completely changed the majority of that generation). She never "bounced back" from it, from the horror of it, the horrifying birth of the 20th century. And as the 30s moved on and it became apparent that another world war was approaching, her health eventually broke down completely. She could not face it.

Her work was her anchor, and also her escape. Not to mention her income! But deeper than that: her life as a minister's wife went so against her own inclinations. Her life had to be social, filled with small talk, and filled with little tiny lies. ha. Ironic, right? But to be a successful minister, you had to get on the good side of everyone in the town - even if they were bitchy assholes ... and the minister's wife is like a celebrity - watched at every turn, criticized - criticized if she dresses too dowdy, criticized if she dresses too flowery ... No matter what you do, you are on display. You kind of can't win. Lucy Maud's temperament was not a small-talk temperament and yet she married a man where small talk would be a requirement of her married life. Having teas, and socials, and quiltings, and Ladies Aid meetings, and having to head up little committees - and all that shit. Lucy Maud was an artist, for God's sake, and she had to go off and do all this petty crap to keep up appearances. Her married life and its obligations (because she certainly didn't love Ewan - this wasn't a partnership - especially not after he went mad) left her almost no room to breathe. And yet still, with all of that - she managed to write practically a novel a year. It's extraordinary.

So I look at this prose in this story - written in 1935 - when Lucy Maud's journals start to get very fragmented - all she does is give updates on how anxious she is, and how horrible things are, and how she can't talk about it ... and I read this story and what I see is the triumph of her artistic spirit. It is truly beautiful to me. Sad, too - because i wish she had been happier - but who knows. A happy peaceful Lucy Maud might not have written so much and so well. She really NEEDED her writing. Not just for the money. But for spiritual and emotional reasons. If writing had been illegal in Canada, she would have gone underground. It was that essential to her mental health. And, I don't know - I could be reading into this (ha - Yes, I think you are, Sheila) - but there's something about her writing that shows all of this to me. It's good writing on its own, don't get me wrong ... but I think one of the reasons it resonates is because Lucy Maud HAD to do this. There is an urgency and a drive in all of her prose. It shimmers with life. Also - that more often than not - her stories are FUNNY. This is not a woman who poured her tragic outlook on life into her work. This is a woman who believed, in all her soul, that a happy ending had as much worth as a sad. That a sad ending does not make you a better artist. She was a fierce believer in things working out. It's amazing. What a life force. What hope.

Bless you, Lucy Maud.

Here's the opening of this story 'What Aunt Marcella Would Have Called It'.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'What Aunt Marcella Would Have Called It' - by L.M. Montgomery

If Aunt Marcella had allowed Glen to bob her hair this story would never have been told because there would have been no story to tell. But Aunt Marcella did not approve of bobbed hair at all. It was flying in the face of Providence for a girl to bob her hair, and ... so Aunt Marcella said ... she would be bald in her old age for her sins.

"You will thank me when you are sixty," she told Glen.

"That is a long time to wait for gratitude," said Glen darkly.

But Aunt Marcella was adamant, and Glen continued to wear her lovely golden-brown braid hanging down her back like a twelve-year-old schoolgirl of the century's teens, when she would be eighteen in another month and every bit as modern as Aunt Marcella would let her be.

Aunt Marcella would not even allow her to put it up. It was intolerable. If she could even put her hair up in a lovely soft knot at the back of her neck ... well, it might dawn on Dudley Wyatt's perception that she was really grown-up and not the schoolgirl, devoted to dolls, that he considered her and, as seemed likely, would go on considering her until she was that mythical sixty of Aunt Marcella's warnings.

It seemed to Glen that she had always been in love with Dudley Wyatt, although she had known him only from the age of twelve, when he had come to live next door to them at Nokomis Lodge. Glen always avowed that her legs trembled the first time she saw him, by which token she knew that she had fallen in love. But Dudley took no notice of her. He was all for Isabel. Not that he was in love with Isabel at all. To him, sixteen-year-old Isabel was just one of the two children at the Lindens. But she was a very clever child and he liked to talk to her. Nobody thought Glen had any brains because she hardly ever talked. And at twelve she had been anything but pretty ... a gaunt, scrawny creature with two sunburned pigtails. Glen would go hatless, to Aunt Marcella's mid-Victorian horror.

"What kind of complexion will you have when you are sixty?" she asked. "Besides, I call it 'Brazen' to go about without a hat."

Aunt Marcella never pronounced an adjective without making you see it spelled with a capital.

But even at sixteen Isabel was a beauty ... a tall, willowy thing with golden-brown hair and big owlish eyes that were the tint of a copper-grey sea. And, although Dudley Wyatt did not seem to have any kind of eyes for women at all, Glen believed in her secret soul that, if Isabel hadn't been so pretty, Dudley would not have detected her cleverness so quickly. As it was, he thought her a wonder. Aunt Marcella didn't. Aunt Marcella did not believe in a woman having brains.

"I call it 'Unwomanly' to be so clever," she told Isabel severely. "Aping the men!"

"But most men are really very stupid," said Isabel.

"I call that 'Flippant'," said Aunt Marcella, "and I dislike flippancy above all things."

"Besides, if you are not clever you bore the men after your novelty wears off," persisted Isabel.

"I have never been a man," said Aunt Marcella superfluously, "but I think it takes some time for them to tire of beauty. And 'bore' was not considered a nice word when I was a girl."

And then Uncle Maurice's daughter had died and Uncle Mauriece had come home and taken Isabel out west with him. That was five years ago and she had never been back since. But she was still tremendously clever and had graduated with highest honours. Aunt Marcella called that very 'Unfeminine' but Dudley exulted.

He wrote to Isabel occasionally and took the keenest interest in her career. He also made quite a bit of Glen, but still only as a child who was a dear little thing, rather dumb. Glen knew she was dumb when Dudley was about. She wasn't going to talk to him as a child and when she tried to talk to him as a grown-up her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth. She had a horrible feeling that if she did talk to him like a grown-up Dudley would smile kindly, as at a precocious child, and tell her to run away and tuck up her doll-babies.

Oh ... Glen clenched her hands ... life wasn't fair to women! Why ... why ... were men so blind? Couldn't he see she wasn't a child any longer? Couldn't he see the love she had to give him? It was bitter to have such a gift to give and nobody wanting to take it. Glen wouldn't have minded so much if Dudley had hated her ... if only he hated her as a woman. She couldn't go on being regarded as a child.

"I love him, and he doens't even know that I exist," she sighed. "He thinks me somebody who doesn't exist ... the twelve-year-old arms-and-legs I was when he came here first. Why can't I make him see? He won't see! He looks at me with the condescending kindness one shows a child ... and then I feel exactly like a caterpillar someone has stepped on."

That night he strolled past as she sat on the porch and called out teasingly, "Tell me what you are thinking of, Glennie?"

Good heavens, suppose she did tell him? Suppose she called back, "I'm thinking of you and how heavenly it would be if you came in here and sat down beside me and said, 'I love you, Glen,' and ... and ... kissed me."

Just what would happen? Well, she knew one thing that would. Aunt Marcella, by the living-room window, would die of frustration because she woudl not be able to find an adjective strong enough to describe such behaviour. But even thn Dudley would probably only say something like, "You've mistaken me for Clark Adams."

Clark Adams! That immature creature of twenty!

"I don't care for boys ... I get on better with men," Glen heard herself calling back.

But of course she had really said nothing when he asked her that question. He hadn't expected her to say anything. If only she could have thought of something quite daring to say! Something that a child couldn't think of saying. Isabel, now, could have said a dozen provocative things. Even she herself could have said them to Clark Adams. But she had said nothing ... had only given a foolish little giggle ... and Dudley had gone on, his dog slouching at his heels, on one of those long hikes of his that she longed to share. But Dudley had asked her only once and Aunt Marcella disapproved, tilting her hawk nose.

"I call it 'Unladylike' to go striding over the country like a man, or like one of those dreadful girls in knickerbockers," said Aunt Marcella. "I suppose you hardly class yourself among them, Glen."

The joke was that Glen was dying to wear knickers, or do anything else that might make Dudley realize that she was grown-up and beautiful ... hair just as glossy and golden-brown as Isabel's, eyes just the same coppery grey, shoulders just as smooth and delicious. But of what use was it? Dudley never saw her shoulders.

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Touch of Fate' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Touch of Fate' - by L.M. Montgomery

This is one of Lucy Maud's stories that takes place out in the wild west of the Canadian prairies. Even though her main childhood was in PEI - she did spend a number of years out in the prairies with her father (before he decided: "You know what? I'm not really into being a father. At least not to THIS child.") ... and I think she writes about it quite eloquently. Civilization is thin out there. The Indians are a problem. It's hard to get to. The whites cluster together in small communities. 'The Touch of Fate' takes place in the Canadian northwest. Violet Thayer, a beautiful coquettish young woman (kind of vain, if the truth must be told) comes out to this particular town to visit an old friend who is a schoolteacher there. There is a huge battalion of MPs there, and Mrs. Hill (wife of the head of the MPs) is thrilled at the advent of Violet - she wants to set her up with at least ONE of the eligible men in town. She gets to work. Violet, being a coquette, slays pretty much everybody. It's a tiny town, with no new faces. Mrs. Hill throws a party to welcome her to town - and Violet finds herself surrounded by men at all times. She loves it. She loves the attention. However ... there's one man who somehow does not fall under her spell. And naturally, he's the one who eventually gets her attention.

I really like the dialogue in their first conversation.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Touch of Fate' - by L.M. Montgomery

Violet was talking to Madison and watching John Spencer out of the tail of her eye. Spencer was not an M.P. He had some government post at Dufferin Bluff and this was his first call at Lone Poplar Villa since Miss Thayer's arrival. He did not seem to be dazzled by her at all, and after his introduction had promptly retired to a corner with Major Hill, where they talked the whole evening about the trouble on the Indian reservation at Loon Lake.

Possibly this indifference piqued Miss Thayer. Possibly she considered it refreshing after the servile adulation of the M.P.s. At any rate, when all the latter were gathered about the piano singing a chorus with gusto, she shook Madison off and went over to the corner where Spencer, deserted by the Major, whose bass was wanted, was sitting in solitary state.

He looked up indifferently as Violet shimmered down on the divan beside him. Sergeant Robinson, who was watching them jealously from the corner beyond the palms, and would have given his eyes, or at least one of them, for such a favour, mentally vowed that Spencer was the dullest fellow he had ever put those useful members on.

"Don't you sing, Mr. Spencer?" asked Violet by way of beginning a conversation, as she turned her splendid eyes full upon him. Robinson would have lost his head under them, but Spencer kept his heroically.

"No," was his calmly brief reply, given without any bluntness, but with no evident intention of saying anything more.

In spite of her social experience Violet felt disconcerted.

"If he doesn't want to talk to me I won't try to make him," she thought crossly. No man had ever snubbed her so before.

Spencer listened immovably to the music for a time. Then he turned to his companion witih a palpable effort to be civilly sociable.

"How do you like the west, Miss Thayer?" he said.

Violet smiled - the smile most men found dangerous.

"Very much, so far as I have seen it. There is a flavour about the life here that I like, but I dare say it would soon pall. It must be horribly lonesome here most of the time, especially in winter."

"The M.P.s are always growling that it is," returned Spencer with a slight smile. "For my own part I never feel it so."

Violet decided that his smile was ver becoming to him, and that she liked the way his dark hair grew over his forehead.

"I don't think I've seen you at Lone Poplar Villa before?" she said.

"No. I haven't been here for some time. I came up tonight to see the Major about the Loon Lake trouble."

"Otherwise you wouldn't have come," thought Violet. "Flattering - very!" Aloud she said, "Is it serious?"

"Oh, no. A mere squabble among the Indians. Have you ever visited the Reservation, Miss Thayer? No? Well, you should get some of your M.P. friends to take you out. It would be worth while."

"Why don't you ask me to go yourself?" said Violet audaciously.

Spencer smiled again. "Have I failed in politeness by not doing so? I fear you would find me an insufferably dull companion."

So he was not going to ask her after all. Violet felt piqued. She was also conscious of a sensation very near akin to disappointment. She looked across at Madison. How trim and dapper he was!

"I hate a bandbox man," she said to herself.

Spencer meanwhile had picked up one of Mrs. Hill's novels from the stand beside him.

"Fools of Habit," he said, glancing at the cover. "I see it is making quite a sensation down east. I suppose you've read it?"

"Yes. It is very frivolous and clever - all froth but delightful froth. Did you like it?"

Spencer balanced the novel reflectively on his slender brown hand.

"Well, yes, rather. But I don't care for novels as a rule. I don't understand them. The hero of this book, now - do you believe that a man in love would act as he did?"

"I don't know," said Violet amusedly. "You ought to be a better judge than I. You are a man."

"I have never loved anybody, so I am no position to decide," said Spencer.

There was as little self-consciousness in his voice as if he were telling her a fact concerning the Loon Lake trouble. Violet rose to the occasion.

"You have an interesting experience to look forward to," she said.

Spencer turned his deep-set grey eyes squarely upon her.

"I don't know that. When I said I had never loved, I meant more than the love of a man for some particular woman. I meant love in every sense. I do not know what it is to have an affection for any human being. My parents died before I can remember. My only living relative was a penurious old uncle who brought me up for shame's sake and kicked me out on the world as soon as he could. I don't make friends easily. I have a few acquaintances whom I like, but there is not a soul on earth for whom I care, or who cares for me."

"What a revelation love will be to you when it comes," said Violet softly. Again he looked into her eyes.

"Do you think it will come?" he asked.

Before she could reply Mrs. Hill pounced upon them. Violet was wanted to sing. Mr. Spencer would excuse her, wouldn't he? Moreover, he got up and bade his hostess good night. Violet gave him her hand.

"You will call again?" she asked.

Spencer looked across at Madison - perhaps it was accidental.

"I think not," he said. "If, as you say, love will come sometime, it would be a very unpleasant revelation if it came in hopeless guise, and one never knows what may happen."

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Way of the Winning of Anne' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Way of the Winning of Anne' - by L.M. Montgomery

Another story with one of Lucy Maud's thematic standbys: a long-ass courtship of 15 years ... not really going anywhere ... until one member of the couple takes drastic measures (pretends to start seeing someone else) ... and the other member of the couple is jealous, and suddenly realizes: I can't live without this person! Like 'The Hurrying of Ludovic'. Or 'The Pursuit of the Ideal'. These are romances between practical middle-aged people. Lucy Maud so knows how to write about that.

In 'The Way of the Winning of Anne' - Jerome has been "seeing" Anne for 15 years. I would say, in a less charitable way, that Anne has been stringing Jerome along - but I suppose she has her reasons. He asks her to marry him once a year, and she continuously turns him down. And yet every week they walk home from prayer meeting together. That is their main date. It is a declaration of commitment to a relationship (as anyone who reads Lucy Maud's books knows. Walking home from prayer meeting with a member of the opposite sex is as good as being engaged.) Jerome figures that if he just keeps asking she'll eventually cave. But 15 years is a long time. So one night - Jerome has had enough. He starts to see a woman named Harriet Warren - even going so far as taking her to a social in the next town. A gossipy neighbor informs Anne of this. The very next night, Jerome is not at prayer meeting. He has gone to prayer meeting at another church with Harriet Warren.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Way of the Winning of Anne' - by L.M. Montgomery

When she got home she looked at her face in the glass more critically than she had done for years. Anne Stockard at her best had never been pretty. When young she had been called "gawky". She was very tall and her figure was lank and angular. She had a long, pale face and dusky hair. Her eyes had been good - a glimmering hazel, large and long-lashed. They were pretty yet, but the crow's feet about them were plainly visible. There were brackets around her mouth too, and her cheeks were hollow. Anne suddenly realized, as she had never realized before, that she had grown old - that her youth was left far behind. She was an old maid, and Harriet Warren was young and pretty. Anne's long, thin lips suddenly quivered.

"I declare, I'm a worse fool than Jerome," she said angrily.

When Saturday night came Jerome did not. The corner of the big, old-fashioned porch where he usually sat looked bare and lonely. Anne was short with octavia and boxed the cat's ears and raged at herself. What did she care if Jerome Irving never came again? She could have married him years ago if she had wanted to - everybody knew that!

At sunset she saw a buggy drive past her gate. Even at that distance she recognized Harriet Warren's handsome, high-coloured profile. It was Jerome's new buggy and Jerome was driving. The wheel spokes flashed in the sunlight as they crept up the hill. Perhaps they dazzled Anne's eyes a little; at least, for that or some other reason she dabbed her hand viciously over them as she turned sharply about and went upstairs. Octavia was practising her music lesson in the parlour below and singing in a sweet shrill voice. The hired men were laughing and talking in the yard. Anne slammed down her window and banged her door and then lay down on her bed; she said her head ached.

The Deep Meadow people were amused and made joking remarks to Anne, which she had to take amiably because she had no excuse for resenting them. In reality they stung her pride unendurably. When Jerome had gone she realized that she had no other intimate friend and that she was a very lonely woman whom nobody cared about. One night - it was three weeks afterward - she met Jerome and Harriet squarely. She was walking to church with Octavia, and they were driving in the opposite direction. Jerome had his new buggy and a crimson lap robe. His horse's coat shone like satin and had rosettes of crimson on his bridle. Jerome was dressed extremely well and looked quite young, with his round, ruddy, clean-shaven face and clear blue eyes.

Harriet was sitting primly and consciously by his side; she was a very handsome girl with bold eyes and was somewhat overdressed. She wore a big flowery hat and a white lace veil and looked at Anne with a supercilious smile.

Anne felt dowdy and old; she was very pale. Jerome lifted his hat and bowed pleasantly as they drove past. Suddenly Harriet laughed out. Anne did not look back, but her face crimsoned darkly. Was that girl laughing at her? She trembled with anger and a sharp, hurt feeling. When she got home that night she sat a long while by her window.

Jerome was gone - and he let Harriet Warren laugh at her - and he would never come back to her. Well, it did not matter, but she had been a fool. Only it had never occurred to her that Jerome could act so.

"If I'd thought he would I mightn't have been so sharp with him," was as far as she would let herself go even in thought.

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Dissipation of Miss Posonby' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Dissipation of Miss Posonby' - by L.M. Montgomery

I love when she has these old-fashioned Victorian titles. 'The Dissipation of Miss Posonby'. Wonderful.

Miss Posonby is one of Lucy Maud delightful old-maid characters. She's prim, tidy, proper - and completely trapped by her circumstances (her father is a tyrant) ... Eventually, this story is about how Miss Posonby hears that an old beau of hers has returned to town - after 20 years being away - and someone is throwing a party for him ... and she wants to go, but her father refuses and, I believe, locks Miss Posonby in her room. What eventually happens is the two young girls next door (19, 18 years old) get all invested in Miss Posonby's old romance - she says she doesn't have a dress to go to the party anyway ... she says all of this out of her bedroom window, where she is locked in ... and the girls live across the way. Eventually, they lend her one of their dresses - and climb it up to her in the old oak tree outside her window. Miss Posonby, once she puts on the pretty dress, is revealed to be a beautiful ripe woman in her 40s, not the silly old maid who lives like Emily Dickinson in her tower-room. She goes to the party, is reunited with her old beau, and is happy! In her utter dissipation.

Here is the opening of the story. I love the tone Lucy Maud takes. It's comedic.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Dissipation of Miss Posonby' - by L.M. Montgomery

Miss Posonby sat and sewed at her window for hours at a time, but she never looked our way, partly, I suppose, from habit induced by modesty, since the former occupants of our room had been two gay young bachelors, whose names Jerry and I found cut all over our window-panes with a diamond.

Jerry and I sat a great deal at ours, laughing and talking, but Miss Posonby never lifted her head or eyes. Jerry couldn't stand it long; she declared it got on her nerves; besides, she felt sorry to see a fellow creature wasting so many precious moments of a fleeting lifetime at patchwork. So one afternoon she hailed Miss Posonby with a cheerful "hello", and Miss Posonby actually looked over and said "good afternoon," as prim as an eighteen-hundred-and-forty fashion plate.

