Meanwhile back at the farm... something to read while you have that cup of tea ;o)

At the Gate of Green Gables

"...Diana and her small fry, the Echo Lodge people and the Allans, had stayed to help the two old ladies over the loneliness of the first evening; and they contrived to have a quietly pleasant little supper-time, sitting long around the table and chatting over all the details of the day. While they were sitting there Anne and Gilbert were alighting from the train at Glen St Mary."

from chapter four, the First Bride at Green Gables; Anne's House of Dreams

...

'You're lookin' rather pale, Marilla,' said Rachel, as she cut into another slice of Sarah Blythe's cherry tart. 'This jug of cream's got more colour than you.' And more so when the cherries bleed into it like that, she thought, pouring it over the pie until it lapped up the sides of her bowl.

Marilla wished she might respond to her friend by saying she was looking rather fat! But one could not live peaceably for seven years and have equal rights when it came to speaking your mind. Someone had to be circumspect and more often than she liked the duty fell to Marilla.

She eyed the woman opposite heave a hefty forkful to her mouth and decided if she were to speak then now would be the time.

'Well now, Rachel, I feel just fine.'

Rachel's mouth was no sooner empty of cherry tart than it was full of words again.

'I'm afraid to say you don't look it, my dear. Pale and interesting might suit our Anne, but it does not suit you!' she announced, as if there could be nothing more to add upon the subject.

Marilla decided she wouldn't. She did feel tired and cross, and somehow despite the feasting and the company all washed out. As if the colour had indeed gone out of her life -and moved to Glen St Mary.

'Think I'll walk a spell,' she said quietly.

Mrs Allen in the chair next to her, stood up and took the shawl that was draped on her chair and tucked it gently about its owner with an understanding smile. The only noise from Rachel being the sound of her fork scraping against her empty bowl.

'All that eating and sitting -it's bad for the constitution,' Marilla couldn't help but add as she departed through the kitchen door and went to the porch.

'Poor Marilla!' Rachel sighed. 'It was the same for me when my babies left. I never took the same pleasure in life again.'

And the last of the cherry pie made itself comfortable on Mrs Lynde's cream glazed dish.

Marilla went to the high-backed chair and sat down unthinkingly. It had been part of a pair that Angus Cuthbert had made as a wedding gift to his wife. But its match was no longer next to it, having been replaced with the more comfortable pleasures of Rachel Lynde's rocker. She stared out at the kitchen garden heaving with its harvest and when her eyes fell upon the swinging bench where Anne had liked to sit.

Marilla Cuthbert, however, was no thinker of maudlin thoughts -at least she was not ready to think them yet. There would be plenty to divert her once the guests had gone, the scrubbing and the sweeping waiting for her like faithful friends. Until then she might as well do what she told Rachel Lynde she would do, and she set out for a good long stroll. The flowers that fringed the drive-way seemed to wave at her and once again Marilla's thoughts returned to Anne, and the sight of her waving goodbye from the buggy that carried her and Gilbert away to their House of Dreams.

A House of Dreams! Marilla had dreamed of one herself, though she had been much younger than Anne -and three times as practical. It was to be something a little more sociably situated than the house her father had built. Not that she wished to live directly by the road -if the news of Avonlea didn't make it to her ears through the normal course of conversation then it was not for her to hear it. Still a house should be close enough that the burdens of wifehood might be made a little easier. She knew her own mother had been denied the pleasures of many an afternoon's quilting or choir, the walk there and back often hampered because of bad roads or their horse being otherwise occupied. Angus Cuthbert liked his women close to him. He was not an especially jealous fellow but like any man he liked what he liked and was accustomed to the getting of it.

Marilla walked on towards the gate of Green Gables, her hands grazing pleasantly against the feathery spears of golden rod that tickled at her tired, worn hands.

Like little fires! Anne had said, her braids swinging, her hand tugging at Marilla's as they made their way to Church. She was unable to decide whether Anne's need to be always running to service every Sunday was plain ungodly or showed a devout heart.

