A GOOD IMAGINATION GONE WRONG
Spring had come once more to Green Gables—the beautiful, capricious,
reluctant Canadian spring, lingering along through April and May in a
succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles
of resurrection and growth. The maples in Lovers’ Lane were red-budded
and little curly ferns pushed up around the Dryad’s Bubble. Away up in
the barrens, behind Mr. Silas Sloane’s place, the Mayflowers blossomed
out, pink and white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves. All
the school girls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them,
coming home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets full
of flowery spoil.
“I’m so sorry for people who live in lands where there are no
Mayflowers,” said Anne. “Diana says perhaps they have something better,
but there couldn’t be anything better than Mayflowers, could there,
Marilla? And Diana says if they don’t know what they are like they
don’t miss them. But I think that is the saddest thing of all. I think
it would be _tragic_, Marilla, not to know what Mayflowers are like and
_not_ to miss them. Do you know what I think Mayflowers are, Marilla? I
think they must be the souls of the flowers that died last summer and
this is their heaven. But we had a splendid time to-day, Marilla. We
had our lunch down in a big mossy hollow by an old well—such a
_romantic_ spot. Charlie Sloane dared Arty Gillis to jump over it, and
Arty did because he wouldn’t take a dare. Nobody would in school. It is
very _fashionable_ to dare. Mr. Phillips gave all the Mayflowers he
found to Prissy Andrews and I heard him say ‘sweets to the sweet.’ He
got that out of a book, I know; but it shows he has some imagination. I
was offered some Mayflowers too, but I rejected them with scorn. I
can’t tell you the person’s name because I have vowed never to let it
cross my lips. We made wreaths of the Mayflowers and put them on our
hats; and when the time came to go home we marched in procession down
the road, two by two, with our bouquets and wreaths, singing ‘My Home
on the Hill.’ Oh, it was so thrilling, Marilla. All Mr. Silas Sloane’s
folks rushed out to see us and everybody we met on the road stopped and
stared after us. We made a real sensation.”
“Not much wonder! Such silly doings!” was Marilla’s response.
After the Mayflowers came the violets, and Violet Vale was empurpled
with them. Anne walked through it on her way to school with reverent
steps and worshipping eyes, as if she trod on holy ground.
“Somehow,” she told Diana, “when I’m going through here I don’t really
care whether Gil—whether anybody gets ahead of me in class or not. But
when I’m up in school it’s all different and I care as much as ever.
There’s such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is
why I’m such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would
be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn’t be half so
interesting.”
One June evening, when the orchards were pink-blossomed again, when the
frogs were singing silverly sweet in the marshes about the head of the
Lake of Shining Waters, and the air was full of the savour of clover
fields and balsamic fir woods, Anne was sitting by her gable window.
She had been studying her lessons, but it had grown too dark to see the
book, so she had fallen into wide-eyed reverie, looking out past the
boughs of the Snow Queen, once more bestarred with its tufts of blossom.
In all essential respects the little gable chamber was unchanged. The
walls were as white, the pincushion as hard, the chairs as stiffly and
yellowly upright as ever. Yet the whole character of the room was
altered. It was full of a new vital, pulsing personality that seemed to
pervade it and to be quite independent of schoolgirl books and dresses
and ribbons, and even of the cracked blue jug full of apple blossoms on
the table. It was as if all the dreams, sleeping and waking, of its
vivid occupant had taken a visible although immaterial form and had
tapestried the bare room with splendid filmy tissues of rainbow and
moonshine. Presently Marilla came briskly in with some of Anne’s
freshly ironed school aprons. She hung them over a chair and sat down
with a short sigh. She had had one of her headaches that afternoon, and
although the pain had gone she felt weak and “tuckered out,” as she
expressed it. Anne looked at her with eyes limpid with sympathy.
“I do truly wish I could have had the headache in your place, Marilla.
I would have endured it joyfully for your sake.”
“I guess you did your part in attending to the work and letting me
rest,” said Marilla. “You seem to have got on fairly well and made
fewer mistakes than usual. Of course it wasn’t exactly necessary to
starch Matthew’s handkerchiefs! And most people when they put a pie in
the oven to warm up for dinner take it out and eat it when it gets hot
instead of leaving it to be burned to a crisp. But that doesn’t seem to
be your way evidently.”
Headaches always left Marilla somewhat sarcastic.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Anne penitently. “I never thought about that
pie from the moment I put it in the oven till now, although I felt
_instinctively_ that there was something missing on the dinner table. I
was firmly resolved, when you left me in charge this morning, not to
imagine anything, but keep my thoughts on facts. I did pretty well
until I put the pie in, and then an irresistible temptation came to me
to imagine I was an enchanted princess shut up in a lonely tower with a
handsome knight riding to my rescue on a coal-black steed. So that is
how I came to forget the pie. I didn’t know I starched the
handkerchiefs. All the time I was ironing I was trying to think of a
name for a new island Diana and I have discovered up the brook. It’s
the most ravishing spot, Marilla. There are two maple-trees on it and
the brook flows right around it. At last it struck me that it would be
splendid to call it Victoria Island because we found it on the Queen’s
birthday. Both Diana and I are very loyal. But I’m very sorry about
that pie and the handkerchiefs. I wanted to be extra good to-day
because it’s an anniversary. Do you remember what happened this day
last year, Marilla?”
“No, I can’t think of anything special.”
“Oh, Marilla, it was the day I came to Green Gables. I shall never
forget it. It was the turning-point in my life. Of course it wouldn’t
seem so important to you. I’ve been here for a year and I’ve been so
happy. Of course, I’ve had my troubles, but one can live down troubles.
