Anne of Windy Poplars (1936) by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Author:Lucy Maud Montgomery [Montgomery, Lucy Maud]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-11-25T22:00:00+00:00

“Oh, you don’t know what this means to me,” he said brokenly at last. “I hadn’t any picture of him. And I’m not like other folks … I can’t recall a face … I can’t see faces as most folks can in their mind. It’s been awful since the Little Fellow died… . I couldn’t even remember what he looked like. And now you’ve brought me this … after I was so rude to you. Sit down … sit down. I wish I could express my thanks in some way. I guess you’ve saved my reason … maybe my life. Oh, miss, isn’t it like him? You’d think he was going to speak. My dear Little Fellow! How am I going to live without him? I’ve nothing to live for now. First his mother … now him.”

“He was a dear little lad,” said Anne tenderly.

“That he was. Little Teddy … Theodore, his mother named him … her ‘gift of Gods’ she said he was. And he was so patient and never complained. Once he smiled up in my face and said, ‘Dad, I think you’ve been mistaken in one thing … just one. I guess there is a heaven, isn’t there? Isn’t there, Dad?’ I said to him, yes, there was… . God forgive me for ever trying to teach him anything else. He smiled again, contented like, and said, ‘Well, Dad, I’m going there and Mother and God are there, so I’ll be pretty well off. But I’m worried about you, Dad. You’ll be so awful lonesome without me. But just do the best you can and be polite to folks and come to us by and by.’ He made me promise I’d try, but when he was gone I couldn’t stand the blankness of it. I’d have gone mad if you hadn’t brought me this. It won’t be so hard now.”

He talked about his Little Fellow for some time, as if he found relief and pleasure in it. His reserve and gruffness seemed to have fallen from him like a garment. Finally Lewis produced the small faded photograph of himself and showed it to him.

“Have you ever seen anybody who looked like that, Mr. Armstrong?” asked Anne.

Mr. Armstrong peered at it in perplexity.

“It’s awful like the Little Fellow,” he said at last. “Whose might it be?”

“Mine,” said Lewis, “when I was seven years old. It was because of the strange resemblance to Teddy that Miss Shirley made me bring it to show you. I thought it possible that you and I or the Little Fellow might be some distant relation. My name is Lewis Allen and my father was George Allen. I was born in New Brunswick.”

James Armstrong shook his head. Then he said,

“What was your mother’s name?”

“Mary Gardiner.”

James Armstrong looked at him for a moment in silence.

“She was my half-sister,” he said at last. “I hardly knew her … never saw her but once. I was brought up in an uncle’s family after my father’s death. My mother married again and moved away.

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