Verso Pages
These back-of-page seemingly random, out-of-order scrap pieces are drafts of Montgomery’s early short stories and poems. Some were already published when she drafted Anne in 1905 and 1906, and others were probably typed up and kept elsewhere. Some verso scrap sheets show early experiments: “A Baking of Gingersnaps” (1895) was her first published short story; she tests the pen names Maud Cavendish and Maud Eglinton. After Chapter 15, she started writing Anne front-to-back. Why did she switch from scrap pages to fresh sheets?
View an index of the verso contents here, or explore the full collection of Verso pages below:
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heaven’s awful near to hell, and at the last you tipped me in.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Felix, drawing his fine, narrow black brows together in a perplexed frown.
“No—and I wouldn’t want you to. You couldn’t understand unless you was an old man who had it in him once to do something and be a man, and just went and made himself a devilish fool. But there must be something in you that understands things,—all kinds of things—or you couldn’t put it all into music the way you do. How do you do it? How in—how do you do it, young Felix?”
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“I don’t know. But I play differently to different people. I don’t know how that is. When I’m alone with you I have to play one way; and when Rachel Janet comes over here to listen I feel quite another way—not so thrilling, but happier and lovelier. And that day when Jessie Blair was here listening I felt as if I want to laugh and sing—as if the violin wanted to laugh and sing all the time.”
The strange, golden gleam flashed through old Abel’s sunken eyes.
“God,” he muttered under his breath,” I believe the boy can get into other folks souls somehow, and play out what his soul sees there.”
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“What’s that you say?” inquired Fel Felix, petting his fiddle.
“Nothing—never mind—go on. Something lively now, young Felix. Stop probing into my soul, where you haven’t no business to be, you infant, and play me something out of your own—something sweet and happy and pure.”
“I’ll play the way I feel on sunshiny mornings, when the birds are singing and I forget I have to be a minister,” said Felix simply.
II
A witching, gurgling, mirthful strain, like mingled bird and brook song, floated out on the still air,
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beauty alone, or he would have been shocked and remorseful. He himself was beautiful. His figure was erect and youthful, despite his seventy years. His face was as mobile and charming as a woman’s, yet with all a man’s tried strength and firmness in it; and his dark blue eyes flashed with the brilliance of one and twenty; even his silken, silvery hair could not make an old man of him. He was worshipped by every one who knew him; and he was, in so far as mortal man may be, worthy of that worship.
“Old Abel is amusing himself with this violin again,” he thought.
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he is able to play on his fiddle.”
Mr. Leonard was on the doorstone. door-stone. The little black dog had frisked down to meet him, and the gray cat rubbed her head against his leg. Old Abel did not notice him; he was beating time with uplifted hand and smiling face to Felix’s music, and his eyes were young again, glowing with laughter and sheer happiness.
“Felix! What does this mean?”
The violin bow clattered from Felix’s hand upon the floor; he swung around and faced his grandfather. As he met the passion of grief and hurt in the old man’s eyes his own clouded with an agony
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of repentance.
“Grandfather—I’m sorry,” he cried brokenly.
“Now, now!” Old Abel had risen deprecatingly. “It’s all my fault, Mr. Leonard. Don’t you blame the boy. I coaxed him to play a bit for me. I didn’t feel fit to touch the fiddle yet myself—too soon after Friday, you see. So I coaxed him on—wouldn’t give him no peace till he played. It’s all my fault.”
“No,” said Felix, throwing back his head. His face was as white as marble, yet it seemed ablaze with desperate truth and scorn of Old Abel’s shielding lie. “No,
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he has disobeyed me, in the spirit if not in the letter. Do you not know it, Felix?”
“Yes, grandfather. I have done wrong—I’ve known that I was doing wrong every time I came. Forgive me, grandfather.”
“Felix, I forgive you. But I ask you to promise me, here and now, that you will never again, as long as you live, touch a violin.”
Dusky crimson rushed madly over the boy’s face. He gave a cry as if he had been lashed with a whip. Old Abel sprang to his feet.
“Don’t you ask such a promise of him, Mr. Leonard,” he cried furiously. “It’s a sin, that’s what it
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is. Man, man, what blinds you? You are blind. Can’t you see what is in the boy? His soul is full of music. It’ll torture him to death –or ^to worse—if you don’t let it have way.”
“There is a devil in such music,” said Mr. Leonard hotly.
“Ay, there may be, but don’t forget that there’s a Christ in it, too,” retorted Old Abel, in a low, tense tone.
Mr. Leonard looked shocked; he considered that Old Abel had uttered blasphemy. He turned away from him rebukingly.
“Felix, promise me.”
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There was no relenting in his face or tone. He was merciless in the use of the power he possessed over that young, loving spirit. Feal Felix understood that there was no escape; but his lips were very white as he said,
“I promise, grandfather.”
“Mr. Leonard drew a long breath of relief. He knew that promise would be kept. So did Old Abel. The latter crossed the floor and sullenly took the violin from Felix’s relaxed hand. Without a word or look he went into the little bedroom off the kitchen and shut the door with a slam of righteous indignation. But from its window he
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stealthily watched his visitors go away. Just as they entered on the maple path Mr. Leonard laid his hand on Felix’s head and looked down at him. Instantly the boy flung his arm up over the old man’s shoulder and smiled at him. In the smile look they exchanged there was boundless love and trust – ay, and good-fellowship. Old Abel’s scornful eyes again held the golden flash.
“How those two love each other!” he muttered enviously. “And how they torture each other”!
III
Mr. Leonard went to his study to pray when he got home. He knew
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that Felix had run for comforting to Rachel Janet Reid Andrews, the little thin, sweet-faced, rigid-lipped woman who kept house for them. Mr. Leonard knew that Rachel Janet would disapprove of his action as deeply as Old Abel had done. She would say nothing; she would only look to at him with reproachful eyes over the teacups at supper time. But Mr. Leonard believed he had done what was best and his conscience did not trouble him, though his heart did.
Thirteen years before this, his daughter Margaret had almost broken his that heart by marrying a man of whom he could not
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approve. Martin Moore was a professional violinist. He was a popular performer, though not in any sense a great one. He met the slim, golden-haired daughter of the manse at the house of a college friend she was visiting in Toronto, and fell straightaway in love with her. Margaret had married hi loved him with all her virginal heart in return, and married him, despite her father’s disapproval. It was not to Martin Moore’s profession that Mr. Leonard objected, but to the man himself. He knew that the violinist’s past life had not been such as became a
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suitor for Margaret Leonard; and his insight into character warned him that Martin Moore could never make any woman lastingly happy.
Margaret Leonard did not believe this. She married Martin Moore and lived one year in Paradise. Perhaps that atoned for the three bitter years which followed—that, and her child. At all events, she died as she had lived, loyal and uncomplaining. She died alone, for her husband was away on a concert tour, and her illness was so brief that her father had not time to