'Little fires?' Marilla had asked her. She knew she shouldn't encourage the girl with her peculiar talk, yet something about Anne inclined her to make exceptions to the rule. 'And what, dare I ask, are they?'

The very name sounded an unpromising subject for a walk to God's House but one could never be certain where the child's fancies would lead.

'Why, didn't you ever have a little fire, Marilla? When you had a such passion for something so it seemed to burn your very soul?'

Marilla's tongue was about to demand that Anne hold hers but the girl was too quick.

'I had this passion once for a red velvet tam with a golden tassel -just like these golden rod, only upside down of course. I used to pass it by on the way to the green -that was when I lived at the Morley asylum and we didn't have a patch to play on, so once a week -or nearly once a week- we got marched across town. We had to go by this heavenly hat shop and there it was... that red and gold tam. Of course, I know better now than to have such a passion for a thing like that-'

Marilla had smiled complacently, thinking credit for this would be due to her sensible influence.

'-because I can never wear red! Red? With my hair? But I was only eight then and I didn't know any better. The thought of that hat just burned in me like a little fire!'

'Sounds like stuff and nonsense. A hat is a hat is a hat.'

'Well might you say that when every hat you have is so lovely. I suppose having your choice of hats you couldn't imagine how it feels to have a passion for one. But you must have had a passion for something, Marilla?'

'John Blythe! What brings you back so soon?' Marilla exclaimed. She whipped her hands away from the firey plumes and brushing them on her skirts.

'Evening, Marilla,' John said, he touched at the peak of his cap. It sat on his silvery hair, soft and familiar -a far cry from the stiff beige thing he had worn to the wedding that afternoon. 'You find me on my way to you as it happens.' He held up a large white platter that the gate between them had obscured from her view. 'Yours, I believe.'

'Not ours, I'm afraid, but it's owner is still at our table and I am happy to take it to her.'

'Still entertaining all these hours later? Another first for Green Gables, I'd say,' he said with a cheeky grin.

'Oh, there's been a lot of changes since you last came for company, John Blythe!' Marilla answered, with a spirited smile of her own.

There was not much to smile about when they recalled their last afternoon together all those years ago. There had been a minister's wife there too, the minister of course, and an exciting addition to the Avonlea circle, the minister's son just returned from his mission work in Sumatra.

John Blythe had come to call at the kitchen door looking for the girl who had not turned up for the first day's picking of the Strawberry apples that grew exclusively on the Blythe property. He had teased her for days with tales of their growing ripeness determined Marilla Cuthbert would wait until they were perfect in colour and flavour, and that he should be the one to see her take that first delicious bite!

'John Blythe, what on earth... was Papa expecting you?' asked Marilla, pressing her damp hands against her hair in an effort to tidy her appearance.

'I was expecting you, Rilla,' he replied, producing a scrumptious blushing specimen from the bushel of apples he was carrying.

'Oh, John, I am sorry. Father only told me during luncheon that we were we were expecting company.'

John hid a scowl, little liking the habit Mr Cuthbert had of withholding news from his family until it suited him to tell it. The plans of his son and daughter were as clouds in the sky to him, and he the North Wind.

'But these apples are a lucky boon for me, I'm short for the tart I'm making and Papa got awful cantankerous when he thought we shouldn't have enough to offer our guests.'

Though Marilla had taken sole care of the house these last six months she had much to learn in her father's eyes. John handed the bushel over, wincing at the thought of those rare apples being stewed for a pie. They were not meant for the guests at the Green Gables table they were meant for his girl!

'Marilla! Bless me, child, where are you?' Angus Cuthbert called, striding into the kitchen with every expectation of finding her exactly where he thought she should be.

'I'm here, Papa,' she answered directly. 'Look, John Blythe has come with the first of the Strawberry A-'

'Marilla, Reverend MacAllister's wife would like the recipe for your lavender shortbread,' said Angus, nodding cordially at the youth at his door. 'Much obliged, young Blythe, give my regards to your parents, there's a good lad.'

