Chapter 1
The Shadow of Change
“Harvest is ended and summer is gone,”
quoted Anne Shirley, gazing
across the shorn fields dreamily. She and
Diana Barry had been picking
apples in the Green Gables orchard, but were
now resting from their
labors in a sunny corner, where airy fleets
of thistledown drifted by
on the wings of a wind that was still summer-sweet
with the incense of
ferns in the Haunted Wood.
But everything in the landscape around them
spoke of autumn. The sea was
roaring hollowly in the distance, the fields
were bare and sere, scarfed
with golden rod, the brook valley below Green
Gables overflowed
with asters of ethereal purple, and the Lake
of Shining Waters was
blue, blue, blue; not the changeful blue of
spring, nor the pale azure
of summer, but a clear, steadfast, serene
blue, as if the water
were past all moods and tenses of emotion
and had settled down to a
tranquility unbroken by fickle dreams.
“It has been a nice summer,” said Diana,
twisting the new ring on her
left hand with a smile. “And Miss Lavendar’s
wedding seemed to come as
a sort of crown to it. I suppose Mr. and Mrs.
Irving are on the Pacific
coast now.”
“It seems to me they have been gone long
enough to go around the world,”
sighed Anne.
“I can’t believe it is only a week since
they were married. Everything
has changed. Miss Lavendar and Mr. and Mrs.
Allan gone, how lonely the
manse looks with the shutters all closed!
I went past it last night, and
it made me feel as if everybody in it had
died.”
“We’ll never get another minister as nice
as Mr. Allan,” said Diana,
with gloomy conviction. “I suppose we’ll
have all kinds of supplies this
winter, and half the Sundays no preaching
at all. And you and Gilbert
gone, it will be awfully dull.”
“Fred will be here,” insinuated Anne slyly.
“When is Mrs. Lynde going to move up?”
asked Diana, as if she had not
heard Anne’s remark.
“Tomorrow. I’m glad she’s coming, but
it will be another change. Marilla
and I cleared everything out of the spare
room yesterday. Do you know,
I hated to do it? Of course, it was silly,
but it did seem as if we
were committing sacrilege. That old spare
room has always seemed like
a shrine to me. When I was a child I thought
it the most wonderful
apartment in the world. You remember what
a consuming desire I had to
sleep in a spare room bed, but not the Green
Gables spare room. Oh, no,
never there! It would have been too terrible,
I couldn’t have slept a
wink from awe. I never WALKED through that
room when Marilla sent me in
on an errand, no, indeed, I tiptoed through
it and held my breath, as if
I were in church, and felt relieved when I
got out of it. The pictures
of George Whitefield and the Duke of Wellington
hung there, one on each
side of the mirror, and frowned so sternly
at me all the time I was in,
especially if I dared peep in the mirror,
which was the only one in the
house that didn’t twist my face a little.
I always wondered how Marilla
dared houseclean that room. And now it’s
not only cleaned but stripped
bare. George Whitefield and the Duke have
been relegated to the upstairs
hall. ‘So passes the glory of this world,’”
concluded Anne, with a
laugh in which there was a little note of
regret. It is never pleasant
to have our old shrines desecrated, even when
we have outgrown them.
“I’ll be so lonesome when you go,” moaned
Diana for the hundredth time.
“And to think you go next week!”
“But we’re together still,” said Anne
cheerily. “We mustn’t let next
week rob us of this week’s joy. I hate the
thought of going myself, home
and I are such good friends. Talk of being
lonesome! It’s I who should
groan. YOU’LL be here with any number of
your old friends, AND Fred!
While I shall be alone among strangers, not
knowing a soul!”
“EXCEPT Gilbert, AND Charlie Sloane,”
said Diana, imitating Anne’s
italics and slyness.
“Charlie Sloane will be a great comfort,
of course,” agreed Anne
sarcastically; whereupon both those irresponsible
damsels laughed. Diana
knew exactly what Anne thought of Charlie
Sloane; but, despite sundry
confidential talks, she did not know just
what Anne thought of Gilbert
Blythe. To be sure, Anne herself did not know
that.
“The boys may be boarding at the other end
of Kingsport, for all I
know,” Anne went on. “I am glad I’m
going to Redmond, and I am sure I
shall like it after a while. But for the first
few weeks I know I won’t.
I shan’t even have the comfort of looking
forward to the weekend visit
home, as I had when I went to Queen’s. Christmas
will seem like a
thousand years away.”
“Everything is changing, or going to change,”
said Diana sadly. “I have
a feeling that things will never be the same
again, Anne.”
“We have come to a parting of the ways,
I suppose,” said Anne
thoughtfully. “We had to come to it. Do
you think, Diana, that being
grown-up is really as nice as we used to imagine
it would be when we
were children?”
“I don’t know, there are SOME nice things
about it,” answered Diana,
again caressing her ring with that little
smile which always had the
effect of making Anne feel suddenly left out
and inexperienced. “But
there are so many puzzling things, too. Sometimes
I feel as if being
grown-up just frightened me, and then I would
give anything to be a
little girl again.”
“I suppose we’ll get used to being grownup
in time,” said Anne
cheerfully. “There won’t be so many unexpected
things about it by and
by, though, after all, I fancy it’s the
unexpected things that give
spice to life. We’re eighteen, Diana. In
two more years we’ll be twenty.
When I was ten I thought twenty was a green
old age. In no time you’ll
be a staid, middle-aged matron, and I shall
be nice, old maid Aunt Anne,
coming to visit you on vacations. You’ll
always keep a corner for me,
won’t you, Di darling? Not the spare room,
of course, old maids can’t
aspire to spare rooms, and I shall be as ‘umble
as Uriah Heep, and quite
content with a little over-the-porch or off-the-parlour
cubby hole.”
“What nonsense you do talk, Anne,” laughed
Diana. “You’ll marry somebody
splendid and handsome and rich, and no spare
room in Avonlea will be
half gorgeous enough for you, and you’ll
turn up your nose at all the
friends of your youth.”
“That would be a pity; my nose is quite
nice, but I fear turning it up
would spoil it,” said Anne, patting that
shapely organ. “I haven’t so
many good features that I could afford to
spoil those I have; so, even
if I should marry the King of the Cannibal
Islands, I promise you I
won’t turn up my nose at you, Diana.”
With another gay laugh the girls separated,
Diana to return to Orchard
Slope, Anne to walk to the Post Office. She
found a letter awaiting her
there, and when Gilbert Blythe overtook her
on the bridge over the Lake
of Shining Waters she was sparkling with the
excitement of it.
“Priscilla Grant is going to Redmond, too,”
she exclaimed. “Isn’t that
splendid? I hoped she would, but she didn’t
think her father would
consent. He has, however, and we’re to board
together. I feel that I can
face an army with banners, or all the professors
of Redmond in one fell
phalanx, with a chum like Priscilla by my
side.”
“I think we’ll like Kingsport,” said
Gilbert. “It’s a nice old burg,
they tell me, and has the finest natural park
in the world. I’ve heard
that the scenery in it is magnificent.”
“I wonder if it will be, can be, any more
beautiful than this,” murmured
Anne, looking around her with the loving,
enraptured eyes of those to
whom “home” must always be the loveliest
spot in the world, no matter
what fairer lands may lie under alien stars.
They were leaning on the bridge of the old
pond, drinking deep of the
enchantment of the dusk, just at the spot
where Anne had climbed from
her sinking Dory on the day Elaine floated
down to Camelot. The fine,
empurpling dye of sunset still stained the
western skies, but the moon
was rising and the water lay like a great,
silver dream in her light.
Remembrance wove a sweet and subtle spell
over the two young creatures.
“You are very quiet, Anne,” said Gilbert
at last.
“I’m afraid to speak or move for fear
all this wonderful beauty will
vanish just like a broken silence,” breathed
Anne.
Gilbert suddenly laid his hand over the slender
white one lying on the
rail of the bridge. His hazel eyes deepened
into darkness, his still
boyish lips opened to say something of the
dream and hope that thrilled
his soul. But Anne snatched her hand away
and turned quickly. The spell
of the dusk was broken for her.
“I must go home,” she exclaimed, with
a rather overdone carelessness.
“Marilla had a headache this afternoon,
and I’m sure the twins will be
in some dreadful mischief by this time. I
really shouldn’t have stayed
away so long.”
She chattered ceaselessly and inconsequently
until they reached the
Green Gables lane. Poor Gilbert hardly had
a chance to get a word in
edgewise. Anne felt rather relieved when they
parted. There had been a
new, secret self-consciousness in her heart
with regard to Gilbert, ever
since that fleeting moment of revelation in
the garden of Echo
Lodge. Something alien had intruded into the
old, perfect, school-day
comradeship, something that threatened to
mar it.
“I never felt glad to see Gilbert go before,”
she thought,
half-resentfully, half-sorrowfully, as she
walked alone up the lane.
“Our friendship will be spoiled if he goes
on with this nonsense.
It mustn’t be spoiled, I won’t let it.
Oh, WHY can’t boys be just
sensible!”
Anne had an uneasy doubt that it was not strictly
“sensible” that
she should still feel on her hand the warm
pressure of Gilbert’s, as
distinctly as she had felt it for the swift
second his had rested
there; and still less sensible that the sensation
was far from being an
unpleasant one, very different from that which
had attended a similar
demonstration on Charlie Sloane’s part,
when she had been sitting out a
dance with him at a White Sands party three
nights before. Anne shivered
over the disagreeable recollection. But all
problems connected with
infatuated swains vanished from her mind when
she entered the
homely, unsentimental atmosphere of the Green
Gables kitchen where an
eight-year-old boy was crying grievously on
the sofa.
“What is the matter, Davy?” asked Anne,
taking him up in her arms.
“Where are Marilla and Dora?”
“Marilla’s putting Dora to bed,” sobbed
Davy, “and I’m crying ‘cause
Dora fell down the outside cellar steps, heels
over head, and scraped
all the skin off her nose, and, ”
“Oh, well, don’t cry about it, dear. Of
course, you are sorry for her,
but crying won’t help her any. She’ll
be all right tomorrow. Crying
never helps any one, Davy-boy, and, ”
“I ain’t crying ‘cause Dora fell down
cellar,” said Davy, cutting short
Anne’s well meant preachment with increasing
bitterness. “I’m crying,
cause I wasn’t there to see her fall. I’m
always missing some fun or
other, seems to me.”
“Oh, Davy!” Anne choked back an unholy
shriek of laughter. “Would you
call it fun to see poor little Dora fall down
the steps and get hurt?”
“She wasn’t MUCH hurt,” said Davy, defiantly.
“‘Course, if she’d been
killed I’d have been real sorry, Anne. But
the Keiths ain’t so easy
killed. They’re like the Blewetts, I guess.
Herb Blewett fell off the
hayloft last Wednesday, and rolled right down
through the turnip chute
into the box stall, where they had a fearful
wild, cross horse, and
rolled right under his heels. And still he
got out alive, with only
three bones broke. Mrs. Lynde says there are
some folks you can’t kill
with a meat-axe. Is Mrs. Lynde coming here
tomorrow, Anne?”
“Yes, Davy, and I hope you’ll be always
very nice and good to her.”
“I’ll be nice and good. But will she ever
put me to bed at nights,
Anne?”
“Perhaps. Why?”
“‘Cause,” said Davy very decidedly,
“if she does I won’t say my prayers
before her like I do before you, Anne.”
“Why not?”
“‘Cause I don’t think it would be nice
to talk to God before strangers,
Anne. Dora can say hers to Mrs. Lynde if she
likes, but I won’t. I’ll
wait till she’s gone and then say ‘em.
Won’t that be all right, Anne?”
“Yes, if you are sure you won’t forget
to say them, Davy-boy.”
“Oh, I won’t forget, you bet. I think
saying my prayers is great fun.
But it won’t be as good fun saying them
alone as saying them to you.
I wish you’d stay home, Anne. I don’t
see what you want to go away and
leave us for.”
“I don’t exactly WANT to, Davy, but I
feel I ought to go.”
“If you don’t want to go you needn’t.
You’re grown up. When I‘m grown
up I’m not going to do one single thing
I don’t want to do, Anne.”
“All your life, Davy, you’ll find yourself
doing things you don’t want
to do.”
“I won’t,” said Davy flatly. “Catch
me! I have to do things I don’t want
to now ‘cause you and Marilla’ll send
me to bed if I don’t. But when I
grow up you can’t do that, and there’ll
be nobody to tell me not to do
things. Won’t I have the time! Say, Anne,
Milty Boulter says his mother
says you’re going to college to see if you
can catch a man. Are you,
Anne? I want to know.”
For a second Anne burned with resentment.
Then she laughed, reminding
herself that Mrs. Boulter’s crude vulgarity
of thought and speech could
not harm her.
“No, Davy, I’m not. I’m going to study
and grow and learn about many
things.”
“What things?”
“‘Shoes and ships and sealing wax
And cabbages and kings,’”
quoted Anne.
“But if you DID want to catch a man how
would you go about it? I want
to know,” persisted Davy, for whom the subject
evidently possessed a
certain fascination.
“You’d better ask Mrs. Boulter,” said
Anne thoughtlessly. “I think it’s
likely she knows more about the process than
I do.”
“I will, the next time I see her,” said
Davy gravely.
“Davy! If you do!” cried Anne, realising
her mistake.
“But you just told me to,” protested Davy
aggrieved.
“It’s time you went to bed,” decreed
Anne, by way of getting out of the
scrape.
After Davy had gone to bed Anne wandered down
to Victoria Island and sat
there alone, curtained with fine-spun, moonlit
gloom, while the water
laughed around her in a duet of brook and
wind. Anne had always loved
that brook. Many a dream had she spun over
its sparkling water in
days gone by. She forgot lovelorn youths,
and the cayenne speeches of
malicious neighbors, and all the problems
of her girlish existence. In
imagination she sailed over storied seas that
wash the distant shining
shores of “faery lands forlorn,” where
lost Atlantis and Elysium lie,
with the evening star for pilot, to the land
of Heart’s Desire. And she
was richer in those dreams than in realities;
for things seen pass away,
but the things that are unseen are eternal.
End of Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Garlands of Autumn
The following week sped swiftly, crowded with
innumerable “last things,”
as Anne called them. Good-bye calls had to
be made and received, being
pleasant or otherwise, according to whether
callers and called-upon
were heartily in sympathy with Anne’s hopes,
or thought she was too much
puffed-up over going to college and that it
was their duty to “take her
down a peg or two.”
The A.V.I.S. gave a farewell party in honour
of Anne and Gilbert one
evening at the home of Josie Pye, choosing
that place, partly because
Mr. Pye’s house was large and convenient,
partly because it was strongly
suspected that the Pye girls would have nothing
to do with the affair if
their offer of the house for the party was
not accepted. It was a very
pleasant little time, for the Pye girls were
gracious, and said and did
nothing to mar the harmony of the occasion,
which was not according
to their wont. Josie was unusually amiable,
so much so that she even
remarked condescendingly to Anne,
“Your new dress is rather becoming to you,
Anne. Really, you look ALMOST
PRETTY in it.”
“How kind of you to say so,” responded
Anne, with dancing eyes. Her
sense of humour was developing, and the speeches
that would have hurt her
at fourteen were becoming merely food for
amusement now. Josie suspected
that Anne was laughing at her behind those
wicked eyes; but she
contented herself with whispering to Gertie,
as they went downstairs,
that Anne Shirley would put on more airs than
ever now that she was
going to college, you’d see!
All the “old crowd” was there, full of
mirth and zest and youthful
lightheartedness. Diana Barry, rosy and dimpled,
shadowed by the
faithful Fred; Jane Andrews, neat and sensible
and plain; Ruby Gillis,
looking her handsomest and brightest in a
cream silk blouse, with red
geraniums in her golden hair; Gilbert Blythe
and Charlie Sloane, both
trying to keep as near the elusive Anne as
possible; Carrie Sloane,
looking pale and melancholy because, so it
was reported, her father
would not allow Oliver Kimball to come near
the place; Moody Spurgeon
MacPherson, whose round face and objectionable
ears were as round and
objectionable as ever; and Billy Andrews,
who sat in a corner all the
evening, chuckled when any one spoke to him,
and watched Anne Shirley
with a grin of pleasure on his broad, freckled
countenance.
Anne had known beforehand of the party, but
she had not known that she
and Gilbert were, as the founders of the Society,
to be presented with
a very complimentary “address” and “tokens
of respect”, in her case a
volume of Shakespeare’s plays, in Gilbert’s
a fountain pen. She was so
taken by surprise and pleased by the nice
things said in the address,
read in Moody Spurgeon’s most solemn and
ministerial tones, that the
tears quite drowned the sparkle of her big
grey eyes. She had worked
hard and faithfully for the A.V.I.S., and
it warmed the cockles of her
heart that the members appreciated her efforts
so sincerely. And they
were all so nice and friendly and jolly, even
the Pye girls had their
merits; at that moment Anne loved all the
world.
She enjoyed the evening tremendously, but
the end of it rather spoiled
all. Gilbert again made the mistake of saying
something sentimental
to her as they ate their supper on the moonlit
verandah; and Anne, to
punish him, was gracious to Charlie Sloane
and allowed the latter to
walk home with her. She found, however, that
revenge hurts nobody quite
so much as the one who tries to inflict it.
Gilbert walked airily off
with Ruby Gillis, and Anne could hear them
laughing and talking gaily as
they loitered along in the still, crisp autumn
air. They were evidently
having the best of good times, while she was
horribly bored by Charlie
Sloane, who talked unbrokenly on, and never,
even by accident, said one
thing that was worth listening to. Anne gave
an occasional absent “yes”
or “no,” and thought how beautiful Ruby
had looked that night, how
very goggly Charlie’s eyes were in the moonlight,
worse even than by
daylight, and that the world, somehow, wasn’t
quite such a nice place as
she had believed it to be earlier in the evening.
“I’m just tired out, that is what is the
matter with me,” she said, when
she thankfully found herself alone in her
own room. And she honestly
believed it was. But a certain little gush
of joy, as from some secret,
unknown spring, bubbled up in her heart the
next evening, when she saw
Gilbert striding down through the Haunted
Wood and crossing the old log
bridge with that firm, quick step of his.
So Gilbert was not going to
spend this last evening with Ruby Gillis after
all!
“You look tired, Anne,” he said.
“I am tired, and, worse than that, I’m
disgruntled. I’m tired because
I’ve been packing my trunk and sewing all
day. But I’m disgruntled
because six women have been here to say good-bye
to me, and every one of
the six managed to say something that seemed
to take the colour right
out of life and leave it as grey and dismal
and cheerless as a November
morning.”
“Spiteful old cats!” was Gilbert’s elegant
comment.
“Oh, no, they weren’t,” said Anne seriously.
“That is just the trouble.
If they had been spiteful cats I wouldn’t
have minded them. But they are
all nice, kind, motherly souls, who like me
and whom I like, and that is
why what they said, or hinted, had such undue
weight with me. They let
me see they thought I was crazy going to Redmond
and trying to take
a B.A., and ever since I’ve been wondering
if I am. Mrs. Peter Sloane
sighed and said she hoped my strength would
hold out till I got through;
and at once I saw myself a hopeless victim
of nervous prostration at the
end of my third year; Mrs. Eben Wright said
it must cost an awful lot
to put in four years at Redmond; and I felt
all over me that it was
unpardonable of me to squander Marilla’s
money and my own on such a
folly. Mrs. Jasper Bell said she hoped I wouldn’t
let college spoil me,
as it did some people; and I felt in my bones
that the end of my four
Redmond years would see me a most insufferable
creature, thinking I knew
it all, and looking down on everything and
everybody in Avonlea; Mrs.
Elisha Wright said she understood that Redmond
girls, especially those
who belonged to Kingsport, were ‘dreadful
dressy and stuck-up,’ and she
guessed I wouldn’t feel much at home among
them; and I saw myself, a
snubbed, dowdy, humiliated country girl, shuffling
through Redmond’s
classic halls in copper toned boots.”
Anne ended with a laugh and a sigh commingled.
With her sensitive nature
all disapproval had weight, even the disapproval
of those for whose
opinions she had scant respect. For the time
being life was savourless,
and ambition had gone out like a snuffed candle.
“You surely don’t care for what they said,”
protested Gilbert. “You know
exactly how narrow their outlook on life is,
excellent creatures though
they are. To do anything THEY have never done
is anathema maranatha. You
are the first Avonlea girl who has ever gone
to college; and you
know that all pioneers are considered to be
afflicted with moonstruck
madness.”
“Oh, I know. But FEELING is so different
from KNOWING. My common sense
tells me all you can say, but there are times
when common sense has
no power over me. Common nonsense takes possession
of my soul. Really,
after Mrs. Elisha went away I hardly had the
heart to finish packing.”
“You’re just tired, Anne. Come, forget
it all and take a walk with
me, a ramble back through the woods beyond
the marsh. There should be
something there I want to show you.”
“Should be! Don’t you know if it is there?”
“No. I only know it should be, from something
I saw there in spring.
Come on. We’ll pretend we are two children
again and we’ll go the way of
the wind.”
They started gaily off. Anne, remembering
the unpleasantness of the
preceding evening, was very nice to Gilbert;
and Gilbert, who was
learning wisdom, took care to be nothing save
the schoolboy comrade
again. Mrs. Lynde and Marilla watched them
from the kitchen window.
“That’ll be a match some day,” Mrs.
Lynde said approvingly.
Marilla winced slightly. In her heart she
hoped it would, but it went
against her grain to hear the matter spoken
of in Mrs. Lynde’s gossipy
matter-of-fact way.
“They’re only children yet,” she said
shortly.
Mrs. Lynde laughed good-naturedly.
“Anne is eighteen; I was married when I
was that age. We old folks,
Marilla, are too much given to thinking children
never grow up, that’s
what. Anne is a young woman and Gilbert’s
a man, and he worships the
ground she walks on, as any one can see. He’s
a fine fellow, and Anne
can’t do better. I hope she won’t get
any romantic nonsense into her
head at Redmond. I don’t approve of them
coeducational places and never
did, that’s what. I don’t believe,”
concluded Mrs. Lynde solemnly, “that
the students at such colleges ever do much
else than flirt.”
“They must study a little,” said Marilla,
with a smile.
“Precious little,” sniffed Mrs. Rachel.
“However, I think Anne will. She
never was flirtatious. But she doesn’t appreciate
Gilbert at his full
value, that’s what. Oh, I know girls! Charlie
Sloane is wild about her,
too, but I’d never advise her to marry a
Sloane. The Sloanes are good,
honest, respectable people, of course. But
when all’s said and done,
they’re SLOANES.”
Marilla nodded. To an outsider, the statement
that Sloanes were Sloanes
might not be very illuminating, but she understood.
Every village has
such a family; good, honest, respectable people
they may be, but SLOANES
they are and must ever remain, though they
speak with the tongues of men
and angels.
Gilbert and Anne, happily unconscious that
their future was thus being
settled by Mrs. Rachel, were sauntering through
the shadows of the
Haunted Wood. Beyond, the harvest hills were
basking in an amber sunset
radiance, under a pale, aerial sky of rose
and blue. The distant spruce
groves were burnished bronze, and their long
shadows barred the upland
meadows. But around them a little wind sang
among the fir tassels, and
in it there was the note of autumn.
“This wood really is haunted now, by old
memories,” said Anne, stooping
to gather a spray of ferns, bleached to waxen
whiteness by frost. “It
seems to me that the little girls Diana and
I used to be play here
still, and sit by the Dryad’s Bubble in
the twilights, trysting with
the ghosts. Do you know, I can never go up
this path in the dusk without
feeling a bit of the old fright and shiver?
There was one especially
horrifying phantom which we created, the ghost
of the murdered child
that crept up behind you and laid cold fingers
on yours. I confess that,
to this day, I cannot help fancying its little,
furtive footsteps behind
me when I come here after nightfall. I’m
not afraid of the White Lady or
the headless man or the skeletons, but I wish
I had never imagined that
baby’s ghost into existence. How angry Marilla
and Mrs. Barry were over
that affair,” concluded Anne, with reminiscent
laughter.
The woods around the head of the marsh were
full of purple vistas,
threaded with gossamers. Past a dour plantation
of gnarled spruces and
a maple-fringed, sun-warm valley they found
the “something” Gilbert was
looking for.
“Ah, here it is,” he said with satisfaction.
“An apple tree, and away back here!” exclaimed
Anne delightedly.
“Yes, a veritable apple-bearing apple tree,
too, here in the very midst
of pines and beeches, a mile away from any
orchard. I was here one day
last spring and found it, all white with blossom.
So I resolved I’d come
again in the fall and see if it had been apples.
See, it’s loaded. They
look good, too, tawny as russets but with
a dusky red cheek. Most wild
seedlings are green and uninviting.”
“I suppose it sprang years ago from some
chance-sown seed,” said Anne
dreamily. “And how it has grown and flourished
and held its own here all
alone among aliens, the brave determined thing!”
“Here’s a fallen tree with a cushion of
moss. Sit down, Anne, it will
serve for a woodland throne. I’ll climb
for some apples. They all grow
high, the tree had to reach up to the sunlight.”
The apples proved to be delicious. Under the
tawny skin was a white,
white flesh, faintly veined with red; and,
besides their own proper
apple taste, they had a certain wild, delightful
tang no orchard-grown
apple ever possessed.
“The fatal apple of Eden couldn’t have
had a rarer flavor,” commented
Anne. “But it’s time we were going home.
See, it was twilight three
minutes ago and now it’s moonlight. What
a pity we couldn’t have caught
the moment of transformation. But such moments
never are caught, I
suppose.”
“Let’s go back around the marsh and home
by way of Lover’s Lane. Do you
feel as disgruntled now as when you started
out, Anne?”
“Not I. Those apples have been as manna
to a hungry soul. I feel that I
shall love Redmond and have a splendid four
years there.”
“And after those four years, what?”
“Oh, there’s another bend in the road
at their end,” answered Anne
lightly. “I’ve no idea what may be around
it, I don’t want to have. It’s
nicer not to know.”
Lover’s Lane was a dear place that night,
still and mysteriously dim
in the pale radiance of the moonlight. They
loitered through it in a
pleasant chummy silence, neither caring to
talk.
“If Gilbert were always as he has been this
evening how nice and simple
everything would be,” reflected Anne.
Gilbert was looking at Anne, as she walked
along. In her light dress,
with her slender delicacy, she made him think
of a white iris.
“I wonder if I can ever make her care for
me,” he thought, with a pang
of self-distrust.
End of Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Greeting and Farewell
Charlie Sloane, Gilbert Blythe and Anne Shirley
left Avonlea the
following Monday morning. Anne had hoped for
a fine day. Diana was to
drive her to the station and they wanted this,
their last drive together
for some time, to be a pleasant one. But when
Anne went to bed Sunday
night the east wind was moaning around Green
Gables with an ominous
prophecy which was fulfilled in the morning.
Anne awoke to find
raindrops pattering against her window and
shadowing the pond’s grey
surface with widening rings; hills and sea
were hidden in mist, and the
whole world seemed dim and dreary. Anne dressed
in the cheerless grey
dawn, for an early start was necessary to
catch the boat train; she
struggled against the tears that WOULD well
up in her eyes in spite of
herself. She was leaving the home that was
so dear to her, and something
told her that she was leaving it forever,
save as a holiday refuge.
Things would never be the same again; coming
back for vacations would
not be living there. And oh, how dear and
beloved everything was, that
little white porch room, sacred to the dreams
of girlhood, the old Snow
Queen at the window, the brook in the hollow,
the Dryad’s Bubble, the
Haunted Woods, and Lover’s Lane, all the
thousand and one dear spots
where memories of the old years bided. Could
she ever be really happy
anywhere else?
Breakfast at Green Gables that morning was
a rather doleful meal. Davy,
for the first time in his life probably, could
not eat, but blubbered
shamelessly over his porridge. Nobody else
seemed to have much appetite,
save Dora, who tucked away her rations comfortably.
Dora, like the
immortal and most prudent Charlotte, who “went
on cutting bread and
butter” when her frenzied lover’s body
had been carried past on a
shutter, was one of those fortunate creatures
who are seldom disturbed
by anything. Even at eight it took a great
deal to ruffle Dora’s
placidity. She was sorry Anne was going away,
of course, but was that
any reason why she should fail to appreciate
a poached egg on toast? Not
at all. And, seeing that Davy could not eat
his, Dora ate it for him.
Promptly on time Diana appeared with horse
and buggy, her rosy face
glowing above her raincoat. The good-byes
had to be said then somehow.
Mrs. Lynde came in from her quarters to give
Anne a hearty embrace and
warn her to be careful of her health, whatever
she did. Marilla, brusque
and tearless, pecked Anne’s cheek and said
she supposed they’d hear from
her when she got settled. A casual observer
might have concluded that
Anne’s going mattered very little to her,
unless said observer had
happened to get a good look in her eyes. Dora
kissed Anne primly and
squeezed out two decorous little tears; but
Davy, who had been crying on
the back porch step ever since they rose from
the table, refused to say
good-bye at all. When he saw Anne coming towards
him he sprang to his
feet, bolted up the back stairs, and hid in
a clothes closet, out of
which he would not come. His muffled howls
were the last sounds Anne
heard as she left Green Gables.
It rained heavily all the way to Bright River,
to which station they had
to go, since the branch line train from Carmody
did not connect with the
boat train. Charlie and Gilbert were on the
station platform when they
reached it, and the train was whistling. Anne
had just time to get her
ticket and trunk check, say a hurried farewell
to Diana, and hasten on
board. She wished she were going back with
Diana to Avonlea; she knew
she was going to die of homesickness. And
oh, if only that dismal rain
would stop pouring down as if the whole world
were weeping over summer
vanished and joys departed! Even Gilbert’s
presence brought her no
comfort, for Charlie Sloane was there, too,
and Sloanishness could be
tolerated only in fine weather. It was absolutely
insufferable in rain.
But when the boat steamed out of Charlottetown
harbour things took a turn
for the better. The rain ceased and the sun
began to burst out goldenly
now and again between the rents in the clouds,
burnishing the grey seas
with copper-hued radiance, and lighting up
the mists that curtained the
Island’s red shores with gleams of gold
foretokening a fine day after
all. Besides, Charlie Sloane promptly became
so seasick that he had to
go below, and Anne and Gilbert were left alone
on deck.
“I am very glad that all the Sloanes get
seasick as soon as they go on
water,” thought Anne mercilessly. “I am
sure I couldn’t take my farewell
look at the ‘ould sod’ with Charlie standing
there pretending to look
sentimentally at it, too.”
“Well, we’re off,” remarked Gilbert
unsentimentally.
“Yes, I feel like Byron’s ‘Childe Harold’,
only it isn’t really my
‘native shore’ that I’m watching,”
said Anne, winking her grey eyes
vigorously. “Nova Scotia is that, I suppose.
But one’s native shore is
the land one loves the best, and that’s
good old P.E.I. for me. I can’t
believe I didn’t always live here. Those
eleven years before I came seem
like a bad dream. It’s seven years since
I crossed on this boat, the
evening Mrs. Spencer brought me over from
Hopetown. I can see myself, in
that dreadful old wincey dress and faded sailor
hat, exploring decks and
cabins with enraptured curiosity. It was a
fine evening; and how those
red Island shores did gleam in the sunshine.
Now I’m crossing the strait
again. Oh, Gilbert, I do hope I’ll like
Redmond and Kingsport, but I’m
sure I won’t!”
“Where’s all your philosophy gone, Anne?”
“It’s all submerged under a great, swamping
wave of loneliness and
homesickness. I’ve longed for three years
to go to Redmond, and now
I’m going, and I wish I weren’t! Never
mind! I shall be cheerful and
philosophical again after I have just one
good cry. I MUST have that,
‘as a went’, and I’ll have to wait until
I get into my boardinghouse
bed tonight, wherever it may be, before I
can have it. Then Anne will be
herself again. I wonder if Davy has come out
of the closet yet.”
It was nine that night when their train reached
Kingsport, and they
found themselves in the blue-white glare of
the crowded station. Anne
felt horribly bewildered, but a moment later
she was seized by Priscilla
Grant, who had come to Kingsport on Saturday.
“Here you are, beloved! And I suppose you’re
as tired as I was when I
got here Saturday night.”
“Tired! Priscilla, don’t talk of it. I’m
tired, and green, and
provincial, and only about ten years old.
For pity’s sake take your
poor, broken-down chum to some place where
she can hear herself think.”
“I’ll take you right up to our boardinghouse.
I’ve a cab ready outside.”
“It’s such a blessing you’re here, Prissy.
If you weren’t I think I
should just sit down on my suitcase, here
and now, and weep bitter
tears. What a comfort one familiar face is
in a howling wilderness of
strangers!”
“Is that Gilbert Blythe over there, Anne?
How he has grown up this past
year! He was only a schoolboy when I taught
in Carmody. And of course
that’s Charlie Sloane. HE hasn’t changed,
couldn’t! He looked just like
that when he was born, and he’ll look like
that when he’s eighty. This
way, dear. We’ll be home in twenty minutes.”
“Home!” groaned Anne. “You mean we’ll
be in some horrible boardinghouse,
in a still more horrible hall bedroom, looking
out on a dingy back
yard.”
“It isn’t a horrible boardinghouse, Anne-girl.
Here’s our cab. Hop
in, the driver will get your trunk. Oh, yes,
the boardinghouse, it’s
really a very nice place of its kind, as you’ll
admit tomorrow morning
when a good night’s sleep has turned your
blues rosy pink. It’s a big,
old-fashioned, grey stone house on St. John
Street, just a nice little
constitutional from Redmond. It used to be
the ‘residence’ of great
folk, but fashion has deserted St. John Street
and its houses only dream
now of better days. They’re so big that
people living in them have
to take boarders just to fill up. At least,
that is the reason our
landladies are very anxious to impress on
us. They’re delicious,
Anne, our landladies, I mean.”
“How many are there?”
“Two. Miss Hannah Harvey and Miss Ada Harvey.
They were born twins about
fifty years ago.”
“I can’t get away from twins, it seems,”
smiled Anne. “Wherever I go
they confront me.”
“Oh, they’re not twins now, dear. After
they reached the age of
thirty they never were twins again. Miss Hannah
has grown old, not too
gracefully, and Miss Ada has stayed thirty,
less gracefully still. I
don’t know whether Miss Hannah can smile
or not; I’ve never caught
her at it so far, but Miss Ada smiles all
the time and that’s worse.
However, they’re nice, kind souls, and they
take two boarders every
year because Miss Hannah’s economical soul
cannot bear to ‘waste room
space’, not because they need to or have
to, as Miss Ada has told me
seven times since Saturday night. As for our
rooms, I admit they are
hall bedrooms, and mine does look out on the
back yard. Your room is
a front one and looks out on Old St. John’s
graveyard, which is just
across the street.”
“That sounds gruesome,” shivered Anne.
“I think I’d rather have the back
yard view.”
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t. Wait and see. Old
St. John’s is a darling place.
It’s been a graveyard so long that it’s
ceased to be one and has become
one of the sights of Kingsport. I was all
through it yesterday for a
pleasure exertion. There’s a big stone wall
and a row of enormous trees
all around it, and rows of trees all through
it, and the queerest old
tombstones, with the queerest and quaintest
inscriptions. You’ll go
there to study, Anne, see if you don’t.
Of course, nobody is ever buried
there now. But a few years ago they put up
a beautiful monument to the
memory of Nova Scotian soldiers who fell in
the Crimean War. It is just
opposite the entrance gates and there’s
‘scope for imagination’ in it,
as you used to say. Here’s your trunk at
last, and the boys coming to
say good night. Must I really shake hands
with Charlie Sloane, Anne?
His hands are always so cold and fishy-feeling.
We must ask them to call
occasionally. Miss Hannah gravely told me
we could have ‘young gentlemen
callers’ two evenings in the week, if they
went away at a reasonable
hour; and Miss Ada asked me, smiling, please
to be sure they didn’t sit
on her beautiful cushions. I promised to see
to it; but goodness knows
where else they CAN sit, unless they sit on
the floor, for there are
cushions on EVERYTHING. Miss Ada even has
an elaborate Battenburg one on
top of the piano.”
Anne was laughing by this time. Priscilla’s
gay chatter had the intended
effect of cheering her up; homesickness vanished
for the time being, and
did not even return in full force when she
finally found herself alone
in her little bedroom. She went to her window
and looked out. The street
below was dim and quiet. Across it the moon
was shining above the trees
in Old St. John’s, just behind the great
dark head of the lion on the
monument. Anne wondered if it could have been
only that morning that she
had left Green Gables. She had the sense of
a long passage of time which
one day of change and travel gives.
“I suppose that very moon is looking down
on Green Gables now,” she
mused. “But I won’t think about it, that
way homesickness lies. I’m not
even going to have my good cry. I’ll put
that off to a more convenient
season, and just now I’ll go calmly and
sensibly to bed and to sleep.”
End of Chapter 3
Chapter 4
April’s Lady
Kingsport is a quaint old town, harking back
to early Colonial days,
and wrapped in its ancient atmosphere, as
some fine old dame in garments
fashioned like those of her youth. Here and
there it sprouts out into
modernity, but at heart it is still unspoiled;
it is full of curious
relics, and haloed by the romance of many
legends of the past. Once it
was a mere frontier station on the fringe
of the wilderness, and those
were the days when Indians kept life from
being monotonous to the
settlers. Then it grew to be a bone of contention
between the British
and the French, being occupied now by the
one and now by the other,
emerging from each occupation with some fresh
scar of battling nations
branded on it.
It has in its park a martello tower, autographed
all over by tourists,
a dismantled old French fort on the hills
beyond the town, and several
antiquated cannon in its public squares. It
has other historic spots
also, which may be hunted out by the curious,
and none is more quaint
and delightful than Old St. John’s Cemetery
at the very core of the
town, with streets of quiet, old-time houses
on two sides, and busy,
bustling, modern thoroughfares on the others.
Every citizen of Kingsport
feels a thrill of possessive pride in Old
St. John’s, for, if he be of
any pretensions at all, he has an ancestor
buried there, with a queer,
crooked slab at his head, or else sprawling
protectively over the grave,
on which all the main facts of his history
are recorded. For the most
part no great art or skill was lavished on
those old tombstones. The
larger number are of roughly chiselled brown
or grey native stone, and
only in a few cases is there any attempt at
ornamentation. Some are
adorned with skull and cross-bones, and this
grizzly decoration is
frequently coupled with a cherub’s head.
Many are prostrate and in
ruins. Into almost all Time’s tooth has
been gnawing, until some
inscriptions have been completely effaced,
and others can only be
deciphered with difficulty. The graveyard
is very full and very bowery,
for it is surrounded and intersected by rows
of elms and willows,
beneath whose shade the sleepers must lie
very dreamlessly, forever
crooned to by the winds and leaves over them,
and quite undisturbed by
the clamour of traffic just beyond.
Anne took the first of many rambles in Old
St. John’s the next
afternoon. She and Priscilla had gone to Redmond
in the forenoon and
registered as students, after which there
was nothing more to do that
day. The girls gladly made their escape, for
it was not exhilarating to
be surrounded by crowds of strangers, most
of whom had a rather alien
appearance, as if not quite sure where they
belonged.
The “freshettes” stood about in detached
groups of two or three,
looking askance at each other; the “freshies,”
wiser in their day and
generation, had banded themselves together
on the big staircase of the
entrance hall, where they were shouting out
glees with all the vigour of
youthful lungs, as a species of defiance to
their traditional enemies,
the Sophomores, a few of whom were prowling
loftily about, looking
properly disdainful of the “unlicked cubs”
on the stairs. Gilbert and
Charlie were nowhere to be seen.
“Little did I think the day would ever come
when I’d be glad of the
sight of a Sloane,” said Priscilla, as they
crossed the campus, “but I’d
welcome Charlie’s goggle eyes almost ecstatically.
At least, they’d be
familiar eyes.”
“Oh,” sighed Anne. “I can’t describe
how I felt when I was standing
there, waiting my turn to be registered, as
insignificant as the
teeniest drop in a most enormous bucket. It’s
bad enough to feel
insignificant, but it’s unbearable to have
it grained into your soul
that you will never, can never, be anything
but insignificant, and that
is how I did feel, as if I were invisible
to the naked eye and some of
those Sophs might step on me. I knew I would
go down to my grave unwept,
unhonoured and unsung.”
“Wait till next year,” comforted Priscilla.
“Then we’ll be able to look
as bored and sophisticated as any Sophomore
of them all. No doubt it is
rather dreadful to feel insignificant; but
I think it’s better than
to feel as big and awkward as I did, as if
I were sprawled all over
Redmond. That’s how I felt, I suppose because
I was a good two inches
taller than any one else in the crowd. I wasn’t
afraid a Soph might walk
over me; I was afraid they’d take me for
an elephant, or an overgrown
sample of a potato-fed Islander.”
“I suppose the trouble is we can’t forgive
big Redmond for not being
little Queen’s,” said Anne, gathering
about her the shreds of her old
cheerful philosophy to cover her nakedness
of spirit. “When we left
Queen’s we knew everybody and had a place
of our own. I suppose we have
been unconsciously expecting to take life
up at Redmond just where we
left off at Queen’s, and now we feel as
if the ground had slipped from
under our feet. I’m thankful that neither
Mrs. Lynde nor Mrs. Elisha
Wright know, or ever will know, my state of
mind at present. They would
exult in saying ‘I told you so,’ and be
convinced it was the beginning
of the end. Whereas it is just the end of
the beginning.”
“Exactly. That sounds more Anneish. In a
little while we’ll be
acclimated and acquainted, and all will be
well. Anne, did you notice
the girl who stood alone just outside the
door of the coeds’ dressing
room all the morning, the pretty one with
the brown eyes and crooked
mouth?”
“Yes, I did. I noticed her particularly
because she seemed the only
creature there who LOOKED as lonely and friendless
as I FELT. I had YOU,
but she had no one.”
“I think she felt pretty all-by-herselfish,
too. Several times I saw her
make a motion as if to cross over to us, but
she never did it, too shy,
I suppose. I wished she would come. If I hadn’t
felt so much like the
aforesaid elephant I’d have gone to her.
But I couldn’t lumber across
that big hall with all those boys howling
on the stairs. She was the
prettiest freshette I saw today, but probably
favour is deceitful and
even beauty is vain on your first day at Redmond,”
concluded Priscilla
with a laugh.
“I’m going across to Old St. John’s
after lunch,” said Anne. “I don’t
know that a graveyard is a very good place
to go to get cheered up, but
it seems the only get-at-able place where
there are trees, and trees
I must have. I’ll sit on one of those old
slabs and shut my eyes and
imagine I’m in the Avonlea woods.”
Anne did not do that, however, for she found
enough of interest in Old
St. John’s to keep her eyes wide open. They
went in by the entrance
gates, past the simple, massive, stone arch
surmounted by the great lion
of England.
“‘And on Inkerman yet the wild bramble
is gory,
And those bleak heights henceforth shall be
famous in story,’”
quoted Anne, looking at it with a thrill.
They found themselves in a
dim, cool, green place where winds were fond
of purring. Up and down
the long grassy aisles they wandered, reading
the quaint, voluminous
epitaphs, carved in an age that had more leisure
than our own.
“‘Here lieth the body of Albert Crawford,
Esq.,’” read Anne from a
worn, grey slab, “‘for many years Keeper
of His Majesty’s Ordnance at
Kingsport. He served in the army till the
peace of 1763, when he retired
from bad health. He was a brave officer, the
best of husbands, the best
of fathers, the best of friends. He died October
29th, 1792, aged 84
years.’ There’s an epitaph for you, Prissy.
There is certainly some
‘scope for imagination’ in it. How full
such a life must have been of
adventure! And as for his personal qualities,
I’m sure human eulogy
couldn’t go further. I wonder if they told
him he was all those best
things while he was alive.”
“Here’s another,” said Priscilla. “Listen,
‘To the memory of Alexander Ross, who died
on the 22nd of September,
1840, aged 43 years. This is raised as a tribute
of affection by one
whom he served so faithfully for 27 years
that he was regarded as a
friend, deserving the fullest confidence and
attachment.’”
“A very good epitaph,” commented Anne
thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t wish a
better. We are all servants of some sort,
and if the fact that we are
faithful can be truthfully inscribed on our
tombstones nothing more need
be added. Here’s a sorrowful little grey
stone, Prissy, ‘to the memory
of a favourite child.’ And here is another
‘erected to the memory of one
who is buried elsewhere.’ I wonder where
that unknown grave is. Really,
Pris, the graveyards of today will never be
as interesting as this. You
were right, I shall come here often. I love
it already. I see we’re not
alone here, there’s a girl down at the end
of this avenue.”
“Yes, and I believe it’s the very girl
we saw at Redmond this morning.
I’ve been watching her for five minutes.
She has started to come up the
avenue exactly half a dozen times, and half
a dozen times has she turned
and gone back. Either she’s dreadfully shy
or she has got something on
her conscience. Let’s go and meet her. It’s
easier to get acquainted in
a graveyard than at Redmond, I believe.”
They walked down the long grassy arcade towards
the stranger, who was
sitting on a grey slab under an enormous willow.
She was certainly very
pretty, with a vivid, irregular, bewitching
type of prettiness. There
was a gloss as of brown nuts on her satin-smooth
hair and a soft, ripe
glow on her round cheeks. Her eyes were big
and brown and velvety, under
oddly-pointed black brows, and her crooked
mouth was rose-red. She
wore a smart brown suit, with two very modish
little shoes peeping from
beneath it; and her hat of dull pink straw,
wreathed with golden-brown
poppies, had the indefinable, unmistakable
air which pertains to the
“creation” of an artist in millinery.
Priscilla had a sudden stinging
consciousness that her own hat had been trimmed
by her village store
milliner, and Anne wondered uncomfortably
if the blouse she had made
herself, and which Mrs. Lynde had fitted,
looked VERY countrified and
home-made besides the stranger’s smart attire.
For a moment both girls
felt like turning back.
But they had already stopped and turned towards
the grey slab. It was
too late to retreat, for the brown-eyed girl
had evidently concluded
that they were coming to speak to her. Instantly
she sprang up and came
forward with outstretched hand and a gay,
friendly smile in which there
seemed not a shadow of either shyness or burdened
conscience.
“Oh, I want to know who you two girls are,”
she exclaimed eagerly. “I’ve
been DYING to know. I saw you at Redmond this
morning. Say, wasn’t it
AWFUL there? For the time I wished I had stayed
home and got married.”
Anne and Priscilla both broke into unconstrained
laughter at this
unexpected conclusion. The brown-eyed girl
laughed, too.
“I really did. I COULD have, you know. Come,
let’s all sit down on this
gravestone and get acquainted. It won’t
be hard. I know we’re going
to adore each other, I knew it as soon as
I saw you at Redmond this
morning. I wanted so much to go right over
and hug you both.”
“Why didn’t you?” asked Priscilla.
“Because I simply couldn’t make up my
mind to do it. I never can make
up my mind about anything myself, I’m always
afflicted with indecision.
Just as soon as I decide to do something I
feel in my bones that another
course would be the correct one. It’s a
dreadful misfortune, but I was
born that way, and there is no use in blaming
me for it, as some people
do. So I couldn’t make up my mind to go
and speak to you, much as I
wanted to.”
“We thought you were too shy,” said Anne.
“No, no, dear. Shyness isn’t among the
many failings, or virtues, of
Philippa Gordon, Phil for short. Do call me
Phil right off. Now, what
are your handles?”
“She’s Priscilla Grant,” said Anne,
pointing.
“And SHE’S Anne Shirley,” said Priscilla,
pointing in turn.
“And we’re from the Island,” said both
together.
“I hail from Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia,”
said Philippa.
“Bolingbroke!” exclaimed Anne. “Why,
that is where I was born.”
“Do you really mean it? Why, that makes
you a Bluenose after all.”
“No, it doesn’t,” retorted Anne. “Wasn’t
it Dan O’Connell who said that
if a man was born in a stable it didn’t
make him a horse? I’m Island to
the core.”
“Well, I’m glad you were born in Bolingbroke
anyway. It makes us kind of
neighbours, doesn’t it? And I like that,
because when I tell you secrets
it won’t be as if I were telling them to
a stranger. I have to tell
them. I can’t keep secrets, it’s no use
to try. That’s my worst
failing, that, and indecision, as aforesaid.
Would you believe it?, it
took me half an hour to decide which hat to
wear when I was coming
here, HERE, to a graveyard! At first I inclined
to my brown one with
the feather; but as soon as I put it on I
thought this pink one with
the floppy brim would be more becoming. When
I got IT pinned in place
I liked the brown one better. At last I put
them close together on the
bed, shut my eyes, and jabbed with a hat pin.
The pin speared the pink
one, so I put it on. It is becoming, isn’t
it? Tell me, what do you
think of my looks?”
At this naive demand, made in a perfectly
serious tone, Priscilla
laughed again. But Anne said, impulsively
squeezing Philippa’s hand,
“We thought this morning that you were the
prettiest girl we saw at
Redmond.”
Philippa’s crooked mouth flashed into a
bewitching, crooked smile over
very white little teeth.
“I thought that myself,” was her next
astounding statement, “but I
wanted some one else’s opinion to bolster
mine up. I can’t decide even
on my own appearance. Just as soon as I’ve
decided that I’m pretty
I begin to feel miserably that I’m not.
Besides, have a horrible old
great-aunt who is always saying to me, with
a mournful sigh, ‘You were
such a pretty baby. It’s strange how children
change when they grow up.’
