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# ANNE OF GREEN GABLES
By Lucy Maud Montgomery
CONTENTS
| | | —- | | CHAPTER I. Mrs. Rachel Lynde is Surprised | | CHAPTER II. Matthew Cuthbert is surprised | | CHAPTER III. Marilla Cuthbert is Surprised | | CHAPTER IV. Morning at Green Gables | | CHAPTER V. Anne’s History | | CHAPTER VI. Marilla Makes Up Her Mind | | CHAPTER VII. Anne Says Her Prayers | | CHAPTER VIII. Anne’s Bringing-up Is Begun | | CHAPTER IX. Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Properly Horrified | | CHAPTER X. Anne’s Apology | | CHAPTER XI. Anne’s Impressions of Sunday-School | | CHAPTER XII. A Solemn Vow and Promise | | CHAPTER XIII. The Delights of Anticipation | | CHAPTER XIV. Anne’s Confession | | CHAPTER XV. A Tempest in the School Teapot | | CHAPTER XVI. Diana Is Invited to Tea with Tragic Results | | CHAPTER XVII. A New Interest in Life | | CHAPTER XVIII. Anne to the Rescue | | CHAPTER XIX. A Concert a Catastrophe and a Confession | | CHAPTER XX. A Good Imagination Gone Wrong | | CHAPTER XXI. A New Departure in Flavorings | | CHAPTER XXII. Anne is Invited Out to Tea | | CHAPTER XXIII. Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honor | | CHAPTER XXIV. Miss Stacy and Her Pupils Get Up a Concert | | CHAPTER XXV. Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves | | CHAPTER XXVI. The Story Club Is Formed | | CHAPTER XXVII. Vanity and Vexation of Spirit | | CHAPTER XXVIII. An Unfortunate Lily Maid | | CHAPTER XXIX. An Epoch in Anne’s Life | | CHAPTER XXX. The Queens Class Is Organized | | CHAPTER XXXI. Where the Brook and River Meet | | CHAPTER XXXII. The Pass List Is Out | | CHAPTER XXXIII. The Hotel Concert | | CHAPTER XXXIV. A Queen’s Girl | | CHAPTER XXXV. The Winter at Queen’s | | CHAPTER XXXVI. The Glory and the Dream | | CHAPTER XXXVII. The Reaper Whose Name Is Death | | CHAPTER XXXVIII. The Bend in the road |
ANNE OF GREEN GABLES
CHAPTER I.
Mrs. Rachel Lynde is Surprised
MRS. Rachel Lynde lived
just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with
alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source
away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an
intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark
secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde’s Hollow it
was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past
Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for decency and decorum; it
probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a
sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if
she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had
ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.
There are plenty of people in Avonlea and out of it, who can attend closely to
their neighbor’s business by dint of neglecting their own; but Mrs.
Rachel Lynde was one of those capable creatures who can manage their own
concerns and those of other folks into the bargain. She was a notable
housewife; her work was always done and well done; she “ran” the
Sewing Circle, helped run the Sunday-school, and was the strongest prop of the
Church Aid Society and Foreign Missions Auxiliary. Yet with all this Mrs.
Rachel found abundant time to sit for hours at her kitchen window, knitting
“cotton warp” quilts—she had knitted sixteen of them, as
Avonlea housekeepers were wont to tell in awed voices—and keeping a sharp
eye on the main road that crossed the hollow and wound up the steep red hill
beyond. Since Avonlea occupied a little triangular peninsula jutting out into
the Gulf of St. Lawrence with water on two sides of it, anybody who went out of
it or into it had to pass over that hill road and so run the unseen gauntlet of
Mrs. Rachel’s all-seeing eye.
She was sitting there one afternoon in early June. The sun was coming in at the
window warm and bright; the orchard on the slope below the house was in a
bridal flush of pinky-white bloom, hummed over by a myriad of bees. Thomas
Lynde—a meek little man whom Avonlea people called “Rachel
Lynde’s husband”—was sowing his late turnip seed on the hill
field beyond the barn; and Matthew Cuthbert ought to have been sowing his on
the big red brook field away over by Green Gables. Mrs. Rachel knew that he
ought because she had heard him tell Peter Morrison the evening before in
William J. Blair’s store over at Carmody that he meant to sow his turnip
seed the next afternoon. Peter had asked him, of course, for Matthew Cuthbert
had never been known to volunteer information about anything in his whole life.
And yet here was Matthew Cuthbert, at half-past three on the afternoon of a
busy day, placidly driving over the hollow and up the hill; moreover, he wore a
white collar and his best suit of clothes, which was plain proof that he was
going out of Avonlea; and he had the buggy and the sorrel mare, which betokened
that he was going a considerable distance. Now, where was Matthew Cuthbert
going and why was he going there?
Had it been any other man in Avonlea, Mrs. Rachel, deftly putting this and that
together, might have given a pretty good guess as to both questions. But
Matthew so rarely went from home that it must be something pressing and unusual
which was taking him; he was the shyest man alive and hated to have to go among
strangers or to any place where he might have to talk. Matthew, dressed up with
a white collar and driving in a buggy, was something that didn’t happen
often. Mrs. Rachel, ponder as she might, could make nothing of it and her
afternoon’s enjoyment was spoiled.
“I’ll just step over to Green Gables after tea and find out from
Marilla where he’s gone and why,” the worthy woman finally
concluded. “He doesn’t generally go to town this time of year and
he visits; if he’d run out of turnip seed he wouldn’t
dress up and take the buggy to go for more; he wasn’t driving fast enough
to be going for a doctor. Yet something must have happened since last night to
start him off. I’m clean puzzled, that’s what, and I won’t
know a minute’s peace of mind or conscience until I know what has taken
Matthew Cuthbert out of Avonlea today.”
Accordingly after tea Mrs. Rachel set out; she had not far to go; the big,
rambling, orchard-embowered house where the Cuthberts lived was a scant quarter
of a mile up the road from Lynde’s Hollow. To be sure, the long lane made
it a good deal further. Matthew Cuthbert’s father, as shy and silent as
his son after him, had got as far away as he possibly could from his fellow men
without actually retreating into the woods when he founded his homestead. Green
Gables was built at the furthest edge of his cleared land and there it was to
this day, barely visible from the main road along which all the other Avonlea
houses were so sociably situated. Mrs. Rachel Lynde did not call living in such
a place at all.
“It’s just , that’s what,” she said as
she stepped along the deep-rutted, grassy lane bordered with wild rose bushes.
“It’s no wonder Matthew and Marilla are both a little odd, living
away back here by themselves. Trees aren’t much company, though dear
knows if they were there’d be enough of them. I’d ruther look at
people. To be sure, they seem contented enough; but then, I suppose,
they’re used to it. A body can get used to anything, even to being
hanged, as the Irishman said.”
With this Mrs. Rachel stepped out of the lane into the backyard of Green
Gables. Very green and neat and precise was that yard, set about on one side
with great patriarchal willows and the other with prim Lombardies. Not a stray
stick nor stone was to be seen, for Mrs. Rachel would have seen it if there had
been. Privately she was of the opinion that Marilla Cuthbert swept that yard
over as often as she swept her house. One could have eaten a meal off the
ground without over-brimming the proverbial peck of dirt.
Mrs. Rachel rapped smartly at the kitchen door and stepped in when bidden to do
so. The kitchen at Green Gables was a cheerful apartment—or would have
been cheerful if it had not been so painfully clean as to give it something of
the appearance of an unused parlor. Its windows looked east and west; through
the west one, looking out on the back yard, came a flood of mellow June
sunlight; but the east one, whence you got a glimpse of the bloom white
cherry-trees in the left orchard and nodding, slender birches down in the
hollow by the brook, was greened over by a tangle of vines. Here sat Marilla
Cuthbert, when she sat at all, always slightly distrustful of sunshine, which
seemed to her too dancing and irresponsible a thing for a world which was meant
to be taken seriously; and here she sat now, knitting, and the table behind her
was laid for supper.
Mrs. Rachel, before she had fairly closed the door, had taken a mental note of
everything that was on that table. There were three plates laid, so that
Marilla must be expecting some one home with Matthew to tea; but the dishes
were everyday dishes and there was only crab-apple preserves and one kind of
cake, so that the expected company could not be any particular company. Yet
what of Matthew’s white collar and the sorrel mare? Mrs. Rachel was
getting fairly dizzy with this unusual mystery about quiet, unmysterious Green
Gables.
“Good evening, Rachel,” Marilla said briskly. “This is a real
fine evening, isn’t it? Won’t you sit down? How are all your
folks?”
Something that for lack of any other name might be called friendship existed
and always had existed between Marilla Cuthbert and Mrs. Rachel, in spite
of—or perhaps because of—their dissimilarity.
Marilla was a tall, thin woman, with angles and without curves; her dark hair
showed some gray streaks and was always twisted up in a hard little knot behind
with two wire hairpins stuck aggressively through it. She looked like a woman
of narrow experience and rigid conscience, which she was; but there was a
saving something about her mouth which, if it had been ever so slightly
developed, might have been considered indicative of a sense of humor.
“We’re all pretty well,” said Mrs. Rachel. “I was kind
of afraid weren’t, though, when I saw Matthew starting off
today. I thought maybe he was going to the doctor’s.”
Marilla’s lips twitched understandingly. She had expected Mrs. Rachel up;
she had known that the sight of Matthew jaunting off so unaccountably would be
too much for her neighbor’s curiosity.
“Oh, no, I’m quite well although I had a bad headache
yesterday,” she said. “Matthew went to Bright River. We’re
getting a little boy from an orphan asylum in Nova Scotia and he’s coming
on the train tonight.”
If Marilla had said that Matthew had gone to Bright River to meet a kangaroo
from Australia Mrs. Rachel could not have been more astonished. She was
actually stricken dumb for five seconds. It was unsupposable that Marilla was
making fun of her, but Mrs. Rachel was almost forced to suppose it.
“Are you in earnest, Marilla?” she demanded when voice returned to
her.
“Yes, of course,” said Marilla, as if getting boys from orphan
asylums in Nova Scotia were part of the usual spring work on any well-regulated
Avonlea farm instead of being an unheard of innovation.
Mrs. Rachel felt that she had received a severe mental jolt. She thought in
exclamation points. A boy! Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of all people adopting
a boy! From an orphan asylum! Well, the world was certainly turning upside
down! She would be surprised at nothing after this! Nothing!
“What on earth put such a notion into your head?” she demanded
disapprovingly.
This had been done without her advice being asked, and must perforce be
disapproved.
“Well, we’ve been thinking about it for some time—all winter
in fact,” returned Marilla. “Mrs. Alexander Spencer was up here one
day before Christmas and she said she was going to get a little girl from the
asylum over in Hopeton in the spring. Her cousin lives there and Mrs. Spencer
has visited here and knows all about it. So Matthew and I have talked it over
off and on ever since. We thought we’d get a boy. Matthew is getting up
in years, you know—he’s sixty—and he isn’t so spry as
he once was. His heart troubles him a good deal. And you know how desperate
hard it’s got to be to get hired help. There’s never anybody to be
had but those stupid, half-grown little French boys; and as soon as you do get
one broke into your ways and taught something he’s up and off to the
lobster canneries or the States. At first Matthew suggested getting a Home boy.
But I said ‘no’ flat to that. ‘They may be all
right—I’m not saying they’re not—but no London street
Arabs for me,’ I said. ‘Give me a native born at least.
There’ll be a risk, no matter who we get. But I’ll feel easier in
my mind and sleep sounder at nights if we get a born Canadian.’ So in the
end we decided to ask Mrs. Spencer to pick us out one when she went over to get
her little girl. We heard last week she was going, so we sent her word by
Richard Spencer’s folks at Carmody to bring us a smart, likely boy of
about ten or eleven. We decided that would be the best age—old enough to
be of some use in doing chores right off and young enough to be trained up
proper. We mean to give him a good home and schooling. We had a telegram from
Mrs. Alexander Spencer today—the mail-man brought it from the
station—saying they were coming on the five-thirty train tonight. So
Matthew went to Bright River to meet him. Mrs. Spencer will drop him off there.
Of course she goes on to White Sands station herself.”
Mrs. Rachel prided herself on always speaking her mind; she proceeded to speak
it now, having adjusted her mental attitude to this amazing piece of news.
“Well, Marilla, I’ll just tell you plain that I think you’re
doing a mighty foolish thing—a risky thing, that’s what. You
don’t know what you’re getting. You’re bringing a strange
child into your house and home and you don’t know a single thing about
him nor what his disposition is like nor what sort of parents he had nor how
he’s likely to turn out. Why, it was only last week I read in the paper
how a man and his wife up west of the Island took a boy out of an orphan asylum
and he set fire to the house at night—set it ,
Marilla—and nearly burnt them to a crisp in their beds. And I know
another case where an adopted boy used to suck the eggs—they
couldn’t break him of it. If you had asked my advice in the
matter—which you didn’t do, Marilla—I’d have said for
mercy’s sake not to think of such a thing, that’s what.”
This Job’s comforting seemed neither to offend nor to alarm Marilla. She
knitted steadily on.
“I don’t deny there’s something in what you say, Rachel.
I’ve had some qualms myself. But Matthew was terrible set on it. I could
see that, so I gave in. It’s so seldom Matthew sets his mind on anything
that when he does I always feel it’s my duty to give in. And as for the
risk, there’s risks in pretty near everything a body does in this world.
There’s risks in people’s having children of their own if it comes
to that—they don’t always turn out well. And then Nova Scotia is
right close to the Island. It isn’t as if we were getting him from
England or the States. He can’t be much different from ourselves.”
“Well, I hope it will turn out all right,” said Mrs. Rachel in a
tone that plainly indicated her painful doubts. “Only don’t say I
didn’t warn you if he burns Green Gables down or puts strychnine in the
well—I heard of a case over in New Brunswick where an orphan asylum child
did that and the whole family died in fearful agonies. Only, it was a girl in
that instance.”
“Well, we’re not getting a girl,” said Marilla, as if
poisoning wells were a purely feminine accomplishment and not to be dreaded in
the case of a boy. “I’d never dream of taking a girl to bring up. I
wonder at Mrs. Alexander Spencer for doing it. But there,
wouldn’t shrink from adopting a whole orphan asylum if she took it into
her head.”
Mrs. Rachel would have liked to stay until Matthew came home with his imported
orphan. But reflecting that it would be a good two hours at least before his
arrival she concluded to go up the road to Robert Bell’s and tell the
news. It would certainly make a sensation second to none, and Mrs. Rachel
dearly loved to make a sensation. So she took herself away, somewhat to
Marilla’s relief, for the latter felt her doubts and fears reviving under
the influence of Mrs. Rachel’s pessimism.
“Well, of all things that ever were or will be!” ejaculated Mrs.
Rachel when she was safely out in the lane. “It does really seem as if I
must be dreaming. Well, I’m sorry for that poor young one and no mistake.
Matthew and Marilla don’t know anything about children and they’ll
expect him to be wiser and steadier that his own grandfather, if so be’s
he ever had a grandfather, which is doubtful. It seems uncanny to think of a
child at Green Gables somehow; there’s never been one there, for Matthew
and Marilla were grown up when the new house was built—if they ever
children, which is hard to believe when one looks at them. I
wouldn’t be in that orphan’s shoes for anything. My, but I pity
him, that’s what.”
So said Mrs. Rachel to the wild rose bushes out of the fulness of her heart;
but if she could have seen the child who was waiting patiently at the Bright
River station at that very moment her pity would have been still deeper and
more profound.
CHAPTER II.
Matthew Cuthbert is surprised
MATTHEW Cuthbert and the
sorrel mare jogged comfortably over the eight miles to Bright River. It was a
pretty road, running along between snug farmsteads, with now and again a bit of
balsamy fir wood to drive through or a hollow where wild plums hung out their
filmy bloom. The air was sweet with the breath of many apple orchards and the
meadows sloped away in the distance to horizon mists of pearl and purple; while
“The little birds sang as if it were
The one day of summer in all the year.”
Matthew enjoyed the drive after his own fashion, except during the moments when
he met women and had to nod to them—for in Prince Edward island you are
supposed to nod to all and sundry you meet on the road whether you know them or
not.
Matthew dreaded all women except Marilla and Mrs. Rachel; he had an
uncomfortable feeling that the mysterious creatures were secretly laughing at
him. He may have been quite right in thinking so, for he was an odd-looking
personage, with an ungainly figure and long iron-gray hair that touched his
stooping shoulders, and a full, soft brown beard which he had worn ever since
he was twenty. In fact, he had looked at twenty very much as he looked at
sixty, lacking a little of the grayness.
When he reached Bright River there was no sign of any train; he thought he was
too early, so he tied his horse in the yard of the small Bright River hotel and
went over to the station house. The long platform was almost deserted; the only
living creature in sight being a girl who was sitting on a pile of shingles at
the extreme end. Matthew, barely noting that it a girl, sidled past
her as quickly as possible without looking at her. Had he looked he could
hardly have failed to notice the tense rigidity and expectation of her attitude
and expression. She was sitting there waiting for something or somebody and,
since sitting and waiting was the only thing to do just then, she sat and
waited with all her might and main.
Matthew encountered the stationmaster locking up the ticket office preparatory
to going home for supper, and asked him if the five-thirty train would soon be
along.
“The five-thirty train has been in and gone half an hour ago,”
answered that brisk official. “But there was a passenger dropped off for
you—a little girl. She’s sitting out there on the shingles. I asked
her to go into the ladies’ waiting room, but she informed me gravely that
she preferred to stay outside. ‘There was more scope for
imagination,’ she said. She’s a case, I should say.”
“I’m not expecting a girl,” said Matthew blankly.
“It’s a boy I’ve come for. He should be here. Mrs. Alexander
Spencer was to bring him over from Nova Scotia for me.”
The stationmaster whistled.
“Guess there’s some mistake,” he said. “Mrs. Spencer
came off the train with that girl and gave her into my charge. Said you and
your sister were adopting her from an orphan asylum and that you would be along
for her presently. That’s all I know about it—and I haven’t
got any more orphans concealed hereabouts.”
“I don’t understand,” said Matthew helplessly, wishing that
Marilla was at hand to cope with the situation.
“Well, you’d better question the girl,” said the
station-master carelessly. “I dare say she’ll be able to
explain—she’s got a tongue of her own, that’s certain. Maybe
they were out of boys of the brand you wanted.”
He walked jauntily away, being hungry, and the unfortunate Matthew was left to
do that which was harder for him than bearding a lion in its den—walk up
to a girl—a strange girl—an orphan girl—and demand of her why
she wasn’t a boy. Matthew groaned in spirit as he turned about and
shuffled gently down the platform towards her.
She had been watching him ever since he had passed her and she had her eyes on
him now. Matthew was not looking at her and would not have seen what she was
really like if he had been, but an ordinary observer would have seen this: A
child of about eleven, garbed in a very short, very tight, very ugly dress of
yellowish-gray wincey. She wore a faded brown sailor hat and beneath the hat,
extending down her back, were two braids of very thick, decidedly red hair. Her
face was small, white and thin, also much freckled; her mouth was large and so
were her eyes, which looked green in some lights and moods and gray in others.
So far, the ordinary observer; an extraordinary observer might have seen that
the chin was very pointed and pronounced; that the big eyes were full of spirit
and vivacity; that the mouth was sweet-lipped and expressive; that the forehead
was broad and full; in short, our discerning extraordinary observer might have
concluded that no commonplace soul inhabited the body of this stray woman-child
of whom shy Matthew Cuthbert was so ludicrously afraid.
Matthew, however, was spared the ordeal of speaking first, for as soon as she
concluded that he was coming to her she stood up, grasping with one thin brown
hand the handle of a shabby, old-fashioned carpet-bag; the other she held out
to him.
“I suppose you are Mr. Matthew Cuthbert of Green Gables?” she said
in a peculiarly clear, sweet voice. “I’m very glad to see you. I
was beginning to be afraid you weren’t coming for me and I was imagining
all the things that might have happened to prevent you. I had made up my mind
that if you didn’t come for me to-night I’d go down the track to
that big wild cherry-tree at the bend, and climb up into it to stay all night.
I wouldn’t be a bit afraid, and it would be lovely to sleep in a wild
cherry-tree all white with bloom in the moonshine, don’t you think? You
could imagine you were dwelling in marble halls, couldn’t you? And I was
quite sure you would come for me in the morning, if you didn’t
to-night.”
Matthew had taken the scrawny little hand awkwardly in his; then and there he
decided what to do. He could not tell this child with the glowing eyes that
there had been a mistake; he would take her home and let Marilla do that. She
couldn’t be left at Bright River anyhow, no matter what mistake had been
made, so all questions and explanations might as well be deferred until he was
safely back at Green Gables.
“I’m sorry I was late,” he said shyly. “Come along. The
horse is over in the yard. Give me your bag.”
“Oh, I can carry it,” the child responded cheerfully. “It
isn’t heavy. I’ve got all my worldly goods in it, but it
isn’t heavy. And if it isn’t carried in just a certain way the
handle pulls out—so I’d better keep it because I know the exact
knack of it. It’s an extremely old carpet-bag. Oh, I’m very glad
you’ve come, even if it would have been nice to sleep in a wild
cherry-tree. We’ve got to drive a long piece, haven’t we? Mrs.
Spencer said it was eight miles. I’m glad because I love driving. Oh, it
seems so wonderful that I’m going to live with you and belong to you.
I’ve never belonged to anybody—not really. But the asylum was the
worst. I’ve only been in it four months, but that was enough. I
don’t suppose you ever were an orphan in an asylum, so you can’t
possibly understand what it is like. It’s worse than anything you could
imagine. Mrs. Spencer said it was wicked of me to talk like that, but I
didn’t mean to be wicked. It’s so easy to be wicked without knowing
it, isn’t it? They were good, you know—the asylum people. But there
is so little scope for the imagination in an asylum—only just in the
other orphans. It was pretty interesting to imagine things about them—to
imagine that perhaps the girl who sat next to you was really the daughter of a
belted earl, who had been stolen away from her parents in her infancy by a
cruel nurse who died before she could confess. I used to lie awake at nights
and imagine things like that, because I didn’t have time in the day. I
guess that’s why I’m so thin—I dreadful thin,
ain’t I? There isn’t a pick on my bones. I do love to imagine
I’m nice and plump, with dimples in my elbows.”
With this Matthew’s companion stopped talking, partly because she was out
of breath and partly because they had reached the buggy. Not another word did
she say until they had left the village and were driving down a steep little
hill, the road part of which had been cut so deeply into the soft soil, that
the banks, fringed with blooming wild cherry-trees and slim white birches, were
several feet above their heads.
The child put out her hand and broke off a branch of wild plum that brushed
against the side of the buggy.
“Isn’t that beautiful? What did that tree, leaning out from the
bank, all white and lacy, make you think of?” she asked.
“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew.
“Why, a bride, of course—a bride all in white with a lovely misty
veil. I’ve never seen one, but I can imagine what she would look like. I
don’t ever expect to be a bride myself. I’m so homely nobody will
ever want to marry me—unless it might be a foreign missionary. I suppose
a foreign missionary mightn’t be very particular. But I do hope that some
day I shall have a white dress. That is my highest ideal of earthly bliss. I
just love pretty clothes. And I’ve never had a pretty dress in my life
that I can remember—but of course it’s all the more to look forward
to, isn’t it? And then I can imagine that I’m dressed gorgeously.
This morning when I left the asylum I felt so ashamed because I had to wear
this horrid old wincey dress. All the orphans had to wear them, you know. A
merchant in Hopeton last winter donated three hundred yards of wincey to the
asylum. Some people said it was because he couldn’t sell it, but
I’d rather believe that it was out of the kindness of his heart,
wouldn’t you? When we got on the train I felt as if everybody must be
looking at me and pitying me. But I just went to work and imagined that I had
on the most beautiful pale blue silk dress—because when you
imagining you might as well imagine something worth while—and a big hat
all flowers and nodding plumes, and a gold watch, and kid gloves and boots. I
felt cheered up right away and I enjoyed my trip to the Island with all my
might. I wasn’t a bit sick coming over in the boat. Neither was Mrs.
Spencer although she generally is. She said she hadn’t time to get sick,
watching to see that I didn’t fall overboard. She said she never saw the
beat of me for prowling about. But if it kept her from being seasick it’s
a mercy I did prowl, isn’t it? And I wanted to see everything that was to
be seen on that boat, because I didn’t know whether I’d ever have
another opportunity. Oh, there are a lot more cherry-trees all in bloom! This
Island is the bloomiest place. I just love it already, and I’m so glad
I’m going to live here. I’ve always heard that Prince Edward Island
was the prettiest place in the world, and I used to imagine I was living here,
but I never really expected I would. It’s delightful when your
imaginations come true, isn’t it? But those red roads are so funny. When
we got into the train at Charlottetown and the red roads began to flash past I
asked Mrs. Spencer what made them red and she said she didn’t know and
for pity’s sake not to ask her any more questions. She said I must have
asked her a thousand already. I suppose I had, too, but how you going to find
out about things if you don’t ask questions? And what make
the roads red?”
“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew.
“Well, that is one of the things to find out sometime. Isn’t it
splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes
me feel glad to be alive—it’s such an interesting world. It
wouldn’t be half so interesting if we know all about everything, would
it? There’d be no scope for imagination then, would there? But am I
talking too much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I
didn’t talk? If you say so I’ll stop. I can when I make
up my mind to it, although it’s difficult.”
Matthew, much to his own surprise, was enjoying himself. Like most quiet folks
he liked talkative people when they were willing to do the talking themselves
and did not expect him to keep up his end of it. But he had never expected to
enjoy the society of a little girl. Women were bad enough in all conscience,
but little girls were worse. He detested the way they had of sidling past him
timidly, with sidewise glances, as if they expected him to gobble them up at a
mouthful if they ventured to say a word. That was the Avonlea type of well-bred
little girl. But this freckled witch was very different, and although he found
it rather difficult for his slower intelligence to keep up with her brisk
mental processes he thought that he “kind of liked her chatter.” So
he said as shyly as usual:
“Oh, you can talk as much as you like. I don’t mind.”
“Oh, I’m so glad. I know you and I are going to get along together
fine. It’s such a relief to talk when one wants to and not be told that
children should be seen and not heard. I’ve had that said to me a million
times if I have once. And people laugh at me because I use big words. But if
you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven’t
you?”
“Well now, that seems reasonable,” said Matthew.
“Mrs. Spencer said that my tongue must be hung in the middle. But it
isn’t—it’s firmly fastened at one end. Mrs. Spencer said your
place was named Green Gables. I asked her all about it. And she said there were
trees all around it. I was gladder than ever. I just love trees. And there
weren’t any at all about the asylum, only a few poor weeny-teeny things
out in front with little whitewashed cagey things about them. They just looked
like orphans themselves, those trees did. It used to make me want to cry to
look at them. I used to say to them, ‘Oh, you little things!
If you were out in a great big woods with other trees all around you and little
mosses and June bells growing over your roots and a brook not far away and
birds singing in you branches, you could grow, couldn’t you? But you
can’t where you are. I know just exactly how you feel, little
trees.’ I felt sorry to leave them behind this morning. You do get so
attached to things like that, don’t you? Is there a brook anywhere near
Green Gables? I forgot to ask Mrs. Spencer that.”
“Well now, yes, there’s one right below the house.”
“Fancy. It’s always been one of my dreams to live near a brook. I
never expected I would, though. Dreams don’t often come true, do they?
Wouldn’t it be nice if they did? But just now I feel pretty nearly
perfectly happy. I can’t feel exactly perfectly happy because—well,
what color would you call this?”
She twitched one of her long glossy braids over her thin shoulder and held it
up before Matthew’s eyes. Matthew was not used to deciding on the tints
of ladies’ tresses, but in this case there couldn’t be much doubt.
“It’s red, ain’t it?” he said.
The girl let the braid drop back with a sigh that seemed to come from her very
toes and to exhale forth all the sorrows of the ages.
“Yes, it’s red,” she said resignedly. “Now you see why
I can’t be perfectly happy. Nobody could who has red hair. I don’t
mind the other things so much—the freckles and the green eyes and my
skinniness. I can imagine them away. I can imagine that I have a beautiful
rose-leaf complexion and lovely starry violet eyes. But I imagine
that red hair away. I do my best. I think to myself, ‘Now my hair is a
glorious black, black as the raven’s wing.’ But all the time I
it is just plain red and it breaks my heart. It will be my lifelong
sorrow. I read of a girl once in a novel who had a lifelong sorrow but it
wasn’t red hair. Her hair was pure gold rippling back from her alabaster
brow. What is an alabaster brow? I never could find out. Can you tell
me?”
“Well now, I’m afraid I can’t,” said Matthew, who was
getting a little dizzy. He felt as he had once felt in his rash youth when
another boy had enticed him on the merry-go-round at a picnic.
“Well, whatever it was it must have been something nice because she was
divinely beautiful. Have you ever imagined what it must feel like to be
divinely beautiful?”
“Well now, no, I haven’t,” confessed Matthew ingenuously.
“I have, often. Which would you rather be if you had the
choice—divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically
good?”
“Well now, I—I don’t know exactly.”
“Neither do I. I can never decide. But it doesn’t make much real
difference for it isn’t likely I’ll ever be either. It’s
certain I’ll never be angelically good. Mrs. Spencer says—oh, Mr.
Cuthbert! Oh, Mr. Cuthbert!! Oh, Mr. Cuthbert!!!”
That was not what Mrs. Spencer had said; neither had the child tumbled out of
the buggy nor had Matthew done anything astonishing. They had simply rounded a
curve in the road and found themselves in the “Avenue.”
The “Avenue,” so called by the Newbridge people, was a stretch of
road four or five hundred yards long, completely arched over with huge,
wide-spreading apple-trees, planted years ago by an eccentric old farmer.
Overhead was one long canopy of snowy fragrant bloom. Below the boughs the air
was full of a purple twilight and far ahead a glimpse of painted sunset sky
shone like a great rose window at the end of a cathedral aisle.
Its beauty seemed to strike the child dumb. She leaned back in the buggy, her
thin hands clasped before her, her face lifted rapturously to the white
splendor above. Even when they had passed out and were driving down the long
slope to Newbridge she never moved or spoke. Still with rapt face she gazed
afar into the sunset west, with eyes that saw visions trooping splendidly
across that glowing background. Through Newbridge, a bustling little village
where dogs barked at them and small boys hooted and curious faces peered from
the windows, they drove, still in silence. When three more miles had dropped
away behind them the child had not spoken. She could keep silence, it was
evident, as energetically as she could talk.
“I guess you’re feeling pretty tired and hungry,” Matthew
ventured to say at last, accounting for her long visitation of dumbness with
the only reason he could think of. “But we haven’t very far to go
now—only another mile.”
She came out of her reverie with a deep sigh and looked at him with the dreamy
gaze of a soul that had been wondering afar, star-led.
“Oh, Mr. Cuthbert,” she whispered, “that place we came
through—that white place—what was it?”
“Well now, you must mean the Avenue,” said Matthew after a few
moments’ profound reflection. “It is a kind of pretty place.”
“Pretty? Oh, doesn’t seem the right word to use. Nor
beautiful, either. They don’t go far enough. Oh, it was
wonderful—wonderful. It’s the first thing I ever saw that
couldn’t be improved upon by imagination. It just satisfies me
here”—she put one hand on her breast—“it made a queer
funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache. Did you ever have an ache like that,
Mr. Cuthbert?”
“Well now, I just can’t recollect that I ever had.”
“I have it lots of time—whenever I see anything royally beautiful.
But they shouldn’t call that lovely place the Avenue. There is no meaning
in a name like that. They should call it—let me see—the White Way
of Delight. Isn’t that a nice imaginative name? When I don’t like
the name of a place or a person I always imagine a new one and always think of
them so. There was a girl at the asylum whose name was Hepzibah Jenkins, but I
always imagined her as Rosalia DeVere. Other people may call that place the
Avenue, but I shall always call it the White Way of Delight. Have we really
only another mile to go before we get home? I’m glad and I’m sorry.
I’m sorry because this drive has been so pleasant and I’m always
sorry when pleasant things end. Something still pleasanter may come after, but
you can never be sure. And it’s so often the case that it isn’t
pleasanter. That has been my experience anyhow. But I’m glad to think of
getting home. You see, I’ve never had a real home since I can remember.
It gives me that pleasant ache again just to think of coming to a really truly
home. Oh, isn’t that pretty!”
They had driven over the crest of a hill. Below them was a pond, looking almost
like a river so long and winding was it. A bridge spanned it midway and from
there to its lower end, where an amber-hued belt of sand-hills shut it in from
the dark blue gulf beyond, the water was a glory of many shifting
hues—the most spiritual shadings of crocus and rose and ethereal green,
with other elusive tintings for which no name has ever been found. Above the
bridge the pond ran up into fringing groves of fir and maple and lay all darkly
translucent in their wavering shadows. Here and there a wild plum leaned out
from the bank like a white-clad girl tip-toeing to her own reflection. From the
marsh at the head of the pond came the clear, mournfully-sweet chorus of the
frogs. There was a little gray house peering around a white apple orchard on a
slope beyond and, although it was not yet quite dark, a light was shining from
one of its windows.
“That’s Barry’s pond,” said Matthew.
“Oh, I don’t like that name, either. I shall call it—let me
see—the Lake of Shining Waters. Yes, that is the right name for it. I
know because of the thrill. When I hit on a name that suits exactly it gives me
a thrill. Do things ever give you a thrill?”
Matthew ruminated.
“Well now, yes. It always kind of gives me a thrill to see them ugly
white grubs that spade up in the cucumber beds. I hate the look of them.”
“Oh, I don’t think that can be exactly the same kind of a thrill.
Do you think it can? There doesn’t seem to be much connection between
grubs and lakes of shining waters, does there? But why do other people call it
Barry’s pond?”
“I reckon because Mr. Barry lives up there in that house. Orchard
Slope’s the name of his place. If it wasn’t for that big bush
behind it you could see Green Gables from here. But we have to go over the
bridge and round by the road, so it’s near half a mile further.”
“Has Mr. Barry any little girls? Well, not so very little
either—about my size.”
“He’s got one about eleven. Her name is Diana.”
“Oh!” with a long indrawing of breath. “What a perfectly
lovely name!”
“Well now, I dunno. There’s something dreadful heathenish about it,
seems to me. I’d ruther Jane or Mary or some sensible name like that. But
when Diana was born there was a schoolmaster boarding there and they gave him
the naming of her and he called her Diana.”
“I wish there had been a schoolmaster like that around when I was born,
then. Oh, here we are at the bridge. I’m going to shut my eyes tight.
I’m always afraid going over bridges. I can’t help imagining that
perhaps just as we get to the middle, they’ll crumple up like a
jack-knife and nip us. So I shut my eyes. But I always have to open them for
all when I think we’re getting near the middle. Because, you see, if the
bridge crumple up I’d want to it crumple. What a
jolly rumble it makes! I always like the rumble part of it. Isn’t it
splendid there are so many things to like in this world? There we’re
over. Now I’ll look back. Good night, dear Lake of Shining Waters. I
always say good night to the things I love, just as I would to people. I think
they like it. That water looks as if it was smiling at me.”
When they had driven up the further hill and around a corner Matthew said:
“We’re pretty near home now. That’s Green Gables
over—”
“Oh, don’t tell me,” she interrupted breathlessly, catching
at his partially raised arm and shutting her eyes that she might not see his
gesture. “Let me guess. I’m sure I’ll guess right.”
She opened her eyes and looked about her. They were on the crest of a hill. The
sun had set some time since, but the landscape was still clear in the mellow
afterlight. To the west a dark church spire rose up against a marigold sky.
Below was a little valley and beyond a long, gently-rising slope with snug
farmsteads scattered along it. From one to another the child’s eyes
darted, eager and wistful. At last they lingered on one away to the left, far
back from the road, dimly white with blossoming trees in the twilight of the
surrounding woods. Over it, in the stainless southwest sky, a great
crystal-white star was shining like a lamp of guidance and promise.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” she said, pointing.
Matthew slapped the reins on the sorrel’s back delightedly.
“Well now, you’ve guessed it! But I reckon Mrs. Spencer described
it so’s you could tell.”
“No, she didn’t—really she didn’t. All she said might
just as well have been about most of those other places. I hadn’t any
real idea what it looked like. But just as soon as I saw it I felt it was home.
Oh, it seems as if I must be in a dream. Do you know, my arm must be black and
blue from the elbow up, for I’ve pinched myself so many times today.
Every little while a horrible sickening feeling would come over me and
I’d be so afraid it was all a dream. Then I’d pinch myself to see
if it was real—until suddenly I remembered that even supposing it was
only a dream I’d better go on dreaming as long as I could; so I stopped
pinching. But it real and we’re nearly home.”
With a sigh of rapture she relapsed into silence. Matthew stirred uneasily. He
felt glad that it would be Marilla and not he who would have to tell this waif
of the world that the home she longed for was not to be hers after all. They
drove over Lynde’s Hollow, where it was already quite dark, but not so
dark that Mrs. Rachel could not see them from her window vantage, and up the
hill and into the long lane of Green Gables. By the time they arrived at the
house Matthew was shrinking from the approaching revelation with an energy he
did not understand. It was not of Marilla or himself he was thinking or of the
trouble this mistake was probably going to make for them, but of the
child’s disappointment. When he thought of that rapt light being quenched
in her eyes he had an uncomfortable feeling that he was going to assist at
murdering something—much the same feeling that came over him when he had
to kill a lamb or calf or any other innocent little creature.
The yard was quite dark as they turned into it and the poplar leaves were
rustling silkily all round it.
“Listen to the trees talking in their sleep,” she whispered, as he
lifted her to the ground. “What nice dreams they must have!”
Then, holding tightly to the carpet-bag which contained “all her worldly
goods,” she followed him into the house.
CHAPTER III.
Marilla Cuthbert is Surprised
MARILLA came briskly
forward as Matthew opened the door. But when her eyes fell on the odd little
figure in the stiff, ugly dress, with the long braids of red hair and the
eager, luminous eyes, she stopped short in amazement.
“Matthew Cuthbert, who’s that?” she ejaculated. “Where
is the boy?”
“There wasn’t any boy,” said Matthew wretchedly. “There
was only .”
He nodded at the child, remembering that he had never even asked her name.
“No boy! But there have been a boy,” insisted Marilla.
“We sent word to Mrs. Spencer to bring a boy.”
“Well, she didn’t. She brought . I asked the
station-master. And I had to bring her home. She couldn’t be left there,
no matter where the mistake had come in.”
“Well, this is a pretty piece of business!” ejaculated Marilla.
During this dialogue the child had remained silent, her eyes roving from one to
the other, all the animation fading out of her face. Suddenly she seemed to
grasp the full meaning of what had been said. Dropping her precious carpet-bag
she sprang forward a step and clasped her hands.
“You don’t want me!” she cried. “You don’t want
me because I’m not a boy! I might have expected it. Nobody ever did want
me. I might have known it was all too beautiful to last. I might have known
nobody really did want me. Oh, what shall I do? I’m going to burst into
tears!”
Burst into tears she did. Sitting down on a chair by the table, flinging her
arms out upon it, and burying her face in them, she proceeded to cry stormily.
Marilla and Matthew looked at each other deprecatingly across the stove.
Neither of them knew what to say or do. Finally Marilla stepped lamely into the
breach.
“Well, well, there’s no need to cry so about it.”
“Yes, there need!” The child raised her head quickly,
revealing a tear-stained face and trembling lips. “ would cry,
too, if you were an orphan and had come to a place you thought was going to be
home and found that they didn’t want you because you weren’t a boy.
Oh, this is the most thing that ever happened to me!”
Something like a reluctant smile, rather rusty from long disuse, mellowed
Marilla’s grim expression.
“Well, don’t cry any more. We’re not going to turn you
out-of-doors to-night. You’ll have to stay here until we investigate this
affair. What’s your name?”
The child hesitated for a moment.
“Will you please call me Cordelia?” she said eagerly.
“ you Cordelia? Is that your name?”
“No-o-o, it’s not exactly my name, but I would love to be called
Cordelia. It’s such a perfectly elegant name.”
“I don’t know what on earth you mean. If Cordelia isn’t your
name, what is?”
“Anne Shirley,” reluctantly faltered forth the owner of that name,
“but, oh, please do call me Cordelia. It can’t matter much to you
what you call me if I’m only going to be here a little while, can it? And
Anne is such an unromantic name.”
“Unromantic fiddlesticks!” said the unsympathetic Marilla.
“Anne is a real good plain sensible name. You’ve no need to be
ashamed of it.”
“Oh, I’m not ashamed of it,” explained Anne, “only I
like Cordelia better. I’ve always imagined that my name was
Cordelia—at least, I always have of late years. When I was young I used
to imagine it was Geraldine, but I like Cordelia better now. But if you call me
Anne please call me Anne spelled with an E.”
“What difference does it make how it’s spelled?” asked
Marilla with another rusty smile as she picked up the teapot.
“Oh, it makes a difference. It so much nicer.
When you hear a name pronounced can’t you always see it in your mind,
just as if it was printed out? I can; and A-n-n looks dreadful, but A-n-n-e
looks so much more distinguished. If you’ll only call me Anne spelled
with an E I shall try to reconcile myself to not being called Cordelia.”
“Very well, then, Anne spelled with an E, can you tell us how this
mistake came to be made? We sent word to Mrs. Spencer to bring us a boy. Were
there no boys at the asylum?”
“Oh, yes, there was an abundance of them. But Mrs. Spencer said
that you wanted a girl about eleven years old. And the matron
said she thought I would do. You don’t know how delighted I was. I
couldn’t sleep all last night for joy. Oh,” she added
reproachfully, turning to Matthew, “why didn’t you tell me at the
station that you didn’t want me and leave me there? If I hadn’t
seen the White Way of Delight and the Lake of Shining Waters it wouldn’t
be so hard.”
“What on earth does she mean?” demanded Marilla, staring at
Matthew.
“She—she’s just referring to some conversation we had on the
road,” said Matthew hastily. “I’m going out to put the mare
in, Marilla. Have tea ready when I come back.”
“Did Mrs. Spencer bring anybody over besides you?” continued
Marilla when Matthew had gone out.
“She brought Lily Jones for herself. Lily is only five years old and she
is very beautiful and had nut-brown hair. If I was very beautiful and had
nut-brown hair would you keep me?”
“No. We want a boy to help Matthew on the farm. A girl would be of no use
to us. Take off your hat. I’ll lay it and your bag on the hall
table.”
Anne took off her hat meekly. Matthew came back presently and they sat down to
supper. But Anne could not eat. In vain she nibbled at the bread and butter and
pecked at the crab-apple preserve out of the little scalloped glass dish by her
plate. She did not really make any headway at all.
“You’re not eating anything,” said Marilla sharply, eying her
as if it were a serious shortcoming. Anne sighed.
“I can’t. I’m in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you
are in the depths of despair?”
“I’ve never been in the depths of despair, so I can’t
say,” responded Marilla.
“Weren’t you? Well, did you ever try to you were in
the depths of despair?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then I don’t think you can understand what it’s like.
It’s a very uncomfortable feeling indeed. When you try to eat a lump
comes right up in your throat and you can’t swallow anything, not even if
it was a chocolate caramel. I had one chocolate caramel once two years ago and
it was simply delicious. I’ve often dreamed since then that I had a lot
of chocolate caramels, but I always wake up just when I’m going to eat
them. I do hope you won’t be offended because I can’t eat.
Everything is extremely nice, but still I cannot eat.”
“I guess she’s tired,” said Matthew, who hadn’t spoken
since his return from the barn. “Best put her to bed, Marilla.”
Marilla had been wondering where Anne should be put to bed. She had prepared a
couch in the kitchen chamber for the desired and expected boy. But, although it
was neat and clean, it did not seem quite the thing to put a girl there
somehow. But the spare room was out of the question for such a stray waif, so
there remained only the east gable room. Marilla lighted a candle and told Anne
to follow her, which Anne spiritlessly did, taking her hat and carpet-bag from
the hall table as she passed. The hall was fearsomely clean; the little gable
chamber in which she presently found herself seemed still cleaner.
Marilla set the candle on a three-legged, three-cornered table and turned down
the bedclothes.
“I suppose you have a nightgown?” she questioned.
Anne nodded.
“Yes, I have two. The matron of the asylum made them for me.
They’re fearfully skimpy. There is never enough to go around in an
asylum, so things are always skimpy—at least in a poor asylum like ours.
I hate skimpy night-dresses. But one can dream just as well in them as in
lovely trailing ones, with frills around the neck, that’s one
consolation.”
“Well, undress as quick as you can and go to bed. I’ll come back in
a few minutes for the candle. I daren’t trust you to put it out yourself.
You’d likely set the place on fire.”
When Marilla had gone Anne looked around her wistfully. The whitewashed walls
were so painfully bare and staring that she thought they must ache over their
own bareness. The floor was bare, too, except for a round braided mat in the
middle such as Anne had never seen before. In one corner was the bed, a high,
old-fashioned one, with four dark, low-turned posts. In the other corner was
the aforesaid three-corner table adorned with a fat, red velvet pin-cushion
hard enough to turn the point of the most adventurous pin. Above it hung a
little six-by-eight mirror. Midway between table and bed was the window, with
an icy white muslin frill over it, and opposite it was the wash-stand. The
whole apartment was of a rigidity not to be described in words, but which sent
a shiver to the very marrow of Anne’s bones. With a sob she hastily
discarded her garments, put on the skimpy nightgown and sprang into bed where
she burrowed face downward into the pillow and pulled the clothes over her
head. When Marilla came up for the light various skimpy articles of raiment
scattered most untidily over the floor and a certain tempestuous appearance of
the bed were the only indications of any presence save her own.
She deliberately picked up Anne’s clothes, placed them neatly on a prim
yellow chair, and then, taking up the candle, went over to the bed.
“Good night,” she said, a little awkwardly, but not unkindly.
Anne’s white face and big eyes appeared over the bedclothes with a
startling suddenness.
“How can you call it a night when you know it must be the
very worst night I’ve ever had?” she said reproachfully.
Then she dived down into invisibility again.
Marilla went slowly down to the kitchen and proceeded to wash the supper
dishes. Matthew was smoking—a sure sign of perturbation of mind. He
seldom smoked, for Marilla set her face against it as a filthy habit; but at
certain times and seasons he felt driven to it and them Marilla winked at the
practice, realizing that a mere man must have some vent for his emotions.
“Well, this is a pretty kettle of fish,” she said wrathfully.
“This is what comes of sending word instead of going ourselves. Richard
Spencer’s folks have twisted that message somehow. One of us will have to
drive over and see Mrs. Spencer tomorrow, that’s certain. This girl will
have to be sent back to the asylum.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Matthew reluctantly.
“You so! Don’t you know it?”
“Well now, she’s a real nice little thing, Marilla. It’s kind
of a pity to send her back when she’s so set on staying here.”
“Matthew Cuthbert, you don’t mean to say you think we ought to keep
her!”
Marilla’s astonishment could not have been greater if Matthew had
expressed a predilection for standing on his head.
“Well, now, no, I suppose not—not exactly,” stammered
Matthew, uncomfortably driven into a corner for his precise meaning. “I
suppose—we could hardly be expected to keep her.”
“I should say not. What good would she be to us?”
“We might be some good to her,” said Matthew suddenly and
unexpectedly.
“Matthew Cuthbert, I believe that child has bewitched you! I can see as
plain as plain that you want to keep her.”
“Well now, she’s a real interesting little thing,” persisted
Matthew. “You should have heard her talk coming from the station.”
“Oh, she can talk fast enough. I saw that at once. It’s nothing in
her favour, either. I don’t like children who have so much to say. I
don’t want an orphan girl and if I did she isn’t the style
I’d pick out. There’s something I don’t understand about her.
No, she’s got to be despatched straight-way back to where she came
from.”
“I could hire a French boy to help me,” said Matthew, “and
she’d be company for you.”
“I’m not suffering for company,” said Marilla shortly.
“And I’m not going to keep her.”
“Well now, it’s just as you say, of course, Marilla,” said
Matthew rising and putting his pipe away. “I’m going to bed.”
To bed went Matthew. And to bed, when she had put her dishes away, went
Marilla, frowning most resolutely. And up-stairs, in the east gable, a lonely,
heart-hungry, friendless child cried herself to sleep.
CHAPTER IV.
Morning at Green Gables
IT was broad daylight
when Anne awoke and sat up in bed, staring confusedly at the window through
which a flood of cheery sunshine was pouring and outside of which something
white and feathery waved across glimpses of blue sky.
For a moment she could not remember where she was. First came a delightful
thrill, as something very pleasant; then a horrible remembrance. This was Green
Gables and they didn’t want her because she wasn’t a boy!
But it was morning and, yes, it was a cherry-tree in full bloom outside of her
window. With a bound she was out of bed and across the floor. She pushed up the
sash—it went up stiffly and creakily, as if it hadn’t been opened
for a long time, which was the case; and it stuck so tight that nothing was
needed to hold it up.
Anne dropped on her knees and gazed out into the June morning, her eyes
glistening with delight. Oh, wasn’t it beautiful? Wasn’t it a
lovely place? Suppose she wasn’t really going to stay here! She would
imagine she was. There was scope for imagination here.
A huge cherry-tree grew outside, so close that its boughs tapped against the
house, and it was so thick-set with blossoms that hardly a leaf was to be seen.
On both sides of the house was a big orchard, one of apple-trees and one of
cherry-trees, also showered over with blossoms; and their grass was all
sprinkled with dandelions. In the garden below were lilac-trees purple with
flowers, and their dizzily sweet fragrance drifted up to the window on the
morning wind.
Below the garden a green field lush with clover sloped down to the hollow where
the brook ran and where scores of white birches grew, upspringing airily out of
an undergrowth suggestive of delightful possibilities in ferns and mosses and
woodsy things generally. Beyond it was a hill, green and feathery with spruce
and fir; there was a gap in it where the gray gable end of the little house she
had seen from the other side of the Lake of Shining Waters was visible.
Off to the left were the big barns and beyond them, away down over green,
low-sloping fields, was a sparkling blue glimpse of sea.
Anne’s beauty-loving eyes lingered on it all, taking everything greedily
in. She had looked on so many unlovely places in her life, poor child; but this
was as lovely as anything she had ever dreamed.
She knelt there, lost to everything but the loveliness around her, until she
was startled by a hand on her shoulder. Marilla had come in unheard by the
small dreamer.
“It’s time you were dressed,” she said curtly.
Marilla really did not know how to talk to the child, and her uncomfortable
ignorance made her crisp and curt when she did not mean to be.
Anne stood up and drew a long breath.
“Oh, isn’t it wonderful?” she said, waving her hand
comprehensively at the good world outside.
“It’s a big tree,” said Marilla, “and it blooms great,
but the fruit don’t amount to much never—small and wormy.”
“Oh, I don’t mean just the tree; of course it’s
lovely—yes, it’s lovely—it blooms as if it
meant it—but I meant everything, the garden and the orchard and the brook
and the woods, the whole big dear world. Don’t you feel as if you just
loved the world on a morning like this? And I can hear the brook laughing all
the way up here. Have you ever noticed what cheerful things brooks are?
They’re always laughing. Even in winter-time I’ve heard them under
the ice. I’m so glad there’s a brook near Green Gables. Perhaps you
think it doesn’t make any difference to me when you’re not going to
keep me, but it does. I shall always like to remember that there is a brook at
Green Gables even if I never see it again. If there wasn’t a brook
I’d be by the uncomfortable feeling that there ought to be
one. I’m not in the depths of despair this morning. I never can be in the
morning. Isn’t it a splendid thing that there are mornings? But I feel
very sad. I’ve just been imagining that it was really me you wanted after
all and that I was to stay here for ever and ever. It was a great comfort while
it lasted. But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you
have to stop and that hurts.”
“You’d better get dressed and come down-stairs and never mind your
imaginings,” said Marilla as soon as she could get a word in edgewise.
“Breakfast is waiting. Wash your face and comb your hair. Leave the
window up and turn your bedclothes back over the foot of the bed. Be as smart
as you can.”
Anne could evidently be smart to some purpose for she was down-stairs in ten
minutes’ time, with her clothes neatly on, her hair brushed and braided,
her face washed, and a comfortable consciousness pervading her soul that she
had fulfilled all Marilla’s requirements. As a matter of fact, however,
she had forgotten to turn back the bedclothes.
“I’m pretty hungry this morning,” she announced as she
slipped into the chair Marilla placed for her. “The world doesn’t
seem such a howling wilderness as it did last night. I’m so glad
it’s a sunshiny morning. But I like rainy mornings real well, too. All
sorts of mornings are interesting, don’t you think? You don’t know
what’s going to happen through the day, and there’s so much scope
for imagination. But I’m glad it’s not rainy today because
it’s easier to be cheerful and bear up under affliction on a sunshiny
day. I feel that I have a good deal to bear up under. It’s all very well
to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but
it’s not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?”
“For pity’s sake hold your tongue,” said Marilla. “You
talk entirely too much for a little girl.”
Thereupon Anne held her tongue so obediently and thoroughly that her continued
silence made Marilla rather nervous, as if in the presence of something not
exactly natural. Matthew also held his tongue,—but this was
natural,—so that the meal was a very silent one.
As it progressed Anne became more and more abstracted, eating mechanically,
with her big eyes fixed unswervingly and unseeingly on the sky outside the
window. This made Marilla more nervous than ever; she had an uncomfortable
feeling that while this odd child’s body might be there at the table her
spirit was far away in some remote airy cloudland, borne aloft on the wings of
imagination. Who would want such a child about the place?
Yet Matthew wished to keep her, of all unaccountable things! Marilla felt that
he wanted it just as much this morning as he had the night before, and that he
would go on wanting it. That was Matthew’s way—take a whim into his
head and cling to it with the most amazing silent persistency—a
persistency ten times more potent and effectual in its very silence than if he
had talked it out.
When the meal was ended Anne came out of her reverie and offered to wash the
dishes.
“Can you wash dishes right?” asked Marilla distrustfully.
“Pretty well. I’m better at looking after children, though.
I’ve had so much experience at that. It’s such a pity you
haven’t any here for me to look after.”
“I don’t feel as if I wanted any more children to look after than
I’ve got at present. problem enough in all
conscience. What’s to be done with you I don’t know. Matthew is a
most ridiculous man.”
“I think he’s lovely,” said Anne reproachfully. “He is
so very sympathetic. He didn’t mind how much I talked—he seemed to
like it. I felt that he was a kindred spirit as soon as ever I saw him.”
“You’re both queer enough, if that’s what you mean by kindred
spirits,” said Marilla with a sniff. “Yes, you may wash the dishes.
Take plenty of hot water, and be sure you dry them well. I’ve got enough
to attend to this morning for I’ll have to drive over to White Sands in
the afternoon and see Mrs. Spencer. You’ll come with me and we’ll
settle what’s to be done with you. After you’ve finished the dishes
go up-stairs and make your bed.”
Anne washed the dishes deftly enough, as Marilla who kept a sharp eye on the
process, discerned. Later on she made her bed less successfully, for she had
never learned the art of wrestling with a feather tick. But is was done somehow
and smoothed down; and then Marilla, to get rid of her, told her she might go
out-of-doors and amuse herself until dinner time.
Anne flew to the door, face alight, eyes glowing. On the very threshold she
stopped short, wheeled about, came back and sat down by the table, light and
glow as effectually blotted out as if some one had clapped an extinguisher on
her.
“What’s the matter now?” demanded Marilla.
“I don’t dare go out,” said Anne, in the tone of a martyr
relinquishing all earthly joys. “If I can’t stay here there is no
use in my loving Green Gables. And if I go out there and get acquainted with
all those trees and flowers and the orchard and the brook I’ll not be
able to help loving it. It’s hard enough now, so I won’t make it
any harder. I want to go out so much—everything seems to be calling to
me, ‘Anne, Anne, come out to us. Anne, Anne, we want a
playmate’—but it’s better not. There is no use in loving
things if you have to be torn from them, is there? And it’s so hard to
keep from loving things, isn’t it? That was why I was so glad when I
thought I was going to live here. I thought I’d have so many things to
love and nothing to hinder me. But that brief dream is over. I am resigned to
my fate now, so I don’t think I’ll go out for fear I’ll get
unresigned again. What is the name of that geranium on the window-sill,
please?”
“That’s the apple-scented geranium.”
“Oh, I don’t mean that sort of a name. I mean just a name you gave
it yourself. Didn’t you give it a name? May I give it one then? May I
call it—let me see—Bonny would do—may I call it Bonny while
I’m here? Oh, do let me!”
“Goodness, I don’t care. But where on earth is the sense of naming
a geranium?”
“Oh, I like things to have handles even if they are only geraniums. It
makes them seem more like people. How do you know but that it hurts a
geranium’s feelings just to be called a geranium and nothing else? You
wouldn’t like to be called nothing but a woman all the time. Yes, I shall
call it Bonny. I named that cherry-tree outside my bedroom window this morning.
I called it Snow Queen because it was so white. Of course, it won’t
always be in blossom, but one can imagine that it is, can’t one?”
“I never in all my life saw or heard anything to equal her,”
muttered Marilla, beating a retreat down to the cellar after potatoes.
“She is kind of interesting as Matthew says. I can feel already that
I’m wondering what on earth she’ll say next. She’ll be
casting a spell over me, too. She’s cast it over Matthew. That look he
gave me when he went out said everything he said or hinted last night over
again. I wish he was like other men and would talk things out. A body could
answer back then and argue him into reason. But what’s to be done with a
man who just ”
Anne had relapsed into reverie, with her chin in her hands and her eyes on the
sky, when Marilla returned from her cellar pilgrimage. There Marilla left her
until the early dinner was on the table.
“I suppose I can have the mare and buggy this afternoon, Matthew?”
said Marilla.
Matthew nodded and looked wistfully at Anne. Marilla intercepted the look and
said grimly:
“I’m going to drive over to White Sands and settle this thing.
I’ll take Anne with me and Mrs. Spencer will probably make arrangements
to send her back to Nova Scotia at once. I’ll set your tea out for you
and I’ll be home in time to milk the cows.”
Still Matthew said nothing and Marilla had a sense of having wasted words and
breath. There is nothing more aggravating than a man who won’t talk
back—unless it is a woman who won’t.
Matthew hitched the sorrel into the buggy in due time and Marilla and Anne set
off. Matthew opened the yard gate for them and as they drove slowly through, he
said, to nobody in particular as it seemed:
“Little Jerry Buote from the Creek was here this morning, and I told him
I guessed I’d hire him for the summer.”
Marilla made no reply, but she hit the unlucky sorrel such a vicious clip with
the whip that the fat mare, unused to such treatment, whizzed indignantly down
the lane at an alarming pace. Marilla looked back once as the buggy bounced
along and saw that aggravating Matthew leaning over the gate, looking wistfully
after them.
CHAPTER V.
Anne’s History
DO you know,” said
Anne confidentially, “I’ve made up my mind to enjoy this drive.
It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you
make up your mind firmly that you will. Of course, you must make it up
. I am not going to think about going back to the asylum while
we’re having our drive. I’m just going to think about the drive.
Oh, look, there’s one little early wild rose out! Isn’t it lovely?
Don’t you think it must be glad to be a rose? Wouldn’t it be nice
if roses could talk? I’m sure they could tell us such lovely things. And
isn’t pink the most bewitching color in the world? I love it, but I
can’t wear it. Redheaded people can’t wear pink, not even in
imagination. Did you ever know of anybody whose hair was red when she was
young, but got to be another color when she grew up?”
“No, I don’t know as I ever did,” said Marilla mercilessly,
“and I shouldn’t think it likely to happen in your case
either.”
Anne sighed.
“Well, that is another hope gone. ‘My life is a perfect graveyard
of buried hopes.’ That’s a sentence I read in a book once, and I
say it over to comfort myself whenever I’m disappointed in
anything.”
“I don’t see where the comforting comes in myself,” said
Marilla.
“Why, because it sounds so nice and romantic, just as if I were a heroine
in a book, you know. I am so fond of romantic things, and a graveyard full of
buried hopes is about as romantic a thing as one can imagine isn’t it?
I’m rather glad I have one. Are we going across the Lake of Shining
Waters today?”
“We’re not going over Barry’s pond, if that’s what you
mean by your Lake of Shining Waters. We’re going by the shore
road.”
“Shore road sounds nice,” said Anne dreamily. “Is it as nice
as it sounds? Just when you said ‘shore road’ I saw it in a picture
in my mind, as quick as that! And White Sands is a pretty name, too; but I
don’t like it as well as Avonlea. Avonlea is a lovely name. It just
sounds like music. How far is it to White Sands?”
“It’s five miles; and as you’re evidently bent on talking you
might as well talk to some purpose by telling me what you know about
yourself.”
“Oh, what I about myself isn’t really worth
telling,” said Anne eagerly. “If you’ll only let me tell you
what I about myself you’ll think it ever so much more
interesting.”
“No, I don’t want any of your imaginings. Just you stick to bald
facts. Begin at the beginning. Where were you born and how old are you?”
