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LucyMaudMontgomery_AnneOfTheIsland.txt
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LucyMaudMontgomery_AnneOfTheIsland.txt
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ANNE of the ISLAND
by Lucy Maud Montgomery
to
all the girls
all over the world
who have "wanted more"
about ANNE
All precious things discovered late
To those that seek them issue forth,
For Love in sequel works with Fate,
And draws the veil from hidden worth.
--TENNYSON
Table of Contents
I The Shadow of Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
II Garlands of Autumn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
III Greeting and Farewell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
IV April's Lady . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
V Letters from Home. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
VI In the Park. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
VII Home Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
VIII Anne's First Proposal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105
IX An Unwelcome Lover and a Welcome Friend. . . . . . .113
X Patty's Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126
XI The Round of Life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .139
XII "Averil's Atonement" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .153
XIII The Way of Transgressors . . . . . . . . . . . . . .165
XIV The Summons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .181
XV A Dream Turned Upside Down . . . . . . . . . . . . .194
XVI Adjusted Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .202
XVII A Letter from Davy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .219
XVIII Miss Josephine Remembers the Anne-girl . . . . . . .225
XIX An Interlude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .234
XX Gilbert Speaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .240
XXI Roses of Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .249
XXII Spring and Anne Return to Green Gables . . . . . . .256
XXIII Paul Cannot Find the Rock People . . . . . . . . . .263
XXIV Enter Jonas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .269
XXV Enter Prince Charming. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .278
XXVI Enter Christine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .288
XXVII Mutual Confidences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .294
XXVIII A June Evening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .303
XXIX Diana's Wedding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .311
XXX Mrs. Skinner's Romance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .317
XXXI Anne to Philippa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .323
XXXII Tea with Mrs. Douglas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .328
XXXIII "He Just Kept Coming and Coming" . . . . . . . . . .336
XXXIV John Douglas Speaks at Last. . . . . . . . . . . . .342
XXXV The Last Redmond Year Opens. . . . . . . . . . . . .350
XXXV1 The Gardners' Call . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .361
XXXVII Full-fledged B.A.'s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .370
XXXVIII False Dawn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .379
XXXIX Deals with Weddings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .388
XL A Book of Revelation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .400
XLI Love Takes Up the Glass of Time. . . . . . . . . . .407
ANNE of the ISLAND
by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Chapter I
The Shadow of Change
"Harvest is ended and summer is gone," quoted Anne Shirley, gazing
across the shorn fields dreamily. She and Diana Barry had been picking
apples in the Green Gables orchard, but were now resting from their
labors in a sunny corner, where airy fleets of thistledown drifted by
on the wings of a wind that was still summer-sweet with the incense of
ferns in the Haunted Wood.
But everything in the landscape around them spoke of autumn. The sea was
roaring hollowly in the distance, the fields were bare and sere, scarfed
with golden rod, the brook valley below Green Gables overflowed
with asters of ethereal purple, and the Lake of Shining Waters was
blue--blue--blue; not the changeful blue of spring, nor the pale azure
of summer, but a clear, steadfast, serene blue, as if the water
were past all moods and tenses of emotion and had settled down to a
tranquility unbroken by fickle dreams.
"It has been a nice summer," said Diana, twisting the new ring on her
left hand with a smile. "And Miss Lavendar's wedding seemed to come as
a sort of crown to it. I suppose Mr. and Mrs. Irving are on the Pacific
coast now."
"It seems to me they have been gone long enough to go around the world,"
sighed Anne.
"I can't believe it is only a week since they were married. Everything
has changed. Miss Lavendar and Mr. and Mrs. Allan gone--how lonely the
manse looks with the shutters all closed! I went past it last night, and
it made me feel as if everybody in it had died."
"We'll never get another minister as nice as Mr. Allan," said Diana,
with gloomy conviction. "I suppose we'll have all kinds of supplies this
winter, and half the Sundays no preaching at all. And you and Gilbert
gone--it will be awfully dull."
"Fred will be here," insinuated Anne slyly.
"When is Mrs. Lynde going to move up?" asked Diana, as if she had not
heard Anne's remark.