I adore aunts, but I detest great-aunts. Please
tell me quite often that
I am pretty, if you don’t mind. I feel so
much more comfortable when I
can believe I’m pretty. And I’ll be just
as obliging to you if you want
me to, I CAN be, with a clear conscience.”
“Thanks,” laughed Anne, “but Priscilla
and I are so firmly convinced of
our own good looks that we don’t need any
assurance about them, so you
needn’t trouble.”
“Oh, you’re laughing at me. I know you
think I’m abominably vain, but
I’m not. There really isn’t one spark
of vanity in me. And I’m never a
bit grudging about paying compliments to other
girls when they deserve
them. I’m so glad I know you folks. I came
up on Saturday and I’ve
nearly died of homesickness ever since. It’s
a horrible feeling, isn’t
it? In Bolingbroke I’m an important personage,
and in Kingsport I’m just
nobody! There were times when I could feel
my soul turning a delicate
blue. Where do you hang out?”
“Thirty-eight St. John’s Street.”
“Better and better. Why, I’m just around
the corner on Wallace Street.
I don’t like my boardinghouse, though. It’s
bleak and lonesome, and my
room looks out on such an unholy back yard.
It’s the ugliest place
in the world. As for cats, well, surely ALL
the Kingsport cats can’t
congregate there at night, but half of them
must. I adore cats on hearth
rugs, snoozing before nice, friendly fires,
but cats in back yards at
midnight are totally different animals. The
first night I was here I
cried all night, and so did the cats. You
should have seen my nose in
the morning. How I wished I had never left
home!”
“I don’t know how you managed to make
up your mind to come to Redmond at
all, if you are really such an undecided person,”
said amused Priscilla.
“Bless your heart, honey, I didn’t. It
was father who wanted me to come
here. His heart was set on it, why, I don’t
know. It seems perfectly
ridiculous to think of me studying for a B.A.
degree, doesn’t it? Not
but what I can do it, all right. I have heaps
of brains.”
“Oh!” said Priscilla vaguely.
“Yes. But it’s such hard work to use them.
And B.A.’s are such learned,
dignified, wise, solemn creatures, they must
be. No, I didn’t want
to come to Redmond. I did it just to oblige
father. He IS such a duck.
Besides, I knew if I stayed home I’d have
to get married. Mother wanted
that, wanted it decidedly. Mother has plenty
of decision. But I really
hated the thought of being married for a few
years yet. I want to have
heaps of fun before I settle down. And, ridiculous
as the idea of my
being a B.A. is, the idea of my being an old
married woman is still more
absurd, isn’t it? I’m only eighteen. No,
I concluded I would rather come
to Redmond than be married. Besides, how could
I ever have made up my
mind which man to marry?”
“Were there so many?” laughed Anne.
“Heaps. The boys like me awfully, they really
do. But there were only
two that mattered. The rest were all too young
and too poor. I must
marry a rich man, you know.”
“Why must you?”
“Honey, you couldn’t imagine ME being
a poor man’s wife, could you? I
can’t do a single useful thing, and I am
VERY extravagant. Oh, no, my
husband must have heaps of money. So that
narrowed them down to two.
But I couldn’t decide between two any easier
than between two hundred.
I knew perfectly well that whichever one I
chose I’d regret all my life
that I hadn’t married the other.”
“Didn’t you, love, either of them?”
asked Anne, a little hesitatingly.
It was not easy for her to speak to a stranger
of the great mystery and
transformation of life.
“Goodness, no. I couldn’t love anybody.
It isn’t in me. Besides I
wouldn’t want to. Being in love makes you
a perfect slave, I think.
And it would give a man such power to hurt
you. I’d be afraid. No, no,
Alec and Alonzo are two dear boys, and I like
them both so much that I
really don’t know which I like the better.
That is the trouble. Alec
is the best looking, of course, and I simply
couldn’t marry a man who
wasn’t handsome. He is good-tempered too,
and has lovely, curly, black
hair. He’s rather too perfect, I don’t
believe I’d like a perfect
husband, somebody I could never find fault
with.”
“Then why not marry Alonzo?” asked Priscilla
gravely.
“Think of marrying a name like Alonzo!”
said Phil dolefully. “I don’t
believe I could endure it. But he has a classic
nose, and it WOULD be a
comfort to have a nose in the family that
could be depended on. I can’t
depend on mine. So far, it takes after the
Gordon pattern, but I’m so
afraid it will develop Byrne tendencies as
I grow older. I examine it
every day anxiously to make sure it’s still
Gordon. Mother was a Byrne
and has the Byrne nose in the Byrnest degree.
Wait till you see it. I
adore nice noses. Your nose is awfully nice,
Anne Shirley. Alonzo’s
nose nearly turned the balance in his favour.
But ALONZO! No, I couldn’t
decide. If I could have done as I did with
the hats, stood them both
up together, shut my eyes, and jabbed with
a hatpin, it would have been
quite easy.”
“What did Alec and Alonzo feel like when
you came away?” queried
Priscilla.
“Oh, they still have hope. I told them they’d
have to wait till I could
make up my mind. They’re quite willing to
wait. They both worship me,
you know. Meanwhile, I intend to have a good
time. I expect I shall have
heaps of beaux at Redmond. I can’t be happy
unless I have, you know. But
don’t you think the freshmen are fearfully
homely? I saw only one really
handsome fellow among them. He went away before
you came. I heard his
chum call him Gilbert. His chum had eyes that
stuck out THAT FAR. But
you’re not going yet, girls? Don’t go
yet.”
“I think we must,” said Anne, rather coldly.
“It’s getting late, and
I’ve some work to do.”
“But you’ll both come to see me, won’t
you?” asked Philippa, getting up
and putting an arm around each. “And let
me come to see you. I want to
be chummy with you. I’ve taken such a fancy
to you both. And I haven’t
quite disgusted you with my frivolity, have
I?”
“Not quite,” laughed Anne, responding
to Phil’s squeeze, with a return
of cordiality.
“Because I’m not half so silly as I seem
on the surface, you know. You
just accept Philippa Gordon, as the Lord made
her, with all her faults,
and I believe you’ll come to like her. Isn’t
this graveyard a sweet
place? I’d love to be buried here. Here’s
a grave I didn’t see
before, this one in the iron railing, oh,
girls, look, see, the stone
says it’s the grave of a middy who was killed
in the fight between the
Shannon and the Chesapeake. Just fancy!”
Anne paused by the railing and looked at the
worn stone, her pulses
thrilling with sudden excitement. The old
graveyard, with its
over-arching trees and long aisles of shadows,
faded from her sight.
Instead, she saw the Kingsport Harbour of
nearly a century agone. Out of
the mist came slowly a great frigate, brilliant
with “the meteor flag of
England.” Behind her was another, with a
still, heroic form, wrapped in
his own starry flag, lying on the quarter
deck, the gallant Lawrence.
Time’s finger had turned back his pages,
and that was the Shannon
sailing triumphant up the bay with the Chesapeake
as her prize.
“Come back, Anne Shirley, come back,”
laughed Philippa, pulling her arm.
“You’re a hundred years away from us.
Come back.”
Anne came back with a sigh; her eyes were
shining softly.
“I’ve always loved that old story,”
she said, “and although the
English won that victory, I think it was because
of the brave, defeated
commander I love it. This grave seems to bring
it so near and make it
so real. This poor little middy was only eighteen.
He ‘died of desperate
wounds received in gallant action’, so reads
his epitaph. It is such as
a soldier might wish for.”
Before she turned away, Anne unpinned the
little cluster of purple
pansies she wore and dropped it softly on
the grave of the boy who had
perished in the great sea-duel.
“Well, what do you think of our new friend?”
asked Priscilla, when Phil
had left them.
“I like her. There is something very loveable
about her, in spite of all
her nonsense. I believe, as she says herself,
that she isn’t half as
silly as she sounds. She’s a dear, kissable
baby, and I don’t know that
she’ll ever really grow up.”
“I like her, too,” said Priscilla, decidedly.
“She talks as much about
boys as Ruby Gillis does. But it always enrages
or sickens me to hear
Ruby, whereas I just wanted to laugh good-naturedly
at Phil. Now, what
is the why of that?”
“There is a difference,” said Anne meditatively.
“I think it’s because
Ruby is really so CONSCIOUS of boys. She plays
at love and love-making.
Besides, you feel, when she is boasting of
her beaux that she is doing
it to rub it well into you that you haven’t
half so many. Now, when Phil
talks of her beaux it sounds as if she was
just speaking of chums. She
really looks upon boys as good comrades, and
she is pleased when she has
dozens of them tagging round, simply because
she likes to be popular and
to be thought popular. Even Alex and Alonzo,
I’ll never be able to
think of those two names separately after
this, are to her just two
playfellows who want her to play with them
all their lives. I’m glad
we met her, and I’m glad we went to Old
St. John’s. I believe I’ve put
forth a tiny soul-root into Kingsport soil
this afternoon. I hope so. I
hate to feel transplanted.”
End of Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Letters from Home
For the next three weeks Anne and Priscilla
continued to feel as
strangers in a strange land. Then, suddenly,
everything seemed to fall
into focus, Redmond, professors, classes,
students, studies, social
doings. Life became homogeneous again, instead
of being made up of
detached fragments. The Freshmen, instead
of being a collection of
unrelated individuals, found themselves a
class, with a class spirit, a
class yell, class interests, class antipathies
and class ambitions.
They won the day in the annual “Arts Rush”
against the Sophomores,
and thereby gained the respect of all the
classes, and an enormous,
confidence-giving opinion of themselves. For
three years the Sophomores
had won in the “rush”; that the victory
of this year perched upon the
Freshmen’s banner was attributed to the
strategic generalship of Gilbert
Blythe, who marshalled the campaign and originated
certain new tactics,
which demoralised the Sophs and swept the
Freshmen to triumph. As
a reward of merit he was elected president
of the Freshman Class, a
position of honour and responsibility, from
a Fresh point of view,
at least, coveted by many. He was also invited
to join the
“Lambs”, Redmondese for Lamba Theta, a
compliment rarely paid to a
Freshman. As a preparatory initiation ordeal
he had to parade the
principal business streets of Kingsport for
a whole day wearing a
sunbonnet and a voluminous kitchen apron of
gaudily flowered calico.
This he did cheerfully, doffing his sunbonnet
with courtly grace when he
met ladies of his acquaintance. Charlie Sloane,
who had not been asked
to join the Lambs, told Anne he did not see
how Blythe could do it, and
HE, for his part, could never humiliate himself
so.
“Fancy Charlie Sloane in a ‘caliker’
apron and a ‘sunbunnit,’” giggled
Priscilla. “He’d look exactly like his
old Grandmother Sloane.
Gilbert, now, looked as much like a man in
them as in his own proper
habiliments.”
Anne and Priscilla found themselves in the
thick of the social life of
Redmond. That this came about so speedily
was due in great measure to
Philippa Gordon. Philippa was the daughter
of a rich and well-known man,
and belonged to an old and exclusive “Bluenose”
family. This, combined
with her beauty and charm, a charm acknowledged
by all who met
her, promptly opened the gates of all cliques,
clubs and classes in
Redmond to her; and where she went Anne and
Priscilla went, too. Phil
“adored” Anne and Priscilla, especially
Anne. She was a loyal little
soul, crystal-free from any form of snobbishness.
“Love me, love my
friends” seemed to be her unconscious motto.
Without effort, she took
them with her into her ever widening circle
of acquaintanceship, and the
two Avonlea girls found their social pathway
at Redmond made very
easy and pleasant for them, to the envy and
wonderment of the other
freshettes, who, lacking Philippa’s sponsorship,
were doomed to remain
rather on the fringe of things during their
first college year.
To Anne and Priscilla, with their more serious
views of life, Phil
remained the amusing, loveable baby she had
seemed on their first
meeting. Yet, as she said herself, she had
“heaps” of brains. When or
where she found time to study was a mystery,
for she seemed always in
demand for some kind of “fun,” and her
home evenings were crowded
with callers. She had all the “beaux”
that heart could desire, for
nine-tenths of the Freshmen and a big fraction
of all the other classes
were rivals for her smiles. She was naively
delighted over this, and
gleefully recounted each new conquest to Anne
and Priscilla, with
comments that might have made the unlucky
lover’s ears burn fiercely.
“Alec and Alonzo don’t seem to have any
serious rival yet,” remarked
Anne, teasingly.
“Not one,” agreed Philippa. “I write
them both every week and tell
them all about my young men here. I’m sure
it must amuse them. But, of
course, the one I like best I can’t get.
Gilbert Blythe won’t take any
notice of me, except to look at me as if I
were a nice little kitten
he’d like to pat. Too well I know the reason.
I owe you a grudge, Queen
Anne. I really ought to hate you and instead
I love you madly, and I’m
miserable if I don’t see you every day.
You’re different from any girl
I ever knew before. When you look at me in
a certain way I feel what an
insignificant, frivolous little beast I am,
and I long to be better
and wiser and stronger. And then I make good
resolutions; but the first
nice-looking mannie who comes my way knocks
them all out of my head.
Isn’t college life magnificent? It’s so
funny to think I hated it that
first day. But if I hadn’t I might never
got really acquainted with you.
Anne, please tell me over again that you like
me a little bit. I yearn
to hear it.”
“I like you a big bit, and I think you’re
a dear, sweet, adorable,
velvety, clawless, little, kitten,” laughed
Anne, “but I don’t see when
you ever get time to learn your lessons.”
Phil must have found time for she held her
own in every class of her
year. Even the grumpy old professor of Mathematics,
who detested coeds,
and had bitterly opposed their admission to
Redmond, couldn’t floor her.
She led the freshettes everywhere, except
in English, where Anne Shirley
left her far behind. Anne herself found the
studies of her Freshman year
very easy, thanks in great part to the steady
work she and Gilbert had
put in during those two past years in Avonlea.
This left her more time
for a social life which she thoroughly enjoyed.
But never for a moment
did she forget Avonlea and the friends there.
To her, the happiest
moments in each week were those in which letters
came from home. It
was not until she had got her first letters
that she began to think
she could ever like Kingsport or feel at home
there. Before they came,
Avonlea had seemed thousands of miles away;
those letters brought it
near and linked the old life to the new so
closely that they began to
seem one and the same, instead of two hopelessly
segregated existences.
The first batch contained six letters, from
Jane Andrews, Ruby Gillis,
Diana Barry, Marilla, Mrs. Lynde and Davy.
Jane’s was a copperplate
production, with every “t” nicely crossed
and every “i” precisely
dotted, and not an interesting sentence in
it. She never mentioned the
school, concerning which Anne was avid to
hear; she never answered one
of the questions Anne had asked in her letter.
But she told Anne how
many yards of lace she had recently crocheted,
and the kind of weather
they were having in Avonlea, and how she intended
to have her new dress
made, and the way she felt when her head ached.
Ruby Gillis wrote a
gushing epistle deploring Anne’s absence,
assuring her she was horribly
missed in everything, asking what the Redmond
“fellows” were like, and
filling the rest with accounts of her own
harrowing experiences with her
numerous admirers. It was a silly, harmless
letter, and Anne would have
laughed over it had it not been for the postscript.
“Gilbert seems to be
enjoying Redmond, judging from his letters,”
wrote Ruby. “I don’t think
Charlie is so stuck on it.”
So Gilbert was writing to Ruby! Very well.
He had a perfect right to,
of course. Only, !! Anne did not know that
Ruby had written the first
letter and that Gilbert had answered it from
mere courtesy. She tossed
Ruby’s letter aside contemptuously. But
it took all Diana’s breezy,
newsy, delightful epistle to banish the sting
of Ruby’s postscript.
Diana’s letter contained a little too much
Fred, but was otherwise
crowded and crossed with items of interest,
and Anne almost felt herself
back in Avonlea while reading it. Marilla’s
was a rather prim and
colourless epistle, severely innocent of gossip
or emotion. Yet somehow
it conveyed to Anne a whiff of the wholesome,
simple life at Green
Gables, with its savour of ancient peace,
and the steadfast abiding love
that was there for her. Mrs. Lynde’s letter
was full of church news.
Having broken up housekeeping, Mrs. Lynde
had more time than ever to
devote to church affairs and had flung herself
into them heart and soul.
She was at present much worked up over the
poor “supplies” they were
having in the vacant Avonlea pulpit.
“I don’t believe any but fools enter the
ministry nowadays,” she wrote
bitterly. “Such candidates as they have
sent us, and such stuff as
they preach! Half of it ain’t true, and,
what’s worse, it ain’t sound
doctrine. The one we have now is the worst
of the lot. He mostly takes
a text and preaches about something else.
And he says he doesn’t believe
all the heathen will be eternally lost. The
idea! If they won’t all the
money we’ve been giving to Foreign Missions
will be clean wasted, that’s
what! Last Sunday night he announced that
next Sunday he’d preach on the
axe-head that swam. I think he’d better
confine himself to the Bible and
leave sensational subjects alone. Things have
come to a pretty pass if
a minister can’t find enough in Holy Writ
to preach about, that’s what.
What church do you attend, Anne? I hope you
go regularly. People are apt
to get so careless about church-going away
from home, and I understand
college students are great sinners in this
respect. I’m told many of
them actually study their lessons on Sunday.
I hope you’ll never sink
that low, Anne. Remember how you were brought
up. And be very careful
what friends you make. You never know what
sort of creatures are in them
colleges. Outwardly they may be as whited
sepulchres and inwardly as
ravening wolves, that’s what. You’d better
not have anything to say to
any young man who isn’t from the Island.
“I forgot to tell you what happened the
day the minister called here. It
was the funniest thing I ever saw. I said
to Marilla, ‘If Anne had been
here wouldn’t she have had a laugh?’ Even
Marilla laughed. You know he’s
a very short, fat little man with bow legs.
Well, that old pig of Mr.
Harrison’s, the big, tall one, had wandered
over here that day again and
broke into the yard, and it got into the back
porch, unbeknownst to us,
and it was there when the minister appeared
in the doorway. It made one
wild bolt to get out, but there was nowhere
to bolt to except between
them bow legs. So there it went, and, being
as it was so big and the
minister so little, it took him clean off
his feet and carried him away.
His hat went one way and his cane another,
just as Marilla and I got to
the door. I’ll never forget the look of
him. And that poor pig was near
scared to death. I’ll never be able to read
that account in the Bible
of the swine that rushed madly down the steep
place into the sea without
seeing Mr. Harrison’s pig careering down
the hill with that minister. I
guess the pig thought he had the Old Boy on
his back instead of inside
of him. I was thankful the twins weren’t
about. It wouldn’t have been
the right thing for them to have seen a minister
in such an undignified
predicament. Just before they got to the brook
the minister jumped off
or fell off. The pig rushed through the brook
like mad and up through
the woods. Marilla and I run down and helped
the minister get up and
brush his coat. He wasn’t hurt, but he was
mad. He seemed to hold
Marilla and me responsible for it all, though
we told him the pig didn’t
belong to us, and had been pestering us all
summer. Besides, what did he
come to the back door for? You’d never have
caught Mr. Allan doing that.
It’ll be a long time before we get a man
like Mr. Allan. But it’s an
ill wind that blows no good. We’ve never
seen hoof or hair of that pig
since, and it’s my belief we never will.
“Things is pretty quiet in Avonlea. I don’t
find Green Gables as
lonesome as I expected. I think I’ll start
another cotton warp quilt
this winter. Mrs. Silas Sloane has a handsome
new apple-leaf pattern.
“When I feel that I must have some excitement
I read the murder trials
in that Boston paper my niece sends me. I
never used to do it, but
they’re real interesting. The States must
be an awful place. I hope
you’ll never go there, Anne. But the way
girls roam over the earth now
is something terrible. It always makes me
think of Satan in the Book of
Job, going to and fro and walking up and down.
I don’t believe the Lord
ever intended it, that’s what.
“Davy has been pretty good since you went
away. One day he was bad and
Marilla punished him by making him wear Dora’s
apron all day, and then
he went and cut all Dora’s aprons up. I
spanked him for that and then he
went and chased my rooster to death.
“The MacPhersons have moved down to my place.
She’s a great housekeeper
and very particular. She’s rooted all my
June lilies up because she says
they make a garden look so untidy. Thomas
set them lilies out when we
were married. Her husband seems a nice sort
of a man, but she can’t get
over being an old maid, that’s what.
“Don’t study too hard, and be sure and
put your winter underclothes on
as soon as the weather gets cool. Marilla
worries a lot about you, but I
tell her you’ve got a lot more sense than
I ever thought you would have
at one time, and that you’ll be all right.”
Davy’s letter plunged into a grievance at
the start.
“Dear anne, please write and tell marilla
not to tie me to the rale of
the bridge when I go fishing the boys make
fun of me when she does. Its
awful lonesome here without you but grate
fun in school. Jane andrews
is crosser than you. I scared mrs. lynde with
a jacky lantern last nite.
She was offel mad and she was mad cause I
chased her old rooster round
the yard till he fell down ded. I didn’t
mean to make him fall down ded.
What made him die, anne, I want to know. mrs.
lynde threw him into the
pig pen she mite of sold him to mr. blair.
mr. blair is giving 50 sense
apeace for good ded roosters now. I herd mrs.
lynde asking the minister
to pray for her. What did she do that was
so bad, anne, I want to know.
I’ve got a kite with a magnificent tail,
anne. Milty bolter told me a
grate story in school yesterday. it is troo.
old Joe Mosey and Leon were
playing cards one nite last week in the woods.
The cards were on a stump
and a big black man bigger than the trees
come along and grabbed the
cards and the stump and disapered with a noys
like thunder. Ill bet they
were skared. Milty says the black man was
the old harry. was he, anne, I
want to know. Mr. kimball over at spenservale
is very sick and will have
to go to the hospitable. please excuse me
while I ask marilla if thats
spelled rite. Marilla says its the silem he
has to go to not the other
place. He thinks he has a snake inside of
him. whats it like to have a
snake inside of you, anne. I want to know.
mrs. lawrence bell is sick
to. mrs. lynde says that all that is the matter
with her is that she
thinks too much about her insides.”
“I wonder,” said Anne, as she folded up
her letters, “what Mrs. Lynde
would think of Philippa.”
End of Chapter 5
Chapter 6
In the Park
“What are you going to do with yourselves
today, girls?” asked Philippa,
popping into Anne’s room one Saturday afternoon.
“We are going for a walk in the park,”
answered Anne. “I ought to stay
in and finish my blouse. But I couldn’t
sew on a day like this. There’s
something in the air that gets into my blood
and makes a sort of glory
in my soul. My fingers would twitch and I’d
sew a crooked seam. So it’s
ho for the park and the pines.”
“Does ‘we’ include any one but yourself
and Priscilla?”
“Yes, it includes Gilbert and Charlie, and
we’ll be very glad if it will
include you, also.”
“But,” said Philippa dolefully, “if
I go I’ll have to be gooseberry, and
that will be a new experience for Philippa
Gordon.”
“Well, new experiences are broadening. Come
along, and you’ll be able
to sympathise with all poor souls who have
to play gooseberry often. But
where are all the victims?”
“Oh, I was tired of them all and simply
couldn’t be bothered with any
of them today. Besides, I’ve been feeling
a little blue, just a pale,
elusive azure. It isn’t serious enough for
anything darker. I wrote Alec
and Alonzo last week. I put the letters into
envelopes and addressed
them, but I didn’t seal them up. That evening
something funny happened.
That is, Alec would think it funny, but Alonzo
wouldn’t be likely to.
I was in a hurry, so I snatched Alec’s letter,
as I thought, out of the
envelope and scribbled down a postscript.
Then I mailed both letters. I
got Alonzo’s reply this morning. Girls,
I had put that postscript to his
letter and he was furious. Of course he’ll
get over it, and I don’t
care if he doesn’t, but it spoiled my day.
So I thought I’d come to you
darlings to get cheered up. After the football
season opens I won’t
have any spare Saturday afternoons. I adore
football. I’ve got the most
gorgeous cap and sweater striped in Redmond
colours to wear to the games.
To be sure, a little way off I’ll look like
a walking barber’s pole.
Do you know that that Gilbert of yours has
been elected Captain of the
Freshman football team?”
“Yes, he told us so last evening,” said
Priscilla, seeing that outraged
Anne would not answer. “He and Charlie were
down. We knew they were
coming, so we painstakingly put out of sight
or out of reach all Miss
Ada’s cushions. That very elaborate one
with the raised embroidery I
dropped on the floor in the corner behind
the chair it was on. I thought
it would be safe there. But would you believe
it? Charlie Sloane made
for that chair, noticed the cushion behind
it, solemnly fished it up,
and sat on it the whole evening. Such a wreck
of a cushion as it was!
Poor Miss Ada asked me today, still smiling,
but oh, so reproachfully,
why I had allowed it to be sat upon. I told
her I hadn’t, that it was
a matter of predestination coupled with inveterate
Sloanishness and I
wasn’t a match for both combined.”
“Miss Ada’s cushions are really getting
on my nerves,” said Anne. “She
finished two new ones last week, stuffed and
embroidered within an inch
of their lives. There being absolutely no
other cushionless place to
put them she stood them up against the wall
on the stair landing. They
topple over half the time and if we come up
or down the stairs in the
dark we fall over them. Last Sunday, when
Dr. Davis prayed for all those
exposed to the perils of the sea, I added
in thought ‘and for all those
who live in houses where cushions are loved
not wisely but too well!’
There! we’re ready, and I see the boys coming
through Old St. John’s. Do
you cast in your lot with us, Phil?”
“I’ll go, if I can walk with Priscilla
and Charlie. That will be a
bearable degree of gooseberry. That Gilbert
of yours is a darling, Anne,
but why does he go around so much with Goggle-eyes?”
Anne stiffened. She had no great liking for
Charlie Sloane; but he was
of Avonlea, so no outsider had any business
to laugh at him.
“Charlie and Gilbert have always been friends,”
she said coldly.
“Charlie is a nice boy. He’s not to blame
for his eyes.”
“Don’t tell me that! He is! He must have
done something dreadful in a
previous existence to be punished with such
eyes. Pris and I are going
to have such sport with him this afternoon.
We’ll make fun of him to his
face and he’ll never know it.”
Doubtless, “the abandoned P’s,” as Anne
called them, did carry out their
amiable intentions. But Sloane was blissfully
ignorant; he thought he
was quite a fine fellow to be walking with
two such coeds, especially
Philippa Gordon, the class beauty and belle.
It must surely impress
Anne. She would see that some people appreciated
him at his real value.
Gilbert and Anne loitered a little behind
the others, enjoying the calm,
still beauty of the autumn afternoon under
the pines of the park, on the
road that climbed and twisted round the harbour
shore.
“The silence here is like a prayer, isn’t
it?” said Anne, her face
upturned to the shining sky. “How I love
the pines! They seem to strike
their roots deep into the romance of all the
ages. It is so comforting
to creep away now and then for a good talk
with them. I always feel so
happy out here.”
“‘And so in mountain solitudes o’ertaken
As by some spell divine,
Their cares drop from them like the needles
shaken
From out the gusty pine,’”
quoted Gilbert.
“They make our little ambitions seem rather
petty, don’t they, Anne?”
“I think, if ever any great sorrow came
to me, I would come to the pines
for comfort,” said Anne dreamily.
“I hope no great sorrow ever will come to
you, Anne,” said Gilbert, who
could not connect the idea of sorrow with
the vivid, joyous creature
beside him, unwitting that those who can soar
to the highest heights can
also plunge to the deepest depths, and that
the natures which enjoy most
keenly are those which also suffer most sharply.
“But there must, sometime,” mused Anne.
“Life seems like a cup of glory
held to my lips just now. But there must be
some bitterness in it, there
is in every cup. I shall taste mine some day.
Well, I hope I shall be
strong and brave to meet it. And I hope it
won’t be through my own
fault that it will come. Do you remember what
Dr. Davis said last Sunday
evening, that the sorrows God sent us brought
comfort and strength
with them, while the sorrows we brought on
ourselves, through folly
or wickedness, were by far the hardest to
bear? But we mustn’t talk
of sorrow on an afternoon like this. It’s
meant for the sheer joy of
living, isn’t it?”
“If I had my way I’d shut everything out
of your life but happiness and
pleasure, Anne,” said Gilbert in the tone
that meant “danger ahead.”
“Then you would be very unwise,” rejoined
Anne hastily. “I’m sure no
life can be properly developed and rounded
out without some trial and
sorrow, though I suppose it is only when we
are pretty comfortable that
we admit it. Come, the others have got to
the pavilion and are beckoning
to us.”
They all sat down in the little pavilion to
watch an autumn sunset of
deep red fire and pallid gold. To their left
lay Kingsport, its roofs
and spires dim in their shroud of violet smoke.
To their right lay the
harbour, taking on tints of rose and copper
as it stretched out into the
sunset. Before them the water shimmered, satin
smooth and silver grey,
and beyond, clean shaven William’s Island
loomed out of the mist,
guarding the town like a sturdy bulldog. Its
lighthouse beacon flared
through the mist like a baleful star, and
was answered by another in the
far horizon.
“Did you ever see such a strong-looking
place?” asked Philippa. “I don’t
want William’s Island especially, but I’m
sure I couldn’t get it if I
did. Look at that sentry on the summit of
the fort, right beside the
flag. Doesn’t he look as if he had stepped
out of a romance?”
“Speaking of romance,” said Priscilla,
“we’ve been looking for
heather, but, of course, we couldn’t find
any. It’s too late in the
season, I suppose.”
“Heather!” exclaimed Anne. “Heather
doesn’t grow in America, does it?”
“There are just two patches of it in the
whole continent,” said Phil,
“one right here in the park, and one somewhere
else in Nova Scotia, I
forget where. The famous Highland Regiment,
the Black Watch, camped here
one year, and, when the men shook out the
straw of their beds in the
spring, some seeds of heather took root.”
“Oh, how delightful!” said enchanted Anne.
“Let’s go home around by Spofford Avenue,”
suggested Gilbert. “We can
see all ‘the handsome houses where the wealthy
nobles dwell.’ Spofford
Avenue is the finest residential street in
Kingsport. Nobody can build
on it unless he’s a millionaire.”
“Oh, do,” said Phil. “There’s a perfectly
killing little place I want to
show you, Anne. IT wasn’t built by a millionaire.
It’s the first place
after you leave the park, and must have grown
while Spofford Avenue was
still a country road. It DID grow, it wasn’t
built! I don’t care for the
houses on the Avenue. They’re too brand
new and plateglassy. But this
little spot is a dream, and its name, but
wait till you see it.”
They saw it as they walked up the pine-fringed
hill from the park. Just
on the crest, where Spofford Avenue petered
out into a plain road, was
a little white frame house with groups of
pines on either side of it,
stretching their arms protectingly over its
low roof. It was covered
with red and gold vines, through which its
green-shuttered windows
peeped. Before it was a tiny garden, surrounded
by a low stone wall.
October though it was, the garden was still
very sweet with dear,
old-fashioned, unworldly flowers and shrubs,
sweet may, southern-wood,
lemon verbena, alyssum, petunias, marigolds
and chrysanthemums. A tiny
brick wall, in herring-bone pattern, led from
the gate to the front
porch. The whole place might have been transplanted
from some remote
country village; yet there was something about
it that made its
nearest neighbour, the big lawn-encircled
palace of a tobacco king, look
exceedingly crude and showy and ill-bred by
contrast. As Phil said, it
was the difference between being born and
being made.
“It’s the dearest place I ever saw,”
said Anne delightedly. “It gives
me one of my old, delightful funny aches.
It’s dearer and quainter than
even Miss Lavendar’s stone house.”
“It’s the name I want you to notice especially,”
said Phil. “Look, in
white letters, around the archway over the
gate. ‘Patty’s Place.’ Isn’t
that killing? Especially on this Avenue of
Pinehursts and Elmwolds and
Cedarcrofts? ‘Patty’s Place,’ if you
please! I adore it.”
“Have you any idea who Patty is?” asked
Priscilla.
“Patty Spofford is the name of the old lady
who owns it, I’ve
discovered. She lives there with her niece,
and they’ve lived there for
hundreds of years, more or less, maybe a little
less, Anne. Exaggeration
is merely a flight of poetic fancy. I understand
that wealthy folk have
tried to buy the lot time and again, it’s
really worth a small fortune
now, you know, but ‘Patty’ won’t sell
upon any consideration.
And there’s an apple orchard behind the
house in place of a back
yard, you’ll see it when we get a little
past, a real apple orchard on
Spofford Avenue!”
“I’m going to dream about ‘Patty’s
Place’ tonight,” said Anne. “Why, I
feel as if I belonged to it. I wonder if,
by any chance, we’ll ever see
the inside of it.”
“It isn’t likely,” said Priscilla.
Anne smiled mysteriously.
“No, it isn’t likely. But I believe it
will happen. I have a queer,
creepy, crawly feeling, you can call it a
presentiment, if you
like, that ‘Patty’s Place’ and I are
going to be better acquainted yet.”
End of Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Home Again
Those first three weeks at Redmond had seemed
long; but the rest of
the term flew by on wings of wind. Before
they realised it the Redmond
students found themselves in the grind of
Christmas examinations,
emerging therefrom more or less triumphantly.
The honour of leading in
the Freshman classes fluctuated between Anne,
Gilbert and Philippa;
Priscilla did very well; Charlie Sloane scraped
through respectably, and
comported himself as complacently as if he
had led in everything.
“I can’t really believe that this time
tomorrow I’ll be in Green
Gables,” said Anne on the night before departure.
“But I shall be. And
you, Phil, will be in Bolingbroke with Alec
and Alonzo.”
“I’m longing to see them,” admitted
Phil, between the chocolate she was
nibbling. “They really are such dear boys,
you know. There’s to be no
end of dances and drives and general jamborees.
I shall never forgive
you, Queen Anne, for not coming home with
me for the holidays.”
“‘Never’ means three days with you,
Phil. It was dear of you to ask
me, and I’d love to go to Bolingbroke some
day. But I can’t go this
year, I MUST go home. You don’t know how
my heart longs for it.”
“You won’t have much of a time,” said
Phil scornfully. “There’ll be one
or two quilting parties, I suppose; and all
the old gossips will talk
you over to your face and behind your back.
You’ll die of lonesomeness,
child.”
“In Avonlea?” said Anne, highly amused.
“Now, if you’d come with me you’d have
a perfectly gorgeous time.
Bolingbroke would go wild over you, Queen
Anne, your hair and your style
and, oh, everything! You’re so DIFFERENT.
You’d be such a success, and
I would bask in reflected glory, ‘not the
rose but near the rose.’ Do
come, after all, Anne.”
“Your picture of social triumphs is quite
fascinating, Phil, but I’ll
paint one to offset it. I’m going home to
an old country farmhouse, once
green, rather faded now, set among leafless
apple orchards. There is a
brook below and a December fir wood beyond,
where I’ve heard harps swept
by the fingers of rain and wind. There is
a pond nearby that will be
grey and brooding now. There will be two oldish
ladies in the house,
one tall and thin, one short and fat; and
there will be two twins, one
a perfect model, the other what Mrs. Lynde
calls a ‘holy terror.’ There
will be a little room upstairs over the porch,
where old dreams hang
thick, and a big, fat, glorious feather bed
which will almost seem the
height of luxury after a boardinghouse mattress.
How do you like my
picture, Phil?”
“It seems a very dull one,” said Phil,
with a grimace.
“Oh, but I’ve left out the transforming
thing,” said Anne softly.
“There’ll be love there, Phil, faithful,
tender love, such as I’ll never
find anywhere else in the world, love that’s
waiting for me. That makes
my picture a masterpiece, doesn’t it, even
if the colours are not very
brilliant?”
Phil silently got up, tossed her box of chocolates
away, went up to
Anne, and put her arms about her.
“Anne, I wish I was like you,” she said
soberly.
Diana met Anne at the Carmody station the
next night, and they drove
home together under silent, star-sown depths
of sky. Green Gables had a
very festal appearance as they drove up the
lane. There was a light in
every window, the glow breaking out through
the darkness like flame-red
blossoms swung against the dark background
of the Haunted Wood. And in
the yard was a brave bonfire with two gay
little figures dancing around
it, one of which gave an unearthly yell as
the buggy turned in under the
poplars.
“Davy means that for an Indian war-whoop,”
said Diana. “Mr. Harrison’s
hired boy taught it to him, and he’s been
practicing it up to welcome
you with. Mrs. Lynde says it has worn her
nerves to a frazzle. He creeps
up behind her, you know, and then lets go.
He was determined to have a
bonfire for you, too. He’s been piling up
branches for a fortnight
and pestering Marilla to be let pour some
kerosene oil over it before
setting it on fire. I guess she did, by the
smell, though Mrs. Lynde
said up to the last that Davy would blow himself
and everybody else up
if he was let.”
Anne was out of the buggy by this time, and
Davy was rapturously hugging
her knees, while even Dora was clinging to
her hand.
“Isn’t that a bully bonfire, Anne? Just
let me show you how to poke
it, see the sparks? I did it for you, Anne,
‘cause I was so glad you
were coming home.”
The kitchen door opened and Marilla’s spare
form darkened against the
inner light. She preferred to meet Anne in
the shadows, for she
was horribly afraid that she was going to
cry with joy, she, stern,
repressed Marilla, who thought all display
of deep emotion unseemly.
Mrs. Lynde was behind her, sonsy, kindly,
matronly, as of yore. The love
that Anne had told Phil was waiting for her
surrounded her and enfolded
her with its blessing and its sweetness. Nothing,
after all, could
compare with old ties, old friends, and old
Green Gables! How starry
Anne’s eyes were as they sat down to the
loaded supper table, how pink
her cheeks, how silver-clear her laughter!
And Diana was going to stay
all night, too. How like the dear old times
it was! And the rose-bud
tea-set graced the table! With Marilla the
force of nature could no
further go.
“I suppose you and Diana will now proceed
to talk all night,” said
Marilla sarcastically, as the girls went upstairs.
Marilla was always
sarcastic after any self-betrayal.
“Yes,” agreed Anne gaily, “but I’m
going to put Davy to bed first. He
insists on that.”
“You bet,” said Davy, as they went along
the hall. “I want somebody to
say my prayers to again. It’s no fun saying
them alone.”
“You don’t say them alone, Davy. God is
always with you to hear you.”
“Well, I can’t see Him,” objected Davy.
“I want to pray to somebody I
can see, but I WON’T say them to Mrs. Lynde
or Marilla, there now!”
Nevertheless, when Davy was garbed in his
grey flannel nighty, he did
not seem in a hurry to begin. He stood before
Anne, shuffling one bare
foot over the other, and looked undecided.
“Come, dear, kneel down,” said Anne.
Davy came and buried his head in Anne’s
lap, but he did not kneel down.
“Anne,” he said in a muffled voice. “I
don’t feel like praying after
all. I haven’t felt like it for a week now.
I, I DIDN’T pray last night
nor the night before.”
“Why not, Davy?” asked Anne gently.
“You, you won’t be mad if I tell you?”
implored Davy.
Anne lifted the little grey-flannelled body
on her knee and cuddled his
head on her arm.
“Do I ever get ‘mad’ when you tell me
things, Davy?”
“No-o-o, you never do. But you get sorry,
and that’s worse. You’ll be
awful sorry when I tell you this, Anne, and
you’ll be ‘shamed of me, I
s’pose.”
“Have you done something naughty, Davy,
and is that why you can’t say
your prayers?”
“No, I haven’t done anything naughty,
yet. But I want to do it.”
“What is it, Davy?”
“I, I want to say a bad word, Anne,” blurted
out Davy, with a desperate
effort. “I heard Mr. Harrison’s hired
boy say it one day last week,
and ever since I’ve been wanting to say
it ALL the time, even when I’m
saying my prayers.”
“Say it then, Davy.”
Davy lifted his flushed face in amazement.
“But, Anne, it’s an AWFUL bad word.”
“SAY IT!”
Davy gave her another incredulous look, then
in a low voice he said the
dreadful word. The next minute his face was
burrowing against her.
“Oh, Anne, I’ll never say it again, never.
I’ll never WANT to say it
again. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t s’pose
it was so, so, I didn’t
s’pose it was like THAT.”
“No, I don’t think you’ll ever want
to say it again, Davy, or think it,
either. And I wouldn’t go about much with
Mr. Harrison’s hired boy if I
were you.”
“He can make bully war-whoops,” said Davy
a little regretfully.
“But you don’t want your mind filled with
bad words, do you, Davy, words
that will poison it and drive out all that
is good and manly?”
“No,” said Davy, owl-eyed with introspection.
“Then don’t go with those people who use
them. And now do you feel as if
you could say your prayers, Davy?”
“Oh, yes,” said Davy, eagerly wriggling
down on his knees, “I can say
them now all right. I ain’t scared now to
say ‘if I should die before I
wake,’ like I was when I was wanting to
say that word.”
Probably Anne and Diana did empty out their
souls to each other that
night, but no record of their confidences
has been preserved. They both
looked as fresh and bright-eyed at breakfast
as only youth can look
after unlawful hours of revelry and confession.
There had been no snow
up to this time, but as Diana crossed the
old log bridge on her homeward
way the white flakes were beginning to flutter
down over the fields
and woods, russet and grey in their dreamless
sleep. Soon the far-away
slopes and hills were dim and wraith-like
through their gauzy scarfing,
as if pale autumn had flung a misty bridal
veil over her hair and was
waiting for her wintry bridegroom. So they
had a white Christmas after
all, and a very pleasant day it was. In the
forenoon letters and gifts
came from Miss Lavendar and Paul; Anne opened
them in the cheerful Green
Gables kitchen, which was filled with what
Davy, sniffing in ecstasy,
called “pretty smells.”
“Miss Lavendar and Mr. Irving are settled
in their new home now,”
reported Anne. “I am sure Miss Lavendar
is perfectly happy, I know it
by the general tone of her letter, but there’s
a note from Charlotta the
Fourth. She doesn’t like Boston at all,
and she is fearfully homesick.
Miss Lavendar wants me to go through to Echo
Lodge some day while
I’m home and light a fire to air it, and
see that the cushions aren’t
getting moldy. I think I’ll get Diana to
go over with me next week, and
we can spend the evening with Theodora Dix.
I want to see Theodora. By
the way, is Ludovic Speed still going to see
her?”
“They say so,” said Marilla, “and he’s
likely to continue it. Folks have
given up expecting that that courtship will
ever arrive anywhere.”
“I’d hurry him up a bit, if I was Theodora,
that’s what,” said Mrs.
Lynde. And there is not the slightest doubt
but that she would.
There was also a characteristic scrawl from
Philippa, full of Alec and
Alonzo, what they said and what they did,
and how they looked when they
saw her.
“But I can’t make up my mind yet which
to marry,” wrote Phil. “I do wish
you had come with me to decide for me. Some
one will have to. When I saw
Alec my heart gave a great thump and I thought,
‘He might be the right
one.’ And then, when Alonzo came, thump
went my heart again. So that’s
no guide, though it should be, according to
all the novels I’ve ever
read. Now, Anne, YOUR heart wouldn’t thump
for anybody but the genuine
Prince Charming, would it? There must be something
radically wrong with
mine. But I’m having a perfectly gorgeous
time. How I wish you were
here! It’s snowing today, and I’m rapturous.
I was so afraid we’d have
a green Christmas and I loathe them. You know,
when Christmas is a dirty
greyey-browney affair, looking as if it had
been left over a hundred
years ago and had been in soak ever since,
it is called a GREEN
Christmas! Don’t ask me why. As Lord Dundreary
says, ‘there are thome
thingth no fellow can underthtand.’
“Anne, did you ever get on a street car
and then discover that you
hadn’t any money with you to pay your fare?
I did, the other day. It’s
quite awful. I had a nickel with me when I
got on the car. I thought it
was in the left pocket of my coat. When I
got settled down comfortably
I felt for it. It wasn’t there. I had a
cold chill. I felt in the other
pocket. Not there. I had another chill. Then
I felt in a little inside
pocket. All in vain. I had two chills at once.
“I took off my gloves, laid them on the
seat, and went over all my
pockets again. It was not there. I stood up
and shook myself, and then
looked on the floor. The car was full of people,
who were going home
from the opera, and they all stared at me,
but I was past caring for a
little thing like that.
“But I could not find my fare. I concluded
I must have put it in my
mouth and swallowed it inadvertently.
“I didn’t know what to do. Would the conductor,
I wondered, stop the
car and put me off in ignominy and shame?
Was it possible that I could
convince him that I was merely the victim
of my own absentmindedness,
and not an unprincipled creature trying to
obtain a ride upon false
pretenses? How I wished that Alec or Alonzo
were there. But they weren’t
because I wanted them. If I HADN’T wanted
them they would have been
there by the dozen. And I couldn’t decide
what to say to the conductor
when he came around. As soon as I got one
sentence of explanation
mapped out in my mind I felt nobody could
believe it and I must compose
another. It seemed there was nothing to do
but trust in Providence, and
for all the comfort that gave me I might as
well have been the old lady
who, when told by the captain during a storm
that she must put her trust
in the Almighty exclaimed, ‘Oh, Captain,
is it as bad as that?’
“Just at the conventional moment, when all
hope had fled, and the
conductor was holding out his box to the passenger
next to me, I
suddenly remembered where I had put that wretched
coin of the realm.
I hadn’t swallowed it after all. I meekly
fished it out of the index
finger of my glove and poked it in the box.
I smiled at everybody and
felt that it was a beautiful world.”
The visit to Echo Lodge was not the least
pleasant of many pleasant
holiday outings. Anne and Diana went back
to it by the old way of the
beech woods, carrying a lunch basket with
them. Echo Lodge, which had
been closed ever since Miss Lavendar’s wedding,
was briefly thrown open
to wind and sunshine once more, and firelight
glimmered again in the
little rooms. The perfume of Miss Lavendar’s
rose bowl still filled the
air. It was hardly possible to believe that
Miss Lavendar would not come
tripping in presently, with her brown eyes
a-star with welcome, and
that Charlotta the Fourth, blue of bow and
wide of smile, would not
pop through the door. Paul, too, seemed hovering
around, with his fairy
fancies.
“It really makes me feel a little bit like
a ghost revisiting the old
time glimpses of the moon,” laughed Anne.
“Let’s go out and see if the
echoes are at home. Bring the old horn. It
is still behind the kitchen
door.”
The echoes were at home, over the white river,
as silver-clear and
multitudinous as ever; and when they had ceased
to answer the girls
locked up Echo Lodge again and went away in
the perfect half hour that
follows the rose and saffron of a winter sunset.
End of Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Anne’s First Proposal
The old year did not slip away in a green
twilight, with a pinky-yellow
sunset. Instead, it went out with a wild,
white bluster and blow. It was
one of the nights when the storm-wind hurtles
over the frozen meadows
and black hollows, and moans around the eaves
like a lost creature, and
drives the snow sharply against the shaking
panes.
“Just the sort of night people like to cuddle
down between their
blankets and count their mercies,” said
Anne to Jane Andrews, who had
come up to spend the afternoon and stay all
night. But when they were
cuddled between their blankets, in Anne’s
little porch room, it was not
her mercies of which Jane was thinking.
“Anne,” she said very solemnly, “I want
to tell you something. May I”
Anne was feeling rather sleepy after the party
Ruby Gillis had given the
night before. She would much rather have gone
to sleep than listen
to Jane’s confidences, which she was sure
would bore her. She had no
prophetic inkling of what was coming. Probably
Jane was engaged,
too; rumour averred that Ruby Gillis was engaged
to the Spencervale
schoolteacher, about whom all the girls were
said to be quite wild.
“I’ll soon be the only fancy-free maiden
of our old quartet,” thought
Anne, drowsily. Aloud she said, “Of course.”
“Anne,” said Jane, still more solemnly,
“what do you think of my brother
Billy?”
Anne gasped over this unexpected question,
and floundered helplessly
in her thoughts. Goodness, what DID she think
of Billy Andrews? She
had never thought ANYTHING about him, round-faced,
stupid, perpetually
smiling, good-natured Billy Andrews. Did ANYBODY
ever think about Billy
Andrews?
“I, I don’t understand, Jane,” she stammered.
“What do you
mean, exactly?”
“Do you like Billy?” asked Jane bluntly.
“Why, why, yes, I like him, of course,”
gasped Anne, wondering if she
were telling the literal truth. Certainly
she did not DISlike Billy.
But could the indifferent tolerance with which
she regarded him, when he
happened to be in her range of vision, be
considered positive enough for
liking? WHAT was Jane trying to elucidate?
“Would you like him for a husband?” asked
Jane calmly.
“A husband!” Anne had been sitting up
in bed, the better to wrestle with
the problem of her exact opinion of Billy
Andrews. Now she fell flatly
back on her pillows, the very breath gone
out of her. “Whose husband?”
“Yours, of course,” answered Jane. “Billy
wants to marry you. He’s
always been crazy about you, and now father
has given him the upper farm
in his own name and there’s nothing to prevent
him from getting married.
But he’s so shy he couldn’t ask you himself
if you’d have him, so he got
me to do it. I’d rather not have, but he
gave me no peace till I said I
would, if I got a good chance. What do you
think about it, Anne?”
Was it a dream? Was it one of those nightmare
things in which you find
yourself engaged or married to some one you
hate or don’t know, without
the slightest idea how it ever came about?
No, she, Anne Shirley, was
lying there, wide awake, in her own bed, and
Jane Andrews was beside
her, calmly proposing for her brother Billy.
