VANITY AND VEXATION OF SPIRIT
Marilla, walking home one late April evening from an Aid meeting,
realized that the winter was over and gone with the thrill of delight
that spring never fails to bring to the oldest and saddest as well as
to the youngest and merriest. Marilla was not given to subjective
analysis of her thoughts and feelings. She probably imagined that she
was thinking about the Aids and their missionary box and the new carpet
for the vestry-room, but under these reflections was a harmonious
consciousness of red fields smoking into pale-purply mists in the
declining sun, of long, sharp-pointed fir shadows falling over the
meadow beyond the brook, of still, crimson-budded maples around a
mirror-like wood-pool, of a wakening in the world and a stir of hidden
pulses under the gray sod. The spring was abroad in the land and
Marilla’s sober, middle-aged step was lighter and swifter because of
its deep, primal gladness.
Her eyes dwelt affectionately on Green Gables, peering through its
network of trees and reflecting the sunlight back from its windows in
several little coruscations of glory. Marilla, as she picked her steps
along the damp lane, thought that it was really a satisfaction to know
that she was going home to a briskly snapping wood fire and a table
nicely spread for tea, instead of to the cold comfort of old Aid
meeting evenings before Anne had come to Green Gables.
Consequently, when Marilla entered her kitchen and found the fire black
out, with no sign of Anne anywhere, she felt justly disappointed and
irritated. She had told Anne to be sure and have tea ready at five
o’clock, but now she must hurry to take off her second-best dress and
prepare the meal herself against Matthew’s return from ploughing.
“I’ll settle Miss Anne when she comes home,” said Marilla grimly, as
she shaved up kindlings with a carving knife and more vim than was
strictly necessary. Matthew had come in and was waiting patiently for
his tea in his corner. “She’s gadding off somewhere with Diana, writing
stories or practising dialogues or some such tomfoolery, and never
thinking once about the time or her duties. She’s just got to be pulled
up short and sudden on this sort of thing. I don’t care if Mrs. Allan
does say she’s the brightest and sweetest child she ever knew. She may
be bright and sweet enough, but her head is full of nonsense and
there’s never any knowing what shape it’ll break out in next. Just as
soon as she grows out of one freak she takes up with another. But
there! Here I am saying the very thing I was so riled with Rachel Lynde
for saying at the Aid to-day. I was real glad when Mrs. Allan spoke up
for Anne, for if she hadn’t I know I’d have said something too sharp to
Rachel before everybody. Anne’s got plenty of faults, goodness knows,
and far be it from me to deny it. But I’m bringing her up and not
Rachel Lynde, who’d pick faults in the Angel Gabriel himself if he
lived in Avonlea. Just the same, Anne has no business to leave the
house like this when I told her she was to stay home this afternoon and
look after things. I must say, with all her faults, I never found her
disobedient or untrustworthy before and I’m real sorry to find her so
now.”
“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew, who, being patient and wise and,
above all, hungry, had deemed it best to let Marilla talk her wrath out
unhindered, having learned by experience that she got through with
whatever work was on hand much quicker if not delayed by untimely
argument. “Perhaps you’re judging her too hasty, Marilla. Don’t call
her untrustworthy until you’re sure she has disobeyed you. Mebbe it can
all be explained—Anne’s a great hand at explaining.”
“She’s not here when I told her to stay,” retorted Marilla. “I reckon
she’ll find it hard to explain _that_ to my satisfaction. Of course I
knew you’d take her part, Matthew. But I’m bringing her up, not you.”
It was dark when supper was ready, and still no sign of Anne, coming
hurriedly over the log bridge or up Lovers’ Lane, breathless and
repentant with a sense of neglected duties. Marilla washed and put away
the dishes grimly. Then, wanting a candle to light her down cellar, she
went up to the east gable for the one that generally stood on Anne’s
table. Lighting it, she turned around to see Anne herself lying on the
bed, face downward among the pillows.
“Mercy on us,” said astonished Marilla, “have you been asleep, Anne?”
“No,” was the muffled reply.
“Are you sick then?” demanded Marilla anxiously, going over to the bed.