"Tomorrow. I'm glad she's coming--but it will be another change. Marilla
and I cleared everything out of the spare room yesterday. Do you know,
I hated to do it? Of course, it was silly--but it did seem as if we
were committing sacrilege. That old spare room has always seemed like
a shrine to me. When I was a child I thought it the most wonderful
apartment in the world. You remember what a consuming desire I had to
sleep in a spare room bed--but not the Green Gables spare room. Oh, no,
never there! It would have been too terrible--I couldn't have slept a
wink from awe. I never WALKED through that room when Marilla sent me in
on an errand--no, indeed, I tiptoed through it and held my breath, as if
I were in church, and felt relieved when I got out of it. The pictures
of George Whitefield and the Duke of Wellington hung there, one on each
side of the mirror, and frowned so sternly at me all the time I was in,
especially if I dared peep in the mirror, which was the only one in the
house that didn't twist my face a little. I always wondered how Marilla
dared houseclean that room. And now it's not only cleaned but stripped
bare. George Whitefield and the Duke have been relegated to the upstairs
hall. 'So passes the glory of this world,'" concluded Anne, with a
laugh in which there was a little note of regret. It is never pleasant
to have our old shrines desecrated, even when we have outgrown them.
"I'll be so lonesome when you go," moaned Diana for the hundredth time.
"And to think you go next week!"
"But we're together still," said Anne cheerily. "We mustn't let next
week rob us of this week's joy. I hate the thought of going myself--home
and I are such good friends. Talk of being lonesome! It's I who should
groan. YOU'LL be here with any number of your old friends--AND Fred!
While I shall be alone among strangers, not knowing a soul!"
"EXCEPT Gilbert--AND Charlie Sloane," said Diana, imitating Anne's
italics and slyness.
"Charlie Sloane will be a great comfort, of course," agreed Anne
sarcastically; whereupon both those irresponsible damsels laughed. Diana
knew exactly what Anne thought of Charlie Sloane; but, despite sundry
confidential talks, she did not know just what Anne thought of Gilbert
Blythe. To be sure, Anne herself did not know that.
"The boys may be boarding at the other end of Kingsport, for all I
know," Anne went on. "I am glad I'm going to Redmond, and I am sure I
shall like it after a while. But for the first few weeks I know I won't.
I shan't even have the comfort of looking forward to the weekend visit
home, as I had when I went to Queen's. Christmas will seem like a
thousand years away."
"Everything is changing--or going to change," said Diana sadly. "I have
a feeling that things will never be the same again, Anne."
"We have come to a parting of the ways, I suppose," said Anne
thoughtfully. "We had to come to it. Do you think, Diana, that being
grown-up is really as nice as we used to imagine it would be when we
were children?"
"I don't know--there are SOME nice things about it," answered Diana,
again caressing her ring with that little smile which always had the
effect of making Anne feel suddenly left out and inexperienced. "But
there are so many puzzling things, too. Sometimes I feel as if being
grown-up just frightened me--and then I would give anything to be a
little girl again."
"I suppose we'll get used to being grownup in time," said Anne
cheerfully. "There won't be so many unexpected things about it by and
by--though, after all, I fancy it's the unexpected things that give
spice to life. We're eighteen, Diana. In two more years we'll be twenty.
When I was ten I thought twenty was a green old age. In no time you'll
be a staid, middle-aged matron, and I shall be nice, old maid Aunt Anne,
coming to visit you on vacations. You'll always keep a corner for me,
won't you, Di darling? Not the spare room, of course--old maids can't
aspire to spare rooms, and I shall be as 'umble as Uriah Heep, and quite
content with a little over-the-porch or off-the-parlor cubby hole."
"What nonsense you do talk, Anne," laughed Diana. "You'll marry somebody
splendid and handsome and rich--and no spare room in Avonlea will be
half gorgeous enough for you--and you'll turn up your nose at all the
friends of your youth."
"That would be a pity; my nose is quite nice, but I fear turning it up
would spoil it," said Anne, patting that shapely organ. "I haven't so
many good features that I could afford to spoil those I have; so, even
if I should marry the King of the Cannibal Islands, I promise you I
won't turn up my nose at you, Diana."
With another gay laugh the girls separated, Diana to return to Orchard
Slope, Anne to walk to the Post Office. She found a letter awaiting her
there, and when Gilbert Blythe overtook her on the bridge over the Lake
of Shining Waters she was sparkling with the excitement of it.
"Priscilla Grant is going to Redmond, too," she exclaimed. "Isn't that
splendid? I hoped she would, but she didn't think her father would
consent. He has, however, and we're to board together. I feel that I can
face an army with banners--or all the professors of Redmond in one fell
phalanx--with a chum like Priscilla by my side."
"I think we'll like Kingsport," said Gilbert. "It's a nice old burg,
they tell me, and has the finest natural park in the world. I've heard
that the scenery in it is magnificent."
"I wonder if it will be--can be--any more beautiful than this," murmured
Anne, looking around her with the loving, enraptured eyes of those to
whom "home" must always be the loveliest spot in the world, no matter
what fairer lands may lie under alien stars.