Anne did not know whether
she wanted to writhe or laugh; but she could
do neither, for Jane’s
feelings must not be hurt.
“I, I couldn’t marry Bill, you know, Jane,”
she managed to gasp. “Why,
such an idea never occurred to me, never!”
“I don’t suppose it did,” agreed Jane.
“Billy has always been far too
shy to think of courting. But you might think
it over, Anne. Billy is a
good fellow. I must say that, if he is my
brother. He has no bad habits
and he’s a great worker, and you can depend
on him. ‘A bird in the hand
is worth two in the bush.’ He told me to
tell you he’d be quite willing
to wait till you got through college, if you
insisted, though he’d
RATHER get married this spring before the
planting begins. He’d always
be very good to you, I’m sure, and you know,
Anne, I’d love to have you
for a sister.”
“I can’t marry Billy,” said Anne decidedly.
She had recovered her wits,
and was even feeling a little angry. It was
all so ridiculous. “There is
no use thinking of it, Jane. I don’t care
anything for him in that way,
and you must tell him so.”
“Well, I didn’t suppose you would,”
said Jane with a resigned sigh,
feeling that she had done her best. “I told
Billy I didn’t believe it
was a bit of use to ask you, but he insisted.
Well, you’ve made your
decision, Anne, and I hope you won’t regret
it.”
Jane spoke rather coldly. She had been perfectly
sure that the enamored
Billy had no chance at all of inducing Anne
to marry him. Nevertheless,
she felt a little resentment that Anne Shirley,
who was, after all,
merely an adopted orphan, without kith or
kin, should refuse her
brother, one of the Avonlea Andrews. Well,
pride sometimes goes before a
fall, Jane reflected ominously.
Anne permitted herself to smile in the darkness
over the idea that she
might ever regret not marrying Billy Andrews.
“I hope Billy won’t feel very badly over
it,” she said nicely.
Jane made a movement as if she were tossing
her head on her pillow.
“Oh, he won’t break his heart. Billy has
too much good sense for that.
He likes Nettie Blewett pretty well, too,
and mother would rather he
married her than any one. She’s such a good
manager and saver. I think,
when Billy is once sure you won’t have him,
he’ll take Nettie. Please
don’t mention this to any one, will you,
Anne?”
“Certainly not,” said Anne, who had no
desire whatever to publish abroad
the fact that Billy Andrews wanted to marry
her, preferring her, when
all was said and done, to Nettie Blewett.
Nettie Blewett!
“And now I suppose we’d better go to sleep,”
suggested Jane.
To sleep went Jane easily and speedily; but,
though very unlike MacBeth
in most respects, she had certainly contrived
to murder sleep for Anne.
That proposed-to damsel lay on a wakeful pillow
until the wee sma’s, but
her meditations were far from being romantic.
It was not, however, until
the next morning that she had an opportunity
to indulge in a good laugh
over the whole affair. When Jane had gone
home, still with a hint of
frost in voice and manner because Anne had
declined so ungratefully
and decidedly the honour of an alliance with
the House of Andrews, Anne
retreated to the porch room, shut the door,
and had her laugh out at
last.
“If I could only share the joke with some
one!” she thought. “But I
can’t. Diana is the only one I’d want
to tell, and, even if I hadn’t
sworn secrecy to Jane, I can’t tell Diana
things now. She tells
everything to Fred, I know she does. Well,
I’ve had my first proposal. I
supposed it would come some day, but I certainly
never thought it would
be by proxy. It’s awfully funny, and yet
there’s a sting in it, too,
somehow.”
Anne knew quite well wherein the sting consisted,
though she did not put
it into words. She had had her secret dreams
of the first time some one
should ask her the great question. And it
had, in those dreams, always
been very romantic and beautiful: and the
“some one” was to be very
handsome and dark-eyed and distinguished-looking
and eloquent, whether
he were Prince Charming to be enraptured with
“yes,” or one to whom a
regretful, beautifully worded, but hopeless
refusal must be given. If
the latter, the refusal was to be expressed
so delicately that it would
be next best thing to acceptance, and he would
go away, after kissing
her hand, assuring her of his unalterable,
life-long devotion. And it
would always be a beautiful memory, to be
proud of and a little sad
about, also.
And now, this thrilling experience had turned
out to be merely
grotesque. Billy Andrews had got his sister
to propose for him because
his father had given him the upper farm; and
if Anne wouldn’t “have him”
Nettie Blewett would. There was romance for
you, with a vengeance! Anne
laughed, and then sighed. The bloom had been
brushed from one little
maiden dream. Would the painful process go
on until everything became
prosaic and hum-drum?
End of Chapter 8
Chapter 9
An Unwelcome Lover and a Welcome Friend
The second term at Redmond sped as quickly
as had the first, “actually
whizzed away,” Philippa said. Anne enjoyed
it thoroughly in all its
phases, the stimulating class rivalry, the
making and deepening of new
and helpful friendships, the gay little social
stunts, the doings of the
various societies of which she was a member,
the widening of horizons
and interests. She studied hard, for she had
made up her mind to win the
Thorburn Scholarship in English. This being
won, meant that she could
come back to Redmond the next year without
trenching on Marilla’s small
savings, something Anne was determined she
would not do.
Gilbert, too, was in full chase after a scholarship,
but found plenty
of time for frequent calls at Thirty-eight,
St. John’s. He was Anne’s
escort at nearly all the college affairs,
and she knew that their names
were coupled in Redmond gossip. Anne raged
over this but was helpless;
she could not cast an old friend like Gilbert
aside, especially when
he had grown suddenly wise and wary, as behooved
him in the dangerous
proximity of more than one Redmond youth who
would gladly have taken his
place by the side of the slender, red-haired
coed, whose grey eyes were
as alluring as stars of evening. Anne was
never attended by the crowd of
willing victims who hovered around Philippa’s
conquering march through
her Freshman year; but there was a lanky,
brainy Freshie, a jolly,
little, round Sophomore, and a tall, learned
Junior who all liked to
call at Thirty-eight, St. John’s, and talk
over ‘ologies and ‘isms, as
well as lighter subjects, with Anne, in the
becushioned parlour of that
domicile. Gilbert did not love any of them,
and he was exceedingly
careful to give none of them the advantage
over him by any untimely
display of his real feelings Anne-ward. To
her he had become again the
boy-comrade of Avonlea days, and as such could
hold his own against
any smitten swain who had so far entered the
lists against him. As a
companion, Anne honestly acknowledged nobody
could be so satisfactory as
Gilbert; she was very glad, so she told herself,
that he had evidently
dropped all nonsensical ideas, though she
spent considerable time
secretly wondering why.
Only one disagreeable incident marred that
winter. Charlie Sloane,
sitting bolt upright on Miss Ada’s most
dearly beloved cushion, asked
Anne one night if she would promise “to
become Mrs. Charlie Sloane some
day.” Coming after Billy Andrews’ proxy
effort, this was not quite the
shock to Anne’s romantic sensibilities that
it would otherwise have
been; but it was certainly another heart-rending
disillusion. She was
angry, too, for she felt that she had never
given Charlie the slightest
encouragement to suppose such a thing possible.
But what could you
expect of a Sloane, as Mrs. Rachel Lynde would
ask scornfully? Charlie’s
whole attitude, tone, air, words, fairly reeked
with Sloanishness. “He
was conferring a great honour, no doubt whatever
about that. And when
Anne, utterly insensible to the honour, refused
him, as delicately and
considerately as she could, for even a Sloane
had feelings which ought
not to be unduly lacerated, Sloanishness still
further betrayed itself.
Charlie certainly did not take his dismissal
as Anne’s imaginary
rejected suitors did. Instead, he became angry,
and showed it; he said
two or three quite nasty things; Anne’s
temper flashed up mutinously and
she retorted with a cutting little speech
whose keenness pierced even
Charlie’s protective Sloanishness and reached
the quick; he caught up
his hat and flung himself out of the house
with a very red face; Anne
rushed upstairs, falling twice over Miss Ada’s
cushions on the way,
and threw herself on her bed, in tears of
humiliation and rage. Had
she actually stooped to quarrel with a Sloane?
Was it possible anything
Charlie Sloane could say had power to make
her angry? Oh, this was
degradation, indeed, worse even than being
the rival of Nettie Blewett!
“I wish I need never see the horrible creature
again,” she sobbed
vindictively into her pillows.
She could not avoid seeing him again, but
the outraged Charlie took care
that it should not be at very close quarters.
Miss Ada’s cushions were
henceforth safe from his depredations, and
when he met Anne on the
street, or in Redmond’s halls, his bow was
icy in the extreme. Relations
between these two old schoolmates continued
to be thus strained for
nearly a year! Then Charlie transferred his
blighted affections to a
round, rosy, snub-nosed, blue-eyed, little
Sophomore who appreciated
them as they deserved, whereupon he forgave
Anne and condescended to be
civil to her again; in a patronising manner
intended to show her just
what she had lost.
One day Anne scurried excitedly into Priscilla’s
room.
“Read that,” she cried, tossing Priscilla
a letter. “It’s from
Stella, and she’s coming to Redmond next
year, and what do you think of
her idea? I think it’s a perfectly splendid
one, if we can only carry it
out. Do you suppose we can, Pris?”
“I’ll be better able to tell you when
I find out what it is,” said
Priscilla, casting aside a Greek lexicon and
taking up Stella’s letter.
Stella Maynard had been one of their chums
at Queen’s Academy and had
been teaching school ever since.
“But I’m going to give it up, Anne dear,”
she wrote, “and go to college
next year. As I took the third year at Queen’s
I can enter the Sophomore
year. I’m tired of teaching in a back country
school. Some day I’m going
to write a treatise on ‘The Trials of a
Country Schoolmarm.’ It will
be a harrowing bit of realism. It seems to
be the prevailing impression
that we live in clover, and have nothing to
do but draw our quarter’s
salary. My treatise shall tell the truth about
us. Why, if a week should
pass without some one telling me that I am
doing easy work for big pay I
would conclude that I might as well order
my ascension robe ‘immediately
and to onct.’ ‘Well, you get your money
easy,’ some rate-payer will
tell me, condescendingly. ‘All you have
to do is to sit there and hear
lessons.’ I used to argue the matter at
first, but I’m wiser now.
Facts are stubborn things, but as some one
has wisely said, not half so
stubborn as fallacies. So I only smile loftily
now in eloquent silence.
Why, I have nine grades in my school and I
have to teach a little of
everything, from investigating the interiors
of earthworms to the study
of the solar system. My youngest pupil is
four, his mother sends him to
school to ‘get him out of the way’, and
my oldest twenty, it ‘suddenly
struck him’ that it would be easier to go
to school and get an education
than follow the plough any longer. In the
wild effort to cram all sorts
of research into six hours a day I don’t
wonder if the children feel
like the little boy who was taken to see the
biograph. ‘I have to look
for what’s coming next before I know what
went last,’ he complained. I
feel like that myself.
“And the letters I get, Anne! Tommy’s
mother writes me that Tommy is not
coming on in arithmetic as fast as she would
like. He is only in simple
reduction yet, and Johnny Johnson is in fractions,
and Johnny isn’t half
as smart as her Tommy, and she can’t understand
it. And Susy’s father
wants to know why Susy can’t write a letter
without misspelling half
the words, and Dick’s aunt wants me to change
his seat, because that bad
Brown boy he is sitting with is teaching him
to say naughty words.
“As to the financial part, but I’ll not
begin on that. Those whom the
gods wish to destroy they first make country
schoolmarms!
“There, I feel better, after that growl.
After all, I’ve enjoyed these
past two years. But I’m coming to Redmond.
“And now, Anne, I’ve a little plan. You
know how I loathe boarding.
I’ve boarded for four years and I’m so
tired of it. I don’t feel like
enduring three years more of it.
“Now, why can’t you and Priscilla and
I club together, rent a little
house somewhere in Kingsport, and board ourselves?
It would be cheaper
than any other way. Of course, we would have
to have a housekeeper and
I have one ready on the spot. You’ve heard
me speak of Aunt Jamesina?
She’s the sweetest aunt that ever lived,
in spite of her name. She can’t
help that! She was called Jamesina because
her father, whose name was
James, was drowned at sea a month before she
was born. I always call her
Aunt Jimsie. Well, her only daughter has recently
married and gone to
the foreign mission field. Aunt Jamesina is
left alone in a great big
house, and she is horribly lonesome. She will
come to Kingsport and keep
house for us if we want her, and I know you’ll
both love her. The more
I think of the plan the more I like it. We
could have such good,
independent times.
“Now, if you and Priscilla agree to it,
wouldn’t it be a good idea
for you, who are on the spot, to look around
and see if you can find a
suitable house this spring? That would be
better than leaving it till
the fall. If you could get a furnished one
so much the better, but if
not, we can scare up a few sticks of finiture
between us and old family
friends with attics. Anyhow, decide as soon
as you can and write me, so
that Aunt Jamesina will know what plans to
make for next year.”
“I think it’s a good idea,” said Priscilla.
“So do I,” agreed Anne delightedly. “Of
course, we have a nice
boardinghouse here, but, when all’s said
and done, a boardinghouse isn’t
home. So let’s go house-hunting at once,
before exams come on.”
“I’m afraid it will be hard enough to
get a really suitable house,”
warned Priscilla. “Don’t expect too much,
Anne. Nice houses in nice
localities will probably be away beyond our
means. We’ll likely have to
content ourselves with a shabby little place
on some street whereon live
people whom to know is to be unknown, and
make life inside compensate
for the outside.”
Accordingly they went house-hunting, but to
find just what they wanted
proved even harder than Priscilla had feared.
Houses there were galore,
furnished and unfurnished; but one was too
big, another too small; this
one too expensive, that one too far from Redmond.
Exams were on and
over; the last week of the term came and still
their “house o’dreams,”
as Anne called it, remained a castle in the
air.
“We shall have to give up and wait till
the fall, I suppose,” said
Priscilla wearily, as they rambled through
the park on one of April’s
darling days of breeze and blue, when the
harbour was creaming and
shimmering beneath the pearl-hued mists floating
over it. “We may find
some shack to shelter us then; and if not,
boardinghouses we shall have
always with us.”
“I’m not going to worry about it just
now, anyway, and spoil this lovely
afternoon,” said Anne, gazing around her
with delight. The fresh chill
air was faintly charged with the aroma of
pine balsam, and the sky above
was crystal clear and blue, a great inverted
cup of blessing. “Spring is
singing in my blood today, and the lure of
April is abroad on the air.
I’m seeing visions and dreaming dreams,
Pris. That’s because the wind is
from the west. I do love the west wind. It
sings of hope and gladness,
doesn’t it? When the east wind blows I always
think of sorrowful rain
on the eaves and sad waves on a grey shore.
When I get old I shall have
rheumatism when the wind is east.”
“And isn’t it jolly when you discard furs
and winter garments for
the first time and sally forth, like this,
in spring attire?” laughed
Priscilla. “Don’t you feel as if you had
been made over new?”
“Everything is new in the spring,” said
Anne. “Springs themselves are
always so new, too. No spring is ever just
like any other spring. It
always has something of its own to be its
own peculiar sweetness. See
how green the grass is around that little
pond, and how the willow buds
are bursting.”
“And exams are over and gone, the time of
Convocation will come
soon, next Wednesday. This day next week we’ll
be home.”
“I’m glad,” said Anne dreamily. “There
are so many things I want to do.
I want to sit on the back porch steps and
feel the breeze blowing down
over Mr. Harrison’s fields. I want to hunt
ferns in the Haunted Wood
and gather violets in Violet Vale. Do you
remember the day of our golden
picnic, Priscilla? I want to hear the frogs
singing and the poplars
whispering. But I’ve learned to love Kingsport,
too, and I’m glad I’m
coming back next fall. If I hadn’t won the
Thorburn I don’t believe I
could have. I COULDN’T take any of Marilla’s
little hoard.”
“If we could only find a house!” sighed
Priscilla. “Look over there at
Kingsport, Anne, houses, houses everywhere,
and not one for us.”
“Stop it, Pris. ‘The best is yet to be.’
Like the old Roman, we’ll find
a house or build one. On a day like this there’s
no such word as fail in
my bright lexicon.”
They lingered in the park until sunset, living
in the amazing miracle
and glory and wonder of the springtide; and
they went home as usual, by
way of Spofford Avenue, that they might have
the delight of looking at
Patty’s Place.
“I feel as if something mysterious were
going to happen right away, ‘by
the pricking of my thumbs,’” said Anne,
as they went up the slope.
“It’s a nice story-bookish feeling. Why,
why, why! Priscilla Grant, look
over there and tell me if it’s true, or
am I seein’ things?”
Priscilla looked. Anne’s thumbs and eyes
had not deceived her. Over the
arched gateway of Patty’s Place dangled
a little, modest sign. It said
“To Let, Furnished. Inquire Within.”
“Priscilla,” said Anne, in a whisper,
“do you suppose it’s possible that
we could rent Patty’s Place?”
“No, I don’t,” averred Priscilla. “It
would be too good to be
true. Fairy tales don’t happen nowadays.
I won’t hope, Anne. The
disappointment would be too awful to bear.
They’re sure to want more for
it than we can afford. Remember, it’s on
Spofford Avenue.”
“We must find out anyhow,” said Anne resolutely.
“It’s too late to call
this evening, but we’ll come tomorrow. Oh,
Pris, if we can get this
darling spot! I’ve always felt that my fortunes
were linked with Patty’s
Place, ever since I saw it first.”
End of Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Patty’s Place
The next evening found them treading resolutely
the herring-bone walk
through the tiny garden. The April wind was
filling the pine trees with
its roundelay, and the grove was alive with
robins, great, plump, saucy
fellows, strutting along the paths. The girls
rang rather timidly, and
were admitted by a grim and ancient handmaiden.
The door opened directly
into a large living-room, where by a cheery
little fire sat two other
ladies, both of whom were also grim and ancient.
Except that one looked
to be about seventy and the other fifty, there
seemed little
difference between them. Each had amazingly
big, light-blue eyes behind
steel-rimmed spectacles; each wore a cap and
a grey shawl; each was
knitting without haste and without rest; each
rocked placidly and looked
at the girls without speaking; and just behind
each sat a large white
china dog, with round green spots all over
it, a green nose and green
ears. Those dogs captured Anne’s fancy on
the spot; they seemed like the
twin guardian deities of Patty’s Place.
For a few minutes nobody spoke. The girls
were too nervous to find
words, and neither the ancient ladies nor
the china dogs seemed
conversationally inclined. Anne glanced about
the room. What a dear
place it was! Another door opened out of it
directly into the pine grove
and the robins came boldly up on the very
step. The floor was spotted
with round, braided mats, such as Marilla
made at Green Gables, but
which were considered out of date everywhere
else, even in Avonlea. And
yet here they were on Spofford Avenue! A big,
polished grandfather’s
clock ticked loudly and solemnly in a corner.
There were delightful
little cupboards over the mantelpiece, behind
whose glass doors
gleamed quaint bits of china. The walls were
hung with old prints and
silhouettes. In one corner the stairs went
up, and at the first low turn
was a long window with an inviting seat. It
was all just as Anne had
known it must be.
By this time the silence had grown too dreadful,
and Priscilla nudged
Anne to intimate that she must speak.
“We, we, saw by your sign that this house
is to let,” said Anne faintly,
addressing the older lady, who was evidently
Miss Patty Spofford.
“Oh, yes,” said Miss Patty. “I intended
to take that sign down today.”
“Then, then we are too late,” said Anne
sorrowfully. “You’ve let it to
some one else?”
“No, but we have decided not to let it at
all.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” exclaimed Anne impulsively.
“I love this place so. I
did hope we could have got it.”
Then did Miss Patty lay down her knitting,
take off her specs, rub them,
put them on again, and for the first time
look at Anne as at a human
being. The other lady followed her example
so perfectly that she might
as well have been a reflection in a mirror.
“You LOVE it,” said Miss Patty with emphasis.
“Does that mean that
you really LOVE it? Or that you merely like
the looks of it? The girls
nowadays indulge in such exaggerated statements
that one never can tell
what they DO mean. It wasn’t so in my young
days. THEN a girl did not
say she LOVED turnips, in just the same tone
as she might have said she
loved her mother or her Saviour.”
Anne’s conscience bore her up.
“I really do love it,” she said gently.
“I’ve loved it ever since I saw
it last fall. My two college chums and I want
to keep house next year
instead of boarding, so we are looking for
a little place to rent; and
when I saw that this house was to let I was
so happy.”
“If you love it, you can have it,” said
Miss Patty. “Maria and I decided
today that we would not let it after all,
because we did not like any of
the people who have wanted it. We don’t
HAVE to let it. We can afford to
go to Europe even if we don’t let it. It
would help us out, but not for
gold will I let my home pass into the possession
of such people as have
come here and looked at it. YOU are different.
I believe you do love it
and will be good to it. You can have it.”
“If, if we can afford to pay what you ask
for it,” hesitated Anne.
Miss Patty named the amount required. Anne
and Priscilla looked at each
other. Priscilla shook her head.
“I’m afraid we can’t afford quite so
much,” said Anne, choking back her
disappointment. “You see, we are only college
girls and we are poor.”
“What were you thinking you could afford?”
demanded Miss Patty, ceasing
not to knit.
Anne named her amount. Miss Patty nodded gravely.
“That will do. As I told you, it is not
strictly necessary that we
should let it at all. We are not rich, but
we have enough to go to
Europe on. I have never been in Europe in
my life, and never expected or
wanted to go. But my niece there, Maria Spofford,
has taken a fancy
to go. Now, you know a young person like Maria
can’t go globetrotting
alone.”
“No, I, I suppose not,” murmured Anne,
seeing that Miss Patty was quite
solemnly in earnest.
“Of course not. So I have to go along to
look after her. I expect to
enjoy it, too; I’m seventy years old, but
I’m not tired of living yet.
I daresay I’d have gone to Europe before
if the idea had occurred to me.
We shall be away for two years, perhaps three.
We sail in June and
we shall send you the key, and leave all in
order for you to take
possession when you choose. We shall pack
away a few things we prize
especially, but all the rest will be left.”
“Will you leave the china dogs?” asked
Anne timidly.
“Would you like me to?”
“Oh, indeed, yes. They are delightful.”
A pleased expression came into Miss Patty’s
face.
“I think a great deal of those dogs,”
she said proudly. “They are over
a hundred years old, and they have sat on
either side of this fireplace
ever since my brother Aaron brought them from
London fifty years ago.
Spofford Avenue was called after my brother
Aaron.”
“A fine man he was,” said Miss Maria,
speaking for the first time. “Ah,
you don’t see the like of him nowadays.”
“He was a good uncle to you, Maria,” said
Miss Patty, with evident
emotion. “You do well to remember him.”
“I shall always remember him,” said Miss
Maria solemnly. “I can see him,
this minute, standing there before that fire,
with his hands under his
coat-tails, beaming on us.”
Miss Maria took out her handkerchief and wiped
her eyes; but Miss Patty
came resolutely back from the regions of sentiment
to those of business.
“I shall leave the dogs where they are,
if you will promise to be very
careful of them,” she said. “Their names
are Gog and Magog. Gog looks
to the right and Magog to the left. And there’s
just one thing more. You
don’t object, I hope, to this house being
called Patty’s Place?”
“No, indeed. We think that is one of the
nicest things about it.”
“You have sense, I see,” said Miss Patty
in a tone of great
satisfaction. “Would you believe it? All
the people who came here to
rent the house wanted to know if they couldn’t
take the name off the
gate during their occupation of it. I told
them roundly that the name
went with the house. This has been Patty’s
Place ever since my brother
Aaron left it to me in his will, and Patty’s
Place it shall remain until
I die and Maria dies. After that happens the
next possessor can call it
any fool name he likes,” concluded Miss
Patty, much as she might have
said, “After that, the deluge.” “And
now, wouldn’t you like to go over
the house and see it all before we consider
the bargain made?”
Further exploration still further delighted
the girls. Besides the
big living-room, there was a kitchen and a
small bedroom downstairs.
Upstairs were three rooms, one large and two
small. Anne took an
especial fancy to one of the small ones, looking
out into the big
pines, and hoped it would be hers. It was
papered in pale blue and had
a little, old-timey toilet table with sconces
for candles. There was a
diamond-paned window with a seat under the
blue muslin frills that would
be a satisfying spot for studying or dreaming.
“It’s all so delicious that I know we
are going to wake up and find it a
fleeting vision of the night,” said Priscilla
as they went away.
“Miss Patty and Miss Maria are hardly such
stuff as dreams are made of,”
laughed Anne. “Can you fancy them ‘globe-trotting’,
especially in those
shawls and caps?”
“I suppose they’ll take them off when
they really begin to trot,” said
Priscilla, “but I know they’ll take their
knitting with them everywhere.
They simply couldn’t be parted from it.
They will walk about Westminster
Abbey and knit, I feel sure. Meanwhile, Anne,
we shall be living in
Patty’s Place, and on Spofford Avenue. I
feel like a millionairess even
now.”
“I feel like one of the morning stars that
sang for joy,” said Anne.
Phil Gordon crept into Thirty-eight, St. John’s,
that night and flung
herself on Anne’s bed.
“Girls, dear, I’m tired to death. I feel
like the man without a
country, or was it without a shadow? I forget
which. Anyway, I’ve been
packing up.”
“And I suppose you are worn out because
you couldn’t decide which things
to pack first, or where to put them,” laughed
Priscilla.
“E-zackly. And when I had got everything
jammed in somehow, and my
landlady and her maid had both sat on it while
I locked it, I discovered
I had packed a whole lot of things I wanted
for Convocation at the very
bottom. I had to unlock the old thing and
poke and dive into it for an
hour before I fished out what I wanted. I
would get hold of something
that felt like what I was looking for, and
I’d yank it up, and it would
be something else. No, Anne, I did NOT swear.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“Well, you looked it. But I admit my thoughts
verged on the profane. And
I have such a cold in the head, I can do nothing
but sniffle, sigh
and sneeze. Isn’t that alliterative agony
for you? Queen Anne, do say
something to cheer me up.”
“Remember that next Thursday night, you’ll
be back in the land of Alec
and Alonzo,” suggested Anne.
Phil shook her head dolefully.
“More alliteration. No, I don’t want Alec
and Alonzo when I have a
cold in the head. But what has happened you
two? Now that I look at
you closely you seem all lighted up with an
internal iridescence. Why,
you’re actually SHINING! What’s up?”
“We are going to live in Patty’s Place
next winter,” said Anne
triumphantly. “Live, mark you, not board!
We’ve rented it, and Stella
Maynard is coming, and her aunt is going to
keep house for us.”
Phil bounced up, wiped her nose, and fell
on her knees before Anne.
“Girls, girls, let me come, too. Oh, I’ll
be so good. If there’s no room
for me I’ll sleep in the little doghouse
in the orchard, I’ve seen it.
Only let me come.”
“Get up, you goose.”
“I won’t stir off my marrow bones till
you tell me I can live with you
next winter.”
Anne and Priscilla looked at each other. Then
Anne said slowly, “Phil
dear, we’d love to have you. But we may
as well speak plainly. I’m
poor, Pris is poor, Stella Maynard is poor,
our housekeeping will have
to be very simple and our table plain. You’d
have to live as we would.
Now, you are rich and your boardinghouse fare
attests the fact.”
“Oh, what do I care for that?” demanded
Phil tragically. “Better a
dinner of herbs where your chums are than
a stalled ox in a lonely
boardinghouse. Don’t think I’m ALL stomach,
girls. I’ll be willing to
live on bread and water, with just a LEETLE
jam, if you’ll let me come.”
“And then,” continued Anne, “there will
be a good deal of work to be
done. Stella’s aunt can’t do it all. We
all expect to have our chores to
do. Now, you, ”
“Toil not, neither do I spin,” finished
Philippa. “But I’ll learn to do
things. You’ll only have to show me once.
I CAN make my own bed to begin
with. And remember that, though I can’t
cook, I CAN keep my temper.
That’s something. And I NEVER growl about
the weather. That’s more. Oh,
please, please! I never wanted anything so
much in my life, and this
floor is awfully hard.”
“There’s just one more thing,” said
Priscilla resolutely. “You, Phil,
as all Redmond knows, entertain callers almost
every evening. Now, at
Patty’s Place we can’t do that. We have
decided that we shall be at home
to our friends on Friday evenings only. If
you come with us you’ll have
to abide by that rule.”
“Well, you don’t think I’ll mind that,
do you? Why, I’m glad of it.
I knew I should have had some such rule myself,
but I hadn’t enough
decision to make it or stick to it. When I
can shuffle off the
responsibility on you it will be a real relief.
If you won’t let me cast
in my lot with you I’ll die of the disappointment
and then I’ll come
back and haunt you. I’ll camp on the very
doorstep of Patty’s Place and
you won’t be able to go out or come in without
falling over my spook.”
Again Anne and Priscilla exchanged eloquent
looks.
“Well,” said Anne, “of course we can’t
promise to take you until we’ve
consulted with Stella; but I don’t think
she’ll object, and, as far as
we are concerned, you may come and glad welcome.”
“If you get tired of our simple life you
can leave us, and no questions
asked,” added Priscilla.
Phil sprang up, hugged them both jubilantly,
and went on her way
rejoicing.
“I hope things will go right,” said Priscilla
soberly.
“We must MAKE them go right,” avowed Anne.
“I think Phil will fit into
our ‘appy little ‘ome very well.”
“Oh, Phil’s a dear to rattle round with
and be chums. And, of course,
the more there are of us the easier it will
be on our slim purses. But
how will she be to live with? You have to
summer and winter with any one
before you know if she’s LIVABLE or not.”
“Oh, well, we’ll all be put to the test,
as far as that goes. And
we must quit us like sensible folk, living
and let live. Phil isn’t
selfish, though she’s a little thoughtless,
and I believe we will all
get on beautifully in Patty’s Place.”
End of Chapter 10
Chapter 11
The Round of Life
Anne was back in Avonlea with the lustre of
the Thorburn Scholarship
on her brow. People told her she hadn’t
changed much, in a tone which
hinted they were surprised and a little disappointed
she hadn’t. Avonlea
had not changed, either. At least, so it seemed
at first. But as Anne
sat in the Green Gables pew, on the first
Sunday after her return, and
looked over the congregation, she saw several
little changes which, all
coming home to her at once, made her realise
that time did not quite
stand still, even in Avonlea. A new minister
was in the pulpit. In the
pews more than one familiar face was missing
forever. Old “Uncle Abe,”
his prophesying over and done with, Mrs. Peter
Sloane, who had sighed,
it was to be hoped, for the last time, Timothy
Cotton, who, as Mrs.
Rachel Lynde said “had actually managed
to die at last after practicing
at it for twenty years,” and old Josiah
Sloane, whom nobody knew in his
coffin because he had his whiskers neatly
trimmed, were all sleeping in
the little graveyard behind the church. And
Billy Andrews was married
to Nettie Blewett! They “appeared out”
that Sunday. When Billy, beaming
with pride and happiness, showed his be-plumed
and be-silked bride into
the Harmon Andrews’ pew, Anne dropped her
lids to hide her dancing eyes.
She recalled the stormy winter night of the
Christmas holidays when Jane
had proposed for Billy. He certainly had not
broken his heart over his
rejection. Anne wondered if Jane had also
proposed to Nettie for him, or
if he had mustered enough spunk to ask the
fateful question himself. All
the Andrews family seemed to share in his
pride and pleasure, from
Mrs. Harmon in the pew to Jane in the choir.
Jane had resigned from the
Avonlea school and intended to go West in
the fall.
“Can’t get a beau in Avonlea, that’s
what,” said Mrs. Rachel Lynde
scornfully. “SAYS she thinks she’ll have
better health out West. I never
heard her health was poor before.”
“Jane is a nice girl,” Anne had said loyally.
“She never tried to
attract attention, as some did.”
“Oh, she never chased the boys, if that’s
what you mean,” said Mrs.
Rachel. “But she’d like to be married,
just as much as anybody, that’s
what. What else would take her out West to
some forsaken place whose
only recommendation is that men are plenty
and women scarce? Don’t you
tell me!”
But it was not at Jane, Anne gazed that day
in dismay and surprise. It
was at Ruby Gillis, who sat beside her in
the choir. What had happened
to Ruby? She was even handsomer than ever;
but her blue eyes were
too bright and lustrous, and the colour of
her cheeks was hectically
brilliant; besides, she was very thin; the
hands that held her hymn-book
were almost transparent in their delicacy.
“Is Ruby Gillis ill?” Anne asked of Mrs.
Lynde, as they went home from
church.
“Ruby Gillis is dying of galloping consumption,”
said Mrs. Lynde
bluntly. “Everybody knows it except herself
and her FAMILY. They won’t
give in. If you ask THEM, she’s perfectly
well. She hasn’t been able
to teach since she had that attack of congestion
in the winter, but she
says she’s going to teach again in the fall,
and she’s after the White
Sands school. She’ll be in her grave, poor
girl, when White Sands school
opens, that’s what.”
Anne listened in shocked silence. Ruby Gillis,
her old school-chum,
dying? Could it be possible? Of late years
they had grown apart; but the
old tie of school-girl intimacy was there,
and made itself felt sharply
in the tug the news gave at Anne’s heartstrings.
Ruby, the brilliant,
the merry, the coquettish! It was impossible
to associate the thought of
her with anything like death. She had greeted
Anne with gay cordiality
after church, and urged her to come up the
next evening.
“I’ll be away Tuesday and Wednesday evenings,”
she had whispered
triumphantly. “There’s a concert at Carmody
and a party at White Sands.
Herb Spencer’s going to take me. He’s
my LATEST. Be sure to come up
tomorrow. I’m dying for a good talk with
you. I want to hear all about
your doings at Redmond.”
Anne knew that Ruby meant that she wanted
to tell Anne all about her own
recent flirtations, but she promised to go,
and Diana offered to go with
her.
“I’ve been wanting to go to see Ruby for
a long while,” she told Anne,
when they left Green Gables the next evening,
“but I really couldn’t
go alone. It’s so awful to hear Ruby rattling
on as she does, and
pretending there is nothing the matter with
her, even when she can
hardly speak for coughing. She’s fighting
so hard for her life, and yet
she hasn’t any chance at all, they say.”
The girls walked silently down the red, twilit
road. The robins were
singing vespers in the high treetops, filling
the golden air with their
jubilant voices. The silver fluting of the
frogs came from marshes and
ponds, over fields where seeds were beginning
to stir with life and
thrill to the sunshine and rain that had drifted
over them. The air
was fragrant with the wild, sweet, wholesome
smell of young raspberry
copses. White mists were hovering in the silent
hollows and violet stars
were shining bluely on the brooklands.
“What a beautiful sunset,” said Diana.
“Look, Anne, it’s just like a
land in itself, isn’t it? That long, low
back of purple cloud is the
shore, and the clear sky further on is like
a golden sea.”
“If we could sail to it in the moonshine
boat Paul wrote of in his old
composition, you remember?, how nice it would
be,” said Anne, rousing
from her reverie. “Do you think we could
find all our yesterdays there,
Diana, all our old springs and blossoms? The
beds of flowers that Paul
saw there are the roses that have bloomed
for us in the past?”
“Don’t!” said Diana. “You make me
feel as if we were old women with
everything in life behind us.”
“I think I’ve almost felt as if we were
since I heard about poor Ruby,”
said Anne. “If it is true that she is dying
any other sad thing might be
true, too.”
“You don’t mind calling in at Elisha Wright’s
for a moment, do you?”
asked Diana. “Mother asked me to leave this
little dish of jelly for
Aunt Atossa.”
“Who is Aunt Atossa?”
“Oh, haven’t you heard? She’s Mrs. Samson
Coates of Spencervale, Mrs.
Elisha Wright’s aunt. She’s father’s
aunt, too. Her husband died last
winter and she was left very poor and lonely,
so the Wrights took her to
live with them. Mother thought we ought to
take her, but father put his
foot down. Live with Aunt Atossa he would
not.”
“Is she so terrible?” asked Anne absently.
“You’ll probably see what she’s like
before we can get away,” said Diana
significantly. “Father says she has a face
like a hatchet, it cuts the
air. But her tongue is sharper still.”
Late as it was Aunt Atossa was cutting potato
sets in the Wright
kitchen. She wore a faded old wrapper, and
her grey hair was decidedly
untidy. Aunt Atossa did not like being “caught
in a kilter,” so she went
out of her way to be disagreeable.
“Oh, so you’re Anne Shirley?” she said,
when Diana introduced Anne.
“I’ve heard of you.” Her tone implied
that she had heard nothing good.
“Mrs. Andrews was telling me you were home.
She said you had improved a
good deal.”
There was no doubt Aunt Atossa thought there
was plenty of room for
further improvement. She ceased not from cutting
sets with much energy.
“Is it any use to ask you to sit down?”
she inquired sarcastically. “Of
course, there’s nothing very entertaining
here for you. The rest are all
away.”
“Mother sent you this little pot of rhubarb
jelly,” said Diana
pleasantly. “She made it today and thought
you might like some.”
“Oh, thanks,” said Aunt Atossa sourly.
“I never fancy your mother’s
jelly, she always makes it too sweet. However,
I’ll try to worry some
down. My appetite’s been dreadful poor this
spring. I’m far from well,”
continued Aunt Atossa solemnly, “but still
I keep a-doing. People who
can’t work aren’t wanted here. If it isn’t
too much trouble will you be
condescending enough to set the jelly in the
pantry? I’m in a hurry to
get these spuds done tonight. I suppose you
two LADIES never do anything
like this. You’d be afraid of spoiling your
hands.”
“I used to cut potato sets before we rented
the farm,” smiled Anne.
“I do it yet,” laughed Diana. “I cut
sets three days last week. Of
course,” she added teasingly, “I did my
hands up in lemon juice and kid
gloves every night after it.”
Aunt Atossa sniffed.
“I suppose you got that notion out of some
of those silly magazines you
read so many of. I wonder your mother allows
you. But she always spoiled
you. We all thought when George married her
she wouldn’t be a suitable
wife for him.”
Aunt Atossa sighed heavily, as if all forebodings
upon the occasion of
George Barry’s marriage had been amply and
darkly fulfilled.
“Going, are you?” she inquired, as the
girls rose. “Well, I suppose you
can’t find much amusement talking to an
old woman like me. It’s such a
pity the boys ain’t home.”
“We want to run in and see Ruby Gillis a
little while,” explained Diana.
“Oh, anything does for an excuse, of course,”
said Aunt Atossa, amiably.
“Just whip in and whip out before you have
time to say how-do decently.
It’s college airs, I s’pose. You’d be
wiser to keep away from Ruby
Gillis. The doctors say consumption’s catching.
I always knew Ruby’d get
something, gadding off to Boston last fall
for a visit. People who ain’t
content to stay home always catch something.”
“People who don’t go visiting catch things,
too. Sometimes they even
die,” said Diana solemnly.
“Then they don’t have themselves to blame
for it,” retorted Aunt Atossa
triumphantly. “I hear you are to be married
in June, Diana.”
“There is no truth in that report,” said
Diana, blushing.
“Well, don’t put it off too long,” said
Aunt Atossa significantly.
“You’ll fade soon, you’re all complexion
and hair. And the Wrights are
terrible fickle. You ought to wear a hat,
MISS SHIRLEY. Your nose is
freckling scandalous. My, but you ARE redheaded!
Well, I s’pose we’re
all as the Lord made us! Give Marilla Cuthbert
my respects. She’s never
been to see me since I come to Avonlea, but
I s’pose I oughtn’t to
complain. The Cuthberts always did think themselves
a cut higher than
any one else round here.”
“Oh, isn’t she dreadful?” gasped Diana,
as they escaped down the lane.
“She’s worse than Miss Eliza Andrews,”
said Anne. “But then think of
living all your life with a name like Atossa!
Wouldn’t it sour almost
any one? She should have tried to imagine
her name was Cordelia. It
might have helped her a great deal. It certainly
helped me in the days
when I didn’t like ANNE.”
“Josie Pye will be just like her when she
grows up,” said Diana.
“Josie’s mother and Aunt Atossa are cousins,
you know. Oh, dear, I’m
glad that’s over. She’s so malicious,
she seems to put a bad flavour in
everything. Father tells such a funny story
about her. One time they had
a minister in Spencervale who was a very good,
spiritual man but very
deaf. He couldn’t hear any ordinary conversation
at all. Well, they used
to have a prayer meeting on Sunday evenings,
and all the church members
present would get up and pray in turn, or
say a few words on some Bible
verse. But one evening Aunt Atossa bounced
up. She didn’t either pray or
preach. Instead, she lit into everybody else
in the church and gave them
a fearful raking down, calling them right
out by name and telling them
how they all had behaved, and casting up all
the quarrels and scandals
of the past ten years. Finally she wound up
by saying that she was
disgusted with Spencervale church and she
never meant to darken its door
again, and she hoped a fearful judgment would
come upon it. Then she sat
down out of breath, and the minister, who
hadn’t heard a word she said,
immediately remarked, in a very devout voice,
‘amen! The Lord grant our
dear sister’s prayer!’ You ought to hear
father tell the story.”
“Speaking of stories, Diana,” remarked
Anne, in a significant,
confidential tone, “do you know that lately
I have been wondering if
I could write a short story, a story that
would be good enough to be
published?”
“Why, of course you could,” said Diana,
after she had grasped the
amazing suggestion. “You used to write perfectly
thrilling stories years
ago in our old Story Club.”
“Well, I hardly meant one of that kind of
stories,” smiled Anne. “I’ve
been thinking about it a little of late, but
I’m almost afraid to try,
for, if I should fail, it would be too humiliating.”
“I heard Priscilla say once that all Mrs.
Morgan’s first stories were
rejected. But I’m sure yours wouldn’t
be, Anne, for it’s likely editors
have more sense nowadays.”
“Margaret Burton, one of the Junior girls
at Redmond, wrote a story last
winter and it was published in the Canadian
Woman. I really do think I
could write one at least as good.”
“And will you have it published in the Canadian
Woman?”
“I might try one of the bigger magazines
first. It all depends on what
kind of a story I write.”
“What is it to be about?”
“I don’t know yet. I want to get hold
of a good plot. I believe this
is very necessary from an editor’s point
of view. The only thing I’ve
settled on is the heroine’s name. It is
to be AVERIL LESTER. Rather
pretty, don’t you think? Don’t mention
this to any one, Diana. I haven’t
told anybody but you and Mr. Harrison. HE
wasn’t very encouraging, he
said there was far too much trash written
nowadays as it was, and he’d
expected something better of me, after a year
at college.”
“What does Mr. Harrison know about it?”
demanded Diana scornfully.
They found the Gillis home gay with lights
and callers. Leonard Kimball,
of Spencervale, and Morgan Bell, of Carmody,
were glaring at each other
across the parlour. Several merry girls had
dropped in. Ruby was dressed
in white and her eyes and cheeks were very
brilliant. She laughed and
chattered incessantly, and after the other
girls had gone she took Anne
upstairs to display her new summer dresses.
“I’ve a blue silk to make up yet, but
it’s a little heavy for summer
wear. I think I’ll leave it until the fall.
I’m going to teach in White
Sands, you know. How do you like my hat? That
one you had on in church
yesterday was real dinky. But I like something
brighter for myself.
Did you notice those two ridiculous boys downstairs?
They’ve both come
determined to sit each other out. I don’t
care a single bit about either
of them, you know. Herb Spencer is the one
I like. Sometimes I really
do think he’s MR. RIGHT. At Christmas I
thought the Spencervale
schoolmaster was that. But I found out something
about him that turned
me against him. He nearly went insane when
I turned him down. I wish
those two boys hadn’t come tonight. I wanted
to have a nice good talk
with you, Anne, and tell you such heaps of
things. You and I were always
good chums, weren’t we?”
Ruby slipped her arm about Anne’s waist
with a shallow little laugh. But
just for a moment their eyes met, and, behind
all the lustre of Ruby’s,
Anne saw something that made her heart ache.
“Come up often, won’t you, Anne?” whispered
Ruby. “Come alone, I want
you.”
“Are you feeling quite well, Ruby?”
“Me! Why, I’m perfectly well. I never
felt better in my life. Of course,
that congestion last winter pulled me down
a little. But just see my
colour. I don’t look much like an invalid,
I’m sure.”
Ruby’s voice was almost sharp. She pulled
her arm away from Anne, as
if in resentment, and ran downstairs, where
she was gayer than ever,
apparently so much absorbed in bantering her
two swains that Diana and
Anne felt rather out of it and soon went away.
End of Chapter 11
Chapter 12
“Averil’s Atonement”
“What are you dreaming of, Anne?”
The two girls were loitering one evening in
a fairy hollow of the brook.
Ferns nodded in it, and little grasses were
green, and wild pears hung
finely-scented, white curtains around it.
Anne roused herself from her reverie with
a happy sigh.
“I was thinking out my story, Diana.”
“Oh, have you really begun it?” cried
Diana, all alight with eager
interest in a moment.
“Yes, I have only a few pages written, but
I have it all pretty well
thought out. I’ve had such a time to get
a suitable plot. None of the
plots that suggested themselves suited a girl
named AVERIL.”
“Couldn’t you have changed her name?”
“No, the thing was impossible. I tried to,
but I couldn’t do it, any
more than I could change yours. AVERIL was
so real to me that no matter
what other name I tried to give her I just
thought of her as AVERIL
behind it all. But finally I got a plot that
matched her. Then came the
excitement of choosing names for all my characters.
You have no idea
how fascinating that is. I’ve lain awake
for hours thinking over those
names. The hero’s name is PERCEVAL DALRYMPLE.”
“Have you named ALL the characters?” asked
Diana wistfully. “If you
hadn’t I was going to ask you to let me
name one, just some unimportant
person. I’d feel as if I had a share in
the story then.”
“You may name the little hired boy who lived
with the LESTERS,” conceded
Anne. “He is not very important, but he
is the only one left unnamed.”
“Call him RAYMOND FITZOSBORNE,” suggested
Diana, who had a store of such
names laid away in her memory, relics of the
old “Story Club,” which she
and Anne and Jane Andrews and Ruby Gillis
had had in their schooldays.
Anne shook her head doubtfully.
“I’m afraid that is too aristocratic a
name for a chore boy, Diana. I
couldn’t imagine a Fitzosborne feeding pigs
and picking up chips, could
you?”
Diana didn’t see why, if you had an imagination
at all, you couldn’t
stretch it to that extent; but probably Anne
knew best, and the chore
boy was finally christened ROBERT RAY, to
be called BOBBY should
occasion require.
“How much do you suppose you’ll get for
it?” asked Diana.
But Anne had not thought about this at all.
She was in pursuit of fame,
not filthy lucre, and her literary dreams
were as yet untainted by
mercenary considerations.
“You’ll let me read it, won’t you?”
pleaded Diana.
“When it is finished I’ll read it to you
and Mr. Harrison, and I shall
want you to criticise it SEVERELY. No one
else shall see it until it is
published.”
“How are you going to end it, happily or
unhappily?”
“I’m not sure. I’d like it to end unhappily,
because that would be so
much more romantic. But I understand editors
have a prejudice against
sad endings. I heard Professor Hamilton say
once that nobody but a
genius should try to write an unhappy ending.
And,” concluded Anne
modestly, “I’m anything but a genius.”
“Oh I like happy endings best. You’d better
let him marry her,” said
Diana, who, especially since her engagement
to Fred, thought this was
how every story should end.
“But you like to cry over stories?”
“Oh, yes, in the middle of them. But I like
everything to come right at
last.”
“I must have one pathetic scene in it,”
said Anne thoughtfully. “I might
let ROBERT RAY be injured in an accident and
have a death scene.”
“No, you mustn’t kill BOBBY off,” declared
Diana, laughing. “He belongs
to me and I want him to live and flourish.
Kill somebody else if you
have to.”
For the next fortnight Anne writhed or revelled,
according to mood, in
her literary pursuits. Now she would be jubilant
over a brilliant
idea, now despairing because some contrary
character would NOT behave
properly. Diana could not understand this.
“MAKE them do as you want them to,” she
said.
“I can’t,” mourned Anne. “Averil is
such an unmanageable heroine. She
WILL do and say things I never meant her to.
Then that spoils everything
that went before and I have to write it all
over again.”
Finally, however, the story was finished,
and Anne read it to Diana in
the seclusion of the porch gable. She had
achieved her “pathetic scene”
without sacrificing ROBERT RAY, and she kept
a watchful eye on Diana as
she read it. Diana rose to the occasion and
cried properly; but, when
the end came, she looked a little disappointed.
“Why did you kill MAURICE LENNOX?” she
asked reproachfully.
“He was the villain,” protested Anne.
“He had to be punished.”
“I like him best of them all,” said unreasonable
Diana.
“Well, he’s dead, and he’ll have to
stay dead,” said Anne, rather
resentfully. “If I had let him live he’d
have gone on persecuting AVERIL
and PERCEVAL.”
“Yes, unless you had reformed him.”
“That wouldn’t have been romantic, and,
besides, it would have made the
story too long.”
“Well, anyway, it’s a perfectly elegant
story, Anne, and will make you
famous, of that I’m sure. Have you got a
title for it?”
“Oh, I decided on the title long ago. I
call it AVERIL’S ATONEMENT.
Doesn’t that sound nice and alliterative?
Now, Diana, tell me candidly,
do you see any faults in my story?”
“Well,” hesitated Diana, “that part
where AVERIL makes the cake doesn’t
seem to me quite romantic enough to match
the rest. It’s just what
anybody might do. Heroines shouldn’t do
cooking, I think.”