“I was eleven last March,” said Anne, resigning herself to bald
facts with a little sigh. “And I was born in Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia. My
father’s name was Walter Shirley, and he was a teacher in the Bolingbroke
High School. My mother’s name was Bertha Shirley. Aren’t Walter and
Bertha lovely names? I’m so glad my parents had nice names. It would be a
real disgrace to have a father named—well, say Jedediah, wouldn’t
it?”
“I guess it doesn’t matter what a person’s name is as long as
he behaves himself,” said Marilla, feeling herself called upon to
inculcate a good and useful moral.
“Well, I don’t know.” Anne looked thoughtful. “I read
in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but
I’ve never been able to believe it. I don’t believe a rose
be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage. I
suppose my father could have been a good man even if he had been called
Jedediah; but I’m sure it would have been a cross. Well, my mother was a
teacher in the High school, too, but when she married father she gave up
teaching, of course. A husband was enough responsibility. Mrs. Thomas said that
they were a pair of babies and as poor as church mice. They went to live in a
weeny-teeny little yellow house in Bolingbroke. I’ve never seen that
house, but I’ve imagined it thousands of times. I think it must have had
honeysuckle over the parlor window and lilacs in the front yard and lilies of
the valley just inside the gate. Yes, and muslin curtains in all the windows.
Muslin curtains give a house such an air. I was born in that house. Mrs. Thomas
said I was the homeliest baby she ever saw, I was so scrawny and tiny and
nothing but eyes, but that mother thought I was perfectly beautiful. I should
think a mother would be a better judge than a poor woman who came in to scrub,
wouldn’t you? I’m glad she was satisfied with me anyhow, I would
feel so sad if I thought I was a disappointment to her—because she
didn’t live very long after that, you see. She died of fever when I was
just three months old. I do wish she’d lived long enough for me to
remember calling her mother. I think it would be so sweet to say
‘mother,’ don’t you? And father died four days afterwards
from fever too. That left me an orphan and folks were at their wits’ end,
so Mrs. Thomas said, what to do with me. You see, nobody wanted me even then.
It seems to be my fate. Father and mother had both come from places far away
and it was well known they hadn’t any relatives living. Finally Mrs.
Thomas said she’d take me, though she was poor and had a drunken husband.
She brought me up by hand. Do you know if there is anything in being brought up
by hand that ought to make people who are brought up that way better than other
people? Because whenever I was naughty Mrs. Thomas would ask me how I could be
such a bad girl when she had brought me up by hand—reproachful-like.
“Mr. and Mrs. Thomas moved away from Bolingbroke to Marysville, and I
lived with them until I was eight years old. I helped look after the Thomas
children—there were four of them younger than me—and I can tell you
they took a lot of looking after. Then Mr. Thomas was killed falling under a
train and his mother offered to take Mrs. Thomas and the children, but she
didn’t want me. Mrs. Thomas was at wits’ end, so she
said, what to do with me. Then Mrs. Hammond from up the river came down and
said she’d take me, seeing I was handy with children, and I went up the
river to live with her in a little clearing among the stumps. It was a very
lonesome place. I’m sure I could never have lived there if I hadn’t
had an imagination. Mr. Hammond worked a little sawmill up there, and Mrs.
Hammond had eight children. She had twins three times. I like babies in
moderation, but twins three times in succession is . I told Mrs.
Hammond so firmly, when the last pair came. I used to get so dreadfully tired
carrying them about.
“I lived up river with Mrs. Hammond over two years, and then Mr. Hammond
died and Mrs. Hammond broke up housekeeping. She divided her children among her
relatives and went to the States. I had to go to the asylum at Hopeton, because
nobody would take me. They didn’t want me at the asylum, either; they
said they were over-crowded as it was. But they had to take me and I was there
four months until Mrs. Spencer came.”
Anne finished up with another sigh, of relief this time. Evidently she did not
like talking about her experiences in a world that had not wanted her.
“Did you ever go to school?” demanded Marilla, turning the sorrel
mare down the shore road.
“Not a great deal. I went a little the last year I stayed with Mrs.
Thomas. When I went up river we were so far from a school that I couldn’t
walk it in winter and there was a vacation in summer, so I could only go in the
spring and fall. But of course I went while I was at the asylum. I can read
pretty well and I know ever so many pieces of poetry off by
heart—‘The Battle of Hohenlinden’ and ‘Edinburgh after
Flodden,’ and ‘Bingen of the Rhine,’ and most of the
‘Lady of the Lake’ and most of ‘The Seasons’ by James
Thompson. Don’t you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up
and down your back? There is a piece in the Fifth Reader—‘The
Downfall of Poland’—that is just full of thrills. Of course, I
wasn’t in the Fifth Reader—I was only in the Fourth—but the
big girls used to lend me theirs to read.”
“Were those women—Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Hammond—good to
you?” asked Marilla, looking at Anne out of the corner of her eye.
“O-o-o-h,” faltered Anne. Her sensitive little face suddenly
flushed scarlet and embarrassment sat on her brow. “Oh, they
to be—I know they meant to be just as good and kind as possible. And when
people mean to be good to you, you don’t mind very much when
they’re not quite—always. They had a good deal to worry them, you
know. It’s a very trying to have a drunken husband, you see; and it must
be very trying to have twins three times in succession, don’t you think?
But I feel sure they meant to be good to me.”
Marilla asked no more questions. Anne gave herself up to a silent rapture over
the shore road and Marilla guided the sorrel abstractedly while she pondered
deeply. Pity was suddenly stirring in her heart for the child. What a starved,
unloved life she had had—a life of drudgery and poverty and neglect; for
Marilla was shrewd enough to read between the lines of Anne’s history and
divine the truth. No wonder she had been so delighted at the prospect of a real
home. It was a pity she had to be sent back. What if she, Marilla, should
indulge Matthew’s unaccountable whim and let her stay? He was set on it;
and the child seemed a nice, teachable little thing.
“She’s got too much to say,” thought Marilla, “but she
might be trained out of that. And there’s nothing rude or slangy in what
she does say. She’s ladylike. It’s likely her people were nice
folks.”
The shore road was “woodsy and wild and lonesome.” On the right
hand, scrub firs, their spirits quite unbroken by long years of tussle with the
gulf winds, grew thickly. On the left were the steep red sandstone cliffs, so
near the track in places that a mare of less steadiness than the sorrel might
have tried the nerves of the people behind her. Down at the base of the cliffs
were heaps of surf-worn rocks or little sandy coves inlaid with pebbles as with
ocean jewels; beyond lay the sea, shimmering and blue, and over it soared the
gulls, their pinions flashing silvery in the sunlight.
“Isn’t the sea wonderful?” said Anne, rousing from a long,
wide-eyed silence. “Once, when I lived in Marysville, Mr. Thomas hired an
express wagon and took us all to spend the day at the shore ten miles away. I
enjoyed every moment of that day, even if I had to look after the children all
the time. I lived it over in happy dreams for years. But this shore is nicer
than the Marysville shore. Aren’t those gulls splendid? Would you like to
be a gull? I think I would—that is, if I couldn’t be a human girl.
Don’t you think it would be nice to wake up at sunrise and swoop down
over the water and away out over that lovely blue all day; and then at night to
fly back to one’s nest? Oh, I can just imagine myself doing it. What big
house is that just ahead, please?”
“That’s the White Sands Hotel. Mr. Kirke runs it, but the season
hasn’t begun yet. There are heaps of Americans come there for the summer.
They think this shore is just about right.”
“I was afraid it might be Mrs. Spencer’s place,” said Anne
mournfully. “I don’t want to get there. Somehow, it will seem like
the end of everything.”
CHAPTER VI.
Marilla Makes Up Her Mind
GET there they did,
however, in due season. Mrs. Spencer lived in a big yellow house at White Sands
Cove, and she came to the door with surprise and welcome mingled on her
benevolent face.
“Dear, dear,” she exclaimed, “you’re the last folks I
was looking for today, but I’m real glad to see you. You’ll put
your horse in? And how are you, Anne?”
“I’m as well as can be expected, thank you,” said Anne
smilelessly. A blight seemed to have descended on her.
“I suppose we’ll stay a little while to rest the mare,” said
Marilla, “but I promised Matthew I’d be home early. The fact is,
Mrs. Spencer, there’s been a queer mistake somewhere, and I’ve come
over to see where it is. We send word, Matthew and I, for you to bring us a boy
from the asylum. We told your brother Robert to tell you we wanted a boy ten or
eleven years old.”
“Marilla Cuthbert, you don’t say so!” said Mrs. Spencer in
distress. “Why, Robert sent word down by his daughter Nancy and she said
you wanted a girl—didn’t she Flora Jane?” appealing to her
daughter who had come out to the steps.
“She certainly did, Miss Cuthbert,” corroborated Flora Jane
earnestly.
“I’m dreadful sorry,” said Mrs. Spencer. “It’s
too bad; but it certainly wasn’t my fault, you see, Miss Cuthbert. I did
the best I could and I thought I was following your instructions. Nancy is a
terrible flighty thing. I’ve often had to scold her well for her
heedlessness.”
“It was our own fault,” said Marilla resignedly. “We should
have come to you ourselves and not left an important message to be passed along
by word of mouth in that fashion. Anyhow, the mistake has been made and the
only thing to do is to set it right. Can we send the child back to the asylum?
I suppose they’ll take her back, won’t they?”
“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Spencer thoughtfully, “but I
don’t think it will be necessary to send her back. Mrs. Peter Blewett was
up here yesterday, and she was saying to me how much she wished she’d
sent by me for a little girl to help her. Mrs. Peter has a large family, you
know, and she finds it hard to get help. Anne will be the very girl for you. I
call it positively providential.”
Marilla did not look as if she thought Providence had much to do with the
matter. Here was an unexpectedly good chance to get this unwelcome orphan off
her hands, and she did not even feel grateful for it.
She knew Mrs. Peter Blewett only by sight as a small, shrewish-faced woman
without an ounce of superfluous flesh on her bones. But she had heard of her.
“A terrible worker and driver,” Mrs. Peter was said to be; and
discharged servant girls told fearsome tales of her temper and stinginess, and
her family of pert, quarrelsome children. Marilla felt a qualm of conscience at
the thought of handing Anne over to her tender mercies.
“Well, I’ll go in and we’ll talk the matter over,” she
said.
“And if there isn’t Mrs. Peter coming up the lane this blessed
minute!” exclaimed Mrs. Spencer, bustling her guests through the hall
into the parlor, where a deadly chill struck on them as if the air had been
strained so long through dark green, closely drawn blinds that it had lost
every particle of warmth it had ever possessed. “That is real lucky, for
we can settle the matter right away. Take the armchair, Miss Cuthbert. Anne,
you sit here on the ottoman and don’t wiggle. Let me take your hats.
Flora Jane, go out and put the kettle on. Good afternoon, Mrs. Blewett. We were
just saying how fortunate it was you happened along. Let me introduce you two
ladies. Mrs. Blewett, Miss Cuthbert. Please excuse me for just a moment. I
forgot to tell Flora Jane to take the buns out of the oven.”
Mrs. Spencer whisked away, after pulling up the blinds. Anne sitting mutely on
the ottoman, with her hands clasped tightly in her lap, stared at Mrs Blewett
as one fascinated. Was she to be given into the keeping of this sharp-faced,
sharp-eyed woman? She felt a lump coming up in her throat and her eyes smarted
painfully. She was beginning to be afraid she couldn’t keep the tears
back when Mrs. Spencer returned, flushed and beaming, quite capable of taking
any and every difficulty, physical, mental or spiritual, into consideration and
settling it out of hand.
“It seems there’s been a mistake about this little girl, Mrs.
Blewett,” she said. “I was under the impression that Mr. and Miss
Cuthbert wanted a little girl to adopt. I was certainly told so. But it seems
it was a boy they wanted. So if you’re still of the same mind you were
yesterday, I think she’ll be just the thing for you.”
Mrs. Blewett darted her eyes over Anne from head to foot.
“How old are you and what’s your name?” she demanded.
“Anne Shirley,” faltered the shrinking child, not daring to make
any stipulations regarding the spelling thereof, “and I’m eleven
years old.”
“Humph! You don’t look as if there was much to you. But
you’re wiry. I don’t know but the wiry ones are the best after all.
Well, if I take you you’ll have to be a good girl, you know—good
and smart and respectful. I’ll expect you to earn your keep, and no
mistake about that. Yes, I suppose I might as well take her off your hands,
Miss Cuthbert. The baby’s awful fractious, and I’m clean worn out
attending to him. If you like I can take her right home now.”
Marilla looked at Anne and softened at sight of the child’s pale face
with its look of mute misery—the misery of a helpless little creature who
finds itself once more caught in the trap from which it had escaped. Marilla
felt an uncomfortable conviction that, if she denied the appeal of that look,
it would haunt her to her dying day. More-over, she did not fancy Mrs. Blewett.
To hand a sensitive, “highstrung” child over to such a woman! No,
she could not take the responsibility of doing that!
“Well, I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I didn’t
say that Matthew and I had absolutely decided that we wouldn’t keep her.
In fact I may say that Matthew is disposed to keep her. I just came over to
find out how the mistake had occurred. I think I’d better take her home
again and talk it over with Matthew. I feel that I oughtn’t to decide on
anything without consulting him. If we make up our mind not to keep her
we’ll bring or send her over to you tomorrow night. If we don’t you
may know that she is going to stay with us. Will that suit you, Mrs.
Blewett?”
“I suppose it’ll have to,” said Mrs. Blewett ungraciously.
During Marilla’s speech a sunrise had been dawning on Anne’s face.
First the look of despair faded out; then came a faint flush of hope; her eyes
grew deep and bright as morning stars. The child was quite transfigured; and, a
moment later, when Mrs. Spencer and Mrs. Blewett went out in quest of a recipe
the latter had come to borrow she sprang up and flew across the room to
Marilla.
“Oh, Miss Cuthbert, did you really say that perhaps you would let me stay
at Green Gables?” she said, in a breathless whisper, as if speaking aloud
might shatter the glorious possibility. “Did you really say it? Or did I
only imagine that you did?”
“I think you’d better learn to control that imagination of yours,
Anne, if you can’t distinguish between what is real and what
isn’t,” said Marilla crossly. “Yes, you did hear me say just
that and no more. It isn’t decided yet and perhaps we will conclude to
let Mrs. Blewett take you after all. She certainly needs you much more than I
do.”
“I’d rather go back to the asylum than go to live with her,”
said Anne passionately. “She looks exactly like a—like a
gimlet.”
Marilla smothered a smile under the conviction that Anne must be reproved for
such a speech.
“A little girl like you should be ashamed of talking so about a lady and
a stranger,” she said severely. “Go back and sit down quietly and
hold your tongue and behave as a good girl should.”
“I’ll try to do and be anything you want me, if you’ll only
keep me,” said Anne, returning meekly to her ottoman.
When they arrived back at Green Gables that evening Matthew met them in the
lane. Marilla from afar had noted him prowling along it and guessed his motive.
She was prepared for the relief she read in his face when he saw that she had
at least brought back Anne back with her. But she said nothing, to him,
relative to the affair, until they were both out in the yard behind the barn
milking the cows. Then she briefly told him Anne’s history and the result
of the interview with Mrs. Spencer.
“I wouldn’t give a dog I liked to that Blewett woman,” said
Matthew with unusual vim.
“I don’t fancy her style myself,” admitted Marilla,
“but it’s that or keeping her ourselves, Matthew. And since you
seem to want her, I suppose I’m willing—or have to be. I’ve
been thinking over the idea until I’ve got kind of used to it. It seems a
sort of duty. I’ve never brought up a child, especially a girl, and I
dare say I’ll make a terrible mess of it. But I’ll do my best. So
far as I’m concerned, Matthew, she may stay.”
Matthew’s shy face was a glow of delight.
“Well now, I reckoned you’d come to see it in that light,
Marilla,” he said. “She’s such an interesting little
thing.”
“It’d be more to the point if you could say she was a useful little
thing,” retorted Marilla, “but I’ll make it my business to
see she’s trained to be that. And mind, Matthew, you’re not to go
interfering with my methods. Perhaps an old maid doesn’t know much about
bringing up a child, but I guess she knows more than an old bachelor. So you
just leave me to manage her. When I fail it’ll be time enough to put your
oar in.”
“There, there, Marilla, you can have your own way,” said Matthew
reassuringly. “Only be as good and kind to her as you can without
spoiling her. I kind of think she’s one of the sort you can do anything
with if you only get her to love you.”
Marilla sniffed, to express her contempt for Matthew’s opinions
concerning anything feminine, and walked off to the dairy with the pails.
“I won’t tell her tonight that she can stay,” she reflected,
as she strained the milk into the creamers. “She’d be so excited
that she wouldn’t sleep a wink. Marilla Cuthbert, you’re fairly in
for it. Did you ever suppose you’d see the day when you’d be
adopting an orphan girl? It’s surprising enough; but not so surprising as
that Matthew should be at the bottom of it, him that always seemed to have such
a mortal dread of little girls. Anyhow, we’ve decided on the experiment
and goodness only knows what will come of it.”
CHAPTER VII.
Anne Says Her Prayers
WHEN Marilla took Anne
up to bed that night she said stiffly:
“Now, Anne, I noticed last night that you threw your clothes all about
the floor when you took them off. That is a very untidy habit, and I
can’t allow it at all. As soon as you take off any article of clothing
fold it neatly and place it on the chair. I haven’t any use at all for
little girls who aren’t neat.”
“I was so harrowed up in my mind last night that I didn’t think
about my clothes at all,” said Anne. “I’ll fold them nicely
tonight. They always made us do that at the asylum. Half the time, though,
I’d forget, I’d be in such a hurry to get into bed nice and quiet
and imagine things.”
“You’ll have to remember a little better if you stay here,”
admonished Marilla. “There, that looks something like. Say your prayers
now and get into bed.”
“I never say any prayers,” announced Anne.
Marilla looked horrified astonishment.
“Why, Anne, what do you mean? Were you never taught to say your prayers?
God always wants little girls to say their prayers. Don’t you know who
God is, Anne?”
“‘God is a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable, in His
being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth,’”
responded Anne promptly and glibly.
Marilla looked rather relieved.
“So you do know something then, thank goodness! You’re not quite a
heathen. Where did you learn that?”
“Oh, at the asylum Sunday-school. They made us learn the whole catechism.
I liked it pretty well. There’s something splendid about some of the
words. ‘Infinite, eternal and unchangeable.’ Isn’t that
grand? It has such a roll to it—just like a big organ playing. You
couldn’t quite call it poetry, I suppose, but it sounds a lot like it,
doesn’t it?”
“We’re not talking about poetry, Anne—we are talking about
saying your prayers. Don’t you know it’s a terrible wicked thing
not to say your prayers every night? I’m afraid you are a very bad little
girl.”
“You’d find it easier to be bad than good if you had red
hair,” said Anne reproachfully. “People who haven’t red hair
don’t know what trouble is. Mrs. Thomas told me that God made my hair red
, and I’ve never cared about Him since. And anyhow
I’d always be too tired at night to bother saying prayers. People who
have to look after twins can’t be expected to say their prayers. Now, do
you honestly think they can?”
Marilla decided that Anne’s religious training must be begun at once.
Plainly there was no time to be lost.
“You must say your prayers while you are under my roof, Anne.”
“Why, of course, if you want me to,” assented Anne cheerfully.
“I’d do anything to oblige you. But you’ll have to tell me
what to say for this once. After I get into bed I’ll imagine out a real
nice prayer to say always. I believe that it will be quite interesting, now
that I come to think of it.”
“You must kneel down,” said Marilla in embarrassment.
Anne knelt at Marilla’s knee and looked up gravely.
“Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray
I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field
all alone or into the deep, deep, woods, and I’d look up into the
sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if
there was no end to its blueness. And then I’d just a prayer.
Well, I’m ready. What am I to say?”
Marilla felt more embarrassed than ever. She had intended to teach Anne the
childish classic, “Now I lay me down to sleep.” But she had, as I
have told you, the glimmerings of a sense of humor—which is simply
another name for a sense of fitness of things; and it suddenly occurred to her
that that simple little prayer, sacred to white-robed childhood lisping at
motherly knees, was entirely unsuited to this freckled witch of a girl who knew
and cared nothing about God’s love, since she had never had it translated
to her through the medium of human love.
“You’re old enough to pray for yourself, Anne,” she said
finally. “Just thank God for your blessings and ask Him humbly for the
things you want.”
“Well, I’ll do my best,” promised Anne, burying her face in
Marilla’s lap. “Gracious heavenly Father—that’s the way
the ministers say it in church, so I suppose it’s all right in private
prayer, isn’t it?” she interjected, lifting her head for a moment.
“Gracious heavenly Father, I thank Thee for the White Way of Delight and
the Lake of Shining Waters and Bonny and the Snow Queen. I’m really
extremely grateful for them. And that’s all the blessings I can think of
just now to thank Thee for. As for the things I want, they’re so numerous
that it would take a great deal of time to name them all so I will only mention
the two most important. Please let me stay at Green Gables; and please let me
be good-looking when I grow up. I remain,
“Yours respectfully,
Anne Shirley.
“There, did I do all right?” she asked eagerly, getting up.
“I could have made it much more flowery if I’d had a little more
time to think it over.”
Poor Marilla was only preserved from complete collapse by remembering that it
was not irreverence, but simply spiritual ignorance on the part of Anne that
was responsible for this extraordinary petition. She tucked the child up in
bed, mentally vowing that she should be taught a prayer the very next day, and
was leaving the room with the light when Anne called her back.
“I’ve just thought of it now. I should have said,
‘Amen’ in place of ‘yours respectfully,’
shouldn’t I?—the way the ministers do. I’d forgotten it, but
I felt a prayer should be finished off in some way, so I put in the other. Do
you suppose it will make any difference?”
“I—I don’t suppose it will,” said Marilla. “Go to
sleep now like a good child. Good night.”
“I can only say good night tonight with a clear conscience,” said
Anne, cuddling luxuriously down among her pillows.
Marilla retreated to the kitchen, set the candle firmly on the table, and
glared at Matthew.
“Matthew Cuthbert, it’s about time somebody adopted that child and
taught her something. She’s next door to a perfect heathen. Will you
believe that she never said a prayer in her life till tonight? I’ll send
her to the manse tomorrow and borrow the Peep of the Day series, that’s
what I’ll do. And she shall go to Sunday-school just as soon as I can get
some suitable clothes made for her. I foresee that I shall have my hands full.
Well, well, we can’t get through this world without our share of trouble.
I’ve had a pretty easy life of it so far, but my time has come at last
and I suppose I’ll just have to make the best of it.”
CHAPTER VIII.
Anne’s Bringing-up Is Begun
FOR reasons best known
to herself, Marilla did not tell Anne that she was to stay at Green Gables
until the next afternoon. During the forenoon she kept the child busy with
various tasks and watched over her with a keen eye while she did them. By noon
she had concluded that Anne was smart and obedient, willing to work and quick
to learn; her most serious shortcoming seemed to be a tendency to fall into
daydreams in the middle of a task and forget all about it until such time as
she was sharply recalled to earth by a reprimand or a catastrophe.
When Anne had finished washing the dinner dishes she suddenly confronted
Marilla with the air and expression of one desperately determined to learn the
worst. Her thin little body trembled from head to foot; her face flushed and
her eyes dilated until they were almost black; she clasped her hands tightly
and said in an imploring voice:
“Oh, please, Miss Cuthbert, won’t you tell me if you are going to
send me away or not? I’ve tried to be patient all the morning, but I
really feel that I cannot bear not knowing any longer. It’s a dreadful
feeling. Please tell me.”
“You haven’t scalded the dishcloth in clean hot water as I told you
to do,” said Marilla immovably. “Just go and do it before you ask
any more questions, Anne.”
Anne went and attended to the dishcloth. Then she returned to Marilla and
fastened imploring eyes of the latter’s face. “Well,” said
Marilla, unable to find any excuse for deferring her explanation longer,
“I suppose I might as well tell you. Matthew and I have decided to keep
you—that is, if you will try to be a good little girl and show yourself
grateful. Why, child, whatever is the matter?”
“I’m crying,” said Anne in a tone of bewilderment. “I
can’t think why. I’m glad as glad can be. Oh,
doesn’t seem the right word at all. I was glad about the White Way and
the cherry blossoms—but this! Oh, it’s something more than glad.
I’m so happy. I’ll try to be so good. It will be uphill work, I
expect, for Mrs. Thomas often told me I was desperately wicked. However,
I’ll do my very best. But can you tell me why I’m crying?”
“I suppose it’s because you’re all excited and worked
up,” said Marilla disapprovingly. “Sit down on that chair and try
to calm yourself. I’m afraid you both cry and laugh far too easily. Yes,
you can stay here and we will try to do right by you. You must go to school;
but it’s only a fortnight till vacation so it isn’t worth while for
you to start before it opens again in September.”
“What am I to call you?” asked Anne. “Shall I always say Miss
Cuthbert? Can I call you Aunt Marilla?”
“No; you’ll call me just plain Marilla. I’m not used to being
called Miss Cuthbert and it would make me nervous.”
“It sounds awfully disrespectful to just say Marilla,” protested
Anne.
“I guess there’ll be nothing disrespectful in it if you’re
careful to speak respectfully. Everybody, young and old, in Avonlea calls me
Marilla except the minister. He says Miss Cuthbert—when he thinks of
it.”
“I’d love to call you Aunt Marilla,” said Anne wistfully.
“I’ve never had an aunt or any relation at all—not even a
grandmother. It would make me feel as if I really belonged to you. Can’t
I call you Aunt Marilla?”
“No. I’m not your aunt and I don’t believe in calling people
names that don’t belong to them.”
“But we could imagine you were my aunt.”
“I couldn’t,” said Marilla grimly.
“Do you never imagine things different from what they really are?”
asked Anne wide-eyed.
“No.”
“Oh!” Anne drew a long breath. “Oh, Miss—Marilla, how
much you miss!”
“I don’t believe in imagining things different from what they
really are,” retorted Marilla. “When the Lord puts us in certain
circumstances He doesn’t mean for us to imagine them away. And that
reminds me. Go into the sitting room, Anne—be sure your feet are clean
and don’t let any flies in—and bring me out the illustrated card
that’s on the mantelpiece. The Lord’s Prayer is on it and
you’ll devote your spare time this afternoon to learning it off by heart.
There’s to be no more of such praying as I heard last night.”
“I suppose I was very awkward,” said Anne apologetically,
“but then, you see, I’d never had any practice. You couldn’t
really expect a person to pray very well the first time she tried, could you? I
thought out a splendid prayer after I went to bed, just as I promised you I
would. It was nearly as long as a minister’s and so poetical. But would
you believe it? I couldn’t remember one word when I woke up this morning.
And I’m afraid I’ll never be able to think out another one as good.
Somehow, things never are so good when they’re thought out a second time.
Have you ever noticed that?”
“Here is something for you to notice, Anne. When I tell you to do a thing
I want you to obey me at once and not stand stock-still and discourse about it.
Just you go and do as I bid you.”
Anne promptly departed for the sitting-room across the hall; she failed to
return; after waiting ten minutes Marilla laid down her knitting and marched
after her with a grim expression. She found Anne standing motionless before a
picture hanging on the wall between the two windows, with her eyes a-star with
dreams. The white and green light strained through apple trees and clustering
vines outside fell over the rapt little figure with a half-unearthly radiance.
“Anne, whatever are you thinking of?” demanded Marilla sharply.
Anne came back to earth with a start.
“That,” she said, pointing to the picture—a rather vivid
chromo entitled, “Christ Blessing Little Children”—“and
I was just imagining I was one of them—that I was the little girl in the
blue dress, standing off by herself in the corner as if she didn’t belong
to anybody, like me. She looks lonely and sad, don’t you think? I guess
she hadn’t any father or mother of her own. But she wanted to be blessed,
too, so she just crept shyly up on the outside of the crowd, hoping nobody
would notice her—except Him. I’m sure I know just how she felt. Her
heart must have beat and her hands must have got cold, like mine did when I
asked you if I could stay. She was afraid He mightn’t notice her. But
it’s likely He did, don’t you think? I’ve been trying to
imagine it all out—her edging a little nearer all the time until she was
quite close to Him; and then He would look at her and put His hand on her hair
and oh, such a thrill of joy as would run over her! But I wish the artist
hadn’t painted Him so sorrowful looking. All His pictures are like that,
if you’ve noticed. But I don’t believe He could really have looked
so sad or the children would have been afraid of Him.”
“Anne,” said Marilla, wondering why she had not broken into this
speech long before, “you shouldn’t talk that way. It’s
irreverent—positively irreverent.”
Anne’s eyes marveled.
“Why, I felt just as reverent as could be. I’m sure I didn’t
mean to be irreverent.”
“Well I don’t suppose you did—but it doesn’t sound
right to talk so familiarly about such things. And another thing, Anne, when I
send you after something you’re to bring it at once and not fall into
mooning and imagining before pictures. Remember that. Take that card and come
right to the kitchen. Now, sit down in the corner and learn that prayer off by
heart.”
Anne set the card up against the jugful of apple blossoms she had brought in to
decorate the dinner-table—Marilla had eyed that decoration askance, but
had said nothing—propped her chin on her hands, and fell to studying it
intently for several silent minutes.
“I like this,” she announced at length. “It’s
beautiful. I’ve heard it before—I heard the superintendent of the
asylum Sunday school say it over once. But I didn’t like it then. He had
such a cracked voice and he prayed it so mournfully. I really felt sure he
thought praying was a disagreeable duty. This isn’t poetry, but it makes
me feel just the same way poetry does. ‘Our Father who art in heaven
hallowed be Thy name.’ That is just like a line of music. Oh, I’m
so glad you thought of making me learn this, Miss—Marilla.”
“Well, learn it and hold your tongue,” said Marilla shortly.
Anne tipped the vase of apple blossoms near enough to bestow a soft kiss on a
pink-cupped bud, and then studied diligently for some moments longer.
“Marilla,” she demanded presently, “do you think that I shall
ever have a bosom friend in Avonlea?”
“A—a what kind of friend?”
“A bosom friend—an intimate friend, you know—a really kindred
spirit to whom I can confide my inmost soul. I’ve dreamed of meeting her
all my life. I never really supposed I would, but so many of my loveliest
dreams have come true all at once that perhaps this one will, too. Do you think
it’s possible?”
“Diana Barry lives over at Orchard Slope and she’s about your age.
She’s a very nice little girl, and perhaps she will be a playmate for you
when she comes home. She’s visiting her aunt over at Carmody just now.
You’ll have to be careful how you behave yourself, though. Mrs. Barry is
a very particular woman. She won’t let Diana play with any little girl
who isn’t nice and good.”
Anne looked at Marilla through the apple blossoms, her eyes aglow with
interest.
“What is Diana like? Her hair isn’t red, is it? Oh, I hope not.
It’s bad enough to have red hair myself, but I positively couldn’t
endure it in a bosom friend.”
“Diana is a very pretty little girl. She has black eyes and hair and rosy
cheeks. And she is good and smart, which is better than being pretty.”
Marilla was as fond of morals as the Duchess in Wonderland, and was firmly
convinced that one should be tacked on to every remark made to a child who was
being brought up.
But Anne waved the moral inconsequently aside and seized only on the delightful
possibilities before it.
“Oh, I’m so glad she’s pretty. Next to being beautiful
oneself—and that’s impossible in my case—it would be best to
have a beautiful bosom friend. When I lived with Mrs. Thomas she had a bookcase
in her sitting room with glass doors. There weren’t any books in it; Mrs.
Thomas kept her best china and her preserves there—when she had any
preserves to keep. One of the doors was broken. Mr. Thomas smashed it one night
when he was slightly intoxicated. But the other was whole and I used to pretend
that my reflection in it was another little girl who lived in it. I called her
Katie Maurice, and we were very intimate. I used to talk to her by the hour,
especially on Sunday, and tell her everything. Katie was the comfort and
consolation of my life. We used to pretend that the bookcase was enchanted and
that if I only knew the spell I could open the door and step right into the
room where Katie Maurice lived, instead of into Mrs. Thomas’ shelves of
preserves and china. And then Katie Maurice would have taken me by the hand and
led me out into a wonderful place, all flowers and sunshine and fairies, and we
would have lived there happy for ever after. When I went to live with Mrs.
Hammond it just broke my heart to leave Katie Maurice. She felt it dreadfully,
too, I know she did, for she was crying when she kissed me good-bye through the
bookcase door. There was no bookcase at Mrs. Hammond’s. But just up the
river a little way from the house there was a long green little valley, and the
loveliest echo lived there. It echoed back every word you said, even if you
didn’t talk a bit loud. So I imagined that it was a little girl called
Violetta and we were great friends and I loved her almost as well as I loved
Katie Maurice—not quite, but almost, you know. The night before I went to
the asylum I said good-bye to Violetta, and oh, her good-bye came back to me in
such sad, sad tones. I had become so attached to her that I hadn’t the
heart to imagine a bosom friend at the asylum, even if there had been any scope
for imagination there.”
“I think it’s just as well there wasn’t,” said Marilla
drily. “I don’t approve of such goings-on. You seem to half believe
your own imaginations. It will be well for you to have a real live friend to
put such nonsense out of your head. But don’t let Mrs. Barry hear you
talking about your Katie Maurices and your Violettas or she’ll think you
tell stories.”
“Oh, I won’t. I couldn’t talk of them to
everybody—their memories are too sacred for that. But I thought I’d
like to have you know about them. Oh, look, here’s a big bee just tumbled
out of an apple blossom. Just think what a lovely place to live—in an
apple blossom! Fancy going to sleep in it when the wind was rocking it. If I
wasn’t a human girl I think I’d like to be a bee and live among the
flowers.”
“Yesterday you wanted to be a sea gull,” sniffed Marilla. “I
think you are very fickle minded. I told you to learn that prayer and not talk.
But it seems impossible for you to stop talking if you’ve got anybody
that will listen to you. So go up to your room and learn it.”
“Oh, I know it pretty nearly all now—all but just the last
line.”
“Well, never mind, do as I tell you. Go to your room and finish learning
it well, and stay there until I call you down to help me get tea.”
“Can I take the apple blossoms with me for company?” pleaded Anne.
“No; you don’t want your room cluttered up with flowers. You should
have left them on the tree in the first place.”
“I did feel a little that way, too,” said Anne. “I kind of
felt I shouldn’t shorten their lovely lives by picking them—I
wouldn’t want to be picked if I were an apple blossom. But the temptation
was . What do you do when you meet with an irresistible
temptation?”
“Anne, did you hear me tell you to go to your room?”
Anne sighed, retreated to the east gable, and sat down in a chair by the
window.
“There—I know this prayer. I learned that last sentence coming
upstairs. Now I’m going to imagine things into this room so that
they’ll always stay imagined. The floor is covered with a white velvet
carpet with pink roses all over it and there are pink silk curtains at the
windows. The walls are hung with gold and silver brocade tapestry. The
furniture is mahogany. I never saw any mahogany, but it does sound
luxurious. This is a couch all heaped with gorgeous silken cushions, pink and
blue and crimson and gold, and I am reclining gracefully on it. I can see my
reflection in that splendid big mirror hanging on the wall. I am tall and
regal, clad in a gown of trailing white lace, with a pearl cross on my breast
and pearls in my hair. My hair is of midnight darkness and my skin is a clear
ivory pallor. My name is the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald. No, it
isn’t—I can’t make seem real.”
She danced up to the little looking-glass and peered into it. Her pointed
freckled face and solemn gray eyes peered back at her.
“You’re only Anne of Green Gables,” she said earnestly,
“and I see you, just as you are looking now, whenever I try to imagine
I’m the Lady Cordelia. But it’s a million times nicer to be Anne of
Green Gables than Anne of nowhere in particular, isn’t it?”
She bent forward, kissed her reflection affectionately, and betook herself to
the open window.
“Dear Snow Queen, good afternoon. And good afternoon dear birches down in
the hollow. And good afternoon, dear gray house up on the hill. I wonder if
Diana is to be my bosom friend. I hope she will, and I shall love her very
much. But I must never quite forget Katie Maurice and Violetta. They would feel
so hurt if I did and I’d hate to hurt anybody’s feelings, even a
little bookcase girl’s or a little echo girl’s. I must be careful
to remember them and send them a kiss every day.”
Anne blew a couple of airy kisses from her fingertips past the cherry blossoms
and then, with her chin in her hands, drifted luxuriously out on a sea of
daydreams.
CHAPTER IX.
Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Properly Horrified
ANNE had been a
fortnight at Green Gables before Mrs. Lynde arrived to inspect her. Mrs.
Rachel, to do her justice, was not to blame for this. A severe and unseasonable
attack of grippe had confined that good lady to her house ever since the
occasion of her last visit to Green Gables. Mrs. Rachel was not often sick and
had a well-defined contempt for people who were; but grippe, she asserted, was
like no other illness on earth and could only be interpreted as one of the
special visitations of Providence. As soon as her doctor allowed her to put her
foot out-of-doors she hurried up to Green Gables, bursting with curiosity to
see Matthew and Marilla’s orphan, concerning whom all sorts of stories
and suppositions had gone abroad in Avonlea.
Anne had made good use of every waking moment of that fortnight. Already she
was acquainted with every tree and shrub about the place. She had discovered
that a lane opened out below the apple orchard and ran up through a belt of
woodland; and she had explored it to its furthest end in all its delicious
vagaries of brook and bridge, fir coppice and wild cherry arch, corners thick
with fern, and branching byways of maple and mountain ash.
She had made friends with the spring down in the hollow—that wonderful
deep, clear icy-cold spring; it was set about with smooth red sandstones and
rimmed in by great palm-like clumps of water fern; and beyond it was a log
bridge over the brook.
That bridge led Anne’s dancing feet up over a wooded hill beyond, where
perpetual twilight reigned under the straight, thick-growing firs and spruces;
the only flowers there were myriads of delicate “June bells,” those
shyest and sweetest of woodland blooms, and a few pale, aerial starflowers,
like the spirits of last year’s blossoms. Gossamers glimmered like
threads of silver among the trees and the fir boughs and tassels seemed to
utter friendly speech.
All these raptured voyages of exploration were made in the odd half hours which
she was allowed for play, and Anne talked Matthew and Marilla half-deaf over
her discoveries. Not that Matthew complained, to be sure; he listened to it all
with a wordless smile of enjoyment on his face; Marilla permitted the
“chatter” until she found herself becoming too interested in it,
whereupon she always promptly quenched Anne by a curt command to hold her
tongue.
Anne was out in the orchard when Mrs. Rachel came, wandering at her own sweet
will through the lush, tremulous grasses splashed with ruddy evening sunshine;
so that good lady had an excellent chance to talk her illness fully over,
describing every ache and pulse beat with such evident enjoyment that Marilla
thought even grippe must bring its compensations. When details were exhausted
Mrs. Rachel introduced the real reason of her call.
“I’ve been hearing some surprising things about you and
Matthew.”
“I don’t suppose you are any more surprised than I am
myself,” said Marilla. “I’m getting over my surprise
now.”
“It was too bad there was such a mistake,” said Mrs. Rachel
sympathetically. “Couldn’t you have sent her back?”
“I suppose we could, but we decided not to. Matthew took a fancy to her.
And I must say I like her myself—although I admit she has her faults. The
house seems a different place already. She’s a real bright little
thing.”
Marilla said more than she had intended to say when she began, for she read
disapproval in Mrs. Rachel’s expression.
“It’s a great responsibility you’ve taken on yourself,”
said that lady gloomily, “especially when you’ve never had any
experience with children. You don’t know much about her or her real
disposition, I suppose, and there’s no guessing how a child like that
will turn out. But I don’t want to discourage you I’m sure,
Marilla.”
“I’m not feeling discouraged,” was Marilla’s dry
response, “when I make up my mind to do a thing it stays made up. I
suppose you’d like to see Anne. I’ll call her in.”
Anne came running in presently, her face sparkling with the delight of her
orchard rovings; but, abashed at finding the delight herself in the unexpected
presence of a stranger, she halted confusedly inside the door. She certainly
was an odd-looking little creature in the short tight wincey dress she had worn
from the asylum, below which her thin legs seemed ungracefully long. Her
freckles were more numerous and obtrusive than ever; the wind had ruffled her
hatless hair into over-brilliant disorder; it had never looked redder than at
that moment.
“Well, they didn’t pick you for your looks, that’s sure and
certain,” was Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s emphatic comment. Mrs. Rachel was
one of those delightful and popular people who pride themselves on speaking
their mind without fear or favor. “She’s terrible skinny and
homely, Marilla. Come here, child, and let me have a look at you. Lawful heart,
did any one ever see such freckles? And hair as red as carrots! Come here,
child, I say.”
Anne “came there,” but not exactly as Mrs. Rachel expected. With
one bound she crossed the kitchen floor and stood before Mrs. Rachel, her face
scarlet with anger, her lips quivering, and her whole slender form trembling
from head to foot.
“I hate you,” she cried in a choked voice, stamping her foot on the
floor. “I hate you—I hate you—I hate you—” a
louder stamp with each assertion of hatred. “How dare you call me skinny
and ugly? How dare you say I’m freckled and redheaded? You are a rude,
impolite, unfeeling woman!”
“Anne!” exclaimed Marilla in consternation.
But Anne continued to face Mrs. Rachel undauntedly, head up, eyes blazing,
hands clenched, passionate indignation exhaling from her like an atmosphere.
“How dare you say such things about me?” she repeated vehemently.
“How would you like to have such things said about you? How would you
like to be told that you are fat and clumsy and probably hadn’t a spark
of imagination in you? I don’t care if I do hurt your feelings by saying
so! I hope I hurt them. You have hurt mine worse than they were ever hurt
before even by Mrs. Thomas’ intoxicated husband. And I’ll
forgive you for it, never, never!”
Stamp! Stamp!
“Did anybody ever see such a temper!” exclaimed the horrified Mrs.
Rachel.
“Anne go to your room and stay there until I come up,” said
Marilla, recovering her powers of speech with difficulty.
Anne, bursting into tears, rushed to the hall door, slammed it until the tins
on the porch wall outside rattled in sympathy, and fled through the hall and up
the stairs like a whirlwind. A subdued slam above told that the door of the
east gable had been shut with equal vehemence.
“Well, I don’t envy you your job bringing up,
Marilla,” said Mrs. Rachel with unspeakable solemnity.
Marilla opened her lips to say she knew not what of apology or deprecation.
What she did say was a surprise to herself then and ever afterwards.
“You shouldn’t have twitted her about her looks, Rachel.”
“Marilla Cuthbert, you don’t mean to say that you are upholding her
in such a terrible display of temper as we’ve just seen?” demanded
Mrs. Rachel indignantly.
“No,” said Marilla slowly, “I’m not trying to excuse
her. She’s been very naughty and I’ll have to give her a talking to
about it. But we must make allowances for her. She’s never been taught
what is right. And you too hard on her, Rachel.”
Marilla could not help tacking on that last sentence, although she was again
surprised at herself for doing it. Mrs. Rachel got up with an air of offended
dignity.
“Well, I see that I’ll have to be very careful what I say after
this, Marilla, since the fine feelings of orphans, brought from goodness knows
where, have to be considered before anything else. Oh, no, I’m not
vexed—don’t worry yourself. I’m too sorry for you to leave
any room for anger in my mind. You’ll have your own troubles with that
child. But if you’ll take my advice—which I suppose you won’t
do, although I’ve brought up ten children and buried
two—you’ll do that ‘talking to’ you mention with a
fair-sized birch switch. I should think would be the most effective
language for that kind of a child. Her temper matches her hair I guess. Well,
good evening, Marilla. I hope you’ll come down to see me often as usual.
But you can’t expect me to visit here again in a hurry, if I’m
liable to be flown at and insulted in such a fashion. It’s something new
in experience.”
Whereat Mrs. Rachel swept out and away—if a fat woman who always waddled
be said to sweep away—and Marilla with a very solemn face
betook herself to the east gable.
On the way upstairs she pondered uneasily as to what she ought to do. She felt
no little dismay over the scene that had just been enacted. How unfortunate
that Anne should have displayed such temper before Mrs. Rachel Lynde, of all
people! Then Marilla suddenly became aware of an uncomfortable and rebuking
consciousness that she felt more humiliation over this than sorrow over the
discovery of such a serious defect in Anne’s disposition. And how was she
to punish her? The amiable suggestion of the birch switch—to the
efficiency of which all of Mrs. Rachel’s own children could have borne
smarting testimony—did not appeal to Marilla. She did not believe she
could whip a child. No, some other method of punishment must be found to bring
Anne to a proper realization of the enormity of her offense.
Marilla found Anne face downward on her bed, crying bitterly, quite oblivious
of muddy boots on a clean counterpane.
“Anne,” she said not ungently.
No answer.
“Anne,” with greater severity, “get off that bed this minute
and listen to what I have to say to you.”
Anne squirmed off the bed and sat rigidly on a chair beside it, her face
swollen and tear-stained and her eyes fixed stubbornly on the floor.
“This is a nice way for you to behave. Anne! Aren’t you ashamed of
yourself?”
“She hadn’t any right to call me ugly and redheaded,”
retorted Anne, evasive and defiant.
“You hadn’t any right to fly into such a fury and talk the way you
did to her, Anne. I was ashamed of you—thoroughly ashamed of you. I
wanted you to behave nicely to Mrs. Lynde, and instead of that you have
disgraced me. I’m sure I don’t know why you should lose your temper
like that just because Mrs. Lynde said you were red-haired and homely. You say
it yourself often enough.”
“Oh, but there’s such a difference between saying a thing yourself
and hearing other people say it,” wailed Anne. “You may know a
thing is so, but you can’t help hoping other people don’t quite
think it is. I suppose you think I have an awful temper, but I couldn’t
help it. When she said those things something just rose right up in me and
choked me. I to fly out at her.”
“Well, you made a fine exhibition of yourself I must say. Mrs. Lynde will
have a nice story to tell about you everywhere—and she’ll tell it,
too. It was a dreadful thing for you to lose your temper like that,
Anne.”
“Just imagine how you would feel if somebody told you to your face that
you were skinny and ugly,” pleaded Anne tearfully.
An old remembrance suddenly rose up before Marilla. She had been a very small
child when she had heard one aunt say of her to another, “What a pity she
is such a dark, homely little thing.” Marilla was every day of fifty
before the sting had gone out of that memory.
“I don’t say that I think Mrs. Lynde was exactly right in saying
what she did to you, Anne,” she admitted in a softer tone. “Rachel
is too outspoken. But that is no excuse for such behavior on your part. She was
a stranger and an elderly person and my visitor—all three very good
reasons why you should have been respectful to her. You were rude and saucy
and”—Marilla had a saving inspiration of
punishment—“you must go to her and tell her you are very sorry for
your bad temper and ask her to forgive you.”
“I can never do that,” said Anne determinedly and darkly.
“You can punish me in any way you like, Marilla. You can shut me up in a
dark, damp dungeon inhabited by snakes and toads and feed me only on bread and
water and I shall not complain. But I cannot ask Mrs. Lynde to forgive
me.”
“We’re not in the habit of shutting people up in dark damp
dungeons,” said Marilla drily, “especially as they’re rather
scarce in Avonlea. But apologize to Mrs. Lynde you must and shall and
you’ll stay here in your room until you can tell me you’re willing
to do it.”
“I shall have to stay here forever then,” said Anne mournfully,
“because I can’t tell Mrs. Lynde I’m sorry I said those
things to her. How can I? I’m sorry. I’m sorry
I’ve vexed you; but I’m I told her just what I did. It
was a great satisfaction. I can’t say I’m sorry when I’m not,
can I? I can’t even I’m sorry.”
“Perhaps your imagination will be in better working order by the
morning,” said Marilla, rising to depart. “You’ll have the
night to think over your conduct in and come to a better frame of mind. You
said you would try to be a very good girl if we kept you at Green Gables, but I
must say it hasn’t seemed very much like it this evening.”
Leaving this Parthian shaft to rankle in Anne’s stormy bosom, Marilla
descended to the kitchen, grievously troubled in mind and vexed in soul. She
was as angry with herself as with Anne, because, whenever she recalled Mrs.
Rachel’s dumbfounded countenance her lips twitched with amusement and she
felt a most reprehensible desire to laugh.
CHAPTER X.
Anne’s Apology
MARILLA said nothing to
Matthew about the affair that evening; but when Anne proved still refractory
the next morning an explanation had to be made to account for her absence from
the breakfast table. Marilla told Matthew the whole story, taking pains to
impress him with a due sense of the enormity of Anne’s behavior.
“It’s a good thing Rachel Lynde got a calling down; she’s a
meddlesome old gossip,” was Matthew’s consolatory rejoinder.
“Matthew Cuthbert, I’m astonished at you. You know that
Anne’s behavior was dreadful, and yet you take her part! I suppose
you’ll be saying next thing that she oughtn’t to be punished at
all!”
“Well now—no—not exactly,” said Matthew uneasily.
“I reckon she ought to be punished a little. But don’t be too hard
on her, Marilla. Recollect she hasn’t ever had anyone to teach her right.
You’re—you’re going to give her something to eat,
aren’t you?”
“When did you ever hear of me starving people into good behavior?”
demanded Marilla indignantly. “She’ll have her meals regular, and
I’ll carry them up to her myself. But she’ll stay up there until
she’s willing to apologize to Mrs. Lynde, and that’s final,
Matthew.”
Breakfast, dinner, and supper were very silent meals—for Anne still
remained obdurate. After each meal Marilla carried a well-filled tray to the
east gable and brought it down later on not noticeably depleted. Matthew eyed
its last descent with a troubled eye. Had Anne eaten anything at all?
When Marilla went out that evening to bring the cows from the back pasture,
Matthew, who had been hanging about the barns and watching, slipped into the
house with the air of a burglar and crept upstairs. As a general thing Matthew
gravitated between the kitchen and the little bedroom off the hall where he
slept; once in a while he ventured uncomfortably into the parlor or sitting
room when the minister came to tea. But he had never been upstairs in his own
house since the spring he helped Marilla paper the spare bedroom, and that was
four years ago.
He tiptoed along the hall and stood for several minutes outside the door of the
east gable before he summoned courage to tap on it with his fingers and then
open the door to peep in.
Anne was sitting on the yellow chair by the window gazing mournfully out into
the garden. Very small and unhappy she looked, and Matthew’s heart smote
him. He softly closed the door and tiptoed over to her.
“Anne,” he whispered, as if afraid of being overheard, “how
are you making it, Anne?”
Anne smiled wanly.
“Pretty well. I imagine a good deal, and that helps to pass the time. Of
course, it’s rather lonesome. But then, I may as well get used to
that.”
Anne smiled again, bravely facing the long years of solitary imprisonment
before her.
Matthew recollected that he must say what he had come to say without loss of
time, lest Marilla return prematurely. “Well now, Anne, don’t you
think you’d better do it and have it over with?” he whispered.
“It’ll have to be done sooner or later, you know, for
Marilla’s a dreadful deter-mined woman—dreadful determined, Anne.
Do it right off, I say, and have it over.”
“Do you mean apologize to Mrs. Lynde?”
“Yes—apologize—that’s the very word,” said
Matthew eagerly. “Just smooth it over so to speak. That’s what I
was trying to get at.”
“I suppose I could do it to oblige you,” said Anne thoughtfully.
“It would be true enough to say I am sorry, because I sorry
now. I wasn’t a bit sorry last night. I was mad clear through, and I
stayed mad all night. I know I did because I woke up three times and I was just
furious every time. But this morning it was over. I wasn’t in a temper
anymore—and it left a dreadful sort of goneness, too. I felt so ashamed
of myself. But I just couldn’t think of going and telling Mrs. Lynde so.
It would be so humiliating. I made up my mind I’d stay shut up here
forever rather than do that. But still—I’d do anything for
you—if you really want me to—”
“Well now, of course I do. It’s terrible lonesome downstairs
without you. Just go and smooth things over—that’s a good
girl.”
“Very well,” said Anne resignedly. “I’ll tell Marilla
as soon as she comes in I’ve repented.”
“That’s right—that’s right, Anne. But don’t tell
Marilla I said anything about it. She might think I was putting my oar in and I
promised not to do that.”
“Wild horses won’t drag the secret from me,” promised Anne
solemnly. “How would wild horses drag a secret from a person
anyhow?”
But Matthew was gone, scared at his own success. He fled hastily to the
remotest corner of the horse pasture lest Marilla should suspect what he had
been up to. Marilla herself, upon her return to the house, was agreeably
surprised to hear a plaintive voice calling, “Marilla” over the
banisters.
“Well?” she said, going into the hall.
“I’m sorry I lost my temper and said rude things, and I’m
willing to go and tell Mrs. Lynde so.”
“Very well.” Marilla’s crispness gave no sign of her relief.
She had been wondering what under the canopy she should do if Anne did not give
in. “I’ll take you down after milking.”
Accordingly, after milking, behold Marilla and Anne walking down the lane, the
former erect and triumphant, the latter drooping and dejected. But halfway down
Anne’s dejection vanished as if by enchantment. She lifted her head and
stepped lightly along, her eyes fixed on the sunset sky and an air of subdued
exhilaration about her. Marilla beheld the change disapprovingly. This was no
meek penitent such as it behooved her to take into the presence of the offended
Mrs. Lynde.
“What are you thinking of, Anne?” she asked sharply.
“I’m imagining out what I must say to Mrs. Lynde,” answered
Anne dreamily.
This was satisfactory—or should have been so. But Marilla could not rid
herself of the notion that something in her scheme of punishment was going
askew. Anne had no business to look so rapt and radiant.
Rapt and radiant Anne continued until they were in the very presence of Mrs.
Lynde, who was sitting knitting by her kitchen window. Then the radiance
vanished. Mournful penitence appeared on every feature. Before a word was
spoken Anne suddenly went down on her knees before the astonished Mrs. Rachel
and held out her hands beseechingly.
“Oh, Mrs. Lynde, I am so extremely sorry,” she said with a quiver
in her voice. “I could never express all my sorrow, no, not if I used up
a whole dictionary. You must just imagine it. I behaved terribly to
you—and I’ve disgraced the dear friends, Matthew and Marilla, who
have let me stay at Green Gables although I’m not a boy. I’m a
dreadfully wicked and ungrateful girl, and I deserve to be punished and cast
out by respectable people forever. It was very wicked of me to fly into a
temper because you told me the truth. It the truth; every word you
said was true. My hair is red and I’m freckled and skinny and ugly. What
I said to you was true, too, but I shouldn’t have said it. Oh, Mrs.
Lynde, please, please, forgive me. If you refuse it will be a lifelong sorrow
on a poor little orphan girl, would you, even if she had a dreadful temper? Oh,
I am sure you wouldn’t. Please say you forgive me, Mrs. Lynde.”
Anne clasped her hands together, bowed her head, and waited for the word of
judgment.
There was no mistaking her sincerity—it breathed in every tone of her
voice. Both Marilla and Mrs. Lynde recognized its unmistakable ring. But the
former under-stood in dismay that Anne was actually enjoying her valley of
humiliation—was reveling in the thoroughness of her abasement. Where was
the wholesome punishment upon which she, Marilla, had plumed herself? Anne had
turned it into a species of positive pleasure.
Good Mrs. Lynde, not being overburdened with perception, did not see this. She
only perceived that Anne had made a very thorough apology and all resentment
vanished from her kindly, if somewhat officious, heart.
“There, there, get up, child,” she said heartily. “Of course
I forgive you. I guess I was a little too hard on you, anyway. But I’m
such an outspoken person. You just mustn’t mind me, that’s what. It
can’t be denied your hair is terrible red; but I knew a girl
once—went to school with her, in fact—whose hair was every mite as
red as yours when she was young, but when she grew up it darkened to a real
handsome auburn. I wouldn’t be a mite surprised if yours did,
too—not a mite.”
“Oh, Mrs. Lynde!” Anne drew a long breath as she rose to her feet.
“You have given me a hope. I shall always feel that you are a benefactor.
Oh, I could endure anything if I only thought my hair would be a handsome
auburn when I grew up. It would be so much easier to be good if one’s
hair was a handsome auburn, don’t you think? And now may I go out into
your garden and sit on that bench under the apple-trees while you and Marilla
are talking? There is so much more scope for imagination out there.”
“Laws, yes, run along, child. And you can pick a bouquet of them white
June lilies over in the corner if you like.”
As the door closed behind Anne Mrs. Lynde got briskly up to light a lamp.
“She’s a real odd little thing. Take this chair, Marilla;
it’s easier than the one you’ve got; I just keep that for the hired
boy to sit on. Yes, she certainly is an odd child, but there is something kind
of taking about her after all. I don’t feel so surprised at you and
Matthew keeping her as I did—nor so sorry for you, either. She may turn
out all right. Of course, she has a queer way of expressing herself—a
little too—well, too kind of forcible, you know; but she’ll likely
get over that now that she’s come to live among civilized folks. And
then, her temper’s pretty quick, I guess; but there’s one comfort,
a child that has a quick temper, just blaze up and cool down, ain’t never
likely to be sly or deceitful. Preserve me from a sly child, that’s what.
On the whole, Marilla, I kind of like her.”
When Marilla went home Anne came out of the fragrant twilight of the orchard
with a sheaf of white narcissi in her hands.
“I apologized pretty well, didn’t I?” she said proudly as
they went down the lane. “I thought since I had to do it I might as well
do it thoroughly.”
“You did it thoroughly, all right enough,” was Marilla’s
comment. Marilla was dismayed at finding herself inclined to laugh over the
recollection. She had also an uneasy feeling that she ought to scold Anne for
apologizing so well; but then, that was ridiculous! She compromised with her
conscience by saying severely:
“I hope you won’t have occasion to make many more such apologies. I
hope you’ll try to control your temper now, Anne.”
“That wouldn’t be so hard if people wouldn’t twit me about my
looks,” said Anne with a sigh. “I don’t get cross about other
things; but I’m tired of being twitted about my hair and it
just makes me boil right over. Do you suppose my hair will really be a handsome
auburn when I grow up?”
“You shouldn’t think so much about your looks, Anne. I’m
afraid you are a very vain little girl.”
“How can I be vain when I know I’m homely?” protested Anne.
“I love pretty things; and I hate to look in the glass and see something
that isn’t pretty. It makes me feel so sorrowful—just as I feel
when I look at any ugly thing. I pity it because it isn’t
beautiful.”
“Handsome is as handsome does,” quoted Marilla. “I’ve
had that said to me before, but I have my doubts about it,” remarked
skeptical Anne, sniffing at her narcissi. “Oh, aren’t these flowers
sweet! It was lovely of Mrs. Lynde to give them to me. I have no hard feelings
against Mrs. Lynde now. It gives you a lovely, comfortable feeling to apologize
and be forgiven, doesn’t it? Aren’t the stars bright tonight? If
you could live in a star, which one would you pick? I’d like that lovely
clear big one away over there above that dark hill.”
“Anne, do hold your tongue,” said Marilla, thoroughly worn out
trying to follow the gyrations of Anne’s thoughts.
Anne said no more until they turned into their own lane. A little gypsy wind
came down it to meet them, laden with the spicy perfume of young dew-wet ferns.
Far up in the shadows a cheerful light gleamed out through the trees from the
kitchen at Green Gables. Anne suddenly came close to Marilla and slipped her
hand into the older woman’s hard palm.
“It’s lovely to be going home and know it’s home,” she
said. “I love Green Gables already, and I never loved any place before.
No place ever seemed like home. Oh, Marilla, I’m so happy. I could pray
right now and not find it a bit hard.”
Something warm and pleasant welled up in Marilla’s heart at touch of that
thin little hand in her own—a throb of the maternity she had missed,
perhaps. Its very unaccustomedness and sweetness disturbed her. She hastened to
restore her sensations to their normal calm by inculcating a moral.
“If you’ll be a good girl you’ll always be happy, Anne. And
you should never find it hard to say your prayers.”
“Saying one’s prayers isn’t exactly the same thing as
praying,” said Anne meditatively. “But I’m going to imagine
that I’m the wind that is blowing up there in those tree tops. When I get
tired of the trees I’ll imagine I’m gently waving down here in the
ferns—and then I’ll fly over to Mrs. Lynde’s garden and set
the flowers dancing—and then I’ll go with one great swoop over the
clover field—and then I’ll blow over the Lake of Shining Waters and
ripple it all up into little sparkling waves. Oh, there’s so much scope
for imagination in a wind! So I’ll not talk any more just now,
Marilla.”
“Thanks be to goodness for that,” breathed Marilla in devout
relief.
CHAPTER XI.
Anne’s Impressions of Sunday-School
WELL, how do you like
them?” said Marilla.
Anne was standing in the gable room, looking solemnly at three new dresses
spread out on the bed. One was of snuffy colored gingham which Marilla had been
tempted to buy from a peddler the preceding summer because it looked so
serviceable; one was of black-and-white checkered sateen which she had picked
up at a bargain counter in the winter; and one was a stiff print of an ugly
blue shade which she had purchased that week at a Carmody store.
She had made them up herself, and they were all made alike—plain skirts
fulled tightly to plain waists, with sleeves as plain as waist and skirt and
tight as sleeves could be.
“I’ll imagine that I like them,” said Anne soberly.
“I don’t want you to imagine it,” said Marilla, offended.
“Oh, I can see you don’t like the dresses! What is the matter with
them? Aren’t they neat and clean and new?”