Then Jerry, whose name is Geraldine only in the family Bible, talked to her about the weather. Jerry can talk interestingly about anything. In five minutes she had performed a miracle - she had made Miss Posonby laugh. In five minutes more she was leaning half out of the window showing Miss Posonby a new, white, fluffy, frivolous, chiffony waist of hers, and Miss Posonby was leaning halfway out of hers looking at it eagerly. At the end of a quarter of an hour they were exchanging confidences about their favourite books. Jerry was a confirmed Kiplingomaniac, but Miss Posonby adored Laura Jean Libbey. She said sorrowfully she supposed she ought not to read novels at all since her father disapproved. We found out later on that Mr. Posonby's way of expressing disapproval was to burn any he got hold of, and storm at his daughter about them like the confirmed old crank he was. Poor Miss Posonby had to keep her Laura Jeans locked up in her trunk, and it wasn't often she got a new one.

Friom that day dated our friendship with Miss Posonby, a curious friendship, only carried on from window to window. We never saw Miss Posonby anywhere else; we asked her to come over but she said her father didn't allow her to visit anybody. Miss Posonby was one of those meek women who are ruled by whomsoever happens to be nearest them, and woe be unto them if that nearest happen to be a tyrant. Her meekness fairly infuriated Jerry.

But we liked Miss Posonby and we pitied her. She confided to us that she was very lonely, and that she wrote poetry. We never asked to see the poetry, although I think she would have liked to show it. But, as Jerry says, there are limits.

We told Miss Posonby all about our dances and picnics and beaus and pretty dresses; she was never tired of hearing of them; we smuggled her library novels - Jerry got our cook to buy them - and boxes of chocolates, from our window to hers; we sat there on moonlit nights and communed with her while other girls down the street were enteretaining callers on their verandahs; we did everything we could for her except to call her Alicia, although she beggued us to do so. But it never came easily to our tongues; we thought she must have been born and christened Miss Posonby; "Alicia" was something her mother could only have dreamed about her.

We thought we knew all about Miss Posonby's past; but even pale, drab, china-blue women can have their secrets and keep them. It was a full half year before we discovered Miss Posonby's.

The Books: At the Altar: 'Them Notorious Pigs' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'Them Notorious Pigs' - by L.M. Montgomery

Okay - so let's get back into the daily excerpt thingie. Lucy Maud still chugging away!!

This story is really cute (and you can tell it will be funny by that ridiculous title). John Harrington is a well-to-do bachelor farmer - who pretty much despises women. He has no use for them at all. This story was originally published in 1904 with the name "The Nuisance of Women". Poor Harrington. Trapped in a world of women. Silly little things. So anyway - Mary Hayden, a young widow with 2 small children, has moved in next door. Harrington doesn't pay much attention to them - until ... Mary's pigs keep escaping from their pen, and running over into Harrington's yard, wreaking their pig havoc. Harrington is in a blind rage about this. Why can't that dern woman figure out how to keep her pigs locked up? He sends messages to her through his hired man - "could you please keep your pigs out of my garden?" Meanwhile, what he's thinking is: This is what happens when women try to run farms. She sends apologies back to him through her hired man, and says that it won't happen again. Then, whaddya know, the next day, the pigs get out, run into Harrington's yard, and totally kick up the dirt in his brand-new vegetable garden. So now Harrington has had it.

He stomps over there to give her a piece of his mind. And you can pretty much tell what is going to happen from their first encounter, although they take a while to get to it.

Here's what happens:

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'Them Notorious Pigs' - by L.M. Montgomery

Harrington had never seen his neighbour at close quarters beforte. Now he could not help seeing that she was a very pretty little woman, with wistful, dark blue eyes and an appealing expression. Mary Hayden had been next to a beauty in her girlhood, and she had a good deal of her bloom left yet, although hard work and worry were doing their best to rob her of it. But John Harrington was an angry man and he did not care whether the woman in question was pretty or not. Her pigs had rooted up his garden - that fact filled his mind.

"Mrs. Hayden, those pigs of yours have been in my garden again. I simply can't put up with this any longer. Why in the name of reason don't you look after your animals better? If I find them in again, I'll set my dog on them, I give you fair warning."

A faint colour had crept into Mary Hayden's soft milky-white cheeks during this tirade, and her voice trembled as she said, "I'm very sorry, Mr. Harrington. I suppose Bobbles forgot to shut the gate of their pen again this morning. He is so forgetful."

"I'd lengthen his memory then, if I were you," returned Harrington grimly, supposing that Bobbles was the hired man. "I'm not going to have my garden ruined just because he happens to be forfetful. I am speaking my mind plainly, madam. If you can't keep your stock from being a nuisance to other people you ought not to try to run a farm at all."

Then did Mary Hayden sit down upon the doorstep and burst into tears. Harrington felt, as Sarah King would have expressed it, "every which way at once." Here was a nice mess! What a nuisance women were - worse than the pigs!

"Oh, don't cry, Mrs. Hayden," he said awkwardly. "I didn't mean - well, I suppose I spoke too strongly. Of course I know you didn't mean to let the pigs in. There, do stop crying! I beg your pardon if I've hurt your feelings."

"Oh, it's isn't that," sobbed Mrs. Hayden, wiping away her tears. "It's only - I've tried so hard - and everything seems to go wrong. I make such mistakes. As for your garden, sir, I'll pay for the damage my pigs have done if you'll let me know what it comes to."

She sobbed again and caught her breath like a grieved child. Harrington felt like a brute. He had a queer notion that if he put his arm around her and told her not to worry over things women were not created to attend to he would be expressing his feelings better than in any other way. But of course he couldn't do that. Instead, he muttered that the damage didn't amount to much after all, and he hoped she wouldn't mind what he said, and then he got himself away and strode through the orchard like a man in a desperate hurry.

Mordecai had gone home and the pigs were not to be seen, but a chubby little face peeped at him from between two scrub, bloom-white cherry trees.

"G'way, you bad man!" said Bobbles vindictively. "G'way! You made my mommer cry - I saw you. I'm only Bobbles now, but when I grow up I'll be Charles Henry Hayden and you won't dare to make my mommer cry then."

Harrington smiled grimly. "So you're the lad who forgets to shut the pigpen gate, are you? Come out here and let me see you. Who is in there with you?"

"Ted is. He's littler than me. But I won't come out. I don't like you. G'way home."

Harrington obeyed. He went home and to work in his garden. But work as hard as he could, he could not forget Mary Hayden's grieved face.

"I was a brute!" he thought. "Why couldn't I have mentioned th ematter gently? I daresay she has enough to trouble her. Confound those pigs!"

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Wooing of Bessy' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Wooing of Bessy' - by L.M. Montgomery

Lucy Maud wrote a really good dominating female character. Sometimes she was benign, even though she bosses everybody around - like Judith in 'The Miracle at Carmody' - she's a dominant boss-type lady but you love her anyway. And sometimes she is malignant - like Emmeline in 'The Courting of Prissy Strong'. I wrote about this a bit here. She's a type that comes up again and again in Lucy Maud's work - taking on different forms, attitudes - but she obviously was very interested in (and understood) rigid stubbornness and pride. (Think of the gravestone in Emily: "Here I stay".) Pride is a sin. Lucy Maud understood it well. I think she writes about pride-ful characters almost better than anyone.

So this particular story 'The Wooing of Bessy' features one of those not-so-benign dominant boss-ladies. It's a creepy story - at least psychologically. It has elements of 'The Son of His Mother' in it - the mother who cannot let go of her son - who is even willing to destroy her son's chance at happiness - to keep him with her. Ew. It's creepy. But you can tell - at least in 'Son of His Mother' - that Lucy Maud has some sympathy for these female characters who hold on so tight to things, and can't let go. You love Thyra. You're glad she's not YOUR mother, but you love her.

In 'The Wooing of Bessy' - Mrs. Eastman, mother of Lawrence Eastman - a young man - not even a teenager - he's 20 - but Mrs. Eastman hovers. Hovers. There is no father in the picture - I believe he is dead. Lawrence has started to see a girl named Bessy Houghton. She's 25 years old, and unmarried - which makes her an old maid in the town's eyes. Also, she always had a kind of mature older personality. Her parents are both dead - she inherited their huge farm - and she runs it, a capable businesswoman. And Lawrence takes a fancy to her, is falling in love with her, you can tell. But something in him knows he shouldn't tell his mother. He isn't openly devious - he just keeps his heart private (which is not an easy thing with such an intrusive mother). Mrs. Eastman gets wind of the romance at a quilting circle - she has never liked Bessy Houghton, thought she "put on airs" - and she is convinced that she is just toying with her son. Also she's 25!! First of all, that's ancient. Second of all, she's 5 years older than Lawrence and everyone knows that the MAN should be older! Oh no no, this must stop.

So Mrs. Eastman goes home and proceeds to stir up trouble.

You know, it occurs to me: reading Lucy Maud's journals - the ones where she has her 2 sons, and they're growing up - sometimes I want to reach in and say to her: Maud, you have to back off. You have to let go. If Chester fails an exam, he fails an exam - there's no need for you to literally take to your bed with a sick stomach over how much you're worrying. It's nuts!

She OBSESSES over them. Every quiz they take - her own ego and pride of them is on the line. Poor lady.

But she really understands that type of thing - this story was written in 1906 - long before she had children - but she understood that type of woman intimately.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Wooing of Bessy' - by L.M. Montgomery

Lawrence was brushing his pet mare's coat until it shone like satin, and whistling "Annie Laurie" until the rafters rang. Bessy had sung it for him the night before. He could see her plainly still as she had looked then, in her gown of vivid red - a colour peculiarly becoming to her - with her favourite laces at wrist and throat and a white rose in her hair, which was dressed in the high, becoming knot she had alwars worn since the night he had shyly told her he liked it so.

She had played and sung many of the sweet old Scotch ballads for him, and when she had gone to the door with him he had taken both her hands in his and, emboldened by the look in her brown eyes, he had stooped and kissed her. Then he had stepped back, filled with dismay at his own audacity. But Bessy had said no word of rebuke, and only blushed hotly crmson. Sge must care for him, h e thought happily, or else she would have been angry.

When his mother came in at the stable door her face was hard and uncompromising.

"Lawrie," she said sharply, "where are you going again tonight? You were out last night."

"Well, Mother, I promise you I wasn't in any bad company. Come now, don't quiz a fellow too close."

"You are going to dangle after Bessy Houghton again. It's time you were told what a fool you were making of yourself. She's old enough to be your mother. The whole settlement is laughing at you."

Lawrence looked as if his mother had struck him a blow in the face. A dull, purplish flush crept over his brow.

"This is some of George's work," he broke out fiercely. "He's been setting you on me, has he? Yes, he's jealous - he wanted Bessy himself, but she would not look at him. He thinks nobody knows it, but I do. Bessy marry him? It's very likely!"

"Lawrie Eastman, you are daft. George hasn't said anything to me. You surely don't imagine Bessy Houghton would marry you. And if she would, she is too old for you. Now, don't you hang around her any longer."

"I will," said Lawrence flatly. "I don't care what anybody says. You needn't worry over me. I can take care of myself."

Mrs. Eastman looked blankly at her son. He had never defied or disobeyed her in his life before. She had supposed her word would be law. Rebellion was something she had not dreamed of. Her lips tightened ominously and her eyes narrowed.

"You're a bigger fool than I took you for," she said in a voice that trembled with anger. "Bessy Houghton laughs at you everywhere. She knows you're just after her money, and she makes fun--"

"Prove it," interrupted Lawrence undauntedly. "I'm not going to put any faith in Lynnfield gossip. Provie it if you can."

"I can prove it. Maggie Hatfield told me what Bessy Houghton said to her about you. She said you were a lovesick fool, and she only went with you for a little amusement, and that if you thought you had nothing to do but marry her and hang up your hat there you'd find yourself vastly mistaken."

Possibly in her calmer moments Mrs. Eastman might have shrunk from such a deliberate falsehood, although it was said of her in Lynnfield that she was not one to stick at a lie when the truth would not serve her purpose. Moreover, she felt quite sure that Lawrence would never ask Maggie Hatfield anything about it.

Lawrence turned white to the lips. "Is that true, Mother?" he asked huskily.

"I've warned you," replied his mother, not choosing to repeat her statement. "If you go after Bessy any more you can take the consequences."

She drew her shawl about her pale, malicious face and left him with a parting glance of contempt.

"I guess that'll settle him," she thought grimly. "Bessy Houghton turned up her nose at George, but she shan't make a fool of Lawrence too."

Alone in the stable Lawrence stood staring out at the dull red ball of the winter sun with unseeing eyes. He had implicit faith in his mother, and the stab had gone straight to his heart. Bessy Houghton listened in vain that night for his well-known footfall on the verandah.

The next night Lawrence went home with Milly Fiske from prayer meeting, taking her out from a crowd of other girls under Bessy Houghton's very eyes as she came down the steps of the little church.

Bessy walked home alone. The light burned low in her sitting-room and in the mirror over the mantel she saw her own pale face, with its tragic, pain-stricken eyes. Annie Hillis, her "help", was out. She was alone in the big house with her misery and despair.

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Pursuit of the Ideal' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Pursuit of the Ideal' - by L.M. Montgomery

The plot-line of this sweet little story has a lot of similarties to "The Hurrying of Ludovic". Published in 1904 - pre-dating the publication of Anne - this story already shows Lucy Maud's strengths. She doesn't try to re-invent the wheel. Her stories (her good ones) have simple plots - and they are character-based. She's already in her stride here as a writer. Freda and Roger are good friends. The opening scene gives you their relationship in a matter of 2 or 3 exchanges. Roger is kind of a dreamer, likes to come hang out at Freda's house, which is cozy, and talk about his dreams. Freda is NOT really a dreamer - she's got a bit more fun in her. But she also is fond of Roger, likes making him hot chocolate, and likes teasing him about his dreams. Until one day .... Roger comes to her and declares that he has seen "his ideal". Meaning: woman. Freda doesn't respond - but also - for the first time - she doesn't tease. She just goes kind of quiet. Roger begins to rave about this woman he saw, a new woman in town ... with the face of a Madonna, with golden hair, eyes blue as the sky, whatever .... he goes on and on and on. Freda just listens. Freda is rosy and plump and twinkley. She is NOT his ideal. But Freda holds her counsel. Roger starts to pursue "his ideal" - and he comes over to Freda's to give her updates. The man is quite clueless. You never know what's going on in Freda's head, though - because the story is told from Roger's point of view. We, the reader, can definitely see what's going on with her - because of how Lucy Maud writes about her behavior ... but still, it's Roger's journey, not Freda's.

So one day, Roger moseys on over to Freda's, to jabber on, yet again, about "his ideal".

Only to find ....

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Pursuit of the Ideal' - by L.M. Montgomery

One day when Roger came he found six feet of young man reposing at ease in his particular chair. Freda was sipping chocolate in her corner and looking over the rim of her cup at the intruder just as she had been wont to look at Roger. She had on a new dark red gown and looked vivid and rose-hued.

She introduced the stranger as Mr. Grayson and called him Tim. They seemed to be excellent friends. Roger sat bolt upright on the edge of a fragile, gilded chair which Freda kept to hide a shabby spot in the carpet, and glared at Tim until the latter said goodbye and lounged out.

"You'll be over tomorrow?" said Freda.

"Can't I come this evening?" he pleaded.

Freda nodded. "Yes - and we'll make taffy. You used to make such delicious stuff, Tim."

"Who is that fellow, Freda?" Roger inquired crossly, as soon as the door closed.

Freda began to make a fresh pot of chocolate. She smiled dreamiliy as if thinking of something pleasant.

"Why, that was Tim Grayson - dear old Tim. He used to live next door to us when we were children. And we were such chums - always together, making mud pies, and getting into scrapes. He is just the same old Tim, and he is home from the west for a long visit. I was so glad to see him again."

"So it would appear," said Roger grumpily. "Well, now that 'dear old Tim' is gone, I suppose I can have my own chair, can I? And do give me some chocolate. I didn't know you made taffy."

"Oh, I don't. It's Tim. He can do everything. He used to make it long ago, and I washed up after him and helped him eat it. How is the pursuit of the Ideal coming on, Roger-boy?"

Roger did not feel as if he wanted to talk about the Ideal. He noticed how vivid Freda's smile was and how lovable were the curves of her neck where the dusky curls were caught up from it. He had also an inner vision of Freda making taffy with Tim and he did not approve of it.

He refused to talk about the Ideal. On his way back to town he found himself thinking that Freda had the most charming, glad little laugh of any girl he knew. He suddenly remembered that he had never heard the Ideal laugh. She smiled placidly - he had raved to Freda about that smile - but she did not laugh. Roger began to wonder what an ideal without any sense of humour would be like when translated into the real.

He went to Lowlands the next afternoon and found Tim there - in his chair again. He detested the fellow but he could not deny that he was good-looking and had charming manners. Freda was very nice to Tim. On his way back to town Roger decided that Tim was in love with Freda. He was furious at the idea. The presumption of the man!

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Gossip of Valley View' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Gossip of Valley View' - by L.M. Montgomery

I think this might be my favorite TYPE of Lucy Maud romance: involving two maybe middle-aged people ... not too romantic ... but either good companions ... or ... who knows. I like when she writes about people past the first flush of youth, having romances. She always gets so much of it right (in my opinion). Like the wonderful story 'The Hurrying of Ludovic'. It's what happnes when people can no longer afford to be all romantic and dreamy-creamy, moonlight and roses ... it's what happens when that stuff fades ... and yet still you find yourself in love. And this story, 'The Gossip of Valley View', is very funny - true Lucy Maud:

A rumor starts in a small town - that Young Thomas Everett and Adelia Williams are going to be married. Now ... the two are not even courting ... Young Thomas Everett, a confirmed old bachelor who lives out on a farm with a grumpy housekeeper, hears the news about himself at the blacksmith one day and bursts into laughter. Adelia Williams? Nice little lady ... but he has no intention of getting married. But because of the laugh - and because neither of them out and out deny it - the gossip spreads. And spreads. I love how Lucy Maud describes this. The growing belief in the story ... people stopping Thomas on the street to congratulate him. He thinks it's all rather silly - he barely knows Adelia - but when the minister and his wife stop by Thomas' house and mention his engagement - Young Thomas gets a bit perturbed. This is getting far too serious. It's no longer a rumor - everyone believes it. Meanwhile, in the story - there has been NO contact with this Adelia Williams. He glances over at her in church during this whole thing - and she's glancing at him too. They both look away. So she obviously has heard the rumors too. Thomas does have the presence of mind to admire her rosy cheeks, and to think: She doesn't look like an old maid at all. But still: he has no idea who she is. All he knows about her is that she has the reputation of being a fantastic home-maker and house-keeper and cook and all that. That's it. The rumor keeps growing. People start just making shit up. Young Thomas hears whispered rumors about Adelia's trousseau - what color her hat will be - it's starting to not be funny. It's starting to be downright annoying. Finally, Young Thomas has had enough. His brother Charlie - who lives in - Manitoba? Winnipeg? Somewhere far from PEI, I'll tell you that - writes him a letter congratulating him on his upcoming engagement, and says, "Give Adelia a kiss for me!"

Young Thomas (who has also been having problems with his grumpy housekeeper) has now had enough. Enough of the rumors. And enough of the messy house. What they hey ... He goes over to see Adelia. This is the excerpt below. It's the end of the story.

This is our first time meeting Adelia. And I just LOVE her reaction. It makes me laugh - makes me feel like we could be friends. Also: it's just typical Lucy Maud.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Gossip of Valley View' - by L.M. Montgomery

Young Thomas shaved and put on his Sunday suit. As soon as it was safely dark, he hied him away to Adelia Williams. He felt very doubtful about his reception, but the remembrance of the twinkle in Adelia's brown eyes comforted him. She looked like a woman who had a sense of humour; she might not take him, but she would not feel offended or insulted because he asked her.

