Kilmeny of the Orchard
1910
Kilmeny Gordon cannot speak. She has lived her entire life in the shadow of some old family scandal, sheltered by an aunt and uncle on their Prince Edward Island farm, finding solace only in her violin and the abandoned orchard where she plays. When Eric Marshall arrives in Lindsay to fill in as a substitute teacher, he stumbles upon her there, one girl alone among the apple blossoms, her bow moving across the strings with a haunting, unspoken music. He is instantly captivated. Eric has never been resisted before: handsome, privileged, accustomed to easy victories, he finds in Kilmeny's silence something that refuses him, and wants it more. Their summer deepens into a strange and tender courtship: he learning to read her gestures, she tentatively trusting a world that has only ever shown her rejection. But Kilmeny knows what he does not: the world he will return to has no place for a silent girl from a scandal-touched past. The question becomes not whether he will leave, but whether she will let herself be loved. Montgomery writes with her signature wistfulness here, softer than Anne but aching in different ways, an orchard idyll that understands some people believe they are not made for the happiness they are offered.
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“The woods are never solitary--they are full of whispering, beckoning, friendly life. But the sea is a mighty soul, forever moaning of some great, unshareable sorrow, which shuts it up into itself for all eternity.””
— L. M. Montgomery
“More than ever at that instant did she long for speech - speech that would conceal and protect where dangerous silence might betray.””
— L. M. Montgomery
“I wonder if perfume could set a man drunk.””
— L. M. Montgomery
“The sunshine of a day in early spring, honey pale and honey sweet, was showering over the red brick buildings of Queenslea College, and the grounds about them, throwing through the bare, budding maples and elms, delicate, evasive etchings of gold and brown on the paths, and coaxing into life the daffodils that were peering greenly and perkily up under the windows of the co-eds' dressing-room.””
— L. M. Montgomery
“an old orchard, evidently long neglected and forsaken. But an orchard dies hard; and this one, which must have been a very delightful spot once, was delightful still, none the less so for the air of gentle melancholy which seemed to pervade it, the melancholy which invests all places that have once been the scenes of joy and pleasure and young life, and are so no longer, places where hearts have throbbed, and pulses thrilled, and eyes brightened, and merry voices echoed. The ghosts of these things seem to linger in their old haunts through many empty years.””
— L. M. Montgomery
“Eric turned abruptly away to hide his emption and on his face was a light as of one who sees a great glory widening and deepening down the vista of his future.””
— L. M. Montgomery
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Montgomery, L. M.. Kilmeny of the Orchard. Lex, lex-books.com/book/kilmeny-of-the-orchard-38eb2cc7-7221-4e17-97a6-16374ff04cc2.Montgomery, L. M. (1910). Kilmeny of the Orchard. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/kilmeny-of-the-orchard-38eb2cc7-7221-4e17-97a6-16374ff04cc2Montgomery, L. M.. Kilmeny of the Orchard. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/kilmeny-of-the-orchard-38eb2cc7-7221-4e17-97a6-16374ff04cc2.