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t you like them?”
“They’re—they’re not—pretty,” said Anne
reluctantly.
“Pretty!” Marilla sniffed. “I didn’t trouble my head
about getting pretty dresses for you. I don’t believe in pampering
vanity, Anne, I’ll tell you that right off. Those dresses are good,
sensible, serviceable dresses, without any frills or furbelows about them, and
they’re all you’ll get this summer. The brown gingham and the blue
print will do you for school when you begin to go. The sateen is for church and
Sunday school. I’ll expect you to keep them neat and clean and not to
tear them. I should think you’d be grateful to get most anything after
those skimpy wincey things you’ve been wearing.”
“Oh, I grateful,” protested Anne. “But I’d be
ever so much gratefuller if—if you’d made just one of them with
puffed sleeves. Puffed sleeves are so fashionable now. It would give me such a
thrill, Marilla, just to wear a dress with puffed sleeves.”
“Well, you’ll have to do without your thrill. I hadn’t any
material to waste on puffed sleeves. I think they are ridiculous-looking things
anyhow. I prefer the plain, sensible ones.”
“But I’d rather look ridiculous when everybody else does than plain
and sensible all by myself,” persisted Anne mournfully.
“Trust you for that! Well, hang those dresses carefully up in your
closet, and then sit down and learn the Sunday school lesson. I got a quarterly
from Mr. Bell for you and you’ll go to Sunday school tomorrow,”
said Marilla, disappearing downstairs in high dudgeon.
Anne clasped her hands and looked at the dresses.
“I did hope there would be a white one with puffed sleeves,” she
whispered disconsolately. “I prayed for one, but I didn’t much
expect it on that account. I didn’t suppose God would have time to bother
about a little orphan girl’s dress. I knew I’d just have to depend
on Marilla for it. Well, fortunately I can imagine that one of them is of
snow-white muslin with lovely lace frills and three-puffed sleeves.”
The next morning warnings of a sick headache prevented Marilla from going to
Sunday-school with Anne.
“You’ll have to go down and call for Mrs. Lynde, Anne,” she
said. “She’ll see that you get into the right class. Now, mind you
behave yourself properly. Stay to preaching afterwards and ask Mrs. Lynde to
show you our pew. Here’s a cent for collection. Don’t stare at
people and don’t fidget. I shall expect you to tell me the text when you
come home.”
Anne started off irreproachable, arrayed in the stiff black-and-white sateen,
which, while decent as regards length and certainly not open to the charge of
skimpiness, contrived to emphasize every corner and angle of her thin figure.
Her hat was a little, flat, glossy, new sailor, the extreme plainness of which
had likewise much disappointed Anne, who had permitted herself secret visions
of ribbon and flowers. The latter, however, were supplied before Anne reached
the main road, for being confronted halfway down the lane with a golden frenzy
of wind-stirred buttercups and a glory of wild roses, Anne promptly and
liberally garlanded her hat with a heavy wreath of them. Whatever other people
might have thought of the result it satisfied Anne, and she tripped gaily down
the road, holding her ruddy head with its decoration of pink and yellow very
proudly.
When she had reached Mrs. Lynde’s house she found that lady gone. Nothing
daunted, Anne proceeded onward to the church alone. In the porch she found a
crowd of little girls, all more or less gaily attired in whites and blues and
pinks, and all staring with curious eyes at this stranger in their midst, with
her extraordinary head adornment. Avonlea little girls had already heard queer
stories about Anne. Mrs. Lynde said she had an awful temper; Jerry Buote, the
hired boy at Green Gables, said she talked all the time to herself or to the
trees and flowers like a crazy girl. They looked at her and whispered to each
other behind their quarterlies. Nobody made any friendly advances, then or
later on when the opening exercises were over and Anne found herself in Miss
Rogerson’s class.
Miss Rogerson was a middle-aged lady who had taught a Sunday-school class for
twenty years. Her method of teaching was to ask the printed questions from the
quarterly and look sternly over its edge at the particular little girl she
thought ought to answer the question. She looked very often at Anne, and Anne,
thanks to Marilla’s drilling, answered promptly; but it may be questioned
if she understood very much about either question or answer.
She did not think she liked Miss Rogerson, and she felt very miserable; every
other little girl in the class had puffed sleeves. Anne felt that life was
really not worth living without puffed sleeves.
“Well, how did you like Sunday school?” Marilla wanted to know when
Anne came home. Her wreath having faded, Anne had discarded it in the lane, so
Marilla was spared the knowledge of that for a time.
“I didn’t like it a bit. It was horrid.”
“Anne Shirley!” said Marilla rebukingly.
Anne sat down on the rocker with a long sigh, kissed one of Bonny’s
leaves, and waved her hand to a blossoming fuchsia.
“They might have been lonesome while I was away,” she explained.
“And now about the Sunday school. I behaved well, just as you told me.
Mrs. Lynde was gone, but I went right on myself. I went into the church, with a
lot of other little girls, and I sat in the corner of a pew by the window while
the opening exercises went on. Mr. Bell made an awfully long prayer. I would
have been dreadfully tired before he got through if I hadn’t been sitting
by that window. But it looked right out on the Lake of Shining Waters, so I
just gazed at that and imagined all sorts of splendid things.”
“You shouldn’t have done anything of the sort. You should have
listened to Mr. Bell.”
“But he wasn’t talking to me,” protested Anne. “He was
talking to God and he didn’t seem to be very much inter-ested in it,
either. I think he thought God was too far off though. There was a long row of
white birches hanging over the lake and the sunshine fell down through them,
‘way, ‘way down, deep into the water. Oh, Marilla, it was like a
beautiful dream! It gave me a thrill and I just said, ‘Thank you for it,
God,’ two or three times.”
“Not out loud, I hope,” said Marilla anxiously.
“Oh, no, just under my breath. Well, Mr. Bell did get through at last and
they told me to go into the classroom with Miss Rogerson’s class. There
were nine other girls in it. They all had puffed sleeves. I tried to imagine
mine were puffed, too, but I couldn’t. Why couldn’t I? It was as
easy as could be to imagine they were puffed when I was alone in the east
gable, but it was awfully hard there among the others who had really truly
puffs.”
“You shouldn’t have been thinking about your sleeves in Sunday
school. You should have been attending to the lesson. I hope you knew
it.”
“Oh, yes; and I answered a lot of questions. Miss Rogerson asked ever so
many. I don’t think it was fair for her to do all the asking. There were
lots I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t like to because I didn’t
think she was a kindred spirit. Then all the other little girls recited a
paraphrase. She asked me if I knew any. I told her I didn’t, but I could
recite, ‘The Dog at His Master’s Grave’ if she liked.
That’s in the Third Royal Reader. It isn’t a really truly religious
piece of poetry, but it’s so sad and melancholy that it might as well be.
She said it wouldn’t do and she told me to learn the nineteenth
paraphrase for next Sunday. I read it over in church afterwards and it’s
splendid. There are two lines in particular that just thrill me.
“‘Quick as the slaughtered squadrons fell
In Midian’s evil day.’
“I don’t know what ‘squadrons’ means nor
‘Midian,’ either, but it sounds tragical. I can hardly
wait until next Sunday to recite it. I’ll practice it all the week. After
Sunday school I asked Miss Rogerson—because Mrs. Lynde was too far
away—to show me your pew. I sat just as still as I could and the text was
Revelations, third chapter, second and third verses. It was a very long text.
If I was a minister I’d pick the short, snappy ones. The sermon was
awfully long, too. I suppose the minister had to match it to the text. I
didn’t think he was a bit interesting. The trouble with him seems to be
that he hasn’t enough imagination. I didn’t listen to him very
much. I just let my thoughts run and I thought of the most surprising
things.”
Marilla felt helplessly that all this should be sternly reproved, but she was
hampered by the undeniable fact that some of the things Anne had said,
especially about the minister’s sermons and Mr. Bell’s prayers,
were what she herself had really thought deep down in her heart for years, but
had never given expression to. It almost seemed to her that those secret,
unuttered, critical thoughts had suddenly taken visible and accusing shape and
form in the person of this outspoken morsel of neglected humanity.
CHAPTER XII.
A Solemn Vow and Promise
IT was not until the
next Friday that Marilla heard the story of the flower-wreathed hat. She came
home from Mrs. Lynde’s and called Anne to account.
“Anne, Mrs. Rachel says you went to church last Sunday with your hat
rigged out ridiculous with roses and buttercups. What on earth put you up to
such a caper? A pretty-looking object you must have been!”
“Oh. I know pink and yellow aren’t becoming to me,” began
Anne.
“Becoming fiddlesticks! It was putting flowers on your hat at all, no
matter what color they were, that was ridiculous. You are the most aggravating
child!”
“I don’t see why it’s any more ridiculous to wear flowers on
your hat than on your dress,” protested Anne. “Lots of little girls
there had bouquets pinned on their dresses. What’s the difference?”
Marilla was not to be drawn from the safe concrete into dubious paths of the
abstract.
“Don’t answer me back like that, Anne. It was very silly of you to
do such a thing. Never let me catch you at such a trick again. Mrs. Rachel says
she thought she would sink through the floor when she saw you come in all
rigged out like that. She couldn’t get near enough to tell you to take
them off till it was too late. She says people talked about it something
dreadful. Of course they would think I had no better sense than to let you go
decked out like that.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Anne, tears welling into her eyes.
“I never thought you’d mind. The roses and buttercups were so sweet
and pretty I thought they’d look lovely on my hat. Lots of the little
girls had artificial flowers on their hats. I’m afraid I’m going to
be a dreadful trial to you. Maybe you’d better send me back to the
asylum. That would be terrible; I don’t think I could endure it; most
likely I would go into consumption; I’m so thin as it is, you see. But
that would be better than being a trial to you.”
“Nonsense,” said Marilla, vexed at herself for having made the
child cry. “I don’t want to send you back to the asylum, I’m
sure. All I want is that you should behave like other little girls and not make
yourself ridiculous. Don’t cry any more. I’ve got some news for
you. Diana Barry came home this afternoon. I’m going up to see if I can
borrow a skirt pattern from Mrs. Barry, and if you like you can come with me
and get acquainted with Diana.”
Anne rose to her feet, with clasped hands, the tears still glistening on her
cheeks; the dish towel she had been hemming slipped unheeded to the floor.
“Oh, Marilla, I’m frightened—now that it has come I’m
actually frightened. What if she shouldn’t like me! It would be the most
tragical disappointment of my life.”
“Now, don’t get into a fluster. And I do wish you wouldn’t
use such long words. It sounds so funny in a little girl. I guess Diana
‘ll like you well enough. It’s her mother you’ve got to
reckon with. If she doesn’t like you it won’t matter how much Diana
does. If she has heard about your outburst to Mrs. Lynde and going to church
with buttercups round your hat I don’t know what she’ll think of
you. You must be polite and well behaved, and don’t make any of your
startling speeches. For pity’s sake, if the child isn’t actually
trembling!”
Anne trembling. Her face was pale and tense.
“Oh, Marilla, you’d be excited, too, if you were going to meet a
little girl you hoped to be your bosom friend and whose mother mightn’t
like you,” she said as she hastened to get her hat.
They went over to Orchard Slope by the short cut across the brook and up the
firry hill grove. Mrs. Barry came to the kitchen door in answer to
Marilla’s knock. She was a tall black-eyed, black-haired woman, with a
very resolute mouth. She had the reputation of being very strict with her
children.
“How do you do, Marilla?” she said cordially. “Come in. And
this is the little girl you have adopted, I suppose?”
“Yes, this is Anne Shirley,” said Marilla.
“Spelled with an E,” gasped Anne, who, tremulous and excited as she
was, was determined there should be no misunderstanding on that important
point.
Mrs. Barry, not hearing or not comprehending, merely shook hands and said
kindly:
“How are you?”
“I am well in body although considerable rumpled up in spirit, thank you
ma’am,” said Anne gravely. Then aside to Marilla in an audible
whisper, “There wasn’t anything startling in that, was there,
Marilla?”
Diana was sitting on the sofa, reading a book which she dropped when the
callers entered. She was a very pretty little girl, with her mother’s
black eyes and hair, and rosy cheeks, and the merry expression which was her
inheritance from her father.
“This is my little girl Diana,” said Mrs. Barry. “Diana, you
might take Anne out into the garden and show her your flowers. It will be
better for you than straining your eyes over that book. She reads entirely too
much—” this to Marilla as the little girls went
out—“and I can’t prevent her, for her father aids and abets
her. She’s always poring over a book. I’m glad she has the prospect
of a playmate—perhaps it will take her more out-of-doors.”
Outside in the garden, which was full of mellow sunset light streaming through
the dark old firs to the west of it, stood Anne and Diana, gazing bashfully at
each other over a clump of gorgeous tiger lilies.
The Barry garden was a bowery wilderness of flowers which would have delighted
Anne’s heart at any time less fraught with destiny. It was encircled by
huge old willows and tall firs, beneath which flourished flowers that loved the
shade. Prim, right-angled paths neatly bordered with clamshells, intersected it
like moist red ribbons and in the beds between old-fashioned flowers ran riot.
There were rosy bleeding-hearts and great splendid crimson peonies; white,
fragrant narcissi and thorny, sweet Scotch roses; pink and blue and white
columbines and lilac-tinted Bouncing Bets; clumps of southernwood and ribbon
grass and mint; purple Adam-and-Eve, daffodils, and masses of sweet clover
white with its delicate, fragrant, feathery sprays; scarlet lightning that shot
its fiery lances over prim white musk-flowers; a garden it was where sunshine
lingered and bees hummed, and winds, beguiled into loitering, purred and
rustled.
“Oh, Diana,” said Anne at last, clasping her hands and speaking
almost in a whisper, “oh, do you think you can like me a
little—enough to be my bosom friend?”
Diana laughed. Diana always laughed before she spoke.
“Why, I guess so,” she said frankly. “I’m awfully glad
you’ve come to live at Green Gables. It will be jolly to have somebody to
play with. There isn’t any other girl who lives near enough to play with,
and I’ve no sisters big enough.”
“Will you swear to be my friend forever and ever?” demanded Anne
eagerly.
Diana looked shocked.
“Why it’s dreadfully wicked to swear,” she said rebukingly.
“Oh no, not my kind of swearing. There are two kinds, you know.”
“I never heard of but one kind,” said Diana doubtfully.
“There really is another. Oh, it isn’t wicked at all. It just means
vowing and promising solemnly.”
“Well, I don’t mind doing that,” agreed Diana, relieved.
“How do you do it?”
“We must join hands—so,” said Anne gravely. “It ought
to be over running water. We’ll just imagine this path is running water.
I’ll repeat the oath first. I solemnly swear to be faithful to my bosom
friend, Diana Barry, as long as the sun and moon shall endure. Now you say it
and put my name in.”
Diana repeated the “oath” with a laugh fore and aft. Then she said:
“You’re a queer girl, Anne. I heard before that you were queer. But
I believe I’m going to like you real well.”
When Marilla and Anne went home Diana went with them as far as the log bridge.
The two little girls walked with their arms about each other. At the brook they
parted with many promises to spend the next afternoon together.
“Well, did you find Diana a kindred spirit?” asked Marilla as they
went up through the garden of Green Gables.
“Oh yes,” sighed Anne, blissfully unconscious of any sarcasm on
Marilla’s part. “Oh Marilla, I’m the happiest girl on Prince
Edward Island this very moment. I assure you I’ll say my prayers with a
right good-will tonight. Diana and I are going to build a playhouse in Mr.
William Bell’s birch grove tomorrow. Can I have those broken pieces of
china that are out in the woodshed? Diana’s birthday is in February and
mine is in March. Don’t you think that is a very strange coincidence?
Diana is going to lend me a book to read. She says it’s perfectly
splendid and tremendously exciting. She’s going to show me a place back
in the woods where rice lilies grow. Don’t you think Diana has got very
soulful eyes? I wish I had soulful eyes. Diana is going to teach me to sing a
song called ‘Nelly in the Hazel Dell.’ She’s going to give me
a picture to put up in my room; it’s a perfectly beautiful picture, she
says—a lovely lady in a pale blue silk dress. A sewing-machine agent gave
it to her. I wish I had something to give Diana. I’m an inch taller than
Diana, but she is ever so much fatter; she says she’d like to be thin
because it’s so much more graceful, but I’m afraid she only said it
to soothe my feelings. We’re going to the shore some day to gather
shells. We have agreed to call the spring down by the log bridge the
Dryad’s Bubble. Isn’t that a perfectly elegant name? I read a story
once about a spring called that. A dryad is sort of a grown-up fairy, I
think.”
“Well, all I hope is you won’t talk Diana to death,” said
Marilla. “But remember this in all your planning, Anne. You’re not
going to play all the time nor most of it. You’ll have your work to do
and it’ll have to be done first.”
Anne’s cup of happiness was full, and Matthew caused it to overflow. He
had just got home from a trip to the store at Carmody, and he sheepishly
produced a small parcel from his pocket and handed it to Anne, with a
deprecatory look at Marilla.
“I heard you say you liked chocolate sweeties, so I got you some,”
he said.
“Humph,” sniffed Marilla. “It’ll ruin her teeth and
stomach. There, there, child, don’t look so dismal. You can eat those,
since Matthew has gone and got them. He’d better have brought you
peppermints. They’re wholesomer. Don’t sicken yourself eating all
them at once now.”
“Oh, no, indeed, I won’t,” said Anne eagerly.
“I’ll just eat one tonight, Marilla. And I can give Diana half of
them, can’t I? The other half will taste twice as sweet to me if I give
some to her. It’s delightful to think I have something to give
her.”
“I will say it for the child,” said Marilla when Anne had gone to
her gable, “she isn’t stingy. I’m glad, for of all faults I
detest stinginess in a child. Dear me, it’s only three weeks since she
came, and it seems as if she’d been here always. I can’t imagine
the place without her. Now, don’t be looking I told-you-so, Matthew.
That’s bad enough in a woman, but it isn’t to be endured in a man.
I’m perfectly willing to own up that I’m glad I consented to keep
the child and that I’m getting fond of her, but don’t you rub it
in, Matthew Cuthbert.”
CHAPTER XIII.
The Delights of Anticipation
IT’S time Anne was
in to do her sewing,” said Marilla, glancing at the clock and then out
into the yellow August afternoon where everything drowsed in the heat.
“She stayed playing with Diana more than half an hour more ‘n I
gave her leave to; and now she’s perched out there on the woodpile
talking to Matthew, nineteen to the dozen, when she knows perfectly well she
ought to be at her work. And of course he’s listening to her like a
perfect ninny. I never saw such an infatuated man. The more she talks and the
odder the things she says, the more he’s delighted evidently. Anne
Shirley, you come right in here this minute, do you hear me!”
A series of staccato taps on the west window brought Anne flying in from the
yard, eyes shining, cheeks faintly flushed with pink, unbraided hair streaming
behind her in a torrent of brightness.
“Oh, Marilla,” she exclaimed breathlessly, “there’s
going to be a Sunday-school picnic next week—in Mr. Harmon
Andrews’s field, right near the lake of Shining Waters. And Mrs.
Superintendent Bell and Mrs. Rachel Lynde are going to make ice
cream—think of it, Marilla— And, oh, Marilla, can
I go to it?”
“Just look at the clock, if you please, Anne. What time did I tell you to
come in?”
“Two o’clock—but isn’t it splendid about the picnic,
Marilla? Please can I go? Oh, I’ve never been to a
picnic—I’ve dreamed of picnics, but I’ve never—”
“Yes, I told you to come at two o’clock. And it’s a quarter
to three. I’d like to know why you didn’t obey me, Anne.”
“Why, I meant to, Marilla, as much as could be. But you have no idea how
fascinating Idlewild is. And then, of course, I had to tell Matthew about the
picnic. Matthew is such a sympathetic listener. Please can I go?”
“You’ll have to learn to resist the fascination of
Idle-whatever-you-call-it. When I tell you to come in at a certain time I mean
that time and not half an hour later. And you needn’t stop to discourse
with sympathetic listeners on your way, either. As for the picnic, of course
you can go. You’re a Sunday-school scholar, and it’s not likely
I’d refuse to let you go when all the other little girls are
going.”
“But—but,” faltered Anne, “Diana says that everybody
must take a basket of things to eat. I can’t cook, as you know, Marilla,
and—and—I don’t mind going to a picnic without puffed sleeves
so much, but I’d feel terribly humiliated if I had to go without a
basket. It’s been preying on my mind ever since Diana told me.”
“Well, it needn’t prey any longer. I’ll bake you a
basket.”
“Oh, you dear good Marilla. Oh, you are so kind to me. Oh, I’m so
much obliged to you.”
Getting through with her “ohs” Anne cast herself into
Marilla’s arms and rapturously kissed her sallow cheek. It was the first
time in her whole life that childish lips had voluntarily touched
Marilla’s face. Again that sudden sensation of startling sweetness
thrilled her. She was secretly vastly pleased at Anne’s impulsive caress,
which was probably the reason why she said brusquely:
“There, there, never mind your kissing nonsense. I’d sooner see you
doing strictly as you’re told. As for cooking, I mean to begin giving you
lessons in that some of these days. But you’re so featherbrained, Anne,
I’ve been waiting to see if you’d sober down a little and learn to
be steady before I begin. You’ve got to keep your wits about you in
cooking and not stop in the middle of things to let your thoughts rove all over
creation. Now, get out your patchwork and have your square done before
teatime.”
“I do like patchwork,” said Anne dolefully, hunting out
her workbasket and sitting down before a little heap of red and white diamonds
with a sigh. “I think some kinds of sewing would be nice; but
there’s no scope for imagination in patchwork. It’s just one little
seam after another and you never seem to be getting anywhere. But of course
I’d rather be Anne of Green Gables sewing patchwork than Anne of any
other place with nothing to do but play. I wish time went as quick sewing
patches as it does when I’m playing with Diana, though. Oh, we do have
such elegant times, Marilla. I have to furnish most of the imagination, but
I’m well able to do that. Diana is simply perfect in every other way. You
know that little piece of land across the brook that runs up between our farm
and Mr. Barry’s. It belongs to Mr. William Bell, and right in the corner
there is a little ring of white birch trees—the most romantic spot,
Marilla. Diana and I have our playhouse there. We call it Idlewild. Isn’t
that a poetical name? I assure you it took me some time to think it out. I
stayed awake nearly a whole night before I invented it. Then, just as I was
dropping off to sleep, it came like an inspiration. Diana was
when she heard it. We have got our house fixed up elegantly. You must come and
see it, Marilla—won’t you? We have great big stones, all covered
with moss, for seats, and boards from tree to tree for shelves. And we have all
our dishes on them. Of course, they’re all broken but it’s the
easiest thing in the world to imagine that they are whole. There’s a
piece of a plate with a spray of red and yellow ivy on it that is especially
beautiful. We keep it in the parlor and we have the fairy glass there, too. The
fairy glass is as lovely as a dream. Diana found it out in the woods behind
their chicken house. It’s all full of rainbows—just little young
rainbows that haven’t grown big yet—and Diana’s mother told
her it was broken off a hanging lamp they once had. But it’s nice to
imagine the fairies lost it one night when they had a ball, so we call it the
fairy glass. Matthew is going to make us a table. Oh, we have named that little
round pool over in Mr. Barry’s field Willowmere. I got that name out of
the book Diana lent me. That was a thrilling book, Marilla. The heroine had
five lovers. I’d be satisfied with one, wouldn’t you? She was very
handsome and she went through great tribulations. She could faint as easy as
anything. I’d love to be able to faint, wouldn’t you, Marilla?
It’s so romantic. But I’m really very healthy for all I’m so
thin. I believe I’m getting fatter, though. Don’t you think I am? I
look at my elbows every morning when I get up to see if any dimples are coming.
Diana is having a new dress made with elbow sleeves. She is going to wear it to
the picnic. Oh, I do hope it will be fine next Wednesday. I don’t feel
that I could endure the disappointment if anything happened to prevent me from
getting to the picnic. I suppose I’d live through it, but I’m
certain it would be a lifelong sorrow. It wouldn’t matter if I got to a
hundred picnics in after years; they wouldn’t make up for missing this
one. They’re going to have boats on the Lake of Shining Waters—and
ice cream, as I told you. I have never tasted ice cream. Diana tried to explain
what it was like, but I guess ice cream is one of those things that are beyond
imagination.”
“Anne, you have talked even on for ten minutes by the clock,” said
Marilla. “Now, just for curiosity’s sake, see if you can hold your
tongue for the same length of time.”
Anne held her tongue as desired. But for the rest of the week she talked picnic
and thought picnic and dreamed picnic. On Saturday it rained and she worked
herself up into such a frantic state lest it should keep on raining until and
over Wednesday that Marilla made her sew an extra patchwork square by way of
steadying her nerves.
On Sunday Anne confided to Marilla on the way home from church that she grew
actually cold all over with excitement when the minister announced the picnic
from the pulpit.
“Such a thrill as went up and down my back, Marilla! I don’t think
I’d ever really believed until then that there was honestly going to be a
picnic. I couldn’t help fearing I’d only imagined it. But when a
minister says a thing in the pulpit you just have to believe it.”
“You set your heart too much on things, Anne,” said Marilla, with a
sigh. “I’m afraid there’ll be a great many disappointments in
store for you through life.”
“Oh, Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of
them,” exclaimed Anne. “You mayn’t get the things themselves;
but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them.
Mrs. Lynde says, ‘Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not
be disappointed.’ But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to
be disappointed.”
Marilla wore her amethyst brooch to church that day as usual. Marilla always
wore her amethyst brooch to church. She would have thought it rather
sacrilegious to leave it off—as bad as forgetting her Bible or her
collection dime. That amethyst brooch was Marilla’s most treasured
possession. A seafaring uncle had given it to her mother who in turn had
bequeathed it to Marilla. It was an old-fashioned oval, containing a braid of
her mother’s hair, surrounded by a border of very fine amethysts. Marilla
knew too little about precious stones to realize how fine the amethysts
actually were; but she thought them very beautiful and was always pleasantly
conscious of their violet shimmer at her throat, above her good brown satin
dress, even although she could not see it.
Anne had been smitten with delighted admiration when she first saw that brooch.
“Oh, Marilla, it’s a perfectly elegant brooch. I don’t know
how you can pay attention to the sermon or the prayers when you have it on. I
couldn’t, I know. I think amethysts are just sweet. They are what I used
to think diamonds were like. Long ago, before I had ever seen a diamond, I read
about them and I tried to imagine what they would be like. I thought they would
be lovely glimmering purple stones. When I saw a real diamond in a lady’s
ring one day I was so disappointed I cried. Of course, it was very lovely but
it wasn’t my idea of a diamond. Will you let me hold the brooch for one
minute, Marilla? Do you think amethysts can be the souls of good
violets?”
CHAPTER XIV.
Anne’s Confession
ON the Monday evening
before the picnic Marilla came down from her room with a troubled face.
“Anne,” she said to that small personage, who was shelling peas by
the spotless table and singing, “Nelly of the Hazel Dell” with a
vigor and expression that did credit to Diana’s teaching, “did you
see anything of my amethyst brooch? I thought I stuck it in my pincushion when
I came home from church yesterday evening, but I can’t find it
anywhere.”
“I—I saw it this afternoon when you were away at the Aid
Society,” said Anne, a little slowly. “I was passing your door when
I saw it on the cushion, so I went in to look at it.”
“Did you touch it?” said Marilla sternly.
“Y-e-e-s,” admitted Anne, “I took it up and I pinned it on my
breast just to see how it would look.”
“You had no business to do anything of the sort. It’s very wrong in
a little girl to meddle. You shouldn’t have gone into my room in the
first place and you shouldn’t have touched a brooch that didn’t
belong to you in the second. Where did you put it?”
“Oh, I put it back on the bureau. I hadn’t it on a minute. Truly, I
didn’t mean to meddle, Marilla. I didn’t think about its being
wrong to go in and try on the brooch; but I see now that it was and I’ll
never do it again. That’s one good thing about me. I never do the same
naughty thing twice.”
“You didn’t put it back,” said Marilla. “That brooch
isn’t anywhere on the bureau. You’ve taken it out or something,
Anne.”
“I did put it back,” said Anne quickly—pertly, Marilla
thought. “I don’t just remember whether I stuck it on the
pincushion or laid it in the china tray. But I’m perfectly certain I put
it back.”
“I’ll go and have another look,” said Marilla, determining to
be just. “If you put that brooch back it’s there still. If it
isn’t I’ll know you didn’t, that’s all!”
Marilla went to her room and made a thorough search, not only over the bureau
but in every other place she thought the brooch might possibly be. It was not
to be found and she returned to the kitchen.
“Anne, the brooch is gone. By your own admission you were the last person
to handle it. Now, what have you done with it? Tell me the truth at once. Did
you take it out and lose it?”
“No, I didn’t,” said Anne solemnly, meeting Marilla’s
angry gaze squarely. “I never took the brooch out of your room and that
is the truth, if I was to be led to the block for it—although I’m
not very certain what a block is. So there, Marilla.”
Anne’s “so there” was only intended to emphasize her
assertion, but Marilla took it as a display of defiance.
“I believe you are telling me a falsehood, Anne,” she said sharply.
“I know you are. There now, don’t say anything more unless you are
prepared to tell the whole truth. Go to your room and stay there until you are
ready to confess.”
“Will I take the peas with me?” said Anne meekly.
“No, I’ll finish shelling them myself. Do as I bid you.”
When Anne had gone Marilla went about her evening tasks in a very disturbed
state of mind. She was worried about her valuable brooch. What if Anne had lost
it? And how wicked of the child to deny having taken it, when anybody could see
she must have! With such an innocent face, too!
“I don’t know what I wouldn’t sooner have had happen,”
thought Marilla, as she nervously shelled the peas. “Of course, I
don’t suppose she meant to steal it or anything like that. She’s
just taken it to play with or help along that imagination of hers. She must
have taken it, that’s clear, for there hasn’t been a soul in that
room since she was in it, by her own story, until I went up tonight. And the
brooch is gone, there’s nothing surer. I suppose she has lost it and is
afraid to own up for fear she’ll be punished. It’s a dreadful thing
to think she tells falsehoods. It’s a far worse thing than her fit of
temper. It’s a fearful responsibility to have a child in your house you
can’t trust. Slyness and untruthfulness—that’s what she has
displayed. I declare I feel worse about that than about the brooch. If
she’d only have told the truth about it I wouldn’t mind so
much.”
Marilla went to her room at intervals all through the evening and searched for
the brooch, without finding it. A bedtime visit to the east gable produced no
result. Anne persisted in denying that she knew anything about the brooch but
Marilla was only the more firmly convinced that she did.
She told Matthew the story the next morning. Matthew was confounded and
puzzled; he could not so quickly lose faith in Anne but he had to admit that
circumstances were against her.
“You’re sure it hasn’t fell down behind the bureau?”
was the only suggestion he could offer.
“I’ve moved the bureau and I’ve taken out the drawers and
I’ve looked in every crack and cranny” was Marilla’s positive
answer. “The brooch is gone and that child has taken it and lied about
it. That’s the plain, ugly truth, Matthew Cuthbert, and we might as well
look it in the face.”
“Well now, what are you going to do about it?” Matthew asked
forlornly, feeling secretly thankful that Marilla and not he had to deal with
the situation. He felt no desire to put his oar in this time.
“She’ll stay in her room until she confesses,” said Marilla
grimly, remembering the success of this method in the former case. “Then
we’ll see. Perhaps we’ll be able to find the brooch if she’ll
only tell where she took it; but in any case she’ll have to be severely
punished, Matthew.”
“Well now, you’ll have to punish her,” said Matthew, reaching
for his hat. “I’ve nothing to do with it, remember. You warned me
off yourself.”
Marilla felt deserted by everyone. She could not even go to Mrs. Lynde for
advice. She went up to the east gable with a very serious face and left it with
a face more serious still. Anne steadfastly refused to confess. She persisted
in asserting that she had not taken the brooch. The child had evidently been
crying and Marilla felt a pang of pity which she sternly repressed. By night
she was, as she expressed it, “beat out.”
“You’ll stay in this room until you confess, Anne. You can make up
your mind to that,” she said firmly.
“But the picnic is tomorrow, Marilla,” cried Anne. “You
won’t keep me from going to that, will you? You’ll just let me out
for the afternoon, won’t you? Then I’ll stay here as long as you
like cheerfully. But I go to the picnic.”
“You’ll not go to picnics nor anywhere else until you’ve
confessed, Anne.”
“Oh, Marilla,” gasped Anne.
But Marilla had gone out and shut the door.
Wednesday morning dawned as bright and fair as if expressly made to order for
the picnic. Birds sang around Green Gables; the Madonna lilies in the garden
sent out whiffs of perfume that entered in on viewless winds at every door and
window, and wandered through halls and rooms like spirits of benediction. The
birches in the hollow waved joyful hands as if watching for Anne’s usual
morning greeting from the east gable. But Anne was not at her window. When
Marilla took her breakfast up to her she found the child sitting primly on her
bed, pale and resolute, with tight-shut lips and gleaming eyes.
“Marilla, I’m ready to confess.”
“Ah!” Marilla laid down her tray. Once again her method had
succeeded; but her success was very bitter to her. “Let me hear what you
have to say then, Anne.”
“I took the amethyst brooch,” said Anne, as if repeating a lesson
she had learned. “I took it just as you said. I didn’t mean to take
it when I went in. But it did look so beautiful, Marilla, when I pinned it on
my breast that I was overcome by an irresistible temptation. I imagined how
perfectly thrilling it would be to take it to Idlewild and play I was the Lady
Cordelia Fitzgerald. It would be so much easier to imagine I was the Lady
Cordelia if I had a real amethyst brooch on. Diana and I make necklaces of
roseberries but what are roseberries compared to amethysts? So I took the
brooch. I thought I could put it back before you came home. I went all the way
around by the road to lengthen out the time. When I was going over the bridge
across the Lake of Shining Waters I took the brooch off to have another look at
it. Oh, how it did shine in the sunlight! And then, when I was leaning over the
bridge, it just slipped through my fingers—so—and went
down—down—down, all purply-sparkling, and sank forevermore beneath
the Lake of Shining Waters. And that’s the best I can do at confessing,
Marilla.”
Marilla felt hot anger surge up into her heart again. This child had taken and
lost her treasured amethyst brooch and now sat there calmly reciting the
details thereof without the least apparent compunction or repentance.
“Anne, this is terrible,” she said, trying to speak calmly.
“You are the very wickedest girl I ever heard of.”
“Yes, I suppose I am,” agreed Anne tranquilly. “And I know
I’ll have to be punished. It’ll be your duty to punish me, Marilla.
Won’t you please get it over right off because I’d like to go to
the picnic with nothing on my mind.”
“Picnic, indeed! You’ll go to no picnic today, Anne Shirley. That
shall be your punishment. And it isn’t half severe enough either for what
you’ve done!”
“Not go to the picnic!” Anne sprang to her feet and clutched
Marilla’s hand. “But you me I might! Oh, Marilla, I
must go to the picnic. That was why I confessed. Punish me any way you like but
that. Oh, Marilla, please, please, let me go to the picnic. Think of the ice
cream! For anything you know I may never have a chance to taste ice cream
again.”
Marilla disengaged Anne’s clinging hands stonily.
“You needn’t plead, Anne. You are not going to the picnic and
that’s final. No, not a word.”
Anne realized that Marilla was not to be moved. She clasped her hands together,
gave a piercing shriek, and then flung herself face downward on the bed, crying
and writhing in an utter abandonment of disappointment and despair.
“For the land’s sake!” gasped Marilla, hastening from the
room. “I believe the child is crazy. No child in her senses would behave
as she does. If she isn’t she’s utterly bad. Oh dear, I’m
afraid Rachel was right from the first. But I’ve put my hand to the plow
and I won’t look back.”
That was a dismal morning. Marilla worked fiercely and scrubbed the porch floor
and the dairy shelves when she could find nothing else to do. Neither the
shelves nor the porch needed it—but Marilla did. Then she went out and
raked the yard.
When dinner was ready she went to the stairs and called Anne. A tear-stained
face appeared, looking tragically over the banisters.
“Come down to your dinner, Anne.”
“I don’t want any dinner, Marilla,” said Anne, sobbingly.
“I couldn’t eat anything. My heart is broken. You’ll feel
remorse of conscience someday, I expect, for breaking it, Marilla, but I
forgive you. Remember when the time comes that I forgive you. But please
don’t ask me to eat anything, especially boiled pork and greens. Boiled
pork and greens are so unromantic when one is in affliction.”
Exasperated, Marilla returned to the kitchen and poured out her tale of woe to
Matthew, who, between his sense of justice and his unlawful sympathy with Anne,
was a miserable man.
“Well now, she shouldn’t have taken the brooch, Marilla, or told
stories about it,” he admitted, mournfully surveying his plateful of
unromantic pork and greens as if he, like Anne, thought it a food unsuited to
crises of feeling, “but she’s such a little thing—such an
interesting little thing. Don’t you think it’s pretty rough not to
let her go to the picnic when she’s so set on it?”
“Matthew Cuthbert, I’m amazed at you. I think I’ve let her
off entirely too easy. And she doesn’t appear to realize how wicked
she’s been at all—that’s what worries me most. If she’d
really felt sorry it wouldn’t be so bad. And you don’t seem to
realize it, neither; you’re making excuses for her all the time to
yourself—I can see that.”
“Well now, she’s such a little thing,” feebly reiterated
Matthew. “And there should be allowances made, Marilla. You know
she’s never had any bringing up.”
“Well, she’s having it now” retorted Marilla.
The retort silenced Matthew if it did not convince him. That dinner was a very
dismal meal. The only cheerful thing about it was Jerry Buote, the hired boy,
and Marilla resented his cheerfulness as a personal insult.
When her dishes were washed and her bread sponge set and her hens fed Marilla
remembered that she had noticed a small rent in her best black lace shawl when
she had taken it off on Monday afternoon on returning from the Ladies’
Aid.
She would go and mend it. The shawl was in a box in her trunk. As Marilla
lifted it out, the sunlight, falling through the vines that clustered thickly
about the window, struck upon something caught in the shawl—something
that glittered and sparkled in facets of violet light. Marilla snatched at it
with a gasp. It was the amethyst brooch, hanging to a thread of the lace by its
catch!
“Dear life and heart,” said Marilla blankly, “what does this
mean? Here’s my brooch safe and sound that I thought was at the bottom of
Barry’s pond. Whatever did that girl mean by saying she took it and lost
it? I declare I believe Green Gables is bewitched. I remember now that when I
took off my shawl Monday afternoon I laid it on the bureau for a minute. I
suppose the brooch got caught in it somehow. Well!”
Marilla betook herself to the east gable, brooch in hand. Anne had cried
herself out and was sitting dejectedly by the window.
“Anne Shirley,” said Marilla solemnly, “I’ve just found
my brooch hanging to my black lace shawl. Now I want to know what that
rigmarole you told me this morning meant.”
“Why, you said you’d keep me here until I confessed,”
returned Anne wearily, “and so I decided to confess because I was bound
to get to the picnic. I thought out a confession last night after I went to bed
and made it as interesting as I could. And I said it over and over so that I
wouldn’t forget it. But you wouldn’t let me go to the picnic after
all, so all my trouble was wasted.”
Marilla had to laugh in spite of herself. But her conscience pricked her.
“Anne, you do beat all! But I was wrong—I see that now. I
shouldn’t have doubted your word when I’d never known you to tell a
story. Of course, it wasn’t right for you to confess to a thing you
hadn’t done—it was very wrong to do so. But I drove you to it. So
if you’ll forgive me, Anne, I’ll forgive you and we’ll start
square again. And now get yourself ready for the picnic.”
Anne flew up like a rocket.
“Oh, Marilla, isn’t it too late?”
“No, it’s only two o’clock. They won’t be more than
well gathered yet and it’ll be an hour before they have tea. Wash your
face and comb your hair and put on your gingham. I’ll fill a basket for
you. There’s plenty of stuff baked in the house. And I’ll get Jerry
to hitch up the sorrel and drive you down to the picnic ground.”
“Oh, Marilla,” exclaimed Anne, flying to the washstand. “Five
minutes ago I was so miserable I was wishing I’d never been born and now
I wouldn’t change places with an angel!”
That night a thoroughly happy, completely tired-out Anne returned to Green
Gables in a state of beatification impossible to describe.
“Oh, Marilla, I’ve had a perfectly scrumptious time. Scrumptious is
a new word I learned today. I heard Mary Alice Bell use it. Isn’t it very
expressive? Everything was lovely. We had a splendid tea and then Mr. Harmon
Andrews took us all for a row on the Lake of Shining Waters—six of us at
a time. And Jane Andrews nearly fell overboard. She was leaning out to pick
water lilies and if Mr. Andrews hadn’t caught her by her sash just in the
nick of time she’d fallen in and prob’ly been drowned. I wish it
had been me. It would have been such a romantic experience to have been nearly
drowned. It would be such a thrilling tale to tell. And we had the ice cream.
Words fail me to describe that ice cream. Marilla, I assure you it was
sublime.”
That evening Marilla told the whole story to Matthew over her stocking basket.
“I’m willing to own up that I made a mistake,” she concluded
candidly, “but I’ve learned a lesson. I have to laugh when I think
of Anne’s ‘confession,’ although I suppose I shouldn’t
for it really was a falsehood. But it doesn’t seem as bad as the other
would have been, somehow, and anyhow I’m responsible for it. That child
is hard to understand in some respects. But I believe she’ll turn out all
right yet. And there’s one thing certain, no house will ever be dull that
she’s in.”
CHAPTER XV.
A Tempest in the School Teapot
WHAT a splendid
day!” said Anne, drawing a long breath. “Isn’t it good just
to be alive on a day like this? I pity the people who aren’t born yet for
missing it. They may have good days, of course, but they can never have this
one. And it’s splendider still to have such a lovely way to go to school
by, isn’t it?”
“It’s a lot nicer than going round by the road; that is so dusty
and hot,” said Diana practically, peeping into her dinner basket and
mentally calculating if the three juicy, toothsome, raspberry tarts reposing
there were divided among ten girls how many bites each girl would have.
The little girls of Avonlea school always pooled their lunches, and to eat
three raspberry tarts all alone or even to share them only with one’s
best chum would have forever and ever branded as “awful mean” the
girl who did it. And yet, when the tarts were divided among ten girls you just
got enough to tantalize you.
The way Anne and Diana went to school a pretty one. Anne thought
those walks to and from school with Diana couldn’t be improved upon even
by imagination. Going around by the main road would have been so unromantic;
but to go by Lover’s Lane and Willowmere and Violet Vale and the Birch
Path was romantic, if ever anything was.
Lover’s Lane opened out below the orchard at Green Gables and stretched
far up into the woods to the end of the Cuthbert farm. It was the way by which
the cows were taken to the back pasture and the wood hauled home in winter.
Anne had named it Lover’s Lane before she had been a month at Green
Gables.
“Not that lovers ever really walk there,” she explained to Marilla,
“but Diana and I are reading a perfectly magnificent book and
there’s a Lover’s Lane in it. So we want to have one, too. And
it’s a very pretty name, don’t you think? So romantic! We
can’t imagine the lovers into it, you know. I like that lane because you
can think out loud there without people calling you crazy.”
Anne, starting out alone in the morning, went down Lover’s Lane as far as
the brook. Here Diana met her, and the two little girls went on up the lane
under the leafy arch of maples—“maples are such sociable
trees,” said Anne; “they’re always rustling and whispering to
you”—until they came to a rustic bridge. Then they left the lane
and walked through Mr. Barry’s back field and past Willowmere. Beyond
Willowmere came Violet Vale—a little green dimple in the shadow of Mr.
Andrew Bell’s big woods. “Of course there are no violets there
now,” Anne told Marilla, “but Diana says there are millions of them
in spring. Oh, Marilla, can’t you just imagine you see them? It actually
takes away my breath. I named it Violet Vale. Diana says she never saw the beat
of me for hitting on fancy names for places. It’s nice to be clever at
something, isn’t it? But Diana named the Birch Path. She wanted to, so I
let her; but I’m sure I could have found something more poetical than
plain Birch Path. Anybody can think of a name like that. But the Birch Path is
one of the prettiest places in the world, Marilla.”
It was. Other people besides Anne thought so when they stumbled on it. It was a
little narrow, twisting path, winding down over a long hill straight through
Mr. Bell’s woods, where the light came down sifted through so many
emerald screens that it was as flawless as the heart of a diamond. It was
fringed in all its length with slim young birches, white stemmed and lissom
boughed; ferns and starflowers and wild lilies-of-the-valley and scarlet tufts
of pigeonberries grew thickly along it; and always there was a delightful
spiciness in the air and music of bird calls and the murmur and laugh of wood
winds in the trees overhead. Now and then you might see a rabbit skipping
across the road if you were quiet—which, with Anne and Diana, happened
about once in a blue moon. Down in the valley the path came out to the main
road and then it was just up the spruce hill to the school.
The Avonlea school was a whitewashed building, low in the eaves and wide in the
windows, furnished inside with comfortable substantial old-fashioned desks that
opened and shut, and were carved all over their lids with the initials and
hieroglyphics of three generations of school children. The schoolhouse was set
back from the road and behind it was a dusky fir wood and a brook where all the
children put their bottles of milk in the morning to keep cool and sweet until
dinner hour.
Marilla had seen Anne start off to school on the first day of September with
many secret misgivings. Anne was such an odd girl. How would she get on with
the other children? And how on earth would she ever manage to hold her tongue
during school hours?
Things went better than Marilla feared, however. Anne came home that evening in
high spirits.
“I think I’m going to like school here,” she announced.
“I don’t think much of the master, through. He’s all the time
curling his mustache and making eyes at Prissy Andrews. Prissy is grown up, you
know. She’s sixteen and she’s studying for the entrance examination
into Queen’s Academy at Charlottetown next year. Tillie Boulter says the
master is on her. She’s got a beautiful complexion and
curly brown hair and she does it up so elegantly. She sits in the long seat at
the back and he sits there, too, most of the time—to explain her lessons,
he says. But Ruby Gillis says she saw him writing something on her slate and
when Prissy read it she blushed as red as a beet and giggled; and Ruby Gillis
says she doesn’t believe it had anything to do with the lesson.”
“Anne Shirley, don’t let me hear you talking about your teacher in
that way again,” said Marilla sharply. “You don’t go to
school to criticize the master. I guess he can teach something, and
it’s your business to learn. And I want you to understand right off that
you are not to come home telling tales about him. That is something I
won’t encourage. I hope you were a good girl.”
“Indeed I was,” said Anne comfortably. “It wasn’t so
hard as you might imagine, either. I sit with Diana. Our seat is right by the
window and we can look down to the Lake of Shining Waters. There are a lot of
nice girls in school and we had scrumptious fun playing at dinnertime.
It’s so nice to have a lot of little girls to play with. But of course I
like Diana best and always will. I Diana. I’m dreadfully far
behind the others. They’re all in the fifth book and I’m only in
the fourth. I feel that it’s kind of a disgrace. But there’s not
one of them has such an imagination as I have and I soon found that out. We had
reading and geography and Canadian history and dictation today. Mr. Phillips
said my spelling was disgraceful and he held up my slate so that everybody
could see it, all marked over. I felt so mortified, Marilla; he might have been
politer to a stranger, I think. Ruby Gillis gave me an apple and Sophia Sloane
lent me a lovely pink card with ‘May I see you home?’ on it.
I’m to give it back to her tomorrow. And Tillie Boulter let me wear her
bead ring all the afternoon. Can I have some of those pearl beads off the old
pincushion in the garret to make myself a ring? And oh, Marilla, Jane Andrews
told me that Minnie MacPherson told her that she heard Prissy Andrews tell Sara
Gillis that I had a very pretty nose. Marilla, that is the first compliment I
have ever had in my life and you can’t imagine what a strange feeling it
gave me. Marilla, have I really a pretty nose? I know you’ll tell me the
truth.”
“Your nose is well enough,” said Marilla shortly. Secretly she
thought Anne’s nose was a remarkable pretty one; but she had no intention
of telling her so.
That was three weeks ago and all had gone smoothly so far. And now, this crisp
September morning, Anne and Diana were tripping blithely down the Birch Path,
two of the happiest little girls in Avonlea.
“I guess Gilbert Blythe will be in school today,” said Diana.
“He’s been visiting his cousins over in New Brunswick all summer
and he only came home Saturday night. He’s handsome,
Anne. And he teases the girls something terrible. He just torments our lives
out.”
Diana’s voice indicated that she rather liked having her life tormented
out than not.
“Gilbert Blythe?” said Anne. “Isn’t his name
that’s written up on the porch wall with Julia Bell’s and a big
‘Take Notice’ over them?”
“Yes,” said Diana, tossing her head, “but I’m sure he
doesn’t like Julia Bell so very much. I’ve heard him say he studied
the multiplication table by her freckles.”
“Oh, don’t speak about freckles to me,” implored Anne.
“It isn’t delicate when I’ve got so many. But I do think that
writing take-notices up on the wall about the boys and girls is the silliest
ever. I should just like to see anybody dare to write my name up with a
boy’s. Not, of course,” she hastened to add, “that anybody
would.”
Anne sighed. She didn’t want her name written up. But it was a little
humiliating to know that there was no danger of it.
“Nonsense,” said Diana, whose black eyes and glossy tresses had
played such havoc with the hearts of Avonlea schoolboys that her name figured
on the porch walls in half a dozen take-notices. “It’s only meant
as a joke. And don’t you be too sure your name won’t ever be
written up. Charlie Sloane is on you. He told his
mother—his , mind you—that you were the smartest girl
in school. That’s better than being good looking.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Anne, feminine to the core.
“I’d rather be pretty than clever. And I hate Charlie Sloane, I
can’t bear a boy with goggle eyes. If anyone wrote my name up with his
I’d never over it, Diana Barry. But it nice to keep
head of your class.”
“You’ll have Gilbert in your class after this,” said Diana,
“and he’s used to being head of his class, I can tell you.
He’s only in the fourth book although he’s nearly fourteen. Four
years ago his father was sick and had to go out to Alberta for his health and
Gilbert went with him. They were there three years and Gil didn’t go to
school hardly any until they came back. You won’t find it so easy to keep
head after this, Anne.”
“I’m glad,” said Anne quickly. “I couldn’t really
feel proud of keeping head of little boys and girls of just nine or ten. I got
up yesterday spelling ‘ebullition.’ Josie Pye was head and, mind
you, she peeped in her book. Mr. Phillips didn’t see her—he was
looking at Prissy Andrews—but I did. I just swept her a look of freezing
scorn and she got as red as a beet and spelled it wrong after all.”
“Those Pye girls are cheats all round,” said Diana indignantly, as
they climbed the fence of the main road. “Gertie Pye actually went and
put her milk bottle in my place in the brook yesterday. Did you ever? I
don’t speak to her now.”
When Mr. Phillips was in the back of the room hearing Prissy Andrews’s
Latin, Diana whispered to Anne, “That’s Gilbert Blythe sitting
right across the aisle from you, Anne. Just look at him and see if you
don’t think he’s handsome.”
Anne looked accordingly. She had a good chance to do so, for the said Gilbert
Blythe was absorbed in stealthily pinning the long yellow braid of Ruby Gillis,
who sat in front of him, to the back of her seat. He was a tall boy, with curly
brown hair, roguish hazel eyes, and a mouth twisted into a teasing smile.
Presently Ruby Gillis started up to take a sum to the master; she fell back
into her seat with a little shriek, believing that her hair was pulled out by
the roots. Everybody looked at her and Mr. Phillips glared so sternly that Ruby
began to cry. Gilbert had whisked the pin out of sight and was studying his
history with the soberest face in the world; but when the commotion subsided he
looked at Anne and winked with inexpressible drollery.
“I think your Gilbert Blythe handsome,” confided Anne to
Diana, “but I think he’s very bold. It isn’t good manners to
wink at a strange girl.”
But it was not until the afternoon that things really began to happen.
Mr. Phillips was back in the corner explaining a problem in algebra to Prissy
Andrews and the rest of the scholars were doing pretty much as they pleased
eating green apples, whispering, drawing pictures on their slates, and driving
crickets harnessed to strings, up and down aisle. Gilbert Blythe was trying to
make Anne Shirley look at him and failing utterly, because Anne was at that
moment totally oblivious not only to the very existence of Gilbert Blythe, but
of every other scholar in Avonlea school itself. With her chin propped on her
hands and her eyes fixed on the blue glimpse of the Lake of Shining Waters that
the west window afforded, she was far away in a gorgeous dreamland hearing and
seeing nothing save her own wonderful visions.
Gilbert Blythe wasn’t used to putting himself out to make a girl look at
him and meeting with failure. She look at him, that red-haired
Shirley girl with the little pointed chin and the big eyes that weren’t
like the eyes of any other girl in Avonlea school.
Gilbert reached across the aisle, picked up the end of Anne’s long red
braid, held it out at arm’s length and said in a piercing whisper:
“Carrots! Carrots!”
Then Anne looked at him with a vengeance!
She did more than look. She sprang to her feet, her bright fancies fallen into
cureless ruin. She flashed one indignant glance at Gilbert from eyes whose
angry sparkle was swiftly quenched in equally angry tears.
“You mean, hateful boy!” she exclaimed passionately. “How
dare you!”
And then—thwack! Anne had brought her slate down on Gilbert’s head
and cracked it—slate not head—clear across.
Avonlea school always enjoyed a scene. This was an especially enjoyable one.
Everybody said “Oh” in horrified delight. Diana gasped. Ruby
Gillis, who was inclined to be hysterical, began to cry. Tommy Sloane let his
team of crickets escape him altogether while he stared open-mouthed at the
tableau.
Mr. Phillips stalked down the aisle and laid his hand heavily on Anne’s
shoulder.
“Anne Shirley, what does this mean?” he said angrily. Anne returned
no answer. It was asking too much of flesh and blood to expect her to tell
before the whole school that she had been called “carrots.” Gilbert
it was who spoke up stoutly.
“It was my fault Mr. Phillips. I teased her.”
Mr. Phillips paid no heed to Gilbert.
“I am sorry to see a pupil of mine displaying such a temper and such a
vindictive spirit,” he said in a solemn tone, as if the mere fact of
being a pupil of his ought to root out all evil passions from the hearts of
small imperfect mortals. “Anne, go and stand on the platform in front of
the blackboard for the rest of the afternoon.”
Anne would have infinitely preferred a whipping to this punishment under which
her sensitive spirit quivered as from a whiplash. With a white, set face she
obeyed. Mr. Phillips took a chalk crayon and wrote on the blackboard above her
head.
“Ann Shirley has a very bad temper. Ann Shirley must learn to control her
temper,” and then read it out loud so that even the primer class, who
couldn’t read writing, should understand it.
Anne stood there the rest of the afternoon with that legend above her. She did
not cry or hang her head. Anger was still too hot in her heart for that and it
sustained her amid all her agony of humiliation. With resentful eyes and
passion-red cheeks she confronted alike Diana’s sympathetic gaze and
Charlie Sloane’s indignant nods and Josie Pye’s malicious smiles.
As for Gilbert Blythe, she would not even look at him. She would
look at him again! She would never speak to him!!
When school was dismissed Anne marched out with her red head held high. Gilbert
Blythe tried to intercept her at the porch door.
“I’m awfully sorry I made fun of your hair, Anne,” he
whispered contritely. “Honest I am. Don’t be mad for keeps,
now.”
Anne swept by disdainfully, without look or sign of hearing. “Oh how
could you, Anne?” breathed Diana as they went down the road half
reproachfully, half admiringly. Diana felt that could never have
resisted Gilbert’s plea.
“I shall never forgive Gilbert Blythe,” said Anne firmly.
“And Mr. Phillips spelled my name without an e, too. The iron has entered
into my soul, Diana.”
Diana hadn’t the least idea what Anne meant but she understood it was
something terrible.
“You mustn’t mind Gilbert making fun of your hair,” she said
soothingly. “Why, he makes fun of all the girls. He laughs at mine
because it’s so black. He’s called me a crow a dozen times; and I
never heard him apologize for anything before, either.”
“There’s a great deal of difference between being called a crow and
being called carrots,” said Anne with dignity. “Gilbert Blythe has
hurt my feelings , Diana.”
It is possible the matter might have blown over without more excruciation if
nothing else had happened. But when things begin to happen they are apt to keep
on.
Avonlea scholars often spent noon hour picking gum in Mr. Bell’s spruce
grove over the hill and across his big pasture field. From there they could
keep an eye on Eben Wright’s house, where the master boarded. When they
saw Mr. Phillips emerging therefrom they ran for the schoolhouse; but the
distance being about three times longer than Mr. Wright’s lane they were
very apt to arrive there, breathless and gasping, some three minutes too late.
On the following day Mr. Phillips was seized with one of his spasmodic fits of
reform and announced before going home to dinner, that he should expect to find
all the scholars in their seats when he returned. Anyone who came in late would
be punished.
All the boys and some of the girls went to Mr. Bell’s spruce grove as
usual, fully intending to stay only long enough to “pick a chew.”
But spruce groves are seductive and yellow nuts of gum beguiling; they picked
and loitered and strayed; and as usual the first thing that recalled them to a
sense of the flight of time was Jimmy Glover shouting from the top of a
patriarchal old spruce “Master’s coming.”
The girls who were on the ground, started first and managed to reach the
schoolhouse in time but without a second to spare. The boys, who had to wriggle
hastily down from the trees, were later; and Anne, who had not been picking gum
at all but was wandering happily in the far end of the grove, waist deep among
the bracken, singing softly to herself, with a wreath of rice lilies on her
hair as if she were some wild divinity of the shadowy places, was latest of
all. Anne could run like a deer, however; run she did with the impish result
that she overtook the boys at the door and was swept into the schoolhouse among
them just as Mr. Phillips was in the act of hanging up his hat.
Mr. Phillips’s brief reforming energy was over; he didn’t want the
bother of punishing a dozen pupils; but it was necessary to do something to
save his word, so he looked about for a scapegoat and found it in Anne, who had
dropped into her seat, gasping for breath, with a forgotten lily wreath hanging
askew over one ear and giving her a particularly rakish and disheveled
appearance.
“Anne Shirley, since you seem to be so fond of the boys’ company we
shall indulge your taste for it this afternoon,” he said sarcastically.
“Take those flowers out of your hair and sit with Gilbert Blythe.”
The other boys snickered. Diana, turning pale with pity, plucked the wreath
from Anne’s hair and squeezed her hand. Anne stared at the master as if
turned to stone.
“Did you hear what I said, Anne?” queried Mr. Phillips sternly.
“Yes, sir,” said Anne slowly “but I didn’t suppose you
really meant it.”
“I assure you I did”—still with the sarcastic inflection
which all the children, and Anne especially, hated. It flicked on the raw.
“Obey me at once.”
For a moment Anne looked as if she meant to disobey. Then, realizing that there
was no help for it, she rose haughtily, stepped across the aisle, sat down
beside Gilbert Blythe, and buried her face in her arms on the desk. Ruby
Gillis, who got a glimpse of it as it went down, told the others going home
from school that she’d “acksually never seen anything like
it—it was so white, with awful little red spots in it.”
To Anne, this was as the end of all things. It was bad enough to be singled out
for punishment from among a dozen equally guilty ones; it was worse still to be
sent to sit with a boy, but that that boy should be Gilbert Blythe was heaping
insult on injury to a degree utterly unbearable. Anne felt that she could not
bear it and it would be of no use to try. Her whole being seethed with shame
and anger and humiliation.
At first the other scholars looked and whispered and giggled and nudged. But as
Anne never lifted her head and as Gilbert worked fractions as if his whole soul
was absorbed in them and them only, they soon returned to their own tasks and
Anne was forgotten. When Mr. Phillips called the history class out Anne should
have gone, but Anne did not move, and Mr. Phillips, who had been writing some
verses “To Priscilla” before he called the class, was thinking
about an obstinate rhyme still and never missed her. Once, when nobody was
looking, Gilbert took from his desk a little pink candy heart with a gold motto
on it, “You are sweet,” and slipped it under the curve of
Anne’s arm. Whereupon Anne arose, took the pink heart gingerly between
the tips of her fingers, dropped it on the floor, ground it to powder beneath
her heel, and resumed her position without deigning to bestow a glance on
Gilbert.
When school went out Anne marched to her desk, ostentatiously took out
everything therein, books and writing tablet, pen and ink, testament and
arithmetic, and piled them neatly on her cracked slate.
“What are you taking all those things home for, Anne?” Diana wanted
to know, as soon as they were out on the road. She had not dared to ask the
question before.
“I am not coming back to school any more,” said Anne. Diana gasped
and stared at Anne to see if she meant it.
“Will Marilla let you stay home?” she asked.
“She’ll have to,” said Anne. “I’ll
go to school to that man again.”
“Oh, Anne!” Diana looked as if she were ready to cry. “I do
think you’re mean. What shall I do? Mr. Phillips will make me sit with
that horrid Gertie Pye—I know he will because she is sitting alone. Do
come back, Anne.”
“I’d do almost anything in the world for you, Diana,” said
Anne sadly. “I’d let myself be torn limb from limb if it would do
you any good. But I can’t do this, so please don’t ask it. You
harrow up my very soul.”