Anne cowered deeper into her pillows as if desirous of hiding herself
for ever from mortal eyes.
“No. But please, Marilla, go away and don’t look at me. I’m in the
depths of despair and I don’t care who gets head in class or writes the
best composition or sings in the Sunday-school choir any more. Little
things like that are of no importance now because I don’t suppose I’ll
ever be able to go anywhere again. My career is closed. Please,
Marilla, go away and don’t look at me.”
“Did any one ever hear the like?” the mystified Marilla wanted to know.
“Anne Shirley, whatever is the matter with you? What have you done? Get
right up this minute and tell me. This minute, I say. There now, what
is it?”
Anne had slid to the floor in despairing obedience.
“Look at my hair, Marilla,” she whispered.
Accordingly, Marilla lifted her candle and looked scrutinizingly at
Anne’s hair, flowing in heavy masses down her back. It certainly had a
very strange appearance.
“Anne Shirley, what have you done to your hair? Why, it’s _green!_”
Green it might be called, if it were any earthly colour—a queer, dull,
bronzy green, with streaks here and there of the original red to
heighten the ghastly effect. Never in all her life had Marilla seen
anything so grotesque as Anne’s hair at that moment.
“Yes, it’s green,” moaned Anne. “I thought nothing could be as bad as
red hair. But now I know it’s ten times worse to have green hair. Oh,
Marilla, you little know how utterly wretched I am.”
“I little know how you got into this fix, but I mean to find out,” said
Marilla. “Come right down to the kitchen—it’s too cold up here—and tell
me just what you’ve done. I’ve been expecting something queer for some
time. You haven’t got into any scrape for over two months, and I was
sure another one was due. Now, then, what did you do to your hair?”
“I dyed it.”
“Dyed it! Dyed your hair! Anne Shirley, didn’t you know it was a wicked
thing to do?”
“Yes, I knew it was a little wicked,” admitted Anne. “But I thought it
was worth while to be a little wicked to get rid of red hair. I counted
the cost, Marilla. Besides, I meant to be extra good in other ways to
make up for it.”
“Well,” said Marilla sarcastically, “if I’d decided it was worth while
to dye my hair I’d have dyed it a decent colour at least. I wouldn’t
have dyed it green.”
“But I didn’t mean to dye it green, Marilla,” protested Anne
dejectedly. “If I was wicked I meant to be wicked to some purpose. He
said it would turn my hair a beautiful raven black—he positively
assured me that it would. How could I doubt his word, Marilla? I know
what it feels like to have your word doubted. And Mrs. Allan says we
should never suspect any one of not telling us the truth unless we have
proof that they’re not. I have proof now—green hair is proof enough for
anybody. But I hadn’t then and I believed every word he said
_implicitly_.”
“Who said? Who are you talking about?”
“The pedlar that was here this afternoon. I bought the dye from him.”
“Anne Shirley, how often have I told you never to let one of those
Italians in the house! I don’t believe in encouraging them to come
around at all.”
“Oh, I didn’t let him in the house. I remembered what you told me, and
I went out, carefully shut the door, and looked at his things on the
step. Besides, he wasn’t an Italian—he was a German Jew. He had a big
box full of very interesting things and he told me he was working hard
to make enough money to bring his wife and children out from Germany.
He spoke so feelingly about them that it touched my heart. I wanted to
buy something from him to help him in such a worthy object. Then all at
once I saw the bottle of hair dye. The pedlar said it was warranted to
dye any hair a beautiful raven black and wouldn’t wash off. In a trice
I saw myself with beautiful raven black hair and the temptation was
irresistible. But the price of the bottle was seventy-five cents and I
had only fifty cents left out of my chicken money. I think the pedlar
had a very kind heart, for he said that, seeing it was me, he’d sell it
for fifty cents and that was just giving it away. So I bought it, and
as soon as he had gone I came up here and applied it with an old
hair-brush as the directions said. I used up the whole bottle, and oh,
Marilla, when I saw the dreadful colour it turned my hair I repented of
being wicked, I can tell you. And I’ve been repenting ever since.”