It might have ended there. John might have walked back with only annoyance and bluster in his heart if the Reverend's wife had not entered the kitchen.

'Angus, I told you not to pester the poor child for the recipe now,' she said, walking over to where they gathered at the kitchen door. 'As if she hasn't enough to do at the kitchen table, now you'd have her writing at it too!'

She gave a small wink to Marilla in a sign of feminine solidarity. Marilla turned to her and smiled. Violet MacAllister had been like a second mother since her own had died, with a wonderful knack of swooping in and saving her just at the right time -and a terrible one, of flying away again to let someone else clean up the mess.

'John brought us Strawberry apples,' she said, with -the older woman noted- the tiniest hint of pride in the Blythe boy's good deed.

'You've been taken my catechism to heart, I see,' she said to John, with a wry smile, 'loving your neighbour as you love yourself. Why don't you join us for afternoon tea? There's a surprise in the parlour which I think you'll be just as glad to see as anyone. If that's alright?' she asked Marilla.

'Yes, you may join us, if your father can spare you, of course,' Angus said on Marilla's behalf. "You'll have to make two tarts now, Marilla," he continued, by way of further discouragement.

'Tarts! From Strawberry apples! For shame, Angus Cuthbert. We'll cut them up and serve them with cheese and pickle,' the minister's wife declared. 'A humble meal will suit the company.'

She did not stay and help the girl however, taking hold Angus Cuthbert's arm so that he could escort her back to the parlour.

Marilla worked on with a distracted eye as John washed up at the pump by the kitchen steps. When he came to her his hair and eyelashes seemed blacker and thicker than they already were. They had both left school some years ago and might have stayed longer had circumstances allowed. But with Marilla's mother and John's father enduring long illnesses their duty had been to their home. For Marilla the choice had not been difficult. She would rather have spent the last years with her mother than recite obscure passages in a small, stuffy classroom. John, however, had not bent to the will of Providence so meekly -though only Marilla knew it.

He was nineteen now, and had his life been in his own, would have set off long ago for places far from the Island. But his life was not, and Marilla could not say with an honest heart that she was very sad about it

'Help you slice 'em up, Rill' ?' John asked, grabbing the knife from her hand.

'Help yourself, I think you mean,' she said, looking for the smaller paring knife that lay within a drawer.

She hardly ever used it, preferring the larger one, and this knife's dullness and size made for slow and awkward work. Her thumb was cut and within John's hand just as quickly. Before she knew it he had placed it in his mouth, his tongue pressing hard against the wound to stop the flow of blood.

It was the only kiss John Blythe would ever give her.

Marilla could not decide what discomfited her more, the warm, soft feel of his mouth, or those brilliant blue eyes staring intently at her. But neither could she bring herself to say that she wanted him to stop. Because she did not. And her scrupulous nature forbade any falsehood, then and now.

'John...'

'Don't speak,' he mumbled with her thumb in his mouth, 'makes the blood flow faster.'

'You, sap!' she said, whisking her hand away and examining the cut.

'Sap, yourself!' John quipped, 'You taste like maple syrup.'

She rolled her eyes at him -her heart seemed to somersault too.

'Off to the parlour, with you, before you make me lose another finger!'

She did make a tart, and more of an effort with her appearance, and when Marilla walked into the parlour some forty minutes later the guests fell upon the food with gratitude.

Only two were not drawn to the table, lost in their own place of wonder, where appetites for the small delights of a home cooked meal were dwarfed by talk of big adventures.

Marilla was welcomed eagerly by the young men as they laid waste to the platter she offered them. Gideon MacAllister had always been popular and being three years older than John was used to having his rapt attention. John's regard for him only increased when Gideon left for a Sumatran mission for two years ago to experience the kinds of escapades John had only read about.

Marilla soon tired of Gideon's tales, she had heard them recounted just an hour before, and the customs and diets of heathen tribes held little to interest her. She returned to the kitchen, and as she looked at the window noticed her brother too had skulked away, and was peering into cabbages in search of grubs. Marilla began to think about the blooms she would pick for John to take to his mother by way of a thank you for the bushel of apples. And if Papa allowed her to take them there herself so much the better!

