to make sure that Uncle Abe’s prediction was not coming true. Finally
the morning dawned pearly and lustrous in a sky full of silver sheen
and radiance, and the wonderful day had arrived.
Diana appeared soon after breakfast, with a basket of flowers over one
arm and _her_ muslin dress over the other . . . for it would not do to
don it until all the dinner preparations were completed. Meanwhile she
wore her afternoon pink print and a lawn apron fearfully and
wonderfully ruffled and frilled; and very neat and pretty and rosy she
was.
“You look simply sweet,” said Anne admiringly.
Diana sighed.
“But I’ve had to let out every one of my dresses _again_. I weigh four
pounds more than I did in July. Anne, _where_ will this end? Mrs.
Morgan’s heroines are all tall and slender.”
“Well, let’s forget our troubles and think of our mercies,” said Anne
gaily. “Mrs. Allan says that whenever we think of anything that is a
trial to us we should also think of something nice that we can set over
against it. If you are slightly too plump you’ve got the dearest
dimples; and if I have a freckled nose the _shape_ of it is all right.
Do you think the lemon juice did any good?”
“Yes, I really think it did,” said Diana critically; and, much elated,
Anne led the way to the garden, which was full of airy shadows and
wavering golden lights.
“We’ll decorate the parlor first. We have plenty of time, for Priscilla
said they’d be here about twelve or half past at the latest, so we’ll
have dinner at one.”
There may have been two happier and more excited girls somewhere in
Canada or the United States at that moment, but I doubt it. Every snip
of the scissors, as rose and peony and bluebell fell, seemed to chirp,
“Mrs. Morgan is coming today.” Anne wondered how Mr. Harrison _could_
go on placidly mowing hay in the field across the lane, just as if
nothing were going to happen.
The parlor at Green Gables was a rather severe and gloomy apartment,
with rigid horsehair furniture, stiff lace curtains, and white
antimacassars that were always laid at a perfectly correct angle,
except at such times as they clung to unfortunate people’s buttons.
Even Anne had never been able to infuse much grace into it, for Marilla
would not permit any alterations. But it is wonderful what flowers can
accomplish if you give them a fair chance; when Anne and Diana finished
with the room you would not have recognized it.
A great blue bowlful of snowballs overflowed on the polished table. The
shining black mantelpiece was heaped with roses and ferns. Every shelf
of the what-not held a sheaf of bluebells; the dark corners on either
side of the grate were lighted up with jars full of glowing crimson
peonies, and the grate itself was aflame with yellow poppies. All this
splendor and color, mingled with the sunshine falling through the
honeysuckle vines at the windows in a leafy riot of dancing shadows
over walls and floor, made of the usually dismal little room the
veritable “bower” of Anne’s imagination, and even extorted a tribute of
admiration from Marilla, who came in to criticize and remained to
praise.
“Now, we must set the table,” said Anne, in the tone of a priestess
about to perform some sacred rite in honor of a divinity. “We’ll have a
big vaseful of wild roses in the center and one single rose in front of
everybody’s plate—and a special bouquet of rosebuds only by Mrs.
Morgan’s—an allusion to ‘The Rosebud Garden’ you know.”
The table was set in the sitting room, with Marilla’s finest linen and
the best china, glass, and silver. You may be perfectly certain that
every article placed on it was polished or scoured to the highest
possible perfection of gloss and glitter.
Then the girls tripped out to the kitchen, which was filled with
appetizing odors emanating from the oven, where the chickens were
already sizzling splendidly. Anne prepared the potatoes and Diana got
the peas and beans ready. Then, while Diana shut herself into the
pantry to compound the lettuce salad, Anne, whose cheeks were already
beginning to glow crimson, as much with excitement as from the heat of
the fire, prepared the bread sauce for the chickens, minced her onions
for the soup, and finally whipped the cream for her lemon pies.
And what about Davy all this time? Was he redeeming his promise to be
good? He was, indeed. To be sure, he insisted on remaining in the
kitchen, for his curiosity wanted to see all that went on. But as he
sat quietly in a corner, busily engaged in untying the knots in a piece
of herring net he had brought home from his last trip to the shore,
nobody objected to this.
At half past eleven the lettuce salad was made, the golden circles of
the pies were heaped with whipped cream, and everything was sizzling
and bubbling that ought to sizzle and bubble.
“We’d better go and dress now,” said Anne, “for they may be here by
twelve. We must have dinner at sharp one, for the soup must be served
as soon as it’s done.”
Serious indeed were the toilet rites presently performed in the east
gable. Anne peered anxiously at her nose and rejoiced to see that its
freckles were not at all prominent, thanks either to the lemon juice or
to the unusual flush on her cheeks. When they were ready they looked
quite as sweet and trim and girlish as ever did any of “Mrs. Morgan’s
heroines.”
“I do hope I’ll be able to say something once in a while, and not sit
like a mute,” said Diana anxiously. “All Mrs. Morgan’s heroines
converse so beautifully. But I’m afraid I’ll be tongue-tied and stupid.
And I’ll be sure to say ‘I seen.’ I haven’t often said it since Miss
Stacy taught here; but in moments of excitement it’s sure to pop out.
Anne, if I were to say ‘I seen’ before Mrs. Morgan I’d die of
mortification. And it would be almost as bad to have nothing to say.”
“I’m nervous about a good many things,” said Anne, “but I don’t think
there is much fear that I won’t be able to _talk_.”
And, to do her justice, there wasn’t.
Anne shrouded her muslin glories in a big apron and went down to
concoct her soup. Marilla had dressed herself and the twins, and looked
more excited than she had ever been known to look before. At half past
twelve the Allans and Miss Stacy came. Everything was going well but
Anne was beginning to feel nervous. It was surely time for Priscilla
and Mrs. Morgan to arrive. She made frequent trips to the gate and
looked as anxiously down the lane as ever her namesake in the Bluebeard
story peered from the tower casement.
“Suppose they don’t come at all?” she said piteously.
“Don’t suppose it. It would be too mean,” said Diana, who, however, was
beginning to have uncomfortable misgivings on the subject.
“Anne,” said Marilla, coming out from the parlor, “Miss Stacy wants to
see Miss Barry’s willowware platter.”
Anne hastened to the sitting room closet to get the platter. She had,
in accordance with her promise to Mrs. Lynde, written to Miss Barry of
Charlottetown, asking for the loan of it. Miss Barry was an old friend
of Anne’s, and she promptly sent the platter out, with a letter
exhorting Anne to be very careful of it, for she had paid twenty
dollars for it. The platter had served its purpose at the Aid bazaar
and had then been returned to the Green Gables closet, for Anne would
not trust anybody but herself to take it back to town.
She carried the platter carefully to the front door where her guests
were enjoying the cool breeze that blew up from the brook. It was
examined and admired; then, just as Anne had taken it back into her own
hands, a terrific crash and clatter sounded from the kitchen pantry.
Marilla, Diana, and Anne fled out, the latter pausing only long enough
to set the precious platter hastily down on the second step of the
stairs.
When they reached the pantry a truly harrowing spectacle met their eyes
. . . a guilty looking small boy scrambling down from the table, with
his clean print blouse liberally plastered with yellow filling, and on
the table the shattered remnants of what had been two brave, becreamed
lemon pies.
Davy had finished ravelling out his herring net and had wound the twine
into a ball. Then he had gone into the pantry to put it up on the shelf
above the table, where he already kept a score or so of similar balls,
which, so far as could be discovered, served no useful purpose save to
yield the joy of possession. Davy had to climb on the table and reach
over to the shelf at a dangerous angle . . . something he had been
forbidden by Marilla to do, as he had come to grief once before in the
experiment. The result in this instance was disastrous. Davy slipped
and came sprawling squarely down on the lemon pies. His clean blouse
was ruined for that time and the pies for all time. It is, however, an
ill wind that blows nobody good, and the pig was eventually the gainer
by Davy’s mischance.
“Davy Keith,” said Marilla, shaking him by the shoulder, “didn’t I
forbid you to climb up on that table again? Didn’t I?”
“I forgot,” whimpered Davy. “You’ve told me not to do such an awful lot
of things that I can’t remember them all.”
“Well, you march upstairs and stay there till after dinner. Perhaps
you’ll get them sorted out in your memory by that time. No, Anne, never
you mind interceding for him. I’m not punishing him because he spoiled
your pies . . . that was an accident. I’m punishing him for his
disobedience. Go, Davy, I say.”
“Ain’t I to have any dinner?” wailed Davy.
“You can come down after dinner is over and have yours in the kitchen.”
“Oh, all right,” said Davy, somewhat comforted. “I know Anne’ll save
some nice bones for me, won’t you, Anne? ’Cause you know I didn’t mean
to fall on the pies. Say, Anne, since they _are_ spoiled can’t I take
some of the pieces upstairs with me?”
“No, no lemon pie for you, Master Davy,” said Marilla, pushing him
toward the hall.
“What shall we do for dessert?” asked Anne, looking regretfully at the
wreck and ruin.
“Get out a crock of strawberry preserves,” said Marilla consolingly.
“There’s plenty of whipped cream left in the bowl for it.”
One o’clock came . . . but no Priscilla or Mrs. Morgan. Anne was in an
agony. Everything was done to a turn and the soup was just what soup
should be, but couldn’t be depended on to remain so for any length of
time.
“I don’t believe they’re coming after all,” said Marilla crossly.
Anne and Diana sought comfort in each other’s eyes.
At half past one Marilla again emerged from the parlor.
“Girls, we _must_ have dinner. Everybody is hungry and it’s no use
waiting any longer. Priscilla and Mrs. Morgan are not coming, that’s
plain, and nothing is being improved by waiting.”
Anne and Diana set about lifting the dinner, with all the zest gone out
of the performance.
“I don’t believe I’ll be able to eat a mouthful,” said Diana dolefully.
“Nor I. But I hope everything will be nice for Miss Stacy’s and Mr. and
Mrs. Allan’s sakes,” said Anne listlessly.
When Diana dished the peas she tasted them and a very peculiar
expression crossed her face.
“Anne, did _you_ put sugar in these peas?”
“Yes,” said Anne, mashing the potatoes with the air of one expected to
do her duty. “I put a spoonful of sugar in. We always do. Don’t you
like it?”
“But _I_ put a spoonful in too, when I set them on the stove,” said
Diana.
Anne dropped her masher and tasted the peas also. Then she made a
grimace.
“How awful! I never dreamed you had put sugar in, because I knew your
mother never does. I happened to think of it, for a wonder . . . I’m
always forgetting it . . . so I popped a spoonful in.”
“It’s a case of too many cooks, I guess,” said Marilla, who had
listened to this dialogue with a rather guilty expression. “I didn’t
think you’d remember about the sugar, Anne, for I’m perfectly certain
you never did before . . . so _I_ put in a spoonful.”
The guests in the parlor heard peal after peal of laughter from the
kitchen, but they never knew what the fun was about. There were no
green peas on the dinner table that day, however.
“Well,” said Anne, sobering down again with a sigh of recollection, “we
have the salad anyhow and I don’t think anything has happened to the
beans. Let’s carry the things in and get it over.”
It cannot be said that that dinner was a notable success socially. The
Allans and Miss Stacy exerted themselves to save the situation and
Marilla’s customary placidity was not noticeably ruffled. But Anne and
Diana, between their disappointment and the reaction from their
excitement of the forenoon, could neither talk nor eat. Anne tried
heroically to bear her part in the conversation for the sake of her
guests; but all the sparkle had been quenched in her for the time
being, and, in spite of her love for the Allans and Miss Stacy, she
couldn’t help thinking how nice it would be when everybody had gone
home and she could bury her weariness and disappointment in the pillows
of the east gable.
There is an old proverb that really seems at times to be inspired . . .
“it never rains but it pours.” The measure of that day’s tribulations
was not yet full. Just as Mr. Allan had finished returning thanks there
arose a strange, ominous sound on the stairs, as of some hard, heavy
object bounding from step to step, finishing up with a grand smash at
the bottom. Everybody ran out into the hall. Anne gave a shriek of
dismay.
At the bottom of the stairs lay a big pink conch shell amid the
fragments of what had been Miss Barry’s platter; and at the top of the
stairs knelt a terrified Davy, gazing down with wide-open eyes at the
havoc.
“Davy,” said Marilla ominously, “did you throw that conch down _on
purpose?_”
“No, I never did,” whimpered Davy. “I was just kneeling here, quiet as
quiet, to watch you folks through the bannisters, and my foot struck
that old thing and pushed it off . . . and I’m awful hungry . . . and I
do wish you’d lick a fellow and have done with it, instead of always
sending him upstairs to miss all the fun.”
“Don’t blame Davy,” said Anne, gathering up the fragments with
trembling fingers. “It was my fault. I set that platter there and
forgot all about it. I am properly punished for my carelessness; but
oh, what will Miss Barry say?”
“Well, you know she only bought it, so it isn’t the same as if it was
an heirloom,” said Diana, trying to console.
The guests went away soon after, feeling that it was the most tactful
thing to do, and Anne and Diana washed the dishes, talking less than
they had ever been known to do before. Then Diana went home with a
headache and Anne went with another to the east gable, where she stayed
until Marilla came home from the post office at sunset, with a letter
from Priscilla, written the day before. Mrs. Morgan had sprained her
ankle so severely that she could not leave her room.
“And oh, Anne dear,” wrote Priscilla, “I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid we
won’t get up to Green Gables at all now, for by the time Aunty’s ankle
is well she will have to go back to Toronto. She has to be there by a
certain date.”
“Well,” sighed Anne, laying the letter down on the red sandstone step
of the back porch, where she was sitting, while the twilight rained
down out of a dappled sky, “I always thought it was too good to be true
that Mrs. Morgan should really come. But there . . . that speech sounds
as pessimistic as Miss Eliza Andrews and I’m ashamed of making it.