They were leaning on the bridge of the old pond, drinking deep of the
enchantment of the dusk, just at the spot where Anne had climbed from
her sinking Dory on the day Elaine floated down to Camelot. The fine,
empurpling dye of sunset still stained the western skies, but the moon
was rising and the water lay like a great, silver dream in her light.
Remembrance wove a sweet and subtle spell over the two young creatures.
"You are very quiet, Anne," said Gilbert at last.
"I'm afraid to speak or move for fear all this wonderful beauty will
vanish just like a broken silence," breathed Anne.
Gilbert suddenly laid his hand over the slender white one lying on the
rail of the bridge. His hazel eyes deepened into darkness, his still
boyish lips opened to say something of the dream and hope that thrilled
his soul. But Anne snatched her hand away and turned quickly. The spell
of the dusk was broken for her.
"I must go home," she exclaimed, with a rather overdone carelessness.
"Marilla had a headache this afternoon, and I'm sure the twins will be
in some dreadful mischief by this time. I really shouldn't have stayed
away so long."
She chattered ceaselessly and inconsequently until they reached the
Green Gables lane. Poor Gilbert hardly had a chance to get a word in
edgewise. Anne felt rather relieved when they parted. There had been a
new, secret self-consciousness in her heart with regard to Gilbert, ever
since that fleeting moment of revelation in the garden of Echo
Lodge. Something alien had intruded into the old, perfect, school-day
comradeship--something that threatened to mar it.
"I never felt glad to see Gilbert go before," she thought,
half-resentfully, half-sorrowfully, as she walked alone up the lane.
"Our friendship will be spoiled if he goes on with this nonsense.
It mustn't be spoiled--I won't let it. Oh, WHY can't boys be just
sensible!"
Anne had an uneasy doubt that it was not strictly "sensible" that
she should still feel on her hand the warm pressure of Gilbert's, as
distinctly as she had felt it for the swift second his had rested
there; and still less sensible that the sensation was far from being an
unpleasant one--very different from that which had attended a similar
demonstration on Charlie Sloane's part, when she had been sitting out a
dance with him at a White Sands party three nights before. Anne shivered
over the disagreeable recollection. But all problems connected with
infatuated swains vanished from her mind when she entered the
homely, unsentimental atmosphere of the Green Gables kitchen where an
eight-year-old boy was crying grievously on the sofa.
"What is the matter, Davy?" asked Anne, taking him up in her arms.
"Where are Marilla and Dora?"
"Marilla's putting Dora to bed," sobbed Davy, "and I'm crying 'cause
Dora fell down the outside cellar steps, heels over head, and scraped
all the skin off her nose, and--"
"Oh, well, don't cry about it, dear. Of course, you are sorry for her,
but crying won't help her any. She'll be all right tomorrow. Crying
never helps any one, Davy-boy, and--"
"I ain't crying 'cause Dora fell down cellar," said Davy, cutting short
Anne's wellmeant preachment with increasing bitterness. "I'm crying,
cause I wasn't there to see her fall. I'm always missing some fun or
other, seems to me."
"Oh, Davy!" Anne choked back an unholy shriek of laughter. "Would you
call it fun to see poor little Dora fall down the steps and get hurt?"
"She wasn't MUCH hurt," said Davy, defiantly. "'Course, if she'd been
killed I'd have been real sorry, Anne. But the Keiths ain't so easy
killed. They're like the Blewetts, I guess. Herb Blewett fell off the
hayloft last Wednesday, and rolled right down through the turnip chute
into the box stall, where they had a fearful wild, cross horse, and
rolled right under his heels. And still he got out alive, with only
three bones broke. Mrs. Lynde says there are some folks you can't kill
with a meat-axe. Is Mrs. Lynde coming here tomorrow, Anne?"
"Yes, Davy, and I hope you'll be always very nice and good to her."
"I'll be nice and good. But will she ever put me to bed at nights,
Anne?"
"Perhaps. Why?"
"'Cause," said Davy very decidedly, "if she does I won't say my prayers
before her like I do before you, Anne."
"Why not?"
"'Cause I don't think it would be nice to talk to God before strangers,
Anne. Dora can say hers to Mrs. Lynde if she likes, but _I_ won't. I'll
wait till she's gone and then say 'em. Won't that be all right, Anne?"
"Yes, if you are sure you won't forget to say them, Davy-boy."
"Oh, I won't forget, you bet. I think saying my prayers is great fun.
But it won't be as good fun saying them alone as saying them to you.
I wish you'd stay home, Anne. I don't see what you want to go away and
leave us for."