“Well, I hope you’ll repent to good purpose,” said Marilla severely,
“and that you’ve got your eyes opened to where your vanity has led you,
Anne. Goodness knows what’s to be done. I suppose the first thing is to
give your hair a good washing and see if that will do any good.”
Accordingly, Anne washed her hair, scrubbing it vigorously with soap
and water, but for all the difference it made she might as well have
been scouring its original red. The pedlar had certainly spoken the
truth when he declared that the dye wouldn’t wash off, however his
veracity might be impeached in other respects.
“Oh, Marilla, what shall I do?” questioned Anne in tears. “I can never
live this down. People have pretty well forgotten my other mistakes—the
liniment cake and setting Diana drunk and flying into a temper with
Mrs. Lynde. But they’ll never forget this. They will think I am not
respectable. Oh, Marilla, ‘what a tangled web we weave when first we
practise to deceive.’ That is poetry, but it is true. And oh, how Josie
Pye will laugh! Marilla, I _cannot_ face Josie Pye. I am the unhappiest
girl in Prince Edward Island.”
Anne’s unhappiness continued for a week. During that time she went
nowhere and shampooed her hair every day. Diana alone of outsiders knew
the fatal secret, but she promised solemnly never to tell, and it may
be stated here and now that she kept her word. At the end of the week
Marilla said decidedly:
“It’s no use, Anne. That is fast dye if ever there was any. Your hair
must be cut off; there is no other way. You can’t go out with it
looking like that.”
Anne’s lips quivered, but she realized the bitter truth of Marilla’s
remarks. With a dismal sigh she went for the scissors.
“Please cut it off at once, Marilla, and have it over. Oh, I feel that
my heart is broken. This is such an unromantic affliction. The girls in
books lose their hair in fevers or sell it to get money for some good
deed, and I’m sure I wouldn’t mind losing my hair in some such fashion
half so much. But there is nothing comforting in having your hair cut
off because you’ve dyed it a dreadful colour, is there? I’m going to
weep all the time you’re cutting it off, if it won’t interfere. It
seems such a tragic thing.”
Anne wept then, but later on, when she went up-stairs and looked in the
glass, she was calm with despair. Marilla had done her work thoroughly
and it had been necessary to shingle the hair as closely as possible.
The result was not becoming, to state the case as mildly as may be.
Anne promptly turned her glass to the wall.
“I’ll never, never look at myself again until my hair grows,” she
exclaimed passionately.
Then she suddenly righted the glass.
“Yes, I will, too. I’d do penance for being wicked that way. I’ll look
at myself every time I come to my room and see how ugly I am. And I
won’t try to imagine it away, either. I never thought I was vain about
my hair, of all things, but now I know I was, in spite of its being
red, because it was so long and thick and curly. I expect something
will happen to my nose next.”
Anne’s clipped head made a sensation in school on the following Monday,
but to her relief nobody guessed the real reason for it, not even Josie
Pye, who, however, did not fail to inform Anne that she looked like a
perfect scarecrow.
“I didn’t say anything when Josie said that to me,” Anne confided that
evening to Marilla, who was lying on the sofa after one of her
headaches, “because I thought it was part of my punishment and I ought
to bear it patiently. It’s hard to be told you look like a scarecrow
and I wanted to say something back. But I didn’t. I just swept her one
scornful look and then I forgave her. It makes you feel very virtuous
when you forgive people, doesn’t it? I mean to devote all my energies
to being good after this and I shall never try to be beautiful again.
Of course it’s better to be good. I know it is, but it’s sometimes so
hard to believe a thing even when you know it. I do really want to be
good, Marilla, like you and Mrs. Allan and Miss Stacy, and grow up to
be a credit to you. Diana says when my hair begins to grow to tie a
black velvet ribbon around my head with a bow at one side. She says she
thinks it will be very becoming. I will call it a snood—that sounds so
romantic. But am I talking too much, Marilla? Does it hurt your head?”
“My head is better now. It was terrible bad this afternoon, though.
These headaches of mine are getting worse and worse. I’ll have to see a
doctor about them. As for your chatter, I don’t know that I mind
it—I’ve got so used to it.”
Which was Marilla’s way of saying that she liked to hear it.