“Just think of all the fun you will miss,” mourned Diana. “We
are going to build the loveliest new house down by the brook; and we’ll
be playing ball next week and you’ve never played ball, Anne. It’s
tremendously exciting. And we’re going to learn a new song—Jane
Andrews is practicing it up now; and Alice Andrews is going to bring a new
Pansy book next week and we’re all going to read it out loud, chapter
about, down by the brook. And you know you are so fond of reading out loud,
Anne.”
Nothing moved Anne in the least. Her mind was made up. She would not go to
school to Mr. Phillips again; she told Marilla so when she got home.
“Nonsense,” said Marilla.
“It isn’t nonsense at all,” said Anne, gazing at Marilla with
solemn, reproachful eyes. “Don’t you understand, Marilla?
I’ve been insulted.”
“Insulted fiddlesticks! You’ll go to school tomorrow as
usual.”
“Oh, no.” Anne shook her head gently. “I’m not going
back, Marilla. I’ll learn my lessons at home and I’ll be as good as
I can be and hold my tongue all the time if it’s possible at all. But I
will not go back to school, I assure you.”
Marilla saw something remarkably like unyielding stubbornness looking out of
Anne’s small face. She understood that she would have trouble in
overcoming it; but she re-solved wisely to say nothing more just then.
“I’ll run down and see Rachel about it this evening,” she
thought. “There’s no use reasoning with Anne now. She’s too
worked up and I’ve an idea she can be awful stubborn if she takes the
notion. Far as I can make out from her story, Mr. Phillips has been carrying
matters with a rather high hand. But it would never do to say so to her.
I’ll just talk it over with Rachel. She’s sent ten children to
school and she ought to know something about it. She’ll have heard the
whole story, too, by this time.”
Marilla found Mrs. Lynde knitting quilts as industriously and cheerfully as
usual.
“I suppose you know what I’ve come about,” she said, a little
shamefacedly.
Mrs. Rachel nodded.
“About Anne’s fuss in school, I reckon,” she said.
“Tillie Boulter was in on her way home from school and told me about
it.”
“I don’t know what to do with her,” said Marilla. “She
declares she won’t go back to school. I never saw a child so worked up.
I’ve been expecting trouble ever since she started to school. I knew
things were going too smooth to last. She’s so high strung. What would
you advise, Rachel?”
“Well, since you’ve asked my advice, Marilla,” said Mrs.
Lynde amiably—Mrs. Lynde dearly loved to be asked for
advice—“I’d just humor her a little at first, that’s
what I’d do. It’s my belief that Mr. Phillips was in the wrong. Of
course, it doesn’t do to say so to the children, you know. And of course
he did right to punish her yesterday for giving way to temper. But today it was
different. The others who were late should have been punished as well as Anne,
that’s what. And I don’t believe in making the girls sit with the
boys for punishment. It isn’t modest. Tillie Boulter was real indignant.
She took Anne’s part right through and said all the scholars did too.
Anne seems real popular among them, somehow. I never thought she’d take
with them so well.”
“Then you really think I’d better let her stay home,” said
Marilla in amazement.
“Yes. That is I wouldn’t say school to her again until she said it
herself. Depend upon it, Marilla, she’ll cool off in a week or so and be
ready enough to go back of her own accord, that’s what, while, if you
were to make her go back right off, dear knows what freak or tantrum
she’d take next and make more trouble than ever. The less fuss made the
better, in my opinion. She won’t miss much by not going to school, as far
as goes. Mr. Phillips isn’t any good at all as a teacher. The
order he keeps is scandalous, that’s what, and he neglects the young fry
and puts all his time on those big scholars he’s getting ready for
Queen’s. He’d never have got the school for another year if his
uncle hadn’t been a trustee— trustee, for he just leads
the other two around by the nose, that’s what. I declare, I don’t
know what education in this Island is coming to.”
Mrs. Rachel shook her head, as much as to say if she were only at the head of
the educational system of the Province things would be much better managed.
Marilla took Mrs. Rachel’s advice and not another word was said to Anne
about going back to school. She learned her lessons at home, did her chores,
and played with Diana in the chilly purple autumn twilights; but when she met
Gilbert Blythe on the road or encountered him in Sunday school she passed him
by with an icy contempt that was no whit thawed by his evident desire to
appease her. Even Diana’s efforts as a peacemaker were of no avail. Anne
had evidently made up her mind to hate Gilbert Blythe to the end of life.
As much as she hated Gilbert, however, did she love Diana, with all the love of
her passionate little heart, equally intense in its likes and dislikes. One
evening Marilla, coming in from the orchard with a basket of apples, found Anne
sitting along by the east window in the twilight, crying bitterly.
“Whatever’s the matter now, Anne?” she asked.
“It’s about Diana,” sobbed Anne luxuriously. “I love
Diana so, Marilla. I cannot ever live without her. But I know very well when we
grow up that Diana will get married and go away and leave me. And oh, what
shall I do? I hate her husband—I just hate him furiously. I’ve been
imagining it all out—the wedding and everything—Diana dressed in
snowy garments, with a veil, and looking as beautiful and regal as a queen; and
me the bridesmaid, with a lovely dress too, and puffed sleeves, but with a
breaking heart hid beneath my smiling face. And then bidding Diana
goodbye-e-e—” Here Anne broke down entirely and wept with
increasing bitterness.
Marilla turned quickly away to hide her twitching face; but it was no use; she
collapsed on the nearest chair and burst into such a hearty and unusual peal of
laughter that Matthew, crossing the yard outside, halted in amazement. When had
he heard Marilla laugh like that before?
“Well, Anne Shirley,” said Marilla as soon as she could speak,
“if you must borrow trouble, for pity’s sake borrow it handier
home. I should think you had an imagination, sure enough.”
CHAPTER XVI.
Diana Is Invited to Tea with Tragic Results
OCTOBER was a beautiful
month at Green Gables, when the birches in the hollow turned as golden as
sunshine and the maples behind the orchard were royal crimson and the wild
cherry trees along the lane put on the loveliest shades of dark red and bronzy
green, while the fields sunned themselves in aftermaths.
Anne reveled in the world of color about her.
“Oh, Marilla,” she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing
in with her arms full of gorgeous boughs, “I’m so glad I live in a
world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from
September to November, wouldn’t it? Look at these maple branches.
Don’t they give you a thrill—several thrills? I’m going to
decorate my room with them.”
“Messy things,” said Marilla, whose aesthetic sense was not
noticeably developed. “You clutter up your room entirely too much with
out-of-doors stuff, Anne. Bedrooms were made to sleep in.”
“Oh, and dream in too, Marilla. And you know one can dream so much better
in a room where there are pretty things. I’m going to put these boughs in
the old blue jug and set them on my table.”
“Mind you don’t drop leaves all over the stairs then. I’m
going on a meeting of the Aid Society at Carmody this afternoon, Anne, and I
won’t likely be home before dark. You’ll have to get Matthew and
Jerry their supper, so mind you don’t forget to put the tea to draw until
you sit down at the table as you did last time.”
“It was dreadful of me to forget,” said Anne apologetically,
“but that was the afternoon I was trying to think of a name for Violet
Vale and it crowded other things out. Matthew was so good. He never scolded a
bit. He put the tea down himself and said we could wait awhile as well as not.
And I told him a lovely fairy story while we were waiting, so he didn’t
find the time long at all. It was a beautiful fairy story, Marilla. I forgot
the end of it, so I made up an end for it myself and Matthew said he
couldn’t tell where the join came in.”
“Matthew would think it all right, Anne, if you took a notion to get up
and have dinner in the middle of the night. But you keep your wits about you
this time. And—I don’t really know if I’m doing
right—it may make you more addlepated than ever—but you can ask
Diana to come over and spend the afternoon with you and have tea here.”
“Oh, Marilla!” Anne clasped her hands. “How perfectly lovely!
You able to imagine things after all or else you’d never have
understood how I’ve longed for that very thing. It will seem so nice and
grown-uppish. No fear of my forgetting to put the tea to draw when I have
company. Oh, Marilla, can I use the rosebud spray tea set?”
“No, indeed! The rosebud tea set! Well, what next? You know I never use
that except for the minister or the Aids. You’ll put down the old brown
tea set. But you can open the little yellow crock of cherry preserves.
It’s time it was being used anyhow—I believe it’s beginning
to work. And you can cut some fruit cake and have some of the cookies and
snaps.”
“I can just imagine myself sitting down at the head of the table and
pouring out the tea,” said Anne, shutting her eyes ecstatically.
“And asking Diana if she takes sugar! I know she doesn’t but of
course I’ll ask her just as if I didn’t know. And then pressing her
to take another piece of fruit cake and another helping of preserves. Oh,
Marilla, it’s a wonderful sensation just to think of it. Can I take her
into the spare room to lay off her hat when she comes? And then into the parlor
to sit?”
“No. The sitting room will do for you and your company. But there’s
a bottle half full of raspberry cordial that was left over from the church
social the other night. It’s on the second shelf of the sitting-room
closet and you and Diana can have it if you like, and a cooky to eat with it
along in the afternoon, for I daresay Matthew ‘ll be late coming in to
tea since he’s hauling potatoes to the vessel.”
Anne flew down to the hollow, past the Dryad’s Bubble and up the spruce
path to Orchard Slope, to ask Diana to tea. As a result just after Marilla had
driven off to Carmody, Diana came over, dressed in second-best dress
and looking exactly as it is proper to look when asked out to tea. At other
times she was wont to run into the kitchen without knocking; but now she
knocked primly at the front door. And when Anne, dressed in her second best, as
primly opened it, both little girls shook hands as gravely as if they had never
met before. This unnatural solemnity lasted until after Diana had been taken to
the east gable to lay off her hat and then had sat for ten minutes in the
sitting room, toes in position.
“How is your mother?” inquired Anne politely, just as if she had
not seen Mrs. Barry picking apples that morning in excellent health and
spirits.
“She is very well, thank you. I suppose Mr. Cuthbert is hauling potatoes
to the this afternoon, is he?” said Diana, who had
ridden down to Mr. Harmon Andrews’s that morning in Matthew’s cart.
“Yes. Our potato crop is very good this year. I hope your father’s
crop is good too.”
“It is fairly good, thank you. Have you picked many of your apples
yet?”
“Oh, ever so many,” said Anne forgetting to be dignified and
jumping up quickly. “Let’s go out to the orchard and get some of
the Red Sweetings, Diana. Marilla says we can have all that are left on the
tree. Marilla is a very generous woman. She said we could have fruit cake and
cherry preserves for tea. But it isn’t good manners to tell your company
what you are going to give them to eat, so I won’t tell you what she said
we could have to drink. Only it begins with an R and a C and it’s bright
red color. I love bright red drinks, don’t you? They taste twice as good
as any other color.”
The orchard, with its great sweeping boughs that bent to the ground with fruit,
proved so delightful that the little girls spent most of the afternoon in it,
sitting in a grassy corner where the frost had spared the green and the mellow
autumn sunshine lingered warmly, eating apples and talking as hard as they
could. Diana had much to tell Anne of what went on in school. She had to sit
with Gertie Pye and she hated it; Gertie squeaked her pencil all the time and
it just made her—Diana’s—blood run cold; Ruby Gillis had
charmed all her warts away, true’s you live, with a magic pebble that old
Mary Joe from the Creek gave her. You had to rub the warts with the pebble and
then throw it away over your left shoulder at the time of the new moon and the
warts would all go. Charlie Sloane’s name was written up with Em
White’s on the porch wall and Em White was about it; Sam
Boulter had “sassed” Mr. Phillips in class and Mr. Phillips whipped
him and Sam’s father came down to the school and dared Mr. Phillips to
lay a hand on one of his children again; and Mattie Andrews had a new red hood
and a blue crossover with tassels on it and the airs she put on about it were
perfectly sickening; and Lizzie Wright didn’t speak to Mamie Wilson
because Mamie Wilson’s grown-up sister had cut out Lizzie Wright’s
grown-up sister with her beau; and everybody missed Anne so and wished
she’s come to school again; and Gilbert Blythe—
But Anne didn’t want to hear about Gilbert Blythe. She jumped up
hurriedly and said suppose they go in and have some raspberry cordial.
Anne looked on the second shelf of the room pantry but there was no bottle of
raspberry cordial there. Search revealed it away back on the top shelf. Anne
put it on a tray and set it on the table with a tumbler.
“Now, please help yourself, Diana,” she said politely. “I
don’t believe I’ll have any just now. I don’t feel as if I
wanted any after all those apples.”
Diana poured herself out a tumblerful, looked at its bright-red hue admiringly,
and then sipped it daintily.
“That’s awfully nice raspberry cordial, Anne,” she said.
“I didn’t know raspberry cordial was so nice.”
“I’m real glad you like it. Take as much as you want. I’m
going to run out and stir the fire up. There are so many responsibilities on a
person’s mind when they’re keeping house, isn’t there?”
When Anne came back from the kitchen Diana was drinking her second glassful of
cordial; and, being entreated thereto by Anne, she offered no particular
objection to the drinking of a third. The tumblerfuls were generous ones and
the raspberry cordial was certainly very nice.
“The nicest I ever drank,” said Diana. “It’s ever so
much nicer than Mrs. Lynde’s, although she brags of hers so much. It
doesn’t taste a bit like hers.”
“I should think Marilla’s raspberry cordial would prob’ly be
much nicer than Mrs. Lynde’s,” said Anne loyally. “Marilla is
a famous cook. She is trying to teach me to cook but I assure you, Diana, it is
uphill work. There’s so little scope for imagination in cookery. You just
have to go by rules. The last time I made a cake I forgot to put the flour in.
I was thinking the loveliest story about you and me, Diana. I thought you were
desperately ill with smallpox and everybody deserted you, but I went boldly to
your bedside and nursed you back to life; and then I took the smallpox and died
and I was buried under those poplar trees in the graveyard and you planted a
rosebush by my grave and watered it with your tears; and you never, never
forgot the friend of your youth who sacrificed her life for you. Oh, it was
such a pathetic tale, Diana. The tears just rained down over my cheeks while I
mixed the cake. But I forgot the flour and the cake was a dismal failure. Flour
is so essential to cakes, you know. Marilla was very cross and I don’t
wonder. I’m a great trial to her. She was terribly mortified about the
pudding sauce last week. We had a plum pudding for dinner on Tuesday and there
was half the pudding and a pitcherful of sauce left over. Marilla said there
was enough for another dinner and told me to set it on the pantry shelf and
cover it. I meant to cover it just as much as could be, Diana, but when I
carried it in I was imagining I was a nun—of course I’m a
Protestant but I imagined I was a Catholic—taking the veil to bury a
broken heart in cloistered seclusion; and I forgot all about covering the
pudding sauce. I thought of it next morning and ran to the pantry. Diana, fancy
if you can my extreme horror at finding a mouse drowned in that pudding sauce!
I lifted the mouse out with a spoon and threw it out in the yard and then I
washed the spoon in three waters. Marilla was out milking and I fully intended
to ask her when she came in if I’d give the sauce to the pigs; but when
she did come in I was imagining that I was a frost fairy going through the
woods turning the trees red and yellow, whichever they wanted to be, so I never
thought about the pudding sauce again and Marilla sent me out to pick apples.
Well, Mr. and Mrs. Chester Ross from Spencervale came here that morning. You
know they are very stylish people, especially Mrs. Chester Ross. When Marilla
called me in dinner was all ready and everybody was at the table. I tried to be
as polite and dignified as I could be, for I wanted Mrs. Chester Ross to think
I was a ladylike little girl even if I wasn’t pretty. Everything went
right until I saw Marilla coming with the plum pudding in one hand and the
pitcher of pudding sauce , in the other. Diana, that was a
terrible moment. I remembered everything and I just stood up in my place and
shrieked out ‘Marilla, you mustn’t use that pudding sauce. There
was a mouse drowned in it. I forgot to tell you before.’ Oh, Diana, I
shall never forget that awful moment if I live to be a hundred. Mrs. Chester
Ross just at me and I thought I would sink through the floor with
mortification. She is such a perfect housekeeper and fancy what she must have
thought of us. Marilla turned red as fire but she never said a word—then.
She just carried that sauce and pudding out and brought in some strawberry
preserves. She even offered me some, but I couldn’t swallow a mouthful.
It was like heaping coals of fire on my head. After Mrs. Chester Ross went
away, Marilla gave me a dreadful scolding. Why, Diana, what is the
matter?”
Diana had stood up very unsteadily; then she sat down again, putting her hands
to her head.
“I’m—I’m awful sick,” she said, a little thickly.
“I—I—must go right home.”
“Oh, you mustn’t dream of going home without your tea,” cried
Anne in distress. “I’ll get it right off—I’ll go and
put the tea down this very minute.”
“I must go home,” repeated Diana, stupidly but determinedly.
“Let me get you a lunch anyhow,” implored Anne. “Let me give
you a bit of fruit cake and some of the cherry preserves. Lie down on the sofa
for a little while and you’ll be better. Where do you feel bad?”
“I must go home,” said Diana, and that was all she would say. In
vain Anne pleaded.
“I never heard of company going home without tea,” she mourned.
“Oh, Diana, do you suppose that it’s possible you’re really
taking the smallpox? If you are I’ll go and nurse you, you can depend on
that. I’ll never forsake you. But I do wish you’d stay till after
tea. Where do you feel bad?”
“I’m awful dizzy,” said Diana.
And indeed, she walked very dizzily. Anne, with tears of disappointment in her
eyes, got Diana’s hat and went with her as far as the Barry yard fence.
Then she wept all the way back to Green Gables, where she sorrowfully put the
remainder of the raspberry cordial back into the pantry and got tea ready for
Matthew and Jerry, with all the zest gone out of the performance.
The next day was Sunday and as the rain poured down in torrents from dawn till
dusk Anne did not stir abroad from Green Gables. Monday afternoon Marilla sent
her down to Mrs. Lynde’s on an errand. In a very short space of time Anne
came flying back up the lane with tears rolling down her cheeks. Into the
kitchen she dashed and flung herself face downward on the sofa in an agony.
“Whatever has gone wrong now, Anne?” queried Marilla in doubt and
dismay. “I do hope you haven’t gone and been saucy to Mrs. Lynde
again.”
No answer from Anne save more tears and stormier sobs!
“Anne Shirley, when I ask you a question I want to be answered. Sit right
up this very minute and tell me what you are crying about.”
Anne sat up, tragedy personified.
“Mrs. Lynde was up to see Mrs. Barry today and Mrs. Barry was in an awful
state,” she wailed. “She says that I set Diana
Saturday and sent her home in a disgraceful condition. And she says I must be a
thoroughly bad, wicked little girl and she’s never, never going to let
Diana play with me again. Oh, Marilla, I’m just overcome with woe.”
Marilla stared in blank amazement.
“Set Diana drunk!” she said when she found her voice. “Anne
are you or Mrs. Barry crazy? What on earth did you give her?”
“Not a thing but raspberry cordial,” sobbed Anne. “I never
thought raspberry cordial would set people drunk, Marilla—not even if
they drank three big tumblerfuls as Diana did. Oh, it sounds
so—so—like Mrs. Thomas’s husband! But I didn’t mean to
set her drunk.”
“Drunk fiddlesticks!” said Marilla, marching to the sitting room
pantry. There on the shelf was a bottle which she at once recognized as one
containing some of her three-year-old homemade currant wine for which she was
celebrated in Avonlea, although certain of the stricter sort, Mrs. Barry among
them, disapproved strongly of it. And at the same time Marilla recollected that
she had put the bottle of raspberry cordial down in the cellar instead of in
the pantry as she had told Anne.
She went back to the kitchen with the wine bottle in her hand. Her face was
twitching in spite of herself.
“Anne, you certainly have a genius for getting into trouble. You went and
gave Diana currant wine instead of raspberry cordial. Didn’t you know the
difference yourself?”
“I never tasted it,” said Anne. “I thought it was the
cordial. I meant to be so—so—hospitable. Diana got awfully sick and
had to go home. Mrs. Barry told Mrs. Lynde she was simply dead drunk. She just
laughed silly-like when her mother asked her what was the matter and went to
sleep and slept for hours. Her mother smelled her breath and knew she was
drunk. She had a fearful headache all day yesterday. Mrs. Barry is so
indignant. She will never believe but what I did it on purpose.”
“I should think she would better punish Diana for being so greedy as to
drink three glassfuls of anything,” said Marilla shortly. “Why,
three of those big glasses would have made her sick even if it had only been
cordial. Well, this story will be a nice handle for those folks who are so down
on me for making currant wine, although I haven’t made any for three
years ever since I found out that the minister didn’t approve. I just
kept that bottle for sickness. There, there, child, don’t cry. I
can’t see as you were to blame although I’m sorry it happened
so.”
“I must cry,” said Anne. “My heart is broken. The stars in
their courses fight against me, Marilla. Diana and I are parted forever. Oh,
Marilla, I little dreamed of this when first we swore our vows of
friendship.”
“Don’t be foolish, Anne. Mrs. Barry will think better of it when
she finds you’re not to blame. I suppose she thinks you’ve done it
for a silly joke or something of that sort. You’d best go up this evening
and tell her how it was.”
“My courage fails me at the thought of facing Diana’s injured
mother,” sighed Anne. “I wish you’d go, Marilla. You’re
so much more dignified than I am. Likely she’d listen to you quicker than
to me.”
“Well, I will,” said Marilla, reflecting that it would probably be
the wiser course. “Don’t cry any more, Anne. It will be all
right.”
Marilla had changed her mind about it being all right by the time she got back
from Orchard Slope. Anne was watching for her coming and flew to the porch door
to meet her.
“Oh, Marilla, I know by your face that it’s been no use,” she
said sorrowfully. “Mrs. Barry won’t forgive me?”
“Mrs. Barry indeed!” snapped Marilla. “Of all the
unreasonable women I ever saw she’s the worst. I told her it was all a
mistake and you weren’t to blame, but she just simply didn’t
believe me. And she rubbed it well in about my currant wine and how I’d
always said it couldn’t have the least effect on anybody. I just told her
plainly that currant wine wasn’t meant to be drunk three tumblerfuls at a
time and that if a child I had to do with was so greedy I’d sober her up
with a right good spanking.”
Marilla whisked into the kitchen, grievously disturbed, leaving a very much
distracted little soul in the porch behind her. Presently Anne stepped out
bareheaded into the chill autumn dusk; very determinedly and steadily she took
her way down through the sere clover field over the log bridge and up through
the spruce grove, lighted by a pale little moon hanging low over the western
woods. Mrs. Barry, coming to the door in answer to a timid knock, found a
white-lipped eager-eyed suppliant on the doorstep.
Her face hardened. Mrs. Barry was a woman of strong prejudices and dislikes,
and her anger was of the cold, sullen sort which is always hardest to overcome.
To do her justice, she really believed Anne had made Diana drunk out of sheer
malice prepense, and she was honestly anxious to preserve her little daughter
from the contamination of further intimacy with such a child.
“What do you want?” she said stiffly.
Anne clasped her hands.
“Oh, Mrs. Barry, please forgive me. I did not mean
to—to—intoxicate Diana. How could I? Just imagine if you were a
poor little orphan girl that kind people had adopted and you had just one bosom
friend in all the world. Do you think you would intoxicate her on purpose? I
thought it was only raspberry cordial. I was firmly convinced it was raspberry
cordial. Oh, please don’t say that you won’t let Diana play with me
any more. If you do you will cover my life with a dark cloud of woe.”
This speech which would have softened good Mrs. Lynde’s heart in a
twinkling, had no effect on Mrs. Barry except to irritate her still more. She
was suspicious of Anne’s big words and dramatic gestures and imagined
that the child was making fun of her. So she said, coldly and cruelly:
“I don’t think you are a fit little girl for Diana to associate
with. You’d better go home and behave yourself.”
Anne’s lips quivered.
“Won’t you let me see Diana just once to say farewell?” she
implored.
“Diana has gone over to Carmody with her father,” said Mrs. Barry,
going in and shutting the door.
Anne went back to Green Gables calm with despair.
“My last hope is gone,” she told Marilla. “I went up and saw
Mrs. Barry myself and she treated me very insultingly. Marilla, I do
think she is a well-bred woman. There is nothing more to do except to pray and
I haven’t much hope that that’ll do much good because, Marilla, I
do not believe that God Himself can do very much with such an obstinate person
as Mrs. Barry.”
“Anne, you shouldn’t say such things” rebuked Marilla,
striving to overcome that unholy tendency to laughter which she was dismayed to
find growing upon her. And indeed, when she told the whole story to Matthew
that night, she did laugh heartily over Anne’s tribulations.
But when she slipped into the east gable before going to bed and found that
Anne had cried herself to sleep an unaccustomed softness crept into her face.
“Poor little soul,” she murmured, lifting a loose curl of hair from
the child’s tear-stained face. Then she bent down and kissed the flushed
cheek on the pillow.
CHAPTER XVII.
A New Interest in Life
THE next afternoon Anne,
bending over her patchwork at the kitchen window, happened to glance out and
beheld Diana down by the Dryad’s Bubble beckoning mysteriously. In a
trice Anne was out of the house and flying down to the hollow, astonishment and
hope struggling in her expressive eyes. But the hope faded when she saw
Diana’s dejected countenance.
“Your mother hasn’t relented?” she gasped.
Diana shook her head mournfully.
“No; and oh, Anne, she says I’m never to play with you again.
I’ve cried and cried and I told her it wasn’t your fault, but it
wasn’t any use. I had ever such a time coaxing her to let me come down
and say good-bye to you. She said I was only to stay ten minutes and
she’s timing me by the clock.”
“Ten minutes isn’t very long to say an eternal farewell in,”
said Anne tearfully. “Oh, Diana, will you promise faithfully never to
forget me, the friend of your youth, no matter what dearer friends may caress
thee?”
“Indeed I will,” sobbed Diana, “and I’ll never have
another bosom friend—I don’t want to have. I couldn’t love
anybody as I love you.”
“Oh, Diana,” cried Anne, clasping her hands, “do you
me?”
“Why, of course I do. Didn’t you know that?”
“No.” Anne drew a long breath. “I thought you me
of course but I never hoped you me. Why, Diana, I didn’t
think anybody could love me. Nobody ever has loved me since I can remember. Oh,
this is wonderful! It’s a ray of light which will forever shine on the
darkness of a path severed from thee, Diana. Oh, just say it once again.”
“I love you devotedly, Anne,” said Diana stanchly, “and I
always will, you may be sure of that.”
“And I will always love thee, Diana,” said Anne, solemnly extending
her hand. “In the years to come thy memory will shine like a star over my
lonely life, as that last story we read together says. Diana, wilt thou give me
a lock of thy jet-black tresses in parting to treasure forevermore?”
“Have you got anything to cut it with?” queried Diana, wiping away
the tears which Anne’s affecting accents had caused to flow afresh, and
returning to practicalities.
“Yes. I’ve got my patchwork scissors in my apron pocket
fortunately,” said Anne. She solemnly clipped one of Diana’s curls.
“Fare thee well, my beloved friend. Henceforth we must be as strangers
though living side by side. But my heart will ever be faithful to thee.”
Anne stood and watched Diana out of sight, mournfully waving her hand to the
latter whenever she turned to look back. Then she returned to the house, not a
little consoled for the time being by this romantic parting.
“It is all over,” she informed Marilla. “I shall never have
another friend. I’m really worse off than ever before, for I
haven’t Katie Maurice and Violetta now. And even if I had it
wouldn’t be the same. Somehow, little dream girls are not satisfying
after a real friend. Diana and I had such an affecting farewell down by the
spring. It will be sacred in my memory forever. I used the most pathetic
language I could think of and said ‘thou’ and ‘thee.’
‘Thou’ and ‘thee’ seem so much more romantic than
‘you.’ Diana gave me a lock of her hair and I’m going to sew
it up in a little bag and wear it around my neck all my life. Please see that
it is buried with me, for I don’t believe I’ll live very long.
Perhaps when she sees me lying cold and dead before her Mrs. Barry may feel
remorse for what she has done and will let Diana come to my funeral.”
“I don’t think there is much fear of your dying of grief as long as
you can talk, Anne,” said Marilla unsympathetically.
The following Monday Anne surprised Marilla by coming down from her room with
her basket of books on her arm and hip and her lips primmed up into a line of
determination.
“I’m going back to school,” she announced. “That is all
there is left in life for me, now that my friend has been ruthlessly torn from
me. In school I can look at her and muse over days departed.”
“You’d better muse over your lessons and sums,” said Marilla,
concealing her delight at this development of the situation. “If
you’re going back to school I hope we’ll hear no more of breaking
slates over people’s heads and such carryings on. Behave yourself and do
just what your teacher tells you.”
“I’ll try to be a model pupil,” agreed Anne dolefully.
“There won’t be much fun in it, I expect. Mr. Phillips said Minnie
Andrews was a model pupil and there isn’t a spark of imagination or life
in her. She is just dull and poky and never seems to have a good time. But I
feel so depressed that perhaps it will come easy to me now. I’m going
round by the road. I couldn’t bear to go by the Birch Path all alone. I
should weep bitter tears if I did.”
Anne was welcomed back to school with open arms. Her imagination had been
sorely missed in games, her voice in the singing and her dramatic ability in
the perusal aloud of books at dinner hour. Ruby Gillis smuggled three blue
plums over to her during testament reading; Ella May MacPherson gave her an
enormous yellow pansy cut from the covers of a floral catalogue—a species
of desk decoration much prized in Avonlea school. Sophia Sloane offered to
teach her a perfectly elegant new pattern of knit lace, so nice for trimming
aprons. Katie Boulter gave her a perfume bottle to keep slate water in, and
Julia Bell copied carefully on a piece of pale pink paper scalloped on the
edges the following effusion:
“
“When twilight drops her curtain down
And pins it with a star
Remember that you have a friend
Though she may wander far.”
“It’s so nice to be appreciated,” sighed Anne rapturously to
Marilla that night.
The girls were not the only scholars who “appreciated” her. When
Anne went to her seat after dinner hour—she had been told by Mr. Phillips
to sit with the model Minnie Andrews—she found on her desk a big luscious
“strawberry apple.” Anne caught it up all ready to take a bite when
she remembered that the only place in Avonlea where strawberry apples grew was
in the old Blythe orchard on the other side of the Lake of Shining Waters. Anne
dropped the apple as if it were a red-hot coal and ostentatiously wiped her
fingers on her handkerchief. The apple lay untouched on her desk until the next
morning, when little Timothy Andrews, who swept the school and kindled the
fire, annexed it as one of his perquisites. Charlie Sloane’s slate
pencil, gorgeously bedizened with striped red and yellow paper, costing two
cents where ordinary pencils cost only one, which he sent up to her after
dinner hour, met with a more favorable reception. Anne was graciously pleased
to accept it and rewarded the donor with a smile which exalted that infatuated
youth straightway into the seventh heaven of delight and caused him to make
such fearful errors in his dictation that Mr. Phillips kept him in after school
to rewrite it.
But as,
The Cæsar’s pageant shorn of Brutus’ bust
Did but of Rome’s best son remind her more,
so the marked absence of any tribute or recognition from Diana Barry who was
sitting with Gertie Pye embittered Anne’s little triumph.
“Diana might just have smiled at me once, I think,” she mourned to
Marilla that night. But the next morning a note most fearfully and wonderfully
twisted and folded, and a small parcel were passed across to Anne.
“Dear Anne, ran the former, “Mother says I’m not to play with
you or talk to you even in school. It isn’t my fault and don’t be
cross at me, because I love you as much as ever. I miss you awfully to tell all
my secrets to and I don’t like Gertie Pye one bit. I made you one of the
new bookmarkers out of red tissue paper. They are awfully fashionable now and
only three girls in school know how to make them. When you look at it remember
Your true friend,
Diana Barry.
Anne read the note, kissed the bookmark, and dispatched a prompt reply back to
the other side of the school.
My own darling Diana:—
Of course I am not cross at you because you have to obey your mother. Our
spirits can commune. I shall keep your lovely present forever. Minnie Andrews
is a very nice little girl—although she has no imagination—but
after having been Diana’s busum friend I cannot be Minnie’s. Please
excuse mistakes because my spelling isn’t very good yet, although much
improoved.
Yours until death us do part
Anne or Cordelia Shirley.
P.S. I shall sleep with your letter under my pillow tonight.
A. C.S.
Marilla pessimistically expected more trouble since Anne had again begun to go
to school. But none developed. Perhaps Anne caught something of the
“model” spirit from Minnie Andrews; at least she got on very well
with Mr. Phillips thenceforth. She flung herself into her studies heart and
soul, determined not to be outdone in any class by Gilbert Blythe. The rivalry
between them was soon apparent; it was entirely good natured on Gilbert’s
side; but it is much to be feared that the same thing cannot be said of Anne,
who had certainly an unpraiseworthy tenacity for holding grudges. She was as
intense in her hatreds as in her loves. She would not stoop to admit that she
meant to rival Gilbert in schoolwork, because that would have been to
acknowledge his existence which Anne persistently ignored; but the rivalry was
there and honors fluctuated between them. Now Gilbert was head of the spelling
class; now Anne, with a toss of her long red braids, spelled him down. One
morning Gilbert had all his sums done correctly and had his name written on the
blackboard on the roll of honor; the next morning Anne, having wrestled wildly
with decimals the entire evening before, would be first. One awful day they
were ties and their names were written up together. It was almost as bad as a
take-notice and Anne’s mortification was as evident as Gilbert’s
satisfaction. When the written examinations at the end of each month were held
the suspense was terrible. The first month Gilbert came out three marks ahead.
The second Anne beat him by five. But her triumph was marred by the fact that
Gilbert congratulated her heartily before the whole school. It would have been
ever so much sweeter to her if he had felt the sting of his defeat.
Mr. Phillips might not be a very good teacher; but a pupil so inflexibly
determined on learning as Anne was could hardly escape making progress under
any kind of teacher. By the end of the term Anne and Gilbert were both promoted
into the fifth class and allowed to begin studying the elements of “the
branches”—by which Latin, geometry, French, and algebra were meant.
In geometry Anne met her Waterloo.
“It’s perfectly awful stuff, Marilla,” she groaned.
“I’m sure I’ll never be able to make head or tail of it.
There is no scope for imagination in it at all. Mr. Phillips says I’m the
worst dunce he ever saw at it. And Gil—I mean some of the others are so
smart at it. It is extremely mortifying, Marilla.
“Even Diana gets along better than I do. But I don’t mind being
beaten by Diana. Even although we meet as strangers now I still love her with
an love. It makes me very sad at times to think about
her. But really, Marilla, one can’t stay sad very long in such an
interesting world, can one?”
CHAPTER XVIII.
Anne to the Rescue
ALL things great are
wound up with all things little. At first glance it might not seem that the
decision of a certain Canadian Premier to include Prince Edward Island in a
political tour could have much or anything to do with the fortunes of little
Anne Shirley at Green Gables. But it had.
It was a January the Premier came, to address his loyal supporters and such of
his nonsupporters as chose to be present at the monster mass meeting held in
Charlottetown. Most of the Avonlea people were on Premier’s side of
politics; hence on the night of the meeting nearly all the men and a goodly
proportion of the women had gone to town thirty miles away. Mrs. Rachel Lynde
had gone too. Mrs. Rachel Lynde was a red-hot politician and couldn’t
have believed that the political rally could be carried through without her,
although she was on the opposite side of politics. So she went to town and took
her husband—Thomas would be useful in looking after the horse—and
Marilla Cuthbert with her. Marilla had a sneaking interest in politics herself,
and as she thought it might be her only chance to see a real live Premier, she
promptly took it, leaving Anne and Matthew to keep house until her return the
following day.
Hence, while Marilla and Mrs. Rachel were enjoying themselves hugely at the
mass meeting, Anne and Matthew had the cheerful kitchen at Green Gables all to
themselves. A bright fire was glowing in the old-fashioned Waterloo stove and
blue-white frost crystals were shining on the windowpanes. Matthew nodded over
a on the sofa and Anne at the table studied her
lessons with grim determination, despite sundry wistful glances at the clock
shelf, where lay a new book that Jane Andrews had lent her that day. Jane had
assured her that it was warranted to produce any number of thrills, or words to
that effect, and Anne’s fingers tingled to reach out for it. But that
would mean Gilbert Blythe’s triumph on the morrow. Anne turned her back
on the clock shelf and tried to imagine it wasn’t there.
“Matthew, did you ever study geometry when you went to school?”
“Well now, no, I didn’t,” said Matthew, coming out of his
doze with a start.
“I wish you had,” sighed Anne, “because then you’d be
able to sympathize with me. You can’t sympathize properly if you’ve
never studied it. It is casting a cloud over my whole life. I’m such a
dunce at it, Matthew.”
“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew soothingly. “I guess
you’re all right at anything. Mr. Phillips told me last week in
Blair’s store at Carmody that you was the smartest scholar in school and
was making rapid progress. ‘Rapid progress’ was his very words.
There’s them as runs down Teddy Phillips and says he ain’t much of
a teacher, but I guess he’s all right.”
Matthew would have thought anyone who praised Anne was “all right.”
“I’m sure I’d get on better with geometry if only he
wouldn’t change the letters,” complained Anne. “I learn the
proposition off by heart and then he draws it on the blackboard and puts
different letters from what are in the book and I get all mixed up. I
don’t think a teacher should take such a mean advantage, do you?
We’re studying agriculture now and I’ve found out at last what
makes the roads red. It’s a great comfort. I wonder how Marilla and Mrs.
Lynde are enjoying themselves. Mrs. Lynde says Canada is going to the dogs the
way things are being run at Ottawa and that it’s an awful warning to the
electors. She says if women were allowed to vote we would soon see a blessed
change. What way do you vote, Matthew?”
“Conservative,” said Matthew promptly. To vote Conservative was
part of Matthew’s religion.
“Then I’m Conservative too,” said Anne decidedly.
“I’m glad because Gil—because some of the boys in school are
Grits. I guess Mr. Phillips is a Grit too because Prissy Andrews’s father
is one, and Ruby Gillis says that when a man is courting he always has to agree
with the girl’s mother in religion and her father in politics. Is that
true, Matthew?”
“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew.
“Did you ever go courting, Matthew?”
“Well now, no, I dunno’s I ever did,” said Matthew, who had
certainly never thought of such a thing in his whole existence.
Anne reflected with her chin in her hands.
“It must be rather interesting, don’t you think, Matthew? Ruby
Gillis says when she grows up she’s going to have ever so many beaus on
the string and have them all crazy about her; but I think that would be too
exciting. I’d rather have just one in his right mind. But Ruby Gillis
knows a great deal about such matters because she has so many big sisters, and
Mrs. Lynde says the Gillis girls have gone off like hot cakes. Mr. Phillips
goes up to see Prissy Andrews nearly every evening. He says it is to help her
with her lessons but Miranda Sloane is studying for Queen’s too, and I
should think she needed help a lot more than Prissy because she’s ever so
much stupider, but he never goes to help her in the evenings at all. There are
a great many things in this world that I can’t understand very well,
Matthew.”
“Well now, I dunno as I comprehend them all myself,” acknowledged
Matthew.
“Well, I suppose I must finish up my lessons. I won’t allow myself
to open that new book Jane lent me until I’m through. But it’s a
terrible temptation, Matthew. Even when I turn my back on it I can see it there
just as plain. Jane said she cried herself sick over it. I love a book that
makes me cry. But I think I’ll carry that book into the sitting room and
lock it in the jam closet and give you the key. And you must give it
to me, Matthew, until my lessons are done, not even if I implore you on my
bended knees. It’s all very well to say resist temptation, but it’s
ever so much easier to resist it if you can’t get the key. And then shall
I run down the cellar and get some russets, Matthew? Wouldn’t you like
some russets?”
“Well now, I dunno but what I would,” said Matthew, who never ate
russets but knew Anne’s weakness for them.
Just as Anne emerged triumphantly from the cellar with her plateful of russets
came the sound of flying footsteps on the icy board walk outside and the next
moment the kitchen door was flung open and in rushed Diana Barry, white faced
and breathless, with a shawl wrapped hastily around her head. Anne promptly let
go of her candle and plate in her surprise, and plate, candle, and apples
crashed together down the cellar ladder and were found at the bottom embedded
in melted grease, the next day, by Marilla, who gathered them up and thanked
mercy the house hadn’t been set on fire.
“Whatever is the matter, Diana?” cried Anne. “Has your mother
relented at last?”
“Oh, Anne, do come quick,” implored Diana nervously. “Minnie
May is awful sick—she’s got croup. Young Mary Joe says—and
Father and Mother are away to town and there’s nobody to go for the
doctor. Minnie May is awful bad and Young Mary Joe doesn’t know what to
do—and oh, Anne, I’m so scared!”
Matthew, without a word, reached out for cap and coat, slipped past Diana and
away into the darkness of the yard.
“He’s gone to harness the sorrel mare to go to Carmody for the
doctor,” said Anne, who was hurrying on hood and jacket. “I know it
as well as if he’d said so. Matthew and I are such kindred spirits I can
read his thoughts without words at all.”
“I don’t believe he’ll find the doctor at Carmody,”
sobbed Diana. “I know that Dr. Blair went to town and I guess Dr. Spencer
would go too. Young Mary Joe never saw anybody with croup and Mrs. Lynde is
away. Oh, Anne!”
“Don’t cry, Di,” said Anne cheerily. “I know exactly
what to do for croup. You forget that Mrs. Hammond had twins three times. When
you look after three pairs of twins you naturally get a lot of experience. They
all had croup regularly. Just wait till I get the ipecac bottle—you
mayn’t have any at your house. Come on now.”
The two little girls hastened out hand in hand and hurried through
Lover’s Lane and across the crusted field beyond, for the snow was too
deep to go by the shorter wood way. Anne, although sincerely sorry for Minnie
May, was far from being insensible to the romance of the situation and to the
sweetness of once more sharing that romance with a kindred spirit.
The night was clear and frosty, all ebony of shadow and silver of snowy slope;
big stars were shining over the silent fields; here and there the dark pointed
firs stood up with snow powdering their branches and the wind whistling through
them. Anne thought it was truly delightful to go skimming through all this
mystery and loveliness with your bosom friend who had been so long estranged.
Minnie May, aged three, was really very sick. She lay on the kitchen sofa
feverish and restless, while her hoarse breathing could be heard all over the
house. Young Mary Joe, a buxom, broad-faced French girl from the creek, whom
Mrs. Barry had engaged to stay with the children during her absence, was
helpless and bewildered, quite incapable of thinking what to do, or doing it if
she thought of it.
Anne went to work with skill and promptness.
“Minnie May has croup all right; she’s pretty bad, but I’ve
seen them worse. First we must have lots of hot water. I declare, Diana, there
isn’t more than a cupful in the kettle! There, I’ve filled it up,
and, Mary Joe, you may put some wood in the stove. I don’t want to hurt
your feelings but it seems to me you might have thought of this before if
you’d any imagination. Now, I’ll undress Minnie May and put her to
bed and you try to find some soft flannel cloths, Diana. I’m going to
give her a dose of ipecac first of all.”
Minnie May did not take kindly to the ipecac but Anne had not brought up three
pairs of twins for nothing. Down that ipecac went, not only once, but many
times during the long, anxious night when the two little girls worked patiently
over the suffering Minnie May, and Young Mary Joe, honestly anxious to do all
she could, kept up a roaring fire and heated more water than would have been
needed for a hospital of croupy babies.
It was three o’clock when Matthew came with a doctor, for he had been
obliged to go all the way to Spencervale for one. But the pressing need for
assistance was past. Minnie May was much better and was sleeping soundly.
“I was awfully near giving up in despair,” explained Anne.
“She got worse and worse until she was sicker than ever the Hammond twins
were, even the last pair. I actually thought she was going to choke to death. I
gave her every drop of ipecac in that bottle and when the last dose went down I
said to myself—not to Diana or Young Mary Joe, because I didn’t
want to worry them any more than they were worried, but I had to say it to
myself just to relieve my feelings—‘This is the last lingering hope
and I fear, tis a vain one.’ But in about three minutes she coughed up
the phlegm and began to get better right away. You must just imagine my relief,
doctor, because I can’t express it in words. You know there are some
things that cannot be expressed in words.”
“Yes, I know,” nodded the doctor. He looked at Anne as if he were
thinking some things about her that couldn’t be expressed in words. Later
on, however, he expressed them to Mr. and Mrs. Barry.
“That little redheaded girl they have over at Cuthbert’s is as
smart as they make ‘em. I tell you she saved that baby’s life, for
it would have been too late by the time I got there. She seems to have a skill
and presence of mind perfectly wonderful in a child of her age. I never saw
anything like the eyes of her when she was explaining the case to me.”
Anne had gone home in the wonderful, white-frosted winter morning, heavy eyed
from loss of sleep, but still talking unweariedly to Matthew as they crossed
the long white field and walked under the glittering fairy arch of the
Lover’s Lane maples.
“Oh, Matthew, isn’t it a wonderful morning? The world looks like
something God had just imagined for His own pleasure, doesn’t it? Those
trees look as if I could blow them away with a breath—pouf! I’m so
glad I live in a world where there are white frosts, aren’t you? And
I’m so glad Mrs. Hammond had three pairs of twins after all. If she
hadn’t I mightn’t have known what to do for Minnie May. I’m
real sorry I was ever cross with Mrs. Hammond for having twins. But, oh,
Matthew, I’m so sleepy. I can’t go to school. I just know I
couldn’t keep my eyes open and I’d be so stupid. But I hate to stay
home, for Gil—some of the others will get head of the class, and
it’s so hard to get up again—although of course the harder it is
the more satisfaction you have when you do get up, haven’t you?”
“Well now, I guess you’ll manage all right,” said Matthew,
looking at Anne’s white little face and the dark shadows under her eyes.
“You just go right to bed and have a good sleep. I’ll do all the
chores.”
Anne accordingly went to bed and slept so long and soundly that it was well on
in the white and rosy winter afternoon when she awoke and descended to the
kitchen where Marilla, who had arrived home in the meantime, was sitting
knitting.
“Oh, did you see the Premier?” exclaimed Anne at once. “What
did he look like Marilla?”
“Well, he never got to be Premier on account of his looks,” said
Marilla. “Such a nose as that man had! But he can speak. I was proud of
being a Conservative. Rachel Lynde, of course, being a Liberal, had no use for
him. Your dinner is in the oven, Anne, and you can get yourself some blue plum
preserve out of the pantry. I guess you’re hungry. Matthew has been
telling me about last night. I must say it was fortunate you knew what to do. I
wouldn’t have had any idea myself, for I never saw a case of croup. There
now, never mind talking till you’ve had your dinner. I can tell by the
look of you that you’re just full up with speeches, but they’ll
keep.”
Marilla had something to tell Anne, but she did not tell it just then for she
knew if she did Anne’s consequent excitement would lift her clear out of
the region of such material matters as appetite or dinner. Not until Anne had
finished her saucer of blue plums did Marilla say:
“Mrs. Barry was here this afternoon, Anne. She wanted to see you, but I
wouldn’t wake you up. She says you saved Minnie May’s life, and she
is very sorry she acted as she did in that affair of the currant wine. She says
she knows now you didn’t mean to set Diana drunk, and she hopes
you’ll forgive her and be good friends with Diana again. You’re to
go over this evening if you like for Diana can’t stir outside the door on
account of a bad cold she caught last night. Now, Anne Shirley, for
pity’s sake don’t fly up into the air.”
The warning seemed not unnecessary, so uplifted and aerial was Anne’s
expression and attitude as she sprang to her feet, her face irradiated with the
flame of her spirit.
“Oh, Marilla, can I go right now—without washing my dishes?
I’ll wash them when I come back, but I cannot tie myself down to anything
so unromantic as dishwashing at this thrilling moment.”
“Yes, yes, run along,” said Marilla indulgently. “Anne
Shirley—are you crazy? Come back this instant and put something on you. I
might as well call to the wind. She’s gone without a cap or wrap. Look at
her tearing through the orchard with her hair streaming. It’ll be a mercy
if she doesn’t catch her death of cold.”
Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy places.
Afar in the southwest was the great shimmering, pearl-like sparkle of an
evening star in a sky that was pale golden and ethereal rose over gleaming
white spaces and dark glens of spruce. The tinkles of sleigh bells among the
snowy hills came like elfin chimes through the frosty air, but their music was
not sweeter than the song in Anne’s heart and on her lips.
“You see before you a perfectly happy person, Marilla,” she
announced. “I’m perfectly happy—yes, in spite of my red hair.
Just at present I have a soul above red hair. Mrs. Barry kissed me and cried
and said she was so sorry and she could never repay me. I felt fearfully
embarrassed, Marilla, but I just said as politely as I could, ‘I have no
hard feelings for you, Mrs. Barry. I assure you once for all that I did not
mean to intoxicate Diana and henceforth I shall cover the past with the mantle
of oblivion.’ That was a pretty dignified way of speaking wasn’t
it, Marilla?”
“I felt that I was heaping coals of fire on Mrs. Barry’s head. And
Diana and I had a lovely afternoon. Diana showed me a new fancy crochet stitch
her aunt over at Carmody taught her. Not a soul in Avonlea knows it but us, and
we pledged a solemn vow never to reveal it to anyone else. Diana gave me a
beautiful card with a wreath of roses on it and a verse of poetry:”
“If you love me as I love you
Nothing but death can part us two.”
“And that is true, Marilla. We’re going to ask Mr. Phillips to let
us sit together in school again, and Gertie Pye can go with Minnie Andrews. We
had an elegant tea. Mrs. Barry had the very best china set out, Marilla, just
as if I was real company. I can’t tell you what a thrill it gave me.
Nobody ever used their very best china on my account before. And we had fruit
cake and pound cake and doughnuts and two kinds of preserves, Marilla. And Mrs.
Barry asked me if I took tea and said ‘Pa, why don’t you pass the
biscuits to Anne?’ It must be lovely to be grown up, Marilla, when just
being treated as if you were is so nice.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Marilla, with a brief sigh.
“Well, anyway, when I am grown up,” said Anne decidedly,
“I’m always going to talk to little girls as if they were too, and
I’ll never laugh when they use big words. I know from sorrowful
experience how that hurts one’s feelings. After tea Diana and I made
taffy. The taffy wasn’t very good, I suppose because neither Diana nor I
had ever made any before. Diana left me to stir it while she buttered the
plates and I forgot and let it burn; and then when we set it out on the
platform to cool the cat walked over one plate and that had to be thrown away.
But the making of it was splendid fun. Then when I came home Mrs. Barry asked
me to come over as often as I could and Diana stood at the window and threw
kisses to me all the way down to Lover’s Lane. I assure you, Marilla,
that I feel like praying tonight and I’m going to think out a special
brand-new prayer in honor of the occasion.”
CHAPTER XIX.
A Concert a Catastrophe and a Confession
MARILLA, can I go over
to see Diana just for a minute?” asked Anne, running breathlessly down
from the east gable one February evening.
“I don’t see what you want to be traipsing about after dark
for,” said Marilla shortly. “You and Diana walked home from school
together and then stood down there in the snow for half an hour more, your
tongues going the whole blessed time, clickety-clack. So I don’t think
you’re very badly off to see her again.”
“But she wants to see me,” pleaded Anne. “She has something
very important to tell me.”
“How do you know she has?”
“Because she just signaled to me from her window. We have arranged a way
to signal with our candles and cardboard. We set the candle on the window sill
and make flashes by passing the cardboard back and forth. So many flashes mean
a certain thing. It was my idea, Marilla.”
“I’ll warrant you it was,” said Marilla emphatically.
“And the next thing you’ll be setting fire to the curtains with
your signaling nonsense.”
“Oh, we’re very careful, Marilla. And it’s so interesting.
Two flashes mean, ‘Are you there?’ Three mean ‘yes’ and
four ‘no.’ Five mean, ‘Come over as soon as possible, because
I have something important to reveal.’ Diana has just signaled five
flashes, and I’m really suffering to know what it is.”
“Well, you needn’t suffer any longer,” said Marilla
sarcastically. “You can go, but you’re to be back here in just ten
minutes, remember that.”
Anne did remember it and was back in the stipulated time, although probably no
mortal will ever know just what it cost her to confine the discussion of
Diana’s important communication within the limits of ten minutes. But at
least she had made good use of them.
“Oh, Marilla, what do you think? You know tomorrow is Diana’s
birthday. Well, her mother told her she could ask me to go home with her from
school and stay all night with her. And her cousins are coming over from
Newbridge in a big pung sleigh to go to the Debating Club concert at the hall
tomorrow night. And they are going to take Diana and me to the concert—if
you’ll let me go, that is. You will, won’t you, Marilla? Oh, I feel
so excited.”
“You can calm down then, because you’re not going. You’re
better at home in your own bed, and as for that club concert, it’s all
nonsense, and little girls should not be allowed to go out to such places at
all.”
“I’m sure the Debating Club is a most respectable affair,”
pleaded Anne.
“I’m not saying it isn’t. But you’re not going to begin
gadding about to concerts and staying out all hours of the night. Pretty doings
for children. I’m surprised at Mrs. Barry’s letting Diana
go.”
“But it’s such a very special occasion,” mourned Anne, on the
verge of tears. “Diana has only one birthday in a year. It isn’t as
if birthdays were common things, Marilla. Prissy Andrews is going to recite
‘Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight.’ That is such a good moral piece,
Marilla, I’m sure it would do me lots of good to hear it. And the choir
are going to sing four lovely pathetic songs that are pretty near as good as
hymns. And oh, Marilla, the minister is going to take part; yes, indeed, he is;
he’s going to give an address. That will be just about the same thing as
a sermon. Please, mayn’t I go, Marilla?”
“You heard what I said, Anne, didn’t you? Take off your boots now
and go to bed. It’s past eight.”
“There’s just one more thing, Marilla,” said Anne, with the
air of producing the last shot in her locker. “Mrs. Barry told Diana that
we might sleep in the spare-room bed. Think of the honor of your little Anne
being put in the spare-room bed.”
“It’s an honor you’ll have to get along without. Go to bed,
Anne, and don’t let me hear another word out of you.”
When Anne, with tears rolling over her cheeks, had gone sorrowfully upstairs,
Matthew, who had been apparently sound asleep on the lounge during the whole
dialogue, opened his eyes and said decidedly:
“Well now, Marilla, I think you ought to let Anne go.”
“I don’t then,” retorted Marilla. “Who’s bringing
this child up, Matthew, you or me?”
“Well now, you,” admitted Matthew.
“Don’t interfere then.”
“Well now, I ain’t interfering. It ain’t interfering to have
your own opinion. And my opinion is that you ought to let Anne go.”
“You’d think I ought to let Anne go to the moon if she took the
notion, I’ve no doubt,” was Marilla’s amiable rejoinder.
“I might have let her spend the night with Diana, if that was all. But I
don’t approve of this concert plan. She’d go there and catch cold
like as not, and have her head filled up with nonsense and excitement. It would
unsettle her for a week. I understand that child’s disposition and
what’s good for it better than you, Matthew.”
“I think you ought to let Anne go,” repeated Matthew firmly.
Argument was not his strong point, but holding fast to his opinion certainly
was. Marilla gave a gasp of helplessness and took refuge in silence. The next
morning, when Anne was washing the breakfast dishes in the pantry, Matthew
paused on his way out to the barn to say to Marilla again:
“I think you ought to let Anne go, Marilla.”
For a moment Marilla looked things not lawful to be uttered. Then she yielded
to the inevitable and said tartly:
“Very well, she can go, since nothing else ‘ll please you.”
Anne flew out of the pantry, dripping dishcloth in hand.
“Oh, Marilla, Marilla, say those blessed words again.”
“I guess once is enough to say them. This is Matthew’s doings and I
wash my hands of it. If you catch pneumonia sleeping in a strange bed or coming
out of that hot hall in the middle of the night, don’t blame me, blame
Matthew. Anne Shirley, you’re dripping greasy water all over the floor. I
never saw such a careless child.”
“Oh, I know I’m a great trial to you, Marilla,” said Anne
repentantly. “I make so many mistakes. But then just think of all the
mistakes I don’t make, although I might. I’ll get some sand and
scrub up the spots before I go to school. Oh, Marilla, my heart was just set on
going to that concert. I never was to a concert in my life, and when the other
girls talk about them in school I feel so out of it. You didn’t know just
how I felt about it, but you see Matthew did. Matthew understands me, and
it’s so nice to be understood, Marilla.”
Anne was too excited to do herself justice as to lessons that morning in
school. Gilbert Blythe spelled her down in class and left her clear out of
sight in mental arithmetic. Anne’s consequent humiliation was less than
it might have been, however, in view of the concert and the spare-room bed. She
and Diana talked so constantly about it all day that with a stricter teacher
than Mr. Phillips dire disgrace must inevitably have been their portion.
Anne felt that she could not have borne it if she had not been going to the
concert, for nothing else was discussed that day in school. The Avonlea
Debating Club, which met fortnightly all winter, had had several smaller free
entertainments; but this was to be a big affair, admission ten cents, in aid of
the library. The Avonlea young people had been practicing for weeks, and all
the scholars were especially interested in it by reason of older brothers and
sisters who were going to take part. Everybody in school over nine years of age
expected to go, except Carrie Sloane, whose father shared Marilla’s
opinions about small girls going out to night concerts. Carrie Sloane cried
into her grammar all the afternoon and felt that life was not worth living.
For Anne the real excitement began with the dismissal of school and increased
therefrom in crescendo until it reached to a crash of positive ecstasy in the
concert itself. They had a “perfectly elegant tea;” and then came
the delicious occupation of dressing in Diana’s little room upstairs.
Diana did Anne’s front hair in the new pompadour style and Anne tied
Diana’s bows with the especial knack she possessed; and they experimented
with at least half a dozen different ways of arranging their back hair. At last
they were ready, cheeks scarlet and eyes glowing with excitement.
True, Anne could not help a little pang when she contrasted her plain black tam
and shapeless, tight-sleeved, homemade gray-cloth coat with Diana’s
jaunty fur cap and smart little jacket. But she remembered in time that she had
an imagination and could use it.
Then Diana’s cousins, the Murrays from Newbridge, came; they all crowded
into the big pung sleigh, among straw and furry robes. Anne reveled in the
drive to the hall, slipping along over the satin-smooth roads with the snow
crisping under the runners. There was a magnificent sunset, and the snowy hills
and deep-blue water of the St. Lawrence Gulf seemed to rim in the splendor like
a huge bowl of pearl and sapphire brimmed with wine and fire. Tinkles of sleigh
bells and distant laughter, that seemed like the mirth of wood elves, came from
every quarter.
“Oh, Diana,” breathed Anne, squeezing Diana’s mittened hand
under the fur robe, “isn’t it all like a beautiful dream? Do I
really look the same as usual? I feel so different that it seems to me it must
show in my looks.”
“You look awfully nice,” said Diana, who having just received a
compliment from one of her cousins, felt that she ought to pass it on.
“You’ve got the loveliest color.”
The program that night was a series of “thrills” for at least one
listener in the audience, and, as Anne assured Diana, every succeeding thrill
was thrillier than the last. When Prissy Andrews, attired in a new pink-silk
waist with a string of pearls about her smooth white throat and real carnations
in her hair—rumor whispered that the master had sent all the way to town
for them for her—“climbed the slimy ladder, dark without one ray of
light,” Anne shivered in luxurious sympathy; when the choir sang
“Far Above the Gentle Daisies” Anne gazed at the ceiling as if it
were frescoed with angels; when Sam Sloane proceeded to explain and illustrate
“How Sockery Set a Hen” Anne laughed until people sitting near her
laughed too, more out of sympathy with her than with amusement at a selection
that was rather threadbare even in Avonlea; and when Mr. Phillips gave Mark
Antony’s oration over the dead body of Cæsar in the most heart-stirring
tones—looking at Prissy Andrews at the end of every sentence—Anne
felt that she could rise and mutiny on the spot if but one Roman citizen led
the way.
Only one number on the program failed to interest her. When Gilbert Blythe
recited “Bingen on the Rhine” Anne picked up Rhoda Murray’s
library book and read it until he had finished, when she sat rigidly stiff and
motionless while Diana clapped her hands until they tingled.
It was eleven when they got home, sated with dissipation, but with the
exceeding sweet pleasure of talking it all over still to come. Everybody seemed
asleep and the house was dark and silent. Anne and Diana tiptoed into the
parlor, a long narrow room out of which the spare room opened. It was
pleasantly warm and dimly lighted by the embers of a fire in the grate.
“Let’s undress here,” said Diana. “It’s so nice
and warm.”
“Hasn’t it been a delightful time?” sighed Anne rapturously.
“It must be splendid to get up and recite there. Do you suppose we will
ever be asked to do it, Diana?”
“Yes, of course, someday. They’re always wanting the big scholars
to recite. Gilbert Blythe does often and he’s only two years older than
us. Oh, Anne, how could you pretend not to listen to him? When he came to the
line,
‘There’s Another, a sister,’
he looked right down at you.”
“Diana,” said Anne with dignity, “you are my bosom friend,
but I cannot allow even you to speak to me of that person. Are you ready for
bed? Let’s run a race and see who’ll get to the bed first.”
The suggestion appealed to Diana. The two little white-clad figures flew down
the long room, through the spare-room door, and bounded on the bed at the same
moment. And then—something—moved beneath them, there was a gasp and
a cry—and somebody said in muffled accents:
“Merciful goodness!”
