Anne of the Island by L.
M.
Montgomery Read by Stephanie Poppins Chapter 21 Roses of Yesterday The fortnight Anne spent in Bolingbroke was a very pleasant one,
With a little undercurrent of vague pain and dissatisfaction running through it whenever she thought about Gilbert.
There was not,
However,
Much time to think about him.
Mount Holly,
The beautiful old Gordon homestead,
Was a very gay place,
Overrun by Phil's friends of both sexes.
There was quite a bewildering succession of drives,
Dances,
Picnics and boating parties all expressively lumped together by Phil under the head of Jamborees.
Alec and Alonso were so constantly on hand that Anne wondered if they ever did anything but dance attendance on that willower wisp that was Philippa.
They were both nice,
Manly fellows,
But Anne would not be drawn into any opinion as to which was the nicer.
"'And I depend so much on you to help me make up my mind which of them I should promise to marry,
' mourned Phil.
"'You must do that for yourself,
' said Anne.
"'You're quite expert at making up your mind as to whom other people should marry.
' "'Oh,
That's a very different thing.
' But the sweetest incident of Anne's sojourn at Bolingbroke was the visit to her birthplace,
The little shabby yellow house in an out-of-the-way street she had so often dreamed about.
She looked at it with delighted eyes as she and Phil turned in at the gate.
"'It's almost exactly as I've pictured it,
' she said.
"'There's no honeysuckle over the windows,
But there is a lilac tree by the gate,
And there are muslin curtains in the windows.
How glad I am it is still painted yellow!
' A very tall,
Very thin woman opened the door.
"'Yes,
The Shirleys lived here twenty years ago,
' she said in answer to Anne's question.
"'They had it rented.
I remember them.
They both died of fever at Onkt.
It was terrible sad.
They left a baby.
I guess it's dead long ago.
It was a sickly little thing.
Old Thomas and his wife took it as if they hadn't enough of their own.
' "'It didn't die,
' said Anne,
Smiling.
"'I was that baby.
' "'You don't say so.
Why,
You have grown!
' exclaimed the woman,
As if she were much surprised that Anne was not still a baby.
"'Come to look at you.
I see the resemblance.
You've complected like your pa.
He had red hair.
But you favour your ma with your eyes and your mouth.
She was a nice little thing.
My daughter went to school to her and was night crazy about her.
They was buried in the one grave,
And the school board put up a tombstone to them as a reward for faithful service.
Will you come in?
' "'Will you let me go all over the house?
' asked Anne eagerly.
"'Oh,
Yes,
If you like.
It won't take you long.
There ain't much of it.
I keep it my man to build a new kitchen,
But he ain't one of your hustlers.
The parlour's in there,
And there's two rooms upstairs.
Just proud about yourselves.
I've got a seed to the baby.
The east room was the one you were born in.
I remember your ma saying she loved to see the sunrise,
And I mind hearing you was born just as the sun was rising,
And its light on your face was the first thing your ma saw.
' Anne went up the narrow stairs and into that little east room with a full heart.
It was as a shrine to her.
Here her mother had dreamed the exquisite happy dreams of anticipated motherhood.
Here that red sunrise light had fallen over them both in the sacred hour of birth,
And here her mother had died.
Anne looked about her reverently,
Her eyes with tears.
It was for her one of the jewelled hours of life that gleam out radiantly forever in memory.
"'Just to think of it.
Mother was younger than I am now when I was born,
' she whispered.
When Anne went downstairs,
The lady of the house met her in the hall.
She held out a dusty little packet tied with faded blue ribbon.
"'Here's a bundle of old letters I found in that closet upstairs when I came here,
' she said.
"'I don't know what they are.
I never bothered to look in them,
But the address on the top one is Miss Bertha Willis,
And that was your ma's maiden name.
You can take them if you're keen to have them.
' "'Thank you,
Thank you,
' cried Anne,
Clasping the packet rapturously.
"'That was all that was in the house,
' said her hostess.
"'The furniture was all sold to pay the doctor's bills,
And Mrs Thomas got your ma's clothes and little things.
I reckon they didn't last long amongst that drove of Thomas youngsters.
They was destructive young animals as I mind them.
' "'I haven't one thing that belonged to my mother,
' said Anne chokerly.
"'I can never thank you enough for these letters.
' "'You're quite welcome,
Lords,
But your eyes is like your ma's.
She could just about talk with hers.
"'Your father was homely,
But awful nice.
I mind hearing folks say when they was married there was never two people more in love with each other.
Poor creatures,
They didn't live much longer.
"'But they was awful happy while they was alive,
And I suppose that counts for a good deal.
' "'Anne longed to get home to read her precious letters,
But she made one little pilgrimage first.
"'She went alone to the green corner of the old Bolingbroke Cemetery where her father and mother were buried,
And left on their grave the white flower she carried.
Then she hastened back to Mount Holly,
Shut herself up in her room,
And read the letters.
"'Some were written by her father,
And some by her mother.
There were not many,
Only a dozen in all,
For Walter and Bertha Shirley had not been often separated during their courtship.
"'The letters were yellow and faded and dim,
Blurred with the touch of passing years.
"'No profound words of wisdom were traced on the stained and wrinkled pages,
But only lines of love and trust.
"'The sweetness of forgotten things clung to them,
The far-off fond imaginings of those long-dead lovers.
"'Bertha Shirley had possessed the gift of writing letters which embodied the charming personality of the writer in words and thoughts that retained their beauty and fragrance after the lapse of time.
"'The letters were tender,
Intimate,
Sacred.
"'To Anne,
The sweetest of all was the one written after her birth to the father on a brief absence.
"'It was full of a proud young mother's accounts of baby,
Her cleverness,
Her brightness,
Her thousand sweetnesses.
"'I love her best when she is asleep and better still when she's awake,
' Bertha Shirley had written.
Probably it was the last sentence she had ever penned.
The end was very near for her then.
"'This has been the most beautiful day of my life,
' Anne said to Phil that night.
"'I found my mother and father.
Those letters have made them real to me.
I'm not an orphan any longer.
"'I feel as if I'd opened a book and found Roses of Yesterday,
Sweet and beloved,
Between its leaves.
'"