After all, it was _not_ too good to be true . . . things just as good
and far better are coming true for me all the time. And I suppose the
events of today have a funny side too. Perhaps when Diana and I are old
and gray we shall be able to laugh over them. But I feel that I can’t
expect to do it before then, for it has truly been a bitter
disappointment.”
“You’ll probably have a good many more and worse disappointments than
that before you get through life,” said Marilla, who honestly thought
she was making a comforting speech. “It seems to me, Anne, that you are
never going to outgrow your fashion of setting your heart so on things
and then crashing down into despair because you don’t get them.”
“I know I’m too much inclined that, way” agreed Anne ruefully. “When I
think something nice is going to happen I seem to fly right up on the
wings of anticipation; and then the first thing I realize I drop down
to earth with a thud. But really, Marilla, the flying part _is_
glorious as long as it lasts . . . it’s like soaring through a sunset.
I think it almost pays for the thud.”
“Well, maybe it does,” admitted Marilla. “I’d rather walk calmly along
and do without both flying and thud. But everybody has her own way of
living . . . I used to think there was only one right way . . . but
since I’ve had you and the twins to bring up I don’t feel so sure of
it. What are you going to do about Miss Barry’s platter?”
“Pay her back the twenty dollars she paid for it, I suppose. I’m so
thankful it wasn’t a cherished heirloom because then no money could
replace it.”
“Maybe you could find one like it somewhere and buy it for her.”
“I’m afraid not. Platters as old as that are very scarce. Mrs. Lynde
couldn’t find one anywhere for the supper. I only wish I could, for of
course Miss Barry would just as soon have one platter as another, if
both were equally old and genuine. Marilla, look at that big star over
Mr. Harrison’s maple grove, with all that holy hush of silvery sky
about it. It gives me a feeling that is like a prayer. After all, when
one can see stars and skies like that, little disappointments and
accidents can’t matter so much, can they?”
“Where’s Davy?” said Marilla, with an indifferent glance at the star.
“In bed. I’ve promised to take him and Dora to the shore for a picnic
tomorrow. Of course, the original agreement was that he must be good.
But he _tried_ to be good . . . and I hadn’t the heart to disappoint
him.”
“You’ll drown yourself or the twins, rowing about the pond in that
flat,” grumbled Marilla. “I’ve lived here for sixty years and I’ve
never been on the pond yet.”
“Well, it’s never too late to mend,” said Anne roguishly. “Suppose you
come with us tomorrow. We’ll shut Green Gables up and spend the whole
day at the shore, daffing the world aside.”
“No, thank you,” said Marilla, with indignant emphasis. “I’d be a nice
sight, wouldn’t I, rowing down the pond in a flat? I think I hear
Rachel pronouncing on it. There’s Mr. Harrison driving away somewhere.
Do you suppose there is any truth in the gossip that Mr. Harrison is
going to see Isabella Andrews?”
“No, I’m sure there isn’t. He just called there one evening on business
with Mr. Harmon Andrews and Mrs. Lynde saw him and said she knew he was
courting because he had a white collar on. I don’t believe Mr. Harrison
will ever marry. He seems to have a prejudice against marriage.”
“Well, you can never tell about those old bachelors. And if he had a
white collar on I’d agree with Rachel that it looks suspicious, for I’m
sure he never was seen with one before.”
“I think he only put it on because he wanted to conclude a business
deal with Harmon Andrews,” said Anne. “I’ve heard him say that’s the
only time a man needs to be particular about his appearance, because if
he looks prosperous the party of the second part won’t be so likely to
try to cheat him. I really feel sorry for Mr. Harrison; I don’t believe
he feels satisfied with his life. It must be very lonely to have no one
to care about except a parrot, don’t you think? But I notice Mr.
Harrison doesn’t like to be pitied. Nobody does, I imagine.”
“There’s Gilbert coming up the lane,” said Marilla. “If he wants you to
go for a row on the pond mind you put on your coat and rubbers. There’s
a heavy dew tonight.”
XVIII
An Adventure on the Tory Road
“Anne,” said Davy, sitting up in bed and propping his chin on his
hands, “Anne, where is sleep? People go to sleep every night, and of
course I know it’s the place where I do the things I dream, but I want
to know _where_ it is and how I get there and back without knowing
anything about it . . . and in my nighty too. Where is it?”
Anne was kneeling at the west gable window watching the sunset sky that
was like a great flower with petals of crocus and a heart of fiery
yellow. She turned her head at Davy’s question and answered dreamily,
“‘Over the mountains of the moon,
Down the valley of the shadow.’”
Paul Irving would have known the meaning of this, or made a meaning out
of it for himself, if he didn’t; but practical Davy, who, as Anne often
despairingly remarked, hadn’t a particle of imagination, was only
puzzled and disgusted.
“Anne, I believe you’re just talking nonsense.”
“Of course, I was, dear boy. Don’t you know that it is only very
foolish folk who talk sense all the time?”
“Well, I think you might give a sensible answer when I ask a sensible
question,” said Davy in an injured tone.
“Oh, you are too little to understand,” said Anne. But she felt rather
ashamed of saying it; for had she not, in keen remembrance of many
similar snubs administered in her own early years, solemnly vowed that
she would never tell any child it was too little to understand? Yet
here she was doing it . . . so wide sometimes is the gulf between
theory and practice.
“Well, I’m doing my best to grow,” said Davy, “but it’s a thing you
can’t hurry much. If Marilla wasn’t so stingy with her jam I believe
I’d grow a lot faster.”
“Marilla is not stingy, Davy,” said Anne severely. “It is very
ungrateful of you to say such a thing.”
“There’s another word that means the same thing and sounds a lot
better, but I don’t just remember it,” said Davy, frowning intently. “I
heard Marilla say she was it, herself, the other day.”
“If you mean _economical_, it’s a _very_ different thing from being
stingy. It is an excellent trait in a person if she is economical. If
Marilla had been stingy she wouldn’t have taken you and Dora when your
mother died. Would you have liked to live with Mrs. Wiggins?”
“You just bet I wouldn’t!” Davy was emphatic on that point. “Nor I
don’t want to go out to Uncle Richard neither. I’d far rather live
here, even if Marilla is that long-tailed word when it comes to jam,
’cause _you’re_ here, Anne. Say, Anne, won’t you tell me a story ’fore
I go to sleep? I don’t want a fairy story. They’re all right for girls,
I s’pose, but I want something exciting . . . lots of killing and
shooting in it, and a house on fire, and in’trusting things like that.”
Fortunately for Anne, Marilla called out at this moment from her room.
“Anne, Diana’s signaling at a great rate. You’d better see what she
wants.”
Anne ran to the east gable and saw flashes of light coming through the
twilight from Diana’s window in groups of five, which meant, according
to their old childish code, “Come over at once for I have something
important to reveal.” Anne threw her white shawl over her head and
hastened through the Haunted Wood and across Mr. Bell’s pasture corner
to Orchard Slope.
“I’ve good news for you, Anne,” said Diana. “Mother and I have just got
home from Carmody, and I saw Mary Sentner from Spencer vale in Mr.
Blair’s store. She says the old Copp girls on the Tory Road have a
willow-ware platter and she thinks it’s exactly like the one we had at
the supper. She says they’ll likely sell it, for Martha Copp has never
been known to keep anything she _could_ sell; but if they won’t there’s
a platter at Wesley Keyson’s at Spencervale and she knows they’d sell
it, but she isn’t sure it’s just the same kind as Aunt Josephine’s.”
“I’ll go right over to Spencervale after it tomorrow,” said Anne
resolutely, “and you must come with me. It will be such a weight off my
mind, for I have to go to town day after tomorrow and how can I face
your Aunt Josephine without a willow-ware platter? It would be even
worse than the time I had to confess about jumping on the spare room
bed.”
Both girls laughed over the old memory . . . concerning which, if any
of my readers are ignorant and curious, I must refer them to Anne’s
earlier history.
The next afternoon the girls fared forth on their platter hunting
expedition. It was ten miles to Spencervale and the day was not
especially pleasant for traveling. It was very warm and windless, and
the dust on the road was such as might have been expected after six
weeks of dry weather.
“Oh, I do wish it would rain soon,” sighed Anne. “Everything is so
parched up. The poor fields just seem pitiful to me and the trees seem
to be stretching out their hands pleading for rain. As for my garden,
it hurts me every time I go into it. I suppose I shouldn’t complain
about a garden when the farmers’ crops are suffering so. Mr. Harrison
says his pastures are so scorched up that his poor cows can hardly get
a bite to eat and he feels guilty of cruelty to animals every time he
meets their eyes.”
After a wearisome drive the girls reached Spencervale and turned down
the “Tory” Road . . . a green, solitary highway where the strips of
grass between the wheel tracks bore evidence to lack of travel. Along
most of its extent it was lined with thick-set young spruces crowding
down to the roadway, with here and there a break where the back field
of a Spencervale farm came out to the fence or an expanse of stumps was
aflame with fireweed and goldenrod.
“Why is it called the Tory Road?” asked Anne.
“Mr. Allan says it is on the principle of calling a place a grove
because there are no trees in it,” said Diana, “for nobody lives along
the road except the Copp girls and old Martin Bovyer at the further
end, who is a Liberal. The Tory government ran the road through when
they were in power just to show they were doing something.”
Diana’s father was a Liberal, for which reason she and Anne never
discussed politics. Green Gables folk had always been Conservatives.
Finally the girls came to the old Copp homestead . . . a place of such
exceeding external neatness that even Green Gables would have suffered
by contrast. The house was a very old-fashioned one, situated on a
slope, which fact had necessitated the building of a stone basement
under one end. The house and out-buildings were all whitewashed to a
condition of blinding perfection and not a weed was visible in the prim
kitchen garden surrounded by its white paling.
“The shades are all down,” said Diana ruefully. “I believe that nobody
is home.”
This proved to be the case. The girls looked at each other in
perplexity.
“I don’t know what to do,” said Anne. “If I were sure the platter was
the right kind I would not mind waiting until they came home. But if it
isn’t it may be too late to go to Wesley Keyson’s afterward.”
Diana looked at a certain little square window over the basement.
“That is the pantry window, I feel sure,” she said, “because this house
is just like Uncle Charles’ at Newbridge, and that is their pantry
window. The shade isn’t down, so if we climbed up on the roof of that
little house we could look into the pantry and might be able to see the
platter. Do you think it would be any harm?”
“No, I don’t think so,” decided Anne, after due reflection, “since our
motive is not idle curiosity.”
This important point of ethics being settled, Anne prepared to mount
the aforesaid “little house,” a construction of laths, with a peaked
roof, which had in times past served as a habitation for ducks. The
Copp girls had given up keeping ducks . . . “because they were such
untidy birds”. . . and the house had not been in use for some years,
save as an abode of correction for setting hens. Although scrupulously
whitewashed it had become somewhat shaky, and Anne felt rather dubious
as she scrambled up from the vantage point of a keg placed on a box.
“I’m afraid it won’t bear my weight,” she said as she gingerly stepped
on the roof.
“Lean on the window sill,” advised Diana, and Anne accordingly leaned.
Much to her delight, she saw, as she peered through the pane, a
willow-ware platter, exactly such as she was in quest of, on the shelf
in front of the window. So much she saw before the catastrophe came. In
her joy Anne forgot the precarious nature of her footing, incautiously
ceased to lean on the window sill, gave an impulsive little hop of
pleasure . . . and the next moment she had crashed through the roof up
to her armpits, and there she hung, quite unable to extricate herself.
Diana dashed into the duck house and, seizing her unfortunate friend by
the waist, tried to draw her down.
“Ow . . . don’t,” shrieked poor Anne. “There are some long splinters
sticking into me. See if you can put something under my feet . . . then
perhaps I can draw myself up.”
Diana hastily dragged in the previously mentioned keg and Anne found
that it was just sufficiently high to furnish a secure resting place
for her feet. But she could not release herself.
“Could I pull you out if I crawled up?” suggested Diana.
Anne shook her head hopelessly.
“No . . . the splinters hurt too badly. If you can find an axe you
might chop me out, though. Oh dear, I do really begin to believe that I
_was_ born under an ill-omened star.”
Diana searched faithfully but no axe was to be found.
“I’ll have to go for help,” she said, returning to the prisoner.
“No, indeed, you won’t,” said Anne vehemently. “If you do the story of
this will get out everywhere and I shall be ashamed to show my face.
No, we must just wait until the Copp girls come home and bind them to
secrecy. They’ll know where the axe is and get me out. I’m not
uncomfortable, as long as I keep perfectly still . . . not
uncomfortable in _body_ I mean. I wonder what the Copp girls value this
house at. I shall have to pay for the damage I’ve done, but I wouldn’t
mind that if I were only sure they would understand my motive in
peeping in at their pantry window. My sole comfort is that the platter
is just the kind I want and if Miss Copp will only sell it to me I
shall be resigned to what has happened.”
“What if the Copp girls don’t come home until after night . . . or till
tomorrow?” suggested Diana.
“If they’re not back by sunset you’ll have to go for other assistance,
I suppose,” said Anne reluctantly, “but you mustn’t go until you really
have to. Oh dear, this is a dreadful predicament. I wouldn’t mind my
misfortunes so much if they were romantic, as Mrs. Morgan’s heroines’
always are, but they are always just simply ridiculous. Fancy what the
Copp girls will think when they drive into their yard and see a girl’s
head and shoulders sticking out of the roof of one of their outhouses.
Listen . . . is that a wagon? No, Diana, I believe it is thunder.”
Thunder it was undoubtedly, and Diana, having made a hasty pilgrimage
around the house, returned to announce that a very black cloud was
rising rapidly in the northwest.