Anne and Diana were never able to tell just how they got off that bed and out
of the room. They only knew that after one frantic rush they found themselves
tiptoeing shiveringly upstairs.
“Oh, who was it— was it?” whispered Anne, her
teeth chattering with cold and fright.
“It was Aunt Josephine,” said Diana, gasping with laughter.
“Oh, Anne, it was Aunt Josephine, however she came to be there. Oh, and I
know she will be furious. It’s dreadful—it’s really
dreadful—but did you ever know anything so funny, Anne?”
“Who is your Aunt Josephine?”
“She’s father’s aunt and she lives in Charlottetown.
She’s awfully old—seventy anyhow—and I don’t believe
she was a little girl. We were expecting her out for a visit, but
not so soon. She’s awfully prim and proper and she’ll scold
dreadfully about this, I know. Well, we’ll have to sleep with Minnie
May—and you can’t think how she kicks.”
Miss Josephine Barry did not appear at the early breakfast the next morning.
Mrs. Barry smiled kindly at the two little girls.
“Did you have a good time last night? I tried to stay awake until you
came home, for I wanted to tell you Aunt Josephine had come and that you would
have to go upstairs after all, but I was so tired I fell asleep. I hope you
didn’t disturb your aunt, Diana.”
Diana preserved a discreet silence, but she and Anne exchanged furtive smiles
of guilty amusement across the table. Anne hurried home after breakfast and so
remained in blissful ignorance of the disturbance which presently resulted in
the Barry household until the late afternoon, when she went down to Mrs.
Lynde’s on an errand for Marilla.
“So you and Diana nearly frightened poor old Miss Barry to death last
night?” said Mrs. Lynde severely, but with a twinkle in her eye.
“Mrs. Barry was here a few minutes ago on her way to Carmody. She’s
feeling real worried over it. Old Miss Barry was in a terrible temper when she
got up this morning—and Josephine Barry’s temper is no joke, I can
tell you that. She wouldn’t speak to Diana at all.”
“It wasn’t Diana’s fault,” said Anne contritely.
“It was mine. I suggested racing to see who would get into bed
first.”
“I knew it!” said Mrs. Lynde, with the exultation of a correct
guesser. “I knew that idea came out of your head. Well, it’s made a
nice lot of trouble, that’s what. Old Miss Barry came out to stay for a
month, but she declares she won’t stay another day and is going right
back to town tomorrow, Sunday and all as it is. She’d have gone today if
they could have taken her. She had promised to pay for a quarter’s music
lessons for Diana, but now she is determined to do nothing at all for such a
tomboy. Oh, I guess they had a lively time of it there this morning. The Barrys
must feel cut up. Old Miss Barry is rich and they’d like to keep on the
good side of her. Of course, Mrs. Barry didn’t say just that to me, but
I’m a pretty good judge of human nature, that’s what.”
“I’m such an unlucky girl,” mourned Anne. “I’m
always getting into scrapes myself and getting my best friends—people
I’d shed my heart’s blood for—into them too. Can you tell me
why it is so, Mrs. Lynde?”
“It’s because you’re too heedless and impulsive, child,
that’s what. You never stop to think—whatever comes into your head
to say or do you say or do it without a moment’s reflection.”
“Oh, but that’s the best of it,” protested Anne.
“Something just flashes into your mind, so exciting, and you must out
with it. If you stop to think it over you spoil it all. Haven’t you never
felt that yourself, Mrs. Lynde?”
No, Mrs. Lynde had not. She shook her head sagely.
“You must learn to think a little, Anne, that’s what. The proverb
you need to go by is ‘Look before you leap’—especially into
spare-room beds.”
Mrs. Lynde laughed comfortably over her mild joke, but Anne remained pensive.
She saw nothing to laugh at in the situation, which to her eyes appeared very
serious. When she left Mrs. Lynde’s she took her way across the crusted
fields to Orchard Slope. Diana met her at the kitchen door.
“Your Aunt Josephine was very cross about it, wasn’t she?”
whispered Anne.
“Yes,” answered Diana, stifling a giggle with an apprehensive
glance over her shoulder at the closed sitting-room door. “She was fairly
dancing with rage, Anne. Oh, how she scolded. She said I was the worst-behaved
girl she ever saw and that my parents ought to be ashamed of the way they had
brought me up. She says she won’t stay and I’m sure I don’t
care. But Father and Mother do.”
“Why didn’t you tell them it was my fault?” demanded Anne.
“It’s likely I’d do such a thing, isn’t it?” said
Diana with just scorn. “I’m no telltale, Anne Shirley, and anyhow I
was just as much to blame as you.”
“Well, I’m going in to tell her myself,” said Anne
resolutely.
Diana stared.
“Anne Shirley, you’d never! why—she’ll eat you
alive!”
“Don’t frighten me any more than I am frightened,” implored
Anne. “I’d rather walk up to a cannon’s mouth. But I’ve
got to do it, Diana. It was my fault and I’ve got to confess. I’ve
had practice in confessing, fortunately.”
“Well, she’s in the room,” said Diana. “You can go in
if you want to. I wouldn’t dare. And I don’t believe you’ll
do a bit of good.”
With this encouragement Anne bearded the lion in its den—that is to say,
walked resolutely up to the sitting-room door and knocked faintly. A sharp
“Come in” followed.
Miss Josephine Barry, thin, prim, and rigid, was knitting fiercely by the fire,
her wrath quite unappeased and her eyes snapping through her gold-rimmed
glasses. She wheeled around in her chair, expecting to see Diana, and beheld a
white-faced girl whose great eyes were brimmed up with a mixture of desperate
courage and shrinking terror.
“Who are you?” demanded Miss Josephine Barry, without ceremony.
“I’m Anne of Green Gables,” said the small visitor
tremulously, clasping her hands with her characteristic gesture, “and
I’ve come to confess, if you please.”
“Confess what?”
“That it was all my fault about jumping into bed on you last night. I
suggested it. Diana would never have thought of such a thing, I am sure. Diana
is a very ladylike girl, Miss Barry. So you must see how unjust it is to blame
her.”
“Oh, I must, hey? I rather think Diana did her share of the jumping at
least. Such carryings on in a respectable house!”
“But we were only in fun,” persisted Anne. “I think you ought
to forgive us, Miss Barry, now that we’ve apologized. And anyhow, please
forgive Diana and let her have her music lessons. Diana’s heart is set on
her music lessons, Miss Barry, and I know too well what it is to set your heart
on a thing and not get it. If you must be cross with anyone, be cross with me.
I’ve been so used in my early days to having people cross at me that I
can endure it much better than Diana can.”
Much of the snap had gone out of the old lady’s eyes by this time and was
replaced by a twinkle of amused interest. But she still said severely:
“I don’t think it is any excuse for you that you were only in fun.
Little girls never indulged in that kind of fun when I was young. You
don’t know what it is to be awakened out of a sound sleep, after a long
and arduous journey, by two great girls coming bounce down on you.”
“I don’t , but I can ,” said Anne
eagerly. “I’m sure it must have been very disturbing. But then,
there is our side of it too. Have you any imagination, Miss Barry? If you have,
just put yourself in our place. We didn’t know there was anybody in that
bed and you nearly scared us to death. It was simply awful the way we felt. And
then we couldn’t sleep in the spare room after being promised. I suppose
you are used to sleeping in spare rooms. But just imagine what you would feel
like if you were a little orphan girl who had never had such an honor.”
All the snap had gone by this time. Miss Barry actually laughed—a sound
which caused Diana, waiting in speechless anxiety in the kitchen outside, to
give a great gasp of relief.
“I’m afraid my imagination is a little rusty—it’s so
long since I used it,” she said. “I dare say your claim to sympathy
is just as strong as mine. It all depends on the way we look at it. Sit down
here and tell me about yourself.”
“I am very sorry I can’t,” said Anne firmly. “I would
like to, because you seem like an interesting lady, and you might even be a
kindred spirit although you don’t look very much like it. But it is my
duty to go home to Miss Marilla Cuthbert. Miss Marilla Cuthbert is a very kind
lady who has taken me to bring up properly. She is doing her best, but it is
very discouraging work. You must not blame her because I jumped on the bed. But
before I go I do wish you would tell me if you will forgive Diana and stay just
as long as you meant to in Avonlea.”
“I think perhaps I will if you will come over and talk to me
occasionally,” said Miss Barry.
That evening Miss Barry gave Diana a silver bangle bracelet and told the senior
members of the household that she had unpacked her valise.
“I’ve made up my mind to stay simply for the sake of getting better
acquainted with that Anne-girl,” she said frankly. “She amuses me,
and at my time of life an amusing person is a rarity.”
Marilla’s only comment when she heard the story was, “I told you
so.” This was for Matthew’s benefit.
Miss Barry stayed her month out and over. She was a more agreeable guest than
usual, for Anne kept her in good humor. They became firm friends.
When Miss Barry went away she said:
“Remember, you Anne-girl, when you come to town you’re to visit me
and I’ll put you in my very sparest spare-room bed to sleep.”
“Miss Barry was a kindred spirit, after all,” Anne confided to
Marilla. “You wouldn’t think so to look at her, but she is. You
don’t find it right out at first, as in Matthew’s case, but after a
while you come to see it. Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think.
It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”
CHAPTER XX.
A Good Imagination Gone Wrong
SPRING had come once
more to Green Gables—the beautiful capricious, reluctant Canadian spring,
lingering along through April and May in a succession of sweet, fresh, chilly
days, with pink sunsets and miracles of resurrection and growth. The maples in
Lover’s Lane were red budded and little curly ferns pushed up around the
Dryad’s Bubble. Away up in the barrens, behind Mr. Silas Sloane’s
place, the Mayflowers blossomed out, pink and white stars of sweetness under
their brown leaves. All the school girls and boys had one golden afternoon
gathering them, coming home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and
baskets full of flowery spoil.
“I’m so sorry for people who live in lands where there are no
Mayflowers,” said Anne. “Diana says perhaps they have something
better, but there couldn’t be anything better than Mayflowers, could
there, Marilla? And Diana says if they don’t know what they are like they
don’t miss them. But I think that is the saddest thing of all. I think it
would be , Marilla, not to know what Mayflowers are like and
to miss them. Do you know what I think Mayflowers are, Marilla? I
think they must be the souls of the flowers that died last summer and this is
their heaven. But we had a splendid time today, Marilla. We had our lunch down
in a big mossy hollow by an old well—such a spot. Charlie
Sloane dared Arty Gillis to jump over it, and Arty did because he
wouldn’t take a dare. Nobody would in school. It is very
to dare. Mr. Phillips gave all the Mayflowers he found to
Prissy Andrews and I heard him to say ‘sweets to the sweet.’ He got
that out of a book, I know; but it shows he has some imagination. I was offered
some Mayflowers too, but I rejected them with scorn. I can’t tell you the
person’s name because I have vowed never to let it cross my lips. We made
wreaths of the Mayflowers and put them on our hats; and when the time came to
go home we marched in procession down the road, two by two, with our bouquets
and wreaths, singing ‘My Home on the Hill.’ Oh, it was so
thrilling, Marilla. All Mr. Silas Sloane’s folks rushed out to see us and
everybody we met on the road stopped and stared after us. We made a real
sensation.”
“Not much wonder! Such silly doings!” was Marilla’s response.
After the Mayflowers came the violets, and Violet Vale was empurpled with them.
Anne walked through it on her way to school with reverent steps and worshiping
eyes, as if she trod on holy ground.
“Somehow,” she told Diana, “when I’m going through here
I don’t really care whether Gil—whether anybody gets ahead of me in
class or not. But when I’m up in school it’s all different and I
care as much as ever. There’s such a lot of different Annes in me. I
sometimes think that is why I’m such a troublesome person. If I was just
the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it
wouldn’t be half so interesting.”
One June evening, when the orchards were pink blossomed again, when the frogs
were singing silverly sweet in the marshes about the head of the Lake of
Shining Waters, and the air was full of the savor of clover fields and balsamic
fir woods, Anne was sitting by her gable window. She had been studying her
lessons, but it had grown too dark to see the book, so she had fallen into
wide-eyed reverie, looking out past the boughs of the Snow Queen, once more
bestarred with its tufts of blossom.
In all essential respects the little gable chamber was unchanged. The walls
were as white, the pincushion as hard, the chairs as stiffly and yellowly
upright as ever. Yet the whole character of the room was altered. It was full
of a new vital, pulsing personality that seemed to pervade it and to be quite
independent of schoolgirl books and dresses and ribbons, and even of the
cracked blue jug full of apple blossoms on the table. It was as if all the
dreams, sleeping and waking, of its vivid occupant had taken a visible although
unmaterial form and had tapestried the bare room with splendid filmy tissues of
rainbow and moonshine. Presently Marilla came briskly in with some of
Anne’s freshly ironed school aprons. She hung them over a chair and sat
down with a short sigh. She had had one of her headaches that afternoon, and
although the pain had gone she felt weak and “tuckered out,” as she
expressed it. Anne looked at her with eyes limpid with sympathy.
“I do truly wish I could have had the headache in your place, Marilla. I
would have endured it joyfully for your sake.”
“I guess you did your part in attending to the work and letting me
rest,” said Marilla. “You seem to have got on fairly well and made
fewer mistakes than usual. Of course it wasn’t exactly necessary to
starch Matthew’s handkerchiefs! And most people when they put a pie in
the oven to warm up for dinner take it out and eat it when it gets hot instead
of leaving it to be burned to a crisp. But that doesn’t seem to be your
way evidently.”
Headaches always left Marilla somewhat sarcastic.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Anne penitently. “I never
thought about that pie from the moment I put it in the oven till now, although
I felt that there was something missing on the dinner
table. I was firmly resolved, when you left me in charge this morning, not to
imagine anything, but keep my thoughts on facts. I did pretty well until I put
the pie in, and then an irresistible temptation came to me to imagine I was an
enchanted princess shut up in a lonely tower with a handsome knight riding to
my rescue on a coal-black steed. So that is how I came to forget the pie. I
didn’t know I starched the handkerchiefs. All the time I was ironing I
was trying to think of a name for a new island Diana and I have discovered up
the brook. It’s the most ravishing spot, Marilla. There are two maple
trees on it and the brook flows right around it. At last it struck me that it
would be splendid to call it Victoria Island because we found it on the
Queen’s birthday. Both Diana and I are very loyal. But I’m sorry
about that pie and the handkerchiefs. I wanted to be extra good today because
it’s an anniversary. Do you remember what happened this day last year,
Marilla?”
“No, I can’t think of anything special.”
“Oh, Marilla, it was the day I came to Green Gables. I shall never forget
it. It was the turning point in my life. Of course it wouldn’t seem so
important to you. I’ve been here for a year and I’ve been so happy.
Of course, I’ve had my troubles, but one can live down troubles. Are you
sorry you kept me, Marilla?”
“No, I can’t say I’m sorry,” said Marilla, who
sometimes wondered how she could have lived before Anne came to Green Gables,
“no, not exactly sorry. If you’ve finished your lessons, Anne, I
want you to run over and ask Mrs. Barry if she’ll lend me Diana’s
apron pattern.”
“Oh—it’s—it’s too dark,” cried Anne.
“Too dark? Why, it’s only twilight. And goodness knows you’ve
gone over often enough after dark.”
“I’ll go over early in the morning,” said Anne eagerly.
“I’ll get up at sunrise and go over, Marilla.”
“What has got into your head now, Anne Shirley? I want that pattern to
cut out your new apron this evening. Go at once and be smart too.”
“I’ll have to go around by the road, then,” said Anne, taking
up her hat reluctantly.
“Go by the road and waste half an hour! I’d like to catch
you!”
“I can’t go through the Haunted Wood, Marilla,” cried Anne
desperately.
Marilla stared.
“The Haunted Wood! Are you crazy? What under the canopy is the Haunted
Wood?”
“The spruce wood over the brook,” said Anne in a whisper.
“Fiddlesticks! There is no such thing as a haunted wood anywhere. Who has
been telling you such stuff?”
“Nobody,” confessed Anne. “Diana and I just imagined the wood
was haunted. All the places around here are
so—so—. We just got this up for our own
amusement. We began it in April. A haunted wood is so very romantic, Marilla.
We chose the spruce grove because it’s so gloomy. Oh, we have imagined
the most harrowing things. There’s a white lady walks along the brook
just about this time of the night and wrings her hands and utters wailing
cries. She appears when there is to be a death in the family. And the ghost of
a little murdered child haunts the corner up by Idlewild; it creeps up behind
you and lays its cold fingers on your hand—so. Oh, Marilla, it gives me a
shudder to think of it. And there’s a headless man stalks up and down the
path and skeletons glower at you between the boughs. Oh, Marilla, I
wouldn’t go through the Haunted Wood after dark now for anything.
I’d be sure that white things would reach out from behind the trees and
grab me.”
“Did ever anyone hear the like!” ejaculated Marilla, who had
listened in dumb amazement. “Anne Shirley, do you mean to tell me you
believe all that wicked nonsense of your own imagination?”
“Not believe ,” faltered Anne. “At least, I
don’t believe it in daylight. But after dark, Marilla, it’s
different. That is when ghosts walk.”
“There are no such things as ghosts, Anne.”
“Oh, but there are, Marilla,” cried Anne eagerly. “I know
people who have seen them. And they are respectable people. Charlie Sloane says
that his grandmother saw his grandfather driving home the cows one night after
he’d been buried for a year. You know Charlie Sloane’s grandmother
wouldn’t tell a story for anything. She’s a very religious woman.
And Mrs. Thomas’s father was pursued home one night by a lamb of fire
with its head cut off hanging by a strip of skin. He said he knew it was the
spirit of his brother and that it was a warning he would die within nine days.
He didn’t, but he died two years after, so you see it was really true.
And Ruby Gillis says—”
“Anne Shirley,” interrupted Marilla firmly, “I never want to
hear you talking in this fashion again. I’ve had my doubts about that
imagination of yours right along, and if this is going to be the outcome of it,
I won’t countenance any such doings. You’ll go right over to
Barry’s, and you’ll go through that spruce grove, just for a lesson
and a warning to you. And never let me hear a word out of your head about
haunted woods again.”
Anne might plead and cry as she liked—and did, for her terror was very
real. Her imagination had run away with her and she held the spruce grove in
mortal dread after nightfall. But Marilla was inexorable. She marched the
shrinking ghost-seer down to the spring and ordered her to proceed straightaway
over the bridge and into the dusky retreats of wailing ladies and headless
specters beyond.
“Oh, Marilla, how can you be so cruel?” sobbed Anne. “What
would you feel like if a white thing did snatch me up and carry me off?”
“I’ll risk it,” said Marilla unfeelingly. “You know I
always mean what I say. I’ll cure you of imagining ghosts into places.
March, now.”
Anne marched. That is, she stumbled over the bridge and went shuddering up the
horrible dim path beyond. Anne never forgot that walk. Bitterly did she repent
the license she had given to her imagination. The goblins of her fancy lurked
in every shadow about her, reaching out their cold, fleshless hands to grasp
the terrified small girl who had called them into being. A white strip of birch
bark blowing up from the hollow over the brown floor of the grove made her
heart stand still. The long-drawn wail of two old boughs rubbing against each
other brought out the perspiration in beads on her forehead. The swoop of bats
in the darkness over her was as the wings of unearthly creatures. When she
reached Mr. William Bell’s field she fled across it as if pursued by an
army of white things, and arrived at the Barry kitchen door so out of breath
that she could hardly gasp out her request for the apron pattern. Diana was
away so that she had no excuse to linger. The dreadful return journey had to be
faced. Anne went back over it with shut eyes, preferring to take the risk of
dashing her brains out among the boughs to that of seeing a white thing. When
she finally stumbled over the log bridge she drew one long shivering breath of
relief.
“Well, so nothing caught you?” said Marilla unsympathetically.
“Oh, Mar—Marilla,” chattered Anne, “I’ll b-b-be
contt-tented with c-c-commonplace places after this.”
CHAPTER XXI.
A New Departure in Flavorings
DEAR ME, there is
nothing but meetings and partings in this world, as Mrs. Lynde says,”
remarked Anne plaintively, putting her slate and books down on the kitchen
table on the last day of June and wiping her red eyes with a very damp
handkerchief. “Wasn’t it fortunate, Marilla, that I took an extra
handkerchief to school today? I had a presentiment that it would be
needed.”
“I never thought you were so fond of Mr. Phillips that you’d
require two handkerchiefs to dry your tears just because he was going
away,” said Marilla.
“I don’t think I was crying because I was really so very fond of
him,” reflected Anne. “I just cried because all the others did. It
was Ruby Gillis started it. Ruby Gillis has always declared she hated Mr.
Phillips, but just as soon as he got up to make his farewell speech she burst
into tears. Then all the girls began to cry, one after the other. I tried to
hold out, Marilla. I tried to remember the time Mr. Phillips made me sit with
Gil—with a boy; and the time he spelled my name without an
‘e’ on the blackboard; and how he said I was the worst dunce he
ever saw at geometry and laughed at my spelling; and all the times he had been
so horrid and sarcastic; but somehow I couldn’t, Marilla, and I just had
to cry too. Jane Andrews has been talking for a month about how glad
she’d be when Mr. Phillips went away and she declared she’d never
shed a tear. Well, she was worse than any of us and had to borrow a
handkerchief from her brother—of course the boys didn’t
cry—because she hadn’t brought one of her own, not expecting to
need it. Oh, Marilla, it was heartrending. Mr. Phillips made such a beautiful
farewell speech beginning, ‘The time has come for us to part.’ It
was very affecting. And he had tears in his eyes too, Marilla. Oh, I felt
dreadfully sorry and remorseful for all the times I’d talked in school
and drawn pictures of him on my slate and made fun of him and Prissy. I can
tell you I wished I’d been a model pupil like Minnie Andrews. She
hadn’t anything on her conscience. The girls cried all the way home from
school. Carrie Sloane kept saying every few minutes, ‘The time has come
for us to part,’ and that would start us off again whenever we were in
any danger of cheering up. I do feel dreadfully sad, Marilla. But one
can’t feel quite in the depths of despair with two months’ vacation
before them, can they, Marilla? And besides, we met the new minister and his
wife coming from the station. For all I was feeling so bad about Mr. Phillips
going away I couldn’t help taking a little interest in a new minister,
could I? His wife is very pretty. Not exactly regally lovely, of
course—it wouldn’t do, I suppose, for a minister to have a regally
lovely wife, because it might set a bad example. Mrs. Lynde says the
minister’s wife over at Newbridge sets a very bad example because she
dresses so fashionably. Our new minister’s wife was dressed in blue
muslin with lovely puffed sleeves and a hat trimmed with roses. Jane Andrews
said she thought puffed sleeves were too worldly for a minister’s wife,
but I didn’t make any such uncharitable remark, Marilla, because I know
what it is to long for puffed sleeves. Besides, she’s only been a
minister’s wife for a little while, so one should make allowances,
shouldn’t they? They are going to board with Mrs. Lynde until the manse
is ready.”
If Marilla, in going down to Mrs. Lynde’s that evening, was actuated by
any motive save her avowed one of returning the quilting frames she had
borrowed the preceding winter, it was an amiable weakness shared by most of the
Avonlea people. Many a thing Mrs. Lynde had lent, sometimes never expecting to
see it again, came home that night in charge of the borrowers thereof. A new
minister, and moreover a minister with a wife, was a lawful object of curiosity
in a quiet little country settlement where sensations were few and far between.
Old Mr. Bentley, the minister whom Anne had found lacking in imagination, had
been pastor of Avonlea for eighteen years. He was a widower when he came, and a
widower he remained, despite the fact that gossip regularly married him to
this, that, or the other one, every year of his sojourn. In the preceding
February he had resigned his charge and departed amid the regrets of his
people, most of whom had the affection born of long intercourse for their good
old minister in spite of his shortcomings as an orator. Since then the Avonlea
church had enjoyed a variety of religious dissipation in listening to the many
and various candidates and “supplies” who came Sunday after Sunday
to preach on trial. These stood or fell by the judgment of the fathers and
mothers in Israel; but a certain small, red-haired girl who sat meekly in the
corner of the old Cuthbert pew also had her opinions about them and discussed
the same in full with Matthew, Marilla always declining from principle to
criticize ministers in any shape or form.
“I don’t think Mr. Smith would have done, Matthew” was
Anne’s final summing up. “Mrs. Lynde says his delivery was so poor,
but I think his worst fault was just like Mr. Bentley’s—he had no
imagination. And Mr. Terry had too much; he let it run away with him just as I
did mine in the matter of the Haunted Wood. Besides, Mrs. Lynde says his
theology wasn’t sound. Mr. Gresham was a very good man and a very
religious man, but he told too many funny stories and made the people laugh in
church; he was undignified, and you must have some dignity about a minister,
mustn’t you, Matthew? I thought Mr. Marshall was decidedly attractive;
but Mrs. Lynde says he isn’t married, or even engaged, because she made
special inquiries about him, and she says it would never do to have a young
unmarried minister in Avonlea, because he might marry in the congregation and
that would make trouble. Mrs. Lynde is a very farseeing woman, isn’t she,
Matthew? I’m very glad they’ve called Mr. Allan. I liked him
because his sermon was interesting and he prayed as if he meant it and not just
as if he did it because he was in the habit of it. Mrs. Lynde says he
isn’t perfect, but she says she supposes we couldn’t expect a
perfect minister for seven hundred and fifty dollars a year, and anyhow his
theology is sound because she questioned him thoroughly on all the points of
doctrine. And she knows his wife’s people and they are most respectable
and the women are all good housekeepers. Mrs. Lynde says that sound doctrine in
the man and good housekeeping in the woman make an ideal combination for a
minister’s family.”
The new minister and his wife were a young, pleasant-faced couple, still on
their honeymoon, and full of all good and beautiful enthusiasms for their
chosen lifework. Avonlea opened its heart to them from the start. Old and young
liked the frank, cheerful young man with his high ideals, and the bright,
gentle little lady who assumed the mistress-ship of the manse. With Mrs. Allan
Anne fell promptly and wholeheartedly in love. She had discovered another
kindred spirit.
“Mrs. Allan is perfectly lovely,” she announced one Sunday
afternoon. “She’s taken our class and she’s a splendid
teacher. She said right away she didn’t think it was fair for the teacher
to ask all the questions, and you know, Marilla, that is exactly what
I’ve always thought. She said we could ask her any question we liked and
I asked ever so many. I’m good at asking questions, Marilla.”
“I believe you,” was Marilla’s emphatic comment.
“Nobody else asked any except Ruby Gillis, and she asked if there was to
be a Sunday-school picnic this summer. I didn’t think that was a very
proper question to ask because it hadn’t any connection with the
lesson—the lesson was about Daniel in the lions’ den—but Mrs.
Allan just smiled and said she thought there would be. Mrs. Allan has a lovely
smile; she has such dimples in her cheeks. I wish I had
dimples in my cheeks, Marilla. I’m not half so skinny as I was when I
came here, but I have no dimples yet. If I had perhaps I could influence people
for good. Mrs. Allan said we ought always to try to influence other people for
good. She talked so nice about everything. I never knew before that religion
was such a cheerful thing. I always thought it was kind of melancholy, but Mrs.
Allan’s isn’t, and I’d like to be a Christian if I could be
one like her. I wouldn’t want to be one like Mr. Superintendent
Bell.”
“It’s very naughty of you to speak so about Mr. Bell,” said
Marilla severely. “Mr. Bell is a real good man.”
“Oh, of course he’s good,” agreed Anne, “but he
doesn’t seem to get any comfort out of it. If I could be good I’d
dance and sing all day because I was glad of it. I suppose Mrs. Allan is too
old to dance and sing and of course it wouldn’t be dignified in a
minister’s wife. But I can just feel she’s glad she’s a
Christian and that she’d be one even if she could get to heaven without
it.”
“I suppose we must have Mr. and Mrs. Allan up to tea someday soon,”
said Marilla reflectively. “They’ve been most everywhere but here.
Let me see. Next Wednesday would be a good time to have them. But don’t
say a word to Matthew about it, for if he knew they were coming he’d find
some excuse to be away that day. He’d got so used to Mr. Bentley he
didn’t mind him, but he’s going to find it hard to get acquainted
with a new minister, and a new minister’s wife will frighten him to
death.”
“I’ll be as secret as the dead,” assured Anne. “But oh,
Marilla, will you let me make a cake for the occasion? I’d love to do
something for Mrs. Allan, and you know I can make a pretty good cake by this
time.”
“You can make a layer cake,” promised Marilla.
Monday and Tuesday great preparations went on at Green Gables. Having the
minister and his wife to tea was a serious and important undertaking, and
Marilla was determined not to be eclipsed by any of the Avonlea housekeepers.
Anne was wild with excitement and delight. She talked it all over with Diana
Tuesday night in the twilight, as they sat on the big red stones by the
Dryad’s Bubble and made rainbows in the water with little twigs dipped in
fir balsam.
“Everything is ready, Diana, except my cake which I’m to make in
the morning, and the baking-powder biscuits which Marilla will make just before
teatime. I assure you, Diana, that Marilla and I have had a busy two days of
it. It’s such a responsibility having a minister’s family to tea. I
never went through such an experience before. You should just see our pantry.
It’s a sight to behold. We’re going to have jellied chicken and
cold tongue. We’re to have two kinds of jelly, red and yellow, and
whipped cream and lemon pie, and cherry pie, and three kinds of cookies, and
fruit cake, and Marilla’s famous yellow plum preserves that she keeps
especially for ministers, and pound cake and layer cake, and biscuits as
aforesaid; and new bread and old both, in case the minister is dyspeptic and
can’t eat new. Mrs. Lynde says ministers are dyspeptic, but I don’t
think Mr. Allan has been a minister long enough for it to have had a bad effect
on him. I just grow cold when I think of my layer cake. Oh, Diana, what if it
shouldn’t be good! I dreamed last night that I was chased all around by a
fearful goblin with a big layer cake for a head.”
“It’ll be good, all right,” assured Diana, who was a very
comfortable sort of friend. “I’m sure that piece of the one you
made that we had for lunch in Idlewild two weeks ago was perfectly
elegant.”
“Yes; but cakes have such a terrible habit of turning out bad just when
you especially want them to be good,” sighed Anne, setting a particularly
well-balsamed twig afloat. “However, I suppose I shall just have to trust
to Providence and be careful to put in the flour. Oh, look, Diana, what a
lovely rainbow! Do you suppose the dryad will come out after we go away and
take it for a scarf?”
“You know there is no such thing as a dryad,” said Diana.
Diana’s mother had found out about the Haunted Wood and had been
decidedly angry over it. As a result Diana had abstained from any further
imitative flights of imagination and did not think it prudent to cultivate a
spirit of belief even in harmless dryads.
“But it’s so easy to imagine there is,” said Anne.
“Every night before I go to bed, I look out of my window and wonder if
the dryad is really sitting here, combing her locks with the spring for a
mirror. Sometimes I look for her footprints in the dew in the morning. Oh,
Diana, don’t give up your faith in the dryad!”
Wednesday morning came. Anne got up at sunrise because she was too excited to
sleep. She had caught a severe cold in the head by reason of her dabbling in
the spring on the preceding evening; but nothing short of absolute pneumonia
could have quenched her interest in culinary matters that morning. After
breakfast she proceeded to make her cake. When she finally shut the oven door
upon it she drew a long breath.
“I’m sure I haven’t forgotten anything this time, Marilla.
But do you think it will rise? Just suppose perhaps the baking powder
isn’t good? I used it out of the new can. And Mrs. Lynde says you can
never be sure of getting good baking powder nowadays when everything is so
adulterated. Mrs. Lynde says the Government ought to take the matter up, but
she says we’ll never see the day when a Tory Government will do it.
Marilla, what if that cake doesn’t rise?”
“We’ll have plenty without it” was Marilla’s
unimpassioned way of looking at the subject.
The cake did rise, however, and came out of the oven as light and feathery as
golden foam. Anne, flushed with delight, clapped it together with layers of
ruby jelly and, in imagination, saw Mrs. Allan eating it and possibly asking
for another piece!
“You’ll be using the best tea set, of course, Marilla,” she
said. “Can I fix the table with ferns and wild roses?”
“I think that’s all nonsense,” sniffed Marilla. “In my
opinion it’s the eatables that matter and not flummery
decorations.”
“Mrs. Barry had table decorated,” said Anne, who was not
entirely guiltless of the wisdom of the serpent, “and the minister paid
her an elegant compliment. He said it was a feast for the eye as well as the
palate.”
“Well, do as you like,” said Marilla, who was quite determined not
to be surpassed by Mrs. Barry or anybody else. “Only mind you leave
enough room for the dishes and the food.”
Anne laid herself out to decorate in a manner and after a fashion that should
leave Mrs. Barry’s nowhere. Having abundance of roses and ferns and a
very artistic taste of her own, she made that tea table such a thing of beauty
that when the minister and his wife sat down to it they exclaimed in chorus
over it loveliness.
“It’s Anne’s doings,” said Marilla, grimly just; and
Anne felt that Mrs. Allan’s approving smile was almost too much happiness
for this world.
Matthew was there, having been inveigled into the party only goodness and Anne
knew how. He had been in such a state of shyness and nervousness that Marilla
had given him up in despair, but Anne took him in hand so successfully that he
now sat at the table in his best clothes and white collar and talked to the
minister not uninterestingly. He never said a word to Mrs. Allan, but that
perhaps was not to be expected.
All went merry as a marriage bell until Anne’s layer cake was passed.
Mrs. Allan, having already been helped to a bewildering variety, declined it.
But Marilla, seeing the disappointment on Anne’s face, said smilingly:
“Oh, you must take a piece of this, Mrs. Allan. Anne made it on purpose
for you.”
“In that case I must sample it,” laughed Mrs. Allan, helping
herself to a plump triangle, as did also the minister and Marilla.
Mrs. Allan took a mouthful of hers and a most peculiar expression crossed her
face; not a word did she say, however, but steadily ate away at it. Marilla saw
the expression and hastened to taste the cake.
“Anne Shirley!” she exclaimed, “what on earth did you put
into that cake?”
“Nothing but what the recipe said, Marilla,” cried Anne with a look
of anguish. “Oh, isn’t it all right?”
“All right! It’s simply horrible. Mr. Allan, don’t try to eat
it. Anne, taste it yourself. What flavoring did you use?”
“Vanilla,” said Anne, her face scarlet with mortification after
tasting the cake. “Only vanilla. Oh, Marilla, it must have been the
baking powder. I had my suspicions of that bak—”
“Baking powder fiddlesticks! Go and bring me the bottle of vanilla you
used.”
Anne fled to the pantry and returned with a small bottle partially filled with
a brown liquid and labeled yellowly, “Best Vanilla.”
Marilla took it, uncorked it, smelled it.
“Mercy on us, Anne, you’ve flavored that cake with . I broke the liniment bottle last week and poured what was left
into an old empty vanilla bottle. I suppose it’s partly my fault—I
should have warned you—but for pity’s sake why couldn’t you
have smelled it?”
Anne dissolved into tears under this double disgrace.
“I couldn’t—I had such a cold!” and with this she
fairly fled to the gable chamber, where she cast herself on the bed and wept as
one who refuses to be comforted.
Presently a light step sounded on the stairs and somebody entered the room.
“Oh, Marilla,” sobbed Anne, without looking up, “I’m
disgraced forever. I shall never be able to live this down. It will get
out—things always do get out in Avonlea. Diana will ask me how my cake
turned out and I shall have to tell her the truth. I shall always be pointed at
as the girl who flavored a cake with anodyne liniment. Gil—the boys in
school will never get over laughing at it. Oh, Marilla, if you have a spark of
Christian pity don’t tell me that I must go down and wash the dishes
after this. I’ll wash them when the minister and his wife are gone, but I
cannot ever look Mrs. Allan in the face again. Perhaps she’ll think I
tried to poison her. Mrs. Lynde says she knows an orphan girl who tried to
poison her benefactor. But the liniment isn’t poisonous. It’s meant
to be taken internally—although not in cakes. Won’t you tell Mrs.
Allan so, Marilla?”
“Suppose you jump up and tell her so yourself,” said a merry voice.
Anne flew up, to find Mrs. Allan standing by her bed, surveying her with
laughing eyes.
“My dear little girl, you mustn’t cry like this,” she said,
genuinely disturbed by Anne’s tragic face. “Why, it’s all
just a funny mistake that anybody might make.”
“Oh, no, it takes me to make such a mistake,” said Anne forlornly.
“And I wanted to have that cake so nice for you, Mrs. Allan.”
“Yes, I know, dear. And I assure you I appreciate your kindness and
thoughtfulness just as much as if it had turned out all right. Now, you
mustn’t cry any more, but come down with me and show me your flower
garden. Miss Cuthbert tells me you have a little plot all your own. I want to
see it, for I’m very much interested in flowers.”
Anne permitted herself to be led down and comforted, reflecting that it was
really providential that Mrs. Allan was a kindred spirit. Nothing more was said
about the liniment cake, and when the guests went away Anne found that she had
enjoyed the evening more than could have been expected, considering that
terrible incident. Nevertheless, she sighed deeply.
“Marilla, isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no
mistakes in it yet?”
“I’ll warrant you’ll make plenty in it,” said Marilla.
“I never saw your beat for making mistakes, Anne.”
“Yes, and well I know it,” admitted Anne mournfully. “But
have you ever noticed one encouraging thing about me, Marilla? I never make the
same mistake twice.”
“I don’t know as that’s much benefit when you’re always
making new ones.”
“Oh, don’t you see, Marilla? There must be a limit to the mistakes
one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I’ll be
through with them. That’s a very comforting thought.”
“Well, you’d better go and give that cake to the pigs,” said
Marilla. “It isn’t fit for any human to eat, not even Jerry
Boute.”
CHAPTER XXII.
Anne is Invited Out to Tea
AND what are your eyes
popping out of your head about. Now?” asked Marilla, when Anne had just
come in from a run to the post office. “Have you discovered another
kindred spirit?” Excitement hung around Anne like a garment, shone in her
eyes, kindled in every feature. She had come dancing up the lane, like a
wind-blown sprite, through the mellow sunshine and lazy shadows of the August
evening.
“No, Marilla, but oh, what do you think? I am invited to tea at the manse
tomorrow afternoon! Mrs. Allan left the letter for me at the post office. Just
look at it, Marilla. ‘Miss Anne Shirley, Green Gables.’ That is the
first time I was ever called ‘Miss.’ Such a thrill as it gave me! I
shall cherish it forever among my choicest treasures.”
“Mrs. Allan told me she meant to have all the members of her
Sunday-school class to tea in turn,” said Marilla, regarding the
wonderful event very coolly. “You needn’t get in such a fever over
it. Do learn to take things calmly, child.”
For Anne to take things calmly would have been to change her nature. All
“spirit and fire and dew,” as she was, the pleasures and pains of
life came to her with trebled intensity. Marilla felt this and was vaguely
troubled over it, realizing that the ups and downs of existence would probably
bear hardly on this impulsive soul and not sufficiently understanding that the
equally great capacity for delight might more than compensate. Therefore
Marilla conceived it to be her duty to drill Anne into a tranquil uniformity of
disposition as impossible and alien to her as to a dancing sunbeam in one of
the brook shallows. She did not make much headway, as she sorrowfully admitted
to herself. The downfall of some dear hope or plan plunged Anne into
“deeps of affliction.” The fulfillment thereof exalted her to dizzy
realms of delight. Marilla had almost begun to despair of ever fashioning this
waif of the world into her model little girl of demure manners and prim
deportment. Neither would she have believed that she really liked Anne much
better as she was.
Anne went to bed that night speechless with misery because Matthew had said the
wind was round northeast and he feared it would be a rainy day tomorrow. The
rustle of the poplar leaves about the house worried her, it sounded so like
pattering raindrops, and the full, faraway roar of the gulf, to which she
listened delightedly at other times, loving its strange, sonorous, haunting
rhythm, now seemed like a prophecy of storm and disaster to a small maiden who
particularly wanted a fine day. Anne thought that the morning would never come.
But all things have an end, even nights before the day on which you are invited
to take tea at the manse. The morning, in spite of Matthew’s predictions,
was fine and Anne’s spirits soared to their highest. “Oh, Marilla,
there is something in me today that makes me just love everybody I see,”
she exclaimed as she washed the breakfast dishes. “You don’t know
how good I feel! Wouldn’t it be nice if it could last? I believe I could
be a model child if I were just invited out to tea every day. But oh, Marilla,
it’s a solemn occasion too. I feel so anxious. What if I shouldn’t
behave properly? You know I never had tea at a manse before, and I’m not
sure that I know all the rules of etiquette, although I’ve been studying
the rules given in the Etiquette Department of the Family Herald ever since I
came here. I’m so afraid I’ll do something silly or forget to do
something I should do. Would it be good manners to take a second helping of
anything if you wanted to much?”
“The trouble with you, Anne, is that you’re thinking too much about
yourself. You should just think of Mrs. Allan and what would be nicest and most
agreeable to her,” said Marilla, hitting for once in her life on a very
sound and pithy piece of advice. Anne instantly realized this.
“You are right, Marilla. I’ll try not to think about myself at
all.”
Anne evidently got through her visit without any serious breach of
“etiquette,” for she came home through the twilight, under a great,
high-sprung sky gloried over with trails of saffron and rosy cloud, in a
beatified state of mind and told Marilla all about it happily, sitting on the
big red-sandstone slab at the kitchen door with her tired curly head in
Marilla’s gingham lap.
A cool wind was blowing down over the long harvest fields from the rims of
firry western hills and whistling through the poplars. One clear star hung over
the orchard and the fireflies were flitting over in Lover’s Lane, in and
out among the ferns and rustling boughs. Anne watched them as she talked and
somehow felt that wind and stars and fireflies were all tangled up together
into something unutterably sweet and enchanting.
“Oh, Marilla, I’ve had a most time. I feel that
I have not lived in vain and I shall always feel like that even if I should
never be invited to tea at a manse again. When I got there Mrs. Allan met me at
the door. She was dressed in the sweetest dress of pale-pink organdy, with
dozens of frills and elbow sleeves, and she looked just like a seraph. I really
think I’d like to be a minister’s wife when I grow up, Marilla. A
minister mightn’t mind my red hair because he wouldn’t be thinking
of such worldly things. But then of course one would have to be naturally good
and I’ll never be that, so I suppose there’s no use in thinking
about it. Some people are naturally good, you know, and others are not.
I’m one of the others. Mrs. Lynde says I’m full of original sin. No
matter how hard I try to be good I can never make such a success of it as those
who are naturally good. It’s a good deal like geometry, I expect. But
don’t you think the trying so hard ought to count for something? Mrs.
Allan is one of the naturally good people. I love her passionately. You know
there are some people, like Matthew and Mrs. Allan that you can love right off
without any trouble. And there are others, like Mrs. Lynde, that you have to
try very hard to love. You know you to love them because they know
so much and are such active workers in the church, but you have to keep
reminding yourself of it all the time or else you forget. There was another
little girl at the manse to tea, from the White Sands Sunday school. Her name
was Laurette Bradley, and she was a very nice little girl. Not exactly a
kindred spirit, you know, but still very nice. We had an elegant tea, and I
think I kept all the rules of etiquette pretty well. After tea Mrs. Allan
played and sang and she got Lauretta and me to sing too. Mrs. Allan says I have
a good voice and she says I must sing in the Sunday-school choir after this.
You can’t think how I was thrilled at the mere thought. I’ve longed
so to sing in the Sunday-school choir, as Diana does, but I feared it was an
honor I could never aspire to. Lauretta had to go home early because there is a
big concert in the White Sands Hotel tonight and her sister is to recite at it.
Lauretta says that the Americans at the hotel give a concert every fortnight in
aid of the Charlottetown hospital, and they ask lots of the White Sands people
to recite. Lauretta said she expected to be asked herself someday. I just gazed
at her in awe. After she had gone Mrs. Allan and I had a heart-to-heart talk. I
told her everything—about Mrs. Thomas and the twins and Katie Maurice and
Violetta and coming to Green Gables and my troubles over geometry. And would
you believe it, Marilla? Mrs. Allan told me she was a dunce at geometry too.
You don’t know how that encouraged me. Mrs. Lynde came to the manse just
before I left, and what do you think, Marilla? The trustees have hired a new
teacher and it’s a lady. Her name is Miss Muriel Stacy. Isn’t that
a romantic name? Mrs. Lynde says they’ve never had a female teacher in
Avonlea before and she thinks it is a dangerous innovation. But I think it will
be splendid to have a lady teacher, and I really don’t see how I’m
going to live through the two weeks before school begins. I’m so
impatient to see her.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honor
ANNE had to live through
more than two weeks, as it happened. Almost a month having elapsed since the
liniment cake episode, it was high time for her to get into fresh trouble of
some sort, little mistakes, such as absentmindedly emptying a pan of skim milk
into a basket of yarn balls in the pantry instead of into the pigs’
bucket, and walking clean over the edge of the log bridge into the brook while
wrapped in imaginative reverie, not really being worth counting.
A week after the tea at the manse Diana Barry gave a party.
“Small and select,” Anne assured Marilla. “Just the girls in
our class.”
They had a very good time and nothing untoward happened until after tea, when
they found themselves in the Barry garden, a little tired of all their games
and ripe for any enticing form of mischief which might present itself. This
presently took the form of “daring.”
Daring was the fashionable amusement among the Avonlea small fry just then. It
had begun among the boys, but soon spread to the girls, and all the silly
things that were done in Avonlea that summer because the doers thereof were
“dared” to do them would fill a book by themselves.
First of all Carrie Sloane dared Ruby Gillis to climb to a certain point in the
huge old willow tree before the front door; which Ruby Gillis, albeit in mortal
dread of the fat green caterpillars with which said tree was infested and with
the fear of her mother before her eyes if she should tear her new muslin dress,
nimbly did, to the discomfiture of the aforesaid Carrie Sloane. Then Josie Pye
dared Jane Andrews to hop on her left leg around the garden without stopping
once or putting her right foot to the ground; which Jane Andrews gamely tried
to do, but gave out at the third corner and had to confess herself defeated.
Josie’s triumph being rather more pronounced than good taste permitted,
Anne Shirley dared her to walk along the top of the board fence which bounded
the garden to the east. Now, to “walk” board fences requires more
skill and steadiness of head and heel than one might suppose who has never
tried it. But Josie Pye, if deficient in some qualities that make for
popularity, had at least a natural and inborn gift, duly cultivated, for
walking board fences. Josie walked the Barry fence with an airy unconcern which
seemed to imply that a little thing like that wasn’t worth a
“dare.” Reluctant admiration greeted her exploit, for most of the
other girls could appreciate it, having suffered many things themselves in
their efforts to walk fences. Josie descended from her perch, flushed with
victory, and darted a defiant glance at Anne.
Anne tossed her red braids.
“I don’t think it’s such a very wonderful thing to walk a
little, low, board fence,” she said. “I knew a girl in Marysville
who could walk the ridgepole of a roof.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Josie flatly. “I don’t
believe anybody could walk a ridgepole. couldn’t,
anyhow.”
“Couldn’t I?” cried Anne rashly.
“Then I dare you to do it,” said Josie defiantly. “I dare you
to climb up there and walk the ridgepole of Mr. Barry’s kitchen
roof.”
Anne turned pale, but there was clearly only one thing to be done. She walked
toward the house, where a ladder was leaning against the kitchen roof. All the
fifth-class girls said, “Oh!” partly in excitement, partly in
dismay.
“Don’t you do it, Anne,” entreated Diana. “You’ll
fall off and be killed. Never mind Josie Pye. It isn’t fair to dare
anybody to do anything so dangerous.”
“I must do it. My honor is at stake,” said Anne solemnly. “I
shall walk that ridgepole, Diana, or perish in the attempt. If I am killed you
are to have my pearl bead ring.”
Anne climbed the ladder amid breathless silence, gained the ridgepole, balanced
herself uprightly on that precarious footing, and started to walk along it,
dizzily conscious that she was uncomfortably high up in the world and that
walking ridgepoles was not a thing in which your imagination helped you out
much. Nevertheless, she managed to take several steps before the catastrophe
came. Then she swayed, lost her balance, stumbled, staggered, and fell, sliding
down over the sun-baked roof and crashing off it through the tangle of Virginia
creeper beneath—all before the dismayed circle below could give a
simultaneous, terrified shriek.
If Anne had tumbled off the roof on the side up which she had ascended Diana
would probably have fallen heir to the pearl bead ring then and there.
Fortunately she fell on the other side, where the roof extended down over the
porch so nearly to the ground that a fall therefrom was a much less serious
thing. Nevertheless, when Diana and the other girls had rushed frantically
around the house—except Ruby Gillis, who remained as if rooted to the
ground and went into hysterics—they found Anne lying all white and limp
among the wreck and ruin of the Virginia creeper.
“Anne, are you killed?” shrieked Diana, throwing herself on her
knees beside her friend. “Oh, Anne, dear Anne, speak just one word to me
and tell me if you’re killed.”
To the immense relief of all the girls, and especially of Josie Pye, who, in
spite of lack of imagination, had been seized with horrible visions of a future
branded as the girl who was the cause of Anne Shirley’s early and tragic
death, Anne sat dizzily up and answered uncertainly:
“No, Diana, I am not killed, but I think I am rendered
unconscious.”
“Where?” sobbed Carrie Sloane. “Oh, where, Anne?”
Before Anne could answer Mrs. Barry appeared on the scene. At sight of her Anne
tried to scramble to her feet, but sank back again with a sharp little cry of
pain.
“What’s the matter? Where have you hurt yourself?” demanded
Mrs. Barry.
“My ankle,” gasped Anne. “Oh, Diana, please find your father
and ask him to take me home. I know I can never walk there. And I’m sure
I couldn’t hop so far on one foot when Jane couldn’t even hop
around the garden.”
Marilla was out in the orchard picking a panful of summer apples when she saw
Mr. Barry coming over the log bridge and up the slope, with Mrs. Barry beside
him and a whole procession of little girls trailing after him. In his arms he
carried Anne, whose head lay limply against his shoulder.
At that moment Marilla had a revelation. In the sudden stab of fear that
pierced her very heart she realized what Anne had come to mean to her. She
would have admitted that she liked Anne—nay, that she was very fond of
Anne. But now she knew as she hurried wildly down the slope that Anne was
dearer to her than anything else on earth.
“Mr. Barry, what has happened to her?” she gasped, more white and
shaken than the self-contained, sensible Marilla had been for many years.
Anne herself answered, lifting her head.
“Don’t be very frightened, Marilla. I was walking the ridgepole and
I fell off. I expect I have sprained my ankle. But, Marilla, I might have
broken my neck. Let us look on the bright side of things.”
“I might have known you’d go and do something of the sort when I
let you go to that party,” said Marilla, sharp and shrewish in her very
relief. “Bring her in here, Mr. Barry, and lay her on the sofa. Mercy me,
the child has gone and fainted!”
It was quite true. Overcome by the pain of her injury, Anne had one more of her
wishes granted to her. She had fainted dead away.
Matthew, hastily summoned from the harvest field, was straightway dispatched
for the doctor, who in due time came, to discover that the injury was more
serious than they had supposed. Anne’s ankle was broken.
That night, when Marilla went up to the east gable, where a white-faced girl
was lying, a plaintive voice greeted her from the bed.
“Aren’t you very sorry for me, Marilla?”
“It was your own fault,” said Marilla, twitching down the blind and
lighting a lamp.
“And that is just why you should be sorry for me,” said Anne,
“because the thought that it is all my own fault is what makes it so
hard. If I could blame it on anybody I would feel so much better. But what
would you have done, Marilla, if you had been dared to walk a ridgepole?”
“I’d have stayed on good firm ground and let them dare away. Such
absurdity!” said Marilla.
Anne sighed.
“But you have such strength of mind, Marilla. I haven’t. I just
felt that I couldn’t bear Josie Pye’s scorn. She would have crowed
over me all my life. And I think I have been punished so much that you
needn’t be very cross with me, Marilla. It’s not a bit nice to
faint, after all. And the doctor hurt me dreadfully when he was setting my
ankle. I won’t be able to go around for six or seven weeks and I’ll
miss the new lady teacher. She won’t be new any more by the time
I’m able to go to school. And Gil—everybody will get ahead of me in
class. Oh, I am an afflicted mortal. But I’ll try to bear it all bravely
if only you won’t be cross with me, Marilla.”
“There, there, I’m not cross,” said Marilla.
“You’re an unlucky child, there’s no doubt about that; but as
you say, you’ll have the suffering of it. Here now, try and eat some
supper.”
“Isn’t it fortunate I’ve got such an imagination?” said
Anne. “It will help me through splendidly, I expect. What do people who
haven’t any imagination do when they break their bones, do you suppose,
Marilla?”
Anne had good reason to bless her imagination many a time and oft during the
tedious seven weeks that followed. But she was not solely dependent on it. She
had many visitors and not a day passed without one or more of the schoolgirls
dropping in to bring her flowers and books and tell her all the happenings in
the juvenile world of Avonlea.
“Everybody has been so good and kind, Marilla,” sighed Anne
happily, on the day when she could first limp across the floor. “It
isn’t very pleasant to be laid up; but there is a bright side to it,
Marilla. You find out how many friends you have. Why, even Superintendent Bell
came to see me, and he’s really a very fine man. Not a kindred spirit, of
course; but still I like him and I’m awfully sorry I ever criticized his
prayers. I believe now he really does mean them, only he has got into the habit
of saying them as if he didn’t. He could get over that if he’d take
a little trouble. I gave him a good broad hint. I told him how hard I tried to
make my own little private prayers interesting. He told me all about the time
he broke his ankle when he was a boy. It does seem so strange to think of
Superintendent Bell ever being a boy. Even my imagination has its limits, for I
can’t imagine . When I try to imagine him as a boy I see him
with gray whiskers and spectacles, just as he looks in Sunday school, only
small. Now, it’s so easy to imagine Mrs. Allan as a little girl. Mrs.
Allan has been to see me fourteen times. Isn’t that something to be proud
of, Marilla? When a minister’s wife has so many claims on her time! She
is such a cheerful person to have visit you, too. She never tells you
it’s your own fault and she hopes you’ll be a better girl on
account of it. Mrs. Lynde always told me that when she came to see me; and she
said it in a kind of way that made me feel she might hope I’d be a better
girl but didn’t really believe I would. Even Josie Pye came to see me. I
received her as politely as I could, because I think she was sorry she dared me
to walk a ridgepole. If I had been killed she would had to carry a dark burden
of remorse all her life. Diana has been a faithful friend. She’s been
over every day to cheer my lonely pillow. But oh, I shall be so glad when I can
go to school for I’ve heard such exciting things about the new teacher.
The girls all think she is perfectly sweet. Diana says she has the loveliest
fair curly hair and such fascinating eyes. She dresses beautifully, and her
sleeve puffs are bigger than anybody else’s in Avonlea. Every other
Friday afternoon she has recitations and everybody has to say a piece or take
part in a dialogue. Oh, it’s just glorious to think of it. Josie Pye says
she hates it but that is just because Josie has so little imagination. Diana
and Ruby Gillis and Jane Andrews are preparing a dialogue, called ‘A
Morning Visit,’ for next Friday. And the Friday afternoons they
don’t have recitations Miss Stacy takes them all to the woods for a
‘field’ day and they study ferns and flowers and birds. And they
have physical culture exercises every morning and evening. Mrs. Lynde says she
never heard of such goings on and it all comes of having a lady teacher. But I
think it must be splendid and I believe I shall find that Miss Stacy is a
kindred spirit.”
“There’s one thing plain to be seen, Anne,” said Marilla,
“and that is that your fall off the Barry roof hasn’t injured your
tongue at all.”
CHAPTER XXIV.
Miss Stacy and Her Pupils Get Up a Concert
IT was October again
when Anne was ready to go back to school—a glorious October, all red and
gold, with mellow mornings when the valleys were filled with delicate mists as
if the spirit of autumn had poured them in for the sun to drain—amethyst,
pearl, silver, rose, and smoke-blue. The dews were so heavy that the fields
glistened like cloth of silver and there were such heaps of rustling leaves in
the hollows of many-stemmed woods to run crisply through. The Birch Path was a
canopy of yellow and the ferns were sear and brown all along it. There was a
tang in the very air that inspired the hearts of small maidens tripping, unlike
snails, swiftly and willingly to school; and it jolly to be back
again at the little brown desk beside Diana, with Ruby Gillis nodding across
the aisle and Carrie Sloane sending up notes and Julia Bell passing a
“chew” of gum down from the back seat. Anne drew a long breath of
happiness as she sharpened her pencil and arranged her picture cards in her
desk. Life was certainly very interesting.
In the new teacher she found another true and helpful friend. Miss Stacy was a
bright, sympathetic young woman with the happy gift of winning and holding the
affections of her pupils and bringing out the best that was in them mentally
and morally. Anne expanded like a flower under this wholesome influence and
carried home to the admiring Matthew and the critical Marilla glowing accounts
of schoolwork and aims.
“I love Miss Stacy with my whole heart, Marilla. She is so ladylike and
she has such a sweet voice. When she pronounces my name I feel
that she’s spelling it with an E. We had recitations
this afternoon. I just wish you could have been there to hear me recite
‘Mary, Queen of Scots.’ I just put my whole soul into it. Ruby
Gillis told me coming home that the way I said the line, ‘Now for my
father’s arm,’ she said, ‘my woman’s heart
farewell,’ just made her blood run cold.”
“Well now, you might recite it for me some of these days, out in the
barn,” suggested Matthew.
“Of course I will,” said Anne meditatively, “but I
won’t be able to do it so well, I know. It won’t be so exciting as
it is when you have a whole schoolful before you hanging breathlessly on your
words. I know I won’t be able to make your blood run cold.”
“Mrs. Lynde says it made blood run cold to see the boys
climbing to the very tops of those big trees on Bell’s hill after
crows’ nests last Friday,” said Marilla. “I wonder at Miss
Stacy for encouraging it.”
“But we wanted a crow’s nest for nature study,” explained
Anne. “That was on our field afternoon. Field afternoons are splendid,
Marilla. And Miss Stacy explains everything so beautifully. We have to write
compositions on our field afternoons and I write the best ones.”
“It’s very vain of you to say so then. You’d better let your
teacher say it.”
“But she say it, Marilla. And indeed I’m not vain about
it. How can I be, when I’m such a dunce at geometry? Although I’m
really beginning to see through it a little, too. Miss Stacy makes it so clear.
Still, I’ll never be good at it and I assure you it is a humbling
reflection. But I love writing compositions. Mostly Miss Stacy lets us choose
our own subjects; but next week we are to write a composition on some
remarkable person. It’s hard to choose among so many remarkable people
who have lived. Mustn’t it be splendid to be remarkable and have
compositions written about you after you’re dead? Oh, I would dearly love
to be remarkable. I think when I grow up I’ll be a trained nurse and go
with the Red Crosses to the field of battle as a messenger of mercy. That is,
if I don’t go out as a foreign missionary. That would be very romantic,
but one would have to be very good to be a missionary, and that would be a
stumbling block. We have physical culture exercises every day, too. They make
you graceful and promote digestion.”
“Promote fiddlesticks!” said Marilla, who honestly thought it was
all nonsense.
But all the field afternoons and recitation Fridays and physical culture
contortions paled before a project which Miss Stacy brought forward in
November. This was that the scholars of Avonlea school should get up a concert
and hold it in the hall on Christmas Night, for the laudable purpose of helping
to pay for a schoolhouse flag. The pupils one and all taking graciously to this
plan, the preparations for a program were begun at once. And of all the excited
performers-elect none was so excited as Anne Shirley, who threw herself into
the undertaking heart and soul, hampered as she was by Marilla’s
disapproval. Marilla thought it all rank foolishness.
“It’s just filling your heads up with nonsense and taking time that
ought to be put on your lessons,” she grumbled. “I don’t
approve of children’s getting up concerts and racing about to practices.
It makes them vain and forward and fond of gadding.”
“But think of the worthy object,” pleaded Anne. “A flag will
cultivate a spirit of patriotism, Marilla.”
“Fudge! There’s precious little patriotism in the thoughts of any
of you. All you want is a good time.”
“Well, when you can combine patriotism and fun, isn’t it all right?
Of course it’s real nice to be getting up a concert. We’re going to
have six choruses and Diana is to sing a solo. I’m in two
dialogues—‘The Society for the Suppression of Gossip’ and
‘The Fairy Queen.’ The boys are going to have a dialogue too. And
I’m to have two recitations, Marilla. I just tremble when I think of it,
but it’s a nice thrilly kind of tremble. And we’re to have a
tableau at the last—‘Faith, Hope and Charity.’ Diana and Ruby
and I are to be in it, all draped in white with flowing hair. I’m to be
Hope, with my hands clasped—so—and my eyes uplifted. I’m
going to practice my recitations in the garret. Don’t be alarmed if you
hear me groaning. I have to groan heartrendingly in one of them, and it’s
really hard to get up a good artistic groan, Marilla. Josie Pye is sulky
because she didn’t get the part she wanted in the dialogue. She wanted to
be the fairy queen. That would have been ridiculous, for who ever heard of a
fairy queen as fat as Josie? Fairy queens must be slender. Jane Andrews is to
be the queen and I am to be one of her maids of honor. Josie says she thinks a
red-haired fairy is just as ridiculous as a fat one, but I do not let myself
mind what Josie says. I’m to have a wreath of white roses on my hair and
Ruby Gillis is going to lend me her slippers because I haven’t any of my
own. It’s necessary for fairies to have slippers, you know. You
couldn’t imagine a fairy wearing boots, could you? Especially with copper
toes? We are going to decorate the hall with creeping spruce and fir mottoes
with pink tissue-paper roses in them. And we are all to march in two by two
after the audience is seated, while Emma White plays a march on the organ. Oh,
Marilla, I know you are not so enthusiastic about it as I am, but don’t
you hope your little Anne will distinguish herself?”