"Dang it all, though, I hope she will take me," said Young Thomas. "I'm in for getting married now and no mistake. And I can't get Adelia out of my head. I've been thinking of her steady ever since that confounded gossip began."

When he knocked at Adelia's door he discovered that his face was wet with perspiration. Adelia opened the door and started when she saw him, then she turned very red and stiffly asked him in. Young Thomas went in and sat down, wondering if all men felt so horribly uncomfortable when they were courting.

Adelia stooped low over the woodbox to put a stick of wood in the stove, for the May evening was chilly. Her shoulders were shaking; the shaking grew worse; suddenly Adelia laughed hysterically and, sitting down on the woodbox, continued to laugh. Young Thomas eyed her with a friendly grin.

"Oh, do excuse me," gasped poor Adelia, wiping tears from her eyes. "This is - dreadful - I didn't mean to laugh - I don't know why I'm laughing - but - I - can't help it."

She laughed helplessly again. Young Thomas laughed too. His embarrassment vanished in the mellowness of that laughter. Presently Adelia composed herself and removed from the woodbox to a chair, but there was still a suspicious twitching about the corners of her mouth.

"I suppose," said Young Thomas, determined to have it over with before the ice could form again, "I suppose, Adelia, you've heard the story that's been going about you and me of late?"

Adelia nodded. "I've been persecuted to the verge of insanity with it," she said. "Every soul I've seen has tormented me about it, and people have written me about it. I've denied it till I was black in the face, but nobody believed me. I can't find out how it started. I hope you believe, Mr. Everett, that it couldn't possibly have arisen from anything I said. I've felt dreadfully worried for fear you might think it did. I heard that my cousin, Lucilla Barrett, said I told her, but Lucilla vowed to me that she never said such a thing or even dreamed of it. I've felt dreadful bad over the whole affair. I even gave up the idea of making a quilt after a lovely new pattern I've got, because they made such a talk about my brown dress."

"I've been kind of supposing that you must be going to marry somebody, and folks just guessed it was me," said Young Thomas - he said it anxiously.

"No, I'm not going to be married to anybody," said Adelia with a laugh, taking up her knitting.

"I'm glad of that," said Young Thomas gravely. "I mean," he hastened to add, seeing the look of astonishment on Adelia's face, "that I'm glad there isn't any other man - because - because I want you myself, Adelia."

Adelia laid down her knitting and blushed crimson. But she looked at Young Thomas squarely and reproachfully.

"You needn't think you are bound to say that because of the gossip, Mr. Everett," she saidq uietly.

"Oh, I don't," said Young Thomas earnestly. "But the truth is, the story set me to thinking about you, and from that I got to wishing it was true - honest, I did - I couldn't get you out of my head, and at last I didn't want to. It just seemed to me that you were the very woman for me if you'd only take me. Will you, Adelia? I've got a good farm and house, and I'll try to make you happy."

It was not a very romantic wooing, perhaps. But Adelia was forty and had never been a romantic little body even in the heyday of her youth. She was a practical woman, and Young Thomas was a fine looking man of his age with abundance of worldly goods. Besides, she liked him, and the gossip had made her think a good deal about him of late. Indeed, in a moment of candour she had owned to herself the very last Sunday in church that she wouldn't mind if the story were true.

"I'll - I'll think of it," she said.

This was practically an acceptance, and Young Thomas so understood it. Without loss of time he crossed the kitchen, sat down beside Adelia, and put his arms about her plump waist.

"Here's a kiss Charlie sent me to give you," he said, giving it.

The Books: At the Altar: 'A Dinner of Herbs' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'A Dinner of Herbs' - by L.M. Montgomery

Speaking of maiden aunts! 'A Dinner of Herbs' is about a maiden aunt - who has elements of many other Lucy Maud heroines - Valancy from Blue Castle, Pat (stupid Pat) in her later years in Mistress Pat, and also Margaret in Tangled Web who ends up adopting a little boy and buying her own house - just to get away from being a maiden aunt in her bossy sister's house.

Robin Lyle is a maiden aunt. She lives with her brother, his bossy wife - and their clattering chattering family of loud bossy horrible children. Robin is put-upon, bossed within an inch of her life, and has no privacy. She is just expected to be grateful that she has a roof over her head. However, naturally, Robin is a PERSON and has secret desires of her own. For example, she's in love with Michael Stanislaws - the next-door neighbor - a guy who lives alone (well, he has 2 cats who follow him everywhere) - and has never married. They are good friends ... in a kind of aloof way. Typical Lucy Maud: they never say just what they mean until the very last second. Michael is a very PROUD person - he's poor, and I believe he's lame? The story was written in 1928 - a post World War I story - so I believe he fought in the war and came home changed from it. He's bitter. But Robin really likes him.

Anyhoo ... at the time the story opens, Robin has been proposed to by Irving Keyes - a pompous asswipe - but she feels she must say yes because ... she's a maiden aunt ... what other choice does she have? Oh - and she has also been informed by her horrible sister-in-law that she will now have to share a room with Gladys, her teenage niece. They need the room - they no longer can give Robin her own room. This is the main reason that she actually considers marrying the odious Irving Keyes - so she won't have to endure yet another chipping away of her privacy.

There's something I really like about the writing in this story. I can see why she used most of this stuff in later novels - it's good. The dialogue is good, the characters clear ... good writing.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'A Dinner of Herbs' - by L.M. Montgomery

Robin went to her room - the only spot on earth she had ever been able to call her own. And, as always when she went into it, the peace and dignity and beauty of it seemed to envelop her like a charm. She was in a different world - a world where George and Myra could not quarrel or the hired girl be impertinent to her; and the everlasting noise and racket of the household died away at its threshold like the spent wave of a troubled sea. For years all that had supported her through the drudgery of days spent waiting on a querulous invalid was the certainty of finding herself alone in her dear room at night where dreams gae some mysterious strength for another day.

The north window looked down on leagues of ripped sea and distant, misty, fairy-like coasts. Between it and the sand-dunes was only a dwindling grove of ragged old spruces.

The west window looked out on Owl's Roost, with its orchard and garden, where First and Second Peter prowled darkly, and Michael himself played the violin at hours when all decent people should be in bed. Sometimes, too, he ate his slender meals in the orchard, under an enormous apple tree, never dreaming that Robin Lyle was watching him from her window, and wishing shamelessly that she might play "Thou" to his crust of bread and jug of milk. Nor was the book of verse wanting. Michael read as he ate, propping his book up against the jug.

And now all this would be taken from her. She knew exactly what rooming with Gladys and her shrieking chums would mean. No more dreaming; no more shadowy hours of listening to Michael's stormy music in the orchard; no more early dawns watching the silent mysterious ships drift by the dunes to the harbour; never again alone with the night.

No, she could not endure it. Even sleek, prosperous Irving Keyes would be better than that.

"Life isn't fair," said Robin drearily, as if there was any use in saying it.

She went to the glass and looked at herself. She looked at her straight, black, bobbed hair, dark blue eyes and white, heart-shaped face; at her wide mouth quirked up at the corners so that she always seemed to be laughing even when very sad. And she thought of Blanche Foster's red-gold hair and flashing black eyes and brilliant complexion. Blanche Foster, who had always made Robin feel old and dowdy and silly. It was amazing that Irving Keyes didn't prefer her, but since he didnt ...

Robin shivered a little and sat down by the west window in the moonlight. The window was open, and the faint, cold, sweet perfumes of night drifted in - blent with the whiff of Michael Stanislaw's pipe, neither faint nor sweet, but very alluring. Once, when she was eighteen, she had had a fleeting fancy for Irving Keyes - and he knew it. Even yet he was attractive - until he spoke. But his funny vulgar stories and his great haw-haws! And his love for practical jokes! He still thought it a joke to stick o ut his foot and trip somebody up. And he still thought it wit to call eggs cackleberries.

Irving Keyes had been heard to boast that he had got everything he wanted in life. And now he wanted Robin Lyle. Robin thought he would get that too, despite his roars of laughter and the jigarees on his house.

What else was there for her? Arnold Clive? No! She shivered again. Austere, religious Arnold with the face of a fanatic: high, narrow brow, deep-set intolerant eyes, merciless mouth - quite out of the question! And, after all, she liked Irving very well.

She looked over at Owl's Roost. What a nice, gentle little old house it was; a nice lazy old house - a house that had folded its hands and said "I will rest." It had none of the Lyle efficiency and up-to-dateness about it, with a sly little eyebrow window above the porch roof and the magic of trees around it. She loved the trees around Owl's Roost. There were no trees around George's house. Myra thought shade unsanitary.

Michael was smoking his pipe at the fence with an orchard full of mysterious moonlit delights behind him. Robin wished she could go down and talk with him. She had sometimes talked with him over the fence. Not often, and yet she felt curiously well acquainted with him. They had laughed together the first time they had talked, and when two peoplel have laughed - really laughed - together they are good friends for life.

Though Michael did not laugh much. If anything, he was bitter. But there was something stimulating and pungent about his bitterness - like choke-cherries. They puckered your mouth horribly, but still you hankered for them.

"I wonder what he is thinking of," thought Robin.

She knew she only thought it. Yet a voice drifted up to her from the orchard.

"I'm thinking how very silvery that dark cloud must be on the moon side," said the voice. "Come down here and help me watch it leaving the moon. It's as good as an eclipse."

Robin flew downstairs, out of the side door and along the brick walk, worn by many feet. Michael was hanging over the fence. First Peter sat hunched up beside him, and Second Peter smoothed about his shoulder. First Peter always let Robin stroke him, but Second Peter swore at her. Second Peter was not to be hoodwinked.

Robin stood beside Michael on the other side of the fence, where the moonlight would lie white as snow on the flagged walk when the cloud passed. She had never been through the fence. There was no gate between the Lyle yard and the old orchard, lying fragrant and velvety under the enchantment of night.

They stood there together in a wonderful silence until the cloud had passed.

" 'He who has seen the full moon break forth from behind a dark cloud at night, has been present like an archangel at the creation of light and of the world,' " quoted Michael, whacking his pipe on the fence and putting it in his pocket. "Wasn't it worth watching, Miss Lyle?"

If there was one thing she hated more than another, it was having Michael call her "Miss Lyle". She hated it so much that she answered "Yes", stiffly and unenthusiastically.

"It's impossible to avoid the conclusion that something is bothering you," said Michael. "Tell First Peter about it and I'll listen in."

A perfectly crazy impulse mastered Robin. She would tell him. She had to tell soembody.

"I can't make up my mind which of two men to marry," she said bluntly.

Michael was silent for an appreciable space. All the soundsaudible were First Peter purring and a dog taking the countryside into his confidence two farms away. His silence got on Robin's nerves.

"That wasn't quite true," she said crossly. "There are two - but there's only one I could really consider possible. And the trouble is I don't want to marry him - or anyone," she added hastily, telling a second tarradiddle.

"Then why marry him?" said Michael. "Why marry at all if you don't want to, in this day of woman's emancipation?"

"The trouble is - I'm not emancipated," sighed Robin, wishing that First Peter would stop purring. It was outrageous that a cat should be so blatantly happy. Though why shouldn't he be happy? Couldn't he sit on Michael's shoulder and snuggle his nose against Michael's face? Wasn't he doing it now, darn him? Yet she was still talking on. "I'm twenty years behind the times. I'm thirty-three and I'm not trained to do anything. I've no special gift. I can't sew or teach or pound a typewriter. All I can do, or want to do, is keep house. And I must marry - or room witih Gladys."

"Do you think Irving Keyes would be a more agreeable room-mate?" said Michael sarcastically - though she had not said anything about Irving Keyes.

"Well, he won't plaster my dressing table with powder - or raise Cain when he can't find his hairpins - or yell to Baal if he has chilblains - or look in the mirror the same time I do - purposely," said Robin defiantly.

"I think I see what you're up against," said Michael, beginning to fill his pipe again.

"You don't - not fully - a man couldn't," snapped Robin. "Gladys will talk me to death about her beaus. Gladys thinks there's no fun in having a beau unless you can tell everybody about him and what he said and what he did. She'll laugh at my funny old pictures with big sleeves and hats high on the head. She'll come in and wake me up in the wee sma's. She'll insist on having the most awful silver pig with a blue velvet pincushion on his back on my table. She'll bring her rampageous school chums in and chitter-chatter for hours. And everything will be either wonderful or priceless. I'll never be alone any more," concluded Robin pathetically.

"That gets me," said Michael. "And the alternative is Irving Keyes. A handsome fellow with gobs of money. Why don't you like him?"

"I do. But I don't feel like marrying him, for several reasons."

"For instance ..."

"He likes bread thick, and I like it thin," said Robin flippantly. She felt she had been absurd in telling Michael as much as she had.

"Every proper man likes bread thick. I've no sympathy with you there."

"Our taste in jokes is entirely different."

"Ah, that's serious," said Michael, not sounding serious.

"And ..." Robin looked at another cloud that was creeping over the moon. "I - I want someone else."

"Oh!" Second Peter snarled, as if he had been pushed aside with a foot.

"He's the only man in the world for me," said Robin, looking straight at Michael.

"That's a large order out of approximately five hundred million men," said Michael drily.

He began to smoke insolently. The cloud was over the moon, and the world was dark. Robin felt cold and old and silly and empty.

"I must go in," she said.

"Wait a sec." Michael was rummaging in his pocket. "Here's something for your rose-jar."

He handed her over a paper bag full of dried rose-leaves.

"All I can give any woman now - withered rose leaves," he said lightly. "Irving's a good fellow. Perhaps you can teach him to laugh in the right place. I'd have a try."

The Books: At the Altar: 'Aunt Philippa and the Men' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

At the Altar - 'Aunt Philippa and the Men' - by L.M. Montgomery

At the Altar is another one of the collections put together by Rea Wilmhurst in the 90s of Lucy Maud's work - her short stories, published throughout her life ... but never before compiled. Rea Wilmhurst put different stories together thematically - and all of these have to do with (obviously) getting married.

"Aunt Philippa and the Men" is a very funny story - a Lucy Maud romance with that tone of COMEDY that I love so much - none of that sentimental stuff. She's more interested in the absurdity. "Aunt Philippa" was published in Redbook in 1915 ... and Aunt Philippa is a clear rehearsal for Miss Cornelia in Anne's House of Dreams (which came out in 1917). They are very nearly the same character. The man-hating thing, the Methodist-hating thing, and also the good heart, the no-nonsense heart.

Ursula Goodwin is her niece and she has come to stay with Aunt Philippa for the summer. Ursula is in a bit of a crisis. She's in love with someone - and her father does not approve of the match because of some age-old feud with the guy's family. At least that's what I think it is. She has been forbidden to marry him. Meanwhile, she has quarreled with him as well ... so she thinks the whole thing might be off anyway ... but her parents are terrified that she will make up with this person whom they do NOT want her to marry ... so they ship her off to PEI and Aunt Philippa for the summer. Philippa picks her up at the ferry in her buggy and as they drive home, Philippa chats and rants and raves about the things that bug her. She gossips about the neighbor and the new minister ("I am of the opinion that he smokes"). She says that there are no good Methodists. Ursula protests: "My stepmother is a Methodist!" Philippa replies, "I would believe anything of a stepmother." You know, it's pure Lucy Maud comedy. Great stuff. So the summer goes by - and Ursula settles in to the slow PEI life ... but she misses Mark (her guy) and wonders what will happen with them. Oh, and Philippa has NO sympathy for romantic problems of any kind because she hates men and thinks they are all despicable and are not worth ONE DROP of your tears. So Ursula can't really confide in Philippa. She suffers in silence. But then - one day - Mark shows up at Aunt Philippa's door. His firm is going to send him to South Africa in a month. He will be gone indefinitely. Will Ursula marry him? Now?? Ursula hesitates ... she hates the thought of a quickie wedding like this ... it feels like running away ... and suddenly Aunt Philippa, the man-hater, swoops in and takes care of everything. Surprising everybody. There WILL be a wedding, and she will have it at her house ... and everything will be fine.

I'll post an excerpt from the wedding itself just because Philippa's one comment after they become man and wife is so hilarious. Just great stuff.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'Aunt Philippa and the Men' - by L.M. Montgomery

For the next three weeks she was a blissfully excited, busy woman. I was allowed to choose the material and fashion of my wedding suit and hat myself, but almost everything else was settled by Aunt Philippa. I didn't mind; it was a relief to be rid of all responsibility; I did protest when she declared her intention of having a big wedding and asking all the cousins and semi-cousins on the island, but Aunt Philippa swept by objections lightly aside.

"I'm bound to have one good wedding in this house," she said. "Not likely I'll ever have another chance."

She found time amid all the baking and concocting to warn me frequently not to take it too much to heart if Mark failed to come after all.

"I know a man who jilted a girl on her wedding day. That's the men for you. It's best to be prepared."

But Mark did come, getting there the evening before our wedding day. And then a severe blow fell on Aunt Philippa. Word came from the manse that Mr. Bentwell had been suddenly summoned to Nova Scotia to his mother's deathbed; he had started that night.

"That's the men for you," said Aunt Philippa bitterly. "Never can depend on one of them, not even on a minister. What's to be done down?"

"Get another minister," said Mark easily.

"Where'll you get him?" demanded Aunt Philippa. "The minister at Cliftonville is away on his vacation, and Mercer is vacant, and that leaves none nearer than town. It won't do to depend on a town minister being able to come. No, there's no help for it. You'll have to have that Methodist man."

Aunt Philippa's tone was tragic. Plainly she thought the ceremony would scarcely be legal if that Methodist man married us. But neither Mark nor I cared. We were too happy to be disturbed by any such trifles.

The young Methodist minister married us the next day in the presence of many beaming guests. Aunt Philippa, splendid in black silk and point-lace collar, neither of which lost a whit of dignity or lustre by being made ten years before, was composure itself while the ceremony was going on. But no sooner had the minister pronounced us man and wife than she spoke up.

"Now that's over I want someone to go right out and put out the fire on the kitchen roof. It's been on fire for the last ten minutes."

Minister and bridegroom headed the emergency brigade, and Aunt Philippa pumped the water for them. In a short time the fire was out, all was safe, and we were receiving our deferred congratulations.

The Books: Along the Shore - 'Young Si' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - 'Young Si' - by L.M. Montgomery

So this is the last story I will excerpt from this collection and then I'll move on to yet another one of Lucy Maud's books. Young Si is a simple little story that just works. No fireworks, no clunky plot ... no florid language!! A young woman named Agnes (who, from Lucy Maud's description - with her orange hair and violet eyes and creamy skin - is quite a looker) has gone to spend the summer at a boarding house near the sea. She is staying with a kindly family - who welcome her. There is a young daughter, Agnes - who is about 16 - who has a kind of girl-crush on Ethel and wants to show her around. Ethel is polite, sweet ... and yet there is something sad about the look in her eyes. We don't hear the story about why she is sad until halfway into the story. The first half of the story is from Agnes' eyes, basically. Ethel arrives at the house. The Bentley family take her in ... and start to tell her a bit about the town, and the characters who live there, etc. - and a man named Young Si comes up. Everyone seems fascinated by this person. Young Si suddenly appeared in their fishing village at some point last year - from out of nowhere - he stays by himself in a little fishing shack and works out on a boat. He quickly has gained the respect of all the fishermen for his brawn, his skill, and his cooperative nature - and yet there's something aloof about him. If you ask him where he is from, or anything about his past, he clams up. And yet Mr. Bentley (the man Ethel is staying with) can't hold back his admiration for this person's character.

On that first day - Agnes takes Ethel down to the beach to see the sights, to see the fishermen coming in with their catches. It is during this first walk - that Ethel comes face to face with this Young Si ... and ... well ... let's just say he is NOT who he says he is.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - 'Young Si' - by L.M. Montgomery

When she came out they started off, and presently found themselves walking down a grassy deep-rutted lane that ran through mown hay fields, green with their rich aftergrowth, and sheets of pale ripening oats and golden-green wheat, until it lost itself in the rolling sand hills at the foot of the slope.