“I believe we’re going to have a heavy thunder-shower,” she exclaimed
in dismay, “Oh, Anne, what will we do?”
“We must prepare for it,” said Anne tranquilly. A thunderstorm seemed a
trifle in comparison with what had already happened. “You’d better
drive the horse and buggy into that open shed. Fortunately my parasol
is in the buggy. Here . . . take my hat with you. Marilla told me I was
a goose to put on my best hat to come to the Tory Road and she was
right, as she always is.”
Diana untied the pony and drove into the shed, just as the first heavy
drops of rain fell. There she sat and watched the resulting downpour,
which was so thick and heavy that she could hardly see Anne through it,
holding the parasol bravely over her bare head. There was not a great
deal of thunder, but for the best part of an hour the rain came merrily
down. Occasionally Anne slanted back her parasol and waved an
encouraging hand to her friend; But conversation at that distance was
quite out of the question. Finally the rain ceased, the sun came out,
and Diana ventured across the puddles of the yard.
“Did you get very wet?” she asked anxiously.
“Oh, no,” returned Anne cheerfully. “My head and shoulders are quite
dry and my skirt is only a little damp where the rain beat through the
laths. Don’t pity me, Diana, for I haven’t minded it at all. I kept
thinking how much good the rain will do and how glad my garden must be
for it, and imagining what the flowers and buds would think when the
drops began to fall. I imagined out a most interesting dialogue between
the asters and the sweet peas and the wild canaries in the lilac bush
and the guardian spirit of the garden. When I go home I mean to write
it down. I wish I had a pencil and paper to do it now, because I
daresay I’ll forget the best parts before I reach home.”
Diana the faithful had a pencil and discovered a sheet of wrapping
paper in the box of the buggy. Anne folded up her dripping parasol, put
on her hat, spread the wrapping paper on a shingle Diana handed up, and
wrote out her garden idyl under conditions that could hardly be
considered as favorable to literature. Nevertheless, the result was
quite pretty, and Diana was “enraptured” when Anne read it to her.
“Oh, Anne, it’s sweet . . . just sweet. _Do_ send it to the _Canadian
Woman_.”
Anne shook her head.
“Oh, no, it wouldn’t be suitable at all. There is no _plot_ in it, you
see. It’s just a string of fancies. I like writing such things, but of
course nothing of the sort would ever do for publication, for editors
insist on plots, so Priscilla says. Oh, there’s Miss Sarah Copp now.
_Please_, Diana, go and explain.”
Miss Sarah Copp was a small person, garbed in shabby black, with a hat
chosen less for vain adornment than for qualities that would wear well.
She looked as amazed as might be expected on seeing the curious tableau
in her yard, but when she heard Diana’s explanation she was all
sympathy. She hurriedly unlocked the back door, produced the axe, and
with a few skillfull blows set Anne free. The latter, somewhat tired
and stiff, ducked down into the interior of her prison and thankfully
emerged into liberty once more.
“Miss Copp,” she said earnestly. “I assure you I looked into your
pantry window _only_ to discover if you had a willow-ware platter. I
didn’t see anything else—I didn’t _look_ for anything else.”
“Bless you, that’s all right,” said Miss Sarah amiably. “You needn’t
worry—there’s no harm done. Thank goodness, we Copps keep our pantries
presentable at all times and don’t care who sees into them. As for that
old duckhouse, I’m glad it’s smashed, for maybe now Martha will agree
to having it taken down. She never would before for fear it might come
in handy sometime and I’ve had to whitewash it every spring. But you
might as well argue with a post as with Martha. She went to town
today—I drove her to the station. And you want to buy my platter. Well,
what will you give for it?”
“Twenty dollars,” said Anne, who was never meant to match business wits
with a Copp, or she would not have offered her price at the start.
“Well, I’ll see,” said Miss Sarah cautiously. “That platter is mine
fortunately, or I’d never dare to sell it when Martha wasn’t here. As
it is, I daresay she’ll raise a fuss. Martha’s the boss of this
establishment I can tell you. I’m getting awful tired of living under
another woman’s thumb. But come in, come in. You must be real tired and
hungry. I’ll do the best I can for you in the way of tea but I warn you
not to expect anything but bread and butter and some cowcumbers. Martha
locked up all the cake and cheese and preserves afore she went. She
always does, because she says I’m too extravagant with them if company
comes.”
The girls were hungry enough to do justice to any fare, and they
enjoyed Miss Sarah’s excellent bread and butter and “cowcumbers”
thoroughly. When the meal was over Miss Sarah said,
“I don’t know as I mind selling the platter. But it’s worth twenty-five
dollars. It’s a very old platter.”
Diana gave Anne’s foot a gentle kick under the table, meaning, “Don’t
agree—she’ll let it go for twenty if you hold out.” But Anne was not
minded to take any chances in regard to that precious platter. She
promptly agreed to give twenty-five and Miss Sarah looked as if she
felt sorry she hadn’t asked for thirty.
“Well, I guess you may have it. I want all the money I can scare up
just now. The fact is—” Miss Sarah threw up her head importantly, with
a proud flush on her thin cheeks—“I’m going to be married—to Luther
Wallace. He wanted me twenty years ago. I liked him real well but he
was poor then and father packed him off. I s’pose I shouldn’t have let
him go so meek but I was timid and frightened of father. Besides, I
didn’t know men were so skurse.”
When the girls were safely away, Diana driving and Anne holding the
coveted platter carefully on her lap, the green, rain-freshened
solitudes of the Tory Road were enlivened by ripples of girlish
laughter.
“I’ll amuse your Aunt Josephine with the ‘strange eventful history’ of
this afternoon when I go to town tomorrow. We’ve had a rather trying
time but it’s over now. I’ve got the platter, and that rain has laid
the dust beautifully. So ‘all’s well that ends well.’”
“We’re not home yet,” said Diana rather pessimistically, “and there’s
no telling what may happen before we are. You’re such a girl to have
adventures, Anne.”
“Having adventures comes natural to some people,” said Anne serenely.
“You just have a gift for them or you haven’t.”
XIX
Just a Happy Day
“After all,” Anne had said to Marilla once, “I believe the nicest and
sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or
wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little
pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a
string.”
Life at Green Gables was full of just such days, for Anne’s adventures
and misadventures, like those of other people, did not all happen at
once, but were sprinkled over the year, with long stretches of
harmless, happy days between, filled with work and dreams and laughter
and lessons. Such a day came late in August. In the forenoon Anne and
Diana rowed the delighted twins down the pond to the sandshore to pick
“sweet grass” and paddle in the surf, over which the wind was harping
an old lyric learned when the world was young.
In the afternoon Anne walked down to the old Irving place to see Paul.
She found him stretched out on the grassy bank beside the thick fir
grove that sheltered the house on the north, absorbed in a book of
fairy tales. He sprang up radiantly at sight of her.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come, teacher,” he said eagerly, “because
Grandma’s away. You’ll stay and have tea with me, won’t you? It’s so
lonesome to have tea all by oneself. _You_ know, teacher. I’ve had
serious thoughts of asking Young Mary Joe to sit down and eat her tea
with me, but I expect Grandma wouldn’t approve. She says the French
have to be kept in their place. And anyhow, it’s difficult to talk with
Young Mary Joe. She just laughs and says, ‘Well, yous do beat all de
kids I ever knowed.’ That isn’t my idea of conversation.”
“Of course I’ll stay to tea,” said Anne gaily. “I was dying to be
asked. My mouth has been watering for some more of your grandma’s
delicious shortbread ever since I had tea here before.”
Paul looked very sober.
“If it depended on me, teacher,” he said, standing before Anne with his
hands in his pockets and his beautiful little face shadowed with sudden
care, “You should have shortbread with a right good will. But it
depends on Mary Joe. I heard Grandma tell her before she left that she
wasn’t to give me any shortcake because it was too rich for little
boys’ stomachs. But maybe Mary Joe will cut some for you if I promise I
won’t eat any. Let us hope for the best.”
“Yes, let us,” agreed Anne, whom this cheerful philosophy suited
exactly, “and if Mary Joe proves hard-hearted and won’t give me any
shortbread it doesn’t matter in the least, so you are not to worry over
that.”
“You’re sure you won’t mind if she doesn’t?” said Paul anxiously.
“Perfectly sure, dear heart.”
“Then I won’t worry,” said Paul, with a long breath of relief,
“especially as I really think Mary Joe will listen to reason. She’s not
a naturally unreasonable person, but she has learned by experience that
it doesn’t do to disobey Grandma’s orders. Grandma is an excellent
woman but people must do as she tells them. She was very much pleased
with me this morning because I managed at last to eat all my plateful
of porridge. It was a great effort but I succeeded. Grandma says she
thinks she’ll make a man of me yet. But, teacher, I want to ask you a
very important question. You will answer it truthfully, won’t you?”
“I’ll try,” promised Anne.
“Do you think I’m wrong in my upper story?” asked Paul, as if his very
existence depended on her reply.
“Goodness, no, Paul,” exclaimed Anne in amazement. “Certainly you’re
not. What put such an idea into your head?”
“Mary Joe . . . but she didn’t know I heard her. Mrs. Peter Sloane’s
hired girl, Veronica, came to see Mary Joe last evening and I heard
them talking in the kitchen as I was going through the hall. I heard
Mary Joe say, ‘Dat Paul, he is de queeres’ leetle boy. He talks dat
queer. I tink dere’s someting wrong in his upper story.’ I couldn’t
sleep last night for ever so long, thinking of it, and wondering if
Mary Joe was right. I couldn’t bear to ask Grandma about it somehow,
but I made up my mind I’d ask you. I’m so glad you think I’m all right
in my upper story.”
“Of course you are. Mary Joe is a silly, ignorant girl, and you are
never to worry about anything she says,” said Anne indignantly,
secretly resolving to give Mrs. Irving a discreet hint as to the
advisability of restraining Mary Joe’s tongue.
“Well, that’s a weight off my mind,” said Paul. “I’m perfectly happy
now, teacher, thanks to you. It wouldn’t be nice to have something
wrong in your upper story, would it, teacher? I suppose the reason Mary
Joe imagines I have is because I tell her what I think about things
sometimes.”
“It _is_ a rather dangerous practice,” admitted Anne, out of the depths
of her own experience.
“Well, by and by I’ll tell you the thoughts I told Mary Joe and you can
see for yourself if there’s anything queer in them,” said Paul, “but
I’ll wait till it begins to get dark. That is the time I ache to tell
people things, and when nobody else is handy I just _have_ to tell Mary
Joe. But after this I won’t, if it makes her imagine I’m wrong in my
upper story. I’ll just ache and bear it.”
“And if the ache gets too bad you can come up to Green Gables and tell
me your thoughts,” suggested Anne, with all the gravity that endeared
her to children, who so dearly love to be taken seriously.
“Yes, I will. But I hope Davy won’t be there when I go because he makes
faces at me. I don’t mind _very_ much because he is such a little boy
and I am quite a big one, but still it is not pleasant to have faces
made at you. And Davy makes such terrible ones. Sometimes I am
frightened he will never get his face straightened out again. He makes
them at me in church when I ought to be thinking of sacred things. Dora
likes me though, and I like her, but not so well as I did before she
told Minnie May Barry that she meant to marry me when I grew up. I may
marry somebody when I grow up but I’m far too young to be thinking of
it yet, don’t you think, teacher?”
“Rather young,” agreed teacher.
“Speaking of marrying, reminds me of another thing that has been
troubling me of late,” continued Paul. “Mrs. Lynde was down here one
day last week having tea with Grandma, and Grandma made me show her my
little mother’s picture . . . the one father sent me for my birthday
present. I didn’t exactly want to show it to Mrs. Lynde. Mrs. Lynde is
a good, kind woman, but she isn’t the sort of person you want to show
your mother’s picture to. _You_ know, teacher. But of course I obeyed
Grandma. Mrs. Lynde said she was very pretty but kind of actressy
looking, and must have been an awful lot younger than father. Then she
said, ‘Some of these days your pa will be marrying again likely. How
will you like to have a new ma, Master Paul?’ Well, the idea almost
took my breath away, teacher, but I wasn’t going to let Mrs. Lynde see
_that_. I just looked her straight in the face . . . like this . . .
and I said, ‘Mrs. Lynde, father made a pretty good job of picking out
my first mother and I could trust him to pick out just as good a one
the second time.’ And I _can_ trust him, teacher. But still, I hope, if
he ever does give me a new mother, he’ll ask my opinion about her
before it’s too late. There’s Mary Joe coming to call us to tea. I’ll
go and consult with her about the shortbread.”
As a result of the “consultation,” Mary Joe cut the shortbread and
added a dish of preserves to the bill of fare. Anne poured the tea and
she and Paul had a very merry meal in the dim old sitting room whose
windows were open to the gulf breezes, and they talked so much
“nonsense” that Mary Joe was quite scandalized and told Veronica the
next evening that “de school mees” was as queer as Paul. After tea Paul
took Anne up to his room to show her his mother’s picture, which had
been the mysterious birthday present kept by Mrs. Irving in the
bookcase. Paul’s little low-ceilinged room was a soft whirl of ruddy
light from the sun that was setting over the sea and swinging shadows
from the fir trees that grew close to the square, deep-set window. From
out this soft glow and glamor shone a sweet, girlish face, with tender
mother eyes, that was hanging on the wall at the foot of the bed.
“That’s my little mother,” said Paul with loving pride. “I got Grandma
to hang it there where I’d see it as soon as I opened my eyes in the
morning. I never mind not having the light when I go to bed now,
because it just seems as if my little mother was right here with me.
Father knew just what I would like for a birthday present, although he
never asked me. Isn’t it wonderful how much fathers _do_ know?”
“Your mother was very lovely, Paul, and you look a little like her. But
her eyes and hair are darker than yours.”
