The Reaper Whose Name Is Death

MATTHEW--Matthew--what is the matter? Matthew, are you sick?”

It was Marilla who spoke, alarm in every jerky word. Anne came through

the hall, her hands full of white narcissus,--it was long before Anne

could love the sight or odor of white narcissus again,--in time to hear

her and to see Matthew standing in the porch doorway, a folded paper

in his hand, and his face strangely drawn and gray. Anne dropped her

flowers and sprang across the kitchen to him at the same moment as

Marilla. They were both too late; before they could reach him Matthew

had fallen across the threshold.

“He’s fainted,” gasped Marilla. “Anne, run for Martin--quick, quick!

He’s at the barn.”

Martin, the hired man, who had just driven home from the post office,

started at once for the doctor, calling at Orchard Slope on his way to

send Mr. and Mrs. Barry over. Mrs. Lynde, who was there on an errand,

came too. They found Anne and Marilla distractedly trying to restore

Matthew to consciousness.

Mrs. Lynde pushed them gently aside, tried his pulse, and then laid her

ear over his heart. She looked at their anxious faces sorrowfully and

the tears came into her eyes.

“Oh, Marilla,” she said gravely. “I don’t think--we can do anything for

him.”

“Mrs. Lynde, you don’t think--you can’t think Matthew is--is--” Anne

could not say the dreadful word; she turned sick and pallid.

“Child, yes, I’m afraid of it. Look at his face. When you’ve seen that

look as often as I have you’ll know what it means.”

Anne looked at the still face and there beheld the seal of the Great

Presence.

When the doctor came he said that death had been instantaneous and

probably painless, caused in all likelihood by some sudden shock. The

secret of the shock was discovered to be in the paper Matthew had held

and which Martin had brought from the office that morning. It contained

an account of the failure of the Abbey Bank.

The news spread quickly through Avonlea, and all day friends and

neighbors thronged Green Gables and came and went on errands of kindness

for the dead and living. For the first time shy, quiet Matthew Cuthbert

was a person of central importance; the white majesty of death had

fallen on him and set him apart as one crowned.

When the calm night came softly down over Green Gables the old house was

hushed and tranquil. In the parlor lay Matthew Cuthbert in his coffin,

his long gray hair framing his placid face on which there was a little

kindly smile as if he but slept, dreaming pleasant dreams. There were

flowers about him--sweet old-fashioned flowers which his mother had

planted in the homestead garden in her bridal days and for which Matthew

had always had a secret, wordless love. Anne had gathered them and

brought them to him, her anguished, tearless eyes burning in her white

face. It was the last thing she could do for him.

The Barrys and Mrs. Lynde stayed with them that night. Diana, going to

the east gable, where Anne was standing at her window, said gently:

“Anne dear, would you like to have me sleep with you tonight?”

“Thank you, Diana.” Anne looked earnestly into her friend’s face. “I

think you won’t misunderstand me when I say I want to be alone. I’m not

afraid. I haven’t been alone one minute since it happened--and I want to

be. I want to be quite silent and quiet and try to realize it. I can’t

realize it. Half the time it seems to me that Matthew can’t be dead; and

the other half it seems as if he must have been dead for a long time and

I’ve had this horrible dull ache ever since.”

Diana did not quite understand. Marilla’s impassioned grief, breaking

all the bounds of natural reserve and lifelong habit in its stormy rush,

she could comprehend better than Anne’s tearless agony. But she went

away kindly, leaving Anne alone to keep her first vigil with sorrow.

Anne hoped that the tears would come in solitude. It seemed to her a

terrible thing that she could not shed a tear for Matthew, whom she had

loved so much and who had been so kind to her, Matthew who had walked

with her last evening at sunset and was now lying in the dim room below

with that awful peace on his brow. But no tears came at first, even when

she knelt by her window in the darkness and prayed, looking up to the

stars beyond the hills--no tears, only the same horrible dull ache of

misery that kept on aching until she fell asleep, worn out with the

day’s pain and excitement.

In the night she awakened, with the stillness and the darkness about

her, and the recollection of the day came over her like a wave of

sorrow. She could see Matthew’s face smiling at her as he had smiled

when they parted at the gate that last evening--she could hear his voice

saying, “My girl--my girl that I’m proud of.” Then the tears came and

Anne wept her heart out. Marilla heard her and crept in to comfort her.

“There--there--don’t cry so, dearie. It can’t bring him back.

It--it--isn’t right to cry so. I knew that today, but I couldn’t help

it then. He’d always been such a good, kind brother to me--but God knows

best.”

“Oh, just let me cry, Marilla,” sobbed Anne. “The tears don’t hurt me

like that ache did. Stay here for a little while with me and keep your

arm round me--so. I couldn’t have Diana stay, she’s good and kind and

sweet--but it’s not her sorrow--she’s outside of it and she couldn’t

come close enough to my heart to help me. It’s our sorrow--yours and

mine. Oh, Marilla, what will we do without him?”

“We’ve got each other, Anne. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t

here--if you’d never come. Oh, Anne, I know I’ve been kind of strict and

harsh with you maybe--but you mustn’t think I didn’t love you as well as

Matthew did, for all that. I want to tell you now when I can. It’s never

been easy for me to say things out of my heart, but at times like this

it’s easier. I love you as dear as if you were my own flesh and blood

and you’ve been my joy and comfort ever since you came to Green Gables.”

Two days afterwards they carried Matthew Cuthbert over his homestead

threshold and away from the fields he had tilled and the orchards he had

loved and the trees he had planted; and then Avonlea settled back to its

usual placidity and even at Green Gables affairs slipped into their old

groove and work was done and duties fulfilled with regularity as before,

although always with the aching sense of “loss in all familiar things.”

