ANNE OF GREEN GABLES
BY
L. M. MONTGOMERY
_Illustrated by
M. A. and W. A. J. Claus_
“The good stars met in your horoscope,
Made you of spirit and fire and dew.”
— _Browning_.
_BOSTON
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
MDCCCCVII_
_Copyright, 1908_
By L. C. Page & Company (Incorporated)
_Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London
All rights reserved_
Third Impression, August, 1908
Fourth Impression, September, 1908
_COLONIAL PRESS
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, U.S.A._
TO THE MEMORY OF
MY FATHER AND MOTHER
CONTENTS
I. Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Surprised
II. Matthew Cuthbert Is Surprised
III. Marilla Cuthbert Is Surprised
IV. Morning at Green Gables
V. Anne’s History
VI. Marilla Makes Up Her Mind
VII. Anne Says Her Prayers
VIII. Anne’s Bringing-up Is Begun
IX. Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Properly Horrified
X. Anne’s Apology
XI. Anne’s Impressions of Sunday-school
XII. A Solemn Vow and Promise
XIII. The Delights of Anticipation
XIV. Anne’s Confession
XV. A Tempest in the School Teapot
XVI. Diana Is Invited to Tea with Tragic Results
XVII. A New Interest in Life
XVIII. Anne to the Rescue
XIX. A Concert, a Catastrophe, and a Confession
XX. A Good Imagination Gone Wrong
XXI. A New Departure in Flavourings
XXII. Anne Is Invited Out to Tea
XXIII. Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honour
XXIV. Miss Stacy and Her Pupils Get Up a Concert
XXV. Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves
XXVI. The Story Club Is Formed
XXVII. Vanity and Vexation of Spirit
XXVIII. An Unfortunate Lily Maid
XXIX. An Epoch in Anne’s Life
XXX. The Queen’s Class Is Organized
XXXI. Where the Brook and River Meet
XXXII. The Pass List Is Out
XXXIII. The Hotel Concert
XXXIV. A Queen’s Girl
XXXV. The Winter at Queen’s
XXXVI. The Glory and the Dream
XXXVII. The Reaper Whose Name Is Death
XXXVIII. The Bend in the Road
ANNE OF GREEN GABLES
CHAPTER I.
MRS. RACHEL LYNDE IS SURPRISED
Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down
into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and
traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the
old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook
in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool
and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde’s Hollow it was a quiet,
well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs.
Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for decency and decorum; it
probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window,
keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children
up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would
never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.
There are plenty of people, in Avonlea and out of it, who can attend
closely to their neighbours’ business by dint of neglecting their own;
but Mrs. Rachel Lynde was one of those capable creatures who can manage
their own concerns and those of other folks into the bargain. She was a
notable housewife; her work was always done and well done; she “ran”
the Sewing Circle, helped run the Sunday-school, and was the strongest
prop of the Church Aid Society and Foreign Missions Auxiliary. Yet with
all this Mrs. Rachel found abundant time to sit for hours at her
kitchen window, knitting “cotton warp” quilts—she had knitted sixteen
of them, as Avonlea housekeepers were wont to tell in awed voices—and
keeping a sharp eye on the main road that crossed the hollow and wound
up the steep red hill beyond. Since Avonlea occupied a little
triangular peninsula jutting out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with
water on two sides of it, anybody who went out of it or into it had to
pass over that hill road and so run the unseen gauntlet of Mrs.
Rachel’s all-seeing eye.
She was sitting there one afternoon in early June. The sun was coming
in at the window warm and bright; the orchard on the slope below the
house was in a bridal flush of pinky-white bloom, hummed over by a
myriad of bees. Thomas Lynde—a meek little man whom Avonlea people
called “Rachel Lynde’s husband”—was sowing his late turnip seed on the
hill field beyond the barn; and Matthew Cuthbert ought to have been
sowing his on the big red brook field away over by Green Gables. Mrs.