“All I hope is that you’ll behave yourself. I’ll be heartily
glad when all this fuss is over and you’ll be able to settle down. You
are simply good for nothing just now with your head stuffed full of dialogues
and groans and tableaus. As for your tongue, it’s a marvel it’s not
clean worn out.”
Anne sighed and betook herself to the back yard, over which a young new moon
was shining through the leafless poplar boughs from an apple-green western sky,
and where Matthew was splitting wood. Anne perched herself on a block and
talked the concert over with him, sure of an appreciative and sympathetic
listener in this instance at least.
“Well now, I reckon it’s going to be a pretty good concert. And I
expect you’ll do your part fine,” he said, smiling down into her
eager, vivacious little face. Anne smiled back at him. Those two were the best
of friends and Matthew thanked his stars many a time and oft that he had
nothing to do with bringing her up. That was Marilla’s exclusive duty; if
it had been his he would have been worried over frequent conflicts between
inclination and said duty. As it was, he was free to, “spoil
Anne”—Marilla’s phrasing—as much as he liked. But it
was not such a bad arrangement after all; a little “appreciation”
sometimes does quite as much good as all the conscientious “bringing
up” in the world.
CHAPTER XXV.
Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves
MATTHEW was having a bad
ten minutes of it. He had come into the kitchen, in the twilight of a cold,
gray December evening, and had sat down in the woodbox corner to take off his
heavy boots, unconscious of the fact that Anne and a bevy of her schoolmates
were having a practice of “The Fairy Queen” in the sitting room.
Presently they came trooping through the hall and out into the kitchen,
laughing and chattering gaily. They did not see Matthew, who shrank bashfully
back into the shadows beyond the woodbox with a boot in one hand and a bootjack
in the other, and he watched them shyly for the aforesaid ten minutes as they
put on caps and jackets and talked about the dialogue and the concert. Anne
stood among them, bright eyed and animated as they; but Matthew suddenly became
conscious that there was something about her different from her mates. And what
worried Matthew was that the difference impressed him as being something that
should not exist. Anne had a brighter face, and bigger, starrier eyes, and more
delicate features than the other; even shy, unobservant Matthew had learned to
take note of these things; but the difference that disturbed him did not
consist in any of these respects. Then in what did it consist?
Matthew was haunted by this question long after the girls had gone, arm in arm,
down the long, hard-frozen lane and Anne had betaken herself to her books. He
could not refer it to Marilla, who, he felt, would be quite sure to sniff
scornfully and remark that the only difference she saw between Anne and the
other girls was that they sometimes kept their tongues quiet while Anne never
did. This, Matthew felt, would be no great help.
He had recourse to his pipe that evening to help him study it out, much to
Marilla’s disgust. After two hours of smoking and hard reflection Matthew
arrived at a solution of his problem. Anne was not dressed like the other
girls!
The more Matthew thought about the matter the more he was convinced that Anne
never had been dressed like the other girls—never since she had come to
Green Gables. Marilla kept her clothed in plain, dark dresses, all made after
the same unvarying pattern. If Matthew knew there was such a thing as fashion
in dress it was as much as he did; but he was quite sure that Anne’s
sleeves did not look at all like the sleeves the other girls wore. He recalled
the cluster of little girls he had seen around her that evening—all gay
in waists of red and blue and pink and white—and he wondered why Marilla
always kept her so plainly and soberly gowned.
Of course, it must be all right. Marilla knew best and Marilla was bringing her
up. Probably some wise, inscrutable motive was to be served thereby. But surely
it would do no harm to let the child have one pretty dress—something like
Diana Barry always wore. Matthew decided that he would give her one; that
surely could not be objected to as an unwarranted putting in of his oar.
Christmas was only a fortnight off. A nice new dress would be the very thing
for a present. Matthew, with a sigh of satisfaction, put away his pipe and went
to bed, while Marilla opened all the doors and aired the house.
The very next evening Matthew betook himself to Carmody to buy the dress,
determined to get the worst over and have done with it. It would be, he felt
assured, no trifling ordeal. There were some things Matthew could buy and prove
himself no mean bargainer; but he knew he would be at the mercy of shopkeepers
when it came to buying a girl’s dress.
After much cogitation Matthew resolved to go to Samuel Lawson’s store
instead of William Blair’s. To be sure, the Cuthberts always had gone to
William Blair’s; it was almost as much a matter of conscience with them
as to attend the Presbyterian church and vote Conservative. But William
Blair’s two daughters frequently waited on customers there and Matthew
held them in absolute dread. He could contrive to deal with them when he knew
exactly what he wanted and could point it out; but in such a matter as this,
requiring explanation and consultation, Matthew felt that he must be sure of a
man behind the counter. So he would go to Lawson’s, where Samuel or his
son would wait on him.
Alas! Matthew did not know that Samuel, in the recent expansion of his
business, had set up a lady clerk also; she was a niece of his wife’s and
a very dashing young person indeed, with a huge, drooping pompadour, big,
rolling brown eyes, and a most extensive and bewildering smile. She was dressed
with exceeding smartness and wore several bangle bracelets that glittered and
rattled and tinkled with every movement of her hands. Matthew was covered with
confusion at finding her there at all; and those bangles completely wrecked his
wits at one fell swoop.
“What can I do for you this evening, Mr. Cuthbert?” Miss Lucilla
Harris inquired, briskly and ingratiatingly, tapping the counter with both
hands.
“Have you any—any—any—well now, say any garden
rakes?” stammered Matthew.
Miss Harris looked somewhat surprised, as well she might, to hear a man
inquiring for garden rakes in the middle of December.
“I believe we have one or two left over,” she said, “but
they’re upstairs in the lumber room. I’ll go and see.” During
her absence Matthew collected his scattered senses for another effort.
When Miss Harris returned with the rake and cheerfully inquired:
“Anything else tonight, Mr. Cuthbert?” Matthew took his courage in
both hands and replied: “Well now, since you suggest it, I might as
well—take—that is—look at—buy some—some
hayseed.”
Miss Harris had heard Matthew Cuthbert called odd. She now concluded that he
was entirely crazy.
“We only keep hayseed in the spring,” she explained loftily.
“We’ve none on hand just now.”
“Oh, certainly—certainly—just as you say,” stammered
unhappy Matthew, seizing the rake and making for the door. At the threshold he
recollected that he had not paid for it and he turned miserably back. While
Miss Harris was counting out his change he rallied his powers for a final
desperate attempt.
“Well now—if it isn’t too much trouble—I might as
well—that is—I’d like to look at—at—some
sugar.”
“White or brown?” queried Miss Harris patiently.
“Oh—well now—brown,” said Matthew feebly.
“There’s a barrel of it over there,” said Miss Harris,
shaking her bangles at it. “It’s the only kind we have.”
“I’ll—I’ll take twenty pounds of it,” said
Matthew, with beads of perspiration standing on his forehead.
Matthew had driven halfway home before he was his own man again. It had been a
gruesome experience, but it served him right, he thought, for committing the
heresy of going to a strange store. When he reached home he hid the rake in the
tool house, but the sugar he carried in to Marilla.
“Brown sugar!” exclaimed Marilla. “Whatever possessed you to
get so much? You know I never use it except for the hired man’s porridge
or black fruit cake. Jerry’s gone and I’ve made my cake long ago.
It’s not good sugar, either—it’s coarse and
dark—William Blair doesn’t usually keep sugar like that.”
“I—I thought it might come in handy sometime,” said Matthew,
making good his escape.
When Matthew came to think the matter over he decided that a woman was required
to cope with the situation. Marilla was out of the question. Matthew felt sure
she would throw cold water on his project at once. Remained only Mrs. Lynde;
for of no other woman in Avonlea would Matthew have dared to ask advice. To
Mrs. Lynde he went accordingly, and that good lady promptly took the matter out
of the harassed man’s hands.
“Pick out a dress for you to give Anne? To be sure I will. I’m
going to Carmody tomorrow and I’ll attend to it. Have you something
particular in mind? No? Well, I’ll just go by my own judgment then. I
believe a nice rich brown would just suit Anne, and William Blair has some new
gloria in that’s real pretty. Perhaps you’d like me to make it up
for her, too, seeing that if Marilla was to make it Anne would probably get
wind of it before the time and spoil the surprise? Well, I’ll do it. No,
it isn’t a mite of trouble. I like sewing. I’ll make it to fit my
niece, Jenny Gillis, for she and Anne are as like as two peas as far as figure
goes.”
“Well now, I’m much obliged,” said Matthew,
“and—and—I dunno—but I’d like—I think they
make the sleeves different nowadays to what they used to be. If it
wouldn’t be asking too much I—I’d like them made in the new
way.”
“Puffs? Of course. You needn’t worry a speck more about it,
Matthew. I’ll make it up in the very latest fashion,” said Mrs.
Lynde. To herself she added when Matthew had gone:
“It’ll be a real satisfaction to see that poor child wearing
something decent for once. The way Marilla dresses her is positively
ridiculous, that’s what, and I’ve ached to tell her so plainly a
dozen times. I’ve held my tongue though, for I can see Marilla
doesn’t want advice and she thinks she knows more about bringing children
up than I do for all she’s an old maid. But that’s always the way.
Folks that has brought up children know that there’s no hard and fast
method in the world that’ll suit every child. But them as never have
think it’s all as plain and easy as Rule of Three—just set your
three terms down so fashion, and the sum ‘ll work out correct. But flesh
and blood don’t come under the head of arithmetic and that’s where
Marilla Cuthbert makes her mistake. I suppose she’s trying to cultivate a
spirit of humility in Anne by dressing her as she does; but it’s more
likely to cultivate envy and discontent. I’m sure the child must feel the
difference between her clothes and the other girls’. But to think of
Matthew taking notice of it! That man is waking up after being asleep for over
sixty years.”
Marilla knew all the following fortnight that Matthew had something on his
mind, but what it was she could not guess, until Christmas Eve, when Mrs. Lynde
brought up the new dress. Marilla behaved pretty well on the whole, although it
is very likely she distrusted Mrs. Lynde’s diplomatic explanation that
she had made the dress because Matthew was afraid Anne would find out about it
too soon if Marilla made it.
“So this is what Matthew has been looking so mysterious over and grinning
about to himself for two weeks, is it?” she said a little stiffly but
tolerantly. “I knew he was up to some foolishness. Well, I must say I
don’t think Anne needed any more dresses. I made her three good, warm,
serviceable ones this fall, and anything more is sheer extravagance.
There’s enough material in those sleeves alone to make a waist, I declare
there is. You’ll just pamper Anne’s vanity, Matthew, and
she’s as vain as a peacock now. Well, I hope she’ll be satisfied at
last, for I know she’s been hankering after those silly sleeves ever
since they came in, although she never said a word after the first. The puffs
have been getting bigger and more ridiculous right along; they’re as big
as balloons now. Next year anybody who wears them will have to go through a
door sideways.”
Christmas morning broke on a beautiful white world. It had been a very mild
December and people had looked forward to a green Christmas; but just enough
snow fell softly in the night to transfigure Avonlea. Anne peeped out from her
frosted gable window with delighted eyes. The firs in the Haunted Wood were all
feathery and wonderful; the birches and wild cherry trees were outlined in
pearl; the plowed fields were stretches of snowy dimples; and there was a crisp
tang in the air that was glorious. Anne ran downstairs singing until her voice
reechoed through Green Gables.
“Merry Christmas, Marilla! Merry Christmas, Matthew! Isn’t it a
lovely Christmas? I’m so glad it’s white. Any other kind of
Christmas doesn’t seem real, does it? I don’t like green
Christmases. They’re not green—they’re just nasty faded
browns and grays. What makes people call them green?
Why—why—Matthew, is that for me? Oh, Matthew!”
Matthew had sheepishly unfolded the dress from its paper swathings and held it
out with a deprecatory glance at Marilla, who feigned to be contemptuously
filling the teapot, but nevertheless watched the scene out of the corner of her
eye with a rather interested air.
Anne took the dress and looked at it in reverent silence. Oh, how pretty it
was—a lovely soft brown gloria with all the gloss of silk; a skirt with
dainty frills and shirrings; a waist elaborately pintucked in the most
fashionable way, with a little ruffle of filmy lace at the neck. But the
sleeves—they were the crowning glory! Long elbow cuffs, and above them
two beautiful puffs divided by rows of shirring and bows of brown-silk ribbon.
“That’s a Christmas present for you, Anne,” said Matthew
shyly. “Why—why—Anne, don’t you like it? Well
now—well now.”
For Anne’s eyes had suddenly filled with tears.
“Like it! Oh, Matthew!” Anne laid the dress over a chair and
clasped her hands. “Matthew, it’s perfectly exquisite. Oh, I can
never thank you enough. Look at those sleeves! Oh, it seems to me this must be
a happy dream.”
“Well, well, let us have breakfast,” interrupted Marilla. “I
must say, Anne, I don’t think you needed the dress; but since Matthew has
got it for you, see that you take good care of it. There’s a hair ribbon
Mrs. Lynde left for you. It’s brown, to match the dress. Come now, sit
in.”
“I don’t see how I’m going to eat breakfast,” said Anne
rapturously. “Breakfast seems so commonplace at such an exciting moment.
I’d rather feast my eyes on that dress. I’m so glad that puffed
sleeves are still fashionable. It did seem to me that I’d never get over
it if they went out before I had a dress with them. I’d never have felt
quite satisfied, you see. It was lovely of Mrs. Lynde to give me the ribbon
too. I feel that I ought to be a very good girl indeed. It’s at times
like this I’m sorry I’m not a model little girl; and I always
resolve that I will be in future. But somehow it’s hard to carry out your
resolutions when irresistible temptations come. Still, I really will make an
extra effort after this.”
When the commonplace breakfast was over Diana appeared, crossing the white log
bridge in the hollow, a gay little figure in her crimson ulster. Anne flew down
the slope to meet her.
“Merry Christmas, Diana! And oh, it’s a wonderful Christmas.
I’ve something splendid to show you. Matthew has given me the loveliest
dress, with sleeves. I couldn’t even imagine any
nicer.”
“I’ve got something more for you,” said Diana breathlessly.
“Here—this box. Aunt Josephine sent us out a big box with ever so
many things in it—and this is for you. I’d have brought it over
last night, but it didn’t come until after dark, and I never feel very
comfortable coming through the Haunted Wood in the dark now.”
Anne opened the box and peeped in. First a card with “For the Anne-girl
and Merry Christmas,” written on it; and then, a pair of the daintiest
little kid slippers, with beaded toes and satin bows and glistening buckles.
“Oh,” said Anne, “Diana, this is too much. I must be
dreaming.”
“I call it providential,” said Diana. “You won’t have
to borrow Ruby’s slippers now, and that’s a blessing, for
they’re two sizes too big for you, and it would be awful to hear a fairy
shuffling. Josie Pye would be delighted. Mind you, Rob Wright went home with
Gertie Pye from the practice night before last. Did you ever hear anything
equal to that?”
All the Avonlea scholars were in a fever of excitement that day, for the hall
had to be decorated and a last grand rehearsal held.
The concert came off in the evening and was a pronounced success. The little
hall was crowded; all the performers did excellently well, but Anne was the
bright particular star of the occasion, as even envy, in the shape of Josie
Pye, dared not deny.
“Oh, hasn’t it been a brilliant evening?” sighed Anne, when
it was all over and she and Diana were walking home together under a dark,
starry sky.
“Everything went off very well,” said Diana practically. “I
guess we must have made as much as ten dollars. Mind you, Mr. Allan is going to
send an account of it to the Charlottetown papers.”
“Oh, Diana, will we really see our names in print? It makes me thrill to
think of it. Your solo was perfectly elegant, Diana. I felt prouder than you
did when it was encored. I just said to myself, ‘It is my dear bosom
friend who is so honored.’”
“Well, your recitations just brought down the house, Anne. That sad one
was simply splendid.”
“Oh, I was so nervous, Diana. When Mr. Allan called out my name I really
cannot tell how I ever got up on that platform. I felt as if a million eyes
were looking at me and through me, and for one dreadful moment I was sure I
couldn’t begin at all. Then I thought of my lovely puffed sleeves and
took courage. I knew that I must live up to those sleeves, Diana. So I started
in, and my voice seemed to be coming from ever so far away. I just felt like a
parrot. It’s providential that I practiced those recitations so often up
in the garret, or I’d never have been able to get through. Did I groan
all right?”
“Yes, indeed, you groaned lovely,” assured Diana.
“I saw old Mrs. Sloane wiping away tears when I sat down. It was splendid
to think I had touched somebody’s heart. It’s so romantic to take
part in a concert, isn’t it? Oh, it’s been a very memorable
occasion indeed.”
“Wasn’t the boys’ dialogue fine?” said Diana.
“Gilbert Blythe was just splendid. Anne, I do think it’s awful mean
the way you treat Gil. Wait till I tell you. When you ran off the platform
after the fairy dialogue one of your roses fell out of your hair. I saw Gil
pick it up and put it in his breast pocket. There now. You’re so romantic
that I’m sure you ought to be pleased at that.”
“It’s nothing to me what that person does,” said Anne
loftily. “I simply never waste a thought on him, Diana.”
That night Marilla and Matthew, who had been out to a concert for the first
time in twenty years, sat for a while by the kitchen fire after Anne had gone
to bed.
“Well now, I guess our Anne did as well as any of them,” said
Matthew proudly.
“Yes, she did,” admitted Marilla. “She’s a bright
child, Matthew. And she looked real nice too. I’ve been kind of opposed
to this concert scheme, but I suppose there’s no real harm in it after
all. Anyhow, I was proud of Anne tonight, although I’m not going to tell
her so.”
“Well now, I was proud of her and I did tell her so ‘fore she went
upstairs,” said Matthew. “We must see what we can do for her some
of these days, Marilla. I guess she’ll need something more than Avonlea
school by and by.”
“There’s time enough to think of that,” said Marilla.
“She’s only thirteen in March. Though tonight it struck me she was
growing quite a big girl. Mrs. Lynde made that dress a mite too long, and it
makes Anne look so tall. She’s quick to learn and I guess the best thing
we can do for her will be to send her to Queen’s after a spell. But
nothing need be said about that for a year or two yet.”
“Well now, it’ll do no harm to be thinking it over off and
on,” said Matthew. “Things like that are all the better for lots of
thinking over.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Story Club Is Formed
JUNIOR Avonlea found it
hard to settle down to humdrum existence again. To Anne in particular things
seemed fearfully flat, stale, and unprofitable after the goblet of excitement
she had been sipping for weeks. Could she go back to the former quiet pleasures
of those faraway days before the concert? At first, as she told Diana, she did
not really think she could.
“I’m positively certain, Diana, that life can never be quite the
same again as it was in those olden days,” she said mournfully, as if
referring to a period of at least fifty years back. “Perhaps after a
while I’ll get used to it, but I’m afraid concerts spoil people for
everyday life. I suppose that is why Marilla disapproves of them. Marilla is
such a sensible woman. It must be a great deal better to be sensible; but
still, I don’t believe I’d really want to be a sensible person,
because they are so unromantic. Mrs. Lynde says there is no danger of my ever
being one, but you can never tell. I feel just now that I may grow up to be
sensible yet. But perhaps that is only because I’m tired. I simply
couldn’t sleep last night for ever so long. I just lay awake and imagined
the concert over and over again. That’s one splendid thing about such
affairs—it’s so lovely to look back to them.”
Eventually, however, Avonlea school slipped back into its old groove and took
up its old interests. To be sure, the concert left traces. Ruby Gillis and Emma
White, who had quarreled over a point of precedence in their platform seats, no
longer sat at the same desk, and a promising friendship of three years was
broken up. Josie Pye and Julia Bell did not “speak” for three
months, because Josie Pye had told Bessie Wright that Julia Bell’s bow
when she got up to recite made her think of a chicken jerking its head, and
Bessie told Julia. None of the Sloanes would have any dealings with the Bells,
because the Bells had declared that the Sloanes had too much to do in the
program, and the Sloanes had retorted that the Bells were not capable of doing
the little they had to do properly. Finally, Charlie Sloane fought Moody
Spurgeon MacPherson, because Moody Spurgeon had said that Anne Shirley put on
airs about her recitations, and Moody Spurgeon was “licked”;
consequently Moody Spurgeon’s sister, Ella May, would not
“speak” to Anne Shirley all the rest of the winter. With the
exception of these trifling frictions, work in Miss Stacy’s little
kingdom went on with regularity and smoothness.
The winter weeks slipped by. It was an unusually mild winter, with so little
snow that Anne and Diana could go to school nearly every day by way of the
Birch Path. On Anne’s birthday they were tripping lightly down it,
keeping eyes and ears alert amid all their chatter, for Miss Stacy had told
them that they must soon write a composition on “A Winter’s Walk in
the Woods,” and it behooved them to be observant.
“Just think, Diana, I’m thirteen years old today,” remarked
Anne in an awed voice. “I can scarcely realize that I’m in my
teens. When I woke this morning it seemed to me that everything must be
different. You’ve been thirteen for a month, so I suppose it
doesn’t seem such a novelty to you as it does to me. It makes life seem
so much more interesting. In two more years I’ll be really grown up.
It’s a great comfort to think that I’ll be able to use big words
then without being laughed at.”
“Ruby Gillis says she means to have a beau as soon as she’s
fifteen,” said Diana.
“Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but beaus,” said Anne disdainfully.
“She’s actually delighted when anyone writes her name up in a
take-notice for all she pretends to be so mad. But I’m afraid that is an
uncharitable speech. Mrs. Allan says we should never make uncharitable
speeches; but they do slip out so often before you think, don’t they? I
simply can’t talk about Josie Pye without making an uncharitable speech,
so I never mention her at all. You may have noticed that. I’m trying to
be as much like Mrs. Allan as I possibly can, for I think she’s perfect.
Mr. Allan thinks so too. Mrs. Lynde says he just worships the ground she treads
on and she doesn’t really think it right for a minister to set his
affections so much on a mortal being. But then, Diana, even ministers are human
and have their besetting sins just like everybody else. I had such an
interesting talk with Mrs. Allan about besetting sins last Sunday afternoon.
There are just a few things it’s proper to talk about on Sundays and that
is one of them. My besetting sin is imagining too much and forgetting my
duties. I’m striving very hard to overcome it and now that I’m
really thirteen perhaps I’ll get on better.”
“In four more years we’ll be able to put our hair up,” said
Diana. “Alice Bell is only sixteen and she is wearing hers up, but I
think that’s ridiculous. I shall wait until I’m seventeen.”
“If I had Alice Bell’s crooked nose,” said Anne decidedly,
“I wouldn’t—but there! I won’t say what I was going to
because it was extremely uncharitable. Besides, I was comparing it with my own
nose and that’s vanity. I’m afraid I think too much about my nose
ever since I heard that compliment about it long ago. It really is a great
comfort to me. Oh, Diana, look, there’s a rabbit. That’s something
to remember for our woods composition. I really think the woods are just as
lovely in winter as in summer. They’re so white and still, as if they
were asleep and dreaming pretty dreams.”
“I won’t mind writing that composition when its time comes,”
sighed Diana. “I can manage to write about the woods, but the one
we’re to hand in Monday is terrible. The idea of Miss Stacy telling us to
write a story out of our own heads!”
“Why, it’s as easy as wink,” said Anne.
“It’s easy for you because you have an imagination,” retorted
Diana, “but what would you do if you had been born without one? I suppose
you have your composition all done?”
Anne nodded, trying hard not to look virtuously complacent and failing
miserably.
“I wrote it last Monday evening. It’s called ‘The Jealous
Rival; or In Death Not Divided.’ I read it to Marilla and she said it was
stuff and nonsense. Then I read it to Matthew and he said it was fine. That is
the kind of critic I like. It’s a sad, sweet story. I just cried like a
child while I was writing it. It’s about two beautiful maidens called
Cordelia Montmorency and Geraldine Seymour who lived in the same village and
were devotedly attached to each other. Cordelia was a regal brunette with a
coronet of midnight hair and duskly flashing eyes. Geraldine was a queenly
blonde with hair like spun gold and velvety purple eyes.”
“I never saw anybody with purple eyes,” said Diana dubiously.
“Neither did I. I just imagined them. I wanted something out of the
common. Geraldine had an alabaster brow too. I’ve found out what an
alabaster brow is. That is one of the advantages of being thirteen. You know so
much more than you did when you were only twelve.”
“Well, what became of Cordelia and Geraldine?” asked Diana, who was
beginning to feel rather interested in their fate.
“They grew in beauty side by side until they were sixteen. Then Bertram
DeVere came to their native village and fell in love with the fair Geraldine.
He saved her life when her horse ran away with her in a carriage, and she
fainted in his arms and he carried her home three miles; because, you
understand, the carriage was all smashed up. I found it rather hard to imagine
the proposal because I had no experience to go by. I asked Ruby Gillis if she
knew anything about how men proposed because I thought she’d likely be an
authority on the subject, having so many sisters married. Ruby told me she was
hid in the hall pantry when Malcolm Andres proposed to her sister Susan. She
said Malcolm told Susan that his dad had given him the farm in his own name and
then said, ‘What do you say, darling pet, if we get hitched this
fall?’ And Susan said, ‘Yes—no—I don’t
know—let me see’—and there they were, engaged as quick as
that. But I didn’t think that sort of a proposal was a very romantic one,
so in the end I had to imagine it out as well as I could. I made it very
flowery and poetical and Bertram went on his knees, although Ruby Gillis says
it isn’t done nowadays. Geraldine accepted him in a speech a page long. I
can tell you I took a lot of trouble with that speech. I rewrote it five times
and I look upon it as my masterpiece. Bertram gave her a diamond ring and a
ruby necklace and told her they would go to Europe for a wedding tour, for he
was immensely wealthy. But then, alas, shadows began to darken over their path.
Cordelia was secretly in love with Bertram herself and when Geraldine told her
about the engagement she was simply furious, especially when she saw the
necklace and the diamond ring. All her affection for Geraldine turned to bitter
hate and she vowed that she should never marry Bertram. But she pretended to be
Geraldine’s friend the same as ever. One evening they were standing on
the bridge over a rushing turbulent stream and Cordelia, thinking they were
alone, pushed Geraldine over the brink with a wild, mocking, ‘Ha, ha,
ha.’ But Bertram saw it all and he at once plunged into the current,
exclaiming, ‘I will save thee, my peerless Geraldine.’ But alas, he
had forgotten he couldn’t swim, and they were both drowned, clasped in
each other’s arms. Their bodies were washed ashore soon afterwards. They
were buried in the one grave and their funeral was most imposing, Diana.
It’s so much more romantic to end a story up with a funeral than a
wedding. As for Cordelia, she went insane with remorse and was shut up in a
lunatic asylum. I thought that was a poetical retribution for her crime.”
“How perfectly lovely!” sighed Diana, who belonged to
Matthew’s school of critics. “I don’t see how you can make up
such thrilling things out of your own head, Anne. I wish my imagination was as
good as yours.”
“It would be if you’d only cultivate it,” said Anne
cheeringly. “I’ve just thought of a plan, Diana. Let you and me
have a story club all our own and write stories for practice. I’ll help
you along until you can do them by yourself. You ought to cultivate your
imagination, you know. Miss Stacy says so. Only we must take the right way. I
told her about the Haunted Wood, but she said we went the wrong way about it in
that.”
This was how the story club came into existence. It was limited to Diana and
Anne at first, but soon it was extended to include Jane Andrews and Ruby Gillis
and one or two others who felt that their imaginations needed cultivating. No
boys were allowed in it—although Ruby Gillis opined that their admission
would make it more exciting—and each member had to produce one story a
week.
“It’s extremely interesting,” Anne told Marilla. “Each
girl has to read her story out loud and then we talk it over. We are going to
keep them all sacredly and have them to read to our descendants. We each write
under a nom-de-plume. Mine is Rosamond Montmorency. All the girls do pretty
well. Ruby Gillis is rather sentimental. She puts too much lovemaking into her
stories and you know too much is worse than too little. Jane never puts any
because she says it makes her feel so silly when she had to read it out loud.
Jane’s stories are extremely sensible. Then Diana puts too many murders
into hers. She says most of the time she doesn’t know what to do with the
people so she kills them off to get rid of them. I mostly always have to tell
them what to write about, but that isn’t hard for I’ve millions of
ideas.”
“I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet,”
scoffed Marilla. “You’ll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and
waste time that should be put on your lessons. Reading stories is bad enough
but writing them is worse.”
“But we’re so careful to put a moral into them all, Marilla,”
explained Anne. “I insist upon that. All the good people are rewarded and
all the bad ones are suitably punished. I’m sure that must have a
wholesome effect. The moral is the great thing. Mr. Allan says so. I read one
of my stories to him and Mrs. Allan and they both agreed that the moral was
excellent. Only they laughed in the wrong places. I like it better when people
cry. Jane and Ruby almost always cry when I come to the pathetic parts. Diana
wrote her Aunt Josephine about our club and her Aunt Josephine wrote back that
we were to send her some of our stories. So we copied out four of our very best
and sent them. Miss Josephine Barry wrote back that she had never read anything
so amusing in her life. That kind of puzzled us because the stories were all
very pathetic and almost everybody died. But I’m glad Miss Barry liked
them. It shows our club is doing some good in the world. Mrs. Allan says that
ought to be our object in everything. I do really try to make it my object but
I forget so often when I’m having fun. I hope I shall be a little like
Mrs. Allan when I grow up. Do you think there is any prospect of it,
Marilla?”
“I shouldn’t say there was a great deal” was Marilla’s
encouraging answer. “I’m sure Mrs. Allan was never such a silly,
forgetful little girl as you are.”
“No; but she wasn’t always so good as she is now either,”
said Anne seriously. “She told me so herself—that is, she said she
was a dreadful mischief when she was a girl and was always getting into
scrapes. I felt so encouraged when I heard that. Is it very wicked of me,
Marilla, to feel encouraged when I hear that other people have been bad and
mischievous? Mrs. Lynde says it is. Mrs. Lynde says she always feels shocked
when she hears of anyone ever having been naughty, no matter how small they
were. Mrs. Lynde says she once heard a minister confess that when he was a boy
he stole a strawberry tart out of his aunt’s pantry and she never had any
respect for that minister again. Now, I wouldn’t have felt that way.
I’d have thought that it was real noble of him to confess it, and
I’d have thought what an encouraging thing it would be for small boys
nowadays who do naughty things and are sorry for them to know that perhaps they
may grow up to be ministers in spite of it. That’s how I’d feel,
Marilla.”
“The way I feel at present, Anne,” said Marilla, “is that
it’s high time you had those dishes washed. You’ve taken half an
hour longer than you should with all your chattering. Learn to work first and
talk afterwards.”
CHAPTER XXVII.
Vanity and Vexation of Spirit
MARILLA, walking home
one late April evening from an Aid meeting, realized that the winter was over
and gone with the thrill of delight that spring never fails to bring to the
oldest and saddest as well as to the youngest and merriest. Marilla was not
given to subjective analysis of her thoughts and feelings. She probably
imagined that she was thinking about the Aids and their missionary box and the
new carpet for the vestry room, but under these reflections was a harmonious
consciousness of red fields smoking into pale-purply mists in the declining
sun, of long, sharp-pointed fir shadows falling over the meadow beyond the
brook, of still, crimson-budded maples around a mirrorlike wood pool, of a
wakening in the world and a stir of hidden pulses under the gray sod. The
spring was abroad in the land and Marilla’s sober, middle-aged step was
lighter and swifter because of its deep, primal gladness.
Her eyes dwelt affectionately on Green Gables, peering through its network of
trees and reflecting the sunlight back from its windows in several little
coruscations of glory. Marilla, as she picked her steps along the damp lane,
thought that it was really a satisfaction to know that she was going home to a
briskly snapping wood fire and a table nicely spread for tea, instead of to the
cold comfort of old Aid meeting evenings before Anne had come to Green Gables.
Consequently, when Marilla entered her kitchen and found the fire black out,
with no sign of Anne anywhere, she felt justly disappointed and irritated. She
had told Anne to be sure and have tea ready at five o’clock, but now she
must hurry to take off her second-best dress and prepare the meal herself
against Matthew’s return from plowing.
“I’ll settle Miss Anne when she comes home,” said Marilla
grimly, as she shaved up kindlings with a carving knife and with more vim than
was strictly necessary. Matthew had come in and was waiting patiently for his
tea in his corner. “She’s gadding off somewhere with Diana, writing
stories or practicing dialogues or some such tomfoolery, and never thinking
once about the time or her duties. She’s just got to be pulled up short
and sudden on this sort of thing. I don’t care if Mrs. Allan does say
she’s the brightest and sweetest child she ever knew. She may be bright
and sweet enough, but her head is full of nonsense and there’s never any
knowing what shape it’ll break out in next. Just as soon as she grows out
of one freak she takes up with another. But there! Here I am saying the very
thing I was so riled with Rachel Lynde for saying at the Aid today. I was real
glad when Mrs. Allan spoke up for Anne, for if she hadn’t I know
I’d have said something too sharp to Rachel before everybody.
Anne’s got plenty of faults, goodness knows, and far be it from me to
deny it. But I’m bringing her up and not Rachel Lynde, who’d pick
faults in the Angel Gabriel himself if he lived in Avonlea. Just the same, Anne
has no business to leave the house like this when I told her she was to stay
home this afternoon and look after things. I must say, with all her faults, I
never found her disobedient or untrustworthy before and I’m real sorry to
find her so now.”
“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew, who, being patient and wise and,
above all, hungry, had deemed it best to let Marilla talk her wrath out
unhindered, having learned by experience that she got through with whatever
work was on hand much quicker if not delayed by untimely argument.
“Perhaps you’re judging her too hasty, Marilla. Don’t call
her untrustworthy until you’re sure she has disobeyed you. Mebbe it can
all be explained—Anne’s a great hand at explaining.”
“She’s not here when I told her to stay,” retorted Marilla.
“I reckon she’ll find it hard to explain to my
satisfaction. Of course I knew you’d take her part, Matthew. But
I’m bringing her up, not you.”
It was dark when supper was ready, and still no sign of Anne, coming hurriedly
over the log bridge or up Lover’s Lane, breathless and repentant with a
sense of neglected duties. Marilla washed and put away the dishes grimly. Then,
wanting a candle to light her way down the cellar, she went up to the east
gable for the one that generally stood on Anne’s table. Lighting it, she
turned around to see Anne herself lying on the bed, face downward among the
pillows.
“Mercy on us,” said astonished Marilla, “have you been
asleep, Anne?”
“No,” was the muffled reply.
“Are you sick then?” demanded Marilla anxiously, going over to the
bed.
Anne cowered deeper into her pillows as if desirous of hiding herself forever
from mortal eyes.
“No. But please, Marilla, go away and don’t look at me. I’m
in the depths of despair and I don’t care who gets head in class or
writes the best composition or sings in the Sunday-school choir any more.
Little things like that are of no importance now because I don’t suppose
I’ll ever be able to go anywhere again. My career is closed. Please,
Marilla, go away and don’t look at me.”
“Did anyone ever hear the like?” the mystified Marilla wanted to
know. “Anne Shirley, whatever is the matter with you? What have you done?
Get right up this minute and tell me. This minute, I say. There now, what is
it?”
Anne had slid to the floor in despairing obedience.
“Look at my hair, Marilla,” she whispered.
Accordingly, Marilla lifted her candle and looked scrutinizingly at
Anne’s hair, flowing in heavy masses down her back. It certainly had a
very strange appearance.
“Anne Shirley, what have you done to your hair? Why, it’s
”
Green it might be called, if it were any earthly color—a queer, dull,
bronzy green, with streaks here and there of the original red to heighten the
ghastly effect. Never in all her life had Marilla seen anything so grotesque as
Anne’s hair at that moment.
“Yes, it’s green,” moaned Anne. “I thought nothing
could be as bad as red hair. But now I know it’s ten times worse to have
green hair. Oh, Marilla, you little know how utterly wretched I am.”
“I little know how you got into this fix, but I mean to find out,”
said Marilla. “Come right down to the kitchen—it’s too cold
up here—and tell me just what you’ve done. I’ve been
expecting something queer for some time. You haven’t got into any scrape
for over two months, and I was sure another one was due. Now, then, what did
you do to your hair?”
“I dyed it.”
“Dyed it! Dyed your hair! Anne Shirley, didn’t you know it was a
wicked thing to do?”
“Yes, I knew it was a little wicked,” admitted Anne. “But I
thought it was worth while to be a little wicked to get rid of red hair. I
counted the cost, Marilla. Besides, I meant to be extra good in other ways to
make up for it.”
“Well,” said Marilla sarcastically, “if I’d decided it
was worth while to dye my hair I’d have dyed it a decent color at least.
I wouldn’t have dyed it green.”
“But I didn’t mean to dye it green, Marilla,” protested Anne
dejectedly. “If I was wicked I meant to be wicked to some purpose. He
said it would turn my hair a beautiful raven black—he positively assured
me that it would. How could I doubt his word, Marilla? I know what it feels
like to have your word doubted. And Mrs. Allan says we should never suspect
anyone of not telling us the truth unless we have proof that they’re not.
I have proof now—green hair is proof enough for anybody. But I
hadn’t then and I believed every word he said .”
“Who said? Who are you talking about?”
“The peddler that was here this afternoon. I bought the dye from
him.”
“Anne Shirley, how often have I told you never to let one of those
Italians in the house! I don’t believe in encouraging them to come around
at all.”
“Oh, I didn’t let him in the house. I remembered what you told me,
and I went out, carefully shut the door, and looked at his things on the step.
Besides, he wasn’t an Italian—he was a German Jew. He had a big box
full of very interesting things and he told me he was working hard to make
enough money to bring his wife and children out from Germany. He spoke so
feelingly about them that it touched my heart. I wanted to buy something from
him to help him in such a worthy object. Then all at once I saw the bottle of
hair dye. The peddler said it was warranted to dye any hair a beautiful raven
black and wouldn’t wash off. In a trice I saw myself with beautiful
raven-black hair and the temptation was irresistible. But the price of the
bottle was seventy-five cents and I had only fifty cents left out of my chicken
money. I think the peddler had a very kind heart, for he said that, seeing it
was me, he’d sell it for fifty cents and that was just giving it away. So
I bought it, and as soon as he had gone I came up here and applied it with an
old hairbrush as the directions said. I used up the whole bottle, and oh,
Marilla, when I saw the dreadful color it turned my hair I repented of being
wicked, I can tell you. And I’ve been repenting ever since.”
“Well, I hope you’ll repent to good purpose,” said Marilla
severely, “and that you’ve got your eyes opened to where your
vanity has led you, Anne. Goodness knows what’s to be done. I suppose the
first thing is to give your hair a good washing and see if that will do any
good.”
Accordingly, Anne washed her hair, scrubbing it vigorously with soap and water,
but for all the difference it made she might as well have been scouring its
original red. The peddler had certainly spoken the truth when he declared that
the dye wouldn’t wash off, however his veracity might be impeached in
other respects.
“Oh, Marilla, what shall I do?” questioned Anne in tears. “I
can never live this down. People have pretty well forgotten my other
mistakes—the liniment cake and setting Diana drunk and flying into a
temper with Mrs. Lynde. But they’ll never forget this. They will think I
am not respectable. Oh, Marilla, ‘what a tangled web we weave when first
we practice to deceive.’ That is poetry, but it is true. And oh, how
Josie Pye will laugh! Marilla, I face Josie Pye. I am the
unhappiest girl in Prince Edward Island.”
Anne’s unhappiness continued for a week. During that time she went
nowhere and shampooed her hair every day. Diana alone of outsiders knew the
fatal secret, but she promised solemnly never to tell, and it may be stated
here and now that she kept her word. At the end of the week Marilla said
decidedly:
“It’s no use, Anne. That is fast dye if ever there was any. Your
hair must be cut off; there is no other way. You can’t go out with it
looking like that.”
Anne’s lips quivered, but she realized the bitter truth of
Marilla’s remarks. With a dismal sigh she went for the scissors.
“Please cut it off at once, Marilla, and have it over. Oh, I feel that my
heart is broken. This is such an unromantic affliction. The girls in books lose
their hair in fevers or sell it to get money for some good deed, and I’m
sure I wouldn’t mind losing my hair in some such fashion half so much.
But there is nothing comforting in having your hair cut off because
you’ve dyed it a dreadful color, is there? I’m going to weep all
the time you’re cutting it off, if it won’t interfere. It seems
such a tragic thing.”
Anne wept then, but later on, when she went upstairs and looked in the glass,
she was calm with despair. Marilla had done her work thoroughly and it had been
necessary to shingle the hair as closely as possible. The result was not
becoming, to state the case as mildly as may be. Anne promptly turned her glass
to the wall.
“I’ll never, never look at myself again until my hair grows,”
she exclaimed passionately.
Then she suddenly righted the glass.
“Yes, I will, too. I’d do penance for being wicked that way.
I’ll look at myself every time I come to my room and see how ugly I am.
And I won’t try to imagine it away, either. I never thought I was vain
about my hair, of all things, but now I know I was, in spite of its being red,
because it was so long and thick and curly. I expect something will happen to
my nose next.”
Anne’s clipped head made a sensation in school on the following Monday,
but to her relief nobody guessed the real reason for it, not even Josie Pye,
who, however, did not fail to inform Anne that she looked like a perfect
scarecrow.
“I didn’t say anything when Josie said that to me,” Anne
confided that evening to Marilla, who was lying on the sofa after one of her
headaches, “because I thought it was part of my punishment and I ought to
bear it patiently. It’s hard to be told you look like a scarecrow and I
wanted to say something back. But I didn’t. I just swept her one scornful
look and then I forgave her. It makes you feel very virtuous when you forgive
people, doesn’t it? I mean to devote all my energies to being good after
this and I shall never try to be beautiful again. Of course it’s better
to be good. I know it is, but it’s sometimes so hard to believe a thing
even when you know it. I do really want to be good, Marilla, like you and Mrs.
Allan and Miss Stacy, and grow up to be a credit to you. Diana says when my
hair begins to grow to tie a black velvet ribbon around my head with a bow at
one side. She says she thinks it will be very becoming. I will call it a
snood—that sounds so romantic. But am I talking too much, Marilla? Does
it hurt your head?”
“My head is better now. It was terrible bad this afternoon, though. These
headaches of mine are getting worse and worse. I’ll have to see a doctor
about them. As for your chatter, I don’t know that I mind
it—I’ve got so used to it.”
Which was Marilla’s way of saying that she liked to hear it.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
An Unfortunate Lily Maid
OF course you must be
Elaine, Anne,” said Diana. “I could never have the courage to float
down there.”
“Nor I,” said Ruby Gillis, with a shiver. “I don’t mind
floating down when there’s two or three of us in the flat and we can sit
up. It’s fun then. But to lie down and pretend I was dead—I just
couldn’t. I’d die really of fright.”
“Of course it would be romantic,” conceded Jane Andrews, “but
I know I couldn’t keep still. I’d be popping up every minute or so
to see where I was and if I wasn’t drifting too far out. And you know,
Anne, that would spoil the effect.”
“But it’s so ridiculous to have a redheaded Elaine,” mourned
Anne. “I’m not afraid to float down and I’d love to be
Elaine. But it’s ridiculous just the same. Ruby ought to be Elaine
because she is so fair and has such lovely long golden hair—Elaine had
‘all her bright hair streaming down,’ you know. And Elaine was the
lily maid. Now, a red-haired person cannot be a lily maid.”
“Your complexion is just as fair as Ruby’s,” said Diana
earnestly, “and your hair is ever so much darker than it used to be
before you cut it.”
“Oh, do you really think so?” exclaimed Anne, flushing sensitively
with delight. “I’ve sometimes thought it was myself—but I
never dared to ask anyone for fear she would tell me it wasn’t. Do you
think it could be called auburn now, Diana?”
“Yes, and I think it is real pretty,” said Diana, looking
admiringly at the short, silky curls that clustered over Anne’s head and
were held in place by a very jaunty black velvet ribbon and bow.
They were standing on the bank of the pond, below Orchard Slope, where a little
headland fringed with birches ran out from the bank; at its tip was a small
wooden platform built out into the water for the convenience of fishermen and
duck hunters. Ruby and Jane were spending the midsummer afternoon with Diana,
and Anne had come over to play with them.
Anne and Diana had spent most of their playtime that summer on and about the
pond. Idlewild was a thing of the past, Mr. Bell having ruthlessly cut down the
little circle of trees in his back pasture in the spring. Anne had sat among
the stumps and wept, not without an eye to the romance of it; but she was
speedily consoled, for, after all, as she and Diana said, big girls of
thirteen, going on fourteen, were too old for such childish amusements as
playhouses, and there were more fascinating sports to be found about the pond.
It was splendid to fish for trout over the bridge and the two girls learned to
row themselves about in the little flat-bottomed dory Mr. Barry kept for duck
shooting.
It was Anne’s idea that they dramatize Elaine. They had studied
Tennyson’s poem in school the preceding winter, the Superintendent of
Education having prescribed it in the English course for the Prince Edward
Island schools. They had analyzed and parsed it and torn it to pieces in
general until it was a wonder there was any meaning at all left in it for them,
but at least the fair lily maid and Lancelot and Guinevere and King Arthur had
become very real people to them, and Anne was devoured by secret regret that
she had not been born in Camelot. Those days, she said, were so much more
romantic than the present.
Anne’s plan was hailed with enthusiasm. The girls had discovered that if
the flat were pushed off from the landing place it would drift down with the
current under the bridge and finally strand itself on another headland lower
down which ran out at a curve in the pond. They had often gone down like this
and nothing could be more convenient for playing Elaine.
“Well, I’ll be Elaine,” said Anne, yielding reluctantly, for,
although she would have been delighted to play the principal character, yet her
artistic sense demanded fitness for it and this, she felt, her limitations made
impossible. “Ruby, you must be King Arthur and Jane will be Guinevere and
Diana must be Lancelot. But first you must be the brothers and the father. We
can’t have the old dumb servitor because there isn’t room for two
in the flat when one is lying down. We must pall the barge all its length in
blackest samite. That old black shawl of your mother’s will be just the
thing, Diana.”
The black shawl having been procured, Anne spread it over the flat and then lay
down on the bottom, with closed eyes and hands folded over her breast.
“Oh, she does look really dead,” whispered Ruby Gillis nervously,
watching the still, white little face under the flickering shadows of the
birches. “It makes me feel frightened, girls. Do you suppose it’s
really right to act like this? Mrs. Lynde says that all play-acting is
abominably wicked.”
“Ruby, you shouldn’t talk about Mrs. Lynde,” said Anne
severely. “It spoils the effect because this is hundreds of years before
Mrs. Lynde was born. Jane, you arrange this. It’s silly for Elaine to be
talking when she’s dead.”
Jane rose to the occasion. Cloth of gold for coverlet there was none, but an
old piano scarf of yellow Japanese crepe was an excellent substitute. A white
lily was not obtainable just then, but the effect of a tall blue iris placed in
one of Anne’s folded hands was all that could be desired.
“Now, she’s all ready,” said Jane. “We must kiss her
quiet brows and, Diana, you say, ‘Sister, farewell forever,’ and
Ruby, you say, ‘Farewell, sweet sister,’ both of you as sorrowfully
as you possibly can. Anne, for goodness sake smile a little. You know Elaine
‘lay as though she smiled.’ That’s better. Now push the flat
off.”
The flat was accordingly pushed off, scraping roughly over an old embedded
stake in the process. Diana and Jane and Ruby only waited long enough to see it
caught in the current and headed for the bridge before scampering up through
the woods, across the road, and down to the lower headland where, as Lancelot
and Guinevere and the King, they were to be in readiness to receive the lily
maid.
For a few minutes Anne, drifting slowly down, enjoyed the romance of her
situation to the full. Then something happened not at all romantic. The flat
began to leak. In a very few moments it was necessary for Elaine to scramble to
her feet, pick up her cloth of gold coverlet and pall of blackest samite and
gaze blankly at a big crack in the bottom of her barge through which the water
was literally pouring. That sharp stake at the landing had torn off the strip
of batting nailed on the flat. Anne did not know this, but it did not take her
long to realize that she was in a dangerous plight. At this rate the flat would
fill and sink long before it could drift to the lower headland. Where were the
oars? Left behind at the landing!
Anne gave one gasping little scream which nobody ever heard; she was white to
the lips, but she did not lose her self-possession. There was one
chance—just one.
“I was horribly frightened,” she told Mrs. Allan the next day,
“and it seemed like years while the flat was drifting down to the bridge
and the water rising in it every moment. I prayed, Mrs. Allan, most earnestly,
but I didn’t shut my eyes to pray, for I knew the only way God could save
me was to let the flat float close enough to one of the bridge piles for me to
climb up on it. You know the piles are just old tree trunks and there are lots
of knots and old branch stubs on them. It was proper to pray, but I had to do
my part by watching out and right well I knew it. I just said, ‘Dear God,
please take the flat close to a pile and I’ll do the rest,’ over
and over again. Under such circumstances you don’t think much about
making a flowery prayer. But mine was answered, for the flat bumped right into
a pile for a minute and I flung the scarf and the shawl over my shoulder and
scrambled up on a big providential stub. And there I was, Mrs. Allan, clinging
to that slippery old pile with no way of getting up or down. It was a very
unromantic position, but I didn’t think about that at the time. You
don’t think much about romance when you have just escaped from a watery
grave. I said a grateful prayer at once and then I gave all my attention to
holding on tight, for I knew I should probably have to depend on human aid to
get back to dry land.”
The flat drifted under the bridge and then promptly sank in midstream. Ruby,
Jane, and Diana, already awaiting it on the lower headland, saw it disappear
before their very eyes and had not a doubt but that Anne had gone down with it.
For a moment they stood still, white as sheets, frozen with horror at the
tragedy; then, shrieking at the tops of their voices, they started on a frantic
run up through the woods, never pausing as they crossed the main road to glance
the way of the bridge. Anne, clinging desperately to her precarious foothold,
saw their flying forms and heard their shrieks. Help would soon come, but
meanwhile her position was a very uncomfortable one.
The minutes passed by, each seeming an hour to the unfortunate lily maid. Why
didn’t somebody come? Where had the girls gone? Suppose they had fainted,
one and all! Suppose nobody ever came! Suppose she grew so tired and cramped
that she could hold on no longer! Anne looked at the wicked green depths below
her, wavering with long, oily shadows, and shivered. Her imagination began to
suggest all manner of gruesome possibilities to her.
Then, just as she thought she really could not endure the ache in her arms and
wrists another moment, Gilbert Blythe came rowing under the bridge in Harmon
Andrews’s dory!
Gilbert glanced up and, much to his amazement, beheld a little white scornful
face looking down upon him with big, frightened but also scornful gray eyes.
“Anne Shirley! How on earth did you get there?” he exclaimed.
Without waiting for an answer he pulled close to the pile and extended his
hand. There was no help for it; Anne, clinging to Gilbert Blythe’s hand,
scrambled down into the dory, where she sat, drabbled and furious, in the stern
with her arms full of dripping shawl and wet crepe. It was certainly extremely
difficult to be dignified under the circumstances!
“What has happened, Anne?” asked Gilbert, taking up his oars.
“We were playing Elaine,” explained Anne frigidly, without even
looking at her rescuer, “and I had to drift down to Camelot in the
barge—I mean the flat. The flat began to leak and I climbed out on the
pile. The girls went for help. Will you be kind enough to row me to the
landing?”
Gilbert obligingly rowed to the landing and Anne, disdaining assistance, sprang
nimbly on shore.
“I’m very much obliged to you,” she said haughtily as she
turned away. But Gilbert had also sprung from the boat and now laid a detaining
hand on her arm.
“Anne,” he said hurriedly, “look here. Can’t we be good
friends? I’m awfully sorry I made fun of your hair that time. I
didn’t mean to vex you and I only meant it for a joke. Besides,
it’s so long ago. I think your hair is awfully pretty now—honest I
do. Let’s be friends.”
For a moment Anne hesitated. She had an odd, newly awakened consciousness under
all her outraged dignity that the half-shy, half-eager expression in
Gilbert’s hazel eyes was something that was very good to see. Her heart
gave a quick, queer little beat. But the bitterness of her old grievance
promptly stiffened up her wavering determination. That scene of two years
before flashed back into her recollection as vividly as if it had taken place
yesterday. Gilbert had called her “carrots” and had brought about
her disgrace before the whole school. Her resentment, which to other and older
people might be as laughable as its cause, was in no whit allayed and softened
by time seemingly. She hated Gilbert Blythe! She would never forgive him!
“No,” she said coldly, “I shall never be friends with you,
Gilbert Blythe; and I don’t want to be!”
“All right!” Gilbert sprang into his skiff with an angry color in
his cheeks. “I’ll never ask you to be friends again, Anne Shirley.
And I don’t care either!”
He pulled away with swift defiant strokes, and Anne went up the steep, ferny
little path under the maples. She held her head very high, but she was
conscious of an odd feeling of regret. She almost wished she had answered
Gilbert differently. Of course, he had insulted her terribly, but still—!
Altogether, Anne rather thought it would be a relief to sit down and have a
good cry. She was really quite unstrung, for the reaction from her fright and
cramped clinging was making itself felt.
Halfway up the path she met Jane and Diana rushing back to the pond in a state
narrowly removed from positive frenzy. They had found nobody at Orchard Slope,
both Mr. and Mrs. Barry being away. Here Ruby Gillis had succumbed to
hysterics, and was left to recover from them as best she might, while Jane and
Diana flew through the Haunted Wood and across the brook to Green Gables. There
they had found nobody either, for Marilla had gone to Carmody and Matthew was
making hay in the back field.
“Oh, Anne,” gasped Diana, fairly falling on the former’s neck
and weeping with relief and delight, “oh, Anne—we thought—you
were—drowned—and we felt like murderers—because we had
made—you be—Elaine. And Ruby is in hysterics—oh, Anne, how
did you escape?”
“I climbed up on one of the piles,” explained Anne wearily,
“and Gilbert Blythe came along in Mr. Andrews’s dory and brought me
to land.”
“Oh, Anne, how splendid of him! Why, it’s so romantic!” said
Jane, finding breath enough for utterance at last. “Of course
you’ll speak to him after this.”
“Of course I won’t,” flashed Anne, with a momentary return of
her old spirit. “And I don’t want ever to hear the word
‘romantic’ again, Jane Andrews. I’m awfully sorry you were so
frightened, girls. It is all my fault. I feel sure I was born under an unlucky
star. Everything I do gets me or my dearest friends into a scrape. We’ve
gone and lost your father’s flat, Diana, and I have a presentiment that
we’ll not be allowed to row on the pond any more.”
Anne’s presentiment proved more trustworthy than presentiments are apt to
do. Great was the consternation in the Barry and Cuthbert households when the
events of the afternoon became known.
“Will you ever have any sense, Anne?” groaned Marilla.
“Oh, yes, I think I will, Marilla,” returned Anne optimistically. A
good cry, indulged in the grateful solitude of the east gable, had soothed her
nerves and restored her to her wonted cheerfulness. “I think my prospects
of becoming sensible are brighter now than ever.”
“I don’t see how,” said Marilla.
“Well,” explained Anne, “I’ve learned a new and
valuable lesson today. Ever since I came to Green Gables I’ve been making
mistakes, and each mistake has helped to cure me of some great shortcoming. The
affair of the amethyst brooch cured me of meddling with things that
didn’t belong to me. The Haunted Wood mistake cured me of letting my
imagination run away with me. The liniment cake mistake cured me of
carelessness in cooking. Dyeing my hair cured me of vanity. I never think about
my hair and nose now—at least, very seldom. And today’s mistake is
going to cure me of being too romantic. I have come to the conclusion that it
is no use trying to be romantic in Avonlea. It was probably easy enough in
towered Camelot hundreds of years ago, but romance is not appreciated now. I
feel quite sure that you will soon see a great improvement in me in this
respect, Marilla.”
“I’m sure I hope so,” said Marilla skeptically.
But Matthew, who had been sitting mutely in his corner, laid a hand on
Anne’s shoulder when Marilla had gone out.
“Don’t give up all your romance, Anne,” he whispered shyly,
“a little of it is a good thing—not too much, of course—but
keep a little of it, Anne, keep a little of it.”
CHAPTER XXIX.
An Epoch in Anne’s Life
ANNE was bringing the
cows home from the back pasture by way of Lover’s Lane. It was a
September evening and all the gaps and clearings in the woods were brimmed up
with ruby sunset light. Here and there the lane was splashed with it, but for
the most part it was already quite shadowy beneath the maples, and the spaces
under the firs were filled with a clear violet dusk like airy wine. The winds
were out in their tops, and there is no sweeter music on earth than that which
the wind makes in the fir trees at evening.
The cows swung placidly down the lane, and Anne followed them dreamily,
repeating aloud the battle canto from —which had also been
part of their English course the preceding winter and which Miss Stacy had made
them learn off by heart—and exulting in its rushing lines and the clash
of spears in its imagery. When she came to the lines
The stubborn spearsmen still made good
Their dark impenetrable wood,
she stopped in ecstasy to shut her eyes that she might the better fancy herself
one of that heroic ring. When she opened them again it was to behold Diana
coming through the gate that led into the Barry field and looking so important
that Anne instantly divined there was news to be told. But betray too eager
curiosity she would not.
“Isn’t this evening just like a purple dream, Diana? It makes me so
glad to be alive. In the mornings I always think the mornings are best; but
when evening comes I think it’s lovelier still.”
“It’s a very fine evening,” said Diana, “but oh, I have
such news, Anne. Guess. You can have three guesses.”
“Charlotte Gillis is going to be married in the church after all and Mrs.
Allan wants us to decorate it,” cried Anne.
“No. Charlotte’s beau won’t agree to that, because nobody
ever has been married in the church yet, and he thinks it would seem too much
like a funeral. It’s too mean, because it would be such fun. Guess
again.”
“Jane’s mother is going to let her have a birthday party?”
Diana shook her head, her black eyes dancing with merriment.
“I can’t think what it can be,” said Anne in despair,
“unless it’s that Moody Spurgeon MacPherson saw you home from
prayer meeting last night. Did he?”
“I should think not,” exclaimed Diana indignantly. “I
wouldn’t be likely to boast of it if he did, the horrid creature! I knew
you couldn’t guess it. Mother had a letter from Aunt Josephine today, and
Aunt Josephine wants you and me to go to town next Tuesday and stop with her
for the Exhibition. There!”
“Oh, Diana,” whispered Anne, finding it necessary to lean up
against a maple tree for support, “do you really mean it? But I’m
afraid Marilla won’t let me go. She will say that she can’t
encourage gadding about. That was what she said last week when Jane invited me
to go with them in their double-seated buggy to the American concert at the
White Sands Hotel. I wanted to go, but Marilla said I’d be better at home
learning my lessons and so would Jane. I was bitterly disappointed, Diana. I
felt so heartbroken that I wouldn’t say my prayers when I went to bed.
But I repented of that and got up in the middle of the night and said
them.”
“I’ll tell you,” said Diana, “we’ll get Mother to
ask Marilla. She’ll be more likely to let you go then; and if she does
we’ll have the time of our lives, Anne. I’ve never been to an
Exhibition, and it’s so aggravating to hear the other girls talking about
their trips. Jane and Ruby have been twice, and they’re going this year
again.”
“I’m not going to think about it at all until I know whether I can
go or not,” said Anne resolutely. “If I did and then was
disappointed, it would be more than I could bear. But in case I do go I’m
very glad my new coat will be ready by that time. Marilla didn’t think I
needed a new coat. She said my old one would do very well for another winter
and that I ought to be satisfied with having a new dress. The dress is very
pretty, Diana—navy blue and made so fashionably. Marilla always makes my
dresses fashionably now, because she says she doesn’t intend to have
Matthew going to Mrs. Lynde to make them. I’m so glad. It is ever so much
easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable. At least, it is easier for
me. I suppose it doesn’t make such a difference to naturally good people.
But Matthew said I must have a new coat, so Marilla bought a lovely piece of
blue broadcloth, and it’s being made by a real dressmaker over at
Carmody. It’s to be done Saturday night, and I’m trying not to
imagine myself walking up the church aisle on Sunday in my new suit and cap,
because I’m afraid it isn’t right to imagine such things. But it
just slips into my mind in spite of me. My cap is so pretty. Matthew bought it
for me the day we were over at Carmody. It is one of those little blue velvet
ones that are all the rage, with gold cord and tassels. Your new hat is
elegant, Diana, and so becoming. When I saw you come into church last Sunday my
heart swelled with pride to think you were my dearest friend. Do you suppose
it’s wrong for us to think so much about our clothes? Marilla says it is
very sinful. But it is such an interesting subject, isn’t it?”