“Why, that is where the humour comes in,
and it’s one of the best parts
of the whole story,” said Anne. And it may
be stated that in this she
was quite right.
Diana prudently refrained from any further
criticism, but Mr. Harrison
was much harder to please. First he told her
there was entirely too much
description in the story.
“Cut out all those flowery passages,”
he said unfeelingly.
Anne had an uncomfortable conviction that
Mr. Harrison was right, and
she forced herself to expunge most of her
beloved descriptions, though
it took three re-writings before the story
could be pruned down to
please the fastidious Mr. Harrison.
“I’ve left out ALL the descriptions but
the sunset,” she said at last.
“I simply COULDN’T let it go. It was the
best of them all.”
“It hasn’t anything to do with the story,”
said Mr. Harrison, “and you
shouldn’t have laid the scene among rich
city people. What do you know
of them? Why didn’t you lay it right here
in Avonlea, changing the name,
of course, or else Mrs. Rachel Lynde would
probably think she was the
heroine.”
“Oh, that would never have done,” protested
Anne. “Avonlea is the
dearest place in the world, but it isn’t
quite romantic enough for the
scene of a story.”
“I daresay there’s been many a romance
in Avonlea, and many a tragedy,
too,” said Mr. Harrison drily. “But your
folks ain’t like real folks
anywhere. They talk too much and use too high-flown
language. There’s
one place where that DALRYMPLE chap talks
even on for two pages, and
never lets the girl get a word in edgewise.
If he’d done that in real
life she’d have pitched him.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Anne flatly.
In her secret soul she thought
that the beautiful, poetical things said to
AVERIL would win any girl’s
heart completely. Besides, it was gruesome
to hear of AVERIL, the
stately, queen-like AVERIL, “pitching”
any one. AVERIL “declined her
suitors.”
“Anyhow,” resumed the merciless Mr. Harrison,
“I don’t see why MAURICE
LENNOX didn’t get her. He was twice the
man the other is. He did bad
things, but he did them. Perceval hadn’t
time for anything but mooning.”
“Mooning.” That was even worse than “pitching!”
“MAURICE LENNOX was the villain,” said
Anne indignantly. “I don’t see
why every one likes him better than PERCEVAL.”
“Perceval is too good. He’s aggravating.
Next time you write about a
hero put a little spice of human nature in
him.”
“AVERIL couldn’t have married MAURICE.
He was bad.”
“She’d have reformed him. You can reform
a man; you can’t reform a
jelly-fish, of course. Your story isn’t
bad, it’s kind of interesting,
I’ll admit. But you’re too young to write
a story that would be worth
while. Wait ten years.”
Anne made up her mind that the next time she
wrote a story she wouldn’t
ask anybody to criticise it. It was too discouraging.
She would not read
the story to Gilbert, although she told him
about it.
“If it is a success you’ll see it when
it is published, Gilbert, but if
it is a failure nobody shall ever see it.”
Marilla knew nothing about the venture. In
imagination Anne saw herself
reading a story out of a magazine to Marilla,
entrapping her into praise
of it, for in imagination all things are possible,
and then triumphantly
announcing herself the author.
One day Anne took to the Post Office a long,
bulky envelope, addressed,
with the delightful confidence of youth and
inexperience, to the very
biggest of the “big” magazines. Diana
was as excited over it as Anne
herself.
“How long do you suppose it will be before
you hear from it?” she asked.
“It shouldn’t be longer than a fortnight.
Oh, how happy and proud I
shall be if it is accepted!”
“Of course it will be accepted, and they
will likely ask you to send
them more. You may be as famous as Mrs. Morgan
some day, Anne, and then
how proud I’ll be of knowing you,” said
Diana, who possessed, at least,
the striking merit of an unselfish admiration
of the gifts and graces of
her friends.
A week of delightful dreaming followed, and
then came a bitter
awakening. One evening Diana found Anne in
the porch gable, with
suspicious-looking eyes. On the table lay
a long envelope and a crumpled
manuscript.
“Anne, your story hasn’t come back?”
cried Diana incredulously.
“Yes, it has,” said Anne shortly.
“Well, that editor must be crazy. What reason
did he give?”
“No reason at all. There is just a printed
slip saying that it wasn’t
found acceptable.”
“I never thought much of that magazine,
anyway,” said Diana hotly.
“The stories in it are not half as interesting
as those in the
Canadian Woman, although it costs so much
more. I suppose the editor
is prejudiced against any one who isn’t
a Yankee. Don’t be discouraged,
Anne. Remember how Mrs. Morgan’s stories
came back. Send yours to the
Canadian Woman.”
“I believe I will,” said Anne, plucking
up heart. “And if it is
published I’ll send that American editor
a marked copy. But I’ll cut the
sunset out. I believe Mr. Harrison was right.”
Out came the sunset; but in spite of this
heroic mutilation the editor
of the Canadian Woman sent Averil’s Atonement
back so promptly that the
indignant Diana declared that it couldn’t
have been read at all, and
vowed she was going to stop her subscription
immediately. Anne took this
second rejection with the calmness of despair.
She locked the story away
in the garret trunk where the old Story Club
tales reposed; but first
she yielded to Diana’s entreaties and gave
her a copy.
“This is the end of my literary ambitions,”
she said bitterly.
She never mentioned the matter to Mr. Harrison,
but one evening he asked
her bluntly if her story had been accepted.
“No, the editor wouldn’t take it,” she
answered briefly.
Mr. Harrison looked sidewise at the flushed,
delicate profile.
“Well, I suppose you’ll keep on writing
them,” he said encouragingly.
“No, I shall never try to write a story
again,” declared Anne, with the
hopeless finality of nineteen when a door
is shut in its face.
“I wouldn’t give up altogether,” said
Mr. Harrison reflectively. “I’d
write a story once in a while, but I wouldn’t
pester editors with it.
I’d write of people and places like I knew,
and I’d make my characters
talk everyday English; and I’d let the sun
rise and set in the usual
quiet way without much fuss over the fact.
If I had to have villains
at all, I’d give them a chance, Anne, I’d
give them a chance. There are
some terrible bad men in the world, I suppose,
but you’d have to go a
long piece to find them, though Mrs. Lynde
believes we’re all bad. But
most of us have got a little decency somewhere
in us. Keep on writing,
Anne.”
“No. It was very foolish of me to attempt
it. When I’m through Redmond
I’ll stick to teaching. I can teach. I can’t
write stories.”
“It’ll be time for you to be getting a
husband when you’re through
Redmond,” said Mr. Harrison. “I don’t
believe in putting marrying off
too long, like I did.”
Anne got up and marched home. There were times
when Mr. Harrison was
really intolerable. “Pitching,” “mooning,”
and “getting a husband.” Ow!!
End of Chapter 12
Chapter 13
The Way of Transgressors
Davy and Dora were ready for Sunday School.
They were going alone, which
did not often happen, for Mrs. Lynde always
attended Sunday School. But
Mrs. Lynde had twisted her ankle and was lame,
so she was staying home
this morning. The twins were also to represent
the family at church, for
Anne had gone away the evening before to spend
Sunday with friends in
Carmody, and Marilla had one of her headaches.
Davy came downstairs slowly. Dora was waiting
in the hall for him,
having been made ready by Mrs. Lynde. Davy
had attended to his own
preparations. He had a cent in his pocket
for the Sunday School
collection, and a five-cent piece for the
church collection; he carried
his Bible in one hand and his Sunday School
quarterly in the other;
he knew his lesson and his Golden Text and
his catechism question
perfectly. Had he not studied them, perforce,
in Mrs. Lynde’s kitchen,
all last Sunday afternoon? Davy, therefore,
should have been in a placid
frame of mind. As a matter of fact, despite
text and catechism, he was
inwardly as a ravening wolf.
Mrs. Lynde limped out of her kitchen as he
joined Dora.
“Are you clean?” she demanded severely.
“Yes, all of me that shows,” Davy answered
with a defiant scowl.
Mrs. Rachel sighed. She had her suspicions
about Davy’s neck and ears.
But she knew that if she attempted to make
a personal examination Davy
would likely take to his heels and she could
not pursue him today.
“Well, be sure you behave yourselves,”
she warned them. “Don’t walk in
the dust. Don’t stop in the porch to talk
to the other children. Don’t
squirm or wriggle in your places. Don’t
forget the Golden Text. Don’t
lose your collection or forget to put it in.
Don’t whisper at prayer
time, and don’t forget to pay attention
to the sermon.”
Davy deigned no response. He marched away
down the lane, followed by the
meek Dora. But his soul seethed within. Davy
had suffered, or thought he
had suffered, many things at the hands and
tongue of Mrs. Rachel Lynde
since she had come to Green Gables, for Mrs.
Lynde could not live with
anybody, whether they were nine or ninety,
without trying to bring
them up properly. And it was only the preceding
afternoon that she had
interfered to influence Marilla against allowing
Davy to go fishing with
the Timothy Cottons. Davy was still boiling
over this.
As soon as he was out of the lane Davy stopped
and twisted his
countenance into such an unearthly and terrific
contortion that Dora,
although she knew his gifts in that respect,
was honestly alarmed lest
he should never in the world be able to get
it straightened out again.
“Darn her,” exploded Davy.
“Oh, Davy, don’t swear,” gasped Dora
in dismay.
“‘Darn’ isn’t swearing, not real swearing.
And I don’t care if it is,”
retorted Davy recklessly.
“Well, if you MUST say dreadful words don’t
say them on Sunday,” pleaded
Dora.
Davy was as yet far from repentance, but in
his secret soul he felt
that, perhaps, he had gone a little too far.
“I’m going to invent a swear word of my
own,” he declared.
“God will punish you if you do,” said
Dora solemnly.
“Then I think God is a mean old scamp,”
retorted Davy. “Doesn’t He know
a fellow must have some way of ‘spressing
his feelings?”
“Davy!!!” said Dora. She expected that
Davy would be struck down dead on
the spot. But nothing happened.
“Anyway, I ain’t going to stand any more
of Mrs. Lynde’s bossing,”
spluttered Davy. “Anne and Marilla may have
the right to boss me, but
SHE hasn’t. I’m going to do every single
thing she told me not to do.
You watch me.”
In grim, deliberate silence, while Dora watched
him with the fascination
of horror, Davy stepped off the green grass
of the roadside, ankle deep
into the fine dust which four weeks of rainless
weather had made on the
road, and marched along in it, shuffling his
feet viciously until he was
enveloped in a hazy cloud.
“That’s the beginning,” he announced
triumphantly. “And I’m going to
stop in the porch and talk as long as there’s
anybody there to talk
to. I’m going to squirm and wriggle and
whisper, and I’m going to say
I don’t know the Golden Text. And I’m
going to throw away both of my
collections RIGHT NOW.”
And Davy hurled cent and nickel over Mr. Barry’s
fence with fierce
delight.
“Satan made you do that,” said Dora reproachfully.
“He didn’t,” cried Davy indignantly.
“I just thought it out for myself.
And I’ve thought of something else. I’m
not going to Sunday School
or church at all. I’m going up to play with
the Cottons. They told me
yesterday they weren’t going to Sunday School
today, ‘cause their mother
was away and there was nobody to make them.
Come along, Dora, we’ll have
a great time.”
“I don’t want to go,” protested Dora.
“You’ve got to,” said Davy. “If you
don’t come I’ll tell Marilla that
Frank Bell kissed you in school last Monday.”
“I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know he
was going to,” cried Dora,
blushing scarlet.
“Well, you didn’t slap him or seem a bit
cross,” retorted Davy. “I’ll
tell her THAT, too, if you don’t come. We’ll
take the short cut up this
field.”
“I’m afraid of those cows,” protested
poor Dora, seeing a prospect of
escape.
“The very idea of your being scared of those
cows,” scoffed Davy. “Why,
they’re both younger than you.”
“They’re bigger,” said Dora.
“They won’t hurt you. Come along, now.
This is great. When I grow up
I ain’t going to bother going to church
at all. I believe I can get to
heaven by myself.”
“You’ll go to the other place if you break
the Sabbath day,” said
unhappy Dora, following him sorely against
her will.
But Davy was not scared, yet. Hell was very
far off, and the delights of
a fishing expedition with the Cottons were
very near. He wished Dora
had more spunk. She kept looking back as if
she were going to cry every
minute, and that spoiled a fellow’s fun.
Hang girls, anyway. Davy did
not say “darn” this time, even in thought.
He was not sorry, yet, that
he had said it once, but it might be as well
not to tempt the Unknown
Powers too far on one day.
The small Cottons were playing in their back
yard, and hailed Davy’s
appearance with whoops of delight. Pete, Tommy,
Adolphus, and Mirabel
Cotton were all alone. Their mother and older
sisters were away. Dora
was thankful Mirabel was there, at least.
She had been afraid she would
be alone in a crowd of boys. Mirabel was almost
as bad as a boy, she was
so noisy and sunburned and reckless. But at
least she wore dresses.
“We’ve come to go fishing,” announced
Davy.
“Whoop,” yelled the Cottons. They rushed
away to dig worms at once,
Mirabel leading the van with a tin can. Dora
could have sat down and
cried. Oh, if only that hateful Frank Bell
had never kissed her! Then
she could have defied Davy, and gone to her
beloved Sunday School.
They dared not, of course, go fishing on the
pond, where they would be
seen by people going to church. They had to
resort to the brook in the
woods behind the Cotton house. But it was
full of trout, and they had a
glorious time that morning, at least the Cottons
certainly had, and
Davy seemed to have it. Not being entirely
bereft of prudence, he had
discarded boots and stockings and borrowed
Tommy Cotton’s overalls. Thus
accoutered, bog and marsh and undergrowth
had no terrors for him. Dora
was frankly and manifestly miserable. She
followed the others in their
peregrinations from pool to pool, clasping
her Bible and quarterly
tightly and thinking with bitterness of soul
of her beloved class where
she should be sitting that very moment, before
a teacher she adored.
Instead, here she was roaming the woods with
those half-wild Cottons,
trying to keep her boots clean and her pretty
white dress free from
rents and stains. Mirabel had offered the
loan of an apron but Dora had
scornfully refused.
The trout bit as they always do on Sundays.
In an hour the transgressors
had all the fish they wanted, so they returned
to the house, much to
Dora’s relief. She sat primly on a hencoop
in the yard while the others
played an uproarious game of tag; and then
they all climbed to the top
of the pig-house roof and cut their initials
on the saddleboard. The
flat-roofed henhouse and a pile of straw beneath
gave Davy another
inspiration. They spent a splendid half hour
climbing on the roof and
diving off into the straw with whoops and
yells.
But even unlawful pleasures must come to an
end. When the rumble of
wheels over the pond bridge told that people
were going home from church
Davy knew they must go. He discarded Tommy’s
overalls, resumed his own
rightful attire, and turned away from his
string of trout with a sigh.
No use to think of taking them home.
“Well, hadn’t we a splendid time?” he
demanded defiantly, as they went
down the hill field.
“I hadn’t,” said Dora flatly. “And
I don’t believe you
had, really, either,” she added, with a
flash of insight that was not to
be expected of her.
“I had so,” cried Davy, but in the voice
of one who doth protest too
much. “No wonder you hadn’t, just sitting
there like a, like a mule.”
“I ain’t going to, ‘sociate with the
Cottons,” said Dora loftily.
“The Cottons are all right,” retorted
Davy. “And they have far better
times than we have. They do just as they please
and say just what they
like before everybody. I‘m going to do that,
too, after this.”
“There are lots of things you wouldn’t
dare say before everybody,”
averred Dora.
“No, there isn’t.”
“There is, too. Would you,” demanded Dora
gravely, “would you say
‘tomcat’ before the minister?”
This was a staggerer. Davy was not prepared
for such a concrete example
of the freedom of speech. But one did not
have to be consistent with
Dora.
“Of course not,” he admitted sulkily.
“‘Tomcat’ isn’t a holy word. I wouldn’t
mention such an animal before a
minister at all.”
“But if you had to?” persisted Dora.
“I’d call it a Thomas pussy,” said Davy.
“I think ‘gentleman cat’ would be more
polite,” reflected Dora.
“YOU thinking!” retorted Davy with withering
scorn.
Davy was not feeling comfortable, though he
would have died before he
admitted it to Dora. Now that the exhilaration
of truant delights had
died away, his conscience was beginning to
give him salutary twinges.
After all, perhaps it would have been better
to have gone to Sunday
School and church. Mrs. Lynde might be bossy;
but there was always a
box of cookies in her kitchen cupboard and
she was not stingy. At this
inconvenient moment Davy remembered that when
he had torn his new school
pants the week before, Mrs. Lynde had mended
them beautifully and never
said a word to Marilla about them.
But Davy’s cup of iniquity was not yet full.
He was to discover that one
sin demands another to cover it. They had
dinner with Mrs. Lynde that
day, and the first thing she asked Davy was,
“Were all your class in Sunday School today?”
“Yes’m,” said Davy with a gulp. “All
were there, ‘cept one.”
“Did you say your Golden Text and catechism?”
“Yes’m.”
“Did you put your collection in?”
“Yes’m.”
“Was Mrs. Malcolm MacPherson in church?”
“I don’t know.” This, at least, was
the truth, thought wretched Davy.
“Was the Ladies’ Aid announced for next
week?”
“Yes’m”, quakingly.
“Was prayer-meeting?”
“I, I don’t know.”
“YOU should know. You should listen more
attentively to the
announcements. What was Mr. Harvey’s text?”
Davy took a frantic gulp of water and swallowed
it and the last protest
of conscience together. He glibly recited
an old Golden Text learned
several weeks ago. Fortunately Mrs. Lynde
now stopped questioning him;
but Davy did not enjoy his dinner.
He could only eat one helping of pudding.
“What’s the matter with you?” demanded
justly astonished Mrs. Lynde.
“Are you sick?”
“No,” muttered Davy.
“You look pale. You’d better keep out
of the sun this afternoon,”
admonished Mrs. Lynde.
“Do you know how many lies you told Mrs.
Lynde?” asked Dora
reproachfully, as soon as they were alone
after dinner.
Davy, goaded to desperation, turned fiercely.
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” he
said. “You just shut up, Dora
Keith.”
Then poor Davy betook himself to a secluded
retreat behind the woodpile
to think over the way of transgressors.
Green Gables was wrapped in darkness and silence
when Anne reached home.
She lost no time going to bed, for she was
very tired and sleepy. There
had been several Avonlea jollifications the
preceding week, involving
rather late hours. Anne’s head was hardly
on her pillow before she was
half asleep; but just then her door was softly
opened and a pleading
voice said, “Anne.”
Anne sat up drowsily.
“Davy, is that you? What is the matter?”
A white-clad figure flung itself across the
floor and on to the bed.
“Anne,” sobbed Davy, getting his arms
about her neck. “I’m awful glad
you’re home. I couldn’t go to sleep till
I’d told somebody.”
“Told somebody what?”
“How mis’rubul I am.”
“Why are you miserable, dear?”
“‘Cause I was so bad today, Anne. Oh,
I was awful bad, badder’n I’ve
ever been yet.”
“What did you do?”
“Oh, I’m afraid to tell you. You’ll
never like me again, Anne. I
couldn’t say my prayers tonight. I couldn’t
tell God what I’d done. I
was ‘shamed to have Him know.”
“But He knew anyway, Davy.”
“That’s what Dora said. But I thought
p’raps He mightn’t have noticed
just at the time. Anyway, I’d rather tell
you first.”
“WHAT is it you did?”
Out it all came in a rush.
“I run away from Sunday School, and went
fishing with the Cottons, and
I told ever so many whoppers to Mrs. Lynde,
oh! ‘most half a
dozen, and, and, I, I said a swear word, Anne,
a pretty near swear word,
anyhow, and I called God names.”
There was silence. Davy didn’t know what
to make of it. Was Anne so
shocked that she never would speak to him
again?
“Anne, what are you going to do to me?”
he whispered.
“Nothing, dear. You’ve been punished already,
I think.”
“No, I haven’t. Nothing’s been done
to me.”
“You’ve been very unhappy ever since you
did wrong, haven’t you?”
“You bet!” said Davy emphatically.
“That was your conscience punishing you,
Davy.”
“What’s my conscience? I want to know.”
“It’s something in you, Davy, that always
tells you when you are doing
wrong and makes you unhappy if you persist
in doing it. Haven’t you
noticed that?”
“Yes, but I didn’t know what it was. I
wish I didn’t have it. I’d have
lots more fun. Where is my conscience, Anne?
I want to know. Is it in my
stomach?”
“No, it’s in your soul,” answered Anne,
thankful for the darkness, since
gravity must be preserved in serious matters.
“I s’pose I can’t get clear of it then,”
said Davy with a sigh. “Are you
going to tell Marilla and Mrs. Lynde on me,
Anne?”
“No, dear, I’m not going to tell any one.
You are sorry you were
naughty, aren’t you?”
“You bet!”
“And you’ll never be bad like that again.”
“No, but, ” added Davy cautiously, “I
might be bad some other way.”
“You won’t say naughty words, or run away
on Sundays, or tell falsehoods
to cover up your sins?”
“No. It doesn’t pay,” said Davy.
“Well, Davy, just tell God you are sorry
and ask Him to forgive you.”
“Have YOU forgiven me, Anne?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Then,” said Davy joyously, “I don’t
care much whether God does or not.”
“Davy!”
“Oh, I’ll ask Him, I’ll ask Him,”
said Davy quickly, scrambling off the
bed, convinced by Anne’s tone that he must
have said something dreadful.
“I don’t mind asking Him, Anne., Please,
God, I’m awful sorry I behaved
bad today and I’ll try to be good on Sundays
always and please forgive
me., There now, Anne.”
“Well, now, run off to bed like a good boy.”
“All right. Say, I don’t feel mis’rubul
any more. I feel fine. Good
night.”
“Good night.”
Anne slipped down on her pillows with a sigh
of relief. Oh, how
sleepy, she was! In another second,
“Anne!” Davy was back again by her bed.
Anne dragged her eyes open.
“What is it now, dear?” she asked, trying
to keep a note of impatience
out of her voice.
“Anne, have you ever noticed how Mr. Harrison
spits? Do you s’pose, if I
practice hard, I can learn to spit just like
him?”
Anne sat up.
“Davy Keith,” she said, “go straight
to your bed and don’t let me catch
you out of it again tonight! Go, now!”
Davy went, and stood not upon the order of
his going.
End of Chapter 13
Chapter 14
The Summons
Anne was sitting with Ruby Gillis in the Gillis’
garden after the day
had crept lingeringly through it and was gone.
It had been a warm, smoky
summer afternoon. The world was in a splendour
of out-flowering. The idle
valleys were full of hazes. The woodways were
pranked with shadows and
the fields with the purple of the asters.
Anne had given up a moonlight drive to the
White Sands beach that she
might spend the evening with Ruby. She had
so spent many evenings
that summer, although she often wondered what
good it did any one, and
sometimes went home deciding that she could
not go again.
Ruby grew paler as the summer waned; the White
Sands school was given
up, “her father thought it better that she
shouldn’t teach till New
Year’s”, and the fancy work she loved
oftener and oftener fell from
hands grown too weary for it. But she was
always gay, always hopeful,
always chattering and whispering of her beaux,
and their rivalries and
despairs. It was this that made Anne’s visits
hard for her. What had
once been silly or amusing was gruesome, now;
it was death peering
through a wilful mask of life. Yet Ruby seemed
to cling to her, and
never let her go until she had promised to
come again soon. Mrs. Lynde
grumbled about Anne’s frequent visits, and
declared she would catch
consumption; even Marilla was dubious.
“Every time you go to see Ruby you come
home looking tired out,” she
said.
“It’s so very sad and dreadful,” said
Anne in a low tone. “Ruby doesn’t
seem to realise her condition in the least.
And yet I somehow feel she
needs help, craves it, and I want to give
it to her and can’t. All the
time I’m with her I feel as if I were watching
her struggle with an
invisible foe, trying to push it back with
such feeble resistance as she
has. That is why I come home tired.”
But tonight Anne did not feel this so keenly.
Ruby was strangely quiet.
She said not a word about parties and drives
and dresses and “fellows.”
She lay in the hammock, with her untouched
work beside her, and a
white shawl wrapped about her thin shoulders.
Her long yellow braids of
hair, how Anne had envied those beautiful
braids in old schooldays!, lay
on either side of her. She had taken the pins
out, they made her head
ache, she said. The hectic flush was gone
for the time, leaving her pale
and childlike.
The moon rose in the silvery sky, empearling
the clouds around her.
Below, the pond shimmered in its hazy radiance.
Just beyond the
Gillis homestead was the church, with the
old graveyard beside it. The
moonlight shone on the white stones, bringing
them out in clear-cut
relief against the dark trees behind.
“How strange the graveyard looks by moonlight!”
said Ruby suddenly.
“How ghostly!” she shuddered. “Anne,
it won’t be long now before I’ll
be lying over there. You and Diana and all
the rest will be going about,
full of life, and I’ll be there, in the
old graveyard, dead!”
The surprise of it bewildered Anne. For a
few moments she could not
speak.
“You know it’s so, don’t you?” said
Ruby insistently.
“Yes, I know,” answered Anne in a low
tone. “Dear Ruby, I know.”
“Everybody knows it,” said Ruby bitterly.
“I know it, I’ve known it all
summer, though I wouldn’t give in. And,
oh, Anne”, she reached out and
caught Anne’s hand pleadingly, impulsively,
“I don’t want to die. I’m
AFRAID to die.”
“Why should you be afraid, Ruby?” asked
Anne quietly.
“Because, because, oh, I’m not afraid
but that I’ll go to heaven,
Anne. I’m a church member. But, it’ll
be all so different. I think, and
think, and I get so frightened, and, and,
homesick. Heaven must be very
beautiful, of course, the Bible says so, but,
Anne, IT WON’T BE WHAT
I’VE BEEN USED TO.”
Through Anne’s mind drifted an intrusive
recollection of a funny story
she had heard Philippa Gordon tell, the story
of some old man who had
said very much the same thing about the world
to come. It had sounded
funny then, she remembered how she and Priscilla
had laughed over it.
But it did not seem in the least humorous
now, coming from Ruby’s pale,
trembling lips. It was sad, tragic, and true!
Heaven could not be what
Ruby had been used to. There had been nothing
in her gay, frivolous
life, her shallow ideals and aspirations,
to fit her for that great
change, or make the life to come seem to her
anything but alien and
unreal and undesirable. Anne wondered helplessly
what she could say
that would help her. Could she say anything?
“I think, Ruby,” she began
hesitatingly, for it was difficult for Anne
to speak to any one of the
deepest thoughts of her heart, or the new
ideas that had vaguely begun
to shape themselves in her mind, concerning
the great mysteries of life
here and hereafter, superseding her old childish
conceptions, and it
was hardest of all to speak of them to such
as Ruby Gillis, “I think,
perhaps, we have very mistaken ideas about
heaven, what it is and what
it holds for us. I don’t think it can be
so very different from life
here as most people seem to think. I believe
we’ll just go on living, a
good deal as we live here, and be OURSELVES
just the same, only it will
be easier to be good and to, follow the highest.
All the hindrances
and perplexities will be taken away, and we
shall see clearly. Don’t be
afraid, Ruby.”
“I can’t help it,” said Ruby pitifully.
“Even if what you say about
heaven is true, and you can’t be sure, it
may be only that imagination
of yours, it won’t be JUST the same. It
CAN’T be. I want to go on living
HERE. I’m so young, Anne. I haven’t had
my life. I’ve fought so hard to
live, and it isn’t any use, I have to die,
and leave EVERYTHING I care
for.” Anne sat in a pain that was almost
intolerable. She could not tell
comforting falsehoods; and all that Ruby said
was so horribly true. She
WAS leaving everything she cared for. She
had laid up her treasures
on earth only; she had lived solely for the
little things of life, the
things that pass, forgetting the great things
that go onward into
eternity, bridging the gulf between the two
lives and making of death a
mere passing from one dwelling to the other,
from twilight to unclouded
day. God would take care of her there, Anne
believed, she would
learn, but now it was no wonder her soul clung,
in blind helplessness,
to the only things she knew and loved.
Ruby raised herself on her arm and lifted
up her bright, beautiful blue
eyes to the moonlit skies.
“I want to live,” she said, in a trembling
voice. “I want to live
like other girls. I, I want to be married,
Anne, and, and, have little
children. You know I always loved babies,
Anne. I couldn’t say this to
any one but you. I know you understand. And
then poor Herb, he, he
loves me and I love him, Anne. The others
meant nothing to me, but HE
does, and if I could live I would be his wife
and be so happy. Oh, Anne,
it’s hard.”
Ruby sank back on her pillows and sobbed convulsively.
Anne pressed her
hand in an agony of sympathy, silent sympathy,
which perhaps helped Ruby
more than broken, imperfect words could have
done; for presently she
grew calmer and her sobs ceased.
“I’m glad I’ve told you this, Anne,”
she whispered. “It has helped me
just to say it all out. I’ve wanted to all
summer, every time you came.
I wanted to talk it over with you, but I COULDN’T.
It seemed as if it
would make death so SURE if I SAID I was going
to die, or if any one
else said it or hinted it. I wouldn’t say
it, or even think it. In the
daytime, when people were around me and everything
was cheerful, it
wasn’t so hard to keep from thinking of
it. But in the night, when I
couldn’t sleep, it was so dreadful, Anne.
I couldn’t get away from
it then. Death just came and stared me in
the face, until I got so
frightened I could have screamed.
“But you won’t be frightened any more,
Ruby, will you? You’ll be brave,
and believe that all is going to be well with
you.”
“I’ll try. I’ll think over what you
have said, and try to believe it.
And you’ll come up as often as you can,
won’t you, Anne?”
“Yes, dear.”
“It, it won’t be very long now, Anne.
I feel sure of that. And I’d
rather have you than any one else. I always
liked you best of all the
girls I went to school with. You were never
jealous, or mean, like some
of them were. Poor Em White was up to see
me yesterday. You remember Em
and I were such chums for three years when
we went to school? And then
we quarrelled the time of the school concert.
We’ve never spoken to each
other since. Wasn’t it silly? Anything like
that seems silly NOW. But
Em and I made up the old quarrel yesterday.
She said she’d have spoken
years ago, only she thought I wouldn’t.
And I never spoke to her
because I was sure she wouldn’t speak to
me. Isn’t it strange how people
misunderstand each other, Anne?”
“Most of the trouble in life comes from
misunderstanding, I think,” said
Anne. “I must go now, Ruby. It’s getting
late, and you shouldn’t be out
in the damp.”
“You’ll come up soon again.”
“Yes, very soon. And if there’s anything
I can do to help you I’ll be so
glad.”
“I know. You HAVE helped me already. Nothing
seems quite so dreadful
now. Good night, Anne.”
“Good night, dear.”
Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight.
The evening had changed
something for her. Life held a different meaning,
a deeper purpose.
On the surface it would go on just the same;
but the deeps had been
stirred. It must not be with her as with poor
butterfly Ruby. When she
came to the end of one life it must not be
to face the next with the
shrinking terror of something wholly different,
something for which
accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration
had unfitted her. The little
things of life, sweet and excellent in their
place, must not be the
things lived for; the highest must be sought
and followed; the life of
heaven must be begun here on earth.
That good night in the garden was for all
time. Anne never saw Ruby in
life again. The next night the A.V.I.S. gave
a farewell party to Jane
Andrews before her departure for the West.
And, while light feet danced
and bright eyes laughed and merry tongues
chattered, there came a
summons to a soul in Avonlea that might not
be disregarded or evaded.
The next morning the word went from house
to house that Ruby Gillis was
dead. She had died in her sleep, painlessly
and calmly, and on her face
was a smile, as if, after all, death had come
as a kindly friend to lead
her over the threshold, instead of the grisly
phantom she had dreaded.
Mrs. Rachel Lynde said emphatically after
the funeral that Ruby Gillis
was the handsomest corpse she ever laid eyes
on. Her loveliness, as she
lay, white-clad, among the delicate flowers
that Anne had placed about
her, was remembered and talked of for years
in Avonlea. Ruby had always
been beautiful; but her beauty had been of
the earth, earthy; it had
had a certain insolent quality in it, as if
it flaunted itself in the
beholder’s eye; spirit had never shone through
it, intellect had never
refined it. But death had touched it and consecrated
it, bringing out
delicate modelings and purity of outline never
seen before, doing what
life and love and great sorrow and deep womanhood
joys might have
done for Ruby. Anne, looking down through
a mist of tears, at her old
playfellow, thought she saw the face God had
meant Ruby to have, and
remembered it so always.
Mrs. Gillis called Anne aside into a vacant
room before the funeral
procession left the house, and gave her a
small packet.
“I want you to have this,” she sobbed.
“Ruby would have liked you to
have it. It’s the embroidered centrepiece
she was working at. It isn’t
quite finished, the needle is sticking in
it just where her poor little
fingers put it the last time she laid it down,
the afternoon before she
died.”
“There’s always a piece of unfinished
work left,” said Mrs. Lynde, with
tears in her eyes. “But I suppose there’s
always some one to finish it.”
“How difficult it is to realise that one
we have always known can really
be dead,” said Anne, as she and Diana walked
home. “Ruby is the first of
our schoolmates to go. One by one, sooner
or later, all the rest of us
must follow.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Diana uncomfortably.
She did not want to talk
of that. She would have preferred to have
discussed the details of the
funeral, the splendid white velvet casket
Mr. Gillis had insisted on
having for Ruby, “the Gillises must always
make a splurge, even at
funerals,” quoth Mrs. Rachel Lynde, Herb
Spencer’s sad face, the
uncontrolled, hysteric grief of one of Ruby’s
sisters, but Anne would
not talk of these things. She seemed wrapped
in a reverie in which Diana
felt lonesomely that she had neither lot nor
part.
“Ruby Gillis was a great girl to laugh,”
said Davy suddenly. “Will she
laugh as much in heaven as she did in Avonlea,
Anne? I want to know.”
“Yes, I think she will,” said Anne.
“Oh, Anne,” protested Diana, with a rather
shocked smile.
“Well, why not, Diana?” asked Anne seriously.
“Do you think we’ll never
laugh in heaven?”
“Oh, I, I don’t know” floundered Diana.
“It doesn’t seem just right,
somehow. You know it’s rather dreadful to
laugh in church.”
“But heaven won’t be like church, all
the time,” said Anne.
“I hope it ain’t,” said Davy emphatically.
“If it is I don’t want to
go. Church is awful dull. Anyway, I don’t
mean to go for ever so long. I
mean to live to be a hundred years old, like
Mr. Thomas Blewett of White
Sands. He says he’s lived so long ‘cause
he always smoked tobacco and it
killed all the germs. Can I smoke tobacco
pretty soon, Anne?”
“No, Davy, I hope you’ll never use tobacco,”
said Anne absently.
“What’ll you feel like if the germs kill
me then?” demanded Davy.
End of Chapter 14
Chapter 15
A Dream Turned Upside Down
“Just one more week and we go back to Redmond,”
said Anne. She was
happy at the thought of returning to work,
classes and Redmond friends.
Pleasing visions were also being woven around
Patty’s Place. There was
a warm pleasant sense of home in the thought
of it, even though she had
never lived there.
But the summer had been a very happy one,
too, a time of glad living
with summer suns and skies, a time of keen
delight in wholesome things;
a time of renewing and deepening of old friendships;
a time in which
she had learned to live more nobly, to work
more patiently, to play more
heartily.
“All life lessons are not learned at college,”
she thought. “Life
teaches them everywhere.”
But alas, the final week of that pleasant
vacation was spoiled for Anne,
by one of those impish happenings which are
like a dream turned upside
down.
“Been writing any more stories lately?”
inquired Mr. Harrison genially
one evening when Anne was taking tea with
him and Mrs. Harrison.
“No,” answered Anne, rather crisply.
“Well, no offence meant. Mrs. Hiram Sloane
told me the other day that a
big envelope addressed to the Rollings Reliable
Baking Powder Company of
Montreal had been dropped into the post office
box a month ago, and she
suspicioned that somebody was trying for the
prize they’d offered for
the best story that introduced the name of
their baking powder. She said
it wasn’t addressed in your writing, but
I thought maybe it was you.”
“Indeed, no! I saw the prize offer, but
I’d never dream of competing
for it. I think it would be perfectly disgraceful
to write a story to
advertise a baking powder. It would be almost
as bad as Judson Parker’s
patent medicine fence.”
So spake Anne loftily, little dreaming of
the valley of humiliation
awaiting her. That very evening Diana popped
into the porch gable,
bright-eyed and rosy cheeked, carrying a letter.
“Oh, Anne, here’s a letter for you. I
was at the office, so I thought
I’d bring it along. Do open it quick. If
it is what I believe it is I
shall just be wild with delight.” Anne,
puzzled, opened the letter and
glanced over the typewritten contents.
Miss Anne Shirley,
Green Gables,
Avonlea, PE Island.
“DEAR MADAM: We have much pleasure in informing
you that your charming
story ‘Averil’s Atonement’ has won the
prize of twenty-five dollars
offered in our recent competition. We enclose
the check herewith. We are
arranging for the publication of the story
in several prominent Canadian
newspapers, and we also intend to have it
printed in pamphlet form for
distribution among our patrons. Thanking you
for the interest you have
shown in our enterprise, we remain,
“Yours very truly,
“THE ROLLINGS RELIABLE
“BAKING POWDER Co.”
“I don’t understand,” said Anne, blankly.
Diana clapped her hands.
“Oh, I KNEW it would win the prize, I was
sure of it. I sent your
story into the competition, Anne.”
“Diana, Barry!”
“Yes, I did,” said Diana gleefully, perching
herself on the bed. “When
I saw the offer I thought of your story in
a minute, and at first
I thought I’d ask you to send it in. But
then I was afraid you
wouldn’t, you had so little faith left in
it. So I just decided I’d send
the copy you gave me, and say nothing about
it. Then, if it didn’t win
the prize, you’d never know and you wouldn’t
feel badly over it, because
the stories that failed were not to be returned,
and if it did you’d
have such a delightful surprise.”
Diana was not the most discerning of mortals,
but just at this moment it
struck her that Anne was not looking exactly
overjoyed. The surprise was
there, beyond doubt, but where was the delight?
“Why, Anne, you don’t seem a bit pleased!”
she exclaimed.
Anne instantly manufactured a smile and put
it on.
“Of course I couldn’t be anything but
pleased over your unselfish wish
to give me pleasure,” she said slowly. “But
you know, I’m so amazed, I
can’t realise it, and I don’t understand.
There wasn’t a word in my
story about, about, ” Anne choked a little
over the word, “baking
powder.”
“Oh, I put that in,” said Diana, reassured.
“It was as easy as
wink, and of course my experience in our old
Story Club helped me. You
know the scene where Averil makes the cake?
Well, I just stated that
she used the Rollings Reliable in it, and
that was why it turned out so
well; and then, in the last paragraph, where
PERCEVAL clasps AVERIL in
his arms and says, ‘Sweetheart, the beautiful
coming years will bring us
the fulfilment of our home of dreams,’ I
added, ‘in which we will never
use any baking powder except Rollings Reliable.’”
“Oh,” gasped poor Anne, as if some one
had dashed cold water on her.
“And you’ve won the twenty-five dollars,”
continued Diana jubilantly.
“Why, I heard Priscilla say once that the
Canadian Woman only pays five
dollars for a story!”
Anne held out the hateful pink slip in shaking
fingers.
“I can’t take it, it’s yours by right,
Diana. You sent the story in and
made the alterations. I, I would certainly
never have sent it. So you
must take the check.”
“I’d like to see myself,” said Diana
scornfully. “Why, what I did wasn’t
any trouble. The honour of being a friend
of the prizewinner is enough
for me. Well, I must go. I should have gone
straight home from the post
office for we have company. But I simply had
to come and hear the news.
I’m so glad for your sake, Anne.”
Anne suddenly bent forward, put her arms about
Diana, and kissed her
cheek.
“I think you are the sweetest and truest
friend in the world, Diana,”
she said, with a little tremble in her voice,
“and I assure you I
appreciate the motive of what you’ve done.”
Diana, pleased and embarrassed, got herself
away, and poor Anne,
after flinging the innocent check into her
bureau drawer as if it
were blood-money, cast herself on her bed
and wept tears of shame and
outraged sensibility. Oh, she could never
live this down, never!
Gilbert arrived at dusk, brimming over with
congratulations, for he had
called at Orchard Slope and heard the news.
But his congratulations died
on his lips at sight of Anne’s face.
“Why, Anne, what is the matter? I expected
to find you radiant over
winning Rollings Reliable prize. Good for
you!”
“Oh, Gilbert, not you,” implored Anne,
in an ET-TU BRUTE tone. “I
thought YOU would understand. Can’t you
see how awful it is?”
“I must confess I can’t. WHAT is wrong?”
“Everything,” moaned Anne. “I feel as
if I were disgraced forever. What
do you think a mother would feel like if she
found her child tattooed
over with a baking powder advertisement? I
feel just the same. I loved
my poor little story, and I wrote it out of
the best that was in me.
And it is SACRILEGE to have it degraded to
the level of a baking powder
advertisement. Don’t you remember what Professor
Hamilton used to tell
us in the literature class at Queen’s? He
said we were never to write
a word for a low or unworthy motive, but always
to cling to the very
highest ideals. What will he think when he
hears I’ve written a story to
advertise Rollings Reliable? And, oh, when
it gets out at Redmond! Think
how I’ll be teased and laughed at!”
“That you won’t,” said Gilbert, wondering
uneasily if it were that
confounded Junior’s opinion in particular
over which Anne was worried.
“The Reds will think just as I thought,
that you, being like nine out of
ten of us, not overburdened with worldly wealth,
had taken this way of
earning an honest penny to help yourself through
the year. I don’t see
that there’s anything low or unworthy about
that, or anything ridiculous
either. One would rather write masterpieces
of literature no doubt, but
meanwhile board and tuition fees have to be
paid.”
This commonsense, matter-of-fact view of the
case cheered Anne a little.
At least it removed her dread of being laughed
at, though the deeper
hurt of an outraged ideal remained.
End of Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Adjusted Relationships
“It’s the homiest spot I ever saw, it’s
homier than home,” avowed
Philippa Gordon, looking about her with delighted
eyes. They were all
assembled at twilight in the big living-room
at Patty’s Place, Anne and
Priscilla, Phil and Stella, Aunt Jamesina,
Rusty, Joseph, the Sarah-Cat,
and Gog and Magog. The firelight shadows were
dancing over the walls;
the cats were purring; and a huge bowl of
hothouse chrysanthemums,
sent to Phil by one of the victims, shone
through the golden gloom like
creamy moons.
It was three weeks since they had considered
themselves settled, and
already all believed the experiment would
be a success. The first
fortnight after their return had been a pleasantly
exciting one; they
had been busy setting up their household goods,
organising their little
establishment, and adjusting different opinions.
Anne was not over-sorry to leave Avonlea when
the time came to return
to college. The last few days of her vacation
had not been pleasant.
Her prize story had been published in the
Island papers; and Mr. William
Blair had, upon the counter of his store,
a huge pile of pink, green and
yellow pamphlets, containing it, one of which
he gave to every customer.
He sent a complimentary bundle to Anne, who
promptly dropped them all in
the kitchen stove. Her humiliation was the
consequence of her own ideals
only, for Avonlea folks thought it quite splendid
that she should have
won the prize. Her many friends regarded her
with honest admiration; her
few foes with scornful envy. Josie Pye said
she believed Anne Shirley
had just copied the story; she was sure she
remembered reading it in
a paper years before. The Sloanes, who had
found out or guessed that
Charlie had been “turned down,” said they
didn’t think it was much to be
proud of; almost any one could have done it,
if she tried. Aunt Atossa
told Anne she was very sorry to hear she had
taken to writing novels;
nobody born and bred in Avonlea would do it;
that was what came of
adopting orphans from goodness knew where,
with goodness knew what
kind of parents. Even Mrs. Rachel Lynde was
darkly dubious about the
propriety of writing fiction, though she was
almost reconciled to it by
that twenty-five dollar check.
“It is perfectly amazing, the price they
pay for such lies, that’s
what,” she said, half-proudly, half-severely.
All things considered, it was a relief when
going-away time came. And
it was very jolly to be back at Redmond, a
wise, experienced Soph with
hosts of friends to greet on the merry opening
day. Pris and Stella and
Gilbert were there, Charlie Sloane, looking
more important than ever a
Sophomore looked before, Phil, with the Alec-and-Alonzo
question still
unsettled, and Moody Spurgeon MacPherson.
Moody Spurgeon had been
teaching school ever since leaving Queen’s,
but his mother had concluded
it was high time he gave it up and turned
his attention to learning
how to be a minister. Poor Moody Spurgeon
fell on hard luck at the very
beginning of his college career. Half a dozen
ruthless Sophs, who were
among his fellow-boarders, swooped down upon
him one night and shaved
half of his head. In this guise the luckless
Moody Spurgeon had to go
about until his hair grew again. He told Anne
bitterly that there were
times when he had his doubts as to whether
he was really called to be a
minister.
Aunt Jamesina did not come until the girls
had Patty’s Place ready for
her. Miss Patty had sent the key to Anne,
with a letter in which she
said Gog and Magog were packed in a box under
the spare-room bed, but
might be taken out when wanted; in a postscript
she added that she hoped
the girls would be careful about putting up
pictures. The living room
had been newly papered five years before and
she and Miss Maria did
not want any more holes made in that new paper
than was absolutely
necessary. For the rest she trusted everything
to Anne.
How those girls enjoyed putting their nest
in order! As Phil said, it
was almost as good as getting married. You
had the fun of homemaking
without the bother of a husband. All brought
something with them to
adorn or make comfortable the little house.
Pris and Phil and Stella had
knick-knacks and pictures galore, which latter
they proceeded to hang
according to taste, in reckless disregard
of Miss Patty’s new paper.
“We’ll putty the holes up when we leave,
dear, she’ll never know,” they
said to protesting Anne.
Diana had given Anne a pine needle cushion
and Miss Ada had given both
her and Priscilla a fearfully and wonderfully
embroidered one. Marilla
had sent a big box of preserves, and darkly
hinted at a hamper for
Thanksgiving, and Mrs. Lynde gave Anne a patchwork
quilt and loaned her
five more.
“You take them,” she said authoritatively.
“They might as well be in use
as packed away in that trunk in the garret
for moths to gnaw.”
No moths would ever have ventured near those
quilts, for they reeked of
mothballs to such an extent that they had
to be hung in the orchard of
Patty’s Place a full fortnight before they
could be endured indoors.
Verily, aristocratic Spofford Avenue had rarely
beheld such a display.
The gruff old millionaire who lived “next
door” came over and wanted to
buy the gorgeous red and yellow “tulip-pattern”
one which Mrs. Rachel
had given Anne. He said his mother used to
make quilts like that, and by
Jove, he wanted one to remind him of her.
Anne would not sell it, much
to his disappointment, but she wrote all about
it to Mrs. Lynde. That
highly-gratified lady sent word back that
she had one just like it to
spare, so the tobacco king got his quilt after
all, and insisted on
having it spread on his bed, to the disgust
of his fashionable wife.
Mrs. Lynde’s quilts served a very useful
purpose that winter. Patty’s
Place for all its many virtues, had its faults
also. It was really a
rather cold house; and when the frosty nights
came the girls were very
glad to snuggle down under Mrs. Lynde’s
quilts, and hoped that the loan
of them might be accounted unto her for righteousness.
Anne had the blue
room she had coveted at sight. Priscilla and
Stella had the large one.
Phil was blissfully content with the little
one over the kitchen; and
Aunt Jamesina was to have the downstairs one
off the living-room. Rusty
at first slept on the doorstep.
Anne, walking home from Redmond a few days
after her return, became
aware that the people that she met surveyed
her with a covert, indulgent
smile. Anne wondered uneasily what was the
matter with her. Was her hat
crooked? Was her belt loose? Craning her head
to investigate, Anne, for
the first time, saw Rusty.
Trotting along behind her, close to her heels,
was quite the most
forlorn specimen of the cat tribe she had
ever beheld. The animal was
well past kitten-hood, lank, thin, disreputable
looking. Pieces of both
ears were lacking, one eye was temporarily
out of repair, and one jowl
ludicrously swollen. As for colour, if a once
black cat had been well and
thoroughly singed the result would have resembled
the hue of this waif’s
thin, draggled, unsightly fur.
Anne “shooed,” but the cat would not “shoo.”
As long as she stood he sat
back on his haunches and gazed at her reproachfully
out of his one good
eye; when she resumed her walk he followed.
Anne resigned herself to his
company until she reached the gate of Patty’s
Place, which she coldly
shut in his face, fondly supposing she had
seen the last of him.
But when, fifteen minutes later, Phil opened
the door, there sat the
rusty-brown cat on the step. More, he promptly
darted in and sprang upon
Anne’s lap with a half-pleading, half-triumphant
“miaow.”
“Anne,” said Stella severely, “do you
own that animal?”
“No, I do NOT,” protested disgusted Anne.
“The creature followed me home
from somewhere. I couldn’t get rid of him.
Ugh, get down. I like decent
cats reasonably well; but I don’t like beasties
of your complexion.”
Pussy, however, refused to get down. He coolly
curled up in Anne’s lap
and began to purr.
“He has evidently adopted you,” laughed
Priscilla.
“I won’t BE adopted,” said Anne stubbornly.