Beyond the sand hills stretched the shining expanse of the ocean, of the faint, bleached blue of hot August seas, and reaching out into a horizon laced with long trails of pinkish cloud. Numberless fishing boats dotted the shimmering reaches.

"That furthest-off boat is Young Si's," said Agnes. "He always goes to that particular spot."

"Is he really all your father says?" asked Miss Lennox curiously.

"Indeed he is. He isn't any more like the rest of the shore men than you are. He's queer, of course. I don't believe he's happy. It seems to me he's worrying over something, but I'm sure it is nothing wrong. Here we are," she added, as they passed the sand hills and came out on the long, level beach.

To their left the shore curved around in a semi-circle of dazlling whiteness; at their right stood a small grey fish-house.

"That's Young Si's place," said Agnes. "He lives there night and day. Wouldn't it make anyone melancholy? No wonder he's mysterious. I'm going to get his spyglass. He told me I might always use it."

She pushed open the door and entered, followed by Ethel. The interior was rough but clean. It was a small room, lighted by one tiny window looking out on the water. In one corner a rough ladder led up to the loft above. The bare lathed walls were hung with fishing jackets, nets, mackerel lines and other shore appurtenances. A little stove bore a kettle and a frying pan. A low board table was strewn with dishes and the cold remnants of a hasty repast; benches were placed along the walls. A fat, bewhiskered kitten, looking as if it were cut out of black velvet, was dozing on the window sill.

"This is Young Si's cat," explained Agnes, patting the creature, which purred joyously and opened its sleepy green eyes. "It's the only thing he cares for, I believe. Witch! Witch! How are you, Witch? Well, here's the spyglass. Let's go and have a look. Si's catching mackerel," announced Agnes a few minutes later, after she had scrutinized each boat in turn, "and he won't be in for an hour yet. If you like, we have time for a walk up the shore."

The sun slipped lower and lower in the creamy sky, leaving a trail of sparkles that ran across the water and lost itself in the west. Sea gulls soared and dipped, and tiny "sand peeps" flitted along the beach. Just as the red rim of the sun dipped in the purpling sea, the boats began to come in.

"Most of them will go around to the Point," explained Agnes, with a contemptuous sweep of her hand towards a long headland running out before them. "They belong there and they're a rough crowd. You don't catch Young Si associating with the Pointeres. There, he's getting up sail. We'll just have time to get back before he comes in."

They hurried back across the dampening sand as the sun disapeared, leaving a fiery spot behind him. The shore was no longer quiet and deserted. The little spot where the fishing house stood had suddenly started into life. Roughly clad boys were running hither and thither, carrying fish or water. The boats were hauled up on the skids. A couple of shaggy old tars, who had strolled over from the Point to hear about Young Si's catch, were smoking their pipes at the corner of his shanty. A mellow afterlight was shining over sea and shore. The whole scene delighted Ethel's artist eyes.

Agnes nudged her companion.

"There! If you want to see Young Si," she whispered, pointing to the skids, where a busy figure was discernible in a large boat, "that's him, with his back to us, in the cream-colored boat. He's counting out mackerel. If you go over to that platform behind him, you'll get a good look when he turns around. I'm going to coax a mackerel out of that stingy old Snuffy, if I can."

She tripped off, and Ethel walked slowly over to the boats. The men stared at her in open-mouthed admiration as she passed them and walked out on the platform behind Young Si. There was no one near the two. The others were all assembled around Snuffy' boat. Young Si was throwing out the mackerel with marvelous rapidity, but at the sound of a footstep behind him he turned and straightened up his tall form. They stood face to face.

"Miles!"

"Ethel!"

Young Si staggered back against the mast, letting two silvery bloaters slip through his hands overboard. His handsome sunburned face was very white.

Ethel Lennox turned abruptly and silently and walked swiftly across the sand. Agnes felt her arm touched and turned to see Ethel standing, pale and erect, beside her.

"Let us go home, " said the latter unsteadily. "It is very damp here - I feel chilled."

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Agnes penitently. "I ought to have told you to bring a shawl. It is always damp on the shore after sunset. Here, Snuffy, give me my mackerel. Thank you. I'm ready now, Miss Lennox."

They reached the lane before Agnes remembered to ask the question Ethel dreaded.

"Oh, did you see Young Si? And what do you think of him?"

Ethel turned her face away and answered with studied carelessness. "He seems to be quite a superior fishermen so far as I could see in the dim light. It was very dusky there, you know. Let us walk a little faster. My shoes are quite wet."

When they reached home, Miss Lennox excused herself on the plea of weariness and went straight to her room.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'The Waking of Helen'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - 'The Waking of Helen' - by L.M. Montgomery

Okay, so after the TERRIBLE story from yesterday - now we come to 'The Waking of Helen' which is one of my favorites of this collection - and it's interesting, in and of itself, because it is one of the only stories of hers I can think of - that has a truly tragic ending. Tragedy (or at least long-lasting tragedy) was never Lucy Maud's bag ... but this story is sad. And you know what? Lucy Maud is amazing here. It's completely believable. It actually reminds me of a short story by, oh, Doris Lessing. It has that kind of bleak outlook ... and it ends with a suicide. A woman who gladly embraces death. It is her only option and she throws herself at it with open arms. But this story has no melodrama to it. You know how some of her stories are ONLY the plot? They're my least favorites of her stories ... but when she focuses on the CHARACTER - she's at her best. And that's what's going on in this story. It's about this Helen girl. She's quite different from any of her other heroines - I can't think of anyone analogous in any of Lucy Maud's other stories or novels. Helen stands alone. She is a sulky sullen unattractive misfit. And yet - with Lucy Maud's insight and compassion - we see what it is like for her, who she is, what is going on inside of this misfit ... and we know ... we just know that she is not going to make it.

The story is this:

A man named Robert Reeves has gone to spend the summer at a place like the Bay of Fundy (uhm - Siobhan??) - a place "noted for its tides". Reeves is a painter. He has heard about the beauty of light and shadow on this large bay and wants to spend the summer painting them. He boards with a local farmer and his wife - the Frasers. They are quiet rough people. No soft edges. They have a niece who lives with them, her parents are dead - Helen. She's probably 20 years old. She's unattractive, not at all verbal - never speaks ... and sits at the table, staring down at her plate. The girl has no future, really ... she lives in this isolated area, her uncle and aunt are gruff and unloving towards her ... and she's no beauty. But she knows the bay inside and out - so she accompanies Reeves on one of his jaunts. Reeves also wants to do a painting of her - standing on the shore. He just needs her as a figure in the painting ... he will pay for her time ... she says yes. She tells him stories of people getting trapped in some of the coves - and drowning - because they can't get out, and the tides are extreme ... they rise 20 feet at times ... So she warns him about certain areas, and when the tides come in and out ...

Reeves is kind to Helen, not realizing how dangerous this will be. He's kind to her not because he's interested in her romantically. He's kind to her because he is a kind man. And he likes her stories about the shore - and he actually finds her to be kind of an interesting person once she gets away from her uncle and aunt. But oh no ... what happens when a girl like this "wakes up", like the title says? She "wakes up" ... and falls in love with him ... (none of this is said - she never declares herself - but Reeves eventually intuits that she has become too attached to him ... just from one look she gives him, a look where her face is full and lit-up with emotion and love for him.) Reeves is horrified. He realizes he has been playing with fire. The girl has woken up ... and now he must crush her. So he tries to be gentle and kind ... and casually mentions his fiance in conversation ... "I'm looking forward to getting back to the city ... my fiance misses me ..." or whatever. Helen doesn't freak. She sits beside him, silently, listening. (The point of view of this story is mainly from Reeves' side ... although the narrator is rather omniscent - but we are never inside Helen's head). Anyway, Helen listens, quiet, nothing happens. And Reeves is relieved. He thinks maybe he mistook the look he saw on her face. Maybe she wasn't in love with him. He can now leave with a clear conscience. And on the day he leaves, Helen goes off for a walk on the shore, walks into one of the coves - one of the dangerous coves she had warned him about - and sits down, and waits for the tide. Waits for the tide to come in, and rise. The last image in the story is chilling: as the water starts to lap at Helen's skirt, higher by the minute ... Helen smiles.

That's the end of the story.

It's wonderful work - I think Lucy Maud is at her best here. And this story stands alone in all of her work. It has a different feel, it really does. And yet it doesn't seem artificial, or like Lucy Maud is "experimenting" in a form and doesn't really know her way around. It feels quite natural.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the story:

Excerpt from Along the Shore - 'The Waking of Helen' - by L.M. Montgomery

Reeves told Helen of his plan himself, meeting her in the evening as she was bringing the cows home from the low shore pastures beyond the marsh. He was surprised at the sudden illumination of her face. It almost transfigured her from a plain sulky-looking girl into a beautiful woman.

But the glow passed quickly. She assented to his plan quietly, almost lifelessly. He walked home with her behind the cows and talked of the sunset and the mysterious beauty of the bay and the purple splendour of the distant coasts. She listened in silence. Only once, when he spoke of the distant murmur of the open sea, she lifted her head and looked at him.

"What does it say to you?" she asked.

"It speaks of eternity. And to you?"

"It calls me," she answered simply, "and then I want to go out and meet it - and it hurts me too. I can't tell how or why. Sometimes it makes me feel as if I were asleep and wanted to wake and didn't know how."

She turned and looked out over the bay. A dying gleam of sunset broke through a cloud and fell across her hair. For a moment she seemed the spirit of the shore personified - all its mystery, all its uncertainty, all its elusive charm.

She has possibilities, thought Reeves.

Next day he began his picture. At first he had thought of painting her as the incarnation of a sea spirit, but decided that her moods were too fitful. So he began to sketch her as "Waiting" - a woman looking out across the bay with a world of hopeless longing in her eyes. The subject suited her well, and the picture grew apace.

When he was tired of work he made her walk around the shore with him, or row up the head of the bay in her own boat. He tried to draw her out, at first with indifferent success. She seemed to be frightened of him. He talked to her of many things - the far outer world whose echoes never reached her, foreign lands where he had traveled, famous men and women whom he had met, music, art, and books. When he spoke of books he touched the right chord. One of those transfiguring flashes he delighted to evoke now passed over her plain face.

"That is what I've always wanted," she said hungrily, "and I never get them. Aunt hates to see me reading. She says it is a waste of time. And I love it so. I read every scrap of paper I can get hold of, but I hardly ever see a book."

The next day Reeves took his Tennyson to the shore and began to read the Idylls of the King to her.

"It is beautiful," was her sole verbal comment, but her rapt eyes said everything.

After that he never went out with her without a book - now one of the poets, now some prose classic. He was surprised by her quick appreciation of and sympathy with the finest passages. Gradually, too, she forgot her shyness and began to talk. She knew nothing of his world, but her own world she knew and knew well. She was a mine of traditional history about the bay. She knew the rocky coast by heart, and every old legend that clung to it. They drifted into making excursions along the shore and explored its wildest retreats. The girl had an artist's eye for scenery and colour effect.

"You should have been an artist," Reeves told her one day when she had pointed out to him the exquisite loveliness of a shaft of light falling through a cleft in the rocks across a dark-green pool at their base.

"I would rather be a writer," she said slowly, "if I could only write something like those books you have read to me. What a glorious destiny it must be to have something to say that the whole world is listening for, and to be able to say it in words that will live forever! It must be the noblest human lot."

"Yet some of those men and women were neither good nor noble," said Reeves gently, "and many of them were unhappy."

Helen dismissed the subject as abruptly as she always did when the conversation touched too nearly on the sensitive edge of her soul dreams.

"Do you know where I am taking you today?" she said.

"No - where?"

"To what the people here call the Kelpy's Cave. I hate to go there. I believe there is something uncanny about it, but I think you will like to see it. It is a dark little cave in the curve of a small cove, and on each side the headlands of rock run far out. At low tide we can walk right around, but when the tide comes in it fills the Kelpy's Cave. If you were there and let the tide come past the points, you would be drowned unless you could swim, for the rocks are so steep and high it is impossible to climb them."

Reeves was interested.

"Was anyone ever caught by the tide?"

"Yes," returned Helen, with a shudder. "Once, long ago, before I was born, a girl went around the shore to the cave and fell asleep there - and the tide came in and she was drowned. She was young and very pretty, and was to have been married the next week. I've been afraid of the place ever since."

The treacherous cave proved to be a picturesque and innocent-looking spot, with the beach of glittering sand before it and the high gloomy walls of rock on either hand.

"I must come here some day and sketch it," said Reeves enthusiastically, "and you must be the Kelpy, Helen, and sit in the cave with your hair wrapped about you and seaweed clinging to it."

"Do you think a kelpy would look like that?" said the girl dreamily. "I don't. I think it is a wild, wicked little sea imp, malicious and mocking and cruel, and it sits here and watches for victims."

"Well, never mind your sea kelpies," Reeves said, fishing out his Longfellow. "They are a tricky folk, if all tales be true, and it is supposed to be a very rash thing to talk about them in their own haunts. I want to read you 'The Building of the Ship.' You will like it, I'm sure."

When the tide turned they went home.

"We haven't seen the kelpy after all," said Reeves.

"I think I shall see him some day," said Helen gravely. "I think he is waiting for me there in that gloomy cave of his, and some time or other he will get me."

Reeves smiled at the gloomy fancy, and Helen smiled back at him with one of her sudden radiances. The tide was creeping swiftly up over the white sands. The sun was low and the bay was swimming in a pale blue glory. They parted at Clam Point, Helen to go for the cows and Reeves to wander on up the shore. He thought of Helen at first, and the wonderful change that had come over her of late; then he began to think of another face - a marvellously lovely one with blue eyes as tender as the waters before him. Then Helen was forgotten.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'A Strayed Allegiance'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - 'A Strayed Allegiance' - by L.M. Montgomery

Okay - this story is HYSTERICAL - but not intentionally so. As a matter of fact - you know the "Averil" story that Anne wrote in Anne of Avonlea? This is like that. The language is like that. It was written in 1897 - a good 11 years before Anne came out - so perhaps she was still working on her craft? Or maybe she is just OBVIOUSLY writing for money here - writing a story to fit the needs of a certain magazine. But the language of this florid torrid romance is hilarious - and absolutely unrecognizable as Lucy Maud's prose. This is one of the reasons why it's interesting. There are a couple more stories like this - usually written early on - in the late 1800s - where it's almost baffling to think that this is the same writer who thought up the whole dyeing hair green episode, or getting Diana drunk episode, or any of the other episodes which eventually made Lucy Maud famous.

A Strayed Allegiance - I mean, even look at the title. Isn't it just soooo serious and melodramatic? I love it. Everybody in this story is an asshole. I guess Marian is KIND of not an asshole ... because she ends up having SOME commonsense and releasing Esterbrook Elliott (yes, his name is ESTERBROOK ELLIOTT - ha!!! Maud, come on!) from his engagement to her - so that he would be free to ruin his life and pursue Magdalen Crawford, the gorgeous and yet poor fishing girl with whom he is obsessed - like a man about to be driven out of his mind. (And uhm, yes, her name is MAGDALEN Crawford.) I mean, there's just so much that is funny about all of this - and it's a very enjoyable read, merely because the whole time you're thinking: "Okay, Maud, you're gonna have to eventually give this up ... and write what YOU want to write ..."

So Esterbrook Elliott is a total asshole, who uses words like "bequeath" and says stuff like, "My time, as you well know, is completely at your disposal." Like - nobody talks like a normal person in this story. It's all heightened and flowery. Marian and Esterbrook are engaged. Marian is a gentle kindly charitable woman who spends her days helping out the poor families who live in the fishing shacks by the beach. She brings them food, blankets, helps them with medical issues. In short, a freakin' saint. You know, just setting the stage for MAGDALEN to enter. The whore with the glowing deep eyes!!

And one day Esterbrook accompanies his beloved Marian on one of her charitable visits. There's a sick kid or something. And there - in the corner of the fishing shack - is the most beautiful woman Esterbrook Elliott has ever seen. Not only that, but the way Lucy Maud describes her -she's the most beautiful woman the world has ever known. She's like a freak supermodel. And yet she is sullen, imperious, etc. Esterbrook immediately practically wets his pants at the sight of her. It's love at first sight. (Although I have my doubts on that score. I think it's more like lust - and after these two knock boots - they will have NOTHING to talk about - and Esterbrook will have ruined his life for a hot piece of fish-wife ass.)

Marian, because she's a freaking saint, and doesn't understand anything about REAL life ... does not notice the blithering idiot her fiance has become. They leave and walk home - and he is distracted - lost in thought (blah blah. Get a grip on yourself, Esterbrook Elliott. Also, get a new name. Thanks.)

And then .... after he drops Marian off ... he cannot help himself ... he goes back to find Magdalen ...

Their first encounter is the excerpt below. I mean, just listen to the prose!!

Go, Lucy Maud with your florid torrid self!

Excerpt from Along the Shore - 'A Strayed Allegiance' - by L.M. Montgomery

But the desire to see Magdalen Crawford once more and to look into the depths of her eyes was stronger than all else, and overpowered every throb of duty and resistance.

He saw nothing of her when he reached the Cove. He could think of no excuse for calling at the Barrett cottage, so he rode slowly past the hamlet and along the shore.

The sun, red as a smouldering ember, was half buried in the silken violet rim of the sea; the west was a vast lake of saffron and rose and ethereal green, through which floated the curved shallop of a thin new moon, slowly deepening from lusterless white, through gleaming silver, into burnished gold, and attended by one solitary, pearl-white star. The vast concave of sky above was of violet, infinite and flawless. Far out dusky amethystine islets clustered like gems on the shining breast of the bay. The little pools of water along the low shores glowed like mirrors of polished jacinth. The small, pine-fringed headlands ran out into the water, cutting its lustrous blue expanse like purple wedges.

As Esterbrook turned one of them he saw Magdalen standing out on the point of the next, a short distance away. Her back was towards him, and her splendid figure was outlined darkly against the vivid sky.

Esterbrook sprang from his horse and left the animal standing by itself while he walked swiftly out to her. His heart throbbed suffocatingly. He was conscious of no direct purpose save merely to see her.

She turned when he reached her with a slight start of surprise. His footsteps had made no sound on the tide-rippled sand.

For a few moments they faced each other so, eyes burning into eyes with mute soul-probing and questioning. The sun had disappeared, leaving a stain of fiery red to mark his grave; the weird, radiant light was startlingly vivid and clear. Little crisp puffs and flakes of foam scurried over the point like elfin things. The fresh wind, blowing up the ba, tossed the lustrous rings of hair about Magdalen's pale face; all the routed shadows of the hour had found refuge in her eyes.

Not a trace of colour appeared in her face under Esterbrook Elliott's burning ggaze. But when he said, "Magdalen!" a single, hot scorch of crimson flamed up into her cheeks protestingly. She lifted her hand with a splendid gesture, but no word passed her lips.

"Magdalen, have you nothing to say to me?" he asked, coming closer to her with an imploring passion in his face never seen by Marian Lesley's eyes. He reached out his hand, but she stepped back from his touch.

"What should I have to say to you?"

"Say that you are glad to see me."

"I am not glad to see you. You have no right to come here. But I knew you would come."

"You knew it? How?"

"Your eyes told me so today. I am not blind - I can see further than those dull fisher folks. Yes, I knew you wopuld come. That is why I came here tonight - so that you would find me alone and I could tell you that you were not to come again."

"Why must you tell me that, Magdalen?"

"Because, as I have told you, you have no right to come."

"But if I will not obey you? If I will come in defiance of your prohibition?"

She turned her steady luminous eyes on his pale, set face.

"You would stamp yourself as a madman, then," she said coldly. "I know that you are Miss Lesley's promised husband. Therefore, you are either false to her or insulting to me. In either case the companionship of Magdalen Crawford is not what you must seek. Go!"