Marilla agreed to let Anne go to town, and it was arranged that Mr. Barry
should take the girls in on the following Tuesday. As Charlottetown was thirty
miles away and Mr. Barry wished to go and return the same day, it was necessary
to make a very early start. But Anne counted it all joy, and was up before
sunrise on Tuesday morning. A glance from her window assured her that the day
would be fine, for the eastern sky behind the firs of the Haunted Wood was all
silvery and cloudless. Through the gap in the trees a light was shining in the
western gable of Orchard Slope, a token that Diana was also up.
Anne was dressed by the time Matthew had the fire on and had the breakfast
ready when Marilla came down, but for her own part was much too excited to eat.
After breakfast the jaunty new cap and jacket were donned, and Anne hastened
over the brook and up through the firs to Orchard Slope. Mr. Barry and Diana
were waiting for her, and they were soon on the road.
It was a long drive, but Anne and Diana enjoyed every minute of it. It was
delightful to rattle along over the moist roads in the early red sunlight that
was creeping across the shorn harvest fields. The air was fresh and crisp, and
little smoke-blue mists curled through the valleys and floated off from the
hills. Sometimes the road went through woods where maples were beginning to
hang out scarlet banners; sometimes it crossed rivers on bridges that made
Anne’s flesh cringe with the old, half-delightful fear; sometimes it
wound along a harbor shore and passed by a little cluster of weather-gray
fishing huts; again it mounted to hills whence a far sweep of curving upland or
misty-blue sky could be seen; but wherever it went there was much of interest
to discuss. It was almost noon when they reached town and found their way to
“Beechwood.” It was quite a fine old mansion, set back from the
street in a seclusion of green elms and branching beeches. Miss Barry met them
at the door with a twinkle in her sharp black eyes.
“So you’ve come to see me at last, you Anne-girl,” she said.
“Mercy, child, how you have grown! You’re taller than I am, I
declare. And you’re ever so much better looking than you used to be, too.
But I dare say you know that without being told.”
“Indeed I didn’t,” said Anne radiantly. “I know
I’m not so freckled as I used to be, so I’ve much to be thankful
for, but I really hadn’t dared to hope there was any other improvement.
I’m so glad you think there is, Miss Barry.” Miss Barry’s
house was furnished with “great magnificence,” as Anne told Marilla
afterward. The two little country girls were rather abashed by the splendor of
the parlor where Miss Barry left them when she went to see about dinner.
“Isn’t it just like a palace?” whispered Diana. “I
never was in Aunt Josephine’s house before, and I’d no idea it was
so grand. I just wish Julia Bell could see this—she puts on such airs
about her mother’s parlor.”
“Velvet carpet,” sighed Anne luxuriously, “and silk curtains!
I’ve dreamed of such things, Diana. But do you know I don’t believe
I feel very comfortable with them after all. There are so many things in this
room and all so splendid that there is no scope for imagination. That is one
consolation when you are poor—there are so many more things you can
imagine about.”
Their sojourn in town was something that Anne and Diana dated from for years.
From first to last it was crowded with delights.
On Wednesday Miss Barry took them to the Exhibition grounds and kept them there
all day.
“It was splendid,” Anne related to Marilla later on. “I never
imagined anything so interesting. I don’t really know which department
was the most interesting. I think I liked the horses and the flowers and the
fancywork best. Josie Pye took first prize for knitted lace. I was real glad
she did. And I was glad that I felt glad, for it shows I’m improving,
don’t you think, Marilla, when I can rejoice in Josie’s success?
Mr. Harmon Andrews took second prize for Gravenstein apples and Mr. Bell took
first prize for a pig. Diana said she thought it was ridiculous for a
Sunday-school superintendent to take a prize in pigs, but I don’t see
why. Do you? She said she would always think of it after this when he was
praying so solemnly. Clara Louise MacPherson took a prize for painting, and
Mrs. Lynde got first prize for homemade butter and cheese. So Avonlea was
pretty well represented, wasn’t it? Mrs. Lynde was there that day, and I
never knew how much I really liked her until I saw her familiar face among all
those strangers. There were thousands of people there, Marilla. It made me feel
dreadfully insignificant. And Miss Barry took us up to the grandstand to see
the horse races. Mrs. Lynde wouldn’t go; she said horse racing was an
abomination and, she being a church member, thought it her bounden duty to set
a good example by staying away. But there were so many there I don’t
believe Mrs. Lynde’s absence would ever be noticed. I don’t think,
though, that I ought to go very often to horse races, because they
awfully fascinating. Diana got so excited that she offered to bet me ten cents
that the red horse would win. I didn’t believe he would, but I refused to
bet, because I wanted to tell Mrs. Allan all about everything, and I felt sure
it wouldn’t do to tell her that. It’s always wrong to do anything
you can’t tell the minister’s wife. It’s as good as an extra
conscience to have a minister’s wife for your friend. And I was very glad
I didn’t bet, because the red horse win, and I would have lost
ten cents. So you see that virtue was its own reward. We saw a man go up in a
balloon. I’d love to go up in a balloon, Marilla; it would be simply
thrilling; and we saw a man selling fortunes. You paid him ten cents and a
little bird picked out your fortune for you. Miss Barry gave Diana and me ten
cents each to have our fortunes told. Mine was that I would marry a
dark-complected man who was very wealthy, and I would go across water to live.
I looked carefully at all the dark men I saw after that, but I didn’t
care much for any of them, and anyhow I suppose it’s too early to be
looking out for him yet. Oh, it was a never-to-be-forgotten day, Marilla. I was
so tired I couldn’t sleep at night. Miss Barry put us in the spare room,
according to promise. It was an elegant room, Marilla, but somehow sleeping in
a spare room isn’t what I used to think it was. That’s the worst of
growing up, and I’m beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so
much when you were a child don’t seem half so wonderful to you when you
get them.”
Thursday the girls had a drive in the park, and in the evening Miss Barry took
them to a concert in the Academy of Music, where a noted prima donna was to
sing. To Anne the evening was a glittering vision of delight.
“Oh, Marilla, it was beyond description. I was so excited I
couldn’t even talk, so you may know what it was like. I just sat in
enraptured silence. Madame Selitsky was perfectly beautiful, and wore white
satin and diamonds. But when she began to sing I never thought about anything
else. Oh, I can’t tell you how I felt. But it seemed to me that it could
never be hard to be good any more. I felt like I do when I look up to the
stars. Tears came into my eyes, but, oh, they were such happy tears. I was so
sorry when it was all over, and I told Miss Barry I didn’t see how I was
ever to return to common life again. She said she thought if we went over to
the restaurant across the street and had an ice cream it might help me. That
sounded so prosaic; but to my surprise I found it true. The ice cream was
delicious, Marilla, and it was so lovely and dissipated to be sitting there
eating it at eleven o’clock at night. Diana said she believed she was
born for city life. Miss Barry asked me what my opinion was, but I said I would
have to think it over very seriously before I could tell her what I really
thought. So I thought it over after I went to bed. That is the best time to
think things out. And I came to the conclusion, Marilla, that I wasn’t
born for city life and that I was glad of it. It’s nice to be eating ice
cream at brilliant restaurants at eleven o’clock at night once in a
while; but as a regular thing I’d rather be in the east gable at eleven,
sound asleep, but kind of knowing even in my sleep that the stars were shining
outside and that the wind was blowing in the firs across the brook. I told Miss
Barry so at breakfast the next morning and she laughed. Miss Barry generally
laughed at anything I said, even when I said the most solemn things. I
don’t think I liked it, Marilla, because I wasn’t trying to be
funny. But she is a most hospitable lady and treated us royally.”
Friday brought going-home time, and Mr. Barry drove in for the girls.
“Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves,” said Miss Barry, as
she bade them good-bye.
“Indeed we have,” said Diana.
“And you, Anne-girl?”
“I’ve enjoyed every minute of the time,” said Anne, throwing
her arms impulsively about the old woman’s neck and kissing her wrinkled
cheek. Diana would never have dared to do such a thing and felt rather aghast
at Anne’s freedom. But Miss Barry was pleased, and she stood on her
veranda and watched the buggy out of sight. Then she went back into her big
house with a sigh. It seemed very lonely, lacking those fresh young lives. Miss
Barry was a rather selfish old lady, if the truth must be told, and had never
cared much for anybody but herself. She valued people only as they were of
service to her or amused her. Anne had amused her, and consequently stood high
in the old lady’s good graces. But Miss Barry found herself thinking less
about Anne’s quaint speeches than of her fresh enthusiasms, her
transparent emotions, her little winning ways, and the sweetness of her eyes
and lips.
“I thought Marilla Cuthbert was an old fool when I heard she’d
adopted a girl out of an orphan asylum,” she said to herself, “but
I guess she didn’t make much of a mistake after all. If I’d a child
like Anne in the house all the time I’d be a better and happier
woman.”
Anne and Diana found the drive home as pleasant as the drive
in—pleasanter, indeed, since there was the delightful consciousness of
home waiting at the end of it. It was sunset when they passed through White
Sands and turned into the shore road. Beyond, the Avonlea hills came out darkly
against the saffron sky. Behind them the moon was rising out of the sea that
grew all radiant and transfigured in her light. Every little cove along the
curving road was a marvel of dancing ripples. The waves broke with a soft swish
on the rocks below them, and the tang of the sea was in the strong, fresh air.
“Oh, but it’s good to be alive and to be going home,”
breathed Anne.
When she crossed the log bridge over the brook the kitchen light of Green
Gables winked her a friendly welcome back, and through the open door shone the
hearth fire, sending out its warm red glow athwart the chilly autumn night.
Anne ran blithely up the hill and into the kitchen, where a hot supper was
waiting on the table.
“So you’ve got back?” said Marilla, folding up her knitting.
“Yes, and oh, it’s so good to be back,” said Anne joyously.
“I could kiss everything, even to the clock. Marilla, a broiled chicken!
You don’t mean to say you cooked that for me!”
“Yes, I did,” said Marilla. “I thought you’d be hungry
after such a drive and need something real appetizing. Hurry and take off your
things, and we’ll have supper as soon as Matthew comes in. I’m glad
you’ve got back, I must say. It’s been fearful lonesome here
without you, and I never put in four longer days.”
After supper Anne sat before the fire between Matthew and Marilla, and gave
them a full account of her visit.
“I’ve had a splendid time,” she concluded happily, “and
I feel that it marks an epoch in my life. But the best of it all was the coming
home.”
CHAPTER XXX.
The Queens Class Is Organized
MARILLA laid her
knitting on her lap and leaned back in her chair. Her eyes were tired, and she
thought vaguely that she must see about having her glasses changed the next
time she went to town, for her eyes had grown tired very often of late.
It was nearly dark, for the full November twilight had fallen around Green
Gables, and the only light in the kitchen came from the dancing red flames in
the stove.
Anne was curled up Turk-fashion on the hearthrug, gazing into that joyous glow
where the sunshine of a hundred summers was being distilled from the maple
cordwood. She had been reading, but her book had slipped to the floor, and now
she was dreaming, with a smile on her parted lips. Glittering castles in Spain
were shaping themselves out of the mists and rainbows of her lively fancy;
adventures wonderful and enthralling were happening to her in
cloudland—adventures that always turned out triumphantly and never
involved her in scrapes like those of actual life.
Marilla looked at her with a tenderness that would never have been suffered to
reveal itself in any clearer light than that soft mingling of fireshine and
shadow. The lesson of a love that should display itself easily in spoken word
and open look was one Marilla could never learn. But she had learned to love
this slim, gray-eyed girl with an affection all the deeper and stronger from
its very undemonstrativeness. Her love made her afraid of being unduly
indulgent, indeed. She had an uneasy feeling that it was rather sinful to set
one’s heart so intensely on any human creature as she had set hers on
Anne, and perhaps she performed a sort of unconscious penance for this by being
stricter and more critical than if the girl had been less dear to her.
Certainly Anne herself had no idea how Marilla loved her. She sometimes thought
wistfully that Marilla was very hard to please and distinctly lacking in
sympathy and understanding. But she always checked the thought reproachfully,
remembering what she owed to Marilla.
“Anne,” said Marilla abruptly, “Miss Stacy was here this
afternoon when you were out with Diana.”
Anne came back from her other world with a start and a sigh.
“Was she? Oh, I’m so sorry I wasn’t in. Why didn’t you
call me, Marilla? Diana and I were only over in the Haunted Wood. It’s
lovely in the woods now. All the little wood things—the ferns and the
satin leaves and the crackerberries—have gone to sleep, just as if
somebody had tucked them away until spring under a blanket of leaves. I think
it was a little gray fairy with a rainbow scarf that came tiptoeing along the
last moonlight night and did it. Diana wouldn’t say much about that,
though. Diana has never forgotten the scolding her mother gave her about
imagining ghosts into the Haunted Wood. It had a very bad effect on
Diana’s imagination. It blighted it. Mrs. Lynde says Myrtle Bell is a
blighted being. I asked Ruby Gillis why Myrtle was blighted, and Ruby said she
guessed it was because her young man had gone back on her. Ruby Gillis thinks
of nothing but young men, and the older she gets the worse she is. Young men
are all very well in their place, but it doesn’t do to drag them into
everything, does it? Diana and I are thinking seriously of promising each other
that we will never marry but be nice old maids and live together forever. Diana
hasn’t quite made up her mind though, because she thinks perhaps it would
be nobler to marry some wild, dashing, wicked young man and reform him. Diana
and I talk a great deal about serious subjects now, you know. We feel that we
are so much older than we used to be that it isn’t becoming to talk of
childish matters. It’s such a solemn thing to be almost fourteen,
Marilla. Miss Stacy took all us girls who are in our teens down to the brook
last Wednesday, and talked to us about it. She said we couldn’t be too
careful what habits we formed and what ideals we acquired in our teens, because
by the time we were twenty our characters would be developed and the foundation
laid for our whole future life. And she said if the foundation was shaky we
could never build anything really worth while on it. Diana and I talked the
matter over coming home from school. We felt extremely solemn, Marilla. And we
decided that we would try to be very careful indeed and form respectable habits
and learn all we could and be as sensible as possible, so that by the time we
were twenty our characters would be properly developed. It’s perfectly
appalling to think of being twenty, Marilla. It sounds so fearfully old and
grown up. But why was Miss Stacy here this afternoon?”
“That is what I want to tell you, Anne, if you’ll ever give me a
chance to get a word in edgewise. She was talking about you.”
“About me?” Anne looked rather scared. Then she flushed and
exclaimed:
“Oh, I know what she was saying. I meant to tell you, Marilla, honestly I
did, but I forgot. Miss Stacy caught me reading Ben Hur in school yesterday
afternoon when I should have been studying my Canadian history. Jane Andrews
lent it to me. I was reading it at dinner hour, and I had just got to the
chariot race when school went in. I was simply wild to know how it turned
out—although I felt sure Ben Hur must win, because it wouldn’t be
poetical justice if he didn’t—so I spread the history open on my
desk lid and then tucked Ben Hur between the desk and my knee. I just looked as
if I were studying Canadian history, you know, while all the while I was
reveling in Ben Hur. I was so interested in it that I never noticed Miss Stacy
coming down the aisle until all at once I just looked up and there she was
looking down at me, so reproachful-like. I can’t tell you how ashamed I
felt, Marilla, especially when I heard Josie Pye giggling. Miss Stacy took Ben
Hur away, but she never said a word then. She kept me in at recess and talked
to me. She said I had done very wrong in two respects. First, I was wasting the
time I ought to have put on my studies; and secondly, I was deceiving my
teacher in trying to make it appear I was reading a history when it was a
storybook instead. I had never realized until that moment, Marilla, that what I
was doing was deceitful. I was shocked. I cried bitterly, and asked Miss Stacy
to forgive me and I’d never do such a thing again; and I offered to do
penance by never so much as looking at Ben Hur for a whole week, not even to
see how the chariot race turned out. But Miss Stacy said she wouldn’t
require that, and she forgave me freely. So I think it wasn’t very kind
of her to come up here to you about it after all.”
“Miss Stacy never mentioned such a thing to me, Anne, and its only your
guilty conscience that’s the matter with you. You have no business to be
taking storybooks to school. You read too many novels anyhow. When I was a girl
I wasn’t so much as allowed to look at a novel.”
“Oh, how can you call Ben Hur a novel when it’s really such a
religious book?” protested Anne. “Of course it’s a little too
exciting to be proper reading for Sunday, and I only read it on weekdays. And I
never read book now unless either Miss Stacy or Mrs. Allan thinks it
is a proper book for a girl thirteen and three-quarters to read. Miss Stacy
made me promise that. She found me reading a book one day called, The Lurid
Mystery of the Haunted Hall. It was one Ruby Gillis had lent me, and, oh,
Marilla, it was so fascinating and creepy. It just curdled the blood in my
veins. But Miss Stacy said it was a very silly, unwholesome book, and she asked
me not to read any more of it or any like it. I didn’t mind promising not
to read any more like it, but it was to give back that book
without knowing how it turned out. But my love for Miss Stacy stood the test
and I did. It’s really wonderful, Marilla, what you can do when
you’re truly anxious to please a certain person.”
“Well, I guess I’ll light the lamp and get to work,” said
Marilla. “I see plainly that you don’t want to hear what Miss Stacy
had to say. You’re more interested in the sound of your own tongue than
in anything else.”
“Oh, indeed, Marilla, I do want to hear it,” cried Anne contritely.
“I won’t say another word—not one. I know I talk too much,
but I am really trying to overcome it, and although I say far too much, yet if
you only knew how many things I want to say and don’t, you’d give
me some credit for it. Please tell me, Marilla.”
“Well, Miss Stacy wants to organize a class among her advanced students
who mean to study for the entrance examination into Queen’s. She intends
to give them extra lessons for an hour after school. And she came to ask
Matthew and me if we would like to have you join it. What do you think about it
yourself, Anne? Would you like to go to Queen’s and pass for a
teacher?”
“Oh, Marilla!” Anne straightened to her knees and clasped her
hands. “It’s been the dream of my life—that is, for the last
six months, ever since Ruby and Jane began to talk of studying for the
Entrance. But I didn’t say anything about it, because I supposed it would
be perfectly useless. I’d love to be a teacher. But won’t it be
dreadfully expensive? Mr. Andrews says it cost him one hundred and fifty
dollars to put Prissy through, and Prissy wasn’t a dunce in
geometry.”
“I guess you needn’t worry about that part of it. When Matthew and
I took you to bring up we resolved we would do the best we could for you and
give you a good education. I believe in a girl being fitted to earn her own
living whether she ever has to or not. You’ll always have a home at Green
Gables as long as Matthew and I are here, but nobody knows what is going to
happen in this uncertain world, and it’s just as well to be prepared. So
you can join the Queen’s class if you like, Anne.”
“Oh, Marilla, thank you.” Anne flung her arms about Marilla’s
waist and looked up earnestly into her face. “I’m extremely
grateful to you and Matthew. And I’ll study as hard as I can and do my
very best to be a credit to you. I warn you not to expect much in geometry, but
I think I can hold my own in anything else if I work hard.”
“I dare say you’ll get along well enough. Miss Stacy says you are
bright and diligent.” Not for worlds would Marilla have told Anne just
what Miss Stacy had said about her; that would have been to pamper vanity.
“You needn’t rush to any extreme of killing yourself over your
books. There is no hurry. You won’t be ready to try the Entrance for a
year and a half yet. But it’s well to begin in time and be thoroughly
grounded, Miss Stacy says.”
“I shall take more interest than ever in my studies now,” said Anne
blissfully, “because I have a purpose in life. Mr. Allan says everybody
should have a purpose in life and pursue it faithfully. Only he says we must
first make sure that it is a worthy purpose. I would call it a worthy purpose
to want to be a teacher like Miss Stacy, wouldn’t you, Marilla? I think
it’s a very noble profession.”
The Queen’s class was organized in due time. Gilbert Blythe, Anne
Shirley, Ruby Gillis, Jane Andrews, Josie Pye, Charlie Sloane, and Moody
Spurgeon MacPherson joined it. Diana Barry did not, as her parents did not
intend to send her to Queen’s. This seemed nothing short of a calamity to
Anne. Never, since the night on which Minnie May had had the croup, had she and
Diana been separated in anything. On the evening when the Queen’s class
first remained in school for the extra lessons and Anne saw Diana go slowly out
with the others, to walk home alone through the Birch Path and Violet Vale, it
was all the former could do to keep her seat and refrain from rushing
impulsively after her chum. A lump came into her throat, and she hastily
retired behind the pages of her uplifted Latin grammar to hide the tears in her
eyes. Not for worlds would Anne have had Gilbert Blythe or Josie Pye see those
tears.
“But, oh, Marilla, I really felt that I had tasted the bitterness of
death, as Mr. Allan said in his sermon last Sunday, when I saw Diana go out
alone,” she said mournfully that night. “I thought how splendid it
would have been if Diana had only been going to study for the Entrance, too.
But we can’t have things perfect in this imperfect world, as Mrs. Lynde
says. Mrs. Lynde isn’t exactly a comforting person sometimes, but
there’s no doubt she says a great many very true things. And I think the
Queen’s class is going to be extremely interesting. Jane and Ruby are
just going to study to be teachers. That is the height of their ambition. Ruby
says she will only teach for two years after she gets through, and then she
intends to be married. Jane says she will devote her whole life to teaching,
and never, never marry, because you are paid a salary for teaching, but a
husband won’t pay you anything, and growls if you ask for a share in the
egg and butter money. I expect Jane speaks from mournful experience, for Mrs.
Lynde says that her father is a perfect old crank, and meaner than second
skimmings. Josie Pye says she is just going to college for education’s
sake, because she won’t have to earn her own living; she says of course
it is different with orphans who are living on charity— have
to hustle. Moody Spurgeon is going to be a minister. Mrs. Lynde says he
couldn’t be anything else with a name like that to live up to. I hope it
isn’t wicked of me, Marilla, but really the thought of Moody Spurgeon
being a minister makes me laugh. He’s such a funny-looking boy with that
big fat face, and his little blue eyes, and his ears sticking out like flaps.
But perhaps he will be more intellectual looking when he grows up. Charlie
Sloane says he’s going to go into politics and be a member of Parliament,
but Mrs. Lynde says he’ll never succeed at that, because the Sloanes are
all honest people, and it’s only rascals that get on in politics
nowadays.”
“What is Gilbert Blythe going to be?” queried Marilla, seeing that
Anne was opening her Cæsar.
“I don’t happen to know what Gilbert Blythe’s ambition in
life is—if he has any,” said Anne scornfully.
There was open rivalry between Gilbert and Anne now. Previously the rivalry had
been rather one-sided, but there was no longer any doubt that Gilbert was as
determined to be first in class as Anne was. He was a foeman worthy of her
steel. The other members of the class tacitly acknowledged their superiority,
and never dreamed of trying to compete with them.
Since the day by the pond when she had refused to listen to his plea for
forgiveness, Gilbert, save for the aforesaid determined rivalry, had evinced no
recognition whatever of the existence of Anne Shirley. He talked and jested
with the other girls, exchanged books and puzzles with them, discussed lessons
and plans, sometimes walked home with one or the other of them from prayer
meeting or Debating Club. But Anne Shirley he simply ignored, and Anne found
out that it is not pleasant to be ignored. It was in vain that she told herself
with a toss of her head that she did not care. Deep down in her wayward,
feminine little heart she knew that she did care, and that if she had that
chance of the Lake of Shining Waters again she would answer very differently.
All at once, as it seemed, and to her secret dismay, she found that the old
resentment she had cherished against him was gone—gone just when she most
needed its sustaining power. It was in vain that she recalled every incident
and emotion of that memorable occasion and tried to feel the old satisfying
anger. That day by the pond had witnessed its last spasmodic flicker. Anne
realized that she had forgiven and forgotten without knowing it. But it was too
late.
And at least neither Gilbert nor anybody else, not even Diana, should ever
suspect how sorry she was and how much she wished she hadn’t been so
proud and horrid! She determined to “shroud her feelings in deepest
oblivion,” and it may be stated here and now that she did it, so
successfully that Gilbert, who possibly was not quite so indifferent as he
seemed, could not console himself with any belief that Anne felt his
retaliatory scorn. The only poor comfort he had was that she snubbed Charlie
Sloane, unmercifully, continually, and undeservedly.
Otherwise the winter passed away in a round of pleasant duties and studies. For
Anne the days slipped by like golden beads on the necklace of the year. She was
happy, eager, interested; there were lessons to be learned and honor to be won;
delightful books to read; new pieces to be practiced for the Sunday-school
choir; pleasant Saturday afternoons at the manse with Mrs. Allan; and then,
almost before Anne realized it, spring had come again to Green Gables and all
the world was abloom once more.
Studies palled just a wee bit then; the Queen’s class, left behind in
school while the others scattered to green lanes and leafy wood cuts and meadow
byways, looked wistfully out of the windows and discovered that Latin verbs and
French exercises had somehow lost the tang and zest they had possessed in the
crisp winter months. Even Anne and Gilbert lagged and grew indifferent. Teacher
and taught were alike glad when the term was ended and the glad vacation days
stretched rosily before them.
“But you’ve done good work this past year,” Miss Stacy told
them on the last evening, “and you deserve a good, jolly vacation. Have
the best time you can in the out-of-door world and lay in a good stock of
health and vitality and ambition to carry you through next year. It will be the
tug of war, you know—the last year before the Entrance.”
“Are you going to be back next year, Miss Stacy?” asked Josie Pye.
Josie Pye never scrupled to ask questions; in this instance the rest of the
class felt grateful to her; none of them would have dared to ask it of Miss
Stacy, but all wanted to, for there had been alarming rumors running at large
through the school for some time that Miss Stacy was not coming back the next
year—that she had been offered a position in the grade school of her own
home district and meant to accept. The Queen’s class listened in
breathless suspense for her answer.
“Yes, I think I will,” said Miss Stacy. “I thought of taking
another school, but I have decided to come back to Avonlea. To tell the truth,
I’ve grown so interested in my pupils here that I found I couldn’t
leave them. So I’ll stay and see you through.”
“Hurrah!” said Moody Spurgeon. Moody Spurgeon had never been so
carried away by his feelings before, and he blushed uncomfortably every time he
thought about it for a week.
“Oh, I’m so glad,” said Anne, with shining eyes. “Dear
Stacy, it would be perfectly dreadful if you didn’t come back. I
don’t believe I could have the heart to go on with my studies at all if
another teacher came here.”
When Anne got home that night she stacked all her textbooks away in an old
trunk in the attic, locked it, and threw the key into the blanket box.
“I’m not even going to look at a schoolbook in vacation,” she
told Marilla. “I’ve studied as hard all the term as I possibly
could and I’ve pored over that geometry until I know every proposition in
the first book off by heart, even when the letters changed. I just
feel tired of everything sensible and I’m going to let my imagination run
riot for the summer. Oh, you needn’t be alarmed, Marilla. I’ll only
let it run riot within reasonable limits. But I want to have a real good jolly
time this summer, for maybe it’s the last summer I’ll be a little
girl. Mrs. Lynde says that if I keep stretching out next year as I’ve
done this I’ll have to put on longer skirts. She says I’m all
running to legs and eyes. And when I put on longer skirts I shall feel that I
have to live up to them and be very dignified. It won’t even do to
believe in fairies then, I’m afraid; so I’m going to believe in
them with all my whole heart this summer. I think we’re going to have a
very gay vacation. Ruby Gillis is going to have a birthday party soon and
there’s the Sunday school picnic and the missionary concert next month.
And Mr. Barry says that some evening he’ll take Diana and me over to the
White Sands Hotel and have dinner there. They have dinner there in the evening,
you know. Jane Andrews was over once last summer and she says it was a dazzling
sight to see the electric lights and the flowers and all the lady guests in
such beautiful dresses. Jane says it was her first glimpse into high life and
she’ll never forget it to her dying day.”
Mrs. Lynde came up the next afternoon to find out why Marilla had not been at
the Aid meeting on Thursday. When Marilla was not at Aid meeting people knew
there was something wrong at Green Gables.
“Matthew had a bad spell with his heart Thursday,” Marilla
explained, “and I didn’t feel like leaving him. Oh, yes, he’s
all right again now, but he takes them spells oftener than he used to and
I’m anxious about him. The doctor says he must be careful to avoid
excitement. That’s easy enough, for Matthew doesn’t go about
looking for excitement by any means and never did, but he’s not to do any
very heavy work either and you might as well tell Matthew not to breathe as not
to work. Come and lay off your things, Rachel. You’ll stay to tea?”
“Well, seeing you’re so pressing, perhaps I might as well,
stay” said Mrs. Rachel, who had not the slightest intention of doing
anything else.
Mrs. Rachel and Marilla sat comfortably in the parlor while Anne got the tea
and made hot biscuits that were light and white enough to defy even Mrs.
Rachel’s criticism.
“I must say Anne has turned out a real smart girl,” admitted Mrs.
Rachel, as Marilla accompanied her to the end of the lane at sunset. “She
must be a great help to you.”
“She is,” said Marilla, “and she’s real steady and
reliable now. I used to be afraid she’d never get over her featherbrained
ways, but she has and I wouldn’t be afraid to trust her in anything
now.”
“I never would have thought she’d have turned out so well that
first day I was here three years ago,” said Mrs. Rachel. “Lawful
heart, shall I ever forget that tantrum of hers! When I went home that night I
says to Thomas, says I, ‘Mark my words, Thomas, Marilla Cuthbert
‘ll live to rue the step she’s took.’ But I was mistaken and
I’m real glad of it. I ain’t one of those kind of people, Marilla,
as can never be brought to own up that they’ve made a mistake. No, that
never was my way, thank goodness. I did make a mistake in judging Anne, but it
weren’t no wonder, for an odder, unexpecteder witch of a child there
never was in this world, that’s what. There was no ciphering her out by
the rules that worked with other children. It’s nothing short of
wonderful how she’s improved these three years, but especially in looks.
She’s a real pretty girl got to be, though I can’t say I’m
overly partial to that pale, big-eyed style myself. I like more snap and color,
like Diana Barry has or Ruby Gillis. Ruby Gillis’s looks are real showy.
But somehow—I don’t know how it is but when Anne and them are
together, though she ain’t half as handsome, she makes them look kind of
common and overdone—something like them white June lilies she calls
narcissus alongside of the big, red peonies, that’s what.”
CHAPTER XXXI.
Where the Brook and River Meet
ANNE had her
“good” summer and enjoyed it wholeheartedly. She and Diana fairly
lived outdoors, reveling in all the delights that Lover’s Lane and the
Dryad’s Bubble and Willowmere and Victoria Island afforded. Marilla
offered no objections to Anne’s gypsyings. The Spencervale doctor who had
come the night Minnie May had the croup met Anne at the house of a patient one
afternoon early in vacation, looked her over sharply, screwed up his mouth,
shook his head, and sent a message to Marilla Cuthbert by another person. It
was:
“Keep that redheaded girl of yours in the open air all summer and
don’t let her read books until she gets more spring into her step.”
This message frightened Marilla wholesomely. She read Anne’s death
warrant by consumption in it unless it was scrupulously obeyed. As a result,
Anne had the golden summer of her life as far as freedom and frolic went. She
walked, rowed, berried, and dreamed to her heart’s content; and when
September came she was bright-eyed and alert, with a step that would have
satisfied the Spencervale doctor and a heart full of ambition and zest once
more.
“I feel just like studying with might and main,” she declared as
she brought her books down from the attic. “Oh, you good old friends,
I’m glad to see your honest faces once more—yes, even you,
geometry. I’ve had a perfectly beautiful summer, Marilla, and now
I’m rejoicing as a strong man to run a race, as Mr. Allan said last
Sunday. Doesn’t Mr. Allan preach magnificent sermons? Mrs. Lynde says he
is improving every day and the first thing we know some city church will gobble
him up and then we’ll be left and have to turn to and break in another
green preacher. But I don’t see the use of meeting trouble halfway, do
you, Marilla? I think it would be better just to enjoy Mr. Allan while we have
him. If I were a man I think I’d be a minister. They can have such an
influence for good, if their theology is sound; and it must be thrilling to
preach splendid sermons and stir your hearers’ hearts. Why can’t
women be ministers, Marilla? I asked Mrs. Lynde that and she was shocked and
said it would be a scandalous thing. She said there might be female ministers
in the States and she believed there was, but thank goodness we hadn’t
got to that stage in Canada yet and she hoped we never would. But I don’t
see why. I think women would make splendid ministers. When there is a social to
be got up or a church tea or anything else to raise money the women have to
turn to and do the work. I’m sure Mrs. Lynde can pray every bit as well
as Superintendent Bell and I’ve no doubt she could preach too with a
little practice.”
“Yes, I believe she could,” said Marilla dryly. “She does
plenty of unofficial preaching as it is. Nobody has much of a chance to go
wrong in Avonlea with Rachel to oversee them.”
“Marilla,” said Anne in a burst of confidence, “I want to
tell you something and ask you what you think about it. It has worried me
terribly—on Sunday afternoons, that is, when I think specially about such
matters. I do really want to be good; and when I’m with you or Mrs. Allan
or Miss Stacy I want it more than ever and I want to do just what would please
you and what you would approve of. But mostly when I’m with Mrs. Lynde I
feel desperately wicked and as if I wanted to go and do the very thing she
tells me I oughtn’t to do. I feel irresistibly tempted to do it. Now,
what do you think is the reason I feel like that? Do you think it’s
because I’m really bad and unregenerate?”
Marilla looked dubious for a moment. Then she laughed.
“If you are I guess I am too, Anne, for Rachel often has that very effect
on me. I sometimes think she’d have more of an influence for good, as you
say yourself, if she didn’t keep nagging people to do right. There should
have been a special commandment against nagging. But there, I shouldn’t
talk so. Rachel is a good Christian woman and she means well. There isn’t
a kinder soul in Avonlea and she never shirks her share of work.”
“I’m very glad you feel the same,” said Anne decidedly.
“It’s so encouraging. I shan’t worry so much over that after
this. But I dare say there’ll be other things to worry me. They keep
coming up new all the time—things to perplex you, you know. You settle
one question and there’s another right after. There are so many things to
be thought over and decided when you’re beginning to grow up. It keeps me
busy all the time thinking them over and deciding what is right. It’s a
serious thing to grow up, isn’t it, Marilla? But when I have such good
friends as you and Matthew and Mrs. Allan and Miss Stacy I ought to grow up
successfully, and I’m sure it will be my own fault if I don’t. I
feel it’s a great responsibility because I have only the one chance. If I
don’t grow up right I can’t go back and begin over again.
I’ve grown two inches this summer, Marilla. Mr. Gillis measured me at
Ruby’s party. I’m so glad you made my new dresses longer. That
dark-green one is so pretty and it was sweet of you to put on the flounce. Of
course I know it wasn’t really necessary, but flounces are so stylish
this fall and Josie Pye has flounces on all her dresses. I know I’ll be
able to study better because of mine. I shall have such a comfortable feeling
deep down in my mind about that flounce.”
“It’s worth something to have that,” admitted Marilla.
Miss Stacy came back to Avonlea school and found all her pupils eager for work
once more. Especially did the Queen’s class gird up their loins for the
fray, for at the end of the coming year, dimly shadowing their pathway already,
loomed up that fateful thing known as “the Entrance,” at the
thought of which one and all felt their hearts sink into their very shoes.
Suppose they did not pass! That thought was doomed to haunt Anne through the
waking hours of that winter, Sunday afternoons inclusive, to the almost entire
exclusion of moral and theological problems. When Anne had bad dreams she found
herself staring miserably at pass lists of the Entrance exams, where Gilbert
Blythe’s name was blazoned at the top and in which hers did not appear at
all.
But it was a jolly, busy, happy swift-flying winter. Schoolwork was as
interesting, class rivalry as absorbing, as of yore. New worlds of thought,
feeling, and ambition, fresh, fascinating fields of unexplored knowledge seemed
to be opening out before Anne’s eager eyes.
“Hills peeped o’er hill and Alps on Alps arose.”
Much of all this was due to Miss Stacy’s tactful, careful, broadminded
guidance. She led her class to think and explore and discover for themselves
and encouraged straying from the old beaten paths to a degree that quite
shocked Mrs. Lynde and the school trustees, who viewed all innovations on
established methods rather dubiously.
Apart from her studies Anne expanded socially, for Marilla, mindful of the
Spencervale doctor’s dictum, no longer vetoed occasional outings. The
Debating Club flourished and gave several concerts; there were one or two
parties almost verging on grown-up affairs; there were sleigh drives and
skating frolics galore.
Between times Anne grew, shooting up so rapidly that Marilla was astonished one
day, when they were standing side by side, to find the girl was taller than
herself.
“Why, Anne, how you’ve grown!” she said, almost
unbelievingly. A sigh followed on the words. Marilla felt a queer regret over
Anne’s inches. The child she had learned to love had vanished somehow and
here was this tall, serious-eyed girl of fifteen, with the thoughtful brows and
the proudly poised little head, in her place. Marilla loved the girl as much as
she had loved the child, but she was conscious of a queer sorrowful sense of
loss. And that night, when Anne had gone to prayer meeting with Diana, Marilla
sat alone in the wintry twilight and indulged in the weakness of a cry.
Matthew, coming in with a lantern, caught her at it and gazed at her in such
consternation that Marilla had to laugh through her tears.
“I was thinking about Anne,” she explained. “She’s got
to be such a big girl—and she’ll probably be away from us next
winter. I’ll miss her terrible.”
“She’ll be able to come home often,” comforted Matthew, to
whom Anne was as yet and always would be the little, eager girl he had brought
home from Bright River on that June evening four years before. “The
branch railroad will be built to Carmody by that time.”
“It won’t be the same thing as having her here all the time,”
sighed Marilla gloomily, determined to enjoy her luxury of grief uncomforted.
“But there—men can’t understand these things!”
There were other changes in Anne no less real than the physical change. For one
thing, she became much quieter. Perhaps she thought all the more and dreamed as
much as ever, but she certainly talked less. Marilla noticed and commented on
this also.
“You don’t chatter half as much as you used to, Anne, nor use half
as many big words. What has come over you?”
Anne colored and laughed a little, as she dropped her book and looked dreamily
out of the window, where big fat red buds were bursting out on the creeper in
response to the lure of the spring sunshine.
“I don’t know—I don’t want to talk as much,” she
said, denting her chin thoughtfully with her forefinger. “It’s
nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one’s heart, like
treasures. I don’t like to have them laughed at or wondered over. And
somehow I don’t want to use big words any more. It’s almost a pity,
isn’t it, now that I’m really growing big enough to say them if I
did want to. It’s fun to be almost grown up in some ways, but it’s
not the kind of fun I expected, Marilla. There’s so much to learn and do
and think that there isn’t time for big words. Besides, Miss Stacy says
the short ones are much stronger and better. She makes us write all our essays
as simply as possible. It was hard at first. I was so used to crowding in all
the fine big words I could think of—and I thought of any number of them.
But I’ve got used to it now and I see it’s so much better.”
“What has become of your story club? I haven’t heard you speak of
it for a long time.”
“The story club isn’t in existence any longer. We hadn’t time
for it—and anyhow I think we had got tired of it. It was silly to be
writing about love and murder and elopements and mysteries. Miss Stacy
sometimes has us write a story for training in composition, but she won’t
let us write anything but what might happen in Avonlea in our own lives, and
she criticizes it very sharply and makes us criticize our own too. I never
thought my compositions had so many faults until I began to look for them
myself. I felt so ashamed I wanted to give up altogether, but Miss Stacy said I
could learn to write well if I only trained myself to be my own severest
critic. And so I am trying to.”
“You’ve only two more months before the Entrance,” said
Marilla. “Do you think you’ll be able to get through?”
Anne shivered.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’ll be all right—and
then I get horribly afraid. We’ve studied hard and Miss Stacy has drilled
us thoroughly, but we mayn’t get through for all that. We’ve each
got a stumbling block. Mine is geometry of course, and Jane’s is Latin,
and Ruby and Charlie’s is algebra, and Josie’s is arithmetic. Moody
Spurgeon says he feels it in his bones that he is going to fail in English
history. Miss Stacy is going to give us examinations in June just as hard as
we’ll have at the Entrance and mark us just as strictly, so we’ll
have some idea. I wish it was all over, Marilla. It haunts me. Sometimes I wake
up in the night and wonder what I’ll do if I don’t pass.”
“Why, go to school next year and try again,” said Marilla
unconcernedly.
“Oh, I don’t believe I’d have the heart for it. It would be
such a disgrace to fail, especially if Gil—if the others passed. And I
get so nervous in an examination that I’m likely to make a mess of it. I
wish I had nerves like Jane Andrews. Nothing rattles her.”
Anne sighed and, dragging her eyes from the witcheries of the spring world, the
beckoning day of breeze and blue, and the green things upspringing in the
garden, buried herself resolutely in her book. There would be other springs,
but if she did not succeed in passing the Entrance, Anne felt convinced that
she would never recover sufficiently to enjoy them.
CHAPTER XXXII.
The Pass List Is Out
WITH the end of June
came the close of the term and the close of Miss Stacy’s rule in Avonlea
school. Anne and Diana walked home that evening feeling very sober indeed. Red
eyes and damp handkerchiefs bore convincing testimony to the fact that Miss
Stacy’s farewell words must have been quite as touching as Mr.
Phillips’s had been under similar circumstances three years before. Diana
looked back at the schoolhouse from the foot of the spruce hill and sighed
deeply.
“It does seem as if it was the end of everything, doesn’t
it?” she said dismally.
“You oughtn’t to feel half as badly as I do,” said Anne,
hunting vainly for a dry spot on her handkerchief. “You’ll be back
again next winter, but I suppose I’ve left the dear old school
forever—if I have good luck, that is.”
“It won’t be a bit the same. Miss Stacy won’t be there, nor
you nor Jane nor Ruby probably. I shall have to sit all alone, for I
couldn’t bear to have another deskmate after you. Oh, we have had jolly
times, haven’t we, Anne? It’s dreadful to think they’re all
over.”
Two big tears rolled down by Diana’s nose.
“If you would stop crying I could,” said Anne imploringly.
“Just as soon as I put away my hanky I see you brimming up and that
starts me off again. As Mrs. Lynde says, ‘If you can’t be cheerful,
be as cheerful as you can.’ After all, I dare say I’ll be back next
year. This is one of the times I I’m not going to pass.
They’re getting alarmingly frequent.”
“Why, you came out splendidly in the exams Miss Stacy gave.”
“Yes, but those exams didn’t make me nervous. When I think of the
real thing you can’t imagine what a horrid cold fluttery feeling comes
round my heart. And then my number is thirteen and Josie Pye says it’s so
unlucky. I am superstitious and I know it can make no difference.
But still I wish it wasn’t thirteen.”
“I do wish I was going in with you,” said Diana.
“Wouldn’t we have a perfectly elegant time? But I suppose
you’ll have to cram in the evenings.”
“No; Miss Stacy has made us promise not to open a book at all. She says
it would only tire and confuse us and we are to go out walking and not think
about the exams at all and go to bed early. It’s good advice, but I
expect it will be hard to follow; good advice is apt to be, I think. Prissy
Andrews told me that she sat up half the night every night of her Entrance week
and crammed for dear life; and I had determined to sit up as
long as she did. It was so kind of your Aunt Josephine to ask me to stay at
Beechwood while I’m in town.”
“You’ll write to me while you’re in, won’t you?”
“I’ll write Tuesday night and tell you how the first day
goes,” promised Anne.
“I’ll be haunting the post office Wednesday,” vowed Diana.
Anne went to town the following Monday and on Wednesday Diana haunted the post
office, as agreed, and got her letter.
“Dearest Diana” [wrote Anne],
“Here it is Tuesday night and I’m writing this in the library at
Beechwood. Last night I was horribly lonesome all alone in my room and wished
so much you were with me. I couldn’t ‘cram’ because I’d
promised Miss Stacy not to, but it was as hard to keep from opening my history
as it used to be to keep from reading a story before my lessons were learned.
“This morning Miss Stacy came for me and we went to the Academy, calling
for Jane and Ruby and Josie on our way. Ruby asked me to feel her hands and
they were as cold as ice. Josie said I looked as if I hadn’t slept a wink
and she didn’t believe I was strong enough to stand the grind of the
teacher’s course even if I did get through. There are times and seasons
even yet when I don’t feel that I’ve made any great headway in
learning to like Josie Pye!
“When we reached the Academy there were scores of students there from all
over the Island. The first person we saw was Moody Spurgeon sitting on the
steps and muttering away to himself. Jane asked him what on earth he was doing
and he said he was repeating the multiplication table over and over to steady
his nerves and for pity’s sake not to interrupt him, because if he
stopped for a moment he got frightened and forgot everything he ever knew, but
the multiplication table kept all his facts firmly in their proper place!
“When we were assigned to our rooms Miss Stacy had to leave us. Jane and
I sat together and Jane was so composed that I envied her. No need of the
multiplication table for good, steady, sensible Jane! I wondered if I looked as
I felt and if they could hear my heart thumping clear across the room. Then a
man came in and began distributing the English examination sheets. My hands
grew cold then and my head fairly whirled around as I picked it up. Just one
awful moment—Diana, I felt exactly as I did four years ago when I asked
Marilla if I might stay at Green Gables—and then everything cleared up in
my mind and my heart began beating again—I forgot to say that it had
stopped altogether!—for I knew I could do something with
paper anyhow.
“At noon we went home for dinner and then back again for history in the
afternoon. The history was a pretty hard paper and I got dreadfully mixed up in
the dates. Still, I think I did fairly well today. But oh, Diana, tomorrow the
geometry exam comes off and when I think of it it takes every bit of
determination I possess to keep from opening my Euclid. If I thought the
multiplication table would help me any I would recite it from now till tomorrow
morning.
“I went down to see the other girls this evening. On my way I met Moody
Spurgeon wandering distractedly around. He said he knew he had failed in
history and he was born to be a disappointment to his parents and he was going
home on the morning train; and it would be easier to be a carpenter than a
minister, anyhow. I cheered him up and persuaded him to stay to the end because
it would be unfair to Miss Stacy if he didn’t. Sometimes I have wished I
was born a boy, but when I see Moody Spurgeon I’m always glad I’m a
girl and not his sister.
“Ruby was in hysterics when I reached their boardinghouse; she had just
discovered a fearful mistake she had made in her English paper. When she
recovered we went uptown and had an ice cream. How we wished you had been with
us.
“Oh, Diana, if only the geometry examination were over! But there, as
Mrs. Lynde would say, the sun will go on rising and setting whether I fail in
geometry or not. That is true but not especially comforting. I think I’d
rather it didn’t go on if I failed!
“Yours devotedly,
“Anne”
The geometry examination and all the others were over in due time and Anne
arrived home on Friday evening, rather tired but with an air of chastened
triumph about her. Diana was over at Green Gables when she arrived and they met
as if they had been parted for years.
“You old darling, it’s perfectly splendid to see you back again. It
seems like an age since you went to town and oh, Anne, how did you get
along?”
“Pretty well, I think, in everything but the geometry. I don’t know
whether I passed in it or not and I have a creepy, crawly presentiment that I
didn’t. Oh, how good it is to be back! Green Gables is the dearest,
loveliest spot in the world.”
“How did the others do?”
“The girls say they know they didn’t pass, but I think they did
pretty well. Josie says the geometry was so easy a child of ten could do it!
Moody Spurgeon still thinks he failed in history and Charlie says he failed in
algebra. But we don’t really know anything about it and won’t until
the pass list is out. That won’t be for a fortnight. Fancy living a
fortnight in such suspense! I wish I could go to sleep and never wake up until
it is over.”
Diana knew it would be useless to ask how Gilbert Blythe had fared, so she
merely said:
“Oh, you’ll pass all right. Don’t worry.”
“I’d rather not pass at all than not come out pretty well up on the
list,” flashed Anne, by which she meant—and Diana knew she
meant—that success would be incomplete and bitter if she did not come out
ahead of Gilbert Blythe.
With this end in view Anne had strained every nerve during the examinations. So
had Gilbert. They had met and passed each other on the street a dozen times
without any sign of recognition and every time Anne had held her head a little
higher and wished a little more earnestly that she had made friends with
Gilbert when he asked her, and vowed a little more determinedly to surpass him
in the examination. She knew that all Avonlea junior was wondering which would
come out first; she even knew that Jimmy Glover and Ned Wright had a bet on the
question and that Josie Pye had said there was no doubt in the world that
Gilbert would be first; and she felt that her humiliation would be unbearable
if she failed.
But she had another and nobler motive for wishing to do well. She wanted to
“pass high” for the sake of Matthew and Marilla—especially
Matthew. Matthew had declared to her his conviction that she “would beat
the whole Island.” That, Anne felt, was something it would be foolish to
hope for even in the wildest dreams. But she did hope fervently that she would
be among the first ten at least, so that she might see Matthew’s kindly
brown eyes gleam with pride in her achievement. That, she felt, would be a
sweet reward indeed for all her hard work and patient grubbing among
unimaginative equations and conjugations.
At the end of the fortnight Anne took to “haunting” the post office
also, in the distracted company of Jane, Ruby, and Josie, opening the
Charlottetown dailies with shaking hands and cold, sinkaway feelings as bad as
any experienced during the Entrance week. Charlie and Gilbert were not above
doing this too, but Moody Spurgeon stayed resolutely away.
“I haven’t got the grit to go there and look at a paper in cold
blood,” he told Anne. “I’m just going to wait until somebody
comes and tells me suddenly whether I’ve passed or not.”
When three weeks had gone by without the pass list appearing Anne began to feel
that she really couldn’t stand the strain much longer. Her appetite
failed and her interest in Avonlea doings languished. Mrs. Lynde wanted to know
what else you could expect with a Tory superintendent of education at the head
of affairs, and Matthew, noting Anne’s paleness and indifference and the
lagging steps that bore her home from the post office every afternoon, began
seriously to wonder if he hadn’t better vote Grit at the next election.
But one evening the news came. Anne was sitting at her open window, for the
time forgetful of the woes of examinations and the cares of the world, as she
drank in the beauty of the summer dusk, sweet-scented with flower breaths from
the garden below and sibilant and rustling from the stir of poplars. The
eastern sky above the firs was flushed faintly pink from the reflection of the
west, and Anne was wondering dreamily if the spirit of color looked like that,
when she saw Diana come flying down through the firs, over the log bridge, and
up the slope, with a fluttering newspaper in her hand.
Anne sprang to her feet, knowing at once what that paper contained. The pass
list was out! Her head whirled and her heart beat until it hurt her. She could
not move a step. It seemed an hour to her before Diana came rushing along the
hall and burst into the room without even knocking, so great was her
excitement.
“Anne, you’ve passed,” she cried, “passed the —you and Gilbert both—you’re ties—but your
name is first. Oh, I’m so proud!”
Diana flung the paper on the table and herself on Anne’s bed, utterly
breathless and incapable of further speech. Anne lighted the lamp, oversetting
the match safe and using up half a dozen matches before her shaking hands could
accomplish the task. Then she snatched up the paper. Yes, she had
passed—there was her name at the very top of a list of two hundred! That
moment was worth living for.
“You did just splendidly, Anne,” puffed Diana, recovering
sufficiently to sit up and speak, for Anne, starry eyed and rapt, had not
uttered a word. “Father brought the paper home from Bright River not ten
minutes ago—it came out on the afternoon train, you know, and won’t
be here till tomorrow by mail—and when I saw the pass list I just rushed
over like a wild thing. You’ve all passed, every one of you, Moody
Spurgeon and all, although he’s conditioned in history. Jane and Ruby did
pretty well—they’re halfway up—and so did Charlie. Josie just
scraped through with three marks to spare, but you’ll see she’ll
put on as many airs as if she’d led. Won’t Miss Stacy be delighted?
Oh, Anne, what does it feel like to see your name at the head of a pass list
like that? If it were me I know I’d go crazy with joy. I am pretty near
crazy as it is, but you’re as calm and cool as a spring evening.”
“I’m just dazzled inside,” said Anne. “I want to say a
hundred things, and I can’t find words to say them in. I never dreamed of
this—yes, I did too, just once! I let myself think ,
‘What if I should come out first?’ quakingly, you know, for it
seemed so vain and presumptuous to think I could lead the Island. Excuse me a
minute, Diana. I must run right out to the field to tell Matthew. Then
we’ll go up the road and tell the good news to the others.”
They hurried to the hayfield below the barn where Matthew was coiling hay, and,
as luck would have it, Mrs. Lynde was talking to Marilla at the lane fence.
“Oh, Matthew,” exclaimed Anne, “I’ve passed and
I’m first—or one of the first! I’m not vain, but I’m
thankful.”
“Well now, I always said it,” said Matthew, gazing at the pass list
delightedly. “I knew you could beat them all easy.”
“You’ve done pretty well, I must say, Anne,” said Marilla,
trying to hide her extreme pride in Anne from Mrs. Rachel’s critical eye.
But that good soul said heartily:
“I just guess she has done well, and far be it from me to be backward in
saying it. You’re a credit to your friends, Anne, that’s what, and
we’re all proud of you.”
That night Anne, who had wound up the delightful evening with a serious little
talk with Mrs. Allan at the manse, knelt sweetly by her open window in a great
sheen of moonshine and murmured a prayer of gratitude and aspiration that came
straight from her heart. There was in it thankfulness for the past and reverent
petition for the future; and when she slept on her white pillow her dreams were
as fair and bright and beautiful as maidenhood might desire.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
The Hotel Concert
PUT on your white
organdy, by all means, Anne,” advised Diana decidedly.
They were together in the east gable chamber; outside it was only
twilight—a lovely yellowish-green twilight with a clear-blue cloudless
sky. A big round moon, slowly deepening from her pallid luster into burnished
silver, hung over the Haunted Wood; the air was full of sweet summer
sounds—sleepy birds twittering, freakish breezes, faraway voices and
laughter. But in Anne’s room the blind was drawn and the lamp lighted,
for an important toilet was being made.
The east gable was a very different place from what it had been on that night
four years before, when Anne had felt its bareness penetrate to the marrow of
her spirit with its inhospitable chill. Changes had crept in, Marilla conniving
at them resignedly, until it was as sweet and dainty a nest as a young girl
could desire.
The velvet carpet with the pink roses and the pink silk curtains of
Anne’s early visions had certainly never materialized; but her dreams had
kept pace with her growth, and it is not probable she lamented them. The floor
was covered with a pretty matting, and the curtains that softened the high
window and fluttered in the vagrant breezes were of pale-green art muslin. The
walls, hung not with gold and silver brocade tapestry, but with a dainty
apple-blossom paper, were adorned with a few good pictures given Anne by Mrs.
Allan. Miss Stacy’s photograph occupied the place of honor, and Anne made
a sentimental point of keeping fresh flowers on the bracket under it. Tonight a
spike of white lilies faintly perfumed the room like the dream of a fragrance.
There was no “mahogany furniture,” but there was a white-painted
bookcase filled with books, a cushioned wicker rocker, a toilet table befrilled
with white muslin, a quaint, gilt-framed mirror with chubby pink Cupids and
purple grapes painted over its arched top, that used to hang in the spare room,
and a low white bed.
Anne was dressing for a concert at the White Sands Hotel. The guests had got it
up in aid of the Charlottetown hospital, and had hunted out all the available
amateur talent in the surrounding districts to help it along. Bertha Sampson
and Pearl Clay of the White Sands Baptist choir had been asked to sing a duet;
Milton Clark of Newbridge was to give a violin solo; Winnie Adella Blair of
Carmody was to sing a Scotch ballad; and Laura Spencer of Spencervale and Anne
Shirley of Avonlea were to recite.
As Anne would have said at one time, it was “an epoch in her life,”
and she was deliciously athrill with the excitement of it. Matthew was in the
seventh heaven of gratified pride over the honor conferred on his Anne and
Marilla was not far behind, although she would have died rather than admit it,
and said she didn’t think it was very proper for a lot of young folks to
be gadding over to the hotel without any responsible person with them.
Anne and Diana were to drive over with Jane Andrews and her brother Billy in
their double-seated buggy; and several other Avonlea girls and boys were going
too. There was a party of visitors expected out from town, and after the
concert a supper was to be given to the performers.
“Do you really think the organdy will be best?” queried Anne
anxiously. “I don’t think it’s as pretty as my blue-flowered
muslin—and it certainly isn’t so fashionable.”
“But it suits you ever so much better,” said Diana.
“It’s so soft and frilly and clinging. The muslin is stiff, and
makes you look too dressed up. But the organdy seems as if it grew on
you.”
Anne sighed and yielded. Diana was beginning to have a reputation for notable
taste in dressing, and her advice on such subjects was much sought after. She
was looking very pretty herself on this particular night in a dress of the
lovely wild-rose pink, from which Anne was forever debarred; but she was not to
take any part in the concert, so her appearance was of minor importance. All
her pains were bestowed upon Anne, who, she vowed, must, for the credit of
Avonlea, be dressed and combed and adorned to the Queen’s taste.
“Pull out that frill a little more—so; here, let me tie your sash;
now for your slippers. I’m going to braid your hair in two thick braids,
and tie them halfway up with big white bows—no, don’t pull out a
single curl over your forehead—just have the soft part. There is no way
you do your hair suits you so well, Anne, and Mrs. Allan says you look like a
Madonna when you part it so. I shall fasten this little white house rose just
behind your ear. There was just one on my bush, and I saved it for you.”
“Shall I put my pearl beads on?” asked Anne. “Matthew brought
me a string from town last week, and I know he’d like to see them on
me.”
Diana pursed up her lips, put her black head on one side critically, and
finally pronounced in favor of the beads, which were thereupon tied around
Anne’s slim milk-white throat.
“There’s something so stylish about you, Anne,” said Diana,
with unenvious admiration. “You hold your head with such an air. I
suppose it’s your figure. I am just a dumpling. I’ve always been
afraid of it, and now I know it is so. Well, I suppose I shall just have to
resign myself to it.”
“But you have such dimples,” said Anne, smiling affectionately into
the pretty, vivacious face so near her own. “Lovely dimples, like little
dents in cream. I have given up all hope of dimples. My dimple-dream will never
come true; but so many of my dreams have that I mustn’t complain. Am I
all ready now?”
“All ready,” assured Diana, as Marilla appeared in the doorway, a
gaunt figure with grayer hair than of yore and no fewer angles, but with a much
softer face. “Come right in and look at our elocutionist, Marilla.
Doesn’t she look lovely?”
Marilla emitted a sound between a sniff and a grunt.
“She looks neat and proper. I like that way of fixing her hair. But I
expect she’ll ruin that dress driving over there in the dust and dew with
it, and it looks most too thin for these damp nights. Organdy’s the most
unserviceable stuff in the world anyhow, and I told Matthew so when he got it.
But there is no use in saying anything to Matthew nowadays. Time was when he
would take my advice, but now he just buys things for Anne regardless, and the
clerks at Carmody know they can palm anything off on him. Just let them tell
him a thing is pretty and fashionable, and Matthew plunks his money down for
it. Mind you keep your skirt clear of the wheel, Anne, and put your warm jacket
on.”
Then Marilla stalked downstairs, thinking proudly how sweet Anne looked, with
that
“One moonbeam from the forehead to the crown”
and regretting that she could not go to the concert herself to hear her girl
recite.
“I wonder if it too damp for my dress,” said Anne
anxiously.
“Not a bit of it,” said Diana, pulling up the window blind.
“It’s a perfect night, and there won’t be any dew. Look at
the moonlight.”
“I’m so glad my window looks east into the sun rising,” said
Anne, going over to Diana. “It’s so splendid to see the morning
coming up over those long hills and glowing through those sharp fir tops.
It’s new every morning, and I feel as if I washed my very soul in that
bath of earliest sunshine. Oh, Diana, I love this little room so dearly. I
don’t know how I’ll get along without it when I go to town next
month.”
“Don’t speak of your going away tonight,” begged Diana.
“I don’t want to think of it, it makes me so miserable, and I do
want to have a good time this evening. What are you going to recite, Anne? And
are you nervous?”
“Not a bit. I’ve recited so often in public I don’t mind at
all now. I’ve decided to give ‘The Maiden’s Vow.’
It’s so pathetic. Laura Spencer is going to give a comic recitation, but
I’d rather make people cry than laugh.”
“What will you recite if they encore you?”
“They won’t dream of encoring me,” scoffed Anne, who was not
without her own secret hopes that they would, and already visioned herself
telling Matthew all about it at the next morning’s breakfast table.
“There are Billy and Jane now—I hear the wheels. Come on.”
Billy Andrews insisted that Anne should ride on the front seat with him, so she
unwillingly climbed up. She would have much preferred to sit back with the
girls, where she could have laughed and chattered to her heart’s content.
There was not much of either laughter or chatter in Billy. He was a big, fat,
stolid youth of twenty, with a round, expressionless face, and a painful lack
of conversational gifts. But he admired Anne immensely, and was puffed up with
pride over the prospect of driving to White Sands with that slim, upright
figure beside him.