“My eyes are the same color as father’s,” said Paul, flying about the
room to heap all available cushions on the window seat, “but father’s
hair is gray. He has lots of it, but it is gray. You see, father is
nearly fifty. That’s ripe old age, isn’t it? But it’s only _outside_
he’s old. _Inside_ he’s just as young as anybody. Now, teacher, please
sit here; and I’ll sit at your feet. May I lay my head against your
knee? That’s the way my little mother and I used to sit. Oh, this is
real splendid, I think.”
“Now, I want to hear those thoughts which Mary Joe pronounces so
queer,” said Anne, patting the mop of curls at her side. Paul never
needed any coaxing to tell his thoughts . . . at least, to congenial
souls.
“I thought them out in the fir grove one night,” he said dreamily. “Of
course I didn’t _believe_ them but I _thought_ them. _You_ know,
teacher. And then I wanted to tell them to somebody and there was
nobody but Mary Joe. Mary Joe was in the pantry setting bread and I sat
down on the bench beside her and I said, ‘Mary Joe, do you know what I
think? I think the evening star is a lighthouse on the land where the
fairies dwell.’ And Mary Joe said, ‘Well, yous are de queer one. Dare
ain’t no such ting as fairies.’ I was very much provoked. Of course, I
knew there are no fairies; but that needn’t prevent my thinking there
is. _You_ know, teacher. But I tried again quite patiently. I said,
‘Well then, Mary Joe, do you know what I think? I think an angel walks
over the world after the sun sets . . . a great, tall, white angel,
with silvery folded wings . . . and sings the flowers and birds to
sleep. Children can hear him if they know how to listen.’ Then Mary Joe
held up her hands all over flour and said, ‘Well, yous are de queer
leetle boy. Yous make me feel scare.’ And she really did looked scared.
I went out then and whispered the rest of my thoughts to the garden.
There was a little birch tree in the garden and it died. Grandma says
the salt spray killed it; but I think the dryad belonging to it was a
foolish dryad who wandered away to see the world and got lost. And the
little tree was so lonely it died of a broken heart.”
“And when the poor, foolish little dryad gets tired of the world and
comes back to her tree _her_ heart will break,” said Anne.
“Yes; but if dryads are foolish they must take the consequences, just
as if they were real people,” said Paul gravely. “Do you know what I
think about the new moon, teacher? I think it is a little golden boat
full of dreams.”
“And when it tips on a cloud some of them spill out and fall into your
sleep.”
“Exactly, teacher. Oh, you _do_ know. And I think the violets are
little snips of the sky that fell down when the angels cut out holes
for the stars to shine through. And the buttercups are made out of old
sunshine; and I think the sweet peas will be butterflies when they go
to heaven. Now, teacher, do you see anything so very queer about those
thoughts?”
“No, laddie dear, they are not queer at all; they are strange and
beautiful thoughts for a little boy to think, and so people who
couldn’t think anything of the sort themselves, if they tried for a
hundred years, think them queer. But keep on thinking them, Paul . . .
some day you are going to be a poet, I believe.”
When Anne reached home she found a very different type of boyhood
waiting to be put to bed. Davy was sulky; and when Anne had undressed
him he bounced into bed and buried his face in the pillow.
“Davy, you have forgotten to say your prayers,” said Anne rebukingly.
“No, I didn’t forget,” said Davy defiantly, “but I ain’t going to say
my prayers any more. I’m going to give up trying to be good, ’cause no
matter how good I am you’d like Paul Irving better. So I might as well
be bad and have the fun of it.”
“I don’t like Paul Irving _better_,” said Anne seriously. “I like you
just as well, only in a different way.”
“But I want you to like me the same way,” pouted Davy.
“You can’t like different people the same way. You don’t like Dora and
me the same way, do you?”
Davy sat up and reflected.
“No . . . o . . . o,” he admitted at last, “I like Dora because she’s
my sister but I like you because you’re _you_.”
“And I like Paul because he is Paul and Davy because he is Davy,” said
Anne gaily.
“Well, I kind of wish I’d said my prayers then,” said Davy, convinced
by this logic. “But it’s too much bother getting out now to say them.
I’ll say them twice over in the morning, Anne. Won’t that do as well?”
No, Anne was positive it would not do as well. So Davy scrambled out
and knelt down at her knee. When he had finished his devotions he
leaned back on his little, bare, brown heels and looked up at her.
“Anne, I’m gooder than I used to be.”
“Yes, indeed you are, Davy,” said Anne, who never hesitated to give
credit where credit was due.
“I _know_ I’m gooder,” said Davy confidently, “and I’ll tell you how I
know it. Today Marilla give me two pieces of bread and jam, one for me
and one for Dora. One was a good deal bigger than the other and Marilla
didn’t say which was mine. But I give the biggest piece to Dora. That
was good of me, wasn’t it?”
“Very good, and very manly, Davy.”
“Of course,” admitted Davy, “Dora wasn’t very hungry and she only et
half her slice and then she give the rest to me. But I didn’t know she
was going to do that when I give it to her, so I _was_ good, Anne.”
In the twilight Anne sauntered down to the Dryad’s Bubble and saw
Gilbert Blythe coming down through the dusky Haunted Wood. She had a
sudden realization that Gilbert was a schoolboy no longer. And how
manly he looked—the tall, frank-faced fellow, with the clear,
straightforward eyes and the broad shoulders. Anne thought Gilbert was
a very handsome lad, even though he didn’t look at all like her ideal
man. She and Diana had long ago decided what kind of a man they admired
and their tastes seemed exactly similar. He must be very tall and
distinguished looking, with melancholy, inscrutable eyes, and a
melting, sympathetic voice. There was nothing either melancholy or
inscrutable in Gilbert’s physiognomy, but of course that didn’t matter
in friendship!
Gilbert stretched himself out on the ferns beside the Bubble and looked
approvingly at Anne. If Gilbert had been asked to describe his ideal
woman the description would have answered point for point to Anne, even
to those seven tiny freckles whose obnoxious presence still continued
to vex her soul. Gilbert was as yet little more than a boy; but a boy
has his dreams as have others, and in Gilbert’s future there was always
a girl with big, limpid gray eyes, and a face as fine and delicate as a
flower. He had made up his mind, also, that his future must be worthy
of its goddess. Even in quiet Avonlea there were temptations to be met
and faced. White Sands youth were a rather “fast” set, and Gilbert was
popular wherever he went. But he meant to keep himself worthy of Anne’s
friendship and perhaps some distant day her love; and he watched over
word and thought and deed as jealously as if her clear eyes were to
pass in judgment on it. She held over him the unconscious influence
that every girl, whose ideals are high and pure, wields over her
friends; an influence which would endure as long as she was faithful to
those ideals and which she would as certainly lose if she were ever
false to them. In Gilbert’s eyes Anne’s greatest charm was the fact
that she never stooped to the petty practices of so many of the Avonlea
girls—the small jealousies, the little deceits and rivalries, the
palpable bids for favor. Anne held herself apart from all this, not
consciously or of design, but simply because anything of the sort was
utterly foreign to her transparent, impulsive nature, crystal clear in
its motives and aspirations.
But Gilbert did not attempt to put his thoughts into words, for he had
already too good reason to know that Anne would mercilessly and
frostily nip all attempts at sentiment in the bud—or laugh at him,
which was ten times worse.
“You look like a real dryad under that birch tree,” he said teasingly.
“I love birch trees,” said Anne, laying her cheek against the creamy
satin of the slim bole, with one of the pretty, caressing gestures that
came so natural to her.
“Then you’ll be glad to hear that Mr. Major Spencer has decided to set
out a row of white birches all along the road front of his farm, by way
of encouraging the A.V.I.S.,” said Gilbert. “He was talking to me about
it today. Major Spencer is the most progressive and public-spirited man
in Avonlea. And Mr. William Bell is going to set out a spruce hedge
along his road front and up his lane. Our Society is getting on
splendidly, Anne. It is past the experimental stage and is an accepted
fact. The older folks are beginning to take an interest in it and the
White Sands people are talking of starting one too. Even Elisha Wright
has come around since that day the Americans from the hotel had the
picnic at the shore. They praised our roadsides so highly and said they
were so much prettier than in any other part of the Island. And when,
in due time, the other farmers follow Mr. Spencer’s good example and
plant ornamental trees and hedges along their road fronts Avonlea will
be the prettiest settlement in the province.”
“The Aids are talking of taking up the graveyard,” said Anne, “and I
hope they will, because there will have to be a subscription for that,
and it would be no use for the Society to try it after the hall affair.
But the Aids would never have stirred in the matter if the Society
hadn’t put it into their thoughts unofficially. Those trees we planted
on the church grounds are flourishing, and the trustees have promised
me that they will fence in the school grounds next year. If they do
I’ll have an arbor day and every scholar shall plant a tree; and we’ll
have a garden in the corner by the road.”
“We’ve succeeded in almost all our plans so far, except in getting the
old Boulter house removed,” said Gilbert, “and I’ve given _that_ up in
despair. Levi won’t have it taken down just to vex us. There’s a
contrary streak in all the Boulters and it’s strongly developed in
him.”
“Julia Bell wants to send another committee to him, but I think the
better way will just be to leave him severely alone,” said Anne sagely.
“And trust to Providence, as Mrs. Lynde says,” smiled Gilbert.
“Certainly, no more committees. They only aggravate him. Julia Bell
thinks you can do anything, if you only have a committee to attempt it.
Next spring, Anne, we must start an agitation for nice lawns and
grounds. We’ll sow good seed betimes this winter. I’ve a treatise here
on lawns and lawnmaking and I’m going to prepare a paper on the subject
soon. Well, I suppose our vacation is almost over. School opens Monday.
Has Ruby Gillis got the Carmody school?”
“Yes; Priscilla wrote that she had taken her own home school, so the
Carmody trustees gave it to Ruby. I’m sorry Priscilla is not coming
back, but since she can’t I’m glad Ruby has got the school. She will be
home for Saturdays and it will seem like old times, to have her and
Jane and Diana and myself all together again.”
Marilla, just home from Mrs. Lynde’s, was sitting on the back porch
step when Anne returned to the house.
“Rachel and I have decided to have our cruise to town tomorrow,” she
said. “Mr. Lynde is feeling better this week and Rachel wants to go
before he has another sick spell.”
“I intend to get up extra early tomorrow morning, for I’ve ever so much
to do,” said Anne virtuously. “For one thing, I’m going to shift the
feathers from my old bedtick to the new one. I ought to have done it
long ago but I’ve just kept putting it off . . . it’s such a detestable
task. It’s a very bad habit to put off disagreeable things, and I never
mean to again, or else I can’t comfortably tell my pupils not to do it.
That would be inconsistent. Then I want to make a cake for Mr. Harrison
and finish my paper on gardens for the A.V.I.S., and write Stella, and
wash and starch my muslin dress, and make Dora’s new apron.”
“You won’t get half done,” said Marilla pessimistically. “I never yet
planned to do a lot of things but something happened to prevent me.”
XX
The Way It Often Happens
Anne rose betimes the next morning and blithely greeted the fresh day,
when the banners of the sunrise were shaken triumphantly across the
pearly skies. Green Gables lay in a pool of sunshine, flecked with the
dancing shadows of poplar and willow. Beyond the land was Mr.
Harrison’s wheatfield, a great, windrippled expanse of pale gold. The
world was so beautiful that Anne spent ten blissful minutes hanging
idly over the garden gate drinking the loveliness in.
After breakfast Marilla made ready for her journey. Dora was to go with
her, having been long promised this treat.
“Now, Davy, you try to be a good boy and don’t bother Anne,” she
straitly charged him. “If you are good I’ll bring you a striped candy
cane from town.”
For alas, Marilla had stooped to the evil habit of bribing people to be
good!
“I won’t be bad on purpose, but s’posen I’m bad zacksidentally?” Davy
wanted to know.
“You’ll have to guard against accidents,” admonished Marilla. “Anne, if
Mr. Shearer comes today get a nice roast and some steak. If he doesn’t
you’ll have to kill a fowl for dinner tomorrow.”
Anne nodded.
“I’m not going to bother cooking any dinner for just Davy and myself
today,” she said. “That cold ham bone will do for noon lunch and I’ll
have some steak fried for you when you come home at night.”
“I’m going to help Mr. Harrison haul dulse this morning,” announced
Davy. “He asked me to, and I guess he’ll ask me to dinner too. Mr.
Harrison is an awful kind man. He’s a real sociable man. I hope I’ll be
like him when I grow up. I mean _behave_ like him . . . I don’t want to
_look_ like him. But I guess there’s no danger, for Mrs. Lynde says I’m
a very handsome child. Do you s’pose it’ll last, Anne? I want to know?”
“I daresay it will,” said Anne gravely. “You _are_ a handsome boy,
Davy,” . . . Marilla looked volumes of disapproval . . . “but you must
live up to it and be just as nice and gentlemanly as you look to be.”
“And you told Minnie May Barry the other day, when you found her crying
’cause some one said she was ugly, that if she was nice and kind and
loving people wouldn’t mind her looks,” said Davy discontentedly.
“Seems to me you can’t get out of being good in this world for some
reason or ‘nother. You just _have_ to behave.”
“Don’t you want to be good?” asked Marilla, who had learned a great
deal but had not yet learned the futility of asking such questions.
“Yes, I want to be good but not _too_ good,” said Davy cautiously. “You
don’t have to be very good to be a Sunday School superintendent. Mr.
Bell’s that, and he’s a real bad man.”
“Indeed he’s not,” said Marila indignantly.
“He is . . . he says he is himself,” asseverated Davy. “He said it when
he prayed in Sunday School last Sunday. He said he was a vile worm and
a miserable sinner and guilty of the blackest ‘niquity. What did he do
that was so bad, Marilla? Did he kill anybody? Or steal the collection
cents? I want to know.”