She turned away from him with an imperious gesture of dismissal. Esterbrook Elliott stepped forward and caught one firm, white wrist.

"I shall not obey you," he said in a low intense tone; his fine eyes burned into hers. "You may send me away, but I will come back, again and yet again until you have learned to welcome me. Why should you meet me like an enemy? Why can we not be friends?"

The girl faced him once more.

"Because," she said proudly, "I am not your equal. There can be no friendship between us. There ought not to be. Magdalen Crawford - the fisherman's niece - is no companion for you. You will be foolish, as well as disloyal, if you ever try to see me again. Go back to the beautiful, high-bred woman you love and forgget me. Perhaps you think I am talking strangely. Perhaps you think me bold and unwomanly to speak so plainly to you, a stranger. But there are some circumstances in life when plain-speaking is best. I do not want to see you again. Now, go back to your own world."

Esterbrook Elliott slowly turned from her and walked in silence back to the shore. In the shadows of the point he stopped to look back at her, standing out like some inspired prophetess against the fiery background of the sunset sky and silver-blue water. The sky overhead was thick-sown with stars; the night breeze was blowing up from its lair in distant, echoing sea caves. On his right the lights of the Cove twinkled out through the dusk.

"I feel like a coward and a traitor," he said slowly. "Good God, what is this madness that has come over me? Is this my boasted strength of manhood?"

A moment later the hoof beats of his horse died away up the shore.

Magdalen Crawford lingered on the point until the last dull red faded out into the violet gloom of the June sea dusk, than which nothing can be rarer or divine, and listened to the moan and murmur of the sea far out over the bay with sorrowful eyes and sternly set lips.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'The Unhappiness of Miss Farquhar'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - 'The Unhappiness of Miss Farquhar' - by L.M. Montgomery

The moral of this story is: If you stop thinking about yourself so much, and start to do things for other people, then maybe you'll be much happier! Kind of simple - but I like the story. Frances Farquhar (Maud: what the hell kind of name is that) is a gorgeous girl, she lives in the city, she has a big family with kind of an illustrious name, and she has just been jilted. Her fiance dumped her, flat. And she, being gorgeous and rich, has no coping skills for rejection ... so she just plummets into the abyss of despair. Her brother tries to tell her, "He was horrible! A cad! A bounder!" She will hear none of it. Frances very very quickly becomes in love with her own grief. She finally goes to visit her aunt, in a quiet seaside town - an aunt she always felt was sympathetic, and also would just leave her alone. Frances basically wants to go somewhere where she can cry all day, and cry all night - and not have anybody get in her way. She doesn't want to be cheered up. She wants to wallow in the greatest tragedy ever known to man: SHE was rejected.

So this is what she does. She lies in bed at her aunt's and cries for 2 straight weeks.

Until finally her aunt intervenes. But she does so gently, and subversively - telling her that the minister's sister, Corona Sherwood (Corona, Maud??? What the hell?) is recovering from some long illness and aunt had promised to take her for a drive but she can't now - and would Frances mind going over and taking her out for a drive??

So - through meeting Corona - who is not at all what Frances pictured - she's a vibrant young pretty woman, like herself - and they immediately click ... so through Corona, Frances ends up getting involved with the community - through all the good works that the minister's family does. She befriends a sick little boy. She helps people. Blah blah. And by the end of the summer - she can't even remember why she was so damn sad about that popinjay who blew her off. Oh - and she falls in love with the minister. Here's the scene of their first encounter:

Excerpt from Along the Shore - 'The Unhappiness of Miss Farquhar' - by L.M. Montgomery

When morning came Frances went home. It was raining, and the sea was hidden in mist. As she walked along the wet road, Elliott Sherwood came splashing along in a little two-wheeled gig and picked her up. He wore a raincoat and a small cap, and did not look at all like a minister - or, at least, like Frances's conception of one.

Not that she knew much about ministers. Her own minister at home - that is to say, the minister of the fashionable uptown church which she attended - was a portly, dignified old man with silvery hair and gold-rimmed glasses, who preached scholarly, cultured sermons and was as far removed from Frances's personal life as a star in the Milky Way.

But a minister who wore rubber coats and little caps and drove about in a two-wheeled gig, very much mud-bespattered, and who talked about the shore people as if they were household intimates of his, was absolutely new to Frances.

She could not help seeing, however, that the crisp brown hair under the edges of the unclerical-looking cap curled around a remarkably well-shaped forehead, beneath which flashed out a pair of very fine dark-grey eyes; he had likewise a good mouth, which was resolute and looked as if it might be stubborn on occasion; and, although he was not exactly handsome, Frances decided that she liked his face.

He tucked the wet, slippery rubber apron of his conveyance about her and then proceeded to ask questions. Jacky Hart's case had to be reported on, and then Mr. Sherwood took out a notebook and looked over its entries intently.

"Do you want any more work of that sort to do?" he asked her abruptly.

Frances felt faintly amused. He talked to her as he might have done to Corona, and seemed utterly oblivious of the fact that her profile was classic and her eyes delicious. His indifference piqued Frances a little in spite of her murdered heart. Well, if there was anything she could do she might as well do it, she told him briefly, and he, with equal brevity, gave her directions for finding some old lady who lived on the Elm Creek road and to whom Corona had read tracts.

"Tracts are a mild dissipation of Aunt Clorinda's," he said. "She fairly revels in them. She is half blind and has missed Corona very much."

There were other matters also - a dozen or so of factory girls who needed to be looked after and a family of ragged children to be clothed. Frances, in some dismay, found herself pledged to help in all directions, and then ways and means had to be discussed. The long, wet road, sprinkled with houses, from whose windows people were peering to see "what girl the minister was driving," seemed very short. Frances did not know it, but Elliott Sherwood drove a full mile out of his way that morning to take her home, and risked being late for a very important appointment - from which it may be inferred that he was not quite so blind to the beautiful as he had seemed.

Frances went through the rain that afternoon and read tracts to Aunt Clorinda. She was so dreadfully tired that night that she forgot to cry, and slept well and soundly.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'A Sandshore Wooing'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - 'A Sandshore Wooing' - by L.M. Montgomery

This story is adorable. I love it. It has that Lucy Maud sense of the absurd - even in the middle of a love story - that I find so attractive. I guess it's how I see life. I'm not really a romantic person. I mean, I have been in love and all that, but the whole ROMANCE thing is not really my bag. My sense of humor gets in the way. This is why books by, uhm, Nicholas Sparks, for example, do nothing for me. The folks in them seem to lack a sense of humor ... and they're too unabashedly romantic. Even in the middle of my greatest love affair which shot through the sky of my life like a freakin' COMET ... I was never romantic like that. I am blunt. Detached. Snarky. I don't know - there's something in Lucy Maud's humor that really appeals to me. This story, especially - and in its own simple way it is my favorite in this particular collection.

It's written in diary-form - Marguerite Forrester, a young woman, living in a repressed way with her extremely strict aunt - keeps a journal about their summer vacation on the sandshore. Marguerite's parents died when she was a baby, so her aunt has brought her up and keeps her on the tightest leash imaginable. The whole story is about Marguerite trying to conduct this romance without her aunt knowing ... her aunt, too, despises men and thinks that they all are after only one thing and must be avoided at all costs. Marguerite is a good girl, she is not a rebel ... but in this case, she feels she must sneak around behind her aunt's back.

The way it happens is: Marguerite sits on the sandshore with her aunt, bored out of her mind. She picks up a pair of binoculars that they have - for bird-watching or whatever - and stares up and down the beach thru the binocs for sometime. Eventually - she sees a man - on a jetty of rocks at the edge of the beach. And he is looking directly at her, waving. She is horrified. She is busted! She puts the binocs down, terrified that her aunt will notice. A couple more days go by like this - with Marguerite looking around the beach with the binocs - and the man is always in the same place (and of course, he is young and handsome) - and he waits for her to rest the binoc-gaze on him - and he will wave, and smile. Marguerite's aunt would have a fit if she knew her niece was having secret "meetings" with a man like this. Marguerite writes in her journal with terror. And yet she starts to look forward to seeing him. Eventually - the man spells something out to her in the deaf-mute alphabet. It's a gamble - maybe she won't know sign language? But strangely enough - Marguerite does know the alphabet. Her roommate at boarding school had taught it to her - so that they could communicate their secrets to one another without the other girls finding out what they were talking about.

So Marguerite begins this "long-distance" communication with this strange man (whom she ends up knowing: he is the brother of her beloved roommate at school - and she had heard many stories about how great he was) - and they talk back and forth in deaf-mute - all behind the dozing aunt's back. If Marguerite is discovered "flirting" with a strange man - she will be in the deepest shit of her life!

But why this story is adorable - and so funny - is that ... this courtship is carried on via ALPHABET - so try to imagine saying, "I'm really attracted to you" but you have to spell it out. That would take too much time. So they end up boiling down their feelings into blunt short statements which won't take too much time to sign. It's kind of like the early 20th century version of IM or text messaging.

So here's their first "conversation".

Excerpt from Along the Shore - 'A Sandshore Wooing' - by L.M. Montgomery

July Twelfth

Something has happened at last. Today I went to the shore as usual, fully resolved not even to glance in the forbidden direction. But in the end I had to take a peep, and saw him on the rocks wiht his glass levelled at me. When he saw that I was looking he laid down the glass, held up his hands, and began to spell out something in the deaf-mute alphabet. Now, I know that same alphabet. Connie taught it to me last year, so that we might hold communication across the schoolroom. I gave one frantic glance at Aunt Martha's rigid back, and then watched him while he deftly spelled: "I am Francis Shelmardine. Are you not Miss Forrester, my sister's friend?"

Francis Shelmardine! Now I knew whom he resembled. And have I not heard endless dissertations from Connie on this wonderful brother of hers, Francis the clever, the handsome, the charming, until he has become the only hero of dreams I have ever had? It was too wonderful. I could only stare dazedly back through my glass.

"May we know each other?" he went on. "May I come over and introduce myself? Right hand, yes, left, no."

I gasped! Suppose he were to come? What would happen? I waved my left hand sorrowfully. He looked quite crestfallen and disappointed as he spelled out: "Why not? Would your friends disapprove?"

I signalled: "Yes."

"Are you displeased at my boldness?" was his next question.

Where had all Aunt Martha's precepts flown to then? I blush to record that I lifted my left hand shyly and had just time to catch his pleased expression when Aunt Martha came up and said it was time to go home. So I picked myself meekly up, shook the sand from my dress, and followed my good aunt dutifully home.

July Thirteenth

When we went to the shore this morning I had to wait in spasms of remorse and anxiety until Aunt got tired of reading and set off along the shore with Mrs. Saxby. Then I reached for my glass.

Mr. Shelmardine and I had quite a conversation. Under the circumstances there could be no useless circumlocution in our exchange of ideas. It was religiously "boiled down," and ran something like this:

"You are not displeased with me?"

"No - but I should be."

"Why?"

"It is wrong to deceive Aunt."

"I am quite respectable."

"That is not the question."

"Cannot her prejudices be overcome?"

"Absolutely no."

"Mrs. Allardyce, who is staying at the hotel, knows her well. Shall I bring her over to vouch for my character?"

"It would not do a bit of good."

"Then it is hoepless."

"Yes."

"Would you object to knowing me on your own account?"

"No."

"Do you ever come to the shore alone?"

"No. Aunt would not permit me."

"Must she know?"

"Yes. I would not come wihtout her permission."

"You will not refuse to chat with me thus now and then?"

"I don't know. Perhaps not."

I had to go home then. As we went Mrs. Saxby complimented me on my good colour. Aunt Martha looked her disapproval. If I were really ill Aunt would spend her last cent in my behalf, but she would be just as well pleased to see me properly pale and subdued at all times, and not looking as if I were too well contented in this vale of tears.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'A Soul That Was Not at Home'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - "A Soul That Was Not at Home" - by L.M. Montgomery

So this is the story of Paul and his Rock People in embryo. This story came out in 1909 (as did Anne of Avonlea) - so obviously this was a dress rehearsal. Many elements have changed once he appears in the Anne stories - but the character is exactly the same. And you know how Paul writes that letter to Anne and describes, in detail, his rock people? That shows up here in this story, word for word - only Paul is speaking it, rather than writing it. All of the Rock People are identical - Nora, the twin sailors ... you will recognize all of them. Beautiful - I love Paul.

In this story however, his circumstances are a bit different. Paul is an orphan (doesn't he have kind of an absentee father in the Anne books?) - and he is being raised by Stephen, a taciturn (that's putting it mildly) fisherman who used to be a beau of Paul's dead mother. So imagine THAT. Stephen may be taciturn - but his heart ... oh. my. God. He was in love with Paul's mother. But Paul's mother fell in love with someone else - whom she married - and he took her away from the little seaside town where she lived. And apparently she pined so for the sea that she became ill. (It happens, you know.) Her husband died - and she returned to her hometown, with her baby of 2 - but it was too late. She died within a couple of months. There was no one to look after baby Paul ... but Stephen, who had loved only one woman, and that was Paul's mother - stepped up and took the boy. And the two have been living in quiet restful harmony for 6 years. Stephen plays the violin at night. Paul sits on the beach in the day and writes stories about his Rock People in his big foolscap book. They are everything to each other. (It's a similar relationship to the one in "Each His Own Tongue" - that kind of intense unspoken bond between an older man and a young boy. It's almost painful.)

Anyway - a Miss Trevor stops to stay in the town, during the summer. I can't remember why she's there - but she's from the "city" (which probably means Charlottetown - not like Paris or anything like that). She comes, though, with the glamour of the outside world, and also artistic pretensions. She's also alone in the world. Anyhoo - she meets Paul one day on the beach and is completely taken by him. By his guilelessness, his beauty, and also his obvious gift of imagination. He immediately divulges about the Rock People, et al. To Miss Trevor, he looks like a prince - and is shocked to find that he lives in the bleached fisherman's shack over the dunes. Surely he should have better? (There's snobbery in Miss Trevor. You can feel it. When she meets Stephen, she patronizes him a bit. And it just kinda makes you really mad, reading it.) But she does get it in her head that Paul needs to have better schooling than could be offered here - and she wants to take him to live with her in town. She also is kind of obsessed with Paul's foolscap book and all the writing in it. She thinks Paul is a genius. A genius needs a better environment than a shack! (So she thinks.) So she asks Stephen if it would be all right ... and Stephen says, taciturn, you just don't know what's going on inside of him, he's too quiet and reserved - that she should ask Paul. If Paul wants to go, he can go. Paul is torn - he goes through some really bad moments. He loves Stephen. Loves him dearly ... but ... Stephen doesn't seem to care one way or the other if he stays or goes ... and Miss Trevor is so nice and so pretty ... but ... but ... how could he leave the Rock People??? Needless to say - Paul ends up going with Miss Trevor. And Stephen shows no emotion when he says goodbye. We, the reader, know that it is because he feels too much - but Paul thinks he doesn't care.

The excerpt below is from what happens when he gets to town. And goes to the end of the story. The Stephen moment that gets me in the throat is here.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - "A Soul That Was Not at Home" - by L.M. Montgomery

At first Paul lay very still on his luxurious perfrumed pillows. It was the first night he had ever spent away from the little seaward-looking loft where he could touch the rafters with his hands. He thought of it now and a lump came into his throat and a strange, new, bitter longing came into his heart. He missed the sea plashing on the rocks below him - he could not sleep without that old lullaby. He turned his face into the pillow, and the longing and loneliness grew worse and hurt him until he moaned. Oh, he wanted to be back home! Surely had had not left it - he could never have meant to leave it. Out there the stars would be shining over the harbour. Stephen would be sitting at the door, all alone, with his violin. But he would not be playing it - all at once Paul knew he would not be playing it. He would be sitting there with his head bowed and the loneliness in his heart calling to the loneliness in Paul's heart all the miles between them. Oh, he could never have really meant to leave Stephen.

And Nora? Nora would be down on the rocks waiting for him - for him, Paul, who would never come to her more. He could see her elfin little face peering around the point, watching for him wistfully.

Paul sat up in bed, choking with tears. Oh, what were books and strange countries? -- what was even Miss Trevor, the friend of a month? - to the call of the sea and Stephen's kind, deep eyes and his dear rock people? He could not stay away from them - never - never.

He slipped out of bed very softly and dressed in the dark. Then he lighted his lamp timidly and opened the little brown chest Stephen had given him. It held his books and his treasures, but he took out only a pencil, a bit of paper, and the foolscap book. With a hand shaking in his eagerness, he wrote:

dear miss Trevor

Im going back home, dont be fritened about me because I know the way. Ive got to go, something is calling me. dont be cross. I love you, but I cant stay. Im leaving my foolscap book for you, you can keep it always but I must go back to stephen and nora

Paul

He put the note on the foolscap book and laid them on the table. Then he blew out the light, took his cap and went softly out. The house was very still. Holding his breath, he tiptoed downstairs and opened the front door. Before it ran the street which went, he knew, straight out into the country road that led home. Paul closed the door and stole down the steps, his heart beating painfully, but when he reached the sidewalk he broke into a frantic run under the limes. It was late and no one was out on that quiet street. He ran until his breath gave out, then walked miserably until he recovered it, and then ran again. He dared not stop running until he was out of that horrible town, which seemed like a prison closing around him, where the houses shut out the stars and the wind could only creep in a narrow space like a fettered, cringing thing, instead of sweeping grandly over great salt wastes of sea.

At last the houses grew few and scattered, and finally he left them behind. He drew a long breath; this was better - rather smothering yet, of course, with nothing but hills and fields and dark woods all about him, but at least his own sky was bove him, looking just the same as it looked out home at Noel's Cove. He recognized the stars as friends; how often Stephen had pointed them out to him as they sat at night by the door of the little house.

He was not at all frightened now. He knew the way home and the kind night was before him. Every step was bringing him nearer to Stephen and Nora and the Twin Sailors. He whistled as he walked silently along.

The dawn was just breaking when he reached Noel's Cove. The eastern sky was all pale rose and silver, and the sea was mottled over with dear grey ripples. In the west over the harbour the sky was a very fine ethereal blue and the wind blew from there, salt and bracing. Paul was tired, but he ran lightly down the shelving rocks to the cove. Stephen was getting ready to launch his boat. When he saw Paul he started and a strange, vivid, exultant expression flashed across his face.

Paul felt a sudden chill - the upspringing fountain of his gladness was checked in mid-leap. He had known no doubt on the way home - all that long, weary walk he had known no doubt - but now?

"Stephen," he cried. "I've come back! I had to! Stephen, are you glad - are you glad?"

Stephen's face was as emotionless as ever. The burst of feeling which had frightened Paul by its unaccustomedness had passed like a fleeting outbreak of sunshine between dull clouds.

"I reckon I am," he said. "Yes, I reckon I am. I kind of - hoped - you would come back. You'd better go in and get some breakfast."

Paul's eyes were as radiant as the deepening dawn. He knew Stephen was glad and he knew there was nothing more to be said about it. They were back just where they were before Miss Trevor came - back to their perfect, unmarred, sufficient comradeship.

"I must just run around and see Nora first," said Paul.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'The Light on the Big Dipper'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - "The Light on the Big Dipper" - by L.M. Montgomery

This story is told from the point of view of a very resourceful 12 year old, and in typical and beautiful Lucy Maud fashion, she can get right into the psychology of a child. I love it when she does that. Lucy Maud, as an adult, can see how absurd some things are - how children deal with things ... and yet - and I think this is why she is so hugely successful with children, to this day - she takes them seriously. She respects them. She writes about them with respect. It's so fun to read these stories, even now, because of that.

Mary Margaret Campbell is 12 years old. Her father is a sea captain and has been gone for 2 long years on a voyage. While Captain Campbell is gone - Mary Margaret, her mother, and her younger sister Nellie - all go to live on an island out in the bay called Little Dipper. Mary Margaret's uncle has a lobster fishing operation out there - and wants someone to keep house for him. There's another island - in sight of Little Dipper - and it's called Big Dipper - and Mary Margaret's Uncle George runs the lighthouse there. Mary Margaret has spent many happy afternoons there - and Uncle George showed her how to light the light, and give the distress signal, and all that.