Rachel knew that he ought because she had heard him tell Peter Morrison
the evening before in William J. Blair’s store over at Carmody that he
meant to sow his turnip seed the next afternoon. Peter had asked him,
of course, for Matthew Cuthbert had never been known to volunteer
information about anything in his whole life.
And yet here was Matthew Cuthbert, at half-past three on the afternoon
of a busy day, placidly driving over the hollow and up the hill;
moreover, he wore a white collar and his best suit of clothes, which
was plain proof that he was going out of Avonlea; and he had the buggy
and the sorrel mare, which betokened that he was going a considerable
distance. Now, where was Matthew Cuthbert going and why was he going
there?
Had it been any other man in Avonlea Mrs. Rachel, deftly putting this
and that together, might have given a pretty good guess as to both
questions. But Matthew so rarely went from home that it must be
something pressing and unusual which was taking him; he was the shyest
man alive and hated to have to go among strangers or to any place where
he might have to talk. Matthew, dressed up with a white collar and
driving in a buggy, was something that didn’t happen often. Mrs.
Rachel, ponder as she might, could make nothing of it and her
afternoon’s enjoyment was spoiled.
“I’ll just step over to Green Gables after tea and find out from
Marilla where he’s gone and why,” the worthy woman finally concluded.
“He doesn’t generally go to town this time of year and he _never_
visits; if he’d run out of turnip seed he wouldn’t dress up and take
the buggy to go for more; he wasn’t driving fast enough to be going for
a doctor. Yet something must have happened since last night to start
him off. I’m clean puzzled, that’s what, and I won’t know a minute’s
peace of mind or conscience until I know what has taken Matthew
Cuthbert out of Avonlea to-day.”
Accordingly after tea Mrs. Rachel set out; she had not far to go; the
big, rambling, orchard-embowered house where the Cuthberts lived was a
scant quarter of a mile up the road from Lynde’s Hollow. To be sure,
the long lane made it a good deal further. Matthew Cuthbert’s father,
as shy and silent as his son after him, had got as far away as he
possibly could from his fellow men without actually retreating into the
woods when he founded his homestead. Green Gables was built at the
furthest edge of his cleared land and there it was to this day, barely
visible from the main road along which all the other Avonlea houses
were so sociably situated. Mrs. Rachel Lynde did not call living in
such a place _living_ at all.
“It’s just _staying_, that’s what,” she said as she stepped along the
deep-rutted, grassy lane bordered with wild rose bushes. “It’s no
wonder Matthew and Marilla are both a little odd, living away back here
by themselves. Trees aren’t much company, though dear knows if they
were there’d be enough of them. I’d ruther look at people. To be sure,
they seem contented enough; but then, I suppose, they’re used to it. A
body can get used to anything, even to being hanged, as the Irishman
said.”
With this Mrs. Rachel stepped out of the lane into the backyard of
Green Gables. Very green and neat and precise was that yard, set about
on one side with great patriarchal willows and on the other with prim
Lombardies. Not a stray stick nor stone was to be seen, for Mrs. Rachel
would have seen it if there had been. Privately she was of the opinion
that Marilla Cuthbert swept that yard over as often as she swept her
house. One could have eaten a meal off the ground without overbrimming
the proverbial peck of dirt.
Mrs. Rachel rapped smartly at the kitchen door and stepped in when
bidden to do so. The kitchen at Green Gables was a cheerful
apartment—or would have been cheerful if it had not been so painfully
clean as to give it something of the appearance of an unused parlour.
Its windows looked east and west; through the west one, looking out on
the back yard, came a flood of mellow June sunlight; but the east one,
whence you got a glimpse of the bloom white cherry-trees in the left
orchard and nodding, slender birches down in the hollow by the brook,
was greened over by a tangle of vines. Here sat Marilla Cuthbert, when
she sat at all, always slightly distrustful of sunshine, which seemed
to her too dancing and irresponsible a thing for a world which was
meant to be taken seriously; and here she sat now, knitting, and the
table behind her was laid for supper.