Fortunately Mrs. Lynde came driving up the lane at this moment and
Marilla made off, feeling that she had escaped from the snare of the
fowler, and wishing devoutly that Mr. Bell were not quite so highly
figurative in his public petitions, especially in the hearing of small
boys who were always “wanting to know.”
Anne, left alone in her glory, worked with a will. The floor was swept,
the beds made, the hens fed, the muslin dress washed and hung out on
the line. Then Anne prepared for the transfer of feathers. She mounted
to the garret and donned the first old dress that came to hand . . . a
navy blue cashmere she had worn at fourteen. It was decidedly on the
short side and as “skimpy” as the notable wincey Anne had worn upon the
occasion of her debut at Green Gables; but at least it would not be
materially injured by down and feathers. Anne completed her toilet by
tying a big red and white spotted handkerchief that had belonged to
Matthew over her head, and, thus accoutred, betook herself to the
kitchen chamber, whither Marilla, before her departure, had helped her
carry the feather bed.
A cracked mirror hung by the chamber window and in an unlucky moment
Anne looked into it. There were those seven freckles on her nose, more
rampant than ever, or so it seemed in the glare of light from the
unshaded window.
“Oh, I forgot to rub that lotion on last night,” she thought. “I’d
better run down to the pantry and do it now.”
Anne had already suffered many things trying to remove those freckles.
On one occasion the entire skin had peeled off her nose but the
freckles remained. A few days previously she had found a recipe for a
freckle lotion in a magazine and, as the ingredients were within her
reach, she straightway compounded it, much to the disgust of Marilla,
who thought that if Providence had placed freckles on your nose it was
your bounden duty to leave them there.
Anne scurried down to the pantry, which, always dim from the big willow
growing close to the window, was now almost dark by reason of the shade
drawn to exclude flies. Anne caught the bottle containing the lotion
from the shelf and copiously anointed her nose therewith by means of a
little sponge sacred to the purpose. This important duty done, she
returned to her work. Any one who has ever shifted feathers from one
tick to another will not need to be told that when Anne finished she
was a sight to behold. Her dress was white with down and fluff, and her
front hair, escaping from under the handkerchief, was adorned with a
veritable halo of feathers. At this auspicious moment a knock sounded
at the kitchen door.
“That must be Mr. Shearer,” thought Anne. “I’m in a dreadful mess but
I’ll have to run down as I am, for he’s always in a hurry.”
Down flew Anne to the kitchen door. If ever a charitable floor did open
to swallow up a miserable, befeathered damsel the Green Gables porch
floor should promptly have engulfed Anne at that moment. On the
doorstep were standing Priscilla Grant, golden and fair in silk attire,
a short, stout gray-haired lady in a tweed suit, and another lady, tall
stately, wonderfully gowned, with a beautiful, highbred face and large,
black-lashed violet eyes, whom Anne “instinctively felt,” as she would
have said in her earlier days, to be Mrs. Charlotte E. Morgan.
In the dismay of the moment one thought stood out from the confusion of
Anne’s mind and she grasped at it as at the proverbial straw. All Mrs.
Morgan’s heroines were noted for “rising to the occasion.” No matter
what their troubles were, they invariably rose to the occasion and
showed their superiority over all ills of time, space, and quantity.
Anne therefore felt it was _her_ duty to rise to the occasion and she
did it, so perfectly that Priscilla afterward declared she never
admired Anne Shirley more than at that moment. No matter what her
outraged feelings were she did not show them. She greeted Priscilla and
was introduced to her companions as calmly and composedly as if she had
been arrayed in purple and fine linen. To be sure, it was somewhat of a
shock to find that the lady she had instinctively felt to be Mrs.
Morgan was not Mrs. Morgan at all, but an unknown Mrs. Pendexter, while
the stout little gray-haired woman was Mrs. Morgan; but in the greater
shock the lesser lost its power. Anne ushered her guests to the spare
room and thence into the parlor, where she left them while she hastened
out to help Priscilla unharness her horse.
“It’s dreadful to come upon you so unexpectedly as this,” apologized
Priscilla, “but I did not know till last night that we were coming.
Aunt Charlotte is going away Monday and she had promised to spend today
with a friend in town. But last night her friend telephoned to her not
to come because they were quarantined for scarlet fever. So I suggested
we come here instead, for I knew you were longing to see her. We called
at the White Sands Hotel and brought Mrs. Pendexter with us. She is a
friend of aunt’s and lives in New York and her husband is a
millionaire. We can’t stay very long, for Mrs. Pendexter has to be back
at the hotel by five o’clock.”
Several times while they were putting away the horse Anne caught
Priscilla looking at her in a furtive, puzzled way.
“She needn’t stare at me so,” Anne thought a little resentfully. “If
she doesn’t _know_ what it is to change a feather bed she might
_imagine_ it.”
When Priscilla had gone to the parlor, and before Anne could escape
upstairs, Diana walked into the kitchen. Anne caught her astonished
friend by the arm.
“Diana Barry, who do you suppose is in that parlor at this very moment?
Mrs. Charlotte E. Morgan . . . and a New York millionaire’s wife . . .
and here I am like _this_ . . . and _not a thing in the house for
dinner but a cold ham bone_, Diana!”
By this time Anne had become aware that Diana was staring at her in
precisely the same bewildered fashion as Priscilla had done. It was
really too much.
“Oh, Diana, don’t look at me so,” she implored. “_You_, at least, must
know that the neatest person in the world couldn’t empty feathers from
one tick into another and remain neat in the process.”
“It . . . it . . . isn’t the feathers,” hesitated Diana. “It’s . . .
it’s . . . your nose, Anne.”
“My nose? Oh, Diana, surely nothing has gone wrong with it!”
Anne rushed to the little looking glass over the sink. One glance
revealed the fatal truth. Her nose was a brilliant scarlet!
Anne sat down on the sofa, her dauntless spirit subdued at last.
“What is the matter with it?” asked Diana, curiosity overcoming
delicacy.
“I thought I was rubbing my freckle lotion on it, but I must have used
that red dye Marilla has for marking the pattern on her rugs,” was the
despairing response. “What shall I do?”
“Wash it off,” said Diana practically.
“Perhaps it won’t wash off. First I dye my hair; then I dye my nose.
Marilla cut my hair off when I dyed it but that remedy would hardly be
practicable in this case. Well, this is another punishment for vanity
and I suppose I deserve it . . . though there’s not much comfort in
_that_. It is really almost enough to make one believe in ill-luck,
though Mrs. Lynde says there is no such thing, because everything is
foreordained.”
Fortunately the dye washed off easily and Anne, somewhat consoled,
betook herself to the east gable while Diana ran home. Presently Anne
came down again, clothed and in her right mind. The muslin dress she
had fondly hoped to wear was bobbing merrily about on the line outside,
so she was forced to content herself with her black lawn. She had the
fire on and the tea steeping when Diana returned; the latter wore _her_
muslin, at least, and carried a covered platter in her hand.
“Mother sent you this,” she said, lifting the cover and displaying a
nicely carved and jointed chicken to Anne’s greatful eyes.
The chicken was supplemented by light new bread, excellent butter and
cheese, Marilla’s fruit cake and a dish of preserved plums, floating in
their golden syrup as in congealed summer sunshine. There was a big
bowlful of pink-and-white asters also, by way of decoration; yet the
spread seemed very meager beside the elaborate one formerly prepared
for Mrs. Morgan.
Anne’s hungry guests, however, did not seem to think anything was
lacking and they ate the simple viands with apparent enjoyment. But
after the first few moments Anne thought no more of what was or was not
on her bill of fare. Mrs. Morgan’s appearance might be somewhat
disappointing, as even her loyal worshippers had been forced to admit
to each other; but she proved to be a delightful conversationalist. She
had traveled extensively and was an excellent storyteller. She had seen
much of men and women, and crystalized her experiences into witty
little sentences and epigrams which made her hearers feel as if they
were listening to one of the people in clever books. But under all her
sparkle there was a strongly felt undercurrent of true, womanly
sympathy and kindheartedness which won affection as easily as her
brilliancy won admiration. Nor did she monopolize the conversation. She
could draw others out as skillfully and fully as she could talk
herself, and Anne and Diana found themselves chattering freely to her.
Mrs. Pendexter said little; she merely smiled with her lovely eyes and
lips, and ate chicken and fruit cake and preserves with such exquisite
grace that she conveyed the impression of dining on ambrosia and
honeydew. But then, as Anne said to Diana later on, anybody so divinely
beautiful as Mrs. Pendexter didn’t need to talk; it was enough for her
just to _look_.
After dinner they all had a walk through Lover’s Lane and Violet Vale
and the Birch Path, then back through the Haunted Wood to the Dryad’s
Bubble, where they sat down and talked for a delightful last half hour.
Mrs. Morgan wanted to know how the Haunted Wood came by its name, and
laughed until she cried when she heard the story and Anne’s dramatic
account of a certain memorable walk through it at the witching hour of
twilight.
“It has indeed been a feast of reason and flow of soul, hasn’t it?”
said Anne, when her guests had gone and she and Diana were alone again.
“I don’t know which I enjoyed more . . . listening to Mrs. Morgan or
gazing at Mrs. Pendexter. I believe we had a nicer time than if we’d
known they were coming and been cumbered with much serving. You must
stay to tea with me, Diana, and we’ll talk it all over.”
“Priscilla says Mrs. Pendexter’s husband’s sister is married to an
English earl; and yet she took a second helping of the plum preserves,”
said Diana, as if the two facts were somehow incompatible.
“I daresay even the English earl himself wouldn’t have turned up his
aristocratic nose at Marilla’s plum preserves,” said Anne proudly.
Anne did not mention the misfortune which had befallen _her_ nose when
she related the day’s history to Marilla that evening. But she took the
bottle of freckle lotion and emptied it out of the window.
“I shall never try any beautifying messes again,” she said, darkly
resolute. “They may do for careful, deliberate people; but for anyone
so hopelessly given over to making mistakes as I seem to be it’s
tempting fate to meddle with them.”
XXI
Sweet Miss Lavendar
School opened and Anne returned to her work, with fewer theories but
considerably more experience. She had several new pupils, six- and
seven-year-olds just venturing, round-eyed, into a world of wonder.
Among them were Davy and Dora. Davy sat with Milty Boulter, who had
been going to school for a year and was therefore quite a man of the
world. Dora had made a compact at Sunday School the previous Sunday to
sit with Lily Sloane; but Lily Sloane not coming the first day, she was
temporarily assigned to Mirabel Cotton, who was ten years old and
therefore, in Dora’s eyes, one of the “big girls.”
“I think school is great fun,” Davy told Marilla when he got home that
night. “You said I’d find it hard to sit still and I did . . . you
mostly do tell the truth, I notice . . . but you can wriggle your legs
about under the desk and that helps a lot. It’s splendid to have so
many boys to play with. I sit with Milty Boulter and he’s fine. He’s
longer than me but I’m wider. It’s nicer to sit in the back seats but
you can’t sit there till your legs grow long enough to touch the floor.
Milty drawed a picture of Anne on his slate and it was awful ugly and I
told him if he made pictures of Anne like that I’d lick him at recess.
I thought first I’d draw one of him and put horns and a tail on it, but
I was afraid it would hurt his feelings, and Anne says you should never
hurt anyone’s feelings. It seems it’s dreadful to have your feelings
hurt. It’s better to knock a boy down than hurt his feelings if you
_must_ do something. Milty said he wasn’t scared of me but he’d just as
soon call it somebody else to ‘blige me, so he rubbed out Anne’s name
and printed Barbara Shaw’s under it. Milty doesn’t like Barbara ’cause
she calls him a sweet little boy and once she patted him on his head.”
Dora said primly that she liked school; but she was very quiet, even
for her; and when at twilight Marilla bade her go upstairs to bed she
hesitated and began to cry.
“I’m . . . I’m frightened,” she sobbed. “I . . . I don’t want to go
upstairs alone in the dark.”
“What notion have you got into your head now?” demanded Marilla. “I’m
sure you’ve gone to bed alone all summer and never been frightened
before.”
Dora still continued to cry, so Anne picked her up, cuddled her
sympathetically, and whispered,
“Tell Anne all about it, sweetheart. What are you frightened of?”
“Of . . . of Mirabel Cotton’s uncle,” sobbed Dora. “Mirabel Cotton told
me all about her family today in school. Nearly everybody in her family
has died . . . all her grandfathers and grandmothers and ever so many
uncles and aunts. They have a habit of dying, Mirabel says. Mirabel’s
awful proud of having so many dead relations, and she told me what they
all died of, and what they said, and how they looked in their coffins.
And Mirabel says one of her uncles was seen walking around the house
after he was buried. Her mother saw him. I don’t mind the rest so much
but I can’t help thinking about that uncle.”
Anne went upstairs with Dora and sat by her until she fell asleep. The
next day Mirabel Cotton was kept in at recess and “gently but firmly”
given to understand that when you were so unfortunate as to possess an
uncle who persisted in walking about houses after he had been decently
interred it was not in good taste to talk about that eccentric
gentleman to your deskmate of tender years. Mirabel thought this very
harsh. The Cottons had not much to boast of. How was she to keep up her
prestige among her schoolmates if she were forbidden to make capital
out of the family ghost?
September slipped by into a gold and crimson graciousness of October.
One Friday evening Diana came over.
“I’d a letter from Ella Kimball today, Anne, and she wants us to go
over to tea tomorrow afternoon to meet her cousin, Irene Trent, from
town. But we can’t get one of our horses to go, for they’ll all be in
use tomorrow, and your pony is lame . . . so I suppose we can’t go.”