But now - happiness! Captain Campbell is finally coming home! Mrs. Campbell is going to pick up her husband on the mainland - and leaves Mary Margaret in charge of little Nellie. Mary Margaret is 12 years old, can cook, can do everything - she is very responsbile. So there are no worries about her being by herself.

All the grownups leave the island. Mary Margaret and Nellie have a nice afternoon. Mary Margaret makes dinner. She lights the fire. She gets Nellie ready for bed. All very responsible. Meanwhile, though - a storm is coming up. A bad one. Darkening sky, and it begins to SNOW - heavily. Mary Margaret sits down by the window, and waits for the light to blaze out of the lighthouse at Big Dipper. Once the sun has gone down, I mean. Mary Margaret knows Uncle George's routine, so she sits down to watch the light come on across the water. Only ... no light comes on. And now the storm is raging. Waves, rain, chaos ... still no light!

Mary Margaret knows that something is horribly wrong. And ... she doesn't know what to do! Responsible little Mary Margaret is in a panic! What about all the ships out on the water right now? How would they know where they were? Everyone was in mortal danger!!!! Why won't the light come on?

Finally, Mary Margaret knows that there is only one thing to do. She must row across the water to the lighthouse and light the lamp herself, see if Uncle George is all right. But what to do with Nellie?? The small 4 year old sister? Mary Margaret is afraid ... she doesn't know what to do ... so she ties her sister in a chair ... so at least she can't get free and hurt herself ... and then goes to row across the water.

Also: having grown up in a seaside town, surrounded by fisherfolk, with lighthouses being a daily part of my life ... I love Lucy Maud's description of the community here. The importance of lighthouses, the URGENCY of lighthouses, etc. The entire community being aware of the lighthouse, and invested in it working properly.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - "The Light on the Big Dipper" - by L.M. Montgomery

Mary Margaret put on her jacket, hood and mittens, and took Uncle Martin's lantern. As she went out and closed the door, a little wail from Nellie sounded on her ear. For a moment she hesitated, then the blackness of the Big Dipper confirmed her resolution. She must go. Nellie was really quite safe and comfortable. It would not hurt her to cry a little, and it might hurt somebody a great deal if the Big Dipper light failed. Setting her lips firmly, Mary Margaret ran down to the shore.

Like all the Harbour girls, Mary Margaret could row a boat from the time she was nine years old. Nevertheless, her heart almost failed her as she got into the little dory and rowed out. The snow was getting thick. Could she pull across those black two miles between the Dippers before it got so much thicker that she would lose her way? Well, she must risk it. She had set the light in the kitchen window; she must keep it fair behind her and then she would land on the lighthouse beach. With a murmured prayer for help and guidance she pulled staunchly away.

It was a long hard row for the little twelve-year-old arms. Fortunately there was no wind. But thicker and thicker came the snow; finally the kitchen light was hidden in it. For a moment Mary Margaret's heart sank in despair; the next it gave a joyful bound, for, turning, she saw the dark tower of the lighthouse directly behind her. By the aid of her lantern she rowed to the landing, sprang out and made her boat fast. A minute later she was in the lighthouse kitchen.

The door leading to the tower stairs was open and at the foot of the stairs lay Uncle George, limp and white.

"Oh, Uncle George," gasped Mary Margaret, "what is the matter? What has happened?"

"Mary Margaret! Thank God! I was just praying to Him to send somebody to 'tend the light. Who's with you?"

"Nobody ... I got frightened because there was no light and I rowed over. Mother and Uncle Martin are away."

"You don't mean to say you rowed yourself over here alone in the dark and snow! Well, you are the pluckiest little girl about this harbour! It's a mercy I've showed you how to manage the light. Run up and start it at once. Don't mind about me. I tumbled down those pesky stairs like the awkward old fool I am and I've broke my leg and hurt my back so bad I can't crawl an inch. I've been lying here for three mortal hours and they've seemed like three years. Hurry with the light, Mary Margaret."

Mary Margaret hurried. Soon the Big Dipper light was once more gleaming cheerfully athwart the stormy harbour. Then she ran back to her uncle. There was not much she could do for him beyond covering him warmly with quilts, placing a pillow under his head, and brewing him a hot drink of tea.

"I left a note for Mother telling her where I'd gone, Uncle George, so I'm sure Uncle Martin will come right over as soon as they get home."

"He'll have to hurry. It's blowing up now ... hear it ... and snowing thick. If your mother and Martin haven't left the Harbour Head before this, they won't leave it tonight. But, anyhow, the light is lit. I don't mind my getting smashed up compared to that. I thought I'd go crazy lying here picturing to myself a vessel out on the reefs."

That night was a very long and anxious one. The storm grew rapidly worse, and snow and wind howled around the lighthouse. Uncle George soon grew feverish and delirious, and Mary Margaret, between her anxiety for him and her dismal thoughts of poor Nellie tied in her chair over at the Little Dipper, and the dark possibility of her mother and Uncle Martin being out in the storm, felt almost distracted. But the morning came at last, as mornings blessedly will, be the nights never so long and anxious, and it dawned fine and clear over a white world. Mary Margaret ran to the shore and gazed eagerly across at the Little Dipper. No smoke was visible from Uncle Martin's house!

She could not leave Uncle George, who was raving wildly, and yet it was necessary to obtain assistance somehow. Suddenly she remembered the distress signal. She must hoist it. How fortunate that Uncle George had once shown her how!

Ten minutes later there was a commotion over at Harbour Head where the signal was promptly observed, and very soon - although it seemed long enough to Mary Margaret - a boat came sailing over to the Big Dipper. When the men landed they were met by a very white-faced little girl who gasped out a rather disjointed story of a light that hadn't been lighted and an uncle with a broken leg and a sister tied in her chair, and would they please see to Uncle George at once, for she must go straight over to the other Dipper?

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'Fair Exchange and No Robbery'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - "Fair Exchange and No Robbery" - by L.M. Montgomery

Next story I'll excerpt (in this book that, er, nobody else appears to have read but me!!) is a really funny story -I like it a lot - it's a romance, but it's written in that way that Lucy Maud has - that really human voice, with an eye towards the comedy in any situation. She doesn't always use that tone - but it's one of my favorites of her narrative voices. Because - I get it. I get her sense of humor. Her impression that life is kind of abSURD. This story is like that.

There are two dear friends - who are in college. Katherine and Edith. Both are seriously involved with someone -Katherine with a guy named Ned and Edith with a guy named Sidney. But neither has met the others beau ... Ned goes to a different college, and Sidney is already out of college. The story opens with Katherine and Edith both getting ready for summer holidays. Katherine is going to spend the summer with her Aunt Elizabeth in a remote seashore town - and Edith is staying on the campus for the summer. But, through a random coincidence, Ned has transferred to Katherine's college and will be there - on campus for the summer - taking courses - and Katherine is bummed and kind of pissed that it should happen just as she is going away. Edith says that she will look out for Ned, and make him feel welcome, not to worry, not to worry. The girls also briefly exchange thoughts about their boyfriends - and you can see that both of them, while fond of their men, have a couple complaints. Katherine is bookish, and loves poetry. Ned laughs at poetry and thinks "women writers are an abomination". Edith's Sidney is VERY bookish - and kind of plain-faced. Katherine admires plain-faced men because they are not vain. Ned, on the other hand, is gorgeous - and very vain - so she has to take him down a peg. And yet she loves him, obviously - it's just two girls kind of complaining about their men and what they lack. Then it's off to vacation! Toodle-oo!!

We follow Katherine on her vacation - where she thinks she will die of boredom in this little seaside town with nothing to do. She ends up meeting a random man (their meeting is the excerpt below) ... and somehow they end up CLICKING. Not romantically - or, of course that is underneath - but ... they just have a good time together. It turns out that he is, actually, Edith's boyfriend - he is writing a book and needed a quiet place for the summer .. so they befriend each other ... and they can't admit what is REALLY going on because they are both involved with someone else. It is very hard for Katherine to say good-bye to him. She is devastated, frankly.

She goes back to the campus town - dreary, sad, not at all looking forward to seeing Ned ... and she comes back to the room she shares with Edith and overhears Edith and Ned inside, having a tormented conversation about what they should do ... how should they "break the news" to Katherine ... Oh, it's so awful ... Edith has STOLEN Katherine's boyfriend! Oh, what a tragedy this is!!

Naturally, to Katherine, it is not a tragedy at all. Because now she will be free to steal EDITH'S boyfriend ... and they can all stay friends ... it will be a fair exchange and no robbery.

This all sounds very prosaic when I write it out like that - but I just love how this story is written - the TONE. I love when she ponders that maybe he is a revivalist.

It was written in 1907 - a year before Anne of Green Gables was published.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - "Fair Exchange and No Robbery" - by L.M. Montgomery

To pass the time Katherine took to collecting seaweeds, and this involved long tramps along the shore. On one of these occasions she met with an adventure. The place was a remote spot far up the shore. Katherine had taken off her shoes and stockings, tucked up her skirt, rolled her sleeves high above her dimpled elbows, and was deep in the absorbing process of fishing up seaweeds off a craggy headland. She looked anything but dignified while so employed, but under the circumstances dignity did not matter.

Presently she heard a shout from the shore and, turning around in dismay, she beheld a man in the rocks behind her. He was evidently shouting at her. What on earth could the creature want?

"Come in," he called, gesticulating wildly. "You'll be in the bottomless pit in another moment if you don't look out."

"He certainly must be a lunatic," said Katherine to herself, "or else he's drunk. What am I to do?"

"Come in, I tell you," insisted the stranger. "What in the world do you mean by wading out to such a place? Why, it's madness."

Katherine's indignation got the bettero f her fear.

"I do not think I am trespassing," she called back as icily as possible.

The stranger did not seem to be satisfied at all. He came down to the very edge of the rocks where Katherine could see him plainly. He was dressed in a somewhat well-worn grey suit and wore spectacles. He did not look like a lunatic, and he did not seem to be drunk.

"I implore you to come in," he said earnestly. "You must be standing on the very brink of the bottomless pit."

He is certainly off his balance, thought Katherine. He must be some revivalist who has gone insane on one point. I suppose I'd better go in. He looks quite capable of wading out here after me if I don't.

She picked her steps carefully back with her precious specimens. The stranger eyed her severely as she stepped on the rocks.

"I should think you would have more sense than to risk your life in that fashion for a handful of seaweeds," he said.

"I haven't the faintest idea what you mean," said Miss Rangely. "You don't look crazy, but you talk as if you were."

"Do you mean to say you don't know that what the people hereabouts call the Bottomless Pit is situated right off that point - the most dangerous spot along the whole coast?"

"No, I didn't," said Katherine, horrified. She remembered now that Aunt Elizabeth ahd warned her to be careful of some bad hole along shore, but she had not been paying much attention and had supposed it to be in quite another direction. "I am a stranger here."

"Well, I hardly thought you'd be foolish enough to be out there if you knew," said the other in mollified accents. "The place ought not to be left without warning, anyhow. It is the most careless thing I ever heard of. There is a big hole right off that point and nobody has ever been able to find the bottom of it. A person who got into it would never be heard of again. The rocks there form an eddy that sucks everything right down."

"I am very grateful to you for calling me in," said Katherine humbly. "I had no idea I was in such danger."

"You have a very find bunch of seaweeds, I see," said the unknown.

But Katherine was in no mood to converse on seaweeds. She suddenly realized what she must look like - bare feet, draggled skirts, dripping arms. And this creature whom she had taken for a lunatic was undoubtedly a gentleman. Oh, if he would only go and give her a chance to put on her shoes and stockings!

Nothing seemed further from his intentions. When Katherine had picked up the aforesaid articles and turned homeward, he walked beside her, still discoursing on seaweeds as eloquently as if he were commonly accustomed to walking with barefooted young women. In spite of herself, Katherine couldn't help listening to him, for he managed to invest seaweeds with an absorbing interest. She finally decided that as he didn't seem to mind her bare feet, she wouldn't either.

He knew so much about seaweeds that Katherine felt decidedly amateurish beside him. He looked over her specimens and pointed out the valuable ones. He explained the best method of preserving and mounting them, and told her of other and less dangerous places along the shore where she might get some new varieties.

When they came in sight of Harbour Hill, Katherine began to wonder what on earth she would do with him. It wasn't exactly permissible to snub a man who had practically saved your life, but, on the other hand, the prospect of walking through the principal street of Harbour Hill barefooted and escorted by a scholarly looking gentleman discoursing on seaweeds was not to be calmly contemplated.

The unknown cut the Gordian knot himself. He said that he must really go back or he would be late for dinner, lifted his hat politely, then sat down on the sand and put on her shoes and stockings.

"Who on earth can he be?" she said to herself. "And where have I seen him before? There was certainly something familiar about his appearance. He is very nice, but he must have thought me crazy. I wonder if he belongs to Harbour Hill."

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'Mackereling Out In the Gulf'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - "Mackereling Out In the Gulf" - by L.M. Montgomery

Another seafaring story - this one about fishermen. Although it's also a romance. Benjamin Selby has always loved Mary Stella - since he was little. They were childhood friends. He has cherished a dream, a hope that someday .... and because of that, she has factored into his plans, and the man he has become. He is trying to be a good enough man to deserve her, etc. You get this within a couple paragraphs. Mary Stella is a sweet girl, and kind to Benjamin. These are all fisher-folk - Benjamin is a big swarthy dude who works out on his boat all day. Anyhoo ... suddenly a new guy comes to town - a Frank Braithwaite - and he's a city person, or ... at least he's not one of THEM. But he's handsome, nice ... and he falls for Mary Stella. He does realize that he has a rival in Benjamin Selby - he understands that ... but Mary Stella (you kind of don't know what's going on with her. She seems rather insipid, if you ask me) ends up choosing Frank. Benjamin ends up seeing them in a romantic moment along the shore one day ... and it is so upsetting to him that it's practically anguish. This is his whole LIFE! A couple days later, Frank Braithwaite goes out in a boat with two French Canadian boys (who are, as they always are in Lucy Maud's world, almost minstrel show-y in their behavior) ... none of them are really competent sailors. So they're idiots, basically. And a storm comes up. A horrible storm. People gather on the shore, terrified ... looking out to sea for the boats to come back in ... and all of them do, except for the one with Frank in it. That boat is struggling mightily - and panic rises along the shore ... are they going to drown? So now Benjamin has to make a choice ... he could go out and save them, or he could let his hated rival die ... and maybe then he could have Mary Stella ...

Naturally, Benjamin makes the right choice.

The story itself is kind of simplistic, I guess - there's not much to it - but I'm excerpting it because of the ending which I think is quite touching and very well done.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - "Mackereling Out In the Gulf" - by L.M. Montgomery

Braithwaite came to the shore next day somewhat pale and shaky. He went straight to Benjamin and held out his hand.

"Thank you," he said simply.

Benjamin bent lower over his work.

"You needn't thank me," he said gruffly. "I wanted to let you drown. But I went out for Mary Stella's sake. Tell me one thing - I couldn't bring myself to ask it of anyone else. When are you to be - married?"

"The 12th of September."

Benjamin did not wince. He turned away and looked out across the sea for a few moments. The last agony of his great renunciation was upon him. Then he turned and held out his hand.

"For her sake," he said earnestly.

Frank Braithwaite put his slender white hand into the fisherman's hard brown palm. There were tears in both men's eyes. They parted in silence.

On the morning of the 12th of September Benjamin Selby went out to the fishing grounds as usual. The catch was good, although the season was almost over. In the afternoon the French Canadians went to sleep. Benjamin intended to row down the shore for salt. He stood by his dory, ready to start, but he seemed to be waiting for something. At last it came: a faint train whistle blew, a puff of white smoke floated across a distant gap in the sandhills.

Mary Stella was gone at last - gone forever from his life. The honest blue eyes looking out over the sea did not falter; bravely he faced his desolate future.

The white gulls soared over the water, little swishing ripples lapped on the sand, and through all the gentle, dreamy noises of the shore came the soft, unceasing murmur of the gulf.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'The Magical Bond of the Sea'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - by L.M. Montgomery

Okay, so I leave Emily behind with some regret ... she's my favorite ... but it's time to do some MORE Lucy Maud Montgomery excerpts. Her books take up 2 enter shelves - and since I'm also posting from short stories I like, from her collections, this is taking some time. But I'm in no rush.

Recently - through the 1990s - as Lucy Maud Montgomery's journals were being published - and as there was a resurgent interest in her (due to the television show, the movie, etc.) - a lot of her, uhm, "juvenilia" was dug up and published. Actually, not all of the collections were made up of her early short stories - some were the short stories that she continued to write throughout her career. She was always working on something - if not a novel, then these stories. Some are 5 or 6 pages long - others are more like novellas. Rea Wilmhurst, the editor, is someone we all owe a GREAT debt to. She's the one who put together all of these collections - and she did so SO beautifully, I think. Here's how she organized the stories (and it truly makes you in awe of Lucy Maud's output ... this was a woman who PRODUCED, man ... a workaholic): She identified some of Lucy Maud's more common themes - oh, and also genres - (orphans finding happiness and home, long-deferred romantic happiness, ghost stories/paranormal experiences, stories based on correspondence, romantic stories ending in marriage) and put together collections of stories in each of these themes. I love how she did it. There's an entire collection about stories that have something to do with the ocean - because the ocean was such a huge part of Lucy Maud's consciousness. For most of her life she ended up living away from the ocean - and she missed it so much that her heart nearly broke. She wrote a lot of stories about sea-faring folks, storms at sea, fishermen, etc. So there's an entire collection of those stories (that's the collection I'm gonna start with).

Some pre-date the publication of Anne of Green Gables - and so you can kind of feel her finding her way as a writer. Some of the stories are pretty bad - Lucy Maud wrote them for cash. She wrote them to order, too. Many of the stories depend on an outrageous coincidence which turns out making everything right (a la Dickens) ... but sometimes the story is just is its plot, and you can feel it creaking along. Sometimes they are way melodramatic. Sometimes they are treacly and would belong in a Sunday School pamphlet. But I loved reading them all because you can feel, first of all, Lucy Maud's work ethic. And I always found that so admirable. And also because - you can feel her working out some of the stories that she would later put into novels. Earlier versions of events show up in these stories all the time. If you're an autistic Lucy Maud freak, like I am, you will even recognize certain sentences: "Oh, she ended up using that sentence in House of Dreams ... oh, I remember that phrase, she put it into the grandmother's mouth in Magic for Marigold ..." Yes, it's that way with me. How entire books sit in my mind, word for word, I will never know ... but they do. So it's fun to read. In the Along the Shore collection there's a story called The Life Book of Uncle Jesse - which is, almost word for word, the story that ends up in House of Dreams - with "lost Margaret" and everything. Word for word. The story that ends up closing the collection, "A House Divided Against Itself" is almost word for word one of the plot-lines in her wonderful book Tangled Web - the two brothers arguing about the statue of Venus and one ends up getting caught in this hole in a rock in the shore - and the waves are coming in - and etc. etc. Word for word. Lucy Maud's books are often quite episodic - so these short stories acted as dress rehearsals. I love that. I love the little moment of recognition when I start to read one of them. I can feel her process, I can feel HER, if you will ... as a writer. It's really neat.

So yes, there is a lot of drivel here. But there's a lot that is truly wonderful as well, and I am thankful to Rea Wilmhurst for putting them all together. Oh, and even better: you get publication dates for the stories. So you can put together your own timeline ... and see where, in her life, she was working on it. Was it between Emily books? Was it BEFORE Anne? Rea Wilmhurst has even dug up stories from the late 1800s ... stuff Lucy Maud had published when she was 19, 20 ... and this stuff is hysterical - really melodramatic - some of it with Gothic horror overtones - she hasn't found her groove yet - but even that is really interesting, if you're a fan of her writing as a whole.

