Trailing Clouds of Glory
Moments of Anne growing-up
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But
trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home:
Green Gables occupied a place in the inmost sanctuary of Anne's soul. The gray-green house, nestled in birchwood and babbling brook, was an image of peace Anne carried with her through all her vagabond hours. In imagination she lived still in the apple-blossom room as she boarded on St. John's street, and that secret shrine kept her hearth fire burning. At Redmond, it was pleasant to daydream of Davy's antics or the achievements of her old pupils when remembering history dates for an exam ceased to hold her attention.
But even Avonlea was hardly the "land where things never changed." The rosy companionship of Patty's Place rendered her second winter break very lonesome, and returning that summer Anne witnessed red-rose Ruby Gillis dying before her eyes. Anne was not a stranger to death – Matthew's memory lived greenly in her heart – but the tragedy of young, hapless Ruby Gillis fighting an unconquerable foe was a dark lesson for Anne qui "voit la vie en rose." Priscilla, Stell, Phil and Aunt Jimsie, and Rusty and Joseph and the Sarah-cat were her "here and now" in a world that was not timeless.
And Gilbert Blythe? He was simply, always there, a pillar of her world.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.
So it shook – earthquake waves of violent destruction– when friendship blossomed prematurely into love. And what could she do but crush the unwonted blossom? It was a lonesome summer for Anne, redolent with bittersweet memories of her parents' brief precious love. In white tulle innocence beside Diana Barry in bridal glory, they walked together down a path destined to fork. Diana Wright would never be the same girl that she knew – did they ever truly meet on common ground? There was a veil that had always hung between their friendship, protective as the veil that swathed Diana's face. Love could easily penetrate the veil, but it blighted them from sharing the same visions.
Anne of Redmond could never be Anne of Avonlea again, but Diana was born and bred to be Diana of Avonlea.
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Trailing clouds of glory with a well-earned B.A. on her brow Anne returned to Avonlea once more. What aught the letters say to the matriarchs of Avonlea, who prized far higher than female education the glitter of a (disillusioning) diamond ring? Who could blame Anne for feeling lonesome while Diana cooed her firstborn and Mrs. Allan remembered her mother? Part of her had left Green Gables behind – had transcended Avonlea – at Redmond. Four years can mould a character deeply.
Perhaps in another world there was the life she could have lead with Roy. Did she regret it, the allure and romance of a glamourous Kingsport socialite?
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
The Snow Queen of her childhood had been severed by a gale in her absence. It left a void in her view from the east gable window, an irreplaceable constant. She missed it – all its memories and associations from her very first morning in her room at Green Gables-- as she knelt to pray in the stormy night of Gilbert's sickness. That which she had woven into her rose-hued world was not immortal. People changed. She changed. She could only touch the life of the moment, weaving it forward with a love that was tied to her roots.
What rebirth Pacifique brought her when he told her that Gilbert had "got de turn"!
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
