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 honor 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 humor 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 gray 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 color right
out of life and leave it as gray 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 coppertoned 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
savorless, 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.