I won't excerpt every one of the stories - and not the ones that show up in novels later - but I will excerpt the ones I like, or ones I find interesting, in terms of Lucy Maud's development.

So. Along the Shore. A collection of stories about the ocean.

First story in the collection has the insipid title "The Magical Bond of the Sea" - but it's a lovely little story. Nora Shelley is a fisherman's daughter, she lives with her big rowdy family in a tiny 3 room shack on the shore (always Prince Edward Island in these stories, you don't even have to ask). And somehow - a rich aunt swoops in and says that Nora, a beautiful girl, age 15 or so, should have a chance at a better life - she should get some education - maybe marry a rich man. But she needs to be groomed for that ... and Nora, in her heart, wants to have a chance to see the big world as well. (This plot reminds me a bit of Cathy being taken away in Wuthering Heights - and coming back a nicely groomed lady). Nora loves her family ... and doesn't want to hurt her parents, her father and mother, by rejecting the life they provide ... but she does want to take this chance. So they let her go. There's a little going-away party - and you get the sense, with one of the guys hovering on the outskirts, that someone has a crush on her, her childhood friend ... who is now working as a fisherman, a nice boy. But now he must watch her go. (Melodramatic chords ensue). So Nora goes off ... and she is gone for almost a year. She writes letters home about her brilliant life of parties and travel and balls ... and the letters are read outloud by her family and by neighbors crowding in to listen. Her father, a "grizzled" old fisherman, can feel that Nora is changing. That she is no longer one of them. It makes him sad but on some level ... he knew he needed to let her go. Nora doesn't even come home for a visit. She immerses herself in this rich world. But then ... (dum da DUM) ... one summer they return, and Nora is staying at the big house across the bay ... and apparently she is slated to go home and visit the next day ... and there is a millionaire named Clark Bryant who supposedly is "courting" her and is stayiing a bit at the big house ... and everything is kind of hectic, etc. Nora is kind of unconscious of her deepest desires (a typical Lucy Maud heroine: unaware of what she wants until THE MOMENT ARRIVES WHEN SHE REALIZES IT ... ) ... she's there in the big house, she just arrived ... when suddenly she looks out the window ... and sees the bay right there ... and sees the little fishermen's town across the water ... and then ...

Here's the excerpt. I love it because of her response to being out on the water ... and how Lucy Maud writes that part. It's glorious.

"The Magical Bond of the Sea" was published in The Springfield Republican in September of 1903.

So this pre-dates Anne by about 5 years. But, in my opinion, you can feel her certainty as a writer here, in a way that you cannot feel in some of the earlier stories. She's writing in HER way ... it is obviously Lucy Maud Montgomery writing - any fan of hers would recognize this prose right away. In some of the earlier stories (the ghost stories, for example) - it is not as apparent who is writing. Lucy Maud didn't put her STAMP on some of those. But her stamp is here.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - "The Magical Bond of the Sea" - by L.M. Montgomery

At sunset on the day of her arrival Nora Shelley looked out cross the harbour to the fishing villagae. She was tired after her journey, and she had not meant to go over until the morning, but now she knew she must go at once. Her mother was over there; the old life called to her; the northwest wind swept up the channel and whistled alluringly to her at the window of her luxurious room. It brought to her the tang of the salt wastes and filled her heart with a great, bitter-sweet yearning.

She was more beautiful than ever. In the year that had passed she had blossomed out to a gracious fulfillment of womanhood. Even the Camerons had wondered at her swift adaptation to her new surroundings. She seemed to have put Racicot behind her as one puts by an old garment. In everything she had held her own royally. Her adopted parents were proud of her beauty and her nameless, untamed charm. They had lavished every indulgence upon her. In those few short months she had lived more keenly and fully than in all her life before. The Nora Shelley who went away was not, so it would seem, the Nora Shelley who came back.

But when she looked from her window to the waves and saw the star of the lighthouse and the blaze of the sunset in the window of the fishing-houses and heard the summons of the wind, something broke loose in her soul and overwhelmed her, like a wave of the sea. She must go at once -- at once -- at once. Not a moment could she wait.

She was dressed for dinner, but with tingling fingers she threw off her costly gown and put on her dark travelling suit again. She left her hair as it was and knotted a crimson scarf about her head. She would slip away quietly to the boathouse, get Davy to launch the little sailboat for her - and then for a fleet skim over the harbour before that glorious wind! She hoped not to be seen, but Mrs. Cameron met her in the hall.

"Nora!" she said in astonishment.

"Oh, I must go, Aunty! I must go!" the girl cried feverishly. She was afraid Mrs. Cameron would try to prevent her going, and all at once she knew that she could not bear that.

"Must go? Where? Dinner is almost ready, and --"

"Oh, I don't want any dinner. I'm going home - I will sail over."

"My dear child, don't be foolish. It's too late to go over the harbour tonight. They won't be expecting you. Wait until the morning."

"No -- oh, you don't understand. I must go -- I must! My mother is over there."

Something in the girl's last sentence or the tone in which it was uttered brought a look of pain to Mrs. Cameron's face. But she made no further attempt to dissuade her.

"Well, if you must. But you cannot go alone - no, Nora, I cannot allow it. The wind is too high and it is too late for you to go over by yourself. Clark Bryant will take you."

Nora would have protested but she knew it would be in vain. She submitted somewhat sullently and walked down to the shore in silence. Clark Bryant strode beside her, humoring her mood. He was a tall, stout man, with an ugly, clever, sarcastic face. He was as clever as he looked, and was one of the younger millionaires whom John Cameron drew around him in the development of his huge financial schemes. Bryant was in love with Nora. This was why the Camerons had asked him to join their August house party at Dalveigh, and why he had accepted. It had occurred to Nora that this was the case, but as yet she had never troubled to think the situation over seriously.

She liked Clark Bryant well enough, but just at the moment he was in the way. She did not want to take him over to Racicot - just why she could not have explained. There was in her no snobbish shame of her humble home. But he did not belong there; he was an alien, and she wished to back to it for the first time alone.

At the boathouse Davy launched the small sailboat and Nora took the tiller. She knew every inch of the harbour. As the sail filled before the wind and the boat sprang across the upcurling waves, her brief sullenness fell away from her. She no longer resented Clark Bryant's presence - she forgot it. He was no more to her than the mast by which he stood. The spell of the sea and the wind surged into her heart and filled it with wild happiness and measureless content. Over yonder, where the lights gleamed on the darkening shore under the high-sprung arch of pale golden sky, was home. How the wind whistled to welcome her back! The lash of it against her face - the flick of salt spray on her lips - the swing of the boat as it cut through the racing crests - how glorious it all was!

Clark Bryant watched her, understanding all at once that he was nothing to her, that he had no part or lot in her heart. He was as one forgotten and left behind. And how lovely, how desirable she was! He had never seen her look so beautiful. The shawl had slipped down to her shoulders and her head rose out of it like some magnificent flower out of a crimson calyx. The masses of her black hair lifted from her face in the rush of the wind and swayed back again like rich shadows. Her lips were stung scarlet with the sea's sharp caresses, and her eyes, large and splendid, looked past him unseeing to the harbour lights of Racicot.

When they swung in by the wharf Nora sprang from the boat before Bryant had time to moor it. Pausing for an instant, she called down to him, carelessly, "Don't wait for me. I shall not go back tonight."

Then she caught her shawl around her head and almost ran up the wharf and along the shore. No one was abroad, for it was supper hour in Racicot. In the Shelley kitchn the family was gathered around the table, when the door was flung open and Nora stood on the threshold. For a moment they gazed at her as at an apparition. They had not known the precise day of her coming, and were not aware of the Camerons' arrival at Dalveigh.

"It's the girl herself. It's Nora," said old Nathan, rising from his bench.

"Mother!" cried Nora. She ran across the room and buried her face in her mother's breast, sobbing.

The Books: "Emily's Quest" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

This excerpt is near the end of the book - and it is some of my favorite prose of Lucy Maud's ever. It's practically elegiac. We're about 3 pages from the end of the novel here - and it feels like it will end this way. Which - I still remember my sensation the first time I read this book. I read it - and I read about the wedding that never was - and I was SHOCKED and yet somehow unbelievably thrilled, too - like: maybe now? Maybe now Emily's loneliness will end? Maybe now Emily and Teddy can say what needs to be said? FINALLY?? But then came this section and then came the chilling words: "Year after year ..." and I just remember finding it so unutterably sad when I first read it. And I still do ... but now that I know the ending ... the sadness doesn't feel quite so intense. Because I know that she will get a break soon. There will be a respite. To quote the Little River Band, help is on its way. But dammit, help doesn't arrive until the last damn page ... thanks for putting me through the wringer, Lucy Maud!

To me, this section proves that those who blithely say, "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" are full of shit. Or, to be kinder - they are not fully thinking about what they are saying. They either think that that cliche is true ... or they do not know what to say, and that cliche seems to fit the bill. So I would respond to someone who made the mistake of saying that to me with: "Try it." (stealing a line from Men in Black). TRY it before you say that to me. If you can say that - and if you can say that so easily - then it says to me 2 things. 1. We are not the same kind of person. Maybe for SOME people it is "better to have loved and lost" blah blah ... but this is not true for EVERYBODY. And #2, which is meaner: it says to me that you do not know what you are talking about, and frankly, nobody likes someone who blabbers on as though they are an expert in a subject they know nothing about. If I sound angry, then it's because I am. I mean, not really right now - but anyone who has suffered a loss of any kind will know what I'm talking about. The stupid shit that people say to you. Now, yes, yes, people are well-meaning, people say things because they don't know what to say, people rely on cliche to get their point across - and I have cut these people slack for many years. Thank God this is my blog and I don't have to cut anyone slack here. I can take a break here from having to be a good sport, and nice, and polite.

Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all my ASS.

And finally - this section moves me so much because of Emily's continuing commitment to her love for Teddy. Or - bah - that's a horrible way to say it. It's all in the last paragraph of the excerpt - which still, after reading it so many times, over so many years, brings me to tears. I don't really write in the margins of novels (I do in all my non-fiction books - I bracket stuff, write question marks, underline ... but not in novels or fiction.) but at some point in my life - I put a bracket around that last paragraph. It obviously means a lot to me. It helped me to make sense of what I was doing in my own life ... after I had loved and lost. And no - the cavalry did not run in on the very last page to save me. Help was NOT on its way in my case. But still: the sentiment expressed there, while very difficult, is something dear to my heart.

Many people who get rejected - or not even rejected - who just have things not work out - then turn that into anger and bitterness towards the one who did the rejecting. I call them the "Love/Hate People". As in: "You love me? Oh, I love you too! Oh - now you hate me? Then I hate you too!" You see it all the time. Love turned to hate. This kind of switch-over doesn't really work for me, even though I've been rejected and even though ... sometimes it's even warranted! Like with this dude. If anyone deserves to be scorned and hated by Sheila, it's that dude. But ... I just can't do it. I'm not carrying a torch for him or anything ... it's just that I can't HATE him ... I can't suddenly think he's a bad person, just because he acted like an ass. He's not a bad person. And I can't help but WISH HIM WELL. And his response to me - on that hot sidewalk - as I wished him well - tells me that he was expecting me to be yet another Love/Hate Person. He was baffled by my good will towards him. But I just ... sometimes I have WISHED that I was a Love/Hate Person. That I could just switch off the love - when someone disses me - or hurts me - that I could say, "Okay then - FUCK. YOU." And then I would get to be all pissed and self-righteous. But I can't do that. Sometimes I should, believe me, sometimes I should.

But it's the sentiment in that last paragraph below ...

I guess it's one of my ... credos, maybe you'd call it. I believe in love like that. I really do. Invisible ... not recognized by the rest of the world ... and yet real.

This'll be the last excerpt of the Emily books. sniff, sniff. We will move on to yet another Lucy Maud book after this one - but I have SO enjoyed hanging out with all the Emily fans over these past couple weeks. It's been a total joy.

Excerpt from Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

II

That summer was a hard time for Emily. The very anguish of her suffering had filled life and now that it was over she realised its emptiness. Then, too, to go anywhere meant martyrdom. Every one talking about the wedding, asking, wondering, surmising. But at last the wild gossip and clatter over Ilse's kididoes had finally died away and people found something else to talk about. Emily was left alone.

Alone? Ay, that was it. Always alone. Love -- friendship gone forever. Nothing left but ambition. Emily settled herself resolutely down to work. Life ran again in its old accustomed grooves. Year after year the seasons walked by her door. Violet-sprinkled valleys of spring - blossom-script of summer - minstrel-firs of autumn - pale fires of the Milky Way on winter nights - soft, new-mooned skies of April - gnomish beauty of dark Lomardies against a moonrise - deep of sea calling to deep of wind - lonely yellow leaves falling in October dusks - woven moonlight in the orchard. Oh, there was beauty in life still - always would be. Immortal, indestructible beauty beyond all the stain and blur of mortal passion. She had some very glorious hours of inspiration and achievement. But mere beauty which had once satisfied her soul could not wholly satisfy it now. New Moon was unchanged, undisturbed by the changes that came elsewhere. Mrs. Kent had gone to live with Teddy. The old Tansy Patch was sold to some Halifax man for a summer home. Perry went to Montreal one autumn and brought Ilse back with him. They were living happily in Charlottetown, where Emily often visited them, astutely evading the matrimonial traps Ilse was always setting for her. It was becoming an accepted thing in the clan that Emily would not marry.

"Another old maid at New Moon," as Uncle Wallace said gracefully.

"And to think of all the men she might have had," said Aunt Elizabeth bitterly. "My Wallace -- Aylmer Vincent - Andrew -"

"But if she didn't -- love -- them," faltered Aunt Laura.

"Laura, you need not be indelicate."

Old Kelly, who still went his rounds -- "and will till the crack of doom," declared Ilse -- had quite given up teasing Emily about getting married, though he occasionally made regretful, cryptic allusions to "toad ointment". There was none of his significant nods and winks. Instead, he always gravely asked her what book she did be working on now, and drove off shaking his spiky grey head. "What do the men be thinking of, anyway? Get up, my nag, get up."

Some men were still thinking of Emily, it appeared. Andrew, now a brisk youn widower, would have come back at the beck of a finger Emily never lifted. Graham Mitchell, of Shrewsbury, unmistakably had intentions. Emily wouldn't have him because he had a slight cast in one eye. At least, that was what the Murrays supposed. They could think of no other reason for her refusal of so good a match. Shrewsbury people declared that he figured in her next novel and that she had only been "leading him on" to "get material". A reputed Klondike "millionaire" pursued her for a winter, but disappeared as briefly in the spring.

"Since she has published those books she thinks no one good enough for her," said Blair Water folks.

Aunt Elizabeth did not regret the Klondike man - he was only a Derry Pond Butterworth, to begin with, and what were the Butterworths? Aunt Elizabeth always contrived to give the impression that Butterworths did not exist. They might imagine they did, but the Murrays k new better. But she did not see why Emily could not take Mooresby, of the firm of Mooresby and Parker, Charlottetown. Emily's explanation that Mr. Mooresby could never live down the fact that he had once had his picture in the papers as a Perkins' Food Baby struck Aunt Elizabeth as very inadequate. But Aunt Elizabeth at last admitted that she could not understand the younger generation.

III

Of Teddy Emily never heard, save from occasional items in newspapers which represented him as advancing steadily in his career. He was beginning to have an international reputation as a portrait painter. The old days of magazine illustrations were gone and Emily was never now confronted with her own face - or her own smile - or her own eyes - looking out at her from some casual page.

One winter Mrs. Kent died. Before her death she sent Emily a brief note - the only word Emily had ever had from her.

"I am dying. When I am dead, Emily, tell Teddy about the letter. I've tried to tell him, but I couldn't tell my son I had done that. Tell him for me."

Emily smiled sadly as she put the letter away. It was too late to tell Teddy. He had long since ceased to care for her. And she -- she would love him forever. And even though he knew it not, surely such love would hover around him all his life like an invisible benediction, not understood but dimly felt, guarding him from ill and keeping from him all things of harm and evil.

The Books: "Emily's Quest" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

So all this sad stuff happens ... Emily breaks off her engagement - scandalizing her entire family (they were scandalized by the engagement itself, but then when she broke it off!!) - and then the Teddy second-sight moment - and then he and Ilse come home for the summer and there's all this ... unrequited unspoken stuff going on. Emily is haughty with Teddy - and to my eyes, he is being SO obvious with her. He is giving her an opening. He is saying I'M INTERESTED IN YOU. And she misinterprets a lot of it ... or she's afraid to even MENTION the second-sight moment ... she's afraid that will mean he will KNOW ... etc etc. So there's all this pent-up stuff during the summer, and Ilse is having her own rageful unrequited situation with Perry. All she can talk about is Perry. And yet in one chilling moment she confides in Emily that she has never liked Teddy so much as now. Then there's the dinner party ... Emily was looking forward to it ... and she sees by accident a really intimate look and conversation pass between Ilse and Teddy and it is like her heart has been smashed to the floor like a piece of crockery. Ilse and Teddy leave - and Emily then starts in to have the worst autumn of her life. She obviously is having some sort of depressive response to things. She writes in her journal that life, during that autumn, was unlivable. But of course life goes on ... we read her journal entries, and interestingly enough - more and more they are about nature. She writes about the snow, the stars, the pumpkins, the sunset ... These entries also reflect her MOOD (Lucy Maud is always so good at that - how the landscape can somehow express the mood of the main character) ... but she's trying not to be introspective. She's just trying to survive.

And then comes the next summer - Teddy and Ilse do NOT come home. And Emily has a series of ridiculous love affairs that mean absolutely nothing - she is pretty much just amusing herself - and (of course) her entire family is completely scandalized. Especially when she is being courted by a visiting Japanese prince, and she seems to take it seriously!! She accepts gifts from him! She walks in the garden with him at night! A Japanese prince!

But some of the suitors are just freakin'; hysterical - and you can see how Emily's breezy unconcern for their feelings, and for the opinion of her prudish clan - drives everyone nuts.

My favorite of all of the "love affairs" (and it doesn't even qualify) is the excerpt below. To me, the almost SLAPSTICK energy here - the sense that you are in the presence of a CRAZY person - is classic Lucy Maud. I love how she pits sanity against insanity, she pits civilization against chaos ... and the results are always comedic (I wrote about that here somewhere before).

Anyway, here's one of the funniest episodes. I just LOVE this guy who shows up. He's such a loon.

Background: an editor friend of Emily's asks her to help him out of a bind. He has a story he has been publishing, serial-fashion - and he lost the last chapter. Not to be found anywhere. Editor is furious - beside himself - turns to Emily for help: could she read the rest of the story, and figure out a concluding chapter, and write it? He would pay her. Emily thinks it would be an amusing task so she does. She reads the story (it sounds like a Gothic torrid romance - and it's all about kings and queens - which Emily finds amusing. Does the writer KNOW any kings or queens?) - but Emily does a good job - she comes up with an ingenious ending, a way to tie together all the threads of the plot ... the editor is happy - and the piece is published. Yay! Emily forgets all about it.

Until ...

Excerpt from Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

"I wonder if any of the readers will notice where the seam comes in," reflected Emily amusedly. "And I wonder if Mark Greaves will ever see it and if so what he will think."

It did not seem in the least likely she would ever know and she dismissed the matter from her mind. Consequently when, one afternoon two weeks later, Cousin Jimmy ushered a stranger into the sitting-room where Emily was arranging roses in Aunt Elizabeth's rock-crystal goblet with its ruby base - a treasured heirloom of New Moon - Emily did not connect him with A Royal Betrothal, though she had a distinct impression that the caller was an exceedingly irate man.

Cousin Jimmy discreetly withdrew and Aunt Laura, who had come in to place a glass dish full of strawberry preserves on the table to cool, withdrew also,w ondering a little who Emily's odd-looking caller could be. Emily herself wondered. She reamined standing by the table, a slim, gracious thing in her pale-green gown, shining like a star in the shadowy, old-fashioned room.