Anne, new to grief, thought it almost sad that it could be so--that

they _could_ go on in the old way without Matthew. She felt something like

shame and remorse when she discovered that the sunrises behind the firs

and the pale pink buds opening in the garden gave her the old inrush of

gladness when she saw them--that Diana’s visits were pleasant to her

and that Diana’s merry words and ways moved her to laughter and

smiles--that, in brief, the beautiful world of blossom and love and

friendship had lost none of its power to please her fancy and thrill her

heart, that life still called to her with many insistent voices.

“It seems like disloyalty to Matthew, somehow, to find pleasure in

these things now that he has gone,” she said wistfully to Mrs. Allan

one evening when they were together in the manse garden. “I miss him so

much--all the time--and yet, Mrs. Allan, the world and life seem very

beautiful and interesting to me for all. Today Diana said something

funny and I found myself laughing. I thought when it happened I could

never laugh again. And it somehow seems as if I oughtn’t to.”

“When Matthew was here he liked to hear you laugh and he liked to know

that you found pleasure in the pleasant things around you,” said Mrs.

Allan gently. “He is just away now; and he likes to know it just the

same. I am sure we should not shut our hearts against the healing

influences that nature offers us. But I can understand your feeling.

I think we all experience the same thing. We resent the thought that

anything can please us when someone we love is no longer here to share

the pleasure with us, and we almost feel as if we were unfaithful to our

sorrow when we find our interest in life returning to us.”

“I was down to the graveyard to plant a rosebush on Matthew’s grave

this afternoon,” said Anne dreamily. “I took a slip of the little white

Scotch rosebush his mother brought out from Scotland long ago; Matthew

always liked those roses the best--they were so small and sweet on

their thorny stems. It made me feel glad that I could plant it by his

grave--as if I were doing something that must please him in taking it

there to be near him. I hope he has roses like them in heaven. Perhaps

the souls of all those little white roses that he has loved so many

summers were all there to meet him. I must go home now. Marilla is all

alone and she gets lonely at twilight.”

“She will be lonelier still, I fear, when you go away again to college,”

said Mrs. Allan.

Anne did not reply; she said good night and went slowly back to Green

Gables. Marilla was sitting on the front door-steps and Anne sat down

beside her. The door was open behind them, held back by a big pink conch

shell with hints of sea sunsets in its smooth inner convolutions.

Anne gathered some sprays of pale-yellow honeysuckle and put them in

her hair. She liked the delicious hint of fragrance, as some aerial

benediction, above her every time she moved.

“Doctor Spencer was here while you were away,” Marilla said. “He says

that the specialist will be in town tomorrow and he insists that I must

go in and have my eyes examined. I suppose I’d better go and have it

over. I’ll be more than thankful if the man can give me the right kind

of glasses to suit my eyes. You won’t mind staying here alone while I’m

away, will you? Martin will have to drive me in and there’s ironing and

baking to do.”

“I shall be all right. Diana will come over for company for me. I shall

attend to the ironing and baking beautifully--you needn’t fear that I’ll

starch the handkerchiefs or flavor the cake with liniment.”

Marilla laughed.

“What a girl you were for making mistakes in them days, Anne. You were

always getting into scrapes. I did use to think you were possessed. Do

you mind the time you dyed your hair?”

“Yes, indeed. I shall never forget it,” smiled Anne, touching the heavy

braid of hair that was wound about her shapely head. “I laugh a little

now sometimes when I think what a worry my hair used to be to me--but I

don’t laugh _much_, because it was a very real trouble then. I did suffer

terribly over my hair and my freckles. My freckles are really gone; and

people are nice enough to tell me my hair is auburn now--all but Josie

Pye. She informed me yesterday that she really thought it was redder

than ever, or at least my black dress made it look redder, and she asked

me if people who had red hair ever got used to having it. Marilla, I’ve

almost decided to give up trying to like Josie Pye. I’ve made what I

would once have called a heroic effort to like her, but Josie Pye won’t

_be_ liked.”

“Josie is a Pye,” said Marilla sharply, “so she can’t help being

disagreeable. I suppose people of that kind serve some useful purpose in

society, but I must say I don’t know what it is any more than I know the

use of thistles. Is Josie going to teach?”

“No, she is going back to Queen’s next year. So are Moody Spurgeon and

Charlie Sloane. Jane and Ruby are going to teach and they have both got

schools--Jane at Newbridge and Ruby at some place up west.”

“Gilbert Blythe is going to teach too, isn’t he?”

“Yes”--briefly.

“What a nice-looking fellow he is,” said Marilla absently. “I saw him in

church last Sunday and he seemed so tall and manly. He looks a lot like

his father did at the same age. John Blythe was a nice boy. We used to

be real good friends, he and I. People called him my beau.”

Anne looked up with swift interest.

“Oh, Marilla--and what happened?--why didn’t you--”

“We had a quarrel. I wouldn’t forgive him when he asked me to. I meant

to, after awhile--but I was sulky and angry and I wanted to punish him

first. He never came back--the Blythes were all mighty independent. But

I always felt--rather sorry. I’ve always kind of wished I’d forgiven him

when I had the chance.”

“So you’ve had a bit of romance in your life, too,” said Anne softly.

“Yes, I suppose you might call it that. You wouldn’t think so to look at

me, would you? But you never can tell about people from their outsides.

Everybody has forgot about me and John. I’d forgotten myself. But it all

came back to me when I saw Gilbert last Sunday.”