“The poor creature is starving,” said
Phil pityingly. “Why, his bones
are almost coming through his skin.”
“Well, I’ll give him a square meal and
then he must return to whence he
came,” said Anne resolutely.
The cat was fed and put out. In the morning
he was still on the
doorstep. On the doorstep he continued to
sit, bolting in whenever the
door was opened. No coolness of welcome had
the least effect on him;
of nobody save Anne did he take the least
notice. Out of compassion the
girls fed him; but when a week had passed
they decided that something
must be done. The cat’s appearance had improved.
His eye and cheek had
resumed their normal appearance; he was not
quite so thin; and he had
been seen washing his face.
“But for all that we can’t keep him,”
said Stella. “Aunt Jimsie is
coming next week and she will bring the Sarah-cat
with her.
We can’t keep two cats; and if we did this
Rusty Coat would fight all the time with the
Sarah-cat.
He’s a fighter by nature.
He had a pitched battle last evening with
the tobacco-king’s cat and routed him, horse,
foot and artillery.”
“We must get rid of him,” agreed Anne,
looking darkly at the subject of their discussion,
who was purring on the hearth rug with an
air of lamb-like meekness.
“But the question is, how? How can four
unprotected
females get rid of a cat who won’t be got
rid of?”
“We must chloroform him,” said Phil briskly.
“That is the most humane way.”
“Who of us knows anything about chloroforming
a cat?” demanded Anne
gloomily.
“I do, honey. It’s one of my few, sadly
few, useful accomplishments.
I’ve disposed of several at home. You take
the cat in the morning and
give him a good breakfast. Then you take an
old burlap bag, there’s one
in the back porch, put the cat on it and turn
over him a wooden box.
Then take a two-ounce bottle of chloroform,
uncork it, and slip it under
the edge of the box. Put a heavy weight on
top of the box and leave it
till evening. The cat will be dead, curled
up peacefully as if he were
asleep. No pain, no struggle.”
“It sounds easy,” said Anne dubiously.
“It IS easy. Just leave it to me. I’ll
see to it,” said Phil
reassuringly.
Accordingly the chloroform was procured, and
the next morning Rusty was
lured to his doom. He ate his breakfast, licked
his chops, and climbed
into Anne’s lap. Anne’s heart misgave
her. This poor creature loved
her, trusted her. How could she be a party
to this destruction?
“Here, take him,” she said hastily to
Phil. “I feel like a murderess.”
“He won’t suffer, you know,” comforted
Phil, but Anne had fled.
The fatal deed was done in the back porch.
Nobody went near it that day.
But at dusk Phil declared that Rusty must
be buried.
“Pris and Stella must dig his grave in the
orchard,” declared Phil, “and
Anne must come with me to lift the box off.
That’s the part I always
hate.”
The two conspirators tip-toed reluctantly
to the back porch. Phil
gingerly lifted the stone she had put on the
box. Suddenly, faint but
distinct, sounded an unmistakable mew under
the box.
“He, he isn’t dead,” gasped Anne, sitting
blankly down on the kitchen
doorstep.
“He must be,” said Phil incredulously.
Another tiny mew proved that he wasn’t.
The two girls stared at each
other.
“What will we do?” questioned Anne.
“Why in the world don’t you come?” demanded
Stella, appearing in the
doorway. “We’ve got the grave ready. ‘What
silent still and silent
all?’” she quoted teasingly.
“‘Oh, no, the voices of the dead Sound
like the distant torrent’s
fall,’” promptly counter-quoted Anne,
pointing solemnly to the box.
A burst of laughter broke the tension.
“We must leave him here till morning,”
said Phil, replacing the stone.
“He hasn’t mewed for five minutes. Perhaps
the mews we heard were his
dying groan. Or perhaps we merely imagined
them, under the strain of our
guilty consciences.”
But, when the box was lifted in the morning,
Rusty bounded at one gay
leap to Anne’s shoulder where he began to
lick her face affectionately.
Never was there a cat more decidedly alive.
“Here’s a knot hole in the box,” groaned
Phil. “I never saw it. That’s
why he didn’t die. Now, we’ve got to do
it all over again.”
“No, we haven’t,” declared Anne suddenly.
“Rusty isn’t going to be
killed again. He’s my cat, and you’ve
just got to make the best of it.”
“Oh, well, if you’ll settle with Aunt
Jimsie and the Sarah-cat,” said
Stella, with the air of one washing her hands
of the whole affair.
From that time Rusty was one of the family.
He slept o’nights on the
scrubbing cushion in the back porch and lived
on the fat of the land.
By the time Aunt Jamesina came he was plump
and glossy and tolerably
respectable. But, like Kipling’s cat, he
“walked by himself.” His paw
was against every cat, and every cat’s paw
against him. One by one he
vanquished the aristocratic felines of Spofford
Avenue. As for human
beings, he loved Anne and Anne alone. Nobody
else even dared stroke
him. An angry spit and something that sounded
much like very improper
language greeted any one who did.
“The airs that cat puts on are perfectly
intolerable,” declared Stella.
“Him was a nice old pussens, him was,”
vowed Anne, cuddling her pet
defiantly.
“Well, I don’t know how he and the Sarah-cat
will ever make out to
live together,” said Stella pessimistically.
“Cat-fights in the orchard
o’nights are bad enough. But cat-fights
here in the living room are
unthinkable.” In due time Aunt Jamesina
arrived. Anne and Priscilla and
Phil had awaited her advent rather dubiously;
but when Aunt Jamesina was
enthroned in the rocking chair before the
open fire they figuratively
bowed down and worshipped her.
Aunt Jamesina was a tiny old woman with a
little, softly-triangular
face, and large, soft blue eyes that were
alight with unquenchable
youth, and as full of hopes as a girl’s.
She had pink cheeks and
snow-white hair which she wore in quaint little
puffs over her ears.
“It’s a very old-fashioned way,” she
said, knitting industriously
at something as dainty and pink as a sunset
cloud. “But I am
old-fashioned. My clothes are, and it stands
to reason my opinions are,
too. I don’t say they’re any the better
of that, mind you. In fact, I
daresay they’re a good deal the worse. But
they’ve worn nice and
easy. New shoes are smarter than old ones,
but the old ones are more
comfortable. I’m old enough to indulge myself
in the matter of shoes and
opinions. I mean to take it real easy here.
I know you expect me to look
after you and keep you proper, but I’m not
going to do it. You’re old
enough to know how to behave if you’re ever
going to be. So, as far as I
am concerned,” concluded Aunt Jamesina,
with a twinkle in her young
eyes, “you can all go to destruction in
your own way.”
“Oh, will somebody separate those cats?”
pleaded Stella, shudderingly.
Aunt Jamesina had brought with her not only
the Sarah-cat but Joseph.
Joseph, she explained, had belonged to a dear
friend of hers who had
gone to live in Vancouver.
“She couldn’t take Joseph with her so
she begged me to take him. I
really couldn’t refuse. He’s a beautiful
cat, that is, his disposition
is beautiful. She called him Joseph because
his coat is of many colours.”
It certainly was. Joseph, as the disgusted
Stella said, looked like a
walking rag-bag. It was impossible to say
what his ground colour was. His
legs were white with black spots on them.
His back was grey with a huge
patch of yellow on one side and a black patch
on the other. His tail was
yellow with a grey tip. One ear was black
and one yellow. A black patch
over one eye gave him a fearfully rakish look.
In reality he was meek
and inoffensive, of a sociable disposition.
In one respect, if in no
other, Joseph was like a lily of the field.
He toiled not neither did
he spin or catch mice. Yet Solomon in all
his glory slept not on softer
cushions, or feasted more fully on fat things.
Joseph and the Sarah-cat arrived by express
in separate boxes. After
they had been released and fed, Joseph selected
the cushion and corner
which appealed to him, and the Sarah-cat gravely
sat herself down
before the fire and proceeded to wash her
face. She was a large, sleek,
grey-and-white cat, with an enormous dignity
which was not at all
impaired by any consciousness of her plebian
origin. She had been given
to Aunt Jamesina by her washerwoman.
“Her name was Sarah, so my husband always
called puss the Sarah-cat,”
explained Aunt Jamesina. “She is eight years
old, and a remarkable
mouser. Don’t worry, Stella. The Sarah-cat
NEVER fights and Joseph
rarely.”
“They’ll have to fight here in self-defense,”
said Stella.
At this juncture Rusty arrived on the scene.
He bounded joyously half
way across the room before he saw the intruders.
Then he stopped short;
his tail expanded until it was as big as three
tails. The fur on his
back rose up in a defiant arch; Rusty lowered
his head, uttered a
fearful shriek of hatred and defiance, and
launched himself at the
Sarah-cat.
The stately animal had stopped washing her
face and was looking at him
curiously. She met his onslaught with one
contemptuous sweep of her
capable paw. Rusty went rolling helplessly
over on the rug; he picked
himself up dazedly. What sort of a cat was
this who had boxed his ears?
He looked dubiously at the Sarah-cat. Would
he or would he not? The
Sarah-cat deliberately turned her back on
him and resumed her toilet
operations. Rusty decided that he would not.
He never did. From that
time on the Sarah-cat ruled the roost. Rusty
never again interfered with
her.
But Joseph rashly sat up and yawned. Rusty,
burning to avenge his
disgrace, swooped down upon him. Joseph, pacific
by nature, could fight
upon occasion and fight well. The result was
a series of drawn battles.
Every day Rusty and Joseph fought at sight.
Anne took Rusty’s part and
detested Joseph. Stella was in despair. But
Aunt Jamesina only laughed.
“Let them fight it out,” she said tolerantly.
“They’ll make friends after
a bit. Joseph needs some exercise, he was
getting too fat. And Rusty has
to learn he isn’t the only cat in the world.”
Eventually Joseph and Rusty accepted the situation
and from sworn
enemies became sworn friends. They slept on
the same cushion with their
paws about each other, and gravely washed
each other’s faces.
“We’ve all got used to each other,”
said Phil. “And I’ve learned how to
wash dishes and sweep a floor.”
“But you needn’t try to make us believe
you can chloroform a cat,”
laughed Anne.
“It was all the fault of the knothole,”
protested Phil.
“It was a good thing the knothole was there,”
said Aunt Jamesina rather
severely. “Kittens HAVE to be drowned, I
admit, or the world would be
overrun. But no decent, grown-up cat should
be done to death, unless he
sucks eggs.”
“You wouldn’t have thought Rusty very
decent if you’d seen him when he
came here,” said Stella. “He positively
looked like the Old Nick.”
“I don’t believe Old Nick can be so very,
ugly” said Aunt Jamesina
reflectively. “He wouldn’t do so much
harm if he was. I always think
of him as a rather handsome gentleman.”
End of Chapter 16
Chapter 17
A Letter from Davy
“It’s beginning to snow, girls,” said
Phil, coming in one November
evening, “and there are the loveliest little
stars and crosses all over
the garden walk. I never noticed before what
exquisite things snowflakes
really are. One has time to notice things
like that in the simple life.
Bless you all for permitting me to live it.
It’s really delightful to
feel worried because butter has gone up five
cents a pound.”
“Has it?” demanded Stella, who kept the
household accounts.
“It has, and here’s your butter. I’m
getting quite expert at marketing.
It’s better fun than flirting,” concluded
Phil gravely.
“Everything is going up scandalously,”
sighed Stella.
“Never mind. Thank goodness air and salvation
are still free,” said Aunt
Jamesina.
“And so is laughter,” added Anne. “There’s
no tax on it yet and that is
well, because you’re all going to laugh
presently. I’m going to read
you Davy’s letter. His spelling has improved
immensely this past year,
though he is not strong on apostrophes, and
he certainly possesses
the gift of writing an interesting letter.
Listen and laugh, before we
settle down to the evening’s study-grind.”
“Dear Anne,” ran Davy’s letter, “I
take my pen to tell you that we are
all pretty well and hope this will find you
the same. It’s snowing some
today and Marilla says the old woman in the
sky is shaking her feather
beds. Is the old woman in the sky God’s
wife, Anne? I want to know.
“Mrs. Lynde has been real sick but she is
better now. She fell down the
cellar stairs last week. When she fell she
grabbed hold of the shelf
with all the milk pails and stewpans on it,
and it gave way and went
down with her and made a splendid crash. Marilla
thought it was an
earthquake at first.
“One of the stewpans was all dinged up and
Mrs. Lynde straned her ribs.
The doctor came and gave her medicine to rub
on her ribs but she didn’t
under stand him and took it all inside instead.
The doctor said it was
a wonder it dident kill her but it dident
and it cured her ribs and Mrs.
Lynde says doctors dont know much anyhow.
But we couldent fix up the
stewpan. Marilla had to throw it out. Thanksgiving
was last week. There
was no school and we had a great dinner. I
et mince pie and rost turkey
and frut cake and donuts and cheese and jam
and choklut cake. Marilla
said I’d die but I dident. Dora had earake
after it, only it wasent in
her ears it was in her stummick. I dident
have earake anywhere.
“Our new teacher is a man. He does things
for jokes. Last week he made
all us third-class boys write a composishun
on what kind of a wife we’d
like to have and the girls on what kind of
a husband. He laughed fit to
kill when he read them. This was mine. I thought
youd like to see it.
“‘The kind of a wife I’d like to Have.
“‘She must have good manners and get my
meals on time and do what I tell
her and always be very polite to me. She must
be fifteen yers old. She
must be good to the poor and keep her house
tidy and be good tempered
and go to church regularly. She must be very
handsome and have curly
hair. If I get a wife that is just what I
like Ill be an awful good
husband to her. I think a woman ought to be
awful good to her husband.
Some poor women haven’t any husbands.
“‘THE END.’”
“I was at Mrs. Isaac Wrights funeral at
White Sands last week. The
husband of the corpse felt real sorry. Mrs.
Lynde says Mrs. Wrights
grandfather stole a sheep but Marilla says
we mustent speak ill of the
dead. Why mustent we, Anne? I want to know.
It’s pretty safe, ain’t it?
“Mrs. Lynde was awful mad the other day
because I asked her if she was
alive in Noah’s time. I dident mean to hurt
her feelings. I just wanted
to know. Was she, Anne?
“Mr. Harrison wanted to get rid of his dog.
So he hunged him once but he
come to life and scooted for the barn while
Mr. Harrison was digging the
grave, so he hunged him again and he stayed
dead that time. Mr. Harrison
has a new man working for him. He’s awful
okward. Mr. Harrison says he
is left handed in both his feet. Mr. Barry’s
hired man is lazy. Mrs.
Barry says that but Mr. Barry says he aint
lazy exactly only he thinks
it easier to pray for things than to work
for them.
“Mrs. Harmon Andrews prize pig that she
talked so much of died in a fit.
Mrs. Lynde says it was a judgment on her for
pride. But I think it
was hard on the pig. Milty Boulter has been
sick. The doctor gave
him medicine and it tasted horrid. I offered
to take it for him for a
quarter but the Boulters are so mean. Milty
says he’d rather take it
himself and save his money. I asked Mrs. Boulter
how a person would go
about catching a man and she got awful mad
and said she dident know,
shed never chased men.
“The A V I S is going to paint the hall
again. They’re tired of having
it blue.
“The new minister was here to tea last night.
He took three pieces of
pie. If I did that Mrs. Lynde would call me
piggy. And he et fast and
took big bites and Marilla is always telling
me not to do that. Why can
ministers do what boys can’t? I want to
know.
“I haven’t any more news. Here are six
kisses. Dora sends one.
Heres hers.
“Your loving friend DAVID KEITH”
“P.S. Anne, who was the devils father? I
want to know.”
End of Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Miss Josephine Remembers the Anne-girl
When Christmas holidays came the girls of
Patty’s Place scattered to
their respective homes, but Aunt Jamesina
elected to stay where she was.
“I couldn’t go to any of the places I’ve
been invited and take those
three cats,” she said. “And I’m not
going to leave the poor creatures
here alone for nearly three weeks. If we had
any decent neighbours who
would feed them I might, but there’s nothing
except millionaires on this
street. So I’ll stay here and keep Patty’s
Place warm for you.”
Anne went home with the usual joyous anticipations,
which were not
wholly fulfilled. She found Avonlea in the
grip of such an early, cold,
and stormy winter as even the “oldest inhabitant”
could not recall.
Green Gables was literally hemmed in by huge
drifts. Almost every day of
that ill-starred vacation it stormed fiercely;
and even on fine days it
drifted unceasingly. No sooner were the roads
broken than they filled
in again. It was almost impossible to stir
out. The A.V.I.S. tried, on
three evenings, to have a party in honour
of the college students, and on
each evening the storm was so wild that nobody
could go, so they gave up
the attempt in despair. Anne, despite her
love of and loyalty to Green
Gables, could not help thinking longingly
of Patty’s Place, its cosy
open fire, Aunt Jamesina’s mirthful eyes,
the three cats, the merry
chatter of the girls, the pleasantness of
Friday evenings when college
friends dropped in to talk of grave and gay.
Anne was lonely; Diana, during the whole of
the holidays, was imprisoned
at home with a bad attack of bronchitis. She
could not come to Green
Gables and it was rarely Anne could get to
Orchard Slope, for the old
way through the Haunted Wood was impassable
with drifts, and the long
way over the frozen Lake of Shining Waters
was almost as bad. Ruby
Gillis was sleeping in the white-heaped graveyard;
Jane Andrews was
teaching a school on western prairies. Gilbert,
to be sure, was still
faithful, and waded up to Green Gables every
possible evening. But
Gilbert’s visits were not what they once
were. Anne almost dreaded them.
It was very disconcerting to look up in the
midst of a sudden silence
and find Gilbert’s hazel eyes fixed upon
her with a quite unmistakable
expression in their grave depths; and it was
still more disconcerting
to find herself blushing hotly and uncomfortably
under his gaze, just as
if, just as if, well, it was very embarrassing.
Anne wished herself back
at Patty’s Place, where there was always
somebody else about to take the
edge off a delicate situation. At Green Gables
Marilla went promptly to
Mrs. Lynde’s domain when Gilbert came and
insisted on taking the twins
with her. The significance of this was unmistakable
and Anne was in a
helpless fury over it.
Davy, however, was perfectly happy. He revelled
in getting out in the
morning and shovelling out the paths to the
well and henhouse. He gloried
in the Christmas-tide delicacies which Marilla
and Mrs. Lynde vied with
each other in preparing for Anne, and he was
reading an enthralling
tale, in a school library book, of a wonderful
hero who seemed blessed
with a miraculous faculty for getting into
scrapes from which he was
usually delivered by an earthquake or a volcanic
explosion, which blew
him high and dry out of his troubles, landed
him in a fortune, and
closed the story with proper ECLAT.
“I tell you it’s a bully story, Anne,”
he said ecstatically. “I’d ever
so much rather read it than the Bible.”
“Would you?” smiled Anne.
Davy peered curiously at her.
“You don’t seem a bit shocked, Anne. Mrs.
Lynde was awful shocked when I
said it to her.”
“No, I’m not shocked, Davy. I think it’s
quite natural that a
nine-year-old boy would sooner read an adventure
story than the Bible.
But when you are older I hope and think that
you will realise what a
wonderful book the Bible is.”
“Oh, I think some parts of it are fine,”
conceded Davy. “That story
about Joseph now, it’s bully. But if I’d
been Joseph I wouldn’t have
forgive the brothers. No, siree, Anne. I’d
have cut all their heads off.
Mrs. Lynde was awful mad when I said that
and shut the Bible up and said
she’d never read me any more of it if I
talked like that. So I don’t
talk now when she reads it Sunday afternoons;
I just think things and
say them to Milty Boulter next day in school.
I told Milty the story
about Elisha and the bears and it scared him
so he’s never made fun of
Mr. Harrison’s bald head once. Are there
any bears on P.E. Island, Anne?
I want to know.”
“Not nowadays,” said Anne, absently, as
the wind blew a scud of snow
against the window. “Oh, dear, will it ever
stop storming.”
“God knows,” said Davy airily, preparing
to resume his reading.
Anne WAS shocked this time.
“Davy!” she exclaimed reproachfully.
“Mrs. Lynde says that,” protested Davy.
“One night last week Marilla
said ‘Will Ludovic Speed and Theodora Dix
EVER get married?” and Mrs.
Lynde said, “‘God knows’, just like
that.”
“Well, it wasn’t right for her to say
it,” said Anne, promptly deciding
upon which horn of this dilemma to empale
herself. “It isn’t right for
anybody to take that name in vain or speak
it lightly, Davy. Don’t ever
do it again.”
“Not if I say it slow and solemn, like the
minister?” queried Davy
gravely.
“No, not even then.”
“Well, I won’t. Ludovic Speed and Theodora
Dix live in Middle Grafton
and Mrs. Rachel says he has been courting
her for a hundred years. Won’t
they soon be too old to get married, Anne?
I hope Gilbert won’t court
YOU that long. When are you going to be married,
Anne? Mrs. Lynde says
it’s a sure thing.”
“Mrs. Lynde is a, ” began Anne hotly;
then stopped. “Awful old gossip,”
completed Davy calmly. “That’s what every
one calls her. But is it a
sure thing, Anne? I want to know.”
“You’re a very silly little boy, Davy,”
said Anne, stalking haughtily
out of the room. The kitchen was deserted
and she sat down by the window
in the fast falling wintry twilight. The sun
had set and the wind had
died down. A pale chilly moon looked out behind
a bank of purple clouds
in the west. The sky faded out, but the strip
of yellow along the
western horizon grew brighter and fiercer,
as if all the stray gleams
of light were concentrating in one spot; the
distant hills, rimmed with
priest-like firs, stood out in dark distinctness
against it. Anne looked
across the still, white fields, cold and lifeless
in the harsh light of
that grim sunset, and sighed. She was very
lonely; and she was sad at
heart; for she was wondering if she would
be able to return to Redmond
next year. It did not seem likely. The only
scholarship possible in the
Sophomore year was a very small affair. She
would not take Marilla’s
money; and there seemed little prospect of
being able to earn enough in
the summer vacation.
“I suppose I’ll just have to drop out
next year,” she thought drearily,
“and teach a district school again until
I earn enough to finish my
course. And by that time all my old class
will have graduated and
Patty’s Place will be out of the question.
But there! I’m not going to
be a coward. I’m thankful I can earn my
way through if necessary.”
“Here’s Mr. Harrison wading up the lane,”
announced Davy, running out.
“I hope he’s brought the mail. It’s
three days since we got it. I want
to see what them pesky Grits are doing. I’m
a Conservative, Anne. And I
tell you, you have to keep your eye on them
Grits.”
Mr. Harrison had brought the mail, and merry
letters from Stella and
Priscilla and Phil soon dissipated Anne’s
blues. Aunt Jamesina, too, had
written, saying that she was keeping the hearth-fire
alight, and that
the cats were all well, and the house plants
doing fine.
“The weather has been real cold,” she
wrote, “so I let the cats sleep
in the house, Rusty and Joseph on the sofa
in the living-room, and the
Sarah-cat on the foot of my bed. It’s real
company to hear her purring
when I wake up in the night and think of my
poor daughter in the foreign
field. If it was anywhere but in India I wouldn’t
worry, but they say
the snakes out there are terrible. It takes
all the Sarah-cats’s purring
to drive away the thought of those snakes.
I have enough faith for
everything but the snakes. I can’t think
why Providence ever made them.
Sometimes I don’t think He did. I’m inclined
to believe the Old Harry
had a hand in making THEM.”
Anne had left a thin, typewritten communication
till the last, thinking
it unimportant. When she had read it she sat
very still, with tears in
her eyes.
“What is the matter, Anne?” asked Marilla.
“Miss Josephine Barry is dead,” said Anne,
in a low tone.
“So she has gone at last,” said Marilla.
“Well, she has been sick for
over a year, and the Barrys have been expecting
to hear of her death any
time. It is well she is at rest for she has
suffered dreadfully, Anne.
She was always kind to you.”
“She has been kind to the last, Marilla.
This letter is from her lawyer.
She has left me a thousand dollars in her
will.”
“Gracious, ain’t that an awful lot of
money,” exclaimed Davy. “She’s
the woman you and Diana lit on when you jumped
into the spare room bed,
ain’t she? Diana told me that story. Is
that why she left you so much?”
“Hush, Davy,” said Anne gently. She slipped
away to the porch gable with
a full heart, leaving Marilla and Mrs. Lynde
to talk over the news to
their hearts’ content.
“Do you s’pose Anne will ever get married
now?” speculated Davy
anxiously. “When Dorcas Sloane got married
last summer she said if she’d
had enough money to live on she’d never
have been bothered with a
man, but even a widower with eight children
was better’n living with a
sister-in-law.”
“Davy Keith, do hold your tongue,” said
Mrs. Rachel severely. “The way
you talk is scandalous for a small boy, that’s
what.”
End of Chapter 18
Chapter 19
An Interlude
“To think that this is my twentieth birthday,
and that I’ve left my
teens behind me forever,” said Anne, who
was curled up on the hearth-rug
with Rusty in her lap, to Aunt Jamesina who
was reading in her pet
chair. They were alone in the living room.
Stella and Priscilla had
gone to a committee meeting and Phil was upstairs
adorning herself for a
party.
“I suppose you feel kind of, sorry” said
Aunt Jamesina. “The teens are
such a nice part of life. I’m glad I’ve
never gone out of them myself.”
Anne laughed.
“You never will, Aunty. You’ll be eighteen
when you should be a hundred.
Yes, I’m sorry, and a little dissatisfied
as well. Miss Stacy told me
long ago that by the time I was twenty my
character would be formed,
for good or evil. I don’t feel that it’s
what it should be. It’s full of
flaws.”
“So’s everybody’s,” said Aunt Jamesina
cheerfully. “Mine’s cracked in
a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant
that when you are twenty
your character would have got its permanent
bent in one direction or
‘tother, and would go on developing in that
line. Don’t worry over it,
Anne. Do your duty by God and your neighbour
and yourself, and have a
good time. That’s my philosophy and it’s
always worked pretty well.
Where’s Phil off to tonight?”
“She’s going to a dance, and she’s got
the sweetest dress for it, creamy
yellow silk and cobwebby lace. It just suits
those brown tints of hers.”
“There’s magic in the words ‘silk’
and ‘lace,’ isn’t there?” said Aunt
Jamesina. “The very sound of them makes
me feel like skipping off to
a dance. And YELLOW silk. It makes one think
of a dress of sunshine.
I always wanted a yellow silk dress, but first
my mother and then my
husband wouldn’t hear of it. The very first
thing I’m going to do when I
get to heaven is to get a yellow silk dress.”
Amid Anne’s peal of laughter Phil came downstairs,
trailing clouds of
glory, and surveyed herself in the long oval
mirror on the wall.
“A flattering looking glass is a promoter
of amiability,” she said.
“The one in my room does certainly make
me green. Do I look pretty nice,
Anne?”
“Do you really know how pretty you are,
Phil?” asked Anne, in honest
admiration.
“Of course I do. What are looking glasses
and men for? That wasn’t what
I meant. Are all my ends tucked in? Is my
skirt straight? And would this
rose look better lower down? I’m afraid
it’s too high, it will make me
look lop-sided. But I hate things tickling
my ears.”
“Everything is just right, and that southwest
dimple of yours is
lovely.”
“Anne, there’s one thing in particular
I like about you, you’re so
ungrudging. There isn’t a particle of envy
in you.”
“Why should she be envious?” demanded
Aunt Jamesina. “She’s not quite as
good looking as you, maybe, but she’s got
a far handsomer nose.”
“I know it,” conceded Phil.
“My nose always has been a great comfort
to me,” confessed Anne.
“And I love the way your hair grows on your
forehead, Anne. And that
one wee curl, always looking as if it were
going to drop, but never
dropping, is delicious. But as for noses,
mine is a dreadful worry to
me. I know by the time I’m forty it will
be Byrney. What do you think
I’ll look like when I’m forty, Anne?”
“Like an old, matronly, married woman,”
teased Anne.
“I won’t,” said Phil, sitting down comfortably
to wait for her escort.
“Joseph, you calico beastie, don’t you
dare jump on my lap. I won’t go
to a dance all over cat hairs. No, Anne, I
WON’T look matronly. But no
doubt I’ll be married.”
“To Alec or Alonzo?” asked Anne.
“To one of them, I suppose,” sighed Phil,
“if I can ever decide which.”
“It shouldn’t be hard to decide,” scolded
Aunt Jamesina.
“I was born a see-saw Aunty, and nothing
can ever prevent me from
teetering.”
“You ought to be more levelheaded, Philippa.”
“It’s best to be levelheaded, of course,”
agreed Philippa, “but you miss
lots of fun. As for Alec and Alonzo, if you
knew them you’d understand
why it’s difficult to choose between them.
They’re equally nice.”
“Then take somebody who is nicer” suggested
Aunt Jamesina. “There’s that
Senior who is so devoted to you, Will Leslie.
He has such nice, large,
mild eyes.”
“They’re a little bit too large and too
mild, like a cow’s,” said Phil
cruelly.
“What do you say about George Parker?”
“There’s nothing to say about him except
that he always looks as if he
had just been starched and ironed.”
“Marr Holworthy then. You can’t find a
fault with him.”
“No, he would do if he wasn’t poor. I
must marry a rich man, Aunt
Jamesina. That, and good looks, is an indispensable
qualification. I’d
marry Gilbert Blythe if he were rich.”
“Oh, would you?” said Anne, rather viciously.
“We don’t like that idea a little bit,
although we don’t want Gilbert
ourselves, oh, no,” mocked Phil. “But
don’t let’s talk of disagreeable
subjects. I’ll have to marry sometime, I
suppose, but I shall put off
the evil day as long as I can.”
“You mustn’t marry anybody you don’t
love, Phil, when all’s said and
done,” said Aunt Jamesina.
“‘Oh, hearts that loved in the good old
way
Have been out o’ the fashion this many a
day.’”
trilled Phil mockingly. “There’s the carriage.
I fly, Bi-bi, you two
old-fashioned darlings.”
When Phil had gone Aunt Jamesina looked solemnly
at Anne.
“That girl is pretty and sweet and goodhearted,
but do you think she is
quite right in her mind, by spells, Anne?”
“Oh, I don’t think there’s anything
the matter with Phil’s mind,” said
Anne, hiding a smile. “It’s just her way
of talking.”
Aunt Jamesina shook her head.
“Well, I hope so, Anne. I do hope so, because
I love her. But I can’t
understand her, she beats me. She isn’t
like any of the girls I ever
knew, or any of the girls I was myself.”
“How many girls were you, Aunt Jimsie?”
“About half a dozen, my dear.”
End of Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Gilbert Speaks
“This has been a dull, prosy day,” yawned
Phil, stretching herself idly
on the sofa, having previously dispossessed
two exceedingly indignant
cats.
Anne looked up from Pickwick Papers. Now that
spring examinations were
over she was treating herself to Dickens.
“It has been a prosy day for us,” she
said thoughtfully, “but to some
people it has been a wonderful day. Some one
has been rapturously happy
in it. Perhaps a great deed has been done
somewhere today, or a great
poem written, or a great man born. And some
heart has been broken,
Phil.”
“Why did you spoil your pretty thought by
tagging that last sentence
on, honey?” grumbled Phil. “I don’t
like to think of broken hearts, or
anything unpleasant.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to shirk
unpleasant things all your life,
Phil?”
“Dear me, no. Am I not up against them now?
You don’t call Alec and
Alonzo pleasant things, do you, when they
simply plague my life out?”
“You never take anything seriously, Phil.”
“Why should I? There are enough folks who
do. The world needs people
like me, Anne, just to amuse it. It would
be a terrible place if
EVERYBODY were intellectual and serious and
in deep, deadly earnest. MY
mission is, as Josiah Allen says, ‘to charm
and allure.’ Confess now.
Hasn’t life at Patty’s Place been really
much brighter and pleasanter
this past winter because I’ve been here
to leaven you?”
“Yes, it has,” owned Anne.
“And you all love me, even Aunt Jamesina,
who thinks I’m stark mad. So
why should I try to be different? Oh, dear,
I’m so sleepy. I was awake
until one last night, reading a harrowing
ghost story. I read it in bed,
and after I had finished it do you suppose
I could get out of bed to put
the light out? No! And if Stella had not fortunately
come in late that
lamp would have burned good and bright till
morning. When I heard Stella
I called her in, explained my predicament,
and got her to put out the
light. If I had got out myself to do it I
knew something would grab
me by the feet when I was getting in again.
By the way, Anne, has Aunt
Jamesina decided what to do this summer?”
“Yes, she’s going to stay here. I know
she’s doing it for the sake of
those blessed cats, although she says it’s
too much trouble to open her
own house, and she hates visiting.”
“What are you reading?”
“Pickwick.”
“That’s a book that always makes me hungry,”
said Phil. “There’s so much
good eating in it. The characters seem always
to be revelling on ham and
eggs and milk punch. I generally go on a cupboard
rummage after reading
Pickwick. The mere thought reminds me that
I’m starving. Is there any
tidbit in the pantry, Queen Anne?”
“I made a lemon pie this morning. You may
have a piece of it.”
Phil dashed out to the pantry and Anne betook
herself to the orchard in
company with Rusty. It was a moist, pleasantly-odorous
night in early
spring. The snow was not quite all gone from
the park; a little dingy
bank of it yet lay under the pines of the
harbour road, screened from the
influence of April suns. It kept the harbour
road muddy, and chilled the
evening air. But grass was growing green in
sheltered spots and Gilbert
had found some pale, sweet arbutus in a hidden
corner. He came up from
the park, his hands full of it.
Anne was sitting on the big grey boulder in
the orchard looking at the
poem of a bare, birchen bough hanging against
the pale red sunset
with the very perfection of grace. She was
building a castle in air, a
wondrous mansion whose sunlit courts and stately
halls were steeped in
Araby’s perfume, and where she reigned queen
and chatelaine. She frowned
as she saw Gilbert coming through the orchard.
Of late she had managed
not to be left alone with Gilbert. But he
had caught her fairly now; and
even Rusty had deserted her.
Gilbert sat down beside her on the boulder
and held out his Mayflowers.
“Don’t these remind you of home and our
old school day picnics, Anne?”
Anne took them and buried her face in them.
“I’m in Mr. Silas Sloane’s barrens this
very minute,” she said
rapturously.
“I suppose you will be there in reality
in a few days?”
“No, not for a fortnight. I’m going to
visit with Phil in Bolingbroke
before I go home. You’ll be in Avonlea before
I will.”
“No, I shall not be in Avonlea at all this
summer, Anne. I’ve been
offered a job in the Daily News office and
I’m going to take it.”
“Oh,” said Anne vaguely. She wondered
what a whole Avonlea summer would
be like without Gilbert. Somehow she did not
like the prospect. “Well,”
she concluded flatly, “it is a good thing
for you, of course.”
“Yes, I’ve been hoping I would get it.
It will help me out next year.”
“You mustn’t work too HARD,” said Anne,
without any very clear idea of
what she was saying. She wished desperately
that Phil would come out.
“You’ve studied very constantly this winter.
Isn’t this a delightful
evening? Do you know, I found a cluster of
white violets under that
old twisted tree over there today? I felt
as if I had discovered a gold
mine.”
“You are always discovering gold mines,”
said Gilbert, also absently.
“Let us go and see if we can find some more,”
suggested Anne eagerly.
“I’ll call Phil and, ”
“Never mind Phil and the violets just now,
Anne,” said Gilbert quietly,
taking her hand in a clasp from which she
could not free it. “There is
something I want to say to you.”
“Oh, don’t say it,” cried Anne, pleadingly.
“Don’t, PLEASE, Gilbert.”
“I must. Things can’t go on like this
any longer. Anne, I love you. You
know I do. I, I can’t tell you how much.
Will you promise me that some
day you’ll be my wife?”
“I, I can’t,” said Anne miserably. “Oh,
Gilbert, you, you’ve spoiled
everything.”
“Don’t you care for me at all?” Gilbert
asked after a very dreadful
pause, during which Anne had not dared to
look up.
“Not, not in that way. I do care a great
deal for you as a friend. But I
don’t love you, Gilbert.”
“But can’t you give me some hope that
you will, yet?”
“No, I can’t,” exclaimed Anne desperately.
“I never, never can love
you, in that way, Gilbert. You must never
speak of this to me again.”
There was another pause, so long and so dreadful
that Anne was driven at
last to look up. Gilbert’s face was white
to the lips. And his eyes, but
Anne shuddered and looked away. There was
nothing romantic about this.
Must proposals be either grotesque or, horrible?
Could she ever forget
Gilbert’s face?
“Is there anybody else?” he asked at last
in a low voice.
“No, no,” said Anne eagerly. “I don’t
care for any one like THAT, and I
LIKE you better than anybody else in the world,
Gilbert. And we must, we
must go on being friends, Gilbert.”
Gilbert gave a bitter little laugh.
“Friends! Your friendship can’t satisfy
me, Anne. I want your love, and
you tell me I can never have that.”
“I’m sorry. Forgive me, Gilbert,” was
all Anne could say. Where,
oh, where were all the gracious and graceful
speeches wherewith, in
imagination, she had been wont to dismiss
rejected suitors?
Gilbert released her hand gently.
“There isn’t anything to forgive. There
have been times when I thought
you did care. I’ve deceived myself, that’s
all. Goodbye, Anne.”
Anne got herself to her room, sat down on
her window seat behind
the pines, and cried bitterly. She felt as
if something incalculably
precious had gone out of her life. It was
Gilbert’s friendship, of
course. Oh, why must she lose it after this
fashion?
“What is the matter, honey?” asked Phil,
coming in through the moonlit
gloom.
Anne did not answer. At that moment she wished
Phil were a thousand
miles away.
“I suppose you’ve gone and refused Gilbert
Blythe. You are an idiot,
Anne Shirley!”
“Do you call it idiotic to refuse to marry
a man I don’t love?” said
Anne coldly, goaded to reply.
“You don’t know love when you see it.
You’ve tricked something out with
your imagination that you think love, and
you expect the real thing to
look like that. There, that’s the first
sensible thing I’ve ever said in
my life. I wonder how I managed it?”
“Phil,” pleaded Anne, “please go away
and leave me alone for a little
while. My world has tumbled into pieces. I
want to reconstruct it.”
“Without any Gilbert in it?” said Phil,
going.
A world without any Gilbert in it! Anne repeated
the words drearily.
Would it not be a very lonely, forlorn place?
Well, it was all Gilbert’s
fault. He had spoiled their beautiful comradeship.
She must just learn
to live without it.
End of Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Roses of Yesterday
The fortnight Anne spent in Bolingbroke was
a very pleasant one, with a
little under current of vague pain and dissatisfaction
running through
it whenever she thought about Gilbert. There
was not, however, much time
to think about him. “Mount Holly,” the
beautiful old Gordon homestead,
was a very gay place, overrun by Phil’s
friends of both sexes. There was
quite a bewildering succession of drives,
dances, picnics and boating
parties, all expressively lumped together
by Phil under the head of
“jamborees”; Alec and Alonzo were so constantly
on hand that Anne
wondered if they ever did anything but dance
attendance on that
will-o’-the-wisp of a Phil. They were both
nice, manly fellows, but Anne
would not be drawn into any opinion as to
which was the nicer.
“And I depended so on you to help me make
up my mind which of them I
should promise to marry,” mourned Phil.
“You must do that for yourself. You are
quite expert at making up
your mind as to whom other people should marry,”
retorted Anne, rather
caustically.
“Oh, that’s a very different thing,”
said Phil, truly.
But the sweetest incident of Anne’s sojourn
in Bolingbroke was the visit
to her birthplace, the little shabby yellow
house in an out-of-the-way
street she had so often dreamed about. She
looked at it with delighted
eyes, as she and Phil turned in at the gate.
“It’s almost exactly as I’ve pictured
it,” she said. “There is no
honeysuckle over the windows, but there is
a lilac tree by the gate,
and, yes, there are the muslin curtains in
the windows. How glad I am it
is still painted yellow.”
A very tall, very thin woman opened the door.
“Yes, the Shirleys lived here twenty years
ago,” she said, in answer to
Anne’s question. “They had it rented.
I remember ‘em. They both died of
fever at onct. It was turrible sad. They left
a baby. I guess it’s dead
long ago. It was a sickly thing. Old Thomas
and his wife took it, as if
they hadn’t enough of their own.”
“It didn’t die,” said Anne, smiling.
“I was that baby.”
“You don’t say so! Why, you have grown,”
exclaimed the woman, as if she
were much surprised that Anne was not still
a baby. “Come to look at
you, I see the resemblance. You’re complected
like your pa. He had
red hair. But you favour your ma in your eyes
and mouth. She was a nice
little thing. My darter went to school to
her and was nigh crazy about
her. They was buried in the one grave and
the School Board put up a
tombstone to them as a reward for faithful
service. Will you come in?”
“Will you let me go all over the house?”
asked Anne eagerly.
“Laws, yes, you can if you like. ‘Twon’t
take you long, there ain’t much
of it. I keep at my man to build a new kitchen,
but he ain’t one of your
hustlers. The parlour’s in there and there’s
two rooms upstairs. Just
prowl about yourselves. I’ve got to see
to the baby. The east room was
the one you were born in. I remember your
ma saying she loved to see the
sunrise; and I mind hearing that you was born
just as the sun was rising
and its light on your face was the first thing
your ma saw.”
Anne went up the narrow stairs and into that
little east room with a
full heart. It was as a shrine to her. Here
her mother had dreamed the
exquisite, happy dreams of anticipated motherhood;
here that red sunrise
light had fallen over them both in the sacred
hour of birth; here her
mother had died. Anne looked about her reverently,
her eyes with tears.
It was for her one of the jewelled hours of
life that gleam out radiantly
forever in memory.
“Just to think of it, mother was younger
than I am now when I was born,”
she whispered.
When Anne went downstairs the lady of the
house met her in the hall. She
held out a dusty little packet tied with faded
blue ribbon.
“Here’s a bundle of old letters I found
in that closet upstairs when I
came here,” she said. “I dunno what they
are, I never bothered to look
in ‘em, but the address on the top one is
‘Miss Bertha Willis,’ and that
was your ma’s maiden name. You can take
‘em if you’d keer to have ‘em.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” cried Anne,
clasping the packet rapturously.
“That was all that was in the house,”
said her hostess. “The furniture
was all sold to pay the doctor bills, and
Mrs. Thomas got your ma’s
clothes and little things. I reckon they didn’t
last long among that
drove of Thomas youngsters. They was destructive
young animals, as I
mind ‘em.”
“I haven’t one thing that belonged to
my mother,” said Anne, chokily.
“I, I can never thank you enough for these
letters.”
“You’re quite welcome. Laws, but your
eyes is like your ma’s. She could
just about talk with hers. Your father was
sorter homely but awful nice.
I mind hearing folks say when they was married
that there never was two
people more in love with each other, Pore
creatures, they didn’t live
much longer; but they was awful happy while
they was alive, and I s’pose
that counts for a good deal.”
Anne longed to get home to read her precious
letters; but she made one
little pilgrimage first. She went alone to
the green corner of the “old”
Bolingbroke cemetery where her father and
mother were buried, and left
on their grave the white flowers she carried.
Then she hastened back
to Mount Holly, shut herself up in her room,
and read the letters.
Some were written by her father, some by her
mother. There were not
many, only a dozen in all, for Walter and
Bertha Shirley had not been
often separated during their courtship. The
letters were yellow and
faded and dim, blurred with the touch of passing
years. No profound
words of wisdom were traced on the stained
and wrinkled pages, but only
lines of love and trust. The sweetness of
forgotten things clung to
them, the far-off, fond imaginings of those
long-dead lovers. Bertha
Shirley had possessed the gift of writing
letters which embodied the
charming personality of the writer in words
and thoughts that retained
their beauty and fragrance after the lapse
of time. The letters were
tender, intimate, sacred. To Anne, the sweetest
of all was the one
written after her birth to the father on a
brief absence. It was full
of a proud young mother’s accounts of “baby”,
her cleverness, her
brightness, her thousand sweetnesses.
“I love her best when she is asleep and
better still when she is awake,”
Bertha Shirley had written in the postscript.
Probably it was the last
sentence she had ever penned. The end was
very near for her.
“This has been the most beautiful day of
my life,” Anne said to Phil
that night. “I’ve FOUND my father and
mother. Those letters have made
them REAL to me. I’m not an orphan any longer.
I feel as if I had opened
a book and found roses of yesterday, sweet
and beloved, between its
leaves.”
End of Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Spring and Anne Return to Green Gables
The firelight shadows were dancing over the
kitchen walls at Green
Gables, for the spring evening was chilly;
through the open east window
drifted in the subtly sweet voices of the
night. Marilla was sitting by
the fire, at least, in body. In spirit she
was roaming olden ways, with
feet grown young. Of late Marilla had thus
spent many an hour, when she
thought she should have been knitting for
the twins.
“I suppose I’m growing old,” she said.
Yet Marilla had changed but little in the
past nine years, save to grow
something thinner, and even more angular;
there was a little more grey
in the hair that was still twisted up in the
same hard knot, with two
hairpins, WERE they the same hairpins?, still
stuck through it. But her
expression was very different; the something
about the mouth which had
hinted at a sense of humour had developed
wonderfully; her eyes were
gentler and milder, her smile more frequent
and tender.
Marilla was thinking of her whole past life,
her cramped but not unhappy
childhood, the jealously hidden dreams and
the blighted hopes of her
girlhood, the long, grey, narrow, monotonous
years of dull middle life
that followed. And the coming of Anne, the
vivid, imaginative, impetuous
child with her heart of love, and her world
of fancy, bringing with her
colour and warmth and radiance, until the
wilderness of existence had
blossomed like the rose. Marilla felt that
out of her sixty years she
had lived only the nine that had followed
the advent of Anne. And Anne
would be home tomorrow night.
The kitchen door opened. Marilla looked up
expecting to see Mrs. Lynde.
Anne stood before her, tall and starry-eyed,
with her hands full of
Mayflowers and violets.
“Anne Shirley!” exclaimed Marilla. For
once in her life she was
surprised out of her reserve; she caught her
girl in her arms and
crushed her and her flowers against her heart,
kissing the bright hair
and sweet face warmly. “I never looked for
you till tomorrow night. How
did you get from Carmody?”
“Walked, dearest of Marillas. Haven’t
I done it a score of times in
the Queen’s days? The mailman is to bring
my trunk tomorrow; I just got
homesick all at once, and came a day earlier.
And oh! I’ve had such a
lovely walk in the May twilight; I stopped
by the barrens and picked
these Mayflowers; I came through Violet-Vale;
it’s just a big bowlful
of violets now, the dear, sky-tinted things.
Smell them, Marilla, drink
them in.”
Marilla sniffed obligingly, but she was more
interested in Anne than in
drinking violets.
“Sit down, child. You must be real tired.
I’m going to get you some
supper.”
“There’s a darling moonrise behind the
hills tonight, Marilla, and oh,
how the frogs sang me home from Carmody! I
do love the music of the
frogs. It seems bound up with all my happiest
recollections of old
spring evenings. And it always reminds me
of the night I came here
first. Do you remember it, Marilla?”
“Well, yes,” said Marilla with emphasis.
“I’m not likely to forget it
ever.”
“They used to sing so madly in the marsh
and brook that year. I would
listen to them at my window in the dusk, and
wonder how they could seem
so glad and so sad at the same time. Oh, but
it’s good to be home again!
Redmond was splendid and Bolingbroke delightful,
but Green Gables is
HOME.”
“Gilbert isn’t coming home this summer,
I hear,” said Marilla.
“No.” Something in Anne’s tone made
Marilla glance at her sharply, but
Anne was apparently absorbed in arranging
her violets in a bowl. “See,
aren’t they sweet?” she went on hurriedly.
“The year is a book, isn’t
it, Marilla? Spring’s pages are written
in Mayflowers and violets,
summer’s in roses, autumn’s in red maple
leaves, and winter in holly and
evergreen.”
“Did Gilbert do well in his examinations?”
persisted Marilla.
“Excellently well. He led his class. But
where are the twins and Mrs.
Lynde?”
“Rachel and Dora are over at Mr. Harrison’s.
Davy is down at Boulters’.
I think I hear him coming now.”
Davy burst in, saw Anne, stopped, and then
hurled himself upon her with
a joyful yell.
“Oh, Anne, ain’t I glad to see you! Say,
Anne, I’ve grown two inches
since last fall. Mrs. Lynde measured me with
her tape today, and say,
Anne, see my front tooth. It’s gone. Mrs.
Lynde tied one end of a string
to it and the other end to the door, and then
shut the door. I sold it
to Milty for two cents. Milty’s collecting
teeth.”
“What in the world does he want teeth for?”
asked Marilla.
“To make a necklace for playing Indian Chief,”
explained Davy, climbing
upon Anne’s lap. “He’s got fifteen already,
and everybody’s else’s
promised, so there’s no use in the rest
of us starting to collect, too.
I tell you the Boulters are great business
people.”
“Were you a good boy at Mrs. Boulter’s?”
asked Marilla severely.
“Yes; but say, Marilla, I’m tired of being
good.”
“You’d get tired of being bad much sooner,
Davy-boy,” said Anne.
“Well, it’d be fun while it lasted, wouldn’t
it?” persisted Davy. “I
could be sorry for it afterwards, couldn’t
I?”
“Being sorry wouldn’t do away with the
consequences of being bad, Davy.
Don’t you remember the Sunday last summer
when you ran away from Sunday
School? You told me then that being bad wasn’t
worth while. What were
you and Milty doing today?”