"Won't you sit down?" she questioned, with all the aloof courtesy of New Moon. But the newcomer did not move. He simply stood before her staring at her. And again Emily felt that, while he had been quite furious when he came in, he was not in the least angry now.

He must have been born, of course, because he was there - but it was incredible, she thought, he would ever have been a baby. He wore audacious clothes and a monocle, screwed into one of his eyes - eyes that seemed absurdly like little black currants with black eyebrows that made right-angled triangles above them. He had a mane of black hair reaching to his shoulders, an immensely long chin and a marble-white face. In a picture Emily thought he would have looked rather handsome and romantic. But here in the New Moon sitting-room he looked merely weird.

"Lyrical creature," he said, gazing at her.

Emily wondered if he were by any chance an escaped lunatic.

"You do not commit the crime of ugliness," he continued fervently. "This is a wonderful moment - very wonderful. 'Tis a pity we must spoil it by talking. Eyes of purple-grey, sprinkled with gold. Eyes that I have looked for all my life. Sweet eyes, in which I drowned myself eons ago."

"Who are you?" said Emily crisply, now entirely convinced that he was quite mad. He laid his hand on his heart and bowed.

"Mark Greaves - Mark D. Greaves - Mark Delage Greaves."

Mark Greaves! Emily had a confused idea that she ought to know the name. It sounded curiously familiar.

"Is it possible you do not recognize my name! Verily this is fame. Even in this remote corner of the world I should have supposed --"

"Oh!" cried Emily, light suddenly breaking in on her. "I -- I remember now. You wrote A Royal Betrothal."

"The story you so unfeelingly murdered - yes."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Emily interrupted. "Of course you would think it unpardonable. It was this way -- you see --"

He stopped her by a wave of a very long, very white hand.

"No matter. No matter. It does not interest me at all now. I admit I was very angry when I came herre. I am stopping at the Derry Pond Hotel ofThe Dunes -- ah, what a name - poetry - mystery - romance - and I saw the special edition of The Argus this morning. I was angry - had I not a right to be? - and yet more sad than angry. My story was barbarously mutilated. A happy ending. Horrible. My ending was sorrowful and artistic. A happy ending can never be artistic. I hastened to the den of The Argus. I dissembled my anger - I discovered who was responsible. I came here - to denounce - to upbraid. I remain to worship."

Emily simply did not know what to say. New Moon traditions held no precedent for this.

"You do not understand me. You are puzzled - your bewilderment becomes you. Again I say a wonderful moment. To come enraged - and behold divinity. To realise as soon as I saw you that you were meant for me and me alone."

Emily wished somebody would come in. This was getting nightmarish.

"It is absurd to talk so," she said shortly. "We are strangers --"

"We are not strangers," he interrupted. "We have loved in some other life, of course, and our love was a violent, gorgeous thing - a love of eternity. I recognized you as soon as I entered. As soon as you have recovered from your sweet surprise you will realise this, too. When can you marry me?"

To be asked by a man to marry him five minutes after the first moment you have laid eyes on him is an experience more stimulating than pleasant. Emily was annoyed.

"Don't talk nonsense, please," she said curtly. "I am not going to marry you at any time."

"Not marry me? But you must! I have never before asked a woman to marry me. I am the famous Mark Greaves. I am rich. I have the charm and romance of my French mother and the common sense of my Scotch father. With the French side of me I feel and acknowledge your beauty and mystery. With the Scotch side of me I bow in homage to your reserve and dignity. You are ideal -- adorable. Many women have loved me but I loved them not. I enter this room a free man. I go out a captive. Enchanting captivity! Adorable captor! I kneel before you in spirit."

Emily was horribly afraid he would kneel before her in the flesh. He looked quite capable of it. And suppose Aunt Elizabeth should come in.

"Please go away," she said desperately. "I'm -- I'm very busy and I can't stop talking to you any longer. I'm sorry about the story - if you would let me explain -"

"I have said it does not matter about the story. Though you must learn never to write happy endings - never. I will teach you. I wil teach you the beauty and artistry of sorrow and incompleteness. Ah, what a pupil you will be! What bliss to teach such a pupil! I kiss your hand."

He made a step nearer as if to seize upon it. Emily stepped backward in alarm.

"You must be crazy," she exclaimed.

"Do I look crazy?" demanded Mark Greaves.

"You do," retorted Emily flatly and cruelly.

"Perhaps I do - probably I do. Crazy - intoxicated with wine of the rose. All lovers are mad. Divine madness! Oh, beautiful, unkissed lips!"

Emily drew herself up. This absurd interview must end. She was by now thoroughly angry.

"Mr. Greaves," she said - and such was the power of the Murray look that Mr. Greaves realised she meant exactly what she said. "I shan't listen to any more of this nonsense. Since you won't let me explain about the matter of the story I bid you good-afternoon."

Mr. Greaves looked gravely at her for a moment. Then he said solemnly:

"A kiss? Or a kick? Which?"

Was he speaking metaphorically? But whether or no --

"A kick," said Emily disdainfully.

Mr. Greaves suddenly seized the crystal goblet and dashed it violently against the stove.

Emily uttered a faint shriek - partly of real horror - partly of dismay. Aunt Elizabeth's treasured goblet.

"That was merely a defence reaction," said Mr. Greaves, glaring at her. "I had to do that - or kill you. Ice-maiden! Chill vestal! Cold as your northern snows! Farewell."

He did not slam the door as he went out. He merely shut it gently and irrevocably, so that Emily might realise what she had lost. When she saw that he was really out of the garden and marching indignantly down the lane as if he were crushing something beneath his feet, she permitted herself the relief of a long breath - the first she had dared to draw since his entrance.

"I suppose," she said, half hysterically, "that I ought to be thankful he did not throw the dish of strawberry preserves at me."

Aunt Elizabeth came in.

"Emily, the rock-crystal goblet! Your Grandmother Murray's goblet! And you have broken it!"

"No, really, Aunty dear, I didn't. Mr. Greaves - Mr. Mark Delage Greaves did it. He threw it at the stove."

"Threw it at the stove!" Aunt Elizabeth was staggered. "Why did he throw it at the stove?"

"Because I wouldn't marry him," said Emily.

"Marry him! Did you ever see him before?"

"Never."

Aunt Elizabeth gathered up the fragments of the crystal goblet and went out quite speechless. There was - there must be - something wrong with a girl when a man proposed marriage to her at first meeting. And hurled heirloom goblets at inoffensive stoves.

The Books: "Emily's Quest" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

The whole 'furnishing of the Disappointed House' section is fantastically written. It's so domestic, so SPECIFIC - Lucy Maud gets into the decorating details with exquisite details ... the mirrors, the china, the knick knacks Dean brings in from all over the world, the pictures on the wall, the sofas ... Elizabeth's opinion on all of it ... and it's that very specificity that (to me) gives the whole section its eerie quality. Emily is putting all of her energy into furniture and wallpaper because what is WRONG is so wrong that to even look at it would seem like a betrayal. There's a moment where she admits to herself, at 3 a.m., that the house means more to her than Dean does ... but then Lucy Maud writes that she said that to herself and 'then refused to believe it the next morning.' Poor Emily. She knows the truth - her subconscious knows the truth - but she is REFUSING to look at it. And so she has moments of terrible haunting. Moments when she looks at the fireplace in the Disappointed House and remembers Teddy ... moments when she feels trapped by her engagement ring and like she wants to fling it away ...

It's depressing, yes, but Lucy Maud is at her best. Seriously. She's never been so successfully DARK as in this book. (She TRIED to be dark at points during Mistress Pat but by that point I am so annoyed at stupid freakin' Pat that I think she deserves what she gets. You're scared and haunted, Pat? Well, good. Maybe THAT will snap you out of your immature attachment to nothing ever changing. You need psychological HELP, Pat. Seriously. Get it, and soon. Ooooh, I can't wait to excerpt THOSE 2 books! The only ones where Lucy Maud fails - that's gonna be fun!!) But back to Emily: There are images from Emily's Quest that just stay with me - Emily pacing up and down the seashore in the middle of the night, in psychic agony. Staring at the emerald ring on her finger, hating it, thinking of it as a "fetter". Poor Dean - throwing himself into the fun of homemaking, for the first time in his life. And she sits beside him, staring into the fire, wondering if she will ever stop thinking of Teddy. Dean, now that he has captured her, relaxes a bit. He doesn't realize that the price Emily has had to pay to get to this point is too high. Her writing is done. She has lost interest in it. This may have made Dean happy ... but he didn't realize that this will come back to "get" him in the end. Nobody can give up a dream like that without serious repercussions. It has to be dealt with openly. You cannot force someone to downgrade or give up their dear dreams. Emily is not at that point yet ... she is just kind of listless and indifferent to the thought of all that ambition. The only thing she cares about is getting the right china for her house ... the house she loves so much. It is all she CAN care about.

It's an extremely eerie section.

And then it all culminates with Emily's last (at least in the books!!) second-sight experience. Each book has some kind of paranormal event ... where Emily is not just experiencing it, but changing the course of people's lives. Ilse Burnley's mother is found - after years of her whole family thinking she has run off with another man. Allan Bradshaw is found - he was trapped in an empty house for 4 days - he wouldn't have lived much longer - and Emily saw where he was in a dream. And now ... this moment. Where she reaches across the ocean - across the space-time continuum - to warn Teddy of impending disaster.

That's the excerpt below.

Excerpt from Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

II

But that letter from Ilse that day. Teddy was coming home. He was to sail on the Flavian. He was going to be home most of the summer.

"If it could have been all over - before he came," muttered Emily.

Always to be afraid of to-morrow? Content - even happy with to-day - but always afraid of to-morrow. Was this to be her life? And why that fear of tomorrow?

She had brought the key of the Disappointed House with her. She had not been in it since November and she wanted to see it - beautiful, waiting, desirable. Her home. In its charm and sanity vague, horrible fears and doubts woudl vanish. The soul of that happy last summer would come back to her. She paused at the garden gate to look lovingly at it - the dear little house nestled under the old trees that sighed softly as they had sighed to her childhood visions. Below, Blair Water was grey and sullen. She loved Blair Water in all its changes - its sparkle of summer, its silver of dusk, its miracle of moonlight, its dimpled rings of rain. And she loved it now, dark and brooding. There was somehow a piercing sadness in that sullent, waiting landscape all around her - as if - the odd fancy crossed her mind - as if it were afraid of spring. How this idea of fear haunted her! She looked up beyond the spires of the Lombardies on the hill. And in a sudden pale rift between the clouds a star shone down on her - Vega of the Lyre.

With a shiver Emily hurriedly unlocked the door and stepped in. The house seemed to be vacant - waiting for her. She fumbled through the darkness to the matches she knew were on the mantelpiece and lighted the tall, pale-green taper beside the clock. The beautiful room glimmered out at her in the flickering light - just as they had left it that last evening. There was Elizabeth Bas, who could never have known the meaning of fear - Mona Lisa, who mocked at it. But the Lady Giovanna, who never turned her saintly profile to look squarely at you. Had she ever known it - this suble, secret fear that one could never put in words? - that would be so ridiculous if one could put it in words? Dean Priest's sad lovely mother. Yes, she had known fear; it looked out of her pictured eyes now in that dim, furtive light.

Emily shut the door and sat down in the armchair beneath Elizabeth Bas' picture. She could hear the dead, dry leaves of a dead summer rustling eerily on the beach just outside the window. And the wind - rising - rising - rising. But she liked it. "The wind is free - not a prisoner like me." She crushed the unbidden thought down sternly. She would not think such things. Her fetters were of her own forging. She had put them on willingly, even desirously. Nothing to do but wear them gracefully.

How the sea moaned down there below the fields! But here in the little house what a silence there was! Something strange and uncanny about the silence. It seemed to hold some profound meaning. She would not have dared to speak lest something should answer her. Yet fear suddenly left her. She felt dreamy - happy - far away from life and reality. The walls of the shadowy room seemed slowly to fade from her vision. The pictures withdrew themselves. There seemed to be nothing before her but Great-aunt Nancy's gazing-ball hung from the old iron lantern - a big, silvery, gleaming globe. In it she saw the reflected room, like a shining doll's-house, with herself sitting in the old, low chair and the taper on the mantelpiece like a tiny, impish star. Emily looked at it as she leaned back in her chair - looked at it till she saw nothing but that tiny point of light in a great misty universe.

III

Did she sleep? Dream? Who knows? Emily herself never know. Twice before in her life - once in delirium - once in sleep she had drawn aside the veil of sense and time and seen beyond. Emily never liked to remember those experiences. She forgot them deliberately. She had not recalled them for years. A dream - a fancy fever-bred. But this?

A small cloud seemed to shape itself within the gazing-ball. It dispersed - faded. But the reflected doll's-house in the ball was gone. Emily saw an entirely different scene - a long lofty room filled with streams of hurrying people - and among them a face she knew.

The gazing-ball was gone - the room in the Disappointed House was gone. She was no longer sitting in her chair looking on. She was in that strange, great room - she was among those throngs of people - she was standing by the man who was waiting impatiently before a ticket-window. As he turned his face and their eyes met she saw that it was Teddy - she saw the amazed recognition in his eyes. And she knew, indisputably, that he was in some terrible danger - and that she must save him.

"Teddy. Come."

It seemed to her that she caught his hand and pulled him away from the window. Then she was drifting back from him - back - back - and he was following - running after her - heedless of the people he ran into - following - following - she was back on the chair - outside of the gazing-ball - in it she still saw the station-room shrunk again to play-size - and that one figure running - still running - the cloud again - filling the ball - whitening - wavering - thinning - clearning. Emily was lying back in her chair staring fixedly into Aunt Nancy's gazing-ball, where the living-room was reflected calmly and silverly, with a dead-white spot that was her face and one solitary taper-light twinkling like an impish star.

IV

Emily, feeling as if she had died and come back to life, got herself out of the Disappointed House, and locked the door. The clouds had cleared away and the world was dim and unreal in starlight. Hardly realising what she was doing she turned her face seaward through the spruce wood - down the long, windy, pasture-field - over the dunes to the sandshore - along it like a haunted, driven creature in a weird, uncanny half-lit kingdom. The sea afar out was like grey satin half hidden in a creeping fog but it washed against the sands as she passed in little swishing, mocking ripples. She was shut in between the misty sea and the high, dark sand-dunes. If she could only go on so forever - never have to turn back and confront the unanswerable question the night had put to her.

She knew, beyond any doubt or cavil or mockery, that she had seen Teddy - had saved, or tried to save him, from some unknown peril. And she knew, just as simply and just as surely that she loved him - had always loved him, with a love that lay at the very foundation of her being.

And in two months' time she was to be married to Dean Priest.

What could she do? To marry him now was unthinkable. She could not live such a lie. But to break his heart - snatch from him all the happiness possible to his thwarted life - that, too, was unthinkable.

Yes, as Ilse had said, it was a very devilish thing to be a woman.

"Particularly," said Emily, filled with bitter self-contempt, "a woman who seemingly doesn't know her own mind for a month at a time. I was so sure last summer that Teddy no longer meant anything to me - so sure that I really cared enough for Dean to marry him. And now to-night - and that horrible power or gift or curse coming again when I thought I had outgrown it - left it behind forever."

Emily walked on that eerie sandshore half the night and slipped guiltily and stealthily into New Moon in the wee sma's to fling herself on her bed and fall at last in the absolute slumber of exhaustion.

The Books: "Emily's Quest" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

Now the Emily books start getting really really sad. The whole unspoken unrequited love thing with Teddy really speaks to me - even though it's frustrating to read it. I want to tell her to give up her pride - to make herself more available to him - to not make Teddy have to WORK so hard. But if she did any of those things, she would not be Emily. But more than that: the hope of her little book she wrote - having the hopes crushed by rejection letters - and then totally crushed by Dean. Dean, in his gentle way, goes right for the jugular - and basically says, "Stop hoping that you can DO anything with your writing, Emily." Emily is grief-stricken. She has no Teddy. All she has is her writing. What would life be without her writing? How can she stop hoping? She burns up her book - and then almost immediately afterwards - regrets it. She can never get her book back (of course she doesn't have a copy ... this is 1914 or whatever - NOW she would have to erase it off her hard drive as well!) ... and her sadness is so intense that she feels she must go outside, she must get OUT, she is trapped, a trapped creature - so she runs out into the hall, trips on something, falls down the stairs, and her foot is pierced by Laura's sewing scissors which had been left on the landing. The injury is so serious that it is thought Emily will never walk again. She tries to recover. But everything is different now.

Anyhoo. Here's an excerpt from this section. It's all really bleak and sad. Great writing, though, as always. Oh - and this excerpt good because we had that big discussiong about the merits of Dean yesterday.

And, I don't know ... these books always feel, to me, like Lucy Maud's most personal ... and the darkness in them is a reflection of that. Lucy Maud had a sad life. Sometimes reading her journals (especially from about 1918 on) are unbearable. Her sadness is so huge, and she can't express it. She must remain calm, and quiet ... because her husband's mental illness is a secret, and obviously stigmatized ... and he would lose his livelihood if it "got out" that he was a nutjob. I often wonder if people in those towns knew about him ... I am SURE they did. Lucy Maud can't have been the only one. He was a reverend - which means he was a public figure. It's not like he could just hang out in the house, and be all insane and stuff. He was out, about, visiting, heading committees, giving services, giving sermons ... I wonder about the remembrances of others in that town (probably too late now to find out) ... But Lucy Maud still bore that up all on her own. Thank God she was a famous woman, with her own money, and her own life ... she was not reliant upon him for anything. It wasn't a real marriage. She suffered in silence for, oh, 30 years? You want to tell her to share with someone, to talk about it, to not be ashamed ... but if she did then she would not be Lucy Maud.

There are a lot of similarities in that situation to Emily's. Not the FACTS of the situation ... but the energy behind it.

Lucy Maud, when she lost her cousin Frede in the 1918 influenza epidemic - lost her only confidante. The only friend she had. Her kindred spirit. She probably could have talked to frede about this stuff ... She could at least have not felt so alone. When Frede died, that was it for Lucy Maud, in terms of friends. She was a one-friend type of person, she could not have another.

At this point in Emily's life - Ilse seems so far away, so ... unreachable. She swoops into town on her vacations, she's dressed insanely well but also really glamorously - with earrings, and silks ... she parties hard, dances all night long, etc. She seems to be having FUN all the time ... and so there is a barrier between Ilse and Emily. Emily now has this darkness within her ... a loneliness, a sadness. She feels she MUST hide it ... she can no longer confide in Ilse. (She probably COULD, come to think of it ... Ilse is probably just as baffled by the distance between them as Emily is ... but neither of them break the ice ...) They are too distant.

It's all just really sad.

Excerpt from Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

From October to April Emily Starr lay in bed or on the sitting-room lounge watching the interminable windy drift of clouds over the long white hills or the passionless beauty of winter trees around quiet fields of snow, and wondering if she would ever walk again - or walk only as a pitiable cripple. There was some obscure injury to her back upon which the doctors could not agree. One said it was negligible and would right itself in time. Two others shook their heads and were afraid. But all were agreed about the foot. The scissors had made two cruel wounds - one by the ankle, one on the sole of the foot. Blood-poisoning set in. For days Emily hovered between life and death, then between the scarcely less terrible alternative of death and amputation. Aunt Elizabeth prevented that. When all the doctors agreed that it was the only way to save Emily's life she said grimly that it was not the Lord's will, as understood by the Murrays, that people's limbs should be cut off. Nor could she be removed from this position. Laura's tears and Cousin Jimmy's pleadings and Dr. Burnley's execrations and Dean Priest's agreements budged her not a lot. Emily's foot should not be cut off. Nor was it. When she recovered unmaimed Aunt Elizabeth was triumphant and Dr. Burnley confounded.

The danger of amputation was over, but the danger of lasting and bad lameness re