Happily Angus Cuthbert had no scruple just then to deny his girl her little wish. He was holed up in the sewing room (which since the death of his wife he had re-designated The Study) where he enjoyed an undisturbed suck on his pipe.

John and Marilla walked silently up the Green Gables drive. Marilla with her arms full of flowers and her heart with shy, quiet joy; John admiring the tall girl, lightly stepping next to him. He only noticed now -to his shame- that she had changed into her pretty print dress and wore tortoise-shell combs in her hair. Marilla Cuthbert mightn't have the furs and furbelows, as she called them, that other girls might prize, but she carried herself like a queen and to walk alone with her now was to feel like the king of the world.

They stopped at the gate and with a light heart Marilla did as she had not done for years, stepping upon its lowest rung as John undid the latch and sailing back as it opened to the lane.

'Do you want a turn, John?' she asked with uncharacteristic girlishness as she walked the gate back to its post.

'I want to go further than that old thing can take me,' he replied.

'Whatever do you mean?' Marilla said, handing John the posy so she could secure the gate.

'Gideon said I could go with him, Rilla, back to the mission at Banda-'

'Gideon says a lot of things, John. He said where they lived they put sugar on their meat, and peanuts on their boiled eggs! I wouldn't pay much mind to what Gideon says.'

'He said they always need lay-people to help with the building and teaching. I could do that, I know I could-'

'But could you do it to your father, John, to your mother?'

Could you do that to me? she wanted to add.

'I wouldn't go forever,' he said, more quietly, 'but I have to take this chance, Rilla. I thought you'd understand.'

He held out the flowers to her hoping in his boyish way that the girl could not help but come to his way of thinking, would understand him, would wait for him.

Marilla eyed them coldly.

Offering her the very flowers she picked herself while telling her he meant to leave for some hair-brained notion of adventure! Leave his duty, leave the Island, leave her... And she was expected to just wait for the next whim that might or might not bring him back! Was she always to be at the beck and call of men? She was not!

She snatched the flowers from him in a fury and struck them hard upon his head. A thorn from an old scotch rose snagging on her sliced thumb so that when the bunch connected little drops of her blood hit the collar of John's shirt.

Did he save the shirt later in hopeful memory -as a token of her fire and his love? He did not. He threw it in with the unlaundered clothes his mother would deal to on Monday, little thinking there would never be another chance to have such a keepsake from her.

It was Marilla who carried the scar. Her thumb healed quickly but the hurt to her pride festered. She received a note the week before Gideon MacAllister left on the SS Huronic -just two short lines which simply said, I won't be going. John Blythe. No word of a why, no way to know unless she asked, which she guessed was what he expected. Well, she wouldn't do what he expected. A man could wait on her for a change. It was a long lesson in waiting, and she was tired to the bone with it.

'Care to walk me to the graveyard, John?' Marilla asked him now. 'You could leave the platter on this stump and I'll take it in when I get back?'

'I'll get the latch' said with a small smile. And though Marilla did not stand upon the gate and sail free -the burden in her heart did.

'Been meaning to ask you about your orchard,' John said, as he tucked Marilla's arm in his. 'I was going to ask today but Sarah wouldn't have it. Talking business at a wedding -not the done thing, it seems.'

'Well, the wedding is done and the children are gone...' They both walked in silence for a time to let the thought sink in. 'So now's as good a time as any."

They made their way up the lane, Marilla Cuthbert quietly listening to John -the grand ambition that excited him now concerning George Fletcher's cider press. As Marilla asked the particulars, John Blythe admired the pretty tints of her dress. The vivid colour so unlike anything she had ever worn, he thought he hadn't seen her look so lovely for the longest time.

Too soon they arrived at the graveyard, where Anne's little posy still sat fresh and new upon Matthew's grave. The rows behind were not nearly so cared for. There was one, another pale coloured stone dedicated to a young man lost at sea, that seemed more green than grey. The name behind the ivy reading Gideon MacAllister.

...