Anne, by dint of talking over her shoulder to the girls and occasionally
passing a sop of civility to Billy—who grinned and chuckled and never
could think of any reply until it was too late—contrived to enjoy the
drive in spite of all. It was a night for enjoyment. The road was full of
buggies, all bound for the hotel, and laughter, silver clear, echoed and
reechoed along it. When they reached the hotel it was a blaze of light from top
to bottom. They were met by the ladies of the concert committee, one of whom
took Anne off to the performers’ dressing room which was filled with the
members of a Charlottetown Symphony Club, among whom Anne felt suddenly shy and
frightened and countrified. Her dress, which, in the east gable, had seemed so
dainty and pretty, now seemed simple and plain—too simple and plain, she
thought, among all the silks and laces that glistened and rustled around her.
What were her pearl beads compared to the diamonds of the big, handsome lady
near her? And how poor her one wee white rose must look beside all the hothouse
flowers the others wore! Anne laid her hat and jacket away, and shrank
miserably into a corner. She wished herself back in the white room at Green
Gables.
It was still worse on the platform of the big concert hall of the hotel, where
she presently found herself. The electric lights dazzled her eyes, the perfume
and hum bewildered her. She wished she were sitting down in the audience with
Diana and Jane, who seemed to be having a splendid time away at the back. She
was wedged in between a stout lady in pink silk and a tall, scornful-looking
girl in a white-lace dress. The stout lady occasionally turned her head
squarely around and surveyed Anne through her eyeglasses until Anne, acutely
sensitive of being so scrutinized, felt that she must scream aloud; and the
white-lace girl kept talking audibly to her next neighbor about the
“country bumpkins” and “rustic belles” in the audience,
languidly anticipating “such fun” from the displays of local talent
on the program. Anne believed that she would hate that white-lace girl to the
end of life.
Unfortunately for Anne, a professional elocutionist was staying at the hotel
and had consented to recite. She was a lithe, dark-eyed woman in a wonderful
gown of shimmering gray stuff like woven moonbeams, with gems on her neck and
in her dark hair. She had a marvelously flexible voice and wonderful power of
expression; the audience went wild over her selection. Anne, forgetting all
about herself and her troubles for the time, listened with rapt and shining
eyes; but when the recitation ended she suddenly put her hands over her face.
She could never get up and recite after that—never. Had she ever thought
she could recite? Oh, if she were only back at Green Gables!
At this unpropitious moment her name was called. Somehow Anne—who did not
notice the rather guilty little start of surprise the white-lace girl gave, and
would not have understood the subtle compliment implied therein if she
had—got on her feet, and moved dizzily out to the front. She was so pale
that Diana and Jane, down in the audience, clasped each other’s hands in
nervous sympathy.
Anne was the victim of an overwhelming attack of stage fright. Often as she had
recited in public, she had never before faced such an audience as this, and the
sight of it paralyzed her energies completely. Everything was so strange, so
brilliant, so bewildering—the rows of ladies in evening dress, the
critical faces, the whole atmosphere of wealth and culture about her. Very
different this from the plain benches at the Debating Club, filled with the
homely, sympathetic faces of friends and neighbors. These people, she thought,
would be merciless critics. Perhaps, like the white-lace girl, they anticipated
amusement from her “rustic” efforts. She felt hopelessly,
helplessly ashamed and miserable. Her knees trembled, her heart fluttered, a
horrible faintness came over her; not a word could she utter, and the next
moment she would have fled from the platform despite the humiliation which, she
felt, must ever after be her portion if she did so.
But suddenly, as her dilated, frightened eyes gazed out over the audience, she
saw Gilbert Blythe away at the back of the room, bending forward with a smile
on his face—a smile which seemed to Anne at once triumphant and taunting.
In reality it was nothing of the kind. Gilbert was merely smiling with
appreciation of the whole affair in general and of the effect produced by
Anne’s slender white form and spiritual face against a background of
palms in particular. Josie Pye, whom he had driven over, sat beside him, and
her face certainly was both triumphant and taunting. But Anne did not see
Josie, and would not have cared if she had. She drew a long breath and flung
her head up proudly, courage and determination tingling over her like an
electric shock. She fail before Gilbert Blythe—he should
never be able to laugh at her, never, never! Her fright and nervousness
vanished; and she began her recitation, her clear, sweet voice reaching to the
farthest corner of the room without a tremor or a break. Self-possession was
fully restored to her, and in the reaction from that horrible moment of
powerlessness she recited as she had never done before. When she finished there
were bursts of honest applause. Anne, stepping back to her seat, blushing with
shyness and delight, found her hand vigorously clasped and shaken by the stout
lady in pink silk.
“My dear, you did splendidly,” she puffed. “I’ve been
crying like a baby, actually I have. There, they’re encoring
you—they’re bound to have you back!”
“Oh, I can’t go,” said Anne confusedly. “But
yet—I must, or Matthew will be disappointed. He said they would encore
me.”
“Then don’t disappoint Matthew,” said the pink lady,
laughing.
Smiling, blushing, limpid eyed, Anne tripped back and gave a quaint, funny
little selection that captivated her audience still further. The rest of the
evening was quite a little triumph for her.
When the concert was over, the stout, pink lady—who was the wife of an
American millionaire—took her under her wing, and introduced her to
everybody; and everybody was very nice to her. The professional elocutionist,
Mrs. Evans, came and chatted with her, telling her that she had a charming
voice and “interpreted” her selections beautifully. Even the
white-lace girl paid her a languid little compliment. They had supper in the
big, beautifully decorated dining room; Diana and Jane were invited to partake
of this, also, since they had come with Anne, but Billy was nowhere to be
found, having decamped in mortal fear of some such invitation. He was in
waiting for them, with the team, however, when it was all over, and the three
girls came merrily out into the calm, white moonshine radiance. Anne breathed
deeply, and looked into the clear sky beyond the dark boughs of the firs.
Oh, it was good to be out again in the purity and silence of the night! How
great and still and wonderful everything was, with the murmur of the sea
sounding through it and the darkling cliffs beyond like grim giants guarding
enchanted coasts.
“Hasn’t it been a perfectly splendid time?” sighed Jane, as
they drove away. “I just wish I was a rich American and could spend my
summer at a hotel and wear jewels and low-necked dresses and have ice cream and
chicken salad every blessed day. I’m sure it would be ever so much more
fun than teaching school. Anne, your recitation was simply great, although I
thought at first you were never going to begin. I think it was better than Mrs.
Evans’s.”
“Oh, no, don’t say things like that, Jane,” said Anne
quickly, “because it sounds silly. It couldn’t be better than Mrs.
Evans’s, you know, for she is a professional, and I’m only a
schoolgirl, with a little knack of reciting. I’m quite satisfied if the
people just liked mine pretty well.”
“I’ve a compliment for you, Anne,” said Diana. “At
least I think it must be a compliment because of the tone he said it in. Part
of it was anyhow. There was an American sitting behind Jane and me—such a
romantic-looking man, with coal-black hair and eyes. Josie Pye says he is a
distinguished artist, and that her mother’s cousin in Boston is married
to a man that used to go to school with him. Well, we heard him
say—didn’t we, Jane?—‘Who is that girl on the platform
with the splendid Titian hair? She has a face I should like to paint.’
There now, Anne. But what does Titian hair mean?”
“Being interpreted it means plain red, I guess,” laughed Anne.
“Titian was a very famous artist who liked to paint red-haired
women.”
“ you see all the diamonds those ladies wore?” sighed
Jane. “They were simply dazzling. Wouldn’t you just love to be
rich, girls?”
“We rich,” said Anne staunchly. “Why, we have
sixteen years to our credit, and we’re happy as queens, and we’ve
all got imaginations, more or less. Look at that sea, girls—all silver
and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn’t enjoy its
loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds. You
wouldn’t change into any of those women if you could. Would you want to
be that white-lace girl and wear a sour look all your life, as if you’d
been born turning up your nose at the world? Or the pink lady, kind and nice as
she is, so stout and short that you’d really no figure at all? Or even
Mrs. Evans, with that sad, sad look in her eyes? She must have been dreadfully
unhappy sometime to have such a look. You you wouldn’t, Jane
Andrews!”
“I know—exactly,” said Jane unconvinced.
“I think diamonds would comfort a person for a good deal.”
“Well, I don’t want to be anyone but myself, even if I go
uncomforted by diamonds all my life,” declared Anne. “I’m
quite content to be Anne of Green Gables, with my string of pearl beads. I know
Matthew gave me as much love with them as ever went with Madame the Pink
Lady’s jewels.”
CHAPTER XXXIV.
A Queen’s Girl
THE next three weeks
were busy ones at Green Gables, for Anne was getting ready to go to
Queen’s, and there was much sewing to be done, and many things to be
talked over and arranged. Anne’s outfit was ample and pretty, for Matthew
saw to that, and Marilla for once made no objections whatever to anything he
purchased or suggested. More—one evening she went up to the east gable
with her arms full of a delicate pale green material.
“Anne, here’s something for a nice light dress for you. I
don’t suppose you really need it; you’ve plenty of pretty waists;
but I thought maybe you’d like something real dressy to wear if you were
asked out anywhere of an evening in town, to a party or anything like that. I
hear that Jane and Ruby and Josie have got ‘evening dresses,’ as
they call them, and I don’t mean you shall be behind them. I got Mrs.
Allan to help me pick it in town last week, and we’ll get Emily Gillis to
make it for you. Emily has got taste, and her fits aren’t to be
equaled.”
“Oh, Marilla, it’s just lovely,” said Anne. “Thank you
so much. I don’t believe you ought to be so kind to me—it’s
making it harder every day for me to go away.”
The green dress was made up with as many tucks and frills and shirrings as
Emily’s taste permitted. Anne put it on one evening for Matthew’s
and Marilla’s benefit, and recited “The Maiden’s Vow”
for them in the kitchen. As Marilla watched the bright, animated face and
graceful motions her thoughts went back to the evening Anne had arrived at
Green Gables, and memory recalled a vivid picture of the odd, frightened child
in her preposterous yellowish-brown wincey dress, the heartbreak looking out of
her tearful eyes. Something in the memory brought tears to Marilla’s own
eyes.
“I declare, my recitation has made you cry, Marilla,” said Anne
gaily stooping over Marilla’s chair to drop a butterfly kiss on that
lady’s cheek. “Now, I call that a positive triumph.”
“No, I wasn’t crying over your piece,” said Marilla, who
would have scorned to be betrayed into such weakness by any poetry stuff.
“I just couldn’t help thinking of the little girl you used to be,
Anne. And I was wishing you could have stayed a little girl, even with all your
queer ways. You’ve grown up now and you’re going away; and you look
so tall and stylish and so—so—different altogether in that
dress—as if you didn’t belong in Avonlea at all—and I just
got lonesome thinking it all over.”
“Marilla!” Anne sat down on Marilla’s gingham lap, took
Marilla’s lined face between her hands, and looked gravely and tenderly
into Marilla’s eyes. “I’m not a bit changed—not really.
I’m only just pruned down and branched out. The real —back
here—is just the same. It won’t make a bit of difference where I go
or how much I change outwardly; at heart I shall always be your little Anne,
who will love you and Matthew and dear Green Gables more and better every day
of her life.”
Anne laid her fresh young cheek against Marilla’s faded one, and reached
out a hand to pat Matthew’s shoulder. Marilla would have given much just
then to have possessed Anne’s power of putting her feelings into words;
but nature and habit had willed it otherwise, and she could only put her arms
close about her girl and hold her tenderly to her heart, wishing that she need
never let her go.
Matthew, with a suspicious moisture in his eyes, got up and went out-of-doors.
Under the stars of the blue summer night he walked agitatedly across the yard
to the gate under the poplars.
“Well now, I guess she ain’t been much spoiled,” he muttered,
proudly. “I guess my putting in my oar occasional never did much harm
after all. She’s smart and pretty, and loving, too, which is better than
all the rest. She’s been a blessing to us, and there never was a luckier
mistake than what Mrs. Spencer made—if it luck. I don’t
believe it was any such thing. It was Providence, because the Almighty saw we
needed her, I reckon.”
The day finally came when Anne must go to town. She and Matthew drove in one
fine September morning, after a tearful parting with Diana and an untearful
practical one—on Marilla’s side at least—with Marilla. But
when Anne had gone Diana dried her tears and went to a beach picnic at White
Sands with some of her Carmody cousins, where she contrived to enjoy herself
tolerably well; while Marilla plunged fiercely into unnecessary work and kept
at it all day long with the bitterest kind of heartache—the ache that
burns and gnaws and cannot wash itself away in ready tears. But that night,
when Marilla went to bed, acutely and miserably conscious that the little gable
room at the end of the hall was untenanted by any vivid young life and
unstirred by any soft breathing, she buried her face in her pillow, and wept
for her girl in a passion of sobs that appalled her when she grew calm enough
to reflect how very wicked it must be to take on so about a sinful fellow
creature.
Anne and the rest of the Avonlea scholars reached town just in time to hurry
off to the Academy. That first day passed pleasantly enough in a whirl of
excitement, meeting all the new students, learning to know the professors by
sight and being assorted and organized into classes. Anne intended taking up
the Second Year work being advised to do so by Miss Stacy; Gilbert Blythe
elected to do the same. This meant getting a First Class teacher’s
license in one year instead of two, if they were successful; but it also meant
much more and harder work. Jane, Ruby, Josie, Charlie, and Moody Spurgeon, not
being troubled with the stirrings of ambition, were content to take up the
Second Class work. Anne was conscious of a pang of loneliness when she found
herself in a room with fifty other students, not one of whom she knew, except
the tall, brown-haired boy across the room; and knowing him in the fashion she
did, did not help her much, as she reflected pessimistically. Yet she was
undeniably glad that they were in the same class; the old rivalry could still
be carried on, and Anne would hardly have known what to do if it had been
lacking.
“I wouldn’t feel comfortable without it,” she thought.
“Gilbert looks awfully determined. I suppose he’s making up his
mind, here and now, to win the medal. What a splendid chin he has! I never
noticed it before. I do wish Jane and Ruby had gone in for First Class, too. I
suppose I won’t feel so much like a cat in a strange garret when I get
acquainted, though. I wonder which of the girls here are going to be my
friends. It’s really an interesting speculation. Of course I promised
Diana that no Queen’s girl, no matter how much I liked her, should ever
be as dear to me as she is; but I’ve lots of second-best affections to
bestow. I like the look of that girl with the brown eyes and the crimson waist.
She looks vivid and red-rosy; there’s that pale, fair one gazing out of
the window. She has lovely hair, and looks as if she knew a thing or two about
dreams. I’d like to know them both—know them well—well enough
to walk with my arm about their waists, and call them nicknames. But just now I
don’t know them and they don’t know me, and probably don’t
want to know me particularly. Oh, it’s lonesome!”
It was lonesomer still when Anne found herself alone in her hall bedroom that
night at twilight. She was not to board with the other girls, who all had
relatives in town to take pity on them. Miss Josephine Barry would have liked
to board her, but Beechwood was so far from the Academy that it was out of the
question; so Miss Barry hunted up a boarding-house, assuring Matthew and
Marilla that it was the very place for Anne.
“The lady who keeps it is a reduced gentlewoman,” explained Miss
Barry. “Her husband was a British officer, and she is very careful what
sort of boarders she takes. Anne will not meet with any objectionable persons
under her roof. The table is good, and the house is near the Academy, in a
quiet neighborhood.”
All this might be quite true, and indeed, proved to be so, but it did not
materially help Anne in the first agony of homesickness that seized upon her.
She looked dismally about her narrow little room, with its dull-papered,
pictureless walls, its small iron bedstead and empty book-case; and a horrible
choke came into her throat as she thought of her own white room at Green
Gables, where she would have the pleasant consciousness of a great green still
outdoors, of sweet peas growing in the garden, and moonlight falling on the
orchard, of the brook below the slope and the spruce boughs tossing in the
night wind beyond it, of a vast starry sky, and the light from Diana’s
window shining out through the gap in the trees. Here there was nothing of
this; Anne knew that outside of her window was a hard street, with a network of
telephone wires shutting out the sky, the tramp of alien feet, and a thousand
lights gleaming on stranger faces. She knew that she was going to cry, and
fought against it.
“I cry. It’s silly—and
weak—there’s the third tear splashing down by my nose. There are
more coming! I must think of something funny to stop them. But there’s
nothing funny except what is connected with Avonlea, and that only makes things
worse—four—five—I’m going home next Friday, but that
seems a hundred years away. Oh, Matthew is nearly home by now—and Marilla
is at the gate, looking down the lane for
him—six—seven—eight—oh, there’s no use in
counting them! They’re coming in a flood presently. I can’t cheer
up—I don’t to cheer up. It’s nicer to be
miserable!”
The flood of tears would have come, no doubt, had not Josie Pye appeared at
that moment. In the joy of seeing a familiar face Anne forgot that there had
never been much love lost between her and Josie. As a part of Avonlea life even
a Pye was welcome.
“I’m so glad you came up,” Anne said sincerely.
“You’ve been crying,” remarked Josie, with aggravating pity.
“I suppose you’re homesick—some people have so little
self-control in that respect. I’ve no intention of being homesick, I can
tell you. Town’s too jolly after that poky old Avonlea. I wonder how I
ever existed there so long. You shouldn’t cry, Anne; it isn’t
becoming, for your nose and eyes get red, and then you seem red.
I’d a perfectly scrumptious time in the Academy today. Our French
professor is simply a duck. His moustache would give you kerwollowps of the
heart. Have you anything eatable around, Anne? I’m literally starving.
Ah, I guessed likely Marilla ‘d load you up with cake. That’s why I
called round. Otherwise I’d have gone to the park to hear the band play
with Frank Stockley. He boards same place as I do, and he’s a sport. He
noticed you in class today, and asked me who the red-headed girl was. I told
him you were an orphan that the Cuthberts had adopted, and nobody knew very
much about what you’d been before that.”
Anne was wondering if, after all, solitude and tears were not more satisfactory
than Josie Pye’s companionship when Jane and Ruby appeared, each with an
inch of Queen’s color ribbon—purple and scarlet—pinned
proudly to her coat. As Josie was not “speaking” to Jane just then
she had to subside into comparative harmlessness.
“Well,” said Jane with a sigh, “I feel as if I’d lived
many moons since the morning. I ought to be home studying my Virgil—that
horrid old professor gave us twenty lines to start in on tomorrow. But I simply
couldn’t settle down to study tonight. Anne, methinks I see the traces of
tears. If you’ve been crying own up. It will restore my
self-respect, for I was shedding tears freely before Ruby came along. I
don’t mind being a goose so much if somebody else is goosey, too. Cake?
You’ll give me a teeny piece, won’t you? Thank you. It has the real
Avonlea flavor.”
Ruby, perceiving the Queen’s calendar lying on the table, wanted to know
if Anne meant to try for the gold medal.
Anne blushed and admitted she was thinking of it.
“Oh, that reminds me,” said Josie, “Queen’s is to get
one of the Avery scholarships after all. The word came today. Frank Stockley
told me—his uncle is one of the board of governors, you know. It will be
announced in the Academy tomorrow.”
An Avery scholarship! Anne felt her heart beat more quickly, and the horizons
of her ambition shifted and broadened as if by magic. Before Josie had told the
news Anne’s highest pinnacle of aspiration had been a teacher’s
provincial license, First Class, at the end of the year, and perhaps the medal!
But now in one moment Anne saw herself winning the Avery scholarship, taking an
Arts course at Redmond College, and graduating in a gown and mortar board,
before the echo of Josie’s words had died away. For the Avery scholarship
was in English, and Anne felt that here her foot was on native heath.
A wealthy manufacturer of New Brunswick had died and left part of his fortune
to endow a large number of scholarships to be distributed among the various
high schools and academies of the Maritime Provinces, according to their
respective standings. There had been much doubt whether one would be allotted
to Queen’s, but the matter was settled at last, and at the end of the
year the graduate who made the highest mark in English and English Literature
would win the scholarship—two hundred and fifty dollars a year for four
years at Redmond College. No wonder that Anne went to bed that night with
tingling cheeks!
“I’ll win that scholarship if hard work can do it,” she
resolved. “Wouldn’t Matthew be proud if I got to be a B.A.? Oh,
it’s delightful to have ambitions. I’m so glad I have such a lot.
And there never seems to be any end to them—that’s the best of it.
Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering
higher up still. It does make life so interesting.”
CHAPTER XXXV.
The Winter at Queen’s
ANNE’S
homesickness wore off, greatly helped in the wearing by her weekend visits
home. As long as the open weather lasted the Avonlea students went out to
Carmody on the new branch railway every Friday night. Diana and several other
Avonlea young folks were generally on hand to meet them and they all walked
over to Avonlea in a merry party. Anne thought those Friday evening gypsyings
over the autumnal hills in the crisp golden air, with the homelights of Avonlea
twinkling beyond, were the best and dearest hours in the whole week.
Gilbert Blythe nearly always walked with Ruby Gillis and carried her satchel
for her. Ruby was a very handsome young lady, now thinking herself quite as
grown up as she really was; she wore her skirts as long as her mother would let
her and did her hair up in town, though she had to take it down when she went
home. She had large, bright-blue eyes, a brilliant complexion, and a plump
showy figure. She laughed a great deal, was cheerful and good-tempered, and
enjoyed the pleasant things of life frankly.
“But I shouldn’t think she was the sort of girl Gilbert would
like,” whispered Jane to Anne. Anne did not think so either, but she
would not have said so for the Avery scholarship. She could not help thinking,
too, that it would be very pleasant to have such a friend as Gilbert to jest
and chatter with and exchange ideas about books and studies and ambitions.
Gilbert had ambitions, she knew, and Ruby Gillis did not seem the sort of
person with whom such could be profitably discussed.
There was no silly sentiment in Anne’s ideas concerning Gilbert. Boys
were to her, when she thought about them at all, merely possible good comrades.
If she and Gilbert had been friends she would not have cared how many other
friends he had nor with whom he walked. She had a genius for friendship; girl
friends she had in plenty; but she had a vague consciousness that masculine
friendship might also be a good thing to round out one’s conceptions of
companionship and furnish broader standpoints of judgment and comparison. Not
that Anne could have put her feelings on the matter into just such clear
definition. But she thought that if Gilbert had ever walked home with her from
the train, over the crisp fields and along the ferny byways, they might have
had many and merry and interesting conversations about the new world that was
opening around them and their hopes and ambitions therein. Gilbert was a clever
young fellow, with his own thoughts about things and a determination to get the
best out of life and put the best into it. Ruby Gillis told Jane Andrews that
she didn’t understand half the things Gilbert Blythe said; he talked just
like Anne Shirley did when she had a thoughtful fit on and for her part she
didn’t think it any fun to be bothering about books and that sort of
thing when you didn’t have to. Frank Stockley had lots more dash and go,
but then he wasn’t half as good-looking as Gilbert and she really
couldn’t decide which she liked best!
In the Academy Anne gradually drew a little circle of friends about her,
thoughtful, imaginative, ambitious students like herself. With the
“rose-red” girl, Stella Maynard, and the “dream girl,”
Priscilla Grant, she soon became intimate, finding the latter pale
spiritual-looking maiden to be full to the brim of mischief and pranks and fun,
while the vivid, black-eyed Stella had a heartful of wistful dreams and
fancies, as aerial and rainbow-like as Anne’s own.
After the Christmas holidays the Avonlea students gave up going home on Fridays
and settled down to hard work. By this time all the Queen’s scholars had
gravitated into their own places in the ranks and the various classes had
assumed distinct and settled shadings of individuality. Certain facts had
become generally accepted. It was admitted that the medal contestants had
practically narrowed down to three—Gilbert Blythe, Anne Shirley, and
Lewis Wilson; the Avery scholarship was more doubtful, any one of a certain six
being a possible winner. The bronze medal for mathematics was considered as
good as won by a fat, funny little up-country boy with a bumpy forehead and a
patched coat.
Ruby Gillis was the handsomest girl of the year at the Academy; in the Second
Year classes Stella Maynard carried off the palm for beauty, with small but
critical minority in favor of Anne Shirley. Ethel Marr was admitted by all
competent judges to have the most stylish modes of hair-dressing, and Jane
Andrews—plain, plodding, conscientious Jane—carried off the honors
in the domestic science course. Even Josie Pye attained a certain preeminence
as the sharpest-tongued young lady in attendance at Queen’s. So it may be
fairly stated that Miss Stacy’s old pupils held their own in the wider
arena of the academical course.
Anne worked hard and steadily. Her rivalry with Gilbert was as intense as it
had ever been in Avonlea school, although it was not known in the class at
large, but somehow the bitterness had gone out of it. Anne no longer wished to
win for the sake of defeating Gilbert; rather, for the proud consciousness of a
well-won victory over a worthy foeman. It would be worth while to win, but she
no longer thought life would be insupportable if she did not.
In spite of lessons the students found opportunities for pleasant times. Anne
spent many of her spare hours at Beechwood and generally ate her Sunday dinners
there and went to church with Miss Barry. The latter was, as she admitted,
growing old, but her black eyes were not dim nor the vigor of her tongue in the
least abated. But she never sharpened the latter on Anne, who continued to be a
prime favorite with the critical old lady.
“That Anne-girl improves all the time,” she said. “I get
tired of other girls—there is such a provoking and eternal sameness about
them. Anne has as many shades as a rainbow and every shade is the prettiest
while it lasts. I don’t know that she is as amusing as she was when she
was a child, but she makes me love her and I like people who make me love them.
It saves me so much trouble in making myself love them.”
Then, almost before anybody realized it, spring had come; out in Avonlea the
Mayflowers were peeping pinkly out on the sere barrens where snow-wreaths
lingered; and the “mist of green” was on the woods and in the
valleys. But in Charlottetown harassed Queen’s students thought and
talked only of examinations.
“It doesn’t seem possible that the term is nearly over,” said
Anne. “Why, last fall it seemed so long to look forward to—a whole
winter of studies and classes. And here we are, with the exams looming up next
week. Girls, sometimes I feel as if those exams meant everything, but when I
look at the big buds swelling on those chestnut trees and the misty blue air at
the end of the streets they don’t seem half so important.”
Jane and Ruby and Josie, who had dropped in, did not take this view of it. To
them the coming examinations were constantly very important indeed—far
more important than chestnut buds or Maytime hazes. It was all very well for
Anne, who was sure of passing at least, to have her moments of belittling them,
but when your whole future depended on them—as the girls truly thought
theirs did—you could not regard them philosophically.
“I’ve lost seven pounds in the last two weeks,” sighed Jane.
“It’s no use to say don’t worry. I worry.
Worrying helps you some—it seems as if you were doing something when
you’re worrying. It would be dreadful if I failed to get my license after
going to Queen’s all winter and spending so much money.”
“ don’t care,” said Josie Pye. “If I
don’t pass this year I’m coming back next. My father can afford to
send me. Anne, Frank Stockley says that Professor Tremaine said Gilbert Blythe
was sure to get the medal and that Emily Clay would likely win the Avery
scholarship.”
“That may make me feel badly tomorrow, Josie,” laughed Anne,
“but just now I honestly feel that as long as I know the violets are
coming out all purple down in the hollow below Green Gables and that little
ferns are poking their heads up in Lovers’ Lane, it’s not a great
deal of difference whether I win the Avery or not. I’ve done my best and
I begin to understand what is meant by the ‘joy of the strife.’
Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing. Girls,
don’t talk about exams! Look at that arch of pale green sky over those
houses and picture to yourself what it must look like over the purply-dark
beech-woods back of Avonlea.”
“What are you going to wear for commencement, Jane?” asked Ruby
practically.
Jane and Josie both answered at once and the chatter drifted into a side eddy
of fashions. But Anne, with her elbows on the window sill, her soft cheek laid
against her clasped hands, and her eyes filled with visions, looked out
unheedingly across city roof and spire to that glorious dome of sunset sky and
wove her dreams of a possible future from the golden tissue of youth’s
own optimism. All the Beyond was hers with its possibilities lurking rosily in
the oncoming years—each year a rose of promise to be woven into an
immortal chaplet.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
The Glory and the Dream
ON the morning when the
final results of all the examinations were to be posted on the bulletin board
at Queen’s, Anne and Jane walked down the street together. Jane was
smiling and happy; examinations were over and she was comfortably sure she had
made a pass at least; further considerations troubled Jane not at all; she had
no soaring ambitions and consequently was not affected with the unrest
attendant thereon. For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this
world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply
won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement.
Anne was pale and quiet; in ten more minutes she would know who had won the
medal and who the Avery. Beyond those ten minutes there did not seem, just
then, to be anything worth being called Time.
“Of course you’ll win one of them anyhow,” said Jane, who
couldn’t understand how the faculty could be so unfair as to order it
otherwise.
“I have not hope of the Avery,” said Anne. “Everybody says
Emily Clay will win it. And I’m not going to march up to that bulletin
board and look at it before everybody. I haven’t the moral courage.
I’m going straight to the girls’ dressing room. You must read the
announcements and then come and tell me, Jane. And I implore you in the name of
our old friendship to do it as quickly as possible. If I have failed just say
so, without trying to break it gently; and whatever you do
sympathize with me. Promise me this, Jane.”
Jane promised solemnly; but, as it happened, there was no necessity for such a
promise. When they went up the entrance steps of Queen’s they found the
hall full of boys who were carrying Gilbert Blythe around on their shoulders
and yelling at the tops of their voices, “Hurrah for Blythe,
Medalist!”
For a moment Anne felt one sickening pang of defeat and disappointment. So she
had failed and Gilbert had won! Well, Matthew would be sorry—he had been
so sure she would win.
And then!
Somebody called out:
“Three cheers for Miss Shirley, winner of the Avery!”
“Oh, Anne,” gasped Jane, as they fled to the girls’ dressing
room amid hearty cheers. “Oh, Anne I’m so proud! Isn’t it
splendid?”
And then the girls were around them and Anne was the center of a laughing,
congratulating group. Her shoulders were thumped and her hands shaken
vigorously. She was pushed and pulled and hugged and among it all she managed
to whisper to Jane:
“Oh, won’t Matthew and Marilla be pleased! I must write the news
home right away.”
Commencement was the next important happening. The exercises were held in the
big assembly hall of the Academy. Addresses were given, essays read, songs
sung, the public award of diplomas, prizes and medals made.
Matthew and Marilla were there, with eyes and ears for only one student on the
platform—a tall girl in pale green, with faintly flushed cheeks and
starry eyes, who read the best essay and was pointed out and whispered about as
the Avery winner.
“Reckon you’re glad we kept her, Marilla?” whispered Matthew,
speaking for the first time since he had entered the hall, when Anne had
finished her essay.
“It’s not the first time I’ve been glad,” retorted
Marilla. “You do like to rub things in, Matthew Cuthbert.”
Miss Barry, who was sitting behind them, leaned forward and poked Marilla in
the back with her parasol.
“Aren’t you proud of that Anne-girl? I am,” she said.
Anne went home to Avonlea with Matthew and Marilla that evening. She had not
been home since April and she felt that she could not wait another day. The
apple blossoms were out and the world was fresh and young. Diana was at Green
Gables to meet her. In her own white room, where Marilla had set a flowering
house rose on the window sill, Anne looked about her and drew a long breath of
happiness.
“Oh, Diana, it’s so good to be back again. It’s so good to
see those pointed firs coming out against the pink sky—and that white
orchard and the old Snow Queen. Isn’t the breath of the mint delicious?
And that tea rose—why, it’s a song and a hope and a prayer all in
one. And it’s to see you again, Diana!”
“I thought you liked that Stella Maynard better than me,” said
Diana reproachfully. “Josie Pye told me you did. Josie said you were
with her.”
Anne laughed and pelted Diana with the faded “June lilies” of her
bouquet.
“Stella Maynard is the dearest girl in the world except one and you are
that one, Diana,” she said. “I love you more than ever—and
I’ve so many things to tell you. But just now I feel as if it were joy
enough to sit here and look at you. I’m tired, I think—tired of
being studious and ambitious. I mean to spend at least two hours tomorrow lying
out in the orchard grass, thinking of absolutely nothing.”
“You’ve done splendidly, Anne. I suppose you won’t be
teaching now that you’ve won the Avery?”
“No. I’m going to Redmond in September. Doesn’t it seem
wonderful? I’ll have a brand new stock of ambition laid in by that time
after three glorious, golden months of vacation. Jane and Ruby are going to
teach. Isn’t it splendid to think we all got through even to Moody
Spurgeon and Josie Pye?”
“The Newbridge trustees have offered Jane their school already,”
said Diana. “Gilbert Blythe is going to teach, too. He has to. His father
can’t afford to send him to college next year, after all, so he means to
earn his own way through. I expect he’ll get the school here if Miss Ames
decides to leave.”
Anne felt a queer little sensation of dismayed surprise. She had not known
this; she had expected that Gilbert would be going to Redmond also. What would
she do without their inspiring rivalry? Would not work, even at a coeducational
college with a real degree in prospect, be rather flat without her friend the
enemy?
The next morning at breakfast it suddenly struck Anne that Matthew was not
looking well. Surely he was much grayer than he had been a year before.
“Marilla,” she said hesitatingly when he had gone out, “is
Matthew quite well?”
“No, he isn’t,” said Marilla in a troubled tone.
“He’s had some real bad spells with his heart this spring and he
won’t spare himself a mite. I’ve been real worried about him, but
he’s some better this while back and we’ve got a good hired man, so
I’m hoping he’ll kind of rest and pick up. Maybe he will now
you’re home. You always cheer him up.”
Anne leaned across the table and took Marilla’s face in her hands.
“You are not looking as well yourself as I’d like to see you,
Marilla. You look tired. I’m afraid you’ve been working too hard.
You must take a rest, now that I’m home. I’m just going to take
this one day off to visit all the dear old spots and hunt up my old dreams, and
then it will be your turn to be lazy while I do the work.”
Marilla smiled affectionately at her girl.
“It’s not the work—it’s my head. I’ve got a pain
so often now—behind my eyes. Doctor Spencer’s been fussing with
glasses, but they don’t do me any good. There is a distinguished oculist
coming to the Island the last of June and the doctor says I must see him. I
guess I’ll have to. I can’t read or sew with any comfort now. Well,
Anne, you’ve done real well at Queen’s I must say. To take First
Class License in one year and win the Avery scholarship—well, well, Mrs.
Lynde says pride goes before a fall and she doesn’t believe in the higher
education of women at all; she says it unfits them for woman’s true
sphere. I don’t believe a word of it. Speaking of Rachel reminds
me—did you hear anything about the Abbey Bank lately, Anne?”
“I heard it was shaky,” answered Anne. “Why?”
“That is what Rachel said. She was up here one day last week and said
there was some talk about it. Matthew felt real worried. All we have saved is
in that bank—every penny. I wanted Matthew to put it in the Savings Bank
in the first place, but old Mr. Abbey was a great friend of father’s and
he’d always banked with him. Matthew said any bank with him at the head
of it was good enough for anybody.”
“I think he has only been its nominal head for many years,” said
Anne. “He is a very old man; his nephews are really at the head of the
institution.”
“Well, when Rachel told us that, I wanted Matthew to draw our money right
out and he said he’d think of it. But Mr. Russell told him yesterday that
the bank was all right.”
Anne had her good day in the companionship of the outdoor world. She never
forgot that day; it was so bright and golden and fair, so free from shadow and
so lavish of blossom. Anne spent some of its rich hours in the orchard; she
went to the Dryad’s Bubble and Willowmere and Violet Vale; she called at
the manse and had a satisfying talk with Mrs. Allan; and finally in the evening
she went with Matthew for the cows, through Lovers’ Lane to the back
pasture. The woods were all gloried through with sunset and the warm splendor
of it streamed down through the hill gaps in the west. Matthew walked slowly
with bent head; Anne, tall and erect, suited her springing step to his.
“You’ve been working too hard today, Matthew,” she said
reproachfully. “Why won’t you take things easier?”
“Well now, I can’t seem to,” said Matthew, as he opened the
yard gate to let the cows through. “It’s only that I’m
getting old, Anne, and keep forgetting it. Well, well, I’ve always worked
pretty hard and I’d rather drop in harness.”
“If I had been the boy you sent for,” said Anne wistfully,
“I’d be able to help you so much now and spare you in a hundred
ways. I could find it in my heart to wish I had been, just for that.”
“Well now, I’d rather have you than a dozen boys, Anne,” said
Matthew patting her hand. “Just mind you that—rather than a dozen
boys. Well now, I guess it wasn’t a boy that took the Avery scholarship,
was it? It was a girl—my girl—my girl that I’m proud
of.”
He smiled his shy smile at her as he went into the yard. Anne took the memory
of it with her when she went to her room that night and sat for a long while at
her open window, thinking of the past and dreaming of the future. Outside the
Snow Queen was mistily white in the moonshine; the frogs were singing in the
marsh beyond Orchard Slope. Anne always remembered the silvery, peaceful beauty
and fragrant calm of that night. It was the last night before sorrow touched
her life; and no life is ever quite the same again when once that cold,
sanctifying touch has been laid upon it.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
The Reaper Whose Name Is Death
MATTHEW—Matthew—what is the matter? Matthew, are you
sick?”
It was Marilla who spoke, alarm in every jerky word. Anne came through the
hall, her hands full of white narcissus,—it was long before Anne could
love the sight or odor of white narcissus again,—in time to hear her and
to see Matthew standing in the porch doorway, a folded paper in his hand, and
his face strangely drawn and gray. Anne dropped her flowers and sprang across
the kitchen to him at the same moment as Marilla. They were both too late;
before they could reach him Matthew had fallen across the threshold.
“He’s fainted,” gasped Marilla. “Anne, run for
Martin—quick, quick! He’s at the barn.”
Martin, the hired man, who had just driven home from the post office, started
at once for the doctor, calling at Orchard Slope on his way to send Mr. and
Mrs. Barry over. Mrs. Lynde, who was there on an errand, came too. They found
Anne and Marilla distractedly trying to restore Matthew to consciousness.
Mrs. Lynde pushed them gently aside, tried his pulse, and then laid her ear
over his heart. She looked at their anxious faces sorrowfully and the tears
came into her eyes.
“Oh, Marilla,” she said gravely. “I don’t
think—we can do anything for him.”
“Mrs. Lynde, you don’t think—you can’t think Matthew
is—is—” Anne could not say the dreadful word; she turned sick
and pallid.
“Child, yes, I’m afraid of it. Look at his face. When you’ve
seen that look as often as I have you’ll know what it means.”
Anne looked at the still face and there beheld the seal of the Great Presence.
When the doctor came he said that death had been instantaneous and probably
painless, caused in all likelihood by some sudden shock. The secret of the
shock was discovered to be in the paper Matthew had held and which Martin had
brought from the office that morning. It contained an account of the failure of
the Abbey Bank.
The news spread quickly through Avonlea, and all day friends and neighbors
thronged Green Gables and came and went on errands of kindness for the dead and
living. For the first time shy, quiet Matthew Cuthbert was a person of central
importance; the white majesty of death had fallen on him and set him apart as
one crowned.
When the calm night came softly down over Green Gables the old house was hushed
and tranquil. In the parlor lay Matthew Cuthbert in his coffin, his long gray
hair framing his placid face on which there was a little kindly smile as if he
but slept, dreaming pleasant dreams. There were flowers about him—sweet
old-fashioned flowers which his mother had planted in the homestead garden in
her bridal days and for which Matthew had always had a secret, wordless love.
Anne had gathered them and brought them to him, her anguished, tearless eyes
burning in her white face. It was the last thing she could do for him.
The Barrys and Mrs. Lynde stayed with them that night. Diana, going to the east
gable, where Anne was standing at her window, said gently:
“Anne dear, would you like to have me sleep with you tonight?”
“Thank you, Diana.” Anne looked earnestly into her friend’s
face. “I think you won’t misunderstand me when I say I want to be
alone. I’m not afraid. I haven’t been alone one minute since it
happened—and I want to be. I want to be quite silent and quiet and try to
realize it. I can’t realize it. Half the time it seems to me that Matthew
can’t be dead; and the other half it seems as if he must have been dead
for a long time and I’ve had this horrible dull ache ever since.”
Diana did not quite understand. Marilla’s impassioned grief, breaking all
the bounds of natural reserve and lifelong habit in its stormy rush, she could
comprehend better than Anne’s tearless agony. But she went away kindly,
leaving Anne alone to keep her first vigil with sorrow.
Anne hoped that the tears would come in solitude. It seemed to her a terrible
thing that she could not shed a tear for Matthew, whom she had loved so much
and who had been so kind to her, Matthew who had walked with her last evening
at sunset and was now lying in the dim room below with that awful peace on his
brow. But no tears came at first, even when she knelt by her window in the
darkness and prayed, looking up to the stars beyond the hills—no tears,
only the same horrible dull ache of misery that kept on aching until she fell
asleep, worn out with the day’s pain and excitement.
In the night she awakened, with the stillness and the darkness about her, and
the recollection of the day came over her like a wave of sorrow. She could see
Matthew’s face smiling at her as he had smiled when they parted at the
gate that last evening—she could hear his voice saying, “My
girl—my girl that I’m proud of.” Then the tears came and Anne
wept her heart out. Marilla heard her and crept in to comfort her.
“There—there—don’t cry so, dearie. It can’t bring
him back. It—it—isn’t right to cry so. I knew that today, but
I couldn’t help it then. He’d always been such a good, kind brother
to me—but God knows best.”
“Oh, just let me cry, Marilla,” sobbed Anne. “The tears
don’t hurt me like that ache did. Stay here for a little while with me
and keep your arm round me—so. I couldn’t have Diana stay,
she’s good and kind and sweet—but it’s not her
sorrow—she’s outside of it and she couldn’t come close enough
to my heart to help me. It’s our sorrow—yours and mine. Oh,
Marilla, what will we do without him?”
“We’ve got each other, Anne. I don’t know what I’d do
if you weren’t here—if you’d never come. Oh, Anne, I know
I’ve been kind of strict and harsh with you maybe—but you
mustn’t think I didn’t love you as well as Matthew did, for all
that. I want to tell you now when I can. It’s never been easy for me to
say things out of my heart, but at times like this it’s easier. I love
you as dear as if you were my own flesh and blood and you’ve been my joy
and comfort ever since you came to Green Gables.”
Two days afterwards they carried Matthew Cuthbert over his homestead threshold
and away from the fields he had tilled and the orchards he had loved and the
trees he had planted; and then Avonlea settled back to its usual placidity and
even at Green Gables affairs slipped into their old groove and work was done
and duties fulfilled with regularity as before, although always with the aching
sense of “loss in all familiar things.” Anne, new to grief, thought
it almost sad that it could be so—that they go on in the old
way without Matthew. She felt something like shame and remorse when she
discovered that the sunrises behind the firs and the pale pink buds opening in
the garden gave her the old inrush of gladness when she saw them—that
Diana’s visits were pleasant to her and that Diana’s merry words
and ways moved her to laughter and smiles—that, in brief, the beautiful
world of blossom and love and friendship had lost none of its power to please
her fancy and thrill her heart, that life still called to her with many
insistent voices.
“It seems like disloyalty to Matthew, somehow, to find pleasure in these
things now that he has gone,” she said wistfully to Mrs. Allan one
evening when they were together in the manse garden. “I miss him so
much—all the time—and yet, Mrs. Allan, the world and life seem very
beautiful and interesting to me for all. Today Diana said something funny and I
found myself laughing. I thought when it happened I could never laugh again.
And it somehow seems as if I oughtn’t to.”
“When Matthew was here he liked to hear you laugh and he liked to know
that you found pleasure in the pleasant things around you,” said Mrs.
Allan gently. “He is just away now; and he likes to know it just the
same. I am sure we should not shut our hearts against the healing influences
that nature offers us. But I can understand your feeling. I think we all
experience the same thing. We resent the thought that anything can please us
when someone we love is no longer here to share the pleasure with us, and we
almost feel as if we were unfaithful to our sorrow when we find our interest in
life returning to us.”
“I was down to the graveyard to plant a rosebush on Matthew’s grave
this afternoon,” said Anne dreamily. “I took a slip of the little
white Scotch rosebush his mother brought out from Scotland long ago; Matthew
always liked those roses the best—they were so small and sweet on their
thorny stems. It made me feel glad that I could plant it by his grave—as
if I were doing something that must please him in taking it there to be near
him. I hope he has roses like them in heaven. Perhaps the souls of all those
little white roses that he has loved so many summers were all there to meet
him. I must go home now. Marilla is all alone and she gets lonely at
twilight.”
“She will be lonelier still, I fear, when you go away again to
college,” said Mrs. Allan.
Anne did not reply; she said good night and went slowly back to green Gables.
Marilla was sitting on the front door-steps and Anne sat down beside her. The
door was open behind them, held back by a big pink conch shell with hints of
sea sunsets in its smooth inner convolutions.
Anne gathered some sprays of pale-yellow honeysuckle and put them in her hair.
She liked the delicious hint of fragrance, as some aerial benediction, above
her every time she moved.
“Doctor Spencer was here while you were away,” Marilla said.
“He says that the specialist will be in town tomorrow and he insists that
I must go in and have my eyes examined. I suppose I’d better go and have
it over. I’ll be more than thankful if the man can give me the right kind
of glasses to suit my eyes. You won’t mind staying here alone while
I’m away, will you? Martin will have to drive me in and there’s
ironing and baking to do.”
“I shall be all right. Diana will come over for company for me. I shall
attend to the ironing and baking beautifully—you needn’t fear that
I’ll starch the handkerchiefs or flavor the cake with liniment.”
Marilla laughed.
“What a girl you were for making mistakes in them days, Anne. You were
always getting into scrapes. I did use to think you were possessed. Do you mind
the time you dyed your hair?”
“Yes, indeed. I shall never forget it,” smiled Anne, touching the
heavy braid of hair that was wound about her shapely head. “I laugh a
little now sometimes when I think what a worry my hair used to be to
me—but I don’t laugh , because it was a very real
trouble then. I did suffer terribly over my hair and my freckles. My freckles
are really gone; and people are nice enough to tell me my hair is auburn
now—all but Josie Pye. She informed me yesterday that she really thought
it was redder than ever, or at least my black dress made it look redder, and
she asked me if people who had red hair ever got used to having it. Marilla,
I’ve almost decided to give up trying to like Josie Pye. I’ve made
what I would once have called a heroic effort to like her, but Josie Pye
won’t liked.”
“Josie is a Pye,” said Marilla sharply, “so she can’t
help being disagreeable. I suppose people of that kind serve some useful
purpose in society, but I must say I don’t know what it is any more than
I know the use of thistles. Is Josie going to teach?”
“No, she is going back to Queen’s next year. So are Moody Spurgeon
and Charlie Sloane. Jane and Ruby are going to teach and they have both got
schools—Jane at Newbridge and Ruby at some place up west.”
“Gilbert Blythe is going to teach too, isn’t he?”
“Yes”—briefly.
“What a nice-looking fellow he is,” said Marilla absently. “I
saw him in church last Sunday and he seemed so tall and manly. He looks a lot
like his father did at the same age. John Blythe was a nice boy. We used to be
real good friends, he and I. People called him my beau.”
Anne looked up with swift interest.
“Oh, Marilla—and what happened?—why didn’t
you—”
“We had a quarrel. I wouldn’t forgive him when he asked me to. I
meant to, after awhile—but I was sulky and angry and I wanted to punish
him first. He never came back—the Blythes were all mighty independent.
But I always felt—rather sorry. I’ve always kind of wished
I’d forgiven him when I had the chance.”
“So you’ve had a bit of romance in your life, too,” said Anne
softly.
“Yes, I suppose you might call it that. You wouldn’t think so to
look at me, would you? But you never can tell about people from their outsides.
Everybody has forgot about me and John. I’d forgotten myself. But it all
came back to me when I saw Gilbert last Sunday.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
The Bend in the road
MARILLA went to town the
next day and returned in the evening. Anne had gone over to Orchard Slope with
Diana and came back to find Marilla in the kitchen, sitting by the table with
her head leaning on her hand. Something in her dejected attitude struck a chill
to Anne’s heart. She had never seen Marilla sit limply inert like that.
“Are you very tired, Marilla?”
“Yes—no—I don’t know,” said Marilla wearily,
looking up. “I suppose I am tired but I haven’t thought about it.
It’s not that.”
“Did you see the oculist? What did he say?” asked Anne anxiously.
“Yes, I saw him. He examined my eyes. He says that if I give up all
reading and sewing entirely and any kind of work that strains the eyes, and if
I’m careful not to cry, and if I wear the glasses he’s given me he
thinks my eyes may not get any worse and my headaches will be cured. But if I
don’t he says I’ll certainly be stone-blind in six months. Blind!
Anne, just think of it!”
For a minute Anne, after her first quick exclamation of dismay, was silent. It
seemed to her that she could speak. Then she said bravely, but with
a catch in her voice:
“Marilla, think of it. You know he has given you hope.
If you are careful you won’t lose your sight altogether; and if his
glasses cure your headaches it will be a great thing.”
“I don’t call it much hope,” said Marilla bitterly.
“What am I to live for if I can’t read or sew or do anything like
that? I might as well be blind—or dead. And as for crying, I can’t
help that when I get lonesome. But there, it’s no good talking about it.
If you’ll get me a cup of tea I’ll be thankful. I’m about
done out. Don’t say anything about this to any one for a spell yet,
anyway. I can’t bear that folks should come here to question and
sympathize and talk about it.”
When Marilla had eaten her lunch Anne persuaded her to go to bed. Then Anne
went herself to the east gable and sat down by her window in the darkness alone
with her tears and her heaviness of heart. How sadly things had changed since
she had sat there the night after coming home! Then she had been full of hope
and joy and the future had looked rosy with promise. Anne felt as if she had
lived years since then, but before she went to bed there was a smile on her
lips and peace in her heart. She had looked her duty courageously in the face
and found it a friend—as duty ever is when we meet it frankly.
One afternoon a few days later Marilla came slowly in from the front yard where
she had been talking to a caller—a man whom Anne knew by sight as Sadler
from Carmody. Anne wondered what he could have been saying to bring that look
to Marilla’s face.
“What did Mr. Sadler want, Marilla?”
Marilla sat down by the window and looked at Anne. There were tears in her eyes
in defiance of the oculist’s prohibition and her voice broke as she said:
“He heard that I was going to sell Green Gables and he wants to buy
it.”
“Buy it! Buy Green Gables?” Anne wondered if she had heard aright.
“Oh, Marilla, you don’t mean to sell Green Gables!”
“Anne, I don’t know what else is to be done. I’ve thought it
all over. If my eyes were strong I could stay here and make out to look after
things and manage, with a good hired man. But as it is I can’t. I may
lose my sight altogether; and anyway I’ll not be fit to run things. Oh, I
never thought I’d live to see the day when I’d have to sell my
home. But things would only go behind worse and worse all the time, till nobody
would want to buy it. Every cent of our money went in that bank; and
there’s some notes Matthew gave last fall to pay. Mrs. Lynde advises me
to sell the farm and board somewhere—with her I suppose. It won’t
bring much—it’s small and the buildings are old. But it’ll be
enough for me to live on I reckon. I’m thankful you’re provided for
with that scholarship, Anne. I’m sorry you won’t have a home to
come to in your vacations, that’s all, but I suppose you’ll manage
somehow.”
Marilla broke down and wept bitterly.
“You mustn’t sell Green Gables,” said Anne resolutely.
“Oh, Anne, I wish I didn’t have to. But you can see for yourself. I
can’t stay here alone. I’d go crazy with trouble and loneliness.
And my sight would go—I know it would.”
“You won’t have to stay here alone, Marilla. I’ll be with
you. I’m not going to Redmond.”
“Not going to Redmond!” Marilla lifted her worn face from her hands
and looked at Anne. “Why, what do you mean?”
“Just what I say. I’m not going to take the scholarship. I decided
so the night after you came home from town. You surely don’t think I
could leave you alone in your trouble, Marilla, after all you’ve done for
me. I’ve been thinking and planning. Let me tell you my plans. Mr. Barry
wants to rent the farm for next year. So you won’t have any bother over
that. And I’m going to teach. I’ve applied for the school
here—but I don’t expect to get it for I understand the trustees
have promised it to Gilbert Blythe. But I can have the Carmody school—Mr.
Blair told me so last night at the store. Of course that won’t be quite
as nice or convenient as if I had the Avonlea school. But I can board home and
drive myself over to Carmody and back, in the warm weather at least. And even
in winter I can come home Fridays. We’ll keep a horse for that. Oh, I
have it all planned out, Marilla. And I’ll read to you and keep you
cheered up. You sha’n’t be dull or lonesome. And we’ll be
real cozy and happy here together, you and I.”
Marilla had listened like a woman in a dream.
“Oh, Anne, I could get on real well if you were here, I know. But I
can’t let you sacrifice yourself so for me. It would be terrible.”
“Nonsense!” Anne laughed merrily. “There is no sacrifice.
Nothing could be worse than giving up Green Gables—nothing could hurt me
more. We must keep the dear old place. My mind is quite made up, Marilla.
I’m going to Redmond; and I going to stay here and
teach. Don’t you worry about me a bit.”
“But your ambitions—and—”
“I’m just as ambitious as ever. Only, I’ve changed the object
of my ambitions. I’m going to be a good teacher—and I’m going
to save your eyesight. Besides, I mean to study at home here and take a little
college course all by myself. Oh, I’ve dozens of plans, Marilla.
I’ve been thinking them out for a week. I shall give life here my best,
and I believe it will give its best to me in return. When I left Queen’s
my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I
could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I
don’t know what lies around the bend, but I’m going to believe that
the best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend, Marilla. I wonder
how the road beyond it goes—what there is of green glory and soft,
checkered light and shadows—what new landscapes—what new
beauties—what curves and hills and valleys further on.”
“I don’t feel as if I ought to let you give it up,” said
Marilla, referring to the scholarship.
“But you can’t prevent me. I’m sixteen and a half,
‘obstinate as a mule,’ as Mrs. Lynde once told me,” laughed
Anne. “Oh, Marilla, don’t you go pitying me. I don’t like to
be pitied, and there is no need for it. I’m heart glad over the very
thought of staying at dear Green Gables. Nobody could love it as you and I
do—so we must keep it.”
“You blessed girl!” said Marilla, yielding. “I feel as if
you’d given me new life. I guess I ought to stick out and make you go to
college—but I know I can’t, so I ain’t going to try.
I’ll make it up to you though, Anne.”
When it became noised abroad in Avonlea that Anne Shirley had given up the idea
of going to college and intended to stay home and teach there was a good deal
of discussion over it. Most of the good folks, not knowing about
Marilla’s eyes, thought she was foolish. Mrs. Allan did not. She told
Anne so in approving words that brought tears of pleasure to the girl’s
eyes. Neither did good Mrs. Lynde. She came up one evening and found Anne and
Marilla sitting at the front door in the warm, scented summer dusk. They liked
to sit there when the twilight came down and the white moths flew about in the
garden and the odor of mint filled the dewy air.
Mrs. Rachel deposited her substantial person upon the stone bench by the door,
behind which grew a row of tall pink and yellow hollyhocks, with a long breath
of mingled weariness and relief.
“I declare I’m getting glad to sit down. I’ve been on my feet
all day, and two hundred pounds is a good bit for two feet to carry round.
It’s a great blessing not to be fat, Marilla. I hope you appreciate it.
Well, Anne, I hear you’ve given up your notion of going to college. I was
real glad to hear it. You’ve got as much education now as a woman can be
comfortable with. I don’t believe in girls going to college with the men
and cramming their heads full of Latin and Greek and all that nonsense.”
“But I’m going to study Latin and Greek just the same, Mrs.
Lynde,” said Anne laughing. “I’m going to take my Arts course
right here at Green Gables, and study everything that I would at
college.”
Mrs. Lynde lifted her hands in holy horror.
“Anne Shirley, you’ll kill yourself.”
“Not a bit of it. I shall thrive on it. Oh, I’m not going to overdo
things. As ‘Josiah Allen’s wife,’ says, I shall be
‘mejum’. But I’ll have lots of spare time in the long winter
evenings, and I’ve no vocation for fancy work. I’m going to teach
over at Carmody, you know.”
“I don’t know it. I guess you’re going to teach right here in
Avonlea. The trustees have decided to give you the school.”
“Mrs. Lynde!” cried Anne, springing to her feet in her surprise.
“Why, I thought they had promised it to Gilbert Blythe!”
“So they did. But as soon as Gilbert heard that you had applied for it he
went to them—they had a business meeting at the school last night, you
know—and told them that he withdrew his application, and suggested that
they accept yours. He said he was going to teach at White Sands. Of course he
knew how much you wanted to stay with Marilla, and I must say I think it was
real kind and thoughtful in him, that’s what. Real self-sacrificing, too,
for he’ll have his board to pay at White Sands, and everybody knows
he’s got to earn his own way through college. So the trustees decided to
take you. I was tickled to death when Thomas came home and told me.”
“I don’t feel that I ought to take it,” murmured Anne.
“I mean—I don’t think I ought to let Gilbert make such a
sacrifice for—for me.”
“I guess you can’t prevent him now. He’s signed papers with
the White Sands trustees. So it wouldn’t do him any good now if you were
to refuse. Of course you’ll take the school. You’ll get along all
right, now that there are no Pyes going. Josie was the last of them, and a good
thing she was, that’s what. There’s been some Pye or other going to
Avonlea school for the last twenty years, and I guess their mission in life was
to keep school teachers reminded that earth isn’t their home. Bless my
heart! What does all that winking and blinking at the Barry gable mean?”
“Diana is signaling for me to go over,” laughed Anne. “You
know we keep up the old custom. Excuse me while I run over and see what she
wants.”
Anne ran down the clover slope like a deer, and disappeared in the firry
shadows of the Haunted Wood. Mrs. Lynde looked after her indulgently.
“There’s a good deal of the child about her yet in some
ways.”
“There’s a good deal more of the woman about her in others,”
retorted Marilla, with a momentary return of her old crispness.
But crispness was no longer Marilla’s distinguishing characteristic. As
Mrs. Lynde told her Thomas that night.
“Marilla Cuthbert has got . That’s what.”
Anne went to the little Avonlea graveyard the next evening to put fresh flowers
on Matthew’s grave and water the Scotch rosebush. She lingered there
until dusk, liking the peace and calm of the little place, with its poplars
whose rustle was like low, friendly speech, and its whispering grasses growing
at will among the graves. When she finally left it and walked down the long
hill that sloped to the Lake of Shining Waters it was past sunset and all
Avonlea lay before her in a dreamlike afterlight—“a haunt of
ancient peace.” There was a freshness in the air as of a wind that had
blown over honey-sweet fields of clover. Home lights twinkled out here and
there among the homestead trees. Beyond lay the sea, misty and purple, with its
haunting, unceasing murmur. The west was a glory of soft mingled hues, and the
pond reflected them all in still softer shadings. The beauty of it all thrilled
Anne’s heart, and she gratefully opened the gates of her soul to it.
“Dear old world,” she murmured, “you are very lovely, and I
am glad to be alive in you.”
Halfway down the hill a tall lad came whistling out of a gate before the Blythe
homestead. It was Gilbert, and the whistle died on his lips as he recognized
Anne. He lifted his cap courteously, but he would have passed on in silence, if
Anne had not stopped and held out her hand.
“Gilbert,” she said, with scarlet cheeks, “I want to thank
you for giving up the school for me. It was very good of you—and I want
you to know that I appreciate it.”
Gilbert took the offered hand eagerly.
“It wasn’t particularly good of me at all, Anne. I was pleased to
be able to do you some small service. Are we going to be friends after this?
Have you really forgiven me my old fault?”
Anne laughed and tried unsuccessfully to withdraw her hand.
“I forgave you that day by the pond landing, although I didn’t know
it. What a stubborn little goose I was. I’ve been—I may as well
make a complete confession—I’ve been sorry ever since.”
“We are going to be the best of friends,” said Gilbert, jubilantly.
“We were born to be good friends, Anne. You’ve thwarted destiny
enough. I know we can help each other in many ways. You are going to keep up
your studies, aren’t you? So am I. Come, I’m going to walk home
with you.”
Marilla looked curiously at Anne when the latter entered the kitchen.
“Who was that came up the lane with you, Anne?”
“Gilbert Blythe,” answered Anne, vexed to find herself blushing.
“I met him on Barry’s hill.”
“I didn’t think you and Gilbert Blythe were such good friends that
you’d stand for half an hour at the gate talking to him,” said
Marilla with a dry smile.
“We haven’t been—we’ve been good enemies. But we have
decided that it will be much more sensible to be good friends in the future.
Were we really there half an hour? It seemed just a few minutes. But, you see,
we have five years’ lost conversations to catch up with, Marilla.”
Anne sat long at her window that night companioned by a glad content. The wind
purred softly in the cherry boughs, and the mint breaths came up to her. The
stars twinkled over the pointed firs in the hollow and Diana’s light
gleamed through the old gap.
Anne’s horizons had closed in since the night she had sat there after
coming home from Queen’s; but if the path set before her feet was to be
narrow she knew that flowers of quiet happiness would bloom along it. The joy
of sincere work and worthy aspiration and congenial friendship were to be hers;
nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy or her ideal world of dreams.
And there was always the bend in the road!
“‘God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the
world,’” whispered Anne softly.
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