“Why can’t we walk?” suggested Anne. “If we go straight back through
the woods we’ll strike the West Grafton road not far from the Kimball
place. I was through that way last winter and I know the road. It’s no
more than four miles and we won’t have to walk home, for Oliver Kimball
will be sure to drive us. He’ll be only too glad of the excuse, for he
goes to see Carrie Sloane and they say his father will hardly ever let
him have a horse.”
It was accordingly arranged that they should walk, and the following
afternoon they set out, going by way of Lover’s Lane to the back of the
Cuthbert farm, where they found a road leading into the heart of acres
of glimmering beech and maple woods, which were all in a wondrous glow
of flame and gold, lying in a great purple stillness and peace.
“It’s as if the year were kneeling to pray in a vast cathedral full of
mellow stained light, isn’t it?” said Anne dreamily. “It doesn’t seem
right to hurry through it, does it? It seems irreverent, like running
in a church.”
“We _must_ hurry though,” said Diana, glancing at her watch. “We’ve
left ourselves little enough time as it is.”
“Well, I’ll walk fast but don’t ask me to talk,” said Anne, quickening
her pace. “I just want to drink the day’s loveliness in . . . I feel as
if she were holding it out to my lips like a cup of airy wine and I’ll
take a sip at every step.”
Perhaps it was because she was so absorbed in “drinking it in” that
Anne took the left turning when they came to a fork in the road. She
should have taken the right, but ever afterward she counted it the most
fortunate mistake of her life. They came out finally to a lonely,
grassy road, with nothing in sight along it but ranks of spruce
saplings.
“Why, where are we?” exclaimed Diana in bewilderment. “This isn’t the
West Grafton road.”
“No, it’s the base line road in Middle Grafton,” said Anne, rather
shamefacedly. “I must have taken the wrong turning at the fork. I don’t
know where we are exactly, but we must be all of three miles from
Kimballs’ still.”
“Then we can’t get there by five, for it’s half past four now,” said
Diana, with a despairing look at her watch. “We’ll arrive after they
have had their tea, and they’ll have all the bother of getting ours
over again.”
“We’d better turn back and go home,” suggested Anne humbly. But Diana,
after consideration, vetoed this.
“No, we may as well go and spend the evening, since we have come this
far.”
A few yards further on the girls came to a place where the road forked
again.
“Which of these do we take?” asked Diana dubiously.
Anne shook her head.
“I don’t know and we can’t afford to make any more mistakes. Here is a
gate and a lane leading right into the wood. There must be a house at
the other side. Let us go down and inquire.”
“What a romantic old lane this it,” said Diana, as they walked along
its twists and turns. It ran under patriarchal old firs whose branches
met above, creating a perpetual gloom in which nothing except moss
could grow. On either hand were brown wood floors, crossed here and
there by fallen lances of sunlight. All was very still and remote, as
if the world and the cares of the world were far away.
“I feel as if we were walking through an enchanted forest,” said Anne
in a hushed tone. “Do you suppose we’ll ever find our way back to the
real world again, Diana? We shall presently come to a palace with a
spellbound princess in it, I think.”
Around the next turn they came in sight, not indeed of a palace, but of
a little house almost as surprising as a palace would have been in this
province of conventional wooden farmhouses, all as much alike in
general characteristics as if they had grown from the same seed. Anne
stopped short in rapture and Diana exclaimed, “Oh, I know where we are
now. That is the little stone house where Miss Lavendar Lewis lives . .
. Echo Lodge, she calls it, I think. I’ve often heard of it but I’ve
never seen it before. Isn’t it a romantic spot?”
“It’s the sweetest, prettiest place I ever saw or imagined,” said Anne
delightedly. “It looks like a bit out of a story book or a dream.”
The house was a low-eaved structure built of undressed blocks of red
Island sandstone, with a little peaked roof out of which peered two
dormer windows, with quaint wooden hoods over them, and two great
chimneys. The whole house was covered with a luxuriant growth of ivy,
finding easy foothold on the rough stonework and turned by autumn
frosts to most beautiful bronze and wine-red tints.
Before the house was an oblong garden into which the lane gate where
the girls were standing opened. The house bounded it on one side; on
the three others it was enclosed by an old stone dyke, so overgrown
with moss and grass and ferns that it looked like a high, green bank.
On the right and left the tall, dark spruces spread their palm-like
branches over it; but below it was a little meadow, green with clover
aftermath, sloping down to the blue loop of the Grafton River. No other
house or clearing was in sight . . . nothing but hills and valleys
covered with feathery young firs.
“I wonder what sort of a person Miss Lewis is,” speculated Diana as
they opened the gate into the garden. “They say she is very peculiar.”
“She’ll be interesting then,” said Anne decidedly. “Peculiar people are
always that at least, whatever else they are or are not. Didn’t I tell
you we would come to an enchanted palace? I knew the elves hadn’t woven
magic over that lane for nothing.”
“But Miss Lavendar Lewis is hardly a spellbound princess,” laughed
Diana. “She’s an old maid . . . she’s forty-five and quite gray, I’ve
heard.”
“Oh, that’s only part of the spell,” asserted Anne confidently. “At
heart she’s young and beautiful still . . . and if we only knew how to
unloose the spell she would step forth radiant and fair again. But we
don’t know how . . . it’s always and only the prince who knows that . .
. and Miss Lavendar’s prince hasn’t come yet. Perhaps some fatal
mischance has befallen him . . . though _that’s_ against the law of all
fairy tales.”
“I’m afraid he came long ago and went away again,” said Diana. “They
say she used to be engaged to Stephen Irving . . . Paul’s father . . .
when they were young. But they quarreled and parted.”
“Hush,” warned Anne. “The door is open.”
The girls paused in the porch under the tendrils of ivy and knocked at
the open door. There was a patter of steps inside and a rather odd
little personage presented herself . . . a girl of about fourteen, with
a freckled face, a snub nose, a mouth so wide that it did really seem
as if it stretched “from ear to ear,” and two long braids of fair hair
tied with two enormous bows of blue ribbon.
“Is Miss Lewis at home?” asked Diana.
“Yes, ma’am. Come in, ma’am. I’ll tell Miss Lavendar you’re here,
ma’am. She’s upstairs, ma’am.”
With this the small handmaiden whisked out of sight and the girls, left
alone, looked about them with delighted eyes. The interior of this
wonderful little house was quite as interesting as its exterior.
The room had a low ceiling and two square, small-paned windows,
curtained with muslin frills. All the furnishings were old-fashioned,
but so well and daintily kept that the effect was delicious. But it
must be candidly admitted that the most attractive feature, to two
healthy girls who had just tramped four miles through autumn air, was a
table, set out with pale blue china and laden with delicacies, while
little golden-hued ferns scattered over the cloth gave it what Anne
would have termed “a festal air.”
“Miss Lavendar must be expecting company to tea,” she whispered. “There
are six places set. But what a funny little girl she has. She looked
like a messenger from pixy land. I suppose she could have told us the
road, but I was curious to see Miss Lavendar. S . . . s . . . sh, she’s
coming.”
And with that Miss Lavendar Lewis was standing in the doorway. The
girls were so surprised that they forgot good manners and simply
stared. They had unconsciously been expecting to see the usual type of
elderly spinster as known to their experience . . . a rather angular
personage, with prim gray hair and spectacles. Nothing more unlike Miss
Lavendar could possibly be imagined.
She was a little lady with snow-white hair beautifully wavy and thick,
and carefully arranged in becoming puffs and coils. Beneath it was an
almost girlish face, pink cheeked and sweet lipped, with big soft brown
eyes and dimples . . . actually dimples. She wore a very dainty gown of
cream muslin with pale-hued roses on it . . . a gown which would have
seemed ridiculously juvenile on most women of her age, but which suited
Miss Lavendar so perfectly that you never thought about it at all.
“Charlotta the Fourth says that you wished to see me,” she said, in a
voice that matched her appearance.
“We wanted to ask the right road to West Grafton,” said Diana. “We are
invited to tea at Mr. Kimball’s, but we took the wrong path coming
through the woods and came out to the base line instead of the West
Grafton road. Do we take the right or left turning at your gate?”
“The left,” said Miss Lavendar, with a hesitating glance at her tea
table. Then she exclaimed, as if in a sudden little burst of
resolution,
“But oh, won’t you stay and have tea with me? Please, do. Mr. Kimball’s
will have tea over before you get there. And Charlotta the Fourth and I
will be so glad to have you.”
Diana looked mute inquiry at Anne.
“We’d like to stay,” said Anne promptly, for she had made up her mind
that she wanted to know more of this surprising Miss Lavendar, “if it
won’t inconvenience you. But you are expecting other guests, aren’t
you?”
Miss Lavendar looked at her tea table again, and blushed.
“I know you’ll think me dreadfully foolish,” she said. “I _am_ foolish
. . . and I’m ashamed of it when I’m found out, but never unless I _am_
found out. I’m not expecting anybody . . . I was just pretending I was.
You see, I was so lonely. I love company . . . that is, the right kind
of company . . . but so few people ever come here because it is so far
out of the way. Charlotta the Fourth was lonely too. So I just
pretended I was going to have a tea party. I cooked for it . . . and
decorated the table for it . . . and set it with my mother’s wedding
china . . . and I dressed up for it.”
Diana secretly thought Miss Lavendar quite as peculiar as report had
pictured her. The idea of a woman of forty-five playing at having a tea
party, just as if she were a little girl! But Anne of the shining eyes
exclaimed joyfuly,
“Oh, do _you_ imagine things too?”
That “too” revealed a kindred spirit to Miss Lavendar.
“Yes, I do,” she confessed, boldly. “Of course it’s silly in anybody as
old as I am. But what is the use of being an independent old maid if
you can’t be silly when you want to, and when it doesn’t hurt anybody?
A person must have some compensations. I don’t believe I could live at
times if I didn’t pretend things. I’m not often caught at it though,
and Charlotta the Fourth never tells. But I’m glad to be caught today,
for you have really come and I have tea all ready for you. Will you go
up to the spare room and take off your hats? It’s the white door at the
head of the stairs. I must run out to the kitchen and see that
Charlotta the Fourth isn’t letting the tea boil. Charlotta the Fourth
is a very good girl but she _will_ let the tea boil.”
Miss Lavendar tripped off to the kitchen on hospitable thoughts intent
and the girls found their way up to the spare room, an apartment as
white as its door, lighted by the ivy-hung dormer window and looking,
as Anne said, like the place where happy dreams grew.
“This is quite an adventure, isn’t it?” said Diana. “And isn’t Miss
Lavendar sweet, if she _is_ a little odd? She doesn’t look a bit like
an old maid.”
“She looks just as music sounds, I think,” answered Anne.
When they went down Miss Lavendar was carrying in the teapot, and
behind her, looking vastly pleased, was Charlotta the Fourth, with a
plate of hot biscuits.
“Now, you must tell me your names,” said Miss Lavendar. “I’m so glad
you are young girls. I love young girls. It’s so easy to pretend I’m a
girl myself when I’m with them. I do hate” . . . with a little grimace
. . . “to believe I’m old. Now, who are you . . . just for convenience’
sake? Diana Barry? And Anne Shirley? May I pretend that I’ve known you
for a hundred years and call you Anne and Diana right away?”
“You, may” the girls said both together.
“Then just let’s sit comfily down and eat everything,” said Miss
Lavendar happily. “Charlotta, you sit at the foot and help with the
chicken. It is so fortunate that I made the sponge cake and doughnuts.
Of course, it was foolish to do it for imaginary guests . . . I know
Charlotta the Fourth thought so, didn’t you, Charlotta? But you see how
well it has turned out. Of course they wouldn’t have been wasted, for
Charlotta the Fourth and I could have eaten them through time. But
sponge cake is not a thing that improves with time.”
That was a merry and memorable meal; and when it was over they all went
out to the garden, lying in the glamor of sunset.
“I do think you have the loveliest place here,” said Diana, looking
round her admiringly.
“Why do you call it Echo Lodge?” asked Anne.
“Charlotta,” said Miss Lavendar, “go into the house and bring out the
little tin horn that is hanging over the clock shelf.”
Charlotta the Fourth skipped off and returned with the horn.
“Blow it, Charlotta,” commanded Miss Lavendar.
Charlotta accordingly blew, a rather raucous, strident blast. There was
moment’s stillness . . . and then from the woods over the river came a
multitude of fairy echoes, sweet, elusive, silvery, as if all the
“horns of elfland” were blowing against the sunset. Anne and Diana
exclaimed in delight.
“Now laugh, Charlotta . . . laugh loudly.”
Charlotta, who would probably have obeyed if Miss Lavendar had told her
to stand on her head, climbed upon the stone bench and laughed loud and
heartily. Back came the echoes, as if a host of pixy people were
mimicking her laughter in the purple woodlands and along the
fir-fringed points.
“People always admire my echoes very much,” said Miss Lavendar, as if
the echoes were her personal property. “I love them myself. They are
very good company . . . with a little pretending. On calm evenings
Charlotta the Fourth and I often sit out here and amuse ourselves with
them. Charlotta, take back the horn and hang it carefully in its
place.”
“Why do you call her Charlotta the Fourth?” asked Diana, who was
bursting with curiosity on this point.
“Just to keep her from getting mixed up with other Charlottas in my
thoughts,” said Miss Lavendar seriously. “They all look so much alike
there’s no telling them apart. Her name isn’t really Charlotta at all.
It is . . . let me see . . . what is it? I _think_ it’s Leonora . . .
yes, it _is_ Leonora. You see, it is this way. When mother died ten
years ago I couldn’t stay here alone . . . and I couldn’t afford to pay
the wages of a grown-up girl. So I got little Charlotta Bowman to come
and stay with me for board and clothes. Her name really was Charlotta .