“Oh, we fished and chased the cat, and hunted
for eggs, and yelled at
the echo. There’s a great echo in the bush
behind the Boulter barn. Say,
what is echo, Anne; I want to know.”
“Echo is a beautiful nymph, Davy, living
far away in the woods, and
laughing at the world from among the hills.”
“What does she look like?”
“Her hair and eyes are dark, but her neck
and arms are white as snow.
No mortal can ever see how fair she is. She
is fleeter than a deer, and
that mocking voice of hers is all we can know
of her. You can hear her
calling at night; you can hear her laughing
under the stars. But you
can never see her. She flies afar if you follow
her, and laughs at you
always just over the next hill.”
“Is that true, Anne? Or is it a whopper?”
demanded Davy staring.
“Davy,” said Anne despairingly, “haven’t
you sense enough to distinguish
between a fairytale and a falsehood?”
“Then what is it that sasses back from the
Boulter bush? I want to
know,” insisted Davy.
“When you are a little older, Davy, I’ll
explain it all to you.”
The mention of age evidently gave a new turn
to Davy’s thoughts for
after a few moments of reflection, he whispered
solemnly:
“Anne, I’m going to be married.”
“When?” asked Anne with equal solemnity.
“Oh, not until I’m grown-up, of course.”
“Well, that’s a relief, Davy. Who is the
lady?”
“Stella Fletcher; she’s in my class at
school. And say, Anne, she’s the
prettiest girl you ever saw. If I die before
I grow up you’ll keep an
eye on her, won’t you?”
“Davy Keith, do stop talking such nonsense,”
said Marilla severely.
“‘Tisn’t nonsense,” protested Davy
in an injured tone. “She’s my
promised wife, and if I was to die she’d
be my promised widow, wouldn’t
she? And she hasn’t got a soul to look after
her except her old
grandmother.”
“Come and have your supper, Anne,” said
Marilla, “and don’t encourage
that child in his absurd talk.”
End of Chapter 22
Anne of the Island Chapter 23
Paul Cannot Find the Rock People
Life was very pleasant in Avonlea that summer,
although Anne, amid
all her vacation joys, was haunted by a sense
of “something gone which
should be there.” She would not admit, even
in her inmost reflections,
that this was caused by Gilbert’s absence.
But when she had to walk home
alone from prayer meetings and A.V.I.S. pow-wows,
while Diana and Fred,
and many other gay couples, loitered along
the dusky, starlit country
roads, there was a queer, lonely ache in her
heart which she could not
explain away. Gilbert did not even write to
her, as she thought he might
have done. She knew he wrote to Diana occasionally,
but she would
not inquire about him; and Diana, supposing
that Anne heard from him,
volunteered no information. Gilbert’s mother,
who was a gay, frank,
light-hearted lady, but not overburdened with
tact, had a very
embarrassing habit of asking Anne, always
in a painfully distinct voice
and always in the presence of a crowd, if
she had heard from Gilbert
lately. Poor Anne could only blush horribly
and murmur, “not very
lately,” which was taken by all, Mrs. Blythe
included, to be merely a
maidenly evasion.
Apart from this, Anne enjoyed her summer.
Priscilla came for a merry
visit in June; and, when she had gone, Mr.
and Mrs. Irving, Paul and
Charlotta the Fourth came “home” for July
and August.
Echo Lodge was the scene of gaieties once
more, and the echoes over the
river were kept busy mimicking the laughter
that rang in the old garden
behind the spruces.
“Miss Lavendar” had not changed, except
to grow even sweeter and
prettier. Paul adored her, and the companionship
between them was
beautiful to see.
“But I don’t call her ‘mother’ just
by itself,” he explained to Anne.
“You see, THAT name belongs just to my own
little mother, and I can’t
give it to any one else. You know, teacher.
But I call her ‘Mother
Lavendar’ and I love her next best to father.
I, I even love her a
LITTLE better than you, teacher.”
“Which is just as it ought to be,” answered
Anne.
Paul was thirteen now and very tall for his
years. His face and eyes
were as beautiful as ever, and his fancy was
still like a prism,
separating everything that fell upon it into
rainbows. He and Anne had
delightful rambles to wood and field and shore.
Never were there two
more thoroughly “kindred spirits.”
Charlotta the Fourth had blossomed out into
young ladyhood. She wore her
hair now in an enormous pompadour and had
discarded the blue ribbon bows
of auld lang syne, but her face was as freckled,
her nose as snubbed,
and her mouth and smiles as wide as ever.
“You don’t think I talk with a Yankee
accent, do you, Miss Shirley,
ma’am?” she demanded anxiously.
“I don’t notice it, Charlotta.”
“I’m real glad of that. They said I did
at home, but I thought likely
they just wanted to aggravate me. I don’t
want no Yankee accent. Not
that I’ve a word to say against the Yankees,
Miss Shirley, ma’am.
They’re real civilised. But give me old
P.E. Island every time.”
Paul spent his first fortnight with his grandmother
Irving in Avonlea.
Anne was there to meet him when he came, and
found him wild with
eagerness to get to the shore, Nora and the
Golden Lady and the Twin
Sailors would be there. He could hardly wait
to eat his supper. Could
he not see Nora’s elfin face peering around
the point, watching for him
wistfully? But it was a very sober Paul who
came back from the shore in
the twilight.
“Didn’t you find your Rock People?”
asked Anne.
Paul shook his chestnut curls sorrowfully.
“The Twin Sailors and the Golden Lady never
came at all,” he said. “Nora
was there, but Nora is not the same, teacher.
She is changed.”
“Oh, Paul, it is you who are changed,”
said Anne. “You have grown too
old for the Rock People. They like only children
for playfellows. I
am afraid the Twin Sailors will never again
come to you in the pearly,
enchanted boat with the sail of moonshine;
and the Golden Lady will play
no more for you on her golden harp. Even Nora
will not meet you much
longer. You must pay the penalty of growing-up,
Paul. You must leave
fairyland behind you.”
“You two talk as much foolishness as ever
you did,” said old Mrs.
Irving, half-indulgently, half-reprovingly.
“Oh, no, we don’t,” said Anne, shaking
her head gravely. “We are getting
very, very wise, and it is such a pity. We
are never half so interesting
when we have learned that language is given
us to enable us to conceal
our thoughts.”
“But it isn’t, it is given us to exchange
our thoughts,” said Mrs.
Irving seriously. She had never heard of Tallyrand
and did not
understand epigrams.
Anne spent a fortnight of halcyon days at
Echo Lodge in the golden prime
of August. While there she incidentally contrived
to hurry Ludovic Speed
in his leisurely courting of Theodora Dix,
as related duly in another
chronicle of her history. Arnold Sherman,
an elderly friend of the
Irvings, was there at the same time, and added
not a little to the
general pleasantness of life.
“What a nice play-time this has been,”
said Anne. “I feel like a giant
refreshed. And it’s only a fortnight more
till I go back to Kingsport,
and Redmond and Patty’s Place. Patty’s
Place is the dearest spot, Miss
Lavendar. I feel as if I had two homes, one
at Green Gables and one
at Patty’s Place. But where has the summer
gone? It doesn’t seem a day
since I came home that spring evening with
the Mayflowers. When I
was little I couldn’t see from one end of
the summer to the other. It
stretched before me like an unending season.
Now, ‘’tis a handbreadth,
‘tis a tale.’”
“Anne, are you and Gilbert Blythe as good
friends as you used to be?”
asked Miss Lavendar quietly.
“I am just as much Gilbert’s friend as
ever I was, Miss Lavendar.”
Miss Lavendar shook her head.
“I see something’s gone wrong, Anne. I’m
going to be impertinent and ask
what. Have you quarrelled?”
“No; it’s only that Gilbert wants more
than friendship and I can’t give
him more.”
“Are you sure of that, Anne?”
“Perfectly sure.”
“I’m very, very sorry.”
“I wonder why everybody seems to think I
ought to marry Gilbert Blythe,”
said Anne petulantly.
“Because you were made and meant for each
other, Anne, that is why. You
needn’t toss that young head of yours. It’s
a fact.”
End of Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Enter Jonas
“PROSPECT POINT, “August 20th.
“Dear Anne, spelled, with, an, E,” wrote
Phil, “I must prop my eyelids
open long enough to write you. I’ve neglected
you shamefully this
summer, honey, but all my other correspondents
have been neglected, too.
I have a huge pile of letters to answer, so
I must gird up the loins
of my mind and hoe in. Excuse my mixed metaphors.
I’m fearfully sleepy.
Last night Cousin Emily and I were calling
at a neighbour’s. There were
several other callers there, and as soon as
those unfortunate creatures
left, our hostess and her three daughters
picked them all to pieces. I
knew they would begin on Cousin Emily and
me as soon as the door shut
behind us. When we came home Mrs. Lilly informed
us that the aforesaid
neighbour’s hired boy was supposed to be
down with scarlet fever. You can
always trust Mrs. Lilly to tell you cheerful
things like that. I have
a horror of scarlet fever. I couldn’t sleep
when I went to bed for
thinking of it. I tossed and tumbled about,
dreaming fearful dreams when
I did snooze for a minute; and at three I
wakened up with a high fever,
a sore throat, and a raging headache. I knew
I had scarlet fever; I got
up in a panic and hunted up Cousin Emily’s
‘doctor book’ to read up the
symptoms. Anne, I had them all. So I went
back to bed, and knowing the
worst, slept like a top the rest of the night.
Though why a top should
sleep sounder than anything else I never could
understand. But this
morning I was quite well, so it couldn’t
have been the fever. I suppose
if I did catch it last night it couldn’t
have developed so soon. I can
remember that in daytime, but at three o’clock
at night I never can be
logical.
“I suppose you wonder what I’m doing at
Prospect Point. Well, I always
like to spend a month of summer at the shore,
and father insists that
I come to his second-cousin Emily’s ‘select
boardinghouse’ at Prospect
Point. So a fortnight ago I came as usual.
And as usual old ‘Uncle Mark
Miller’ brought me from the station with
his ancient buggy and what he
calls his ‘generous purpose’ horse. He
is a nice old man and gave me
a handful of pink peppermints. Peppermints
always seem to me such a
religious sort of candy, I suppose because
when I was a little girl
Grandmother Gordon always gave them to me
in church. Once I asked,
referring to the smell of peppermints, ‘Is
that the odour of sanctity?’ I
didn’t like to eat Uncle Mark’s peppermints
because he just fished them
loose out of his pocket, and had to pick some
rusty nails and other
things from among them before he gave them
to me. But I wouldn’t hurt
his dear old feelings for anything, so I carefully
sowed them along the
road at intervals. When the last one was gone,
Uncle Mark said, a little
rebukingly, ‘Ye shouldn’t a’et all them
candies to onct, Miss Phil.
You’ll likely have the stummick-ache.’
“Cousin Emily has only five boarders besides
myself, four old ladies and
one young man. My right-hand neighbour is
Mrs. Lilly. She is one of those
people who seem to take a gruesome pleasure
in detailing all their many
aches and pains and sicknesses. You cannot
mention any ailment but she
says, shaking her head, ‘Ah, I know too
well what that is’, and then you
get all the details. Jonas declares he once
spoke of locomotor ataxia in
hearing and she said she knew too well what
that was. She suffered from
it for ten years and was finally cured by
a traveling doctor.
“Who is Jonas? Just wait, Anne Shirley.
You’ll hear all about Jonas in
the proper time and place. He is not to be
mixed up with estimable old
ladies.
“My left-hand neighbour at the table is
Mrs. Phinney. She always speaks
with a wailing, dolorous voice, you are nervously
expecting her to burst
into tears every moment. She gives you the
impression that life to her
is indeed a vale of tears, and that a smile,
never to speak of a laugh,
is a frivolity truly reprehensible. She has
a worse opinion of me than
Aunt Jamesina, and she doesn’t love me hard
to atone for it, as Aunty J.
does, either.
“Miss Maria Grimsby sits cati-corner from
me. The first day I came I
remarked to Miss Maria that it looked a little
like rain, and Miss Maria
laughed. I said the road from the station
was very pretty, and Miss
Maria laughed. I said there seemed to be a
few mosquitoes left yet, and
Miss Maria laughed. I said that Prospect Point
was as beautiful as
ever, and Miss Maria laughed. If I were to
say to Miss Maria, ‘My father
has hanged himself, my mother has taken poison,
my brother is in the
penitentiary, and I am in the last stages
of consumption,’ Miss Maria
would laugh. She can’t help it, she was
born so; but is very sad and
awful.
“The fifth old lady is Mrs. Grant. She is
a sweet old thing; but
she never says anything but good of anybody
and so she is a very
uninteresting conversationalist.
“And now for Jonas, Anne.
“That first day I came I saw a young man
sitting opposite me at the
table, smiling at me as if he had known me
from my cradle. I knew, for
Uncle Mark had told me, that his name was
Jonas Blake, that he was a
Theological Student from St. Columbia, and
that he had taken charge of
the Point Prospect Mission Church for the
summer.
“He is a very ugly young man, really, the
ugliest young man I’ve ever
seen. He has a big, loose-jointed figure with
absurdly long legs. His
hair is tow-colour and lank, his eyes are
green, and his mouth is big,
and his ears, but I never think about his
ears if I can help it.
“He has a lovely voice, if you shut your
eyes he is adorable, and he
certainly has a beautiful soul and disposition.
“We were good chums right way. Of course
he is a graduate of Redmond,
and that is a link between us. We fished and
boated together; and we
walked on the sands by moonlight. He didn’t
look so homely by moonlight
and oh, he was nice. Niceness fairly exhaled
from him. The old
ladies, except Mrs. Grant, don’t approve
of Jonas, because he laughs and
jokes, and because he evidently likes the
society of frivolous me better
than theirs.
“Somehow, Anne, I don’t want him to think
me frivolous. This is
ridiculous. Why should I care what a tow-haired
person called Jonas,
whom I never saw before thinks of me?
“Last Sunday Jonas preached in the village
church. I went, of course,
but I couldn’t realise that Jonas was going
to preach. The fact that he
was a minister, or going to be one, persisted
in seeming a huge joke to
me.
“Well, Jonas preached. And, by the time
he had preached ten minutes, I
felt so small and insignificant that I thought
I must be invisible to
the naked eye. Jonas never said a word about
women and he never
looked at me. But I realised then and there
what a pitiful, frivolous,
small-souled little butterfly I was, and how
horribly different I must
be from Jonas’ ideal woman. SHE would be
grand and strong and noble. He
was so earnest and tender and true. He was
everything a minister ought
to be. I wondered how I could ever have thought
him ugly, but he really
is!, with those inspired eyes and that intellectual
brow which the
roughly-falling hair hid on week days.
“It was a splendid sermon and I could have
listened to it forever, and
it made me feel utterly wretched. Oh, I wish
I was like YOU, Anne.
“He caught up with me on the road home,
and grinned as cheerfully as
usual. But his grin could never deceive me
again. I had seen the REAL
Jonas. I wondered if he could ever see the
REAL PHIL, whom NOBODY, not
even you, Anne, has ever seen yet.
“‘Jonas,’ I said, I forgot to call him
Mr. Blake. Wasn’t it dreadful?
But there are times when things like that
don’t matter, ‘Jonas, you were
born to be a minister. You COULDN’T be anything
else.’
“‘No, I couldn’t,’ he said soberly.
‘I tried to be something else for
a long time, I didn’t want to be a minister.
But I came to see at last
that it was the work given me to do, and God
helping me, I shall try to
do it.’
“His voice was low and reverent. I thought
that he would do his work and
do it well and nobly; and happy the woman
fitted by nature and training
to help him do it. SHE would be no feather,
blown about by every fickle
wind of fancy. SHE would always know what
hat to put on. Probably she
would have only one. Ministers never have
much money. But she wouldn’t
mind having one hat or none at all, because
she would have Jonas.
“Anne Shirley, don’t you dare to say or
hint or think that I’ve
fallen in love with Mr. Blake. Could I care
for a lank, poor, ugly
theologue, named Jonas? As Uncle Mark says,
‘It’s impossible, and what’s
more it’s improbable.’
“Good night, PHIL.”
“P.S. It is impossible, but I am horribly
afraid it’s true. I’m happy
and wretched and scared. HE can NEVER care
for me, I know. Do you think
I could ever develop into a passable minister’s
wife, Anne? And WOULD
they expect me to lead in prayer? P G.”
End of Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Enter Prince Charming
“I’m contrasting the claims of indoors
and out,” said Anne, looking from
the window of Patty’s Place to the distant
pines of the park.
“I’ve an afternoon to spend in sweet doing
nothing, Aunt Jimsie. Shall
I spend it here where there is a cosy fire,
a plateful of delicious
russets, three purring and harmonious cats,
and two impeccable china
dogs with green noses? Or shall I go to the
park, where there is the
lure of grey woods and of grey water lapping
on the harbour rocks?”
“If I was as young as you, I’d decide
in favour of the park,” said Aunt
Jamesina, tickling Joseph’s yellow ear with
a knitting needle.
“I thought that you claimed to be as young
as any of us, Aunty,” teased
Anne.
“Yes, in my soul. But I’ll admit my legs
aren’t as young as yours. You
go and get some fresh air, Anne. You look
pale lately.”
“I think I’ll go to the park,” said
Anne restlessly. “I don’t feel like
tame domestic joys today. I want to feel alone
and free and wild. The
park will be empty, for every one will be
at the football match.”
“Why didn’t you go to it?”
“‘Nobody axed me, sir, she said’, at
least, nobody but that horrid
little Dan Ranger. I wouldn’t go anywhere
with him; but rather than hurt
his poor little tender feelings I said I wasn’t
going to the game at
all. I don’t mind. I’m not in the mood
for football today somehow.”
“You go and get some fresh air,” repeated
Aunt Jamesina, “but take your
umbrella, for I believe it’s going to rain.
I’ve rheumatism in my leg.”
“Only old people should have rheumatism,
Aunty.”
“Anybody is liable to rheumatism in her
legs, Anne. It’s only old people
who should have rheumatism in their souls,
though. Thank goodness, I
never have. When you get rheumatism in your
soul you might as well go
and pick out your coffin.”
It was November, the month of crimson sunsets,
parting birds, deep,
sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs
in the pines. Anne roamed
through the pineland alleys in the park and,
as she said, let that great
sweeping wind blow the fogs out of her soul.
Anne was not wont to be
troubled with soul fog. But, somehow, since
her return to Redmond for
this third year, life had not mirrored her
spirit back to her with its
old, perfect, sparkling clearness.
Outwardly, existence at Patty’s Place was
the same pleasant round
of work and study and recreation that it had
always been. On Friday
evenings the big, fire-lighted livingroom
was crowded by callers
and echoed to endless jest and laughter, while
Aunt Jamesina smiled
beamingly on them all. The “Jonas” of
Phil’s letter came often, running
up from St. Columbia on the early train and
departing on the late. He
was a general favourite at Patty’s Place,
though Aunt Jamesina shook her
head and opined that divinity students were
not what they used to be.
“He’s VERY nice, my dear,” she told
Phil, “but ministers ought to be
graver and more dignified.”
“Can’t a man laugh and laugh and be a
Christian still?” demanded Phil.
“Oh, MEN, yes. But I was speaking of MINISTERS,
my dear,” said Aunt
Jamesina rebukingly. “And you shouldn’t
flirt so with Mr. Blake, you
really shouldn’t.”
“I’m not flirting with him,” protested
Phil.
Nobody believed her, except Anne. The others
thought she was amusing
herself as usual, and told her roundly that
she was behaving very badly.
“Mr. Blake isn’t of the Alec-and-Alonzo
type, Phil,” said Stella
severely. “He takes things seriously. You
may break his heart.”
“Do you really think I could?” asked Phil.
“I’d love to think so.”
“Philippa Gordon! I never thought you were
utterly unfeeling. The idea
of you saying you’d love to break a man’s
heart!”
“I didn’t say so, honey. Quote me correctly.
I said I’d like to think I
COULD break it. I would like to know I had
the POWER to do it.”
“I don’t understand you, Phil. You are
leading that man on
deliberately, and you know you don’t mean
anything by it.”
“I mean to make him ask me to marry him
if I can,” said Phil calmly.
“I give you up,” said Stella hopelessly.
Gilbert came occasionally on Friday evenings.
He seemed always in good
spirits, and held his own in the jests and
repartee that flew about.
He neither sought nor avoided Anne. When circumstances
brought them
in contact he talked to her pleasantly and
courteously, as to any
newly-made acquaintance. The old camaraderie
was gone entirely. Anne
felt it keenly; but she told herself she was
very glad and thankful that
Gilbert had got so completely over his disappointment
in regard to her.
She had really been afraid, that April evening
in the orchard, that she
had hurt him terribly and that the wound would
be long in healing. Now
she saw that she need not have worried. Men
have died and the worms
have eaten them but not for love. Gilbert
evidently was in no danger of
immediate dissolution. He was enjoying life,
and he was full of ambition
and zest. For him there was to be no wasting
in despair because a woman
was fair and cold. Anne, as she listened to
the ceaseless badinage that
went on between him and Phil, wondered if
she had only imagined that
look in his eyes when she had told him she
could never care for him.
There were not lacking those who would gladly
have stepped into
Gilbert’s vacant place. But Anne snubbed
them without fear and without
reproach. If the real Prince Charming was
never to come she would have
none of a substitute. So she sternly told
herself that grey day in the
windy park.
Suddenly the rain of Aunt Jamesina’s prophecy
came with a swish and
rush. Anne put up her umbrella and hurried
down the slope. As she turned
out on the harbour road a savage gust of wind
tore along it. Instantly
her umbrella turned wrong side out. Anne clutched
at it in despair. And
then, there came a voice close to her.
“Pardon me, may I offer you the shelter
of my umbrella?”
Anne looked up. Tall and handsome and distinguished-looking,
dark,
melancholy, inscrutable eyes, melting, musical,
sympathetic voice, yes,
the very hero of her dreams stood before her
in the flesh. He could not
have more closely resembled her ideal if he
had been made to order.
“Thank you,” she said confusedly.
“We’d better hurry over to that little
pavilion on the point,”
suggested the unknown. “We can wait there
until this shower is over. It
is not likely to rain so heavily very long.”
The words were very commonplace, but oh, the
tone! And the smile which
accompanied them! Anne felt her heart beating
strangely.
Together they scurried to the pavilion and
sat breathlessly down under
its friendly roof. Anne laughingly held up
her false umbrella.
“It is when my umbrella turns inside out
that I am convinced of the
total depravity of inanimate things,” she
said gaily.
The raindrops sparkled on her shining hair;
its loosened rings curled
around her neck and forehead. Her cheeks were
flushed, her eyes big and
starry. Her companion looked down at her admiringly.
She felt herself
blushing under his gaze. Who could he be?
Why, there was a bit of the
Redmond white and scarlet pinned to his coat
lapel. Yet she had thought
she knew, by sight at least, all the Redmond
students except the
Freshmen. And this courtly youth surely was
no Freshman.
“We are schoolmates, I see,” he said,
smiling at Anne’s colours. “That
ought to be sufficient introduction. My name
is Royal Gardner. And you
are the Miss Shirley who read the Tennyson
paper at the Philomathic the
other evening, aren’t you?”
“Yes; but I cannot place you at all,”
said Anne, frankly. “Please, where
DO you belong?”
“I feel as if I didn’t belong anywhere
yet. I put in my Freshman and
Sophomore years at Redmond two years ago.
I’ve been in Europe ever
since. Now I’ve come back to finish my Arts
course.”
“This is my Junior year, too,” said Anne.
“So we are classmates as well as college
mates. I am reconciled to the
loss of the years that the locust has eaten,”
said her companion, with a
world of meaning in those wonderful eyes of
his.
The rain came steadily down for the best part
of an hour. But the time
seemed really very short. When the clouds
parted and a burst of pale
November sunshine fell athwart the harbour
and the pines Anne and her
companion walked home together. By the time
they had reached the gate of
Patty’s Place he had asked permission to
call, and had received it. Anne
went in with cheeks of flame and her heart
beating to her fingertips.
Rusty, who climbed into her lap and tried
to kiss her, found a very
absent welcome. Anne, with her soul full of
romantic thrills, had no
attention to spare just then for a crop-eared
pussy cat.
That evening a parcel was left at Patty’s
Place for Miss Shirley. It was
a box containing a dozen magnificent roses.
Phil pounced impertinently
on the card that fell from it, read the name
and the poetical quotation
written on the back.
“Royal Gardner!” she exclaimed. “Why,
Anne, I didn’t know you were
acquainted with Roy Gardner!”
“I met him in the park this afternoon in
the rain,” explained Anne
hurriedly. “My umbrella turned inside out
and he came to my rescue with
his.”
“Oh!” Phil peered curiously at Anne. “And
is that exceedingly
commonplace incident any reason why he should
send us long stemmed roses
by the dozen, with a very sentimental rhyme?
Or why we should blush
divinest rosy-red when we look at his card?
Anne, thy face betrayeth
thee.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Phil. Do you know
Mr. Gardner?”
“I’ve met his two sisters, and I know
of him. So does everybody
worthwhile in Kingsport. The Gardners are
among the richest, bluest,
of Bluenoses. Roy is adorably handsome and
clever. Two years ago his
mother’s health failed and he had to leave
college and go abroad with
her, his father is dead. He must have been
greatly disappointed to have
to give up his class, but they say he was
perfectly sweet about it.
Fee, fi, fo, fum, Anne. I smell romance. Almost
do I envy you, but not
quite. After all, Roy Gardner isn’t Jonas.”
“You goose!” said Anne loftily. But she
lay long awake that night, nor
did she wish for sleep. Her waking fancies
were more alluring than any
vision of dreamland. Had the real Prince come
at last? Recalling those
glorious dark eyes which had gazed so deeply
into her own, Anne was very
strongly inclined to think he had.
End of Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Enter Christine
The girls at Patty’s Place were dressing
for the reception which the
Juniors were giving for the Seniors in February.
Anne surveyed herself
in the mirror of the blue room with girlish
satisfaction. She had a
particularly pretty gown on. Originally it
had been only a simple little
slip of cream silk with a chiffon overdress.
But Phil had insisted on
taking it home with her in the Christmas holidays
and embroidering tiny
rosebuds all over the chiffon. Phil’s fingers
were deft, and the result
was a dress which was the envy of every Redmond
girl. Even Allie Boone,
whose frocks came from Paris, was wont to
look with longing eyes on that
rosebud concoction as Anne trailed up the
main staircase at Redmond in
it.
Anne was trying the effect of a white orchid
in her hair. Roy Gardner
had sent her white orchids for the reception,
and she knew no other
Redmond girl would have them that night, when
Phil came in with admiring
gaze.
“Anne, this is certainly your night for
looking handsome. Nine nights
out of ten I can easily outshine you. The
tenth you blossom out suddenly
into something that eclipses me altogether.
How do you manage it?”
“It’s the dress, dear. Fine feathers.”
“‘Tisn’t. The last evening you flamed
out into beauty you wore your old
blue flannel shirtwaist that Mrs. Lynde made
you. If Roy hadn’t already
lost head and heart about you he certainly
would tonight. But I don’t
like orchids on you, Anne. No; it isn’t
jealousy. Orchids don’t seem to
BELONG to you. They’re too exotic, too tropical,
too insolent. Don’t put
them in your hair, anyway.”
“Well, I won’t. I admit I’m not fond
of orchids myself. I don’t think
they’re related to me. Roy doesn’t often
send them, he knows I like
flowers I can live with. Orchids are only
things you can visit with.”
“Jonas sent me some dear pink rosebuds for
the evening, but, he isn’t
coming himself. He said he had to lead a prayer-meeting
in the slums! I
don’t believe he wanted to come. Anne, I’m
horribly afraid Jonas doesn’t
really care anything about me. And I’m trying
to decide whether I’ll
pine away and die, or go on and get my B.A.
and be sensible and useful.”
“You couldn’t possibly be sensible and
useful, Phil, so you’d better
pine away and die,” said Anne cruelly.
“Heartless Anne!”
“Silly Phil! You know quite well that Jonas
loves you.”
“But, he won’t TELL me so. And I can’t
MAKE him. He LOOKS it, I’ll
admit. But ‘speak to me only with thine
eyes’ isn’t a really reliable
reason for embroidering doilies and hemstitching
tablecloths. I don’t
want to begin such work until I’m really
engaged. It would be tempting
Fate.”
“Mr. Blake is afraid to ask you to marry
him, Phil. He is poor and can’t
offer you a home such as you’ve always had.
You know that is the only
reason he hasn’t spoken long ago.”
“I suppose so,” agreed Phil dolefully.
“Well”, brightening up, “if he
WON’T ask me to marry him I’ll ask him,
that’s all. So it’s bound to
come right. I won’t worry. By the way, Gilbert
Blythe is going about
constantly with Christine Stuart. Did you
know?”
Anne was trying to fasten a little gold chain
about her throat. She
suddenly found the clasp difficult to manage.
WHAT was the matter with
it, or with her fingers?
“No,” she said carelessly. “Who is Christine
Stuart?”
“Ronald Stuart’s sister. She’s in Kingsport
this winter studying music.
I haven’t seen her, but they say she’s
very pretty and that Gilbert is
quite crazy over her. How angry I was when
you refused Gilbert, Anne.
But Roy Gardner was foreordained for you.
I can see that now. You were
right, after all.”
Anne did not blush, as she usually did when
the girls assumed that her
eventual marriage to Roy Gardner was a settled
thing. All at once she
felt rather dull. Phil’s chatter seemed
trivial and the reception a
bore. She boxed poor Rusty’s ears.
“Get off that cushion instantly, you cat,
you! Why don’t you stay down
where you belong?”
Anne picked up her orchids and went downstairs,
where Aunt Jamesina was
presiding over a row of coats hung before
the fire to warm. Roy Gardner
was waiting for Anne and teasing the Sarah-cat
while he waited. The
Sarah-cat did not approve of him. She always
turned her back on him.
But everybody else at Patty’s Place liked
him very much. Aunt Jamesina,
carried away by his unfailing and deferential
courtesy, and the pleading
tones of his delightful voice, declared he
was the nicest young man she
ever knew, and that Anne was a very fortunate
girl. Such remarks made
Anne restive. Roy’s wooing had certainly
been as romantic as girlish
heart could desire, but, she wished Aunt Jamesina
and the girls would
not take things so for granted. When Roy murmured
a poetical compliment
as he helped her on with her coat, she did
not blush and thrill as
usual; and he found her rather silent in their
brief walk to Redmond.
He thought she looked a little pale when she
came out of the coeds’
dressing room; but as they entered the reception
room her colour and
sparkle suddenly returned to her. She turned
to Roy with her gayest
expression. He smiled back at her with what
Phil called “his deep,
black, velvety smile.” Yet she really did
not see Roy at all. She was
acutely conscious that Gilbert was standing
under the palms just across
the room talking to a girl who must be Christine
Stuart.
She was very handsome, in the stately style
destined to become rather
massive in middle life. A tall girl, with
large dark-blue eyes, ivory
outlines, and a gloss of darkness on her smooth
hair.
“She looks just as I’ve always wanted
to look,” thought Anne miserably.
“Rose-leaf complexion, starry violet eyes,
raven hair, yes, she has them
all. It’s a wonder her name isn’t Cordelia
Fitzgerald into the bargain!
But I don’t believe her figure is as good
as mine, and her nose
certainly isn’t.”
Anne felt a little comforted by this conclusion.
End of Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Mutual Confidences
March came in that winter like the meekest
and mildest of lambs,
bringing days that were crisp and golden and
tingling, each followed
by a frosty pink twilight which gradually
lost itself in an elfland of
moonshine.
Over the girls at Patty’s Place was falling
the shadow of April
examinations. They were studying hard; even
Phil had settled down to
text and notebooks with a doggedness not to
be expected of her.
“I’m going to take the Johnson Scholarship
in Mathematics,” she
announced calmly. “I could take the one
in Greek easily, but I’d rather
take the mathematical one because I want to
prove to Jonas that I’m
really enormously clever.”
“Jonas likes you better for your big brown
eyes and your crooked smile
than for all the brains you carry under your
curls,” said Anne.
“When I was a girl it wasn’t considered
lady-like to know anything about
Mathematics,” said Aunt Jamesina. “But
times have changed. I don’t know
that it’s all for the better. Can you cook,
Phil?”
“No, I never cooked anything in my life
except a gingerbread and it was
a failure, flat in the middle and hilly round
the edges. You know the
kind. But, Aunty, when I begin in good earnest
to learn to cook don’t
you think the brains that enable me to win
a mathematical scholarship
will also enable me to learn cooking just
as well?”
“Maybe,” said Aunt Jamesina cautiously.
“I am not decrying the higher
education of women. My daughter is an M.A.
She can cook, too. But
I taught her to cook BEFORE I let a college
professor teach her
Mathematics.”
In mid-March came a letter from Miss Patty
Spofford, saying that she and
Miss Maria had decided to remain abroad for
another year.
“So you may have Patty’s Place next winter,
too,” she wrote. “Maria and
I are going to run over Egypt. I want to see
the Sphinx once before I
die.”
“Fancy those two dames ‘running over Egypt’!
I wonder if they’ll look up
at the Sphinx and knit,” laughed Priscilla.
“I’m so glad we can keep Patty’s Place
for another year,” said Stella.
“I was afraid they’d come back. And then
our jolly little nest here
would be broken up, and we poor callow nestlings
thrown out on the cruel
world of boardinghouses again.”
“I’m off for a tramp in the park,” announced
Phil, tossing her book
aside. “I think when I am eighty I’ll
be glad I went for a walk in the
park tonight.”
“What do you mean?” asked Anne.
“Come with me and I’ll tell you, honey.”
They captured in their ramble all the mysteries
and magics of a March
evening. Very still and mild it was, wrapped
in a great, white, brooding
silence, a silence which was yet threaded
through with many little
silvery sounds which you could hear if you
hearkened as much with your
soul as your ears. The girls wandered down
a long pineland aisle that
seemed to lead right out into the heart of
a deep-red, overflowing
winter sunset.
“I’d go home and write a poem this blessed
minute if I only knew how,”
declared Phil, pausing in an open space where
a rosy light was staining
the green tips of the pines. “It’s all
so wonderful here, this great,
white stillness, and those dark trees that
always seem to be thinking.”
“‘The woods were God’s first temples,’”
quoted Anne softly. “One can’t
help feeling reverent and adoring in such
a place. I always feel so near
Him when I walk among the pines.”
“Anne, I’m the happiest girl in the world,”
confessed Phil suddenly.
“So Mr. Blake has asked you to marry him
at last?” said Anne calmly.
“Yes. And I sneezed three times while he
was asking me. Wasn’t that
horrid? But I said ‘yes’ almost before
he finished, I was so afraid he
might change his mind and stop. I’m besottedly
happy. I couldn’t really
believe before that Jonas would ever care
for frivolous me.”
“Phil, you’re not really frivolous,”
said Anne gravely. “‘Way down
underneath that frivolous exterior of yours
you’ve got a dear, loyal,
womanly little soul. Why do you hide it so?”
“I can’t help it, Queen Anne. You are
right, I’m not frivolous at heart.
But there’s a sort of frivolous skin over
my soul and I can’t take it
off. As Mrs. Poyser says, I’d have to be
hatched over again and hatched
different before I could change it. But Jonas
knows the real me and
loves me, frivolity and all. And I love him.
I never was so surprised
in my life as I was when I found out I loved
him. I’d never thought it
possible to fall in love with an ugly man.
Fancy me coming down to one
solitary beau. And one named Jonas! But I
mean to call him Jo. That’s
such a nice, crisp little name. I couldn’t
nickname Alonzo.”
“What about Alec and Alonzo?”
“Oh, I told them at Christmas that I never
could marry either of them.
It seems so funny now to remember that I ever
thought it possible that I
might. They felt so badly I just cried over
both of them, howled. But I
knew there was only one man in the world I
could ever marry. I had made
up my own mind for once and it was real easy,
too. It’s very delightful
to feel so sure, and know it’s your own
sureness and not somebody
else’s.”
“Do you suppose you’ll be able to keep
it up?”
“Making up my mind, you mean? I don’t
know, but Jo has given me a
splendid rule. He says, when I’m perplexed,
just to do what I would
wish I had done when I shall be eighty. Anyhow,
Jo can make up his mind
quickly enough, and it would be uncomfortable
to have too much mind in
the same house.”
“What will your father and mother say?”
“Father won’t say much. He thinks everything
I do right. But mother WILL
talk. Oh, her tongue will be as Byrney as
her nose. But in the end it
will be all right.”
“You’ll have to give up a good many things
you’ve always had, when you
marry Mr. Blake, Phil.”
“But I’ll have HIM. I won’t miss the
other things. We’re to be married
a year from next June. Jo graduates from St.
Columbia this spring, you
know. Then he’s going to take a little mission
church down on Patterson
Street in the slums. Fancy me in the slums!
But I’d go there or to
Greenland’s icy mountains with him.”
“And this is the girl who would NEVER marry
a man who wasn’t rich,”
commented Anne to a young pine tree.
“Oh, don’t cast up the follies of my youth
to me. I shall be poor as
gaily as I’ve been rich. You’ll see. I’m
going to learn how to cook
and make over dresses. I’ve learned how
to market since I’ve lived
at Patty’s Place; and once I taught a Sunday
School class for a whole
summer. Aunt Jamesina says I’ll ruin Jo’s
career if I marry him. But
I won’t. I know I haven’t much sense or
sobriety, but I’ve got what is
ever so much better, the knack of making people
like me. There is a
man in Bolingbroke who lisps and always testifies
in prayer-meeting.
He says, ‘If you can’t thine like an electric
thtar thine like a
candlethtick.’ I’ll be Jo’s little candlestick.”
“Phil, you’re incorrigible. Well, I love
you so much that I can’t make
nice, light, congratulatory little speeches.
But I’m heart-glad of your
happiness.”
“I know. Those big grey eyes of yours are
brimming over with real
friendship, Anne. Some day I’ll look the
same way at you. You’re going
to marry Roy, aren’t you, Anne?”
“My dear Philippa, did you ever hear of
the famous Betty Baxter, who
‘refused a man before he’d axed her’?
I am not going to emulate that
celebrated lady by either refusing or accepting
any one before he ‘axes’
me.”
“All Redmond knows that Roy is crazy about
you,” said Phil candidly.
“And you DO love him, don’t you, Anne?”
“I, I suppose so,” said Anne reluctantly.
She felt that she ought to be
blushing while making such a confession; but
she was not; on the other
hand, she always blushed hotly when any one
said anything about Gilbert
Blythe or Christine Stuart in her hearing.
Gilbert Blythe and Christine
Stuart were nothing to her, absolutely nothing.
But Anne had given up
trying to analyse the reason of her blushes.
As for Roy, of course she
was in love with him, madly so. How could
she help it? Was he not her
ideal? Who could resist those glorious dark
eyes, and that pleading
voice? Were not half the Redmond girls wildly
envious? And what a
charming sonnet he had sent her, with a box
of violets, on her birthday!
Anne knew every word of it by heart. It was
very good stuff of its kind,
too. Not exactly up to the level of Keats
or Shakespeare, even Anne
was not so deeply in love as to think that.
But it was very tolerable
magazine verse. And it was addressed to HER,
not to Laura or Beatrice or
the Maid of Athens, but to her, Anne Shirley.
To be told in rhythmical
cadences that her eyes were stars of the morning,
that her cheek had
the flush it stole from the sunrise, that
her lips were redder than the
roses of Paradise, was thrillingly romantic.
Gilbert would never have
dreamed of writing a sonnet to her eyebrows.
But then, Gilbert could
see a joke. She had once told Roy a funny
story, and he had not seen
the point of it. She recalled the chummy laugh
she and Gilbert had had
together over it, and wondered uneasily if
life with a man who had no
sense of humour might not be somewhat uninteresting
in the long run. But
who could expect a melancholy, inscrutable
hero to see the humorous side
of things? It would be flatly unreasonable.
End of Chapter 27
Chapter 28
A June Evening
“I wonder what it would be like to live
in a world where it was always
June,” said Anne, as she came through the
spice and bloom of the twilit
orchard to the front door steps, where Marilla
and Mrs. Rachel were
sitting, talking over Mrs. Samson Coates’
funeral, which they had
attended that day. Dora sat between them,
diligently studying her
lessons; but Davy was sitting tailor-fashion
on the grass, looking as
gloomy and depressed as his single dimple
would let him.
“You’d get tired of it,” said Marilla,
with a sigh.
“I daresay; but just now I feel that it
would take me a long time to get
tired of it, if it were all as charming as
today. Everything loves June.
Davy-boy, why this melancholy November face
in blossom-time?”
“I’m just sick and tired of living,”
said the youthful pessimist.
“At ten years? Dear me, how sad!”
“I’m not making fun,” said Davy with
dignity. “I’m
dis, dis, discouraged”, bringing out the
big word with a valiant effort.
“Why and wherefore?” asked Anne, sitting
down beside him.
“‘Cause the new teacher that come when
Mr. Holmes got sick give me ten
sums to do for Monday. It’ll take me all
day tomorrow to do them. It
isn’t fair to have to work Saturdays. Milty
Boulter said he wouldn’t do
them, but Marilla says I’ve got to. I don’t
like Miss Carson a bit.”
“Don’t talk like that about your teacher,
Davy Keith,” said Mrs. Rachel
severely. “Miss Carson is a very fine girl.
There is no nonsense about
her.”
“That doesn’t sound very attractive,”
laughed Anne. “I like people to
have a little nonsense about them. But I’m
inclined to have a better
opinion of Miss Carson than you have. I saw
her in prayer-meeting last
night, and she has a pair of eyes that can’t
always look sensible. Now,
Davy-boy, take heart of grace. ‘Tomorrow
will bring another day’ and
I’ll help you with the sums as far as in
me lies. Don’t waste this
lovely hour ‘twixt light and dark worrying
over arithmetic.”
“Well, I won’t,” said Davy, brightening
up. “If you help me with the
sums I’ll have ‘em done in time to go
fishing with Milty. I wish old
Aunt Atossa’s funeral was tomorrow instead
of today. I wanted to go to
it ‘cause Milty said his mother said Aunt
Atossa would be sure to rise
up in her coffin and say sarcastic things
to the folks that come to see
her buried. But Marilla said she didn’t.”
“Poor Atossa laid in her coffin peaceful
enough,” said Mrs. Lynde
solemnly. “I never saw her look so pleasant
before, that’s what. Well,
there weren’t many tears shed over her,
poor old soul. The Elisha
Wrights are thankful to be rid of her, and
I can’t say I blame them a
mite.”
“It seems to me a most dreadful thing to
go out of the world and not
leave one person behind you who is sorry you
are gone,” said Anne,
shuddering.
“Nobody except her parents ever loved poor
Atossa, that’s certain, not
even her husband,” averred Mrs. Lynde. “She
was his fourth wife. He’d
sort of got into the habit of marrying. He
only lived a few years after
he married her. The doctor said he died of
dyspepsia, but I shall always
maintain that he died of Atossa’s tongue,
that’s what. Poor soul, she
always knew everything about her neighbours,
but she never was very well
acquainted with herself. Well, she’s gone
anyhow; and I suppose the next
excitement will be Diana’s wedding.”
“It seems funny and horrible to think of
Diana’s being married,” sighed
Anne, hugging her knees and looking through
the gap in the Haunted Wood
to the light that was shining in Diana’s
room.
“I don’t see what’s horrible about it,
when she’s doing so well,” said
Mrs. Lynde emphatically. “Fred Wright has
a fine farm and he is a model
young man.”
“He certainly isn’t the wild, dashing,
wicked, young man Diana once
wanted to marry,” smiled Anne. “Fred is
extremely good.”
“That’s just what he ought to be. Would
you want Diana to marry a wicked
man? Or marry one yourself?”
“Oh, no. I wouldn’t want to marry anybody
who was wicked, but I think
I’d like it if he COULD be wicked and WOULDN’T.
Now, Fred is HOPELESSLY
good.”
“You’ll have more sense some day, I hope,”
said Marilla.
Marilla spoke rather bitterly. She was grievously
disappointed. She knew
Anne had refused Gilbert Blythe. Avonlea gossip
buzzed over the fact,
which had leaked out, nobody knew how. Perhaps
Charlie Sloane had
guessed and told his guesses for truth. Perhaps
Diana had betrayed it
to Fred and Fred had been indiscreet. At all
events it was known; Mrs.
Blythe no longer asked Anne, in public or
private, if she had heard
lately from Gilbert, but passed her by with
a frosty bow. Anne, who
had always liked Gilbert’s merry, young-hearted
mother, was grieved in
secret over this. Marilla said nothing; but
Mrs. Lynde gave Anne many
exasperated digs about it, until fresh gossip
reached that worthy lady,
through the medium of Moody Spurgeon MacPherson’s
mother, that Anne had
another “beau” at college, who was rich
and handsome and good all in
one. After that Mrs. Rachel held her tongue,
though she still wished in
her inmost heart that Anne had accepted Gilbert.
Riches were all very
well; but even Mrs. Rachel, practical soul
though she was, did not
consider them the one essential. If Anne “liked”
the Handsome Unknown
better than Gilbert there was nothing more
to be said; but Mrs. Rachel
was dreadfully afraid that Anne was going
to make the mistake of
marrying for money. Marilla knew Anne too
well to fear this; but she
felt that something in the universal scheme
of things had gone sadly
awry.
“What is to be, will be,” said Mrs. Rachel
gloomily, “and what isn’t
to be happens sometimes. I can’t help believing
it’s going to happen in
Anne’s case, if Providence doesn’t interfere,
that’s what.” Mrs. Rachel
sighed. She was afraid Providence wouldn’t
interfere; and she didn’t
dare to.
Anne had wandered down to the Dryad’s Bubble
and was curled up among the
ferns at the root of the big white birch where
she and Gilbert had so
often sat in summers gone by. He had gone
into the newspaper office
again when college closed, and Avonlea seemed
very dull without him. He
never wrote to her, and Anne missed the letters
that never came. To be
sure, Roy wrote twice a week; his letters
were exquisite compositions
which would have read beautifully in a memoir
or biography. Anne felt
herself more deeply in love with him than
ever when she read them; but
her heart never gave the queer, quick, painful
bound at sight of his
letters which it had given one day when Mrs.
Hiram Sloane had handed her
out an envelope addressed in Gilbert’s black,
upright handwriting. Anne
had hurried home to the east gable and opened
it eagerly, to find a
typewritten copy of some college society report,
“only that and nothing
more.” Anne flung the harmless screed across
her room and sat down to
write an especially nice epistle to Roy.
Diana was to be married in five more days.
The grey house at Orchard
Slope was in a turmoil of baking and brewing
and boiling and stewing,
for there was to be a big, old-timey wedding.
Anne, of course, was to
be bridesmaid, as had been arranged when they
were twelve years old, and
Gilbert was coming from Kingsport to be best
man. Anne was enjoying the
excitement of the various preparations, but
under it all she carried a
little heartache. She was, in a sense, losing
her dear old chum; Diana’s
new home would be two miles from Green Gables,
and the old constant
companionship could never be theirs again.
Anne looked up at Diana’s
light and thought how it had beaconed to her
for many years; but soon it
would shine through the summer twilights no
more. Two big, painful tears
welled up in her grey eyes.
“Oh,” she thought, “how horrible it
is that people have to grow up, and
marry, and CHANGE!”
End of Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Diana’s Wedding
“After all, the only real roses are the
pink ones,” said Anne, as she
tied white ribbon around Diana’s bouquet
in the westward-looking gable at
Orchard Slope. “They are the flowers of
love and faith.”
Diana was standing nervously in the middle
of the room, arrayed in her
bridal white, her black curls frosted over
with the film of her wedding
veil. Anne had draped that veil, in accordance
with the sentimental
compact of years before.
“It’s all pretty much as I used to imagine
it long ago, when I wept over
your inevitable marriage and our consequent
parting,” she laughed. “You
are the bride of my dreams, Diana, with the
‘lovely misty veil’; and
I am YOUR bridesmaid. But, alas! I haven’t
the puffed sleeves, though
these short lace ones are even prettier. Neither
is my heart wholly
breaking nor do I exactly hate Fred.”
“We are not really parting, Anne,” protested
Diana. “I’m not going far
away. We’ll love each other just as much
as ever. We’ve always kept that
‘oath’ of friendship we swore long ago,
haven’t we?”
“Yes. We’ve kept it faithfully. We’ve
had a beautiful friendship, Diana.
We’ve never marred it by one quarrel or
coolness or unkind word; and
I hope it will always be so. But things can’t
be quite the same after
this. You’ll have other interests. I’ll
just be on the outside. But
‘such is life’ as Mrs. Rachel says. Mrs.
Rachel has given you one of
her beloved knitted quilts of the ‘tobacco
stripe’ pattern, and she says
when I am married she’ll give me one, too.”
“The mean thing about your getting married
is that I won’t be able to be
your bridesmaid,” lamented Diana.
“I’m to be Phil’s bridesmaid next June,
when she marries Mr. Blake, and
then I must stop, for you know the proverb
‘three times a bridesmaid,
never a bride,’” said Anne, peeping through
the window over the pink
and snow of the blossoming orchard beneath.
“Here comes the minister,
Diana.”
“Oh, Anne,” gasped Diana, suddenly turning
very pale and beginning to
tremble. “Oh, Anne, I’m so nervous, I
can’t go through with it, Anne, I
know I’m going to faint.”