Are you sorry you kept me, Marilla?”
“No, I can’t say I’m sorry,” said Marilla, who sometimes wondered how
she could have lived before Anne came to Green Gables, “no, not exactly
sorry. If you’ve finished your lessons, Anne, I want you to run over
and ask Mrs. Barry if she’ll lend me Diana’s apron pattern.”
“Oh—it’s—it’s too dark,” cried Anne.
“Too dark? Why, it’s only twilight. And goodness knows you’ve gone over
often enough after dark.”
“I’ll go over early in the morning,” said Anne eagerly. “I’ll get up at
sunrise and go over, Marilla.”
“What has got into your head now, Anne Shirley? I want that pattern to
cut out your new apron this evening. Go at once and be smart, too.”
“I’ll have to go around by the road, then,” said Anne, taking up her
hat reluctantly.
“Go by the road and waste half an hour! I’d like to catch you!”
“I can’t go through the Haunted Wood, Marilla,” cried Anne desperately.
Marilla stared.
“The Haunted Wood! Are you crazy? What under the canopy is the Haunted
Wood?”
“The spruce wood over the brook,” said Anne in a whisper.
“Fiddlesticks! There is no such thing as a haunted wood anywhere. Who
has been telling you such stuff?”
“Nobody,” confessed Anne. “Diana and I just imagined the wood was
haunted. All the places around here are so—so—_commonplace_. We just
got this up for our own amusement. We began it in April. A haunted wood
is so very romantic, Marilla. We chose the spruce grove because it’s so
gloomy. Oh, we have imagined the most harrowing things. There’s a white
lady walks along the brook just about this time of the night and wrings
her hands and utters wailing cries. She appears when there is to be a
death in the family. And the ghost of a little murdered child haunts
the corner up by Idlewild; it creeps up behind you and lays its cold
fingers on your hand—so. Oh, Marilla, it gives me a shudder to think of
it. And there’s a headless man stalks up and down the path and
skeletons glower at you between the boughs. Oh, Marilla, I wouldn’t go
through the Haunted Wood after dark now for anything. I’d be sure that
white things would reach out from behind the trees and grab me.”
“Did ever any one hear the like!” ejaculated Marilla, who had listened
in dumb amazement. “Anne Shirley, do you mean to tell me you believe
all that wicked nonsense of your own imagination?”
“Not believe _exactly_,” faltered Anne. “At least, I don’t believe it
in daylight. But after dark, Marilla, it’s different. That is when
ghosts walk.”
“There are no such things as ghosts, Anne.”
“Oh, but there are, Marilla,” cried Anne eagerly. “I know people who
have seen them. And they are respectable people. Charlie Sloane says
that his grandmother saw his grandfather driving home the cows one
night after he’d been buried for a year. You know Charlie Sloane’s
grandmother wouldn’t tell a story for anything. She’s a very religious
woman. And Mrs. Thomas’ father was pursued home one night by a lamb of
fire with its head cut off hanging by a strip of skin. He said he knew
it was the spirit of his brother and that it was a warning he would die
within nine days. He didn’t, but he died two years after, so you see it
was really true. And Ruby Gillis says—”
“Anne Shirley,” interrupted Marilla firmly, “I never want to hear you
talking in this fashion again. I’ve had my doubts about that
imagination of yours right along, and if this is going to be the
outcome of it, I won’t countenance any such doings. You’ll go right
over to Barry’s, and you’ll go through that spruce grove, just for a
lesson and a warning to you. And never let me hear a word out of your
head about haunted woods again.”
Anne might plead and cry as she liked—and did, for her terror was very
real. Her imagination had run away with her and she held the spruce
grove in mortal dread after nightfall. But Marilla was inexorable. She
marched the shrinking ghostseer down to the spring and ordered her to
proceed straightway over the bridge and into the dusky retreats of
wailing ladies and headless spectres beyond.
“Oh, Marilla, how can you be so cruel?” sobbed Anne. “What would you
feel like if a white thing did snatch me up and carry me off?”
“I’ll risk it,” said Marilla unfeelingly. “You know I always mean what
I say. I’ll cure you of imagining ghosts into places. March, now.”
Anne marched. That is, she stumbled over the bridge and went shuddering
up the horrible dim path beyond. Anne never forgot that walk. Bitterly
did she repent the license she had given to her imagination. The
goblins of her fancy lurked in every shadow about her, reaching out
their cold, fleshless hands to grasp the terrified small girl who had
called them into being. A white strip of birch bark blowing up from the
hollow over the brown floor of the grove made her heart stand still.
The long-drawn wail of two old boughs rubbing against each other
brought out the perspiration in beads on her forehead. The swoop of
bats in the darkness over her was as the wings of unearthly creatures.
When she reached Mr. William Bell’s field she fled across it as if
pursued by an army of white things, and arrived at the Barry kitchen
door so out of breath that she could hardly gasp out her request for
the apron pattern. Diana was away so that she had no excuse to linger.
The dreadful return journey had to be faced. Anne went back over it
with shut eyes, preferring to take the risk of dashing her brains out
among the boughs to that of seeing a white thing. When she finally
stumbled over the log bridge she drew one long shivering breath of
relief.
“Well, so nothing caught you?” said Marilla unsympathetically.
“Oh, Mar—Marilla,” chattered Anne, “I’ll b-b-be cont-t-tented with
c-c-commonplace places after this.”