. . she was Charlotta the First. She was just thirteen. She stayed with
me till she was sixteen and then she went away to Boston, because she
could do better there. Her sister came to stay with me then. Her name
was Julietta . . . Mrs. Bowman had a weakness for fancy names I think .
. . but she looked so like Charlotta that I kept calling her that all
the time . . .and she didn’t mind. So I just gave up trying to remember
her right name. She was Charlotta the Second, and when she went away
Evelina came and she was Charlotta the Third. Now I have Charlotta the
Fourth; but when she is sixteen . . . she’s fourteen now . . . she will
want to go to Boston too, and what I shall do then I really do not
know. Charlotta the Fourth is the last of the Bowman girls, and the
best. The other Charlottas always let me see that they thought it silly
of me to pretend things but Charlotta the Fourth never does, no matter
what she may really think. I don’t care what people think about me if
they don’t let me see it.”
“Well,” said Diana looking regretfully at the setting sun. “I suppose
we must go if we want to get to Mr. Kimball’s before dark. We’ve had a
lovely time, Miss Lewis.”
“Won’t you come again to see me?” pleaded Miss Lavendar.
Tall Anne put her arm about the little lady.
“Indeed we shall,” she promised. “Now that we have discovered you we’ll
wear out our welcome coming to see you. Yes, we must go . . . ‘we must
tear ourselves away,’ as Paul Irving says every time he comes to Green
Gables.”
“Paul Irving?” There was a subtle change in Miss Lavendar’s voice. “Who
is he? I didn’t think there was anybody of that name in Avonlea.”
Anne felt vexed at her own heedlessness. She had forgotten about Miss
Lavendar’s old romance when Paul’s name slipped out.
“He is a little pupil of mine,” she explained slowly. “He came from
Boston last year to live with his grandmother, Mrs. Irving of the shore
road.”
“Is he Stephen Irving’s son?” Miss Lavendar asked, bending over her
namesake border so that her face was hidden.
“Yes.”
“I’m going to give you girls a bunch of lavendar apiece,” said Miss
Lavendar brightly, as if she had not heard the answer to her question.
“It’s very sweet, don’t you think? Mother always loved it. She planted
these borders long ago. Father named me Lavendar because he was so fond
of it. The very first time he saw mother was when he visited her home
in East Grafton with her brother. He fell in love with her at first
sight; and they put him in the spare room bed to sleep and the sheets
were scented with lavendar and he lay awake all night and thought of
her. He always loved the scent of lavendar after that . . . and that
was why he gave me the name. Don’t forget to come back soon, girls
dear. We’ll be looking for you, Charlotta the Fourth and I.”
She opened the gate under the firs for them to pass through. She looked
suddenly old and tired; the glow and radiance had faded from her face;
her parting smile was as sweet with ineradicable youth as ever, but
when the girls looked back from the first curve in the lane they saw
her sitting on the old stone bench under the silver poplar in the
middle of the garden with her head leaning wearily on her hand.
“She does look lonely,” said Diana softly. “We must come often to see
her.”
“I think her parents gave her the only right and fitting name that
could possibly be given her,” said Anne. “If they had been so blind as
to name her Elizabeth or Nellie or Muriel she must have been called
Lavendar just the same, I think. It’s so suggestive of sweetness and
old-fashioned graces and ‘silk attire.’ Now, my name just smacks of
bread and butter, patchwork and chores.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Diana. “Anne seems to me real stately and
like a queen. But I’d like Kerrenhappuch if it happened to be your
name. I think people make their names nice or ugly just by what they
are themselves. I can’t bear Josie or Gertie for names now but before I
knew the Pye girls I thought them real pretty.”
“That’s a lovely idea, Diana,” said Anne enthusiastically. “Living so
that you beautify your name, even if it wasn’t beautiful to begin with
. . . making it stand in people’s thoughts for something so lovely and
pleasant that they never think of it by itself. Thank you, Diana.”
XXII
Odds and Ends
“So you had tea at the stone house with Lavendar Lewis?” said Marilla
at the breakfast table next morning. “What is she like now? It’s over
fifteen years since I saw her last . . . it was one Sunday in Grafton
church. I suppose she has changed a great deal. Davy Keith, when you
want something you can’t reach, ask to have it passed and don’t spread
yourself over the table in that fashion. Did you ever see Paul Irving
doing that when he was here to meals?”
“But Paul’s arms are longer’n mine,” brumbled Davy. “They’ve had eleven
years to grow and mine’ve only had seven. ‘Sides, I _did_ ask, but you
and Anne was so busy talking you didn’t pay any ‘tention. ‘Sides,
Paul’s never been here to any meal escept tea, and it’s easier to be
p’lite at tea than at breakfast. You ain’t half as hungry. It’s an
awful long while between supper and breakfast. Now, Anne, that spoonful
ain’t any bigger than it was last year and _I_’m ever so much bigger.”
“Of course, I don’t know what Miss Lavendar used to look like but I
don’t fancy somehow that she has changed a great deal,” said Anne,
after she had helped Davy to maple syrup, giving him two spoonfuls to
pacify him. “Her hair is snow-white but her face is fresh and almost
girlish, and she has the sweetest brown eyes . . . such a pretty shade
of wood-brown with little golden glints in them . . . and her voice
makes you think of white satin and tinkling water and fairy bells all
mixed up together.”
“She was reckoned a great beauty when she was a girl,” said Marilla. “I
never knew her very well but I liked her as far as I did know her. Some
folks thought her peculiar even then. _Davy_, if ever I catch you at
such a trick again you’ll be made to wait for your meals till everyone
else is done, like the French.”
Most conversations between Anne and Marilla in the presence of the
twins, were punctuated by these rebukes Davy-ward. In this instance,
Davy, sad to relate, not being able to scoop up the last drops of his
syrup with his spoon, had solved the difficulty by lifting his plate in
both hands and applying his small pink tongue to it. Anne looked at him
with such horrified eyes that the little sinner turned red and said,
half shamefacedly, half defiantly,
“There ain’t any wasted that way.”
“People who are different from other people are always called
peculiar,” said Anne. “And Miss Lavendar is certainly different, though
it’s hard to say just where the difference comes in. Perhaps it is
because she is one of those people who never grow old.”
“One might as well grow old when all your generation do,” said Marilla,
rather reckless of her pronouns. “If you don’t, you don’t fit in
anywhere. Far as I can learn Lavendar Lewis has just dropped out of
everything. She’s lived in that out of the way place until everybody
has forgotten her. That stone house is one of the oldest on the Island.
Old Mr. Lewis built it eighty years ago when he came out from England.
Davy, stop joggling Dora’s elbow. Oh, I saw you! You needn’t try to
look innocent. What does make you behave so this morning?”
“Maybe I got out of the wrong side of the bed,” suggested Davy. “Milty
Boulter says if you do that things are bound to go wrong with you all
day. His grandmother told him. But which _is_ the right side? And what
are you to do when your bed’s against the wall? I want to know.”
“I’ve always wondered what went wrong between Stephen Irving and
Lavendar Lewis,” continued Marilla, ignoring Davy. “They were certainly
engaged twenty-five years ago and then all at once it was broken off. I
don’t know what the trouble was but it must have been something
terrible, for he went away to the States and never come home since.”
“Perhaps it was nothing very dreadful after all. I think the little
things in life often make more trouble than the big things,” said Anne,
with one of those flashes of insight which experience could not have
bettered. “Marilla, please don’t say anything about my being at Miss
Lavendar’s to Mrs. Lynde. She’d be sure to ask a hundred questions and
somehow I wouldn’t like it . . . nor Miss Lavendar either if she knew,
I feel sure.”
“I daresay Rachel would be curious,” admitted Marilla, “though she
hasn’t as much time as she used to have for looking after other
people’s affairs. She’s tied home now on account of Thomas; and she’s
feeling pretty downhearted, for I think she’s beginning to lose hope of
his ever getting better. Rachel will be left pretty lonely if anything
happens to him, with all her children settled out west, except Eliza in
town; and she doesn’t like her husband.”
Marilla’s pronouns slandered Eliza, who was very fond of her husband.
“Rachel says if he’d only brace up and exert his will power he’d get
better. But what is the use of asking a jellyfish to sit up straight?”
continued Marilla. “Thomas Lynde never had any will power to exert. His
mother ruled him till he married and then Rachel carried it on. It’s a
wonder he dared to get sick without asking her permission. But there, I
shouldn’t talk so. Rachel has been a good wife to him. He’d never have
amounted to anything without her, that’s certain. He was born to be
ruled; and it’s well he fell into the hands of a clever, capable
manager like Rachel. He didn’t mind her way. It saved him the bother of
ever making up his own mind about anything. Davy, do stop squirming
like an eel.”
“I’ve nothing else to do,” protested Davy. “I can’t eat any more, and
it’s no fun watching you and Anne eat.”
“Well, you and Dora go out and give the hens their wheat,” said
Marilla. “And don’t you try to pull any more feathers out of the white
rooster’s tail either.”
“I wanted some feathers for an Injun headdress,” said Davy sulkily.
“Milty Boulter has a dandy one, made out of the feathers his mother
give him when she killed their old white gobbler. You might let me have
some. That rooster’s got ever so many more’n he wants.”
“You may have the old feather duster in the garret,” said Anne, “and
I’ll dye them green and red and yellow for you.”
“You do spoil that boy dreadfully,” said Marilla, when Davy, with a
radiant face, had followed prim Dora out. Marilla’s education had made
great strides in the past six years; but she had not yet been able to
rid herself of the idea that it was very bad for a child to have too
many of its wishes indulged.
“All the boys of his class have Indian headdresses, and Davy wants one
too,” said Anne. “_I_ know how it feels . . . I’ll never forget how I
used to long for puffed sleeves when all the other girls had them. And
Davy isn’t being spoiled. He is improving every day. Think what a
difference there is in him since he came here a year ago.”
“He certainly doesn’t get into as much mischief since he began to go to
school,” acknowledged Marilla. “I suppose he works off the tendency
with the other boys. But it’s a wonder to me we haven’t heard from
Richard Keith before this. Never a word since last May.”
“I’ll be afraid to hear from him,” sighed Anne, beginning to clear away
the dishes. “If a letter should come I’d dread opening it, for fear it
would tell us to send the twins to him.”
A month later a letter did come. But it was not from Richard Keith. A
friend of his wrote to say that Richard Keith had died of consumption a
fortnight previously. The writer of the letter was the executor of his
will and by that will the sum of two thousand dollars was left to Miss
Marilla Cuthbert in trust for David and Dora Keith until they came of
age or married. In the meantime the interest was to be used for their
maintenance.
“It seems dreadful to be glad of anything in connection with a death,”
said Anne soberly. “I’m sorry for poor Mr. Keith; but I _am_ glad that
we can keep the twins.”
“It’s a very good thing about the money,” said Marilla practically. “I
wanted to keep them but I really didn’t see how I could afford to do
it, especially when they grew older. The rent of the farm doesn’t do
any more than keep the house and I was bound that not a cent of your
money should be spent on them. You do far too much for them as it is.
Dora didn’t need that new hat you bought her any more than a cat needs
two tails. But now the way is made clear and they are provided for.”
Davy and Dora were delighted when they heard that they were to live at
Green Gables, “for good.” The death of an uncle whom they had never
seen could not weigh a moment in the balance against that. But Dora had
one misgiving.
“Was Uncle Richard buried?” she whispered to Anne.
“Yes, dear, of course.”
“He . . . he . . . isn’t like Mirabel Cotton’s uncle, is he?” in a
still more agitated whisper. “He won’t walk about houses after being
buried, will he, Anne?”
XXIII
Miss Lavendar’s Romance
“I think I’ll take a walk through to Echo Lodge this evening,” said
Anne, one Friday afternoon in December.
“It looks like snow,” said Marilla dubiously.
“I’ll be there before the snow comes and I mean to stay all night.
Diana can’t go because she has company, and I’m sure Miss Lavendar will
be looking for me tonight. It’s a whole fortnight since I was there.”
Anne had paid many a visit to Echo Lodge since that October day.
Sometimes she and Diana drove around by the road; sometimes they walked
through the woods. When Diana could not go Anne went alone. Between her
and Miss Lavendar had sprung up one of those fervent, helpful
friendships possible only between a woman who has kept the freshness of
youth in her heart and soul, and a girl whose imagination and intuition
supplied the place of experience. Anne had at last discovered a real
“kindred spirit,” while into the little lady’s lonely, sequestered life
of dreams Anne and Diana came with the wholesome joy and exhilaration
of the outer existence, which Miss Lavendar, “the world forgetting, by
the world forgot,” had long ceased to share; they brought an atmosphere
of youth and reality to the little stone house. Charlotta the Fourth
always greeted them with her very widest smile . . . and Charlotta’s
smiles _were_ fearfully wide . . . loving them for the sake of her
adored mistress as well as for their own. Never had there been such
“high jinks” held in the little stone house as were held there that
beautiful, late-lingering autumn, when November seemed October over
again, and even December aped the sunshine and hazes of summer.
But on this particular day it seemed as if December had remembered that
it was time for winter and had turned suddenly dull and brooding, with
a windless hush predictive of coming snow. Nevertheless, Anne keenly
enjoyed her walk through the great gray maze of the beechlands; though
alone she never found it lonely; her imagination peopled her path with
merry companions, and with these she carried on a gay, pretended
conversation that was wittier and more fascinating than conversations
are apt to be in real life, where people sometimes fail most lamentably
to talk up to the requirements. In a “make believe” assembly of choice
spirits everybody says just the thing you want her to say and so gives
you the chance to say just what _you_ want to say. Attended by this
invisible company, Anne traversed the woods and arrived at the fir lane
just as broad, feathery flakes began to flutter down softly.
At the first bend she came upon Miss Lavendar, standing under a big,
broad-branching fir. She wore a gown of warm, rich red, and her head
and shoulders were wrapped in a silvery gray silk shawl.