Mrs. Rachel, before she had fairly closed the door, had taken mental
note of everything that was on that table. There were three plates
laid, so that Marilla must be expecting some one home with Matthew to
tea; but the dishes were every-day dishes and there was only crab-apple
preserves and one kind of cake, so that the expected company could not
be any particular company. Yet what of Matthew’s white collar and the
sorrel mare? Mrs. Rachel was getting fairly dizzy with this unusual
mystery about quiet, unmysterious Green Gables.
“Good evening, Rachel,” Marilla said briskly. “This is a real fine
evening, isn’t it? Won’t you sit down? How are all your folks?”
Something that for lack of any other name might be called friendship
existed and always had existed between Marilla Cuthbert and Mrs.
Rachel, in spite of—or perhaps because of—their dissimilarity.
Marilla was a tall, thin woman, with angles and without curves; her
dark hair showed some gray streaks and was always twisted up in a hard
little knot behind with two wire hairpins stuck aggressively through
it. She looked like a woman of narrow experience and rigid conscience,
which she was; but there was a saving something about her mouth which,
if it had been ever so slightly developed, might have been considered
indicative of a sense of humour.
“We’re all pretty well,” said Mrs. Rachel. “I was kind of afraid _you_
weren’t, though, when I saw Matthew starting off to-day. I thought
maybe he was going to the doctor’s.”
Marilla’s lips twitched understandingly. She had expected Mrs. Rachel
up; she had known that the sight of Matthew jaunting off so
unaccountably would be too much for her neighbour’s curiosity.
“Oh, no, I’m quite well although I had a bad headache yesterday,” she
said. “Matthew went to Bright River. We’re getting a little boy from an
orphan asylum in Nova Scotia and he’s coming on the train to-night.”
If Marilla had said that Matthew had gone to Bright River to meet a
kangaroo from Australia Mrs. Rachel could not have been more
astonished. She was actually stricken dumb for five seconds. It was
unsupposable that Marilla was making fun of her, but Mrs. Rachel was
almost forced to suppose it.
“Are you in earnest, Marilla?” she demanded when voice returned to her.
“Yes, of course,” said Marilla, as if getting boys from orphan asylums
in Nova Scotia were part of the usual spring work on any well-regulated
Avonlea farm instead of being an unheard of innovation.
Mrs. Rachel felt that she had received a severe mental jolt. She
thought in exclamation points. A boy! Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of
all people adopting a boy! From an orphan asylum! Well, the world was
certainly turning upside down! She would be surprised at nothing after
this! Nothing!
“What on earth put such a notion into your head?” she demanded
disapprovingly.
This had been done without her advice being asked, and must perforce be
disapproved.
“Well, we’ve been thinking about it for some time—all winter in fact,”
returned Marilla. “Mrs. Alexander Spencer was up here one day before
Christmas and she said she was going to get a little girl from the
asylum over in Hopeton in the spring. Her cousin lives there and Mrs.
Spencer has visited her and knows all about it. So Matthew and I have
talked it over off and on ever since. We thought we’d get a boy.
Matthew is getting up in years, you know—he’s sixty—and he isn’t so
spry as he once was. His heart troubles him a good deal. And you know
how desperate hard it’s got to be to get hired help. There’s never
anybody to be had but those stupid, half-grown little French boys; and
as soon as you do get one broke into your ways and taught something
he’s up and off to the lobster canneries or the States. At first
Matthew suggested getting a Barnado boy. But I said ‘no’ flat to that.
‘They may be all right—I’m not saying they’re not—but no London street
Arabs for me,’ I said. ‘Give me a native born at least. There’ll be a
risk, no matter who we get. But I’ll feel easier in my mind and sleep
sounder at nights if we get a born Canadian.’ So in the end we decided
to ask Mrs. Spencer to pick us out one when she went over to get her
little girl. We heard last week she was going, so we sent her word by
Richard Spencer’s folks at Carmody to bring us a smart, likely boy of
about ten or eleven. We decided that would be the best age—old enough
to be of some use in doing chores right off and young enough to be
trained up proper. We mean to give him a good home and schooling. We
had a telegram from Mrs. Alexander Spencer to-day—the mail-man brought
it from the station—saying they were coming on the five-thirty train
to-night. So Matthew went to Bright River to meet him. Mrs. Spencer
will drop him off there. Of course she goes on to White Sands station
herself.”