“If you do I’ll drag you down to the rainwater
hogshed and drop you in,”
said Anne unsympathetically. “Cheer up,
dearest. Getting married can’t
be so very terrible when so many people survive
the ceremony. See how
cool and composed I am, and take courage.”
“Wait till your turn comes, Miss Anne. Oh,
Anne, I hear father coming
upstairs. Give me my bouquet. Is my veil right?
Am I very pale?”
“You look just lovely. Di, darling, kiss
me good-bye for the last time.
Diana Barry will never kiss me again.”
“Diana Wright will, though. There, mother’s
calling. Come.”
Following the simple, old-fashioned way in
vogue then, Anne went down to
the parlour on Gilbert’s arm. They met at
the top of the stairs for the
first time since they had left Kingsport,
for Gilbert had arrived only
that day. Gilbert shook hands courteously.
He was looking very well,
though, as Anne instantly noted, rather thin.
He was not pale; there was
a flush on his cheek that had burned into
it as Anne came along the hall
towards him, in her soft, white dress with
lilies-of-the-valley in the
shining masses of her hair. As they entered
the crowded parlour together
a little murmur of admiration ran around the
room. “What a fine-looking
pair they are,” whispered the impressible
Mrs. Rachel to Marilla.
Fred ambled in alone, with a very red face,
and then Diana swept in on
her father’s arm. She did not faint, and
nothing untoward occurred to
interrupt the ceremony. Feasting and merry-making
followed; then, as the
evening waned, Fred and Diana drove away through
the moonlight to their
new home, and Gilbert walked with Anne to
Green Gables.
Something of their old comradeship had returned
during the informal
mirth of the evening. Oh, it was nice to be
walking over that well-known
road with Gilbert again!
The night was so very still that one should
have been able to hear the
whisper of roses in blossom, the laughter
of daisies, the piping of
grasses, many sweet sounds, all tangled up
together. The beauty of
moonlight on familiar fields irradiated the
world.
“Can’t we take a ramble up Lovers’ Lane
before you go in?” asked Gilbert
as they crossed the bridge over the Lake of
Shining Waters, in which the
moon lay like a great, drowned blossom of
gold.
Anne assented readily. Lovers’ Lane was
a veritable path in a fairyland
that night, a shimmering, mysterious place,
full of wizardry in the
white-woven enchantment of moonlight. There
had been a time when such
a walk with Gilbert through Lovers’ Lane
would have been far too
dangerous. But Roy and Christine had made
it very safe now. Anne found
herself thinking a good deal about Christine
as she chatted lightly to
Gilbert. She had met her several times before
leaving Kingsport, and had
been charmingly sweet to her. Christine had
also been charmingly
sweet. Indeed, they were a most cordial pair.
But for all that, their
acquaintance had not ripened into friendship.
Evidently Christine was
not a kindred spirit.
“Are you going to be in Avonlea all summer?”
asked Gilbert.
“No. I’m going down east to Valley Road
next week. Esther Haythorne
wants me to teach for her through July and
August. They have a summer
term in that school, and Esther isn’t feeling
well. So I’m going to
substitute for her. In one way I don’t mind.
Do you know, I’m beginning
to feel a little bit like a stranger in Avonlea
now? It makes me
sorry, but it’s true. It’s quite appalling
to see the number of
children who have shot up into big boys and
girls, really young men and
women, these past two years. Half of my pupils
are grown up. It makes me
feel awfully old to see them in the places
you and I and our mates used
to fill.”
Anne laughed and sighed. She felt very old
and mature and wise, which
showed how young she was. She told herself
that she longed greatly to go
back to those dear merry days when life was
seen through a rosy mist
of hope and illusion, and possessed an indefinable
something that had
passed away forever. Where was it now, the
glory and the dream?
“‘So wags the world away,’” quoted
Gilbert practically, and a trifle
absently. Anne wondered if he were thinking
of Christine. Oh, Avonlea
was going to be so lonely now, with Diana
gone!
End of Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Mrs. Skinner’s Romance
Anne stepped off the train at Valley Road
station and looked about to
see if any one had come to meet her. She was
to board with a certain
Miss Janet Sweet, but she saw no one who answered
in the least to her
preconception of that lady, as formed from
Esther’s letter. The only
person in sight was an elderly woman, sitting
in a wagon with mail bags
piled around her. Two hundred would have been
a charitable guess at her
weight; her face was as round and red as a
harvest-moon and almost
as featureless. She wore a tight, black, cashmere
dress, made in the
fashion of ten years ago, a little dusty black
straw hat trimmed with
bows of yellow ribbon, and faded black lace
mits.
“Here, you,” she called, waving her whip
at Anne. “Are you the new
Valley Road schoolma’am?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I thought so. Valley Road is noted
for its good-looking
schoolma’ams, just as Millersville is noted
for its humly ones. Janet
Sweet asked me this morning if I could bring
you out. I said, ‘Sartin
I kin, if she don’t mind being scrunched
up some. This rig of mine’s
kinder small for the mail bags and I’m some
heftier than Thomas!’ Just
wait, miss, till I shift these bags a bit
and I’ll tuck you in somehow.
It’s only two miles to Janet’s. Her next-door
neighbour’s hired boy is
coming for your trunk tonight. My name is
Skinner, Amelia Skinner.”
Anne was eventually tucked in, exchanging
amused smiles with herself
during the process.
“Jog along, black mare,” commanded Mrs.
Skinner, gathering up the reins
in her pudgy hands. “This is my first trip
on the mail rowte. Thomas
wanted to hoe his turnips today so he asked
me to come. So I jest sot
down and took a standing-up snack and started.
I sorter like it. O’
course it’s rather tejus. Part of the time
I sits and thinks and the
rest I jest sits. Jog along, black mare. I
want to git home airly.
Thomas is terrible lonesome when I’m away.
You see, we haven’t been
married very long.”
“Oh!” said Anne politely.
“Just a month. Thomas courted me for quite
a spell, though. It was real
romantic.” Anne tried to picture Mrs. Skinner
on speaking terms with
romance and failed.
“Oh?” she said again.
“Yes. Y’see, there was another man after
me. Jog along, black mare. I’d
been a widder so long folks had given up expecting
me to marry again.
But when my darter, she’s a schoolma’am
like you, went out West to teach
I felt real lonesome and wasn’t nowise sot
against the idea. Bime-by
Thomas began to come up and so did the other
feller, William Obadiah
Seaman, his name was. For a long time I couldn’t
make up my mind which
of them to take, and they kep’ coming and
coming, and I kep’ worrying.
Y’see, W.O. was rich, he had a fine place
and carried considerable
style. He was by far the best match. Jog along,
black mare.”
“Why didn’t you marry him?” asked Anne.
“Well, y’see, he didn’t love me,”
answered Mrs. Skinner, solemnly.
Anne opened her eyes widely and looked at
Mrs. Skinner. But there was
not a glint of humour on that lady’s face.
Evidently Mrs. Skinner saw
nothing amusing in her own case.
“He’d been a widder-man for three yers,
and his sister kept house for
him. Then she got married and he just wanted
some one to look after his
house. It was worth looking after, too, mind
you that. It’s a handsome
house. Jog along, black mare. As for Thomas,
he was poor, and if his
house didn’t leak in dry weather it was
about all that could be said for
it, though it looks kind of pictureaskew.
But, y’see, I loved Thomas,
and I didn’t care one red cent for W.O.
So I argued it out with myself.
‘Sarah Crowe,’ say I, my first was a Crowe,
‘you can marry your rich man
if you like but you won’t be happy. Folks
can’t get along together in
this world without a little bit of love. You’d
just better tie up to
Thomas, for he loves you and you love him
and nothing else ain’t going
to do you.’ Jog along, black mare. So I
told Thomas I’d take him. All
the time I was getting ready I never dared
drive past W.O.’s place for
fear the sight of that fine house of his would
put me in the swithers
again. But now I never think of it at all,
and I’m just that comfortable
and happy with Thomas. Jog along, black mare.”
“How did William Obadiah take it?” queried
Anne.
“Oh, he rumpussed a bit. But he’s going
to see a skinny old maid in
Millersville now, and I guess she’ll take
him fast enough. She’ll make
him a better wife than his first did. W.O.
never wanted to marry her.
He just asked her to marry him ‘cause his
father wanted him to, never
dreaming but that she’d say ‘no.’ But
mind you, she said ‘yes.’ There
was a predicament for you. Jog along, black
mare. She was a great
housekeeper, but most awful mean. She wore
the same bonnet for eighteen
years. Then she got a new one and W.O. met
her on the road and didn’t
know her. Jog along, black mare. I feel that
I’d a narrer escape. I
might have married him and been most awful
miserable, like my poor
cousin, Jane Ann. Jane Ann married a rich
man she didn’t care anything
about, and she hasn’t the life of a dog.
She come to see me last week
and says, says she, ‘Sarah Skinner, I envy
you. I’d rather live in a
little hut on the side of the road with a
man I was fond of than in my
big house with the one I’ve got.’ Jane
Ann’s man ain’t such a bad sort,
nuther, though he’s so contrary that he
wears his fur coat when the
thermometer’s at ninety. The only way to
git him to do anything is to
coax him to do the opposite. But there ain’t
any love to smooth things
down and it’s a poor way of living. Jog
along, black mare. There’s
Janet’s place in the hollow, ‘Wayside,’
she calls it. Quite
pictureaskew, ain’t it? I guess you’ll
be glad to git out of this, with
all them mail bags jamming round you.”
“Yes, but I have enjoyed my drive with you
very much,” said Anne
sincerely.
“Git away now!” said Mrs. Skinner, highly
flattered. “Wait till I tell
Thomas that. He always feels dretful tickled
when I git a compliment.
Jog along, black mare. Well, here we are.
I hope you’ll git on well in
the school, miss. There’s a short cut to
it through the ma’sh back of
Janet’s. If you take that way be awful keerful.
If you once got stuck in
that black mud you’d be sucked right down
and never seen or heard tell
of again till the day of judgment, like Adam
Palmer’s cow. Jog along,
black mare.”
End of Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Anne to Philippa
“Anne Shirley to Philippa Gordon, greeting.
“Well-beloved, it’s high time I was writing
you. Here am I, installed
once more as a country ‘schoolma’am’
at Valley Road, boarding at
‘Wayside,’ the home of Miss Janet Sweet.
Janet is a dear soul and very
nicelooking; tall, but not over-tall; stoutish,
yet with a certain
restraint of outline suggestive of a thrifty
soul who is not going to
be overlavish even in the matter of avoirdupois.
She has a knot of soft,
crimpy, brown hair with a thread of grey in
it, a sunny face with rosy
cheeks, and big, kind eyes as blue as forget-me-nots.
Moreover, she is
one of those delightful, old-fashioned cooks
who don’t care a bit if
they ruin your digestion as long as they can
give you feasts of fat
things.
“I like her; and she likes me, principally,
it seems, because she had a
sister named Anne who died young.
“‘I’m real glad to see you,’ she said
briskly, when I landed in her
yard. ‘My, you don’t look a mite like
I expected. I was sure you’d be
dark, my sister Anne was dark. And here you’re
redheaded!’
“For a few minutes I thought I wasn’t
going to like Janet as much as I
had expected at first sight. Then I reminded
myself that I really must
be more sensible than to be prejudiced against
any one simply because
she called my hair red. Probably the word
‘auburn’ was not in Janet’s
vocabulary at all.
“‘Wayside’ is a dear sort of little
spot. The house is small and white,
set down in a delightful little hollow that
drops away from the road.
Between road and house is an orchard and flower-garden
all mixed
up together. The front door walk is bordered
with quahog
clam-shells, ‘cow-hawks,’ Janet calls
them; there is Virginia Creeper
over the porch and moss on the roof. My room
is a neat little spot ‘off
the parlour’, just big enough for the bed
and me. Over the head of my
bed there is a picture of Robby Burns standing
at Highland Mary’s
grave, shadowed by an enormous weeping willow
tree. Robby’s face is so
lugubrious that it is no wonder I have bad
dreams. Why, the first night
I was here I dreamed I COULDN’T LAUGH.
“The parlour is tiny and neat. Its one window
is so shaded by a huge
willow that the room has a grotto-like effect
of emerald gloom. There
are wonderful tidies on the chairs, and gay
mats on the floor, and books
and cards carefully arranged on a round table,
and vases of dried grass
on the mantel-piece. Between the vases is
a cheerful decoration of
preserved coffin plates, five in all, pertaining
respectively to Janet’s
father and mother, a brother, her sister Anne,
and a hired man who died
here once! If I go suddenly insane some of
these days ‘know all men by
these presents’ that those coffin-plates
have caused it.
“But it’s all delightful and I said so.
Janet loved me for it, just
as she detested poor Esther because Esther
had said so much shade was
unhygienic and had objected to sleeping on
a feather bed. Now, I glory
in feather-beds, and the more unhygienic and
feathery they are the more
I glory. Janet says it is such a comfort to
see me eat; she had been
so afraid I would be like Miss Haythorne,
who wouldn’t eat anything but
fruit and hot water for breakfast and tried
to make Janet give up frying
things. Esther is really a dear girl, but
she is rather given to fads.
The trouble is that she hasn’t enough imagination
and HAS a tendency to
indigestion.
“Janet told me I could have the use of the
parlour when any young men
called! I don’t think there are many to
call. I haven’t seen a young man
in Valley Road yet, except the next-door hired
boy, Sam Toliver, a very
tall, lank, tow-haired youth. He came over
one evening recently and sat
for an hour on the garden fence, near the
front porch where Janet and I
were doing fancy-work. The only remarks he
volunteered in all that
time were, ‘Hev a peppermint, miss! Dew
now-fine thing for carARRH,
peppermints,’ and, ‘Powerful lot o’
jump-grasses round here ternight.
Yep.’
“But there is a love affair going on here.
It seems to be my fortune to
be mixed up, more or less actively, with elderly
love affairs. Mr. and
Mrs. Irving always say that I brought about
their marriage. Mrs. Stephen
Clark of Carmody persists in being most grateful
to me for a suggestion
which somebody else would probably have made
if I hadn’t. I do really
think, though, that Ludovic Speed would never
have got any further along
than placid courtship if I had not helped
him and Theodora Dix out.
“In the present affair I am only a passive
spectator. I’ve tried once
to help things along and made an awful mess
of it. So I shall not meddle
again. I’ll tell you all about it when we
meet.”
End of Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Tea with Mrs. Douglas
On the first Thursday night of Anne’s sojourn
in Valley Road Janet asked
her to go to prayer-meeting. Janet blossomed
out like a rose to attend
that prayer-meeting. She wore a pale-blue,
pansy-sprinkled muslin dress
with more ruffles than one would ever have
supposed economical Janet
could be guilty of, and a white leghorn hat
with pink roses and three
ostrich feathers on it. Anne felt quite amazed.
Later on, she found out
Janet’s motive in so arraying herself, a
motive as old as Eden.
Valley Road prayer-meetings seemed to be essentially
feminine. There
were thirty-two women present, two half-grown
boys, and one solitary
man, beside the minister. Anne found herself
studying this man. He was
not handsome or young or graceful; he had
remarkably long legs, so
long that he had to keep them coiled up under
his chair to dispose of
them, and he was stoop-shouldered. His hands
were big, his hair wanted
barbering, and his moustache was unkempt.
But Anne thought she liked his
face; it was kind and honest and tender; there
was something else in it,
too, just what, Anne found it hard to define.
She finally concluded that
this man had suffered and been strong, and
it had been made manifest
in his face. There was a sort of patient,
humorous endurance in his
expression which indicated that he would go
to the stake if need be, but
would keep on looking pleasant until he really
had to begin squirming.
When prayer-meeting was over this man came
up to Janet and said,
“May I see you home, Janet?”
Janet took his arm, “as primly and shyly
as if she were no more than
sixteen, having her first escort home,”
Anne told the girls at Patty’s
Place later on.
“Miss Shirley, permit me to introduce Mr.
Douglas,” she said stiffly.
Mr. Douglas nodded and said, “I was looking
at you in prayer-meeting,
miss, and thinking what a nice little girl
you were.”
Such a speech from ninety-nine people out
of a hundred would have
annoyed Anne bitterly; but the way in which
Mr. Douglas said it made
her feel that she had received a very real
and pleasing compliment.
She smiled appreciatively at him and dropped
obligingly behind on the
moonlit road.
So Janet had a beau! Anne was delighted. Janet
would make a paragon of a
wife, cheery, economical, tolerant, and a
very queen of cooks. It would
be a flagrant waste on Nature’s part to
keep her a permanent old maid.
“John Douglas asked me to take you up to
see his mother,” said Janet
the next day. “She’s bed-rid a lot of
the time and never goes out of
the house. But she’s powerful fond of company
and always wants to see my
boarders. Can you go up this evening?”
Anne assented; but later in the day Mr. Douglas
called on his mother’s
behalf to invite them up to tea on Saturday
evening.
“Oh, why didn’t you put on your pretty
pansy dress?” asked Anne, when
they left home. It was a hot day, and poor
Janet, between her excitement
and her heavy black cashmere dress, looked
as if she were being broiled
alive.
“Old Mrs. Douglas would think it terrible
frivolous and unsuitable, I’m
afraid. John likes that dress, though,”
she added wistfully.
The old Douglas homestead was half a mile
from “Wayside” cresting a
windy hill. The house itself was large and
comfortable, old enough to be
dignified, and girdled with maple groves and
orchards. There were big,
trim barns behind it, and everything bespoke
prosperity. Whatever the
patient endurance in Mr. Douglas’ face had
meant it hadn’t, so Anne
reflected, meant debts and duns.
John Douglas met them at the door and took
them into the sitting-room,
where his mother was enthroned in an armchair.
Anne had expected old Mrs. Douglas to be tall
and thin, because Mr.
Douglas was. Instead, she was a tiny scrap
of a woman, with soft
pink cheeks, mild blue eyes, and a mouth like
a baby’s. Dressed in a
beautiful, fashionably-made black silk dress,
with a fluffy white shawl
over her shoulders, and her snowy hair surmounted
by a dainty lace cap,
she might have posed as a grandmother doll.
“How do you do, Janet dear?” she said
sweetly. “I am so glad to see you
again, dear.” She put up her pretty old
face to be kissed. “And this is
our new teacher. I’m delighted to meet you.
My son has been singing your
praises until I’m half jealous, and I’m
sure Janet ought to be wholly
so.”
Poor Janet blushed, Anne said something polite
and conventional, and
then everybody sat down and made talk. It
was hard work, even for Anne,
for nobody seemed at ease except old Mrs.
Douglas, who certainly did not
find any difficulty in talking. She made Janet
sit by her and
stroked her hand occasionally. Janet sat and
smiled, looking horribly
uncomfortable in her hideous dress, and John
Douglas sat without
smiling.
At the tea table Mrs. Douglas gracefully asked
Janet to pour the tea.
Janet turned redder than ever but did it.
Anne wrote a description of
that meal to Stella.
“We had cold tongue and chicken and strawberry
preserves, lemon pie and
tarts and chocolate cake and raisin cookies
and pound cake and fruit
cake, and a few other things, including more
pie, caramel pie, I think
it was. After I had eaten twice as much as
was good for me, Mrs. Douglas
sighed and said she feared she had nothing
to tempt my appetite.
“‘I’m afraid dear Janet’s cooking
has spoiled you for any other,’ she
said sweetly. ‘Of course nobody in Valley
Road aspires to rival HER.
WON’T you have another piece of pie, Miss
Shirley? You haven’t eaten
ANYTHING.’
“Stella, I had eaten a helping of tongue
and one of chicken, three
biscuits, a generous allowance of preserves,
a piece of pie, a tart, and
a square of chocolate cake!”
After tea Mrs. Douglas smiled benevolently
and told John to take “dear
Janet” out into the garden and get her some
roses. “Miss Shirley will
keep me company while you are out, won’t
you?” she said plaintively. She
settled down in her armchair with a sigh.
“I am a very frail old woman, Miss Shirley.
For over twenty years I’ve
been a great sufferer. For twenty long, weary
years I’ve been dying by
inches.”
“How painful!” said Anne, trying to be
sympathetic and succeeding only
in feeling idiotic.
“There have been scores of nights when they’ve
thought I could never
live to see the dawn,” went on Mrs. Douglas
solemnly. “Nobody knows what
I’ve gone through, nobody can know but myself.
Well, it can’t last very
much longer now. My weary pilgrimage will
soon be over, Miss Shirley.
It is a great comfort to me that John will
have such a good wife to look
after him when his mother is gone, a great
comfort, Miss Shirley.”
“Janet is a lovely woman,” said Anne warmly.
“Lovely! A beautiful character,” assented
Mrs. Douglas. “And a perfect
housekeeper, something I never was. My health
would not permit it, Miss
Shirley. I am indeed thankful that John has
made such a wise choice. I
hope and believe that he will be happy. He
is my only son, Miss Shirley,
and his happiness lies very near my heart.”
“Of course,” said Anne stupidly. For the
first time in her life she was
stupid. Yet she could not imagine why. She
seemed to have absolutely
nothing to say to this sweet, smiling, angelic
old lady who was patting
her hand so kindly.
“Come and see me soon again, dear Janet,”
said Mrs. Douglas lovingly,
when they left. “You don’t come half often
enough. But then I suppose
John will be bringing you here to stay all
the time one of these days.”
Anne, happening to glance at John Douglas,
as his mother spoke, gave a
positive start of dismay. He looked as a tortured
man might look when
his tormentors gave the rack the last turn
of possible endurance. She
felt sure he must be ill and hurried poor
blushing Janet away.
“Isn’t old Mrs. Douglas a sweet woman?”
asked Janet, as they went down
the road.
“M, m,” answered Anne absently. She was
wondering why John Douglas had
looked so.
“She’s been a terrible sufferer,” said
Janet feelingly. “She takes
terrible spells. It keeps John all worried
up. He’s scared to leave home
for fear his mother will take a spell and
nobody there but the hired
girl.”
End of Chapter 32
Chapter 33
“He Just Kept Coming and Coming”
Three days later Anne came home from school
and found Janet crying.
Tears and Janet seemed so incongruous that
Anne was honestly alarmed.
“Oh, what is the matter?” she cried anxiously.
“I’m, I’m forty today,” sobbed Janet.
“Well, you were nearly that yesterday and
it didn’t hurt,” comforted
Anne, trying not to smile.
“But, but,” went on Janet with a big gulp,
“John Douglas won’t ask me to
marry him.”
“Oh, but he will,” said Anne lamely. “You
must give him time, Janet
“Time!” said Janet with indescribable
scorn. “He has had twenty years.
How much time does he want?”
“Do you mean that John Douglas has been
coming to see you for twenty
years?”
“He has. And he has never so much as mentioned
marriage to me. And I
don’t believe he ever will now. I’ve never
said a word to a mortal about
it, but it seems to me I’ve just got to
talk it out with some one at
last or go crazy. John Douglas begun to go
with me twenty years ago,
before mother died. Well, he kept coming and
coming, and after a spell I
begun making quilts and things; but he never
said anything about getting
married, only just kept coming and coming.
There wasn’t anything I could
do. Mother died when we’d been going together
for eight years. I thought
he maybe would speak out then, seeing as I
was left alone in the world.
He was real kind and feeling, and did everything
he could for me, but
he never said marry. And that’s the way
it has been going on ever since.
People blame ME for it. They say I won’t
marry him because his mother is
so sickly and I don’t want the bother of
waiting on her. Why, I’d LOVE
to wait on John’s mother! But I let them
think so. I’d rather they’d
blame me than pity me! It’s so dreadful
humiliating that John won’t ask
me. And WHY won’t he? Seems to me if I only
knew his reason I wouldn’t
mind it so much.”
“Perhaps his mother doesn’t want him to
marry anybody,” suggested Anne.
“Oh, she does. She’s told me time and
again that she’d love to see John
settled before her time comes. She’s always
giving him hints, you heard
her yourself the other day. I thought I’d
ha’ gone through the floor.”
“It’s beyond me,” said Anne helplessly.
She thought of Ludovic Speed.
But the cases were not parallel. John Douglas
was not a man of Ludovic’s
type.
“You should show more spirit, Janet,”
she went on resolutely. “Why
didn’t you send him about his business long
ago?”
“I couldn’t,” said poor Janet pathetically.
“You see, Anne, I’ve always
been awful fond of John. He might just as
well keep coming as not, for
there was never anybody else I’d want, so
it didn’t matter.”
“But it might have made him speak out like
a man,” urged Anne.
Janet shook her head.
“No, I guess not. I was afraid to try, anyway,
for fear he’d think I
meant it and just go. I suppose I’m a poor-spirited
creature, but that
is how I feel. And I can’t help it.”
“Oh, you COULD help it, Janet. It isn’t
too late yet. Take a firm stand.
Let that man know you are not going to endure
his shillyshallying any
longer. I’LL back you up.”
“I dunno,” said Janet hopelessly. “I
dunno if I could ever get up enough
spunk. Things have drifted so long. But I’ll
think it over.”
Anne felt that she was disappointed in John
Douglas. She had liked him
so well, and she had not thought him the sort
of man who would play fast
and loose with a woman’s feelings for twenty
years. He certainly should
be taught a lesson, and Anne felt vindictively
that she would enjoy
seeing the process. Therefore she was delighted
when Janet told her, as
they were going to prayer-meeting the next
night, that she meant to show
some “sperrit.”
“I’ll let John Douglas see I’m not going
to be trodden on any longer.”
“You are perfectly right,” said Anne emphatically.
When prayer-meeting was over John Douglas
came up with his usual
request. Janet looked frightened but resolute.
“No, thank you,” she said icily. “I
know the road home pretty well
alone. I ought to, seeing I’ve been traveling
it for forty years. So you
needn’t trouble yourself, MR. Douglas.”
Anne was looking at John Douglas; and, in
that brilliant moonlight,
she saw the last twist of the rack again.
Without a word he turned and
strode down the road.
“Stop! Stop!” Anne called wildly after
him, not caring in the least for
the other dumbfounded onlookers. “Mr. Douglas,
stop! Come back.”
John Douglas stopped but he did not come back.
Anne flew down the road,
caught his arm and fairly dragged him back
to Janet.
“You must come back,” she said imploringly.
“It’s all a mistake, Mr.
Douglas, all my fault. I made Janet do it.
She didn’t want to, but it’s
all right now, isn’t it, Janet?”
Without a word Janet took his arm and walked
away. Anne followed them
meekly home and slipped in by the back door.
“Well, you are a nice person to back me
up,” said Janet sarcastically.
“I couldn’t help it, Janet,” said Anne
repentantly. “I just felt as if I
had stood by and seen murder done. I HAD to
run after him.”
“Oh, I’m just as glad you did. When I
saw John Douglas making off down
that road I just felt as if every little bit
of joy and happiness that
was left in my life was going with him. It
was an awful feeling.”
“Did he ask you why you did it?” asked
Anne.
“No, he never said a word about it,” replied
Janet dully.
End of Chapter 33
Chapter 34
John Douglas Speaks at Last
Anne was not without a feeble hope that something
might come of it after
all. But nothing did. John Douglas came and
took Janet driving, and
walked home from prayer-meeting with her,
as he had been doing for
twenty years, and as he seemed likely to do
for twenty years more. The
summer waned. Anne taught her school and wrote
letters and studied a
little. Her walks to and from school were
pleasant. She always went by
way of the swamp; it was a lovely place, a
boggy soil, green with the
greenest of mossy hillocks; a silvery brook
meandered through it and
spruces stood erectly, their boughs a-trail
with grey-green mosses,
their roots overgrown with all sorts of woodland
lovelinesses.
Nevertheless, Anne found life in Valley Road
a little monotonous. To be
sure, there was one diverting incident.
She had not seen the lank, tow-headed Samuel
of the peppermints since
the evening of his call, save for chance meetings
on the road. But one
warm August night he appeared, and solemnly
seated himself on the rustic
bench by the porch. He wore his usual working
habiliments, consisting of
varipatched trousers, a blue jean shirt, out
at the elbows, and a ragged
straw hat. He was chewing a straw and he kept
on chewing it while he
looked solemnly at Anne. Anne laid her book
aside with a sigh and took
up her doily. Conversation with Sam was really
out of the question.
After a long silence Sam suddenly spoke.
“I’m leaving over there,” he said abruptly,
waving his straw in the
direction of the neighbouring house.
“Oh, are you?” said Anne politely.
“Yep.”
“And where are you going now?”
“Wall, I’ve been thinking some of gitting
a place of my own. There’s
one that’d suit me over at Millersville.
But ef I rents it I’ll want a
woman.”
“I suppose so,” said Anne vaguely.
“Yep.”
There was another long silence. Finally Sam
removed his straw again and
said,
“Will yeh hev me?”
“Wh, a, t!” gasped Anne.
“Will yeh hev me?”
“Do you mean, MARRY you?” queried poor
Anne feebly.
“Yep.”
“Why, I’m hardly acquainted with you,”
cried Anne indignantly.
“But yeh’d git acquainted with me after
we was married,” said Sam.
Anne gathered up her poor dignity.
“Certainly I won’t marry you,” she said
haughtily.
“Wall, yeh might do worse,” expostulated
Sam. “I’m a good worker and
I’ve got some money in the bank.”
“Don’t speak of this to me again. Whatever
put such an idea into your
head?” said Anne, her sense of humour getting
the better of her wrath. It
was such an absurd situation.
“Yeh’re a likely-looking girl and hev
a right-smart way o’ stepping,”
said Sam. “I don’t want no lazy woman.
Think it over. I won’t change my
mind yit awhile. Wall, I must be gitting.
Gotter milk the cows.”
Anne’s illusions concerning proposals had
suffered so much of late years
that there were few of them left. So she could
laugh wholeheartedly over
this one, not feeling any secret sting. She
mimicked poor Sam to Janet
that night, and both of them laughed immoderately
over his plunge into
sentiment.
One afternoon, when Anne’s sojourn in Valley
Road was drawing to a
close, Alec Ward came driving down to “Wayside”
in hot haste for Janet.
“They want you at the Douglas place quick,”
he said. “I really believe
old Mrs. Douglas is going to die at last,
after pretending to do it for
twenty years.”
Janet ran to get her hat. Anne asked if Mrs.
Douglas was worse than
usual.
“She’s not half as bad,” said Alec solemnly,
“and that’s what makes me
think it’s serious. Other times she’d
be screaming and throwing herself
all over the place. This time she’s lying
still and mum. When Mrs.
Douglas is mum she is pretty sick, you bet.”
“You don’t like old Mrs. Douglas?” said
Anne curiously.
“I like cats as IS cats. I don’t like
cats as is women,” was Alec’s
cryptic reply.
Janet came home in the twilight.
“Mrs. Douglas is dead,” she said wearily.
“She died soon after I got
there. She just spoke to me once, ‘I suppose
you’ll marry John now?’ she
said. It cut me to the heart, Anne. To think
John’s own mother thought
I wouldn’t marry him because of her! I couldn’t
say a word either, there
were other women there. I was thankful John
had gone out.”
Janet began to cry drearily. But Anne brewed
her a hot drink of ginger
tea to her comforting. To be sure, Anne discovered
later on that she
had used white pepper instead of ginger; but
Janet never knew the
difference.
The evening after the funeral Janet and Anne
were sitting on the front
porch steps at sunset. The wind had fallen
asleep in the pinelands and
lurid sheets of heat-lightning flickered across
the northern skies.
Janet wore her ugly black dress and looked
her very worst, her eyes and
nose red from crying. They talked little,
for Janet seemed faintly
to resent Anne’s efforts to cheer her up.
She plainly preferred to be
miserable.
Suddenly the gate-latch clicked and John Douglas
strode into the garden.
He walked towards them straight over the geranium
bed. Janet stood
up. So did Anne. Anne was a tall girl and
wore a white dress; but John
Douglas did not see her.
“Janet,” he said, “will you marry me?”
The words burst out as if they had been wanting
to be said for twenty
years and MUST be uttered now, before anything
else.
Janet’s face was so red from crying that
it couldn’t turn any redder, so
it turned a most unbecoming purple.
“Why didn’t you ask me before?” she
said slowly.
“I couldn’t. She made me promise not to,
mother made me promise not to.
Nineteen years ago she took a terrible spell.
We thought she couldn’t
live through it. She implored me to promise
not to ask you to marry me
while she was alive. I didn’t want to promise
such a thing, even though
we all thought she couldn’t live very long,
the doctor only gave her
six months. But she begged it on her knees,
sick and suffering. I had to
promise.”
“What had your mother against me?” cried
Janet.
“Nothing, nothing. She just didn’t want
another woman, ANY woman, there
while she was living. She said if I didn’t
promise she’d die right
there and I’d have killed her. So I promised.
And she’s held me to that
promise ever since, though I’ve gone on
my knees to her in my turn to
beg her to let me off.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?” asked
Janet chokingly. “If I’d only
KNOWN! Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“She made me promise I wouldn’t tell a
soul,” said John hoarsely.
“She swore me to it on the Bible; Janet,
I’d never have done it if I’d
dreamed it was to be for so long. Janet, you’ll
never know what I’ve
suffered these nineteen years. I know I’ve
made you suffer, too, but
you’ll marry me for all, won’t you, Janet?
Oh, Janet, won’t you? I’ve
come as soon as I could to ask you.”
At this moment the stupefied Anne came to
her senses and realised that
she had no business to be there. She slipped
away and did not see Janet
until the next morning, when the latter told
her the rest of the story.
“That cruel, relentless, deceitful old woman!”
cried Anne.
“Hush, she’s dead,” said Janet solemnly.
“If she wasn’t, but she IS.
So we mustn’t speak evil of her. But I’m
happy at last, Anne. And I
wouldn’t have minded waiting so long a bit
if I’d only known why.”
“When are you to be married?”
“Next month. Of course it will be very quiet.
I suppose people will talk
terrible. They’ll say I made enough haste
to snap John up as soon as his
poor mother was out of the way. John wanted
to let them know the truth
but I said, ‘No, John; after all she was
your mother, and we’ll keep the
secret between us, and not cast any shadow
on her memory. I don’t mind
what people say, now that I know the truth
myself. It don’t matter a
mite. Let it all be buried with the dead’
says I to him. So I coaxed him
round to agree with me.”
“You’re much more forgiving than I could
ever be,” Anne said, rather
crossly.
“You’ll feel differently about a good
many things when you get to be my
age,” said Janet tolerantly. “That’s
one of the things we learn as we
grow older, how to forgive. It comes easier
at forty than it did at
twenty.”
End of Chapter 34
Chapter 35
The Last Redmond Year Opens
“Here we are, all back again, nicely sunburned
and rejoicing as a strong
man to run a race,” said Phil, sitting down
on a suitcase with a sigh of
pleasure. “Isn’t it jolly to see this
dear old Patty’s Place again, and
Aunty, and the cats? Rusty has lost another
piece of ear, hasn’t he?”
“Rusty would be the nicest cat in the world
if he had no ears at all,”
declared Anne loyally from her trunk, while
Rusty writhed about her lap
in a frenzy of welcome.
“Aren’t you glad to see us back, Aunty?”
demanded Phil.
“Yes. But I wish you’d tidy things up,”
said Aunt Jamesina plaintively,
looking at the wilderness of trunks and suitcases
by which the four
laughing, chattering girls were surrounded.
“You can talk just as well
later on. Work first and then play used to
be my motto when I was a
girl.”
“Oh, we’ve just reversed that in this
generation, Aunty. OUR motto is
play your play and then dig in. You can do
your work so much better if
you’ve had a good bout of play first.”
“If you are going to marry a minister,”
said Aunt Jamesina, picking up
Joseph and her knitting and resigning herself
to the inevitable with the
charming grace that made her the queen of
housemothers, “you will have
to give up such expressions as ‘dig in.’”
“Why?” moaned Phil. “Oh, why must a
minister’s wife be supposed to utter
only prunes and prisms? I shan’t. Everybody
on Patterson Street uses
slang, that is to say, metaphorical language,
and if I didn’t they would
think me insufferably proud and stuck up.”
“Have you broken the news to your family?”
asked Priscilla, feeding the
Sarah-cat bits from her lunchbasket.
Phil nodded.
“How did they take it?”
“Oh, mother rampaged. But I stood rockfirm,
even I, Philippa Gordon, who
never before could hold fast to anything.
Father was calmer. Father’s
own daddy was a minister, so you see he has
a soft spot in his heart for
the cloth. I had Jo up to Mount Holly, after
mother grew calm, and
they both loved him. But mother gave him some
frightful hints in every
conversation regarding what she had hoped
for me. Oh, my vacation
pathway hasn’t been exactly strewn with
roses, girls dear. But, I’ve won
out and I’ve got Jo. Nothing else matters.”
“To you,” said Aunt Jamesina darkly.
“Nor to Jo, either,” retorted Phil. “You
keep on pitying him. Why, pray?
I think he’s to be envied. He’s getting
brains, beauty, and a heart of
gold in ME.”
“It’s well we know how to take your speeches,”
said Aunt Jamesina
patiently. “I hope you don’t talk like
that before strangers. What would
they think?”
“Oh, I don’t want to know what they think.
I don’t want to see myself as
others see me. I’m sure it would be horribly
uncomfortable most of the
time. I don’t believe Burns was really sincere
in that prayer, either.”
“Oh, I daresay we all pray for some things
that we really don’t want, if
we were only honest enough to look into our
hearts,” owned Aunt Jamesina
candidly. “I’ve a notion that such prayers
don’t rise very far. I used
to pray that I might be enabled to forgive
a certain person, but I know
now I really didn’t want to forgive her.
When I finally got that I DID
want to I forgave her without having to pray
about it.”
“I can’t picture you as being unforgiving
for long,” said Stella.
“Oh, I used to be. But holding spite doesn’t
seem worth while when you
get along in years.”
“That reminds me,” said Anne, and told
the tale of John and Janet.
“And now tell us about that romantic scene
you hinted so darkly at in
one of your letters,” demanded Phil.
Anne acted out Samuel’s proposal with great
spirit. The girls shrieked
with laughter and Aunt Jamesina smiled.
“It isn’t in good taste to make fun of
your beaux,” she said severely;
“but,” she added calmly, “I always did
it myself.”
“Tell us about your beaux, Aunty,” entreated
Phil. “You must have had
any number of them.”
“They’re not in the past tense,” retorted
Aunt Jamesina. “I’ve got them
yet. There are three old widowers at home
who have been casting sheep’s
eyes at me for some time. You children needn’t
think you own all the
romance in the world.”
“Widowers and sheep’s eyes don’t sound
very romantic, Aunty.”
“Well, no; but young folks aren’t always
romantic either. Some of my
beaux certainly weren’t. I used to laugh
at them scandalous, poor boys.
There was Jim Elwood, he was always in a sort
of day-dream, never seemed
to sense what was going on. He didn’t wake
up to the fact that I’d said
‘no’ till a year after I’d said it.
When he did get married his wife
fell out of the sleigh one night when they
were driving home from church
and he never missed her. Then there was Dan
Winston. He knew too much.
He knew everything in this world and most
of what is in the next. He
could give you an answer to any question,
even if you asked him when the
Judgment Day was to be. Milton Edwards was
real nice and I liked him but
I didn’t marry him. For one thing, he took
a week to get a joke through
his head, and for another he never asked me.
Horatio Reeve was the most
interesting beau I ever had. But when he told
a story he dressed it up
so that you couldn’t see it for frills.
I never could decide whether he
was lying or just letting his imagination
run loose.”
“And what about the others, Aunty?”
“Go away and unpack,” said Aunt Jamesina,
waving Joseph at them by
mistake for a needle. “The others were too
nice to make fun of. I shall
respect their memory. There’s a box of flowers
in your room, Anne. They
came about an hour ago.”
After the first week the girls of Patty’s
Place settled down to a steady
grind of study; for this was their last year
at Redmond and graduation
honours must be fought for persistently. Anne
devoted herself to English,
Priscilla pored over classics, and Philippa
pounded away at Mathematics.
Sometimes they grew tired, sometimes they
felt discouraged, sometimes
nothing seemed worth the struggle for it.
In one such mood Stella
wandered up to the blue room one rainy November
evening. Anne sat on the
floor in a little circle of light cast by
the lamp beside her, amid a
surrounding snow of crumpled manuscript.
“What in the world are you doing?”
“Just looking over some old Story Club yarns.
I wanted something to
cheer AND inebriate. I’d studied until the
world seemed azure. So I came
up here and dug these out of my trunk. They
are so drenched in tears and
tragedy that they are excruciatingly funny.”
“I’m blue and discouraged myself,” said
Stella, throwing herself on the
couch. “Nothing seems worthwhile. My very
thoughts are old. I’ve thought
them all before. What is the use of living
after all, Anne?”
“Honey, it’s just brain fag that makes
us feel that way, and the
weather. A pouring rainy night like this,
coming after a hard day’s
grind, would squelch any one but a Mark Tapley.
You know it IS
worthwhile to live.”
“Oh, I suppose so. But I can’t prove it
to myself just now.”
“Just think of all the great and noble souls
who have lived and worked
in the world,” said Anne dreamily. “Isn’t
it worthwhile to come after
them and inherit what they won and taught?
Isn’t it worthwhile to think
we can share their inspiration? And then,
all the great souls that will
come in the future? Isn’t it worthwhile
to work a little and prepare the
way for them, make just one step in their
path easier?”
“Oh, my mind agrees with you, Anne. But
my soul remains doleful and
uninspired. I’m always grubby and dingy
on rainy nights.”
“Some nights I like the rain, I like to
lie in bed and hear it pattering
on the roof and drifting through the pines.”
“I like it when it stays on the roof,”
said Stella. “It doesn’t always.
I spent a gruesome night in an old country
farmhouse last summer. The
roof leaked and the rain came pattering down
on my bed. There was no
poetry in THAT. I had to get up in the ‘mirk
midnight’ and chivy round
to pull the bedstead out of the drip, and
it was one of those solid,
old-fashioned beds that weigh a ton, more
or less. And then that
drip-drop, drip-drop kept up all night until
my nerves just went to
pieces. You’ve no idea what an eerie noise
a great drop of rain falling
with a mushy thud on a bare floor makes in
the night. It sounds like
ghostly footsteps and all that sort of thing.
What are you laughing
over, Anne?”
“These stories. As Phil would say they are
killing, in more senses than
one, for everybody died in them. What dazzlingly
lovely heroines
we had, and how we dressed them!
“Silks, satins, velvets, jewels, laces,
they never wore anything else.
Here is one of Jane Andrews’ stories depicting
her heroine as sleeping
in a beautiful white satin nightdress trimmed
with seed pearls.”
“Go on,” said Stella. “I begin to feel
that life is worth living as long
as there’s a laugh in it.”
“Here’s one I wrote. My heroine is disporting
herself at a ball
‘glittering from head to foot with large
diamonds of the first water.’
But what booted beauty or rich attire? ‘The
paths of glory lead but to
the grave.’ They must either be murdered
or die of a broken heart. There
was no escape for them.”
“Let me read some of your stories.”
“Well, here’s my masterpiece. Note its
cheerful title, ‘My Graves.’ I
shed quarts of tears while writing it, and
the other girls shed gallons
while I read it. Jane Andrews’ mother scolded
her frightfully because
she had so many handkerchiefs in the wash
that week. It’s a harrowing
tale of the wanderings of a Methodist minister’s
wife. I made her a
Methodist because it was necessary that she
should wander. She buried a
child every place she lived in. There were
nine of them and their
graves were severed far apart, ranging from
Newfoundland to Vancouver. I
described the children, pictured their several
death beds, and detailed
their tombstones and epitaphs. I had intended
to bury the whole nine
but when I had disposed of eight my invention
of horrors gave out and I
permitted the ninth to live as a hopeless
cripple.”
While Stella read My Graves, punctuating its
tragic paragraphs with
chuckles, and Rusty slept the sleep of a just
cat who has been out all
night curled up on a Jane Andrews tale of
a beautiful maiden of fifteen
who went to nurse in a leper colony, of course
dying of the loathsome
disease finally, Anne glanced over the other
manuscripts and recalled
the old days at Avonlea school when the members
of the Story Club,
sitting under the spruce trees or down among
the ferns by the brook, had
written them. What fun they had had! How the
sunshine and mirth of those
olden summers returned as she read. Not all
the glory that was Greece
or the grandeur that was Rome could weave
such wizardry as those funny,
tearful tales of the Story Club. Among the
manuscripts Anne found one
written on sheets of wrapping paper. A wave
of laughter filled her
grey eyes as she recalled the time and place
of its genesis. It was the
sketch she had written the day she fell through
the roof of the Cobb
duckhouse on the Tory Road.
Anne glanced over it, then fell to reading
it intently. It was a little
dialogue between asters and sweet-peas, wild
canaries in the lilac bush,
and the guardian spirit of the garden. After
she had read it, she
sat, staring into space; and when Stella had
gone she smoothed out the
crumpled manuscript.
“I believe I will,” she said resolutely.
End of Chapter 35
Chapter 36
The Gardners’Call
“Here is a letter with an Indian stamp for
you, Aunt Jimsie,” said Phil.
“Here are three for Stella, and two for
Pris, and a glorious fat one for
me from Jo. There’s nothing for you, Anne,
except a circular.”
Nobody noticed Anne’s flush as she took
the thin letter Phil tossed her
carelessly. But a few minutes later Phil looked
up to see a transfigured
Anne.
“Honey, what good thing has happened?”
“The Youth’s Friend has accepted a little
sketch I sent them a fortnight
ago,” said Anne, trying hard to speak as
if she were accustomed to
having sketches accepted every mail, but not
quite succeeding.
“Anne Shirley! How glorious! What was it?
When is it to be published?
Did they pay you for it?”
“Yes; they’ve sent a check for ten dollars,
and the editor writes that
he would like to see more of my work. Dear
man, he shall. It was an
old sketch I found in my box. I re-wrote it
and sent it in, but I never
really thought it could be accepted because
it had no plot,” said Anne,
recalling the bitter experience of Averil’s
Atonement.
“What are you going to do with that ten
dollars, Anne? Let’s all go up
town and get drunk,” suggested Phil.
“I AM going to squander it in a wild soulless
revel of some sort,”
declared Anne gaily. “At all events it isn’t
tainted money, like the
check I got for that horrible Reliable Baking
Powder story. I spent IT
usefully for clothes and hated them every
time I put them on.”
“Think of having a real live author at Patty’s
Place,” said Priscilla.
“It’s a great responsibility,” said
Aunt Jamesina solemnly.
“Indeed it is,” agreed Pris with equal
solemnity. “Authors are kittle
cattle. You never know when or how they will
break out. Anne may make
copy of us.”
“I meant that the ability to write for the
Press was a great
responsibility,” said Aunt Jamesina severely,
“and I hope Anne realises,
it. My daughter used to write stories before
she went to the foreign
field, but now she has turned her attention
to higher things. She used
to say her motto was ‘Never write a line
you would be ashamed to read
at your own funeral.’ You’d better take
that for yours, Anne, if you are
going to embark in literature. Though, to
be sure,” added Aunt Jamesina
perplexedly, “Elizabeth always used to laugh
when she said it. She
always laughed so much that I don’t know
how she ever came to decide
on being a missionary. I’m thankful she
did, I prayed that she
might, but, I wish she hadn’t.”
Then Aunt Jamesina wondered why those giddy
girls all laughed.
Anne’s eyes shone all that day; literary
ambitions sprouted and budded
in her brain; their exhilaration accompanied
her to Jennie Cooper’s
walking party, and not even the sight of Gilbert
and Christine, walking
just ahead of her and Roy, could quite subdue
the sparkle of her starry
hopes. Nevertheless, she was not so rapt from
things of earth as to be
unable to notice that Christine’s walk was
decidedly ungraceful.
“But I suppose Gilbert looks only at her
face. So like a man,” thought
Anne scornfully.
“Shall you be home Saturday afternoon?”
asked Roy.
“Yes.”
“My mother and sisters are coming to call
on you,” said Roy quietly.
Something went over Anne which might be described
as a thrill, but it
was hardly a pleasant one. She had never met
any of Roy’s family; she
realised the significance of his statement;
and it had, somehow, an
irrevocableness about it that chilled her.
“I shall be glad to see them,” she said
flatly; and then wondered if she
really would be glad. She ought to be, of
course. But would it not be
something of an ordeal? Gossip had filtered
to Anne regarding the light
in which the Gardners viewed the “infatuation”
of son and brother. Roy
must have brought pressure to bear in the
matter of this call. Anne
knew she would be weighed in the balance.
From the fact that they had
consented to call she understood that, willingly
or unwillingly, they
regarded her as a possible member of their
clan.
“I shall just be myself. I shall not TRY
to make a good impression,”
thought Anne loftily. But she was wondering
what dress she would better
wear Saturday afternoon, and if the new style
of high hair-dressing
would suit her better than the old; and the
walking party was rather
spoiled for her. By night she had decided
that she would wear her brown
chiffon on Saturday, but would do her hair
low.
Friday afternoon none of the girls had classes
at Redmond. Stella took
the opportunity to write a paper for the Philomathic
Society, and was
sitting at the table in the corner of the
living-room with an untidy
litter of notes and manuscript on the floor
around her. Stella always
vowed she never could write anything unless
she threw each sheet down as
she completed it. Anne, in her flannel blouse
and serge skirt, with her
hair rather blown from her windy walk home,
was sitting squarely in the
middle of the floor, teasing the Sarah-cat
with a wishbone. Joseph and
Rusty were both curled up in her lap. A warm
plummy odour filled the
whole house, for Priscilla was cooking in
the kitchen. Presently she
came in, enshrouded in a huge work-apron,
with a smudge of flour on her
nose, to show Aunt Jamesina the chocolate
cake she had just iced.
