The Collected Works of Lucy Maud Montgomery: 20 Novels & 170+ Short Stories, Poems, Autobiography and Letters (Including Complete Anne Shirley Series, Chronicles of Avonlea & Emily Starr Trilogy). Lucy Maud Montgomery
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or a breath of fresh air. It is said she never smiled in her life… . I’ve never caught her at it, anyway, and when I look at her I find myself wondering what would happen to her face if she did smile. Pauline can’t even have a room to herself. She has to sleep in the same room with her mother and be up almost every hour of the night rubbing Mrs. Gibson’s back or giving her a pill or getting a hot-water bottle for her … hot, not lukewarm! … or changing her pillows or seeing what that mysterious noise is in the back yard. Mrs. Gibson does her sleeping in the afternoons and spends her nights devising tasks for Pauline.
“Yet nothing has ever made Pauline bitter. She is sweet and unselfish and patient and I am glad she has a dog to love. The only thing she has ever had her own way about is keeping that dog … and then only because there was a burglary somewhere in town and Mrs. Gibson thought it would be a protection. Pauline never dares to let her mother see how much she loves the dog. Mrs. Gibson hates him and complains of his bringing bones in but she never actually says he must go, for her own selfish reason.
“But at last I have a chance to give Pauline something and I’m going to do it. I’m going to give her a day, though it will mean giving up my next weekend at Green Gables.
“Tonight when I went in I could see that Pauline had been crying. Mrs. Gibson did not long leave me in doubt why.
“‘Pauline wants to go and leave me, Miss Shirley,’ she said. ‘Nice, grateful daughter I’ve got, haven’t I?’
“‘Only for a day, Ma,’ said Pauline, swallowing a sob and trying to smile.
“‘Only for a day,’ says she! ‘Well, you know what my days are like, Miss Shirley … every one knows what my days are like. But you don’t know … yet … Miss Shirley, and I hope you never will, how long a day can be when you are suffering.’
“I knew Mrs. Gibson didn’t suffer at all now, so I didn’t try to be sympathetic.
“‘I’d get some one to stay with you, of course, Ma,’ said Pauline. ‘You see,’ she explained to me, ‘my cousin Louisa is going to celebrate her silver wedding at White Sands next Saturday week and she wants me to go. I was her bridesmaid when she was married to Maurice Hilton. I would like to go so much if Ma would give her consent.’
“‘If I must die alone I must,’ said Mrs. Gibson. ‘I leave it to your conscience, Pauline.’
“I knew Pauline’s battle was lost the moment Mrs. Gibson left it to her conscience. Mrs. Gibson has got her way all her life by leaving things to people’s consciences. I’ve heard that years ago somebody wanted to marry Pauline and Mrs. Gibson prevented it by leaving it to her conscience.
“Pauline wiped her eyes, summoned up a piteous smile and picked up a dress she was making over … a hideous green and black plaid.
“‘Now don’t sulk, Pauline,’ said Mrs. Gibson. ‘I can’t abide people who sulk. And mind you put a collar on that dress. Would you believe it, Miss Shirley, she actually wanted to make the dress without a collar? She’d wear a low-necked dress, that one, if I’d let her.’
“I looked at poor Pauline with her slender little throat … which is rather plump and pretty yet … enclosed in a high, stiff-boned net collar.
“‘Collarless dresses are coming in,’ I said.
“‘Collarless dresses,’ said Mrs. Gibson, ‘are indecent.’
“(Item: — I was wearing a collarless dress.)
“‘Moreover,’ went on Mrs. Gibson, as if it were all of a piece. ‘I never liked Maurice Hilton. His mother was a Crockett. He never had any sense of decorum … always kissing his wife in the most unsuitable places!’
“(Are you sure you kiss me in suitable places, Gilbert? I’m afraid Mrs. Gibson would think the nape of the neck, for instance, most unsuitable.)
“‘But, Ma, you know that was the day she nearly escaped being trampled by Harvey Wither’s horse running amuck on the church green. It was only natural Maurice should feel a little excited.’
“‘Pauline, please don’t contradict me. I still think the church steps were an unsuitable place for any one to be kissed. But of course my opinions don’t matter to any one any longer. Of course every one wishes I was dead. Well, there’ll be room for me in the grave. I know what a burden I am to you. I might as well die. Nobody wants me.’
“‘Don’t say that, Ma,’ begged Pauline.
“‘I will say it. Here you are, determined to go to that silver wedding although you know I’m not willing.’
“‘Ma dear. I’m not going … I’d never think of going if you weren’t willing. Don’t excite yourself so… .’
“‘Oh, I can’t even have a little excitement, can’t I, to brighten my dull life? Surely you’re not going so soon, Miss Shirley?’
“I felt that if I stayed any longer I’d either go crazy or slap Mrs. Gibson’s nutcracker face. So I said I had exam papers to correct.
“‘Ah well, I suppose two old women like us are very poor company for a young girl,’ sighed Mrs. Gibson. ‘Pauline isn’t very cheerful … are you, Pauline? Not very cheerful. I don’t wonder Miss Shirley doesn’t want to stay long.’
“Pauline came out to the porch with me. The moon was shining down on her little garden and sparkling on the harbor. A soft, delightful wind was talking to a white apple tree. It was spring … spring … spring! Even Mrs. Gibson can’t stop plum trees from blooming. And Pauline’s soft gray-blue eyes were full of tears.
“‘I would like to go to Louie’s wedding so much,’ she said, with a long sigh of despairing resignation.
“‘You are going,’ I said.
“‘Oh, no, dear, I can’t go. Poor Ma will never consent. I’ll just put it out of my mind. Isn’t the moon beautiful tonight?’ she added, in a loud, cheerful tone.
“‘I’ve never heard of any good that came from moon gazing,’ called out Mrs. Gibson from the sitting-room. ‘Stop chirruping there, Pauline, and come in and get my red bedroom slippers with the fur round the tops for me. These shoes pinch my feet something terrible. But nobody cares how I suffer.’
“I felt that I didn’t care how much she suffered. Poor darling Pauline! But a day off is certainly coming to Pauline and she is going to have her silver wedding. I, Anne Shirley, have spoken it.
“I told Rebecca Dew and the widows all about it when I came home and we had such fun, thinking up all the lovely, insulting things I might have said to Mrs. Gibson. Aunt Kate does not think I will succeed in getting Mrs. Gibson to let Pauline go but Rebecca Dew has faith in me. ‘Anyhow, if you can’t, nobody can,’ she said.
“I was at supper recently with Mrs. Tom Pringle who wouldn’t take me to board. (Rebecca says I am the best paying boarder she ever heard of because I am invited out to supper so often.) I’m very glad she didn’t. She’s nice and purry and her pies praise her in the gates, but her home isn’t Windy Poplars and she doesn’t live in Spook’s Lane and she isn’t Aunt Kate and Aunt Chatty and Rebecca Dew. I love them all three and I’m going to board here next year and the year after. My chair is always called ‘Miss Shirley’s chair’ and Aunt Chatty tells me that when I’m not here Rebecca Dew sets my place at the table just the same, so it won’t seem so lonesome.’ Sometimes Aunt Chatty’s feelings have complicated matters a bit but she says she understands me now and knows I would never hurt her intentionally.
“Little Elizabeth and I go out for a walk twice a week now. Mrs. Campbell has agreed to that, but it must not be oftener and never on Sundays. Things are better for little Elizabeth in spring. Some sunshine gets into even that grim old house and outwardly it is even beautiful because of the dancing