"I don't exactly WANT to, Davy, but I feel I ought to go."
"If you don't want to go you needn't. You're grown up. When _I_'m grown
up I'm not going to do one single thing I don't want to do, Anne."
"All your life, Davy, you'll find yourself doing things you don't want
to do."
"I won't," said Davy flatly. "Catch me! I have to do things I don't want
to now 'cause you and Marilla'll send me to bed if I don't. But when I
grow up you can't do that, and there'll be nobody to tell me not to do
things. Won't I have the time! Say, Anne, Milty Boulter says his mother
says you're going to college to see if you can catch a man. Are you,
Anne? I want to know."
For a second Anne burned with resentment. Then she laughed, reminding
herself that Mrs. Boulter's crude vulgarity of thought and speech could
not harm her.
"No, Davy, I'm not. I'm going to study and grow and learn about many
things."
"What things?"
"'Shoes and ships and sealing wax
And cabbages and kings,'"
quoted Anne.
"But if you DID want to catch a man how would you go about it? I want
to know," persisted Davy, for whom the subject evidently possessed a
certain fascination.
"You'd better ask Mrs. Boulter," said Anne thoughtlessly. "I think it's
likely she knows more about the process than I do."
"I will, the next time I see her," said Davy gravely.
"Davy! If you do!" cried Anne, realizing her mistake.
"But you just told me to," protested Davy aggrieved.
"It's time you went to bed," decreed Anne, by way of getting out of the
scrape.
After Davy had gone to bed Anne wandered down to Victoria Island and sat
there alone, curtained with fine-spun, moonlit gloom, while the water
laughed around her in a duet of brook and wind. Anne had always loved
that brook. Many a dream had she spun over its sparkling water in
days gone by. She forgot lovelorn youths, and the cayenne speeches of
malicious neighbors, and all the problems of her girlish existence. In
imagination she sailed over storied seas that wash the distant shining
shores of "faery lands forlorn," where lost Atlantis and Elysium lie,
with the evening star for pilot, to the land of Heart's Desire. And she
was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass away,
but the things that are unseen are eternal.
Chapter II
Garlands of Autumn
The following week sped swiftly, crowded with innumerable "last things,"
as Anne called them. Good-bye calls had to be made and received, being
pleasant or otherwise, according to whether callers and called-upon
were heartily in sympathy with Anne's hopes, or thought she was too much
puffed-up over going to college and that it was their duty to "take her
down a peg or two."
The A.V.I.S. gave a farewell party in honor of Anne and Gilbert one
evening at the home of Josie Pye, choosing that place, partly because
Mr. Pye's house was large and convenient, partly because it was strongly
suspected that the Pye girls would have nothing to do with the affair if
their offer of the house for the party was not accepted. It was a very
pleasant little time, for the Pye girls were gracious, and said and did
nothing to mar the harmony of the occasion--which was not according
to their wont. Josie was unusually amiable--so much so that she even
remarked condescendingly to Anne,
"Your new dress is rather becoming to you, Anne. Really, you look ALMOST
PRETTY in it."
"How kind of you to say so," responded Anne, with dancing eyes. Her
sense of humor was developing, and the speeches that would have hurt her
at fourteen were becoming merely food for amusement now. Josie suspected
that Anne was laughing at her behind those wicked eyes; but she
contented herself with whispering to Gertie, as they went downstairs,
that Anne Shirley would put on more airs than ever now that she was
going to college--you'd see!
All the "old crowd" was there, full of mirth and zest and youthful
lightheartedness. Diana Barry, rosy and dimpled, shadowed by the
faithful Fred; Jane Andrews, neat and sensible and plain; Ruby Gillis,
looking her handsomest and brightest in a cream silk blouse, with red
geraniums in her golden hair; Gilbert Blythe and Charlie Sloane, both
trying to keep as near the elusive Anne as possible; Carrie Sloane,
looking pale and melancholy because, so it was reported, her father
would not allow Oliver Kimball to come near the place; Moody Spurgeon
MacPherson, whose round face and objectionable ears were as round and
objectionable as ever; and Billy Andrews, who sat in a corner all the
evening, chuckled when any one spoke to him, and watched Anne Shirley
with a grin of pleasure on his broad, freckled countenance.
Anne had known beforehand of the party, but she had not known that she
and Gilbert were, as the founders of the Society, to be presented with
a very complimentary "address" and "tokens of respect"--in her case a
volume of Shakespeare's plays, in Gilbert's a fountain pen. She was so
taken by surprise and pleased by the nice things said in the address,
read in Moody Spurgeon's most solemn and ministerial tones, that the
tears quite drