Uncle Jem and Aunt Faith went to Green Gables for a week in August, and took their brood with them. Uncle Jem had so many pleasant memories of being a boy and visiting Aunt Marilla there and went back every year. He called it his annual pilgrimage. "There's no place sweeter on earth than Green Gables," he always said. And Cecilia was to go with them!
She'd been to Green Gables only a few times in her life and was a-flutter with excitement over this visit. And it would be heaven--pure heaven--to see Bertie every day. Trudy was a wonderful playmate but was lacking in imagination the sort of magic for spinning tales that Bertie had. And they were joined often by Merry, who didn't seem so much like a big girl at Green Gables, but one of them.
They had a wonderful time. The girls spent their days tramping around in the woods, dreaming in the White Way of Delight, and rowing about in the dory on the Lake of Shining Waters. They trysted in Hester Gray's garden and picked violets in Violet Vale. The playhouse in Idlewild was rebuilt and not once, but twice, Uncle Jem had led them on an expedition to Echo Lodge, where they beat on pots and pans and danced and sang to the silvery music of far-off echoes--that laughed and sang back to them. Cecilia was browned by the sun and wind so much so that she looked remarkably like her father. Her black hair even lightened to a sun-streaked, chocolate-y brown.
She'd never looked better or prettier or healthier. She was growing like a weed and though she had always been thin--she took after mother--she found it was harder and harder to zip up her dresses. But Auntie Di was a whiz with a needle and sewed her more--pretty cotton dresses with short sleeves and the most enchanting buttons they found on a string in the garret. One was even shaped like a cat!
There were heaps of cats at Green Gables, a whole tribe of them descended from some barn-cat of long ago. When Cecilia saw them playing in the fields, she remembered a verse from the Bible, about the descendents of Abraham. That barn cat's own decendents were "more numerous than the stars in the sky."
Oh, and Cecilia and Bertie were reading the Bible, all the way through! They were only to Exodus, though. But consequently, they decided to name all of the cats after Bible characters, thumbing through Chonicles to find the best names. Cecilia's favorite was Judah, a gray cat with a face like a pansy. Bertie's especial cat was Nehemiah, and Teddy called his Jehosophat, because of his tendency to jump high into the air and pounce on things unseen.
"I do like a cat," said Cecilia one dim afternoon in the hayloft, where they were surrounded by those aforementioned animals, who were leaping at dust-motes swirling around in the light that came through the slates. "I feel like I can learn something from a cat."
"I'm a dog person myself," Teddy said, twirling a stalk of hay for Jehosophat to pounce on. "Besides, what can you learn from a cat? Cats are lazy--and they never come when you call them."
Cecilia sighed. It was at times like these she missed Blythe the most. She wished he could have come to Green Gables, too--but Aunt Di said that seven children were enough, even for four adults to wrangle them. Blythe would have known what she meant. Cecilia lay back and composed a letter in her head--not to Father. Somehow, while she was away, at least, he had taken a backseat. The letter was to Blythe.
There was a party tonight, Bly. The Pyes threw it at their ancestral home. Isn't "ancestral home" a lovely phrase? Even though we live so far away from each other--you on the Island, and me in Montreal, we have the same ancestral home and that is Green Gables. When Bertie and Teddy are busy with chores (Auntie Di never lets me lift a hand because I am a guest), I sit in the parlor and look at the old pictures. You know how I love old pictures! I have conversations with all of the people in them. I tell Mrs. Rachel Lynde's photo all the gossip, and to Aunt Marilla I tell all my wrongdoings. I feel as though she would understand. There is an old framed portrait of an old man with a white beard--Uncle Matthew. I tell him all about the little things that are going on at Green Gables--I remember Grandmother Blythe saying he loved the place so. There is a snapshot of her, too, and on rainy days I pretend she is my playmate. Wouldn't you have liked to know Grandmother as a girl, Bly?
I did not like the Pyes' house. I have never seen a house I didn't like before, but that is probably because most the people I know live in darling houses. This house was a squat red house--the same color red as Red Apple Farm--but the roof was a brilliant blue. The colors separately would have been pretty, but together they fought horribly with each other. Rebecca Pye is exactly my age, and she showed me around the house with a very haughty air. She was especially fond of their cuckoo clock--on the hour, a moth-eaten little bird pops out and chirps weirdly. It was not one bit as dear as any of the Ingleside clocks. I did not like the Pyes' house, and I did not like the Pyes. Isn't it strange? 'Pie' spelled the usual way is a lovely, round, hungry word, but 'p-y-e' looks sly and smug. Just like the Pyes are.
I wish you had been here tonight. I have a new dress of rosy brown taffeta Aunt Di made me--it is just the shade that you say makes me look like a tea rose. I thought for sure--I hoped--that other people would notice--and that perhaps some of the boys would ask me to dance. But only Andrew Sloan did, and I can't abide his goggly eyes. And he had a runny nose and sniffed and snorted every time he talked to me. It was a terrible sound. Teddy asked me to dance once, but he is sweet on Rebecca Pye--he is!--and he danced most of the dances with her.
There's a crescent moon over the barn tonight and it's carrying good thoughts from me to you, to tip down into your dreams. If you have any dreams, write them in your dream book so that we can talk them over when I get back. I had the most fantastic one last night--I was in a jungle--and about to get eaten by a snake! I ran and ran and the snake snapped along behind me--but instead of being scared, I woke up laughing. It's impossible to have a nightmare at Green Gables, I think. This house is such a happy place. It's as if every voice that ever laughed and every happy soul that ever passed this way is still--here--somehow. Oh, Blythe! I think some of your poetry is rubbing off on me.
The two weeks passed in a blur, and then suddenly it was time to go back to Ingleside. Cecilia packed up the little room she shared with Bertie with a heavy heart--she loved Ingleside, but it was such a treat to spend time at Green Gables!
"There is something--mournful--about the end of a journey," she said pitifully to Bertie. "No matter how nice the home you are going back to is."
Bertie just nodded her eyes and nose a watery pink that clashed with her hair. There was a dearth of female playmates in Avonlea at that time. It wasn't fair that the Ingleside folk got to have Cecilia!
There were tearful goodbyes all around and Cecilia's own eyes were filled as she piled into Uncle Jem's car and drove back toward home. But that sadness soon disappated. She did miss Trudy, and Grandmother and Grandfather--and Blythe! And dear Red Apple Farm. She dropped her valise at the manse and let Aunt Nan kiss her.
"Bly and Joy are out somewhere. I don't know where--" But Cecilia had already flown out and down the path. She knew where Bly was, at least.
Someone had put flowers in the urns on the porch of Red Apple Farm. Not lovely, merry crimson geraniums like they had planned, but stiff pink-and-yellow zinnias. Cecilia hated zinnias. There were no poetry in zinnias. Still, the little house looked as dear to her as ever.
"Red Apple Farm, I'm home!" she cried, bursting through the door.
There was no one there, though the ruins of a Monopoly game were scattered across the hearth. Cecilia heard voices in the back room--she ran toward them--and--
Stopped, her rosebud mouth opening in surprise. Perched at her lovely dining room table, eating off of her china plates, was a jaunty, happy Bly--and Joy. Joy looked right at home in the little house--as if she had been born and raised there.
"What--is--she--doing here?" said Cecilia in a dangerous voice. Her black eyes looked like the sky at midnight she was so mad, and a hot flush of anger came to her cheeks. She really looked so well after her stay at Green Gables--and the anger made her look even more piquant. The truth was that Blythe had been so lonely without Cecilia--Trudy had been laid up with a summer cold--that he hadn't been able to resist bringing Joy to the house. And Joy might have told Cecilia so, except that she looked so pretty just then, all crimson and velvety black. So instead, Joy said,
" It's a very--sweet--house, Cecilia."
Joy made the word sweet sound so terrible that Cecilia wanted to cover her ears. Her look said archly, "Do you think Blythe would keep secrets from me?" Oh, Cecilia would not--she would not--deign to reply to Joyce. Instead she turned her fury on Blythe.
"Judas!" she cried. "Traitor! You swore you wouldn't tell--it was our secret! Oh, Blythe! You have betrayed me."
She looked like an Antigone, facing him, her little fists balled up into hard knots. Blythe felt something like an arrow pierce his heart--he hadn't meant to be bad--he did love Joy. She wasn't so bad when you got to know her--not a bit proud, really. He didn't know why she had taken against Cecilia. They were--both--such sweet girls. He hadn't seen any harm in it, and Joy had fallen as much in love with the little house as Cecilia and he himself were. He'd thought it would be a marvelous surprise, and a way for the two girls he loved to play together in harmony. But looking at Cecilia's stricken face now, Blythe knew that he had made a mistake, and felt ashamed.
"I'm sorry--" he began, but Cecilia stopped him with a harsh sound in her throat. Something between a sob and a cry. She fled through the house, gathering all of the little treasures she had brought there, and then left the two of them behind in it. She left the little house behind forever, and went to Rainbow Valley and sobbed.
"I shall never go back there," she wept, scattering her belongings on the grass. "It was the dearest house--made even dearer that it was a secret between me and Trudy and Bly. Now that Joy knows about it--the magic's gone out of it somehow."
A/N: Thanks for the reviews! Stormtrooper-Shrink, I'm glad you decided to delurk. I hope you read some of my other stories, too! Please? And there will be more about Una later on. Miri, yes, in the other family tree Joy and Bly had a little sister, Diana, but it was too confusing to keep them all straight so I edited her out. : )
I'll have another chapter up in the next day or so.