Mrs. Rachel prided herself on always speaking her mind; she proceeded
to speak it now, having adjusted her mental attitude to this amazing
piece of news.
“Well, Marilla, I’ll just tell you plain that I think you’re doing a
mighty foolish thing—a risky thing, that’s what. You don’t know what
you’re getting. You’re bringing a strange child into your house and
home and you don’t know a single thing about him nor what his
disposition is like nor what sort of parents he had nor how he’s likely
to turn out. Why, it was only last week I read in the paper how a man
and his wife up west of the Island took a boy out of an orphan asylum
and he set fire to the house at night—set it _on purpose_, Marilla—and
nearly burnt them to a crisp in their beds. And I know another case
where an adopted boy used to suck the eggs—they couldn’t break him of
it. If you had asked my advice in the matter—which you didn’t do,
Marilla—I’d have said for mercy’s sake not to think of such a thing,
that’s what.”
This Job’s comforting seemed neither to offend nor alarm Marilla. She
knitted steadily on.
“I don’t deny there’s something in what you say, Rachel. I’ve had some
qualms myself. But Matthew was terrible set on it. I could see that, so
I gave in. It’s so seldom Matthew sets his mind on anything that when
he does I always feel it’s my duty to give in. And as for the risk,
there’s risks in pretty near everything a body does in this world.
There’s risks in people’s having children of their own if it comes to
that—they don’t always turn out well. And then Nova Scotia is right
close to the Island. It isn’t as if we were getting him from England or
the States. He can’t be much different from ourselves.”
“Well, I hope it will turn out all right,” said Mrs. Rachel in a tone
that plainly indicated her painful doubts. “Only don’t say I didn’t
warn you if he burns Green Gables down or puts strychnine in the well—I
heard of a case over in New Brunswick where an orphan asylum child did
that and the whole family died in fearful agonies. Only, it was a girl
in that instance.”
“Well, we’re not getting a girl,” said Marilla, as if poisoning wells
were a purely feminine accomplishment and not to be dreaded in the case
of a boy. “I’d never dream of taking a girl to bring up. I wonder at
Mrs. Alexander Spencer for doing it. But there, _she_ wouldn’t shrink
from adopting a whole orphan asylum if she took it into her head.”
Mrs. Rachel would have liked to stay until Matthew came home with his
imported orphan. But reflecting that it would be a good two hours at
least before his arrival she concluded to go up the road to Robert
Bell’s and tell them the news. It would certainly make a sensation
second to none, and Mrs. Rachel dearly loved to make a sensation. So
she took herself away, somewhat to Marilla’s relief, for the latter
felt her doubts and fears reviving under the influence of Mrs. Rachel’s
pessimism.
“Well, of all things that ever were or will be!” ejaculated Mrs. Rachel
when she was safely out in the lane. “It does really seem as if I must
be dreaming. Well, I’m sorry for that poor young one and no mistake.
Matthew and Marilla don’t know anything about children and they’ll
expect him to be wiser and steadier than his own grandfather, if so
be’s he ever had a grandfather, which is doubtful. It seems uncanny to
think of a child at Green Gables somehow; there’s never been one there,
for Matthew and Marilla were grown up when the new house was built—if
they ever _were_ children, which is hard to believe when one looks at
them. I wouldn’t be in that orphan’s shoes for anything. My, but I pity
him, that’s what.”
So said Mrs. Rachel to the wild rose bushes out of the fulness of her
heart; but if she could have seen the child who was waiting patiently
at the Bright River station at that very moment her pity would have
been still deeper and more profound.