At this auspicious moment the knocker sounded.
Nobody paid any attention
to it save Phil, who sprang up and opened
it, expecting a boy with the
hat she had bought that morning. On the doorstep
stood Mrs. Gardner and
her daughters.
Anne scrambled to her feet somehow, emptying
two indignant cats out of
her lap as she did so, and mechanically shifting
her wishbone from her
right hand to her left. Priscilla, who would
have had to cross the room
to reach the kitchen door, lost her head,
wildly plunged the chocolate
cake under a cushion on the inglenook sofa,
and dashed upstairs. Stella
began feverishly gathering up her manuscript.
Only Aunt Jamesina and
Phil remained normal. Thanks to them, everybody
was soon sitting at
ease, even Anne. Priscilla came down, apronless
and smudgeless, Stella
reduced her corner to decency, and Phil saved
the situation by a stream
of ready small talk.
Mrs. Gardner was tall and thin and handsome,
exquisitely gowned, cordial
with a cordiality that seemed a trifle forced.
Aline Gardner was a
younger edition of her mother, lacking the
cordiality. She endeavoured
to be nice, but succeeded only in being haughty
and patronising. Dorothy
Gardner was slim and jolly and rather tomboyish.
Anne knew she was Roy’s
favourite sister and warmed to her. She would
have looked very much
like Roy if she had had dreamy dark eyes instead
of roguish hazel ones.
Thanks to her and Phil, the call really went
off very well, except for
a slight sense of strain in the atmosphere
and two rather untoward
incidents. Rusty and Joseph, left to themselves,
began a game of chase,
and sprang madly into Mrs. Gardner’s silken
lap and out of it in their
wild career. Mrs. Gardner lifted her lorgnette
and gazed after their
flying forms as if she had never seen cats
before, and Anne, choking
back slightly nervous laughter, apologised
as best she could.
“You are fond of cats?” said Mrs. Gardner,
with a slight intonation of
tolerant wonder.
Anne, despite her affection for Rusty, was
not especially fond of cats,
but Mrs. Gardner’s tone annoyed her. Inconsequently
she remembered
that Mrs. John Blythe was so fond of cats
that she kept as many as her
husband would allow.
“They ARE adorable animals, aren’t they?”
she said wickedly.
“I have never liked cats,” said Mrs. Gardner
remotely.
“I love them,” said Dorothy. “They are
so nice and selfish. Dogs are
TOO good and unselfish. They make me feel
uncomfortable. But cats are
gloriously human.”
“You have two delightful old china dogs
there. May I look at them
closely?” said Aline, crossing the room
towards the fireplace and
thereby becoming the unconscious cause of
the other accident. Picking up
Magog, she sat down on the cushion under which
was secreted Priscilla’s
chocolate cake. Priscilla and Anne exchanged
agonised glances but
could do nothing. The stately Aline continued
to sit on the cushion and
discuss china dogs until the time of departure.
Dorothy lingered behind a moment to squeeze
Anne’s hand and whisper
impulsively.
“I KNOW you and I are going to be chums.
Oh, Roy has told me all about
you. I’m the only one of the family he tells
things to, poor boy, nobody
COULD confide in mamma and Aline, you know.
What glorious times you
girls must have here! Won’t you let me come
often and have a share in
them?”
“Come as often as you like,” Anne responded
heartily, thankful that one
of Roy’s sisters was likable. She would
never like Aline, so much was
certain; and Aline would never like her, though
Mrs. Gardner might be
won. Altogether, Anne sighed with relief when
the ordeal was over.
“‘Of all sad words of tongue or pen
The saddest are it might have been,’”
quoted Priscilla tragically, lifting the cushion.
“This cake is now what
you might call a flat failure. And the cushion
is likewise ruined. Never
tell me that Friday isn’t unlucky.”
“People who send word they are coming on
Saturday shouldn’t come on
Friday,” said Aunt Jamesina.
“I fancy it was Roy’s mistake,” said
Phil. “That boy isn’t really
responsible for what he says when he talks
to Anne. Where IS Anne?”
Anne had gone upstairs. She felt oddly like
crying. But she made herself
laugh instead. Rusty and Joseph had been TOO
awful! And Dorothy WAS a
dear.
End of Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Full-fledged B.A.’s
“I wish I were dead, or that it were tomorrow
night,” groaned Phil.
“If you live long enough both wishes will
come true,” said Anne calmly.
“It’s easy for you to be serene. You’re
at home in Philosophy. I’m
not, and when I think of that horrible paper
tomorrow I quail. If I
should fail in it what would Jo say?”
“You won’t fail. How did you get on in
Greek today?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps it was a good paper
and perhaps it was bad enough
to make Homer turn over in his grave. I’ve
studied and mulled over
notebooks until I’m incapable of forming
an opinion of anything. How
thankful little Phil will be when all this
examinating is over.”
“Examinating? I never heard such a word.”
“Well, haven’t I as good a right to make
a word as any one else?”
demanded Phil.
“Words aren’t made, they grow,” said
Anne.
“Never mind, I begin faintly to discern
clear water ahead where no
examination breakers loom. Girls, do you,
can you realise that our
Redmond Life is almost over?”
“I can’t,” said Anne, sorrowfully. “It
seems just yesterday that Pris
and I were alone in that crowd of Freshmen
at Redmond. And now we are
Seniors in our final examinations.”
“‘Potent, wise, and reverend Seniors,’”
quoted Phil. “Do you suppose we
really are any wiser than when we came to
Redmond?”
“You don’t act as if you were by times,”
said Aunt Jamesina severely.
“Oh, Aunt Jimsie, haven’t we been pretty
good girls, take us by and
large, these three winters you’ve mothered
us?” pleaded Phil.
“You’ve been four of the dearest, sweetest,
goodest girls that ever went
together through college,” averred Aunt
Jamesina, who never spoiled a
compliment by misplaced economy.
“But I mistrust you haven’t any too much
sense yet. It’s not to be
expected, of course. Experience teaches sense.
You can’t learn it in a
college course. You’ve been to college four
years and I never was, but I
know heaps more than you do, young ladies.”
“‘There are lots of things that never
go by rule,
There’s a powerful pile o’ knowledge
That you never get at college,
There are heaps of things you never learn
at school,’”
quoted Stella.
“Have you learned anything at Redmond except
dead languages and geometry
and such trash?” queried Aunt Jamesina.
“Oh, yes. I think we have, Aunty,” protested
Anne.
“We’ve learned the truth of what Professor
Woodleigh told us last
Philomathic,” said Phil. “He said, ‘humour
is the spiciest condiment in
the feast of existence. Laugh at your mistakes
but learn from them, joke
over your troubles but gather strength from
them, make a jest of
your difficulties but overcome them.’ Isn’t
that worth learning, Aunt
Jimsie?”
“Yes, it is, dearie. When you’ve learned
to laugh at the things that
should be laughed at, and not to laugh at
those that shouldn’t, you’ve
got wisdom and understanding.”
“What have you got out of your Redmond course,
Anne?” murmured Priscilla
aside.
“I think,” said Anne slowly, “that I
really have learned to look upon
each little hindrance as a jest and each great
one as the foreshadowing
of victory. Summing up, I think that is what
Redmond has given me.”
“I shall have to fall back on another Professor
Woodleigh quotation to
express what it has done for me,” said Priscilla.
“You remember that
he said in his address, ‘There is so much
in the world for us all if we
only have the eyes to see it, and the heart
to love it, and the hand
to gather it to ourselves, so much in men
and women, so much in art and
literature, so much everywhere in which to
delight, and for which to be
thankful.’ I think Redmond has taught me
that in some measure, Anne.”
“Judging from what you all, say” remarked
Aunt Jamesina, “the sum
and substance is that you can learn, if you’ve
got natural gumption
enough, in four years at college what it would
take about twenty years
of living to teach you. Well, that justifies
higher education in my
opinion. It’s a matter I was always dubious
about before.”
“But what about people who haven’t natural
gumption, Aunt Jimsie?”
“People who haven’t natural gumption never
learn,” retorted Aunt
Jamesina, “neither in college nor life.
If they live to be a hundred
they really don’t know anything more than
when they were born. It’s
their misfortune not their fault, poor souls.
But those of us who have
some gumption should duly thank the Lord for
it.”
“Will you please define what gumption is,
Aunt Jimsie?” asked Phil.
“No, I won’t, young woman. Any one who
has gumption knows what it is,
and any one who hasn’t can never know what
it is. So there is no need of
defining it.”
The busy days flew by and examinations were
over. Anne took High honours
in English. Priscilla took honours in Classics,
and Phil in Mathematics.
Stella obtained a good all-round showing.
Then came Convocation.
“This is what I would once have called an
epoch in my life,” said
Anne, as she took Roy’s violets out of their
box and gazed at them
thoughtfully. She meant to carry them, of
course, but her eyes wandered
to another box on her table. It was filled
with lilies-of-the-valley, as
fresh and fragrant as those which bloomed
in the Green Gables yard when
June came to Avonlea. Gilbert Blythe’s card
lay beside it.
Anne wondered why Gilbert should have sent
her flowers for Convocation.
She had seen very little of him during the
past winter. He had come to
Patty’s Place only one Friday evening since
the Christmas holidays, and
they rarely met elsewhere. She knew he was
studying very hard, aiming at
High honours and the Cooper Prize, and he
took little part in the social
doings of Redmond. Anne’s own winter had
been quite gay socially.
She had seen a good deal of the Gardners;
she and Dorothy were very
intimate; college circles expected the announcement
of her engagement to
Roy any day. Anne expected it herself. Yet
just before she left Patty’s
Place for Convocation she flung Roy’s violets
aside and put Gilbert’s
lilies-of-the-valley in their place. She could
not have told why she
did it. Somehow, old Avonlea days and dreams
and friendships seemed very
close to her in this attainment of her long-cherished
ambitions. She
and Gilbert had once picturedout merrily the
day on which they should
be capped and gowned graduates in Arts. The
wonderful day had come and
Roy’s violets had no place in it. Only her
old friend’s flowers seemed
to belong to this fruition of old-blossoming
hopes which he had once
shared.
For years this day had beckoned and allured
to her; but when it came the
one single, keen, abiding memory it left with
her was not that of the
breathless moment when the stately president
of Redmond gave her cap and
diploma and hailed her B.A.; it was not of
the flash in Gilbert’s eyes
when he saw her lilies, nor the puzzled pained
glance Roy gave her as he
passed her on the platform. It was not of
Aline Gardner’s condescending
congratulations, or Dorothy’s ardent, impulsive
good wishes. It was of
one strange, unaccountable pang that spoiled
this long-expected day for
her and left in it a certain faint but enduring
flavour of bitterness.
The Arts graduates gave a graduation dance
that night. When Anne dressed
for it she tossed aside the pearl beads she
usually wore and took from
her trunk the small box that had come to Green
Gables on Christmas day.
In it was a thread-like gold chain with a
tiny pink enamel heart as a
pendant. On the accompanying card was written,
“With all good wishes
from your old chum, Gilbert.” Anne, laughing
over the memory the enamel
heart conjured up the fatal day when Gilbert
had called her “Carrots”
and vainly tried to make his peace with a
pink candy heart, had written
him a nice little note of thanks. But she
had never worn the trinket.
Tonight she fastened it about her white throat
with a dreamy smile.
She and Phil walked to Redmond together. Anne
walked in silence; Phil
chattered of many things. Suddenly she said,
“I heard today that Gilbert Blythe’s engagement
to Christine Stuart was
to be announced as soon as Convocation was
over. Did you hear anything
of it?”
“No,” said Anne.
“I think it’s true,” said Phil lightly.
Anne did not speak. In the darkness she felt
her face burning. She
slipped her hand inside her collar and caught
at the gold chain. One
energetic twist and it gave way. Anne thrust
the broken trinket into her
pocket. Her hands were trembling and her eyes
were smarting.
But she was the gayest of all the gay revellers
that night, and told
Gilbert unregretfully that her card was full
when he came to ask her for
a dance. Afterwards, when she sat with the
girls before the dying embers
at Patty’s Place, removing the spring chilliness
from their satin skins,
none chatted more blithely than she of the
day’s events.
“Moody Spurgeon MacPherson called here tonight
after you left,” said
Aunt Jamesina, who had sat up to keep the
fire on. “He didn’t know about
the graduation dance. That boy ought to sleep
with a rubber band around
his head to train his ears not to stick out.
I had a beau once who did
that and it improved him immensely. It was
I who suggested it to him and
he took my advice, but he never forgave me
for it.”
“Moody Spurgeon is a very serious young
man,” yawned Priscilla. “He
is concerned with graver matters than his
ears. He is going to be a
minister, you know.”
“Well, I suppose the Lord doesn’t regard
the ears of a man,” said Aunt
Jamesina gravely, dropping all further criticism
of Moody Spurgeon.
Aunt Jamesina had a proper respect for the
cloth even in the case of an
unfledged parson.
End of Chapter 37
Chapter 38
False Dawn
“Just imagine, this night week I’ll be
in Avonlea, delightful thought!”
said Anne, bending over the box in which she
was packing Mrs. Rachel
Lynde’s quilts. “But just imagine, this
night week I’ll be gone forever
from Patty’s Place, horrible thought!”
“I wonder if the ghost of all our laughter
will echo through the maiden
dreams of Miss Patty and Miss Maria,” speculated
Phil.
Miss Patty and Miss Maria were coming home,
after having trotted over
most of the habitable globe.
“We’ll be back the second week in May”
wrote Miss Patty. “I expect
Patty’s Place will seem rather small after
the Hall of the Kings at
Karnak, but I never did like big places to
live in. And I’ll be glad
enough to be home again. When you start traveling
late in life you’re
apt to do too much of it because you know
you haven’t much time left,
and it’s a thing that grows on you. I’m
afraid Maria will never be
contented again.”
“I shall leave here my fancies and dreams
to bless the next comer,” said
Anne, looking around the blue room wistfully,
her pretty blue room where
she had spent three such happy years. She
had knelt at its window to
pray and had bent from it to watch the sunset
behind the pines. She
had heard the autumn raindrops beating against
it and had welcomed
the spring robins at its sill. She wondered
if old dreams could haunt
rooms, if, when one left forever the room
where she had joyed and
suffered and laughed and wept, something of
her, intangible and
invisible, yet nonetheless real, did not remain
behind like a voiceful
memory.
“I think,” said Phil, “that a room where
one dreams and grieves and
rejoices and lives becomes inseparably connected
with those processes
and acquires a personality of its own. I am
sure if I came into this
room fifty years from now it would say ‘Anne,
Anne’ to me. What nice
times we’ve had here, honey! What chats
and jokes and good chummy
jamborees! Oh, dear me! I’m to marry Jo
in June and I know I will
be rapturously happy. But just now I feel
as if I wanted this lovely
Redmond life to go on forever.”
“I’m unreasonable enough just now to wish
that, too,” admitted Anne. “No
matter what deeper joys may come to us later
on we’ll never again have
just the same delightful, irresponsible existence
we’ve had here. It’s
over forever, Phil.”
“What are you going to do with Rusty?”
asked Phil, as that privileged
pussy padded into the room.
“I am going to take him home with me and
Joseph and the Sarah-cat,”
announced Aunt Jamesina, following Rusty.
“It would be a shame to
separate those cats now that they have learned
to live together. It’s a
hard lesson for cats and humans to learn.”
“I’m sorry to part with Rusty,” said
Anne regretfully, “but it would be
no use to take him to Green Gables. Marilla
detests cats, and Davy would
tease his life out. Besides, I don’t suppose
I’ll be home very long.
I’ve been offered the principalship of the
Summerside High School.”
“Are you going to accept it?” asked Phil.
“I, I haven’t decided yet,” answered
Anne, with a confused flush.
Phil nodded understandingly. Naturally Anne’s
plans could not be settled
until Roy had spoken. He would soon, there
was no doubt of that. And
there was no doubt that Anne would say “yes”
when he said “Will
you please?” Anne herself regarded the state
of affairs with a
seldom-ruffled complacency. She was deeply
in love with Roy. True, it
was not just what she had imagined love to
be. But was anything in life,
Anne asked herself wearily, like one’s imagination
of it? It was the old
diamond disillusion of childhood repeated,
the same disappointment she
had felt when she had first seen the chill
sparkle instead of the purple
splendour she had anticipated. “That’s
not my idea of a diamond,” she had
said. But Roy was a dear fellow and they would
be very happy together,
even if some indefinable zest was missing
out of life. When Roy came
down that evening and asked Anne to walk in
the park every one at
Patty’s Place knew what he had come to say;
and every one knew, or
thought they knew, what Anne’s answer would
be.
“Anne is a very fortunate girl,” said
Aunt Jamesina.
“I suppose so,” said Stella, shrugging
her shoulders. “Roy is a nice
fellow and all that. But there’s really
nothing in him.”
“That sounds very like a jealous remark,
Stella Maynard,” said Aunt
Jamesina rebukingly.
“It does, but I am not jealous,” said
Stella calmly. “I love Anne and I
like Roy. Everybody says she is making a brilliant
match, and even Mrs.
Gardner thinks her charming now. It all sounds
as if it were made in
heaven, but I have my doubts. Make the most
of that, Aunt Jamesina.”
Roy asked Anne to marry him in the little
pavilion on the harbour shore
where they had talked on the rainy day of
their first meeting. Anne
thought it very romantic that he should have
chosen that spot. And his
proposal was as beautifully worded as if he
had copied it, as one of
Ruby Gillis’ lovers had done, out of a Deportment
of Courtship and
Marriage. The whole effect was quite flawless.
And it was also sincere.
There was no doubt that Roy meant what he
said. There was no false note
to jar the symphony. Anne felt that she ought
to be thrilling from head
to foot. But she wasn’t; she was horribly
cool. When Roy paused for his
answer she opened her lips to say her fateful
yes. And then, she found
herself trembling as if she were reeling back
from a precipice. To her
came one of those moments when we realise,
as by a blinding flash of
illumination, more than all our previous years
have taught us. She
pulled her hand from Roy’s.
“Oh, I can’t marry you, I can’t, I can’t,”
she cried, wildly.
Roy turned pale, and also looked rather foolish.
He had, small blame to
him, felt very sure.
“What do you mean?” he stammered.
“I mean that I can’t marry you,” repeated
Anne desperately. “I thought I
could, but I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?” Roy asked more calmly.
“Because, I don’t care enough for you.”
A crimson streak came into Roy’s face.
“So you’ve just been amusing yourself
these two years?” he said slowly.
“No, no, I haven’t,” gasped poor Anne.
Oh, how could she explain? She
COULDN’T explain. There are some things
that cannot be explained. “I did
think I cared, truly I did, but I know now
I don’t.”
“You have ruined my life,” said Roy bitterly.
“Forgive me,” pleaded Anne miserably,
with hot cheeks and stinging eyes.
Roy turned away and stood for a few minutes
looking out seaward. When he
came back to Anne, he was very pale again.
“You can give me no hope?” he said.
Anne shook her head mutely.
“Then, good-bye,” said Roy. “I can’t
understand it, I can’t believe
you are not the woman I’ve believed you
to be. But reproaches are idle
between us. You are the only woman I can ever
love. I thank you for your
friendship, at least. Good-bye, Anne.”
“Good-bye,” faltered Anne. When Roy had
gone she sat for a long time in
the pavilion, watching a white mist creeping
subtly and remorselessly
landward up the harbour. It was her hour of
humiliation and self-contempt
and shame. Their waves went over her. And
yet, underneath it all, was a
queer sense of recovered freedom.
She slipped into Patty’s Place in the dusk
and escaped to her room. But
Phil was there on the window seat.
“Wait,” said Anne, flushing to anticipate
the scene. “Wait til you hear
what I have to say. Phil, Roy asked me to
marry him-and I refused.”
“You, you REFUSED him?” said Phil blankly.
“Yes.”
“Anne Shirley, are you in your senses?”
“I think so,” said Anne wearily. “Oh,
Phil, don’t scold me. You don’t
understand.”
“I certainly don’t understand. You’ve
encouraged Roy Gardner in every
way for two years, and now you tell me you’ve
refused him. Then you’ve
just been flirting scandalously with him.
Anne, I couldn’t have believed
it of YOU.”
“I WASN’T flirting with him, I honestly
thought I cared up to the last
minute, and then, well, I just knew I NEVER
could marry him.”
“I suppose,” said Phil cruelly, “that
you intended to marry him for his
money, and then your better self rose up and
prevented you.”
“I DIDN’T. I never thought about his money.
Oh, I can’t explain it to
you any more than I could to him.”
“Well, I certainly think you have treated
Roy shamefully,” said Phil in
exasperation. “He’s handsome and clever
and rich and good. What more do
you want?”
“I want some one who BELONGS in my life.
He doesn’t. I was swept off
my feet at first by his good looks and knack
of paying romantic
compliments; and later on I thought I MUST
be in love because he was my
dark-eyed ideal.”
“I am bad enough for not knowing my own
mind, but you are worse,” said
Phil.
“I DO know my own mind,” protested Anne.
“The trouble is, my mind
changes and then I have to get acquainted
with it all over again.”
“Well, I suppose there is no use in saying
anything to you.”
“There is no need, Phil. I’m in the dust.
This has spoiled everything
backwards. I can never think of Redmond days
without recalling the
humiliation of this evening. Roy despises
me, and you despise me, and I
despise myself.”
“You poor darling,” said Phil, melting.
“Just come here and let me
comfort you. I’ve no right to scold you.
I’d have married Alec or Alonzo
if I hadn’t met Jo. Oh, Anne, things are
so mixed-up in real life. They
aren’t clear-cut and trimmed off, as they
are in novels.”
“I hope that NO one will ever again ask
me to marry him as long as I
live,” sobbed poor Anne, devoutly believing
that she meant it.
End of Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Deals with Weddings
Anne felt that life partook of the nature
of an anticlimax during the
first few weeks after her return to Green
Gables. She missed the merry
comradeship of Patty’s Place. She had dreamed
some brilliant dreams
during the past winter and now they lay in
the dust around her. In her
present mood of self-disgust, she could not
immediately begin dreaming
again. And she discovered that, while solitude
with dreams is glorious,
solitude without them has few charms.
She had not seen Roy again after their painful
parting in the park
pavilion; but Dorothy came to see her before
she left Kingsport.
“I’m awfully sorry you won’t marry Roy,”
she said. “I did want you for a
sister. But you are quite right. He would
bore you to death. I love him,
and he is a dear sweet boy, but really he
isn’t a bit interesting. He
looks as if he ought to be, but he isn’t.”
“This won’t spoil OUR friendship, will
it, Dorothy?” Anne had asked
wistfully.
“No, indeed. You’re too good to lose.
If I can’t have you for a sister
I mean to keep you as a chum anyway. And don’t
fret over Roy. He is
feeling terribly just now, I have to listen
to his outpourings every
day, but he’ll get over it. He always does.”
“Oh, ALWAYS?” said Anne with a slight
change of voice. “So he has ‘got
over it’ before?”
“Dear me, yes,” said Dorothy frankly.
“Twice before. And he raved to me
just the same both times. Not that the others
actually refused him, they
simply announced their engagements to some
one else. Of course, when he
met you he vowed to me that he had never really
loved before, that the
previous affairs had been merely boyish fancies.
But I don’t think you
need worry.”
Anne decided not to worry. Her feelings were
a mixture of relief and
resentment. Roy had certainly told her she
was the only one he had ever
loved. No doubt he believed it. But it was
a comfort to feel that she
had not, in all likelihood, ruined his life.
There were other goddesses,
and Roy, according to Dorothy, must needs
be worshipping at some shrine.
Nevertheless, life was stripped of several
more illusions, and Anne
began to think drearily that it seemed rather
bare.
She came down from the porch gable on the
evening of her return with a
sorrowful face.
“What has happened to the old Snow Queen,
Marilla?”
“Oh, I knew you’d feel bad over that,”
said Marilla. “I felt bad myself.
That tree was there ever since I was a young
girl. It blew down in the
big gale we had in March. It was rotten at
the core.”
“I’ll miss it so,” grieved Anne. “The
porch gable doesn’t seem the same
room without it. I’ll never look from its
window again without a sense
of loss. And oh, I never came home to Green
Gables before that Diana
wasn’t here to welcome me.”
“Diana has something else to think of just
now,” said Mrs. Lynde
significantly.
“Well, tell me all the Avonlea news,”
said Anne, sitting down on the
porch steps, where the evening sunshine fell
over her hair in a fine
golden rain.
“There isn’t much news except what we’ve
wrote you,” said Mrs. Lynde. “I
suppose you haven’t heard that Simon Fletcher
broke his leg last week.
It’s a great thing for his family. They’re
getting a hundred things done
that they’ve always wanted to do but couldn’t
as long as he was about,
the old crank.”
“He came of an aggravating family,” remarked
Marilla.
“Aggravating? Well, rather! His mother used
to get up in prayer-meeting
and tell all her children’s shortcomings
and ask prayers for them.
‘Course it made them mad, and worse than
ever.”
“You haven’t told Anne the news about
Jane,” suggested Marilla.
“Oh, Jane,” sniffed Mrs. Lynde. “Well,”
she conceded grudgingly, “Jane
Andrews is home from the West, came last week,
and she’s going to be
married to a Winnipeg millionaire. You may
be sure Mrs. Harmon lost no
time in telling it far and wide.”
“Dear old Jane, I’m so glad,” said Anne
heartily. “She deserves the good
things of life.”
“Oh, I ain’t saying anything against Jane.
She’s a nice enough girl. But
she isn’t in the millionaire class, and
you’ll find there’s not much to
recommend that man but his money, that’s
what. Mrs. Harmon says he’s an
Englishman who has made money in mines but
I believe he’ll turn out to
be a Yankee. He certainly must have money,
for he has just showered Jane
with jewellery. Her engagement ring is a diamond
cluster so big that it
looks like a plaster on Jane’s fat paw.”
Mrs. Lynde could not keep some bitterness
out of her tone. Here was
Jane Andrews, that plain little plodder, engaged
to a millionaire, while
Anne, it seemed, was not yet bespoken by any
one, rich or poor. And Mrs.
Harmon Andrews did brag insufferably.
“What has Gilbert Blythe been doing to at
college?” asked Marilla. “I
saw him when he came home last week, and he
is so pale and thin I hardly
knew him.”
“He studied very hard last winter,” said
Anne. “You know he took High
honours in Classics and the Cooper Prize.
It hasn’t been taken for five
years! So I think he’s rather run down.
We’re all a little tired.”
“Anyhow, you’re a B.A. and Jane Andrews
isn’t and never will be,” said
Mrs. Lynde, with gloomy satisfaction.
A few evenings later Anne went down to see
Jane, but the latter was
away in Charlottetown, “getting sewing done,”
Mrs. Harmon informed Anne
proudly. “Of course an Avonlea dressmaker
wouldn’t do for Jane under the
circumstances.”
“I’ve heard something very nice about
Jane,” said Anne.
“Yes, Jane has done pretty well, even if
she isn’t a B.A.,” said Mrs.
Harmon, with a slight toss of her head. “Mr.
Inglis is worth millions,
and they’re going to Europe on their wedding
tour. When they come back
they’ll live in a perfect mansion of marble
in Winnipeg. Jane has only
one trouble, she can cook so well and her
husband won’t let her cook. He
is so rich he hires his cooking done. They’re
going to keep a cook and
two other maids and a coachman and a man-of-all-work.
But what about
YOU, Anne? I don’t hear anything of your
being married, after all your
college-going.”
“Oh,” laughed Anne, “I am going to be
an old maid. I really can’t find
any one to suit me.” It was rather wicked
of her. She deliberately meant
to remind Mrs. Andrews that if she became
an old maid it was not because
she had not had at least one chance of marriage.
But Mrs. Harmon took
swift revenge.
“Well, the over-particular girls generally
get left, I notice. And
what’s this I hear about Gilbert Blythe
being engaged to a Miss Stuart?
Charlie Sloane tells me she is perfectly beautiful.
Is it true?”
“I don’t know if it is true that he is
engaged to Miss Stuart,” replied
Anne, with Spartan composure, “but it is
certainly true that she is very
lovely.”
“I once thought you and Gilbert would have
made a match of it,” said
Mrs. Harmon. “If you don’t take care,
Anne, all of your beaux will slip
through your fingers.”
Anne decided not to continue her duel with
Mrs. Harmon. You could not
fence with an antagonist who met rapier thrust
with blow of battle axe.
“Since Jane is away,” she said, rising
haughtily, “I don’t think I can
stay longer this morning. I’ll come down
when she comes home.”
“Do,” said Mrs. Harmon effusively. “Jane
isn’t a bit proud. She just
means to associate with her old friends the
same as ever. She’ll be real
glad to see you.”
Jane’s millionaire arrived the last of May
and carried her off in a
blaze of splendour. Mrs. Lynde was spitefully
gratified to find that
Mr. Inglis was every day of forty, and short
and thin and greyish. Mrs.
Lynde did not spare him in her enumeration
of his shortcomings, you may
be sure.
“It will take all his gold to gild a pill
like him, that’s what,” said
Mrs. Rachel solemnly.
“He looks kind and good-hearted,” said
Anne loyally, “and I’m sure he
thinks the world of Jane.”
“Humph!” said Mrs. Rachel.
Phil Gordon was married the next week and
Anne went over to Bolingbroke
to be her bridesmaid. Phil made a dainty fairy
of a bride, and the Rev.
Jo was so radiant in his happiness that nobody
thought him plain.
“We’re going for a lovers’ saunter through
the land of Evangeline,” said
Phil, “and then we’ll settle down on Patterson
Street. Mother thinks
it is terrible, she thinks Jo might at least
take a church in a decent
place. But the wilderness of the Patterson
slums will blossom like the
rose for me if Jo is there. Oh, Anne, I’m
so happy my heart aches with
it.”
Anne was always glad in the happiness of her
friends; but it is
sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded
everywhere by a happiness
that is not your own. And it was just the
same when she went back to
Avonlea. This time it was Diana who was bathed
in the wonderful glory
that comes to a woman when her first-born
is laid beside her. Anne
looked at the white young mother with a certain
awe that had never
entered into her feelings for Diana before.
Could this pale woman with
the rapture in her eyes be the little black-curled,
rosy-cheeked Diana
she had played with in vanished schooldays?
It gave her a queer desolate
feeling that she herself somehow belonged
only in those past years and
had no business in the present at all.
“Isn’t he perfectly beautiful?” said
Diana proudly.
The little fat fellow was absurdly like Fred,
just as round, just as
red. Anne really could not say conscientiously
that she thought him
beautiful, but she vowed sincerely that he
was sweet and kissable and
altogether delightful.
“Before he came I wanted a girl, so that
I could call her ANNE,” said
Diana. “But now that little Fred is here
I wouldn’t exchange him for a
million girls. He just COULDN’T have been
anything but his own precious
self.”
“‘Every little baby is the sweetest and
the best,’” quoted Mrs. Allan
gaily. “If little Anne HAD come you’d
have felt just the same about
her.”
Mrs. Allan was visiting in Avonlea, for the
first time since leaving it.
She was as gay and sweet and sympathetic as
ever. Her old girl friends
had welcomed her back rapturously. The reigning
minister’s wife was an
estimable lady, but she was not exactly a
kindred spirit.
“I can hardly wait till he gets old enough
to talk,” sighed Diana. “I
just long to hear him say ‘mother.’ And
oh, I’m determined that his
first memory of me shall be a nice one. The
first memory I have of
my mother is of her slapping me for something
I had done. I am sure I
deserved it, and mother was always a good
mother and I love her dearly.
But I do wish my first memory of her was nicer.”
“I have just one memory of my mother and
it is the sweetest of all
my memories,” said Mrs. Allan. “I was
five years old, and I had been
allowed to go to school one day with my two
older sisters. When school
came out my sisters went home in different
groups, each supposing I was
with the other. Instead I had run off with
a little girl I had played
with at recess. We went to her home, which
was near the school, and
began making mud pies. We were having a glorious
time when my older
sister arrived, breathless and angry.
“‘You naughty girl” she cried, snatching
my reluctant hand and dragging
me along with her. ‘Come home this minute.
Oh, you’re going to catch it!
Mother is awful cross. She is going to give
you a good whipping.’
“I had never been whipped. Dread and terror
filled my poor little heart.
I have never been so miserable in my life
as I was on that walk home. I
had not meant to be naughty. Phemy Cameron
had asked me to go home with
her and I had not known it was wrong to go.
And now I was to be whipped
for it. When we got home my sister dragged
me into the kitchen where
mother was sitting by the fire in the twilight.
My poor wee legs were
trembling so that I could hardly stand. And
mother, mother just took me
up in her arms, without one word of rebuke
or harshness, kissed me
and held me close to her heart. ‘I was so
frightened you were lost,
darling,’ she said tenderly. I could see
the love shining in her eyes as
she looked down on me. She never scolded or
reproached me for what I had
done, only told me I must never go away again
without asking permission.
She died very soon afterwards. That is the
only memory I have of her.
Isn’t it a beautiful one?”
Anne felt lonelier than ever as she walked
home, going by way of the
Birch Path and Willowmere. She had not walked
that way for many moons.
It was a darkly-purple bloomy night. The air
was heavy with blossom
fragrance, almost too heavy. The cloyed senses
recoiled from it as
from an overfull cup. The birches of the path
had grown from the fairy
saplings of old to big trees. Everything had
changed. Anne felt that she
would be glad when the summer was over and
she was away at work again.
Perhaps life would not seem so empty then.
“‘I’ve tried the world, it wears no
more
The colouring of romance it wore,’”
sighed Anne, and was straightway much comforted
by the romance in the
idea of the world being denuded of romance!
End of Chapter 39
Chapter 40
A Book of Revelation
The Irvings came back to Echo Lodge for the
summer, and Anne spent
a happy three weeks there in July. Miss Lavendar
had not changed;
Charlotta the Fourth was a very grown-up young
lady now, but still
adored Anne sincerely.
“When all’s said and done, Miss Shirley,
ma’am, I haven’t seen any one
in Boston that’s equal to you,” she said
frankly.
Paul was almost grown up, too. He was sixteen,
his chestnut curls had
given place to close-cropped brown locks,
and he was more interested
in football than fairies. But the bond between
him and his old teacher
still held. Kindred spirits alone do not change
with changing years.
It was a wet, bleak, cruel evening in July
when Anne came back to Green
Gables. One of the fierce summer storms which
sometimes sweep over the
gulf was ravaging the sea. As Anne came in
the first raindrops dashed
against the panes.
“Was that Paul who brought you home?”
asked Marilla. “Why didn’t you
make him stay all night. It’s going to be
a wild evening.”
“He’ll reach Echo Lodge before the rain
gets very heavy, I think.
Anyway, he wanted to go back tonight. Well,
I’ve had a splendid visit,
but I’m glad to see you dear folks again.
‘East, west, hame’s best.’
Davy, have you been growing again lately?”
“I’ve growed a whole inch since you left,”
said Davy proudly. “I’m as
tall as Milty Boulter now. Ain’t I glad.
He’ll have to stop crowing
about being bigger. Say, Anne, did you know
that Gilbert Blythe is
dying?” Anne stood quite silent and motionless,
looking at Davy. Her
face had gone so white that Marilla thought
she was going to faint.
“Davy, hold your tongue,” said Mrs. Rachel
angrily. “Anne, don’t
look like that, DON’T LOOK LIKE THAT! We
didn’t mean to tell you so
suddenly.”
“Is, it, true?” asked Anne in a voice
that was not hers.
“Gilbert is very ill,” said Mrs. Lynde
gravely. “He took down with
typhoid fever just after you left for Echo
Lodge. Did you never hear of
it?”
“No,” said that unknown voice.
“It was a very bad case from the start.
The doctor said he’d been
terribly run down. They’ve a trained nurse
and everything’s been done.
DON’T look like that, Anne. While there’s
life there’s hope.”
“Mr. Harrison was here this evening and
he said they had no hope of
him,” reiterated Davy.
Marilla, looking old and worn and tired, got
up and marched Davy grimly
out of the kitchen.
“Oh, DON’T look so, dear,” said Mrs.
Rachel, putting her kind old arms
about the pallid girl. “I haven’t given
up hope, indeed I haven’t. He’s
got the Blythe constitution in his favour,
that’s what.”
Anne gently put Mrs. Lynde’s arms away from
her, walked blindly across
the kitchen, through the hall, up the stairs
to her old room. At its
window she knelt down, staring out unseeingly.
It was very dark. The
rain was beating down over the shivering fields.
The Haunted Woods was
full of the groans of mighty trees wrung in
the tempest, and the air
throbbed with the thunderous crash of billows
on the distant shore. And
Gilbert was dying!
There is a book of Revelation in every one’s
life, as there is in the
Bible. Anne read hers that bitter night, as
she kept her agonised vigil
through the hours of storm and darkness. She
loved Gilbert, had always
loved him! She knew that now. She knew that
she could no more cast him
out of her life without agony than she could
have cut off her right hand
and cast it from her. And the knowledge had
come too late, too late even
for the bitter solace of being with him at
the last. If she had not been
so blind, so foolish, she would have had the
right to go to him now. But
he would never know that she loved him, he
would go away from this
life thinking that she did not care. Oh, the
black years of emptiness
stretching before her! She could not live
through them, she could not!
She cowered down by her window and wished,
for the first time in her
gay young life, that she could die, too. If
Gilbert went away from her,
without one word or sign or message, she could
not live. Nothing was of
any value without him. She belonged to him
and he to her. In her hour
of supreme agony she had no doubt of that.
He did not love Christine
Stuart, never had loved Christine Stuart.
Oh, what a fool she had been
not to realise what the bond was that had
held her to Gilbert, to think
that the flattered fancy she had felt for
Roy Gardner had been love. And
now she must pay for her folly as for a crime.
Mrs. Lynde and Marilla crept to her door before
they went to bed, shook
their heads doubtfully at each other over
the silence, and went away.
The storm raged all night, but when the dawn
came it was spent. Anne
saw a fairy fringe of light on the skirts
of darkness. Soon the eastern
hilltops had a fire-shot ruby rim. The clouds
rolled themselves away
into great, soft, white masses on the horizon;
the sky gleamed blue and
silvery. A hush fell over the world.
Anne rose from her knees and crept downstairs.
The freshness of the
rain-wind blew against her white face as she
went out into the yard, and
cooled her dry, burning eyes. A merry rollicking
whistle was lilting up
the lane. A moment later Pacifique Buote came
in sight.
Anne’s physical strength suddenly failed
her. If she had not clutched
at a low willow bough she would have fallen.
Pacifique was George
Fletcher’s hired man, and George Fletcher
lived next door to the
Blythes. Mrs. Fletcher was Gilbert’s aunt.
Pacifique would know
if, if, Pacifique would know what there was
to be known.
Pacifique strode sturdily on along the red
lane, whistling. He did not
see Anne. She made three futile attempts to
call him. He was almost past
before she succeeded in making her quivering
lips call, “Pacifique!”
Pacifique turned with a grin and a cheerful
good morning.
“Pacifique,” said Anne faintly, “did
you come from George Fletcher’s
this morning?”
“Sure,” said Pacifique amiably. “I got
de word las’ night dat my fader,
he was seeck. It was so stormy dat I couldn’t
go den, so I start vair
early dis mornin’. I’m goin’ troo de
woods for short cut.”
“Did you hear how Gilbert Blythe was this
morning?” Anne’s desperation
drove her to the question. Even the worst
would be more endurable than
this hideous suspense.
“He’s better,” said Pacifique. “He
got de turn las’ night. De doctor say
he’ll be all right now dis soon while. Had
close shave, dough! Dat boy,
he jus’ keel himself at college. Well, I
mus’ hurry. De old man, he’ll
be in hurry to see me.”
Pacifique resumed his walk and his whistle.
Anne gazed after him with
eyes where joy was driving out the strained
anguish of the night. He was
a very lank, very ragged, very homely youth.
But in her sight he was as
beautiful as those who bring good tidings
on the mountains. Never, as
long as she lived, would Anne see Pacifique’s
brown, round, black-eyed
face without a warm remembrance of the moment
when he had given to her
the oil of joy for mourning.
Long after Pacifique’s gay whistle had faded
into the phantom of music
and then into silence far up under the maples
of Lover’s Lane Anne stood
under the willows, tasting the poignant sweetness
of life when some
great dread has been removed from it. The
morning was a cup filled
with mist and glamor. In the corner near her
was a rich surprise of
new-blown, crystal-dewed roses. The trills
and trickles of song from the
birds in the big tree above her seemed in
perfect accord with her mood.
A sentence from a very old, very true, very
wonderful Book came to her
lips,
“Weeping may endure for a night but joy
cometh in the morning.”
End of Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Love Takes Up the Glass of Time
“I’ve come up to ask you to go for one
of our old-time rambles through
September woods and ‘over hills where spices
grow,’ this afternoon,”
said Gilbert, coming suddenly around the porch
corner. “Suppose we visit
Hester grey’s garden.”
Anne, sitting on the stone step with her lap
full of a pale, filmy,
green stuff, looked up rather blankly.
“Oh, I wish I could,” she said slowly,
“but I really can’t, Gilbert. I’m
going to Alice Penhallow’s wedding this
evening, you know. I’ve got to
do something to this dress, and by the time
it’s finished I’ll have to
get ready. I’m so sorry. I’d love to go.”
“Well, can you go tomorrow afternoon, then?”
asked Gilbert, apparently
not much disappointed.
“Yes, I think so.”
“In that case I shall hie me home at once
to do something I should
otherwise have to do tomorrow. So Alice Penhallow
is to be married
tonight. Three weddings for you in one summer,
Anne, Phil’s, Alice’s,
and Jane’s. I’ll never forgive Jane for
not inviting me to her wedding.”
“You really can’t blame her when you think
of the tremendous Andrews
connection who had to be invited. The house
could hardly hold them all.
I was only bidden by grace of being Jane’s
old chum, at least on Jane’s
part. I think Mrs. Harmon’s motive for inviting
me was to let me see
Jane’s surpassing gorgeousness.”
“Is it true that she wore so many diamonds
that you couldn’t tell where
the diamonds left off and Jane began?”
Anne laughed.
“She certainly wore a good many. What with
all the diamonds and white
satin and tulle and lace and roses and orange
blossoms, prim little
Jane was almost lost to sight. But she was
VERY happy, and so was Mr.
Inglis, and so was Mrs. Harmon.”
“Is that the dress you’re going to wear
tonight?” asked Gilbert, looking
down at the fluffs and frills.
“Yes. Isn’t it pretty? And I shall wear
starflowers in my hair. The
Haunted Wood is full of them this summer.”
Gilbert had a sudden vision of Anne, arrayed
in a frilly green gown,
with the virginal curves of arms and throat
slipping out of it, and
white stars shining against the coils of her
ruddy hair. The vision made
him catch his breath. But he turned lightly
away.
“Well, I’ll be up tomorrow. Hope you’ll
have a nice time tonight.”
Anne looked after him as he strode away, and
sighed. Gilbert was
friendly, very friendly, far too friendly.
He had come quite often to
Green Gables after his recovery, and something
of their old comradeship
had returned. But Anne no longer found it
satisfying. The rose of love
made the blossom of friendship pale and scentless
by contrast. And
Anne had again begun to doubt if Gilbert now
felt anything for her but
friendship. In the common light of common
day her radiant certainty of
that rapt morning had faded. She was haunted
by a miserable fear that
her mistake could never be rectified. It was
quite likely that it was
Christine whom Gilbert loved after all. Perhaps
he was even engaged
to her. Anne tried to put all unsettling hopes
out of her heart, and
reconcile herself to a future where work and
ambition must take the
place of love. She could do good, if not noble,
work as a teacher; and
the success her little sketches were beginning
to meet with in certain
editorial sanctums augured well for her budding
literary dreams.
But, but, Anne picked up her green dress and
sighed again.
When Gilbert came the next afternoon he found
Anne waiting for him,
fresh as the dawn and fair as a star, after
all the gaiety of the
preceding night. She wore a green dress, not
the one she had worn to
the wedding, but an old one which Gilbert
had told her at a Redmond
reception he liked especially. It was just
the shade of green that
brought out the rich tints of her hair, and
the starry grey of her
eyes and the iris-like delicacy of her skin.
Gilbert, glancing at her
sideways as they walked along a shadowy woodpath,
thought she had never
looked so lovely. Anne, glancing sideways
at Gilbert, now and then,
thought how much older he looked since his
illness. It was as if he had
put boyhood behind him forever.
The day was beautiful and the way was beautiful.
Anne was almost sorry
when they reached Hester grey’s garden,
and sat down on the old bench.
But it was beautiful there, too, as beautiful
as it had been on the
faraway day of the Golden Picnic, when Diana
and Jane and Priscilla and
she had found it. Then it had been lovely
with narcissus and violets;
now golden rod had kindled its fairy torches
in the corners and asters
dotted it bluely. The call of the brook came
up through the woods from
the valley of birches with all its old allurement;
the mellow air
was full of the purr of the sea; beyond were
fields rimmed by fences
bleached silvery grey in the suns of many
summers, and long hills
scarfed with the shadows of autumnal clouds;
with the blowing of the
west wind old dreams returned.
“I think,” said Anne softly, “that ‘the
land where dreams come true’ is
in the blue haze yonder, over that little
valley.”
“Have you any unfulfilled dreams, Anne?”
asked Gilbert.
Something in his tone, something she had not
heard since that miserable
evening in the orchard at Patty’s Place,
made Anne’s heart beat wildly.
But she made answer lightly.
“Of course. Everybody has. It wouldn’t
do for us to have all our dreams
fulfilled. We would be as good as dead if
we had nothing left to dream
about. What a delicious aroma that low-descending
sun is extracting
from the asters and ferns. I wish we could
see perfumes as well as smell
them. I’m sure they would be very beautiful.”
Gilbert was not to be thus sidetracked.
“I have a dream,” he said slowly. “I
persist in dreaming it, although it
has often seemed to me that it could never
come true. I dream of a home
with a hearth-fire in it, a cat and dog, the
footsteps of friends, and
YOU!”
Anne wanted to speak but she could find no
words. Happiness was breaking
over her like a wave. It almost frightened
her.
“I asked you a question over two years ago,
Anne. If I ask it again
today will you give me a different answer?”
Still Anne could not speak. But she lifted
her eyes, shining with all
the love-rapture of countless generations,
and looked into his for a
moment. He wanted no other answer.
They lingered in the old garden until twilight,
sweet as dusk in Eden
must have been, crept over it. There was so
much to talk over and
recall, things said and done and heard and
thought and felt and
misunderstood.
“I thought you loved Christine Stuart,”
Anne told him, as reproachfully
as if she had not given him every reason to
suppose that she loved Roy
Gardner.
Gilbert laughed boyishly.
“Christine was engaged to somebody in her
home town. I knew it and she
knew I knew it. When her brother graduated
he told me his sister was
coming to Kingsport the next winter to take
music, and asked me if I
would look after her a bit, as she knew no
one and would be very lonely.
So I did. And then I liked Christine for her
own sake. She is one of
the nicest girls I’ve ever known. I knew
college gossip credited us with
being in love with each other. I didn’t
care. Nothing mattered much to
me for a time there, after you told me you
could never love me, Anne.
There was nobody else, there never could be
anybody else for me but you.
I’ve loved you ever since that day you broke
your slate over my head in
school.”
“I don’t see how you could keep on loving
me when I was such a little
fool,” said Anne.
“Well, I tried to stop,” said Gilbert
frankly, “not because I thought
you what you call yourself, but because I
felt sure there was no chance
for me after Gardner came on the scene. But
I couldn’t, and I can’t tell
you, either, what it’s meant to me these
two years to believe you were
going to marry him, and be told every week
by some busybody that your
engagement was on the point of being announced.
I believed it until one
blessed day when I was sitting up after the
fever. I got a letter from
Phil Gordon, Phil Blake, rather, in which
she told me there was really
nothing between you and Roy, and advised me
to ‘try again.’ Well, the
doctor was amazed at my rapid recovery after
that.”
Anne laughed, then shivered.
“I can never forget the night I thought
you were dying, Gilbert. Oh, I
knew, I KNEW then, and I thought it was too
late.”
“But it wasn’t, sweetheart. Oh, Anne,
this makes up for everything,
doesn’t it? Let’s resolve to keep this
day sacred to perfect beauty all
our lives for the gift it has given us.”
“It’s the birthday of our happiness,”
said Anne softly. “I’ve always
loved this old garden of Hester grey’s,
and now it will be dearer than
ever.”
“But I’ll have to ask you to wait a long
time, Anne,” said Gilbert
sadly. “It will be three years before I’ll
finish my medical course. And
even then there will be no diamond sunbursts
and marble halls.”
Anne laughed.
“I don’t want sunbursts and marble halls.
I just want YOU. You see I’m
quite as shameless as Phil about it. Sunbursts
and marble halls may be
all very well, but there is more ‘scope
for imagination’ without them.
And as for the waiting, that doesn’t matter.
We’ll just be happy,
waiting and working for each other, and dreaming.
Oh, dreams will be
very sweet now.”
Gilbert drew her close to him and kissed her.
Then they walked home
together in the dusk, crowned king and queen
in the bridal realm of
love, along winding paths fringed with the
sweetest flowers that ever
bloomed, and over haunted meadows where winds
of hope and memory blew.