“You look like the queen of the fir wood fairies,” called Anne merrily.
“I thought you would come tonight, Anne,” said Miss Lavendar, running
forward. “And I’m doubly glad, for Charlotta the Fourth is away. Her
mother is sick and she had to go home for the night. I should have been
very lonely if you hadn’t come . . . even the dreams and the echoes
wouldn’t have been enough company. Oh, Anne, how pretty you are,” she
added suddenly, looking up at the tall, slim girl with the soft
rose-flush of walking on her face. “How pretty and how young! It’s so
delightful to be seventeen, isn’t it? I do envy you,” concluded Miss
Lavendar candidly.
“But you are only seventeen at heart,” smiled Anne.
“No, I’m old . . . or rather middle-aged, which is far worse,” sighed
Miss Lavendar. “Sometimes I can pretend I’m not, but at other times I
realize it. And I can’t reconcile myself to it as most women seem to.
I’m just as rebellious as I was when I discovered my first gray hair.
Now, Anne, don’t look as if you were trying to understand. Seventeen
_can’t_ understand. I’m going to pretend right away that I am seventeen
too, and I can do it, now that you’re here. You always bring youth in
your hand like a gift. We’re going to have a jolly evening. Tea first .
. . what do you want for tea? We’ll have whatever you like. Do think of
something nice and indigestible.”
There were sounds of riot and mirth in the little stone house that
night. What with cooking and feasting and making candy and laughing and
“pretending,” it is quite true that Miss Lavendar and Anne comported
themselves in a fashion entirely unsuited to the dignity of a spinster
of forty-five and a sedate schoolma’am. Then, when they were tired,
they sat down on the rug before the grate in the parlor, lighted only
by the soft fireshine and perfumed deliciously by Miss Lavendar’s open
rose-jar on the mantel. The wind had risen and was sighing and wailing
around the eaves and the snow was thudding softly against the windows,
as if a hundred storm sprites were tapping for entrance.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Anne,” said Miss Lavendar, nibbling at her
candy. “If you weren’t I should be blue . . . very blue . . . almost
navy blue. Dreams and make-believes are all very well in the daytime
and the sunshine, but when dark and storm come they fail to satisfy.
One wants real things then. But you don’t know this . . . seventeen
never knows it. At seventeen dreams DO satisfy because you think the
realities are waiting for you further on. When I was seventeen, Anne, I
didn’t think forty-five would find me a white-haired little old maid
with nothing but dreams to fill my life.”
“But you aren’t an old maid,” said Anne, smiling into Miss Lavendar’s
wistful woodbrown eyes. “Old maids are _born_ . . . they don’t
_become_.”
“Some are born old maids, some achieve old maidenhood, and some have
old maidenhood thrust upon them,” parodied Miss Lavendar whimsically.
“You are one of those who have achieved it then,” laughed Anne, “and
you’ve done it so beautifully that if every old maid were like you they
would come into the fashion, I think.”
“I always like to do things as well as possible,” said Miss Lavendar
meditatively, “and since an old maid I had to be I was determined to be
a very nice one. People say I’m odd; but it’s just because I follow my
own way of being an old maid and refuse to copy the traditional
pattern. Anne, did anyone ever tell you anything about Stephen Irving
and me?”
“Yes,” said Anne candidly, “I’ve heard that you and he were engaged
once.”
“So we were . . . twenty-five years ago . . . a lifetime ago. And we
were to have been married the next spring. I had my wedding dress made,
although nobody but mother and Stephen ever knew _that_. We’d been
engaged in a way almost all our lives, you might say. When Stephen was
a little boy his mother would bring him here when she came to see my
mother; and the second time he ever came . . . he was nine and I was
six . . . he told me out in the garden that he had pretty well made up
his mind to marry me when he grew up. I remember that I said ‘Thank
you’; and when he was gone I told mother very gravely that there was a
great weight off my mind, because I wasn’t frightened any more about
having to be an old maid. How poor mother laughed!”
“And what went wrong?” asked Anne breathlessly.
“We had just a stupid, silly, commonplace quarrel. So commonplace that,
if you’ll believe me, I don’t even remember just how it began. I hardly
know who was the more to blame for it. Stephen did really begin it, but
I suppose I provoked him by some foolishness of mine. He had a rival or
two, you see. I was vain and coquettish and liked to tease him a
little. He was a very high-strung, sensitive fellow. Well, we parted in
a temper on both sides. But I thought it would all come right; and it
would have if Stephen hadn’t come back too soon. Anne, my dear, I’m
sorry to say” . . . Miss Lavendar dropped her voice as if she were
about to confess a predilection for murdering people, “that I am a
dreadfully sulky person. Oh, you needn’t smile, . . . it’s only too
true. I _do_ sulk; and Stephen came back before I had finished sulking.
I wouldn’t listen to him and I wouldn’t forgive him; and so he went
away for good. He was too proud to come again. And then I sulked
because he didn’t come. I might have sent for him perhaps, but I
couldn’t humble myself to do that. I was just as proud as he was . . .
pride and sulkiness make a very bad combination, Anne. But I could
never care for anybody else and I didn’t want to. I knew I would rather
be an old maid for a thousand years than marry anybody who wasn’t
Stephen Irving. Well, it all seems like a dream now, of course. How
sympathetic you look, Anne . . . as sympathetic as only seventeen can
look. But don’t overdo it. I’m really a very happy, contented little
person in spite of my broken heart. My heart did break, if ever a heart
did, when I realized that Stephen Irving was not coming back. But,
Anne, a broken heart in real life isn’t half as dreadful as it is in
books. It’s a good deal like a bad tooth . . . though you won’t think
_that_ a very romantic simile. It takes spells of aching and gives you
a sleepless night now and then, but between times it lets you enjoy
life and dreams and echoes and peanut candy as if there were nothing
the matter with it. And now you’re looking disappointed. You don’t
think I’m half as interesting a person as you did five minutes ago when
you believed I was always the prey of a tragic memory bravely hidden
beneath external smiles. That’s the worst . . . or the best . . . of
real life, Anne. It _won’t_ let you be miserable. It keeps on trying to
make you comfortable . . . and succeeding...even when you’re determined
to be unhappy and romantic. Isn’t this candy scrumptious? I’ve eaten
far more than is good for me already but I’m going to keep recklessly
on.”
After a little silence Miss Lavendar said abruptly,
“It gave me a shock to hear about Stephen’s son that first day you were
here, Anne. I’ve never been able to mention him to you since, but I’ve
wanted to know all about him. What sort of a boy is he?”
“He is the dearest, sweetest child I ever knew, Miss Lavendar . . . and
he pretends things too, just as you and I do.”
“I’d like to see him,” said Miss Lavendar softly, as if talking to
herself. “I wonder if he looks anything like the little dream-boy who
lives here with me . . . _my_ little dream-boy.”
“If you would like to see Paul I’ll bring him through with me
sometime,” said Anne.
“I _would_ like it . . . but not too soon. I want to get used to the
thought. There might be more pain than pleasure in it . . . if he
looked too much like Stephen . . . or if he didn’t look enough like
him. In a month’s time you may bring him.”
Accordingly, a month later Anne and Paul walked through the woods to
the stone house, and met Miss Lavendar in the lane. She had not been
expecting them just then and she turned very pale.
“So this is Stephen’s boy,” she said in a low tone, taking Paul’s hand
and looking at him as he stood, beautiful and boyish, in his smart
little fur coat and cap. “He . . . he is very like his father.”
“Everybody says I’m a chip off the old block,” remarked Paul, quite at
his ease.
Anne, who had been watching the little scene, drew a relieved breath.
She saw that Miss Lavendar and Paul had “taken” to each other, and that
there would be no constraint or stiffness. Miss Lavendar was a very
sensible person, in spite of her dreams and romance, and after that
first little betrayal she tucked her feelings out of sight and
entertained Paul as brightly and naturally as if he were anybody’s son
who had come to see her. They all had a jolly afternoon together and
such a feast of fat things by way of supper as would have made old Mrs.
Irving hold up her hands in horror, believing that Paul’s digestion
would be ruined for ever.
“Come again, laddie,” said Miss Lavendar, shaking hands with him at
parting.
“You may kiss me if you like,” said Paul gravely.
Miss Lavendar stooped and kissed him.
“How did you know I wanted to?” she whispered.
“Because you looked at me just as my little mother used to do when she
wanted to kiss me. As a rule, I don’t like to be kissed. Boys don’t.
_You_ know, Miss Lewis. But I think I rather like to have you kiss me.
And of course I’ll come to see you again. I think I’d like to have you
for a particular friend of mine, if you don’t object.”
“I . . . I don’t think I shall object,” said Miss Lavendar. She turned
and went in very quickly; but a moment later she was waving a gay and
smiling good-bye to them from the window.
“I like Miss Lavendar,” announced Paul, as they walked through the
beech woods. “I like the way she looked at me, and I like her stone
house, and I like Charlotta the Fourth. I wish Grandma Irving had a
Charlotta the Fourth instead of a Mary Joe. I feel sure Charlotta the
Fourth wouldn’t think I was wrong in my upper story when I told her
what I think about things. Wasn’t that a splendid tea we had, teacher?
Grandma says a boy shouldn’t be thinking about what he gets to eat, but
he can’t help it sometimes when he is real hungry. _You_ know, teacher.
I don’t think Miss Lavendar would make a boy eat porridge for breakfast
if he didn’t like it. She’d get things for him he did like. But of
course” . . . Paul was nothing if not fair-minded . . . “that mightn’t
be very good for him. It’s very nice for a change though, teacher.
_You_ know.”
XXIV
A Prophet in His Own Country
One May day Avonlea folks were mildly excited over some “Avonlea
Notes,” signed “Observer,” which appeared in the Charlottetown _Daily
Enterprise_. Gossip ascribed the authorship thereof to Charlie Sloane,
partly because the said Charlie had indulged in similar literary
flights in times past, and partly because one of the notes seemed to
embody a sneer at Gilbert Blythe. Avonlea juvenile society persisted in
regarding Gilbert Blythe and Charlie Sloane as rivals in the good
graces of a certain damsel with gray eyes and an imagination.
Gossip, as usual, was wrong. Gilbert Blythe, aided and abetted by Anne,
had written the notes, putting in the one about himself as a blind.
Only two of the notes have any bearing on this history:
“Rumor has it that there will be a wedding in our village ere the
daisies are in bloom. A new and highly respected citizen will lead to
the hymeneal altar one of our most popular ladies.
“Uncle Abe, our well-known weather prophet, predicts a violent storm of
thunder and lightning for the evening of the twenty-third of May,
beginning at seven o’clock sharp. The area of the storm will extend
over the greater part of the Province. People traveling that evening
will do well to take umbrellas and mackintoshes with them.”
“Uncle Abe really has predicted a storm for sometime this spring,” said
Gilbert, “but do you suppose Mr. Harrison really does go to see
Isabella Andrews?”
“No,” said Anne, laughing, “I’m sure he only goes to play checkers with
Mr. Harrison Andrews, but Mrs. Lynde says she knows Isabella Andrews
must be going to get married, she’s in such good spirits this spring.”
Poor old Uncle Abe felt rather indignant over the notes. He suspected
that “Observer” was making fun of him. He angrily denied having
assigned any particular date for his storm but nobody believed him.
Life in Avonlea continued on the smooth and even tenor of its way. The
“planting” was put in; the Improvers celebrated an Arbor Day. Each
Improver set out, or caused to be set out, five ornamental trees. As
the society now numbered forty members, this meant a total of two
hundred young trees. Early oats greened over the red fields; apple
orchards flung great blossoming arms about the farmhouses and the Snow
Queen adorned itself as a bride for her husband. Anne liked to sleep
with her window open and let the cherry fragrance blow over her face
all night. She thought it very poetical. Marilla thought she was
risking her life.
“Thanksgiving should be celebrated in the spring,” said Anne one
evening to Marilla, as they sat on the front door steps and listened to
the silver-sweet chorus of the frogs. “I think it would be ever so much
better than having it in November when everything is dead or asleep.
Then you have to remember to be thankful; but in May one simply can’t
help being thankful . . . that they are alive, if for nothing else. I
feel exactly as Eve must have felt in the garden of Eden before the
trouble began. _Is_ that grass in the hollow green or golden? It seems
to me, Marilla, that a pearl of a day like this, when the blossoms are
out and the winds don’t know where to blow from next for sheer crazy
delight must be pretty near as good as heaven.”
Marilla looked scandalized and glanced apprehensively around to make
sure the twins were not within earshot. They came around the corner of
the house just then.
“Ain’t it an awful nice-smelling evening?” asked Davy, sniffing
delightedly as he swung a hoe in his grimy hands. He had been working
in his garden. That spring Marilla, by way of turning Davy’s passion
for reveling in mud and clay into useful channels, had given him and
Dora a small plot of ground for a garden. Both had eagerly gone to work
in a characteristic fashion. Dora planted, weeded, and watered
carefully, systematically, and dispassionately. As a result, her plot
was already green with prim, orderly little rows of vegetables and
annuals. Davy, however, worked with more zeal than discretion; he dug
and hoed and raked and watered and transplanted so energetically that
his seeds had no chance for their lives.
“How is your garden coming on, Davy-boy?” asked Anne.
“Kind of slow,” said Davy with a sigh. “I don’t know why the things
don’t grow better. Milty Boulter says I must have planted them in the
dark of the moon and that’s the whole trouble. He says you must never
sow seeds or kill pork or cut your hair or do any ‘portant thing in the
wrong time of the moon. Is that true, Anne? I want to know.”
“Maybe if you didn’t pull your plants up by the roots every other day
to see how they’re getting on ‘at the other end,’ they’d do better,”
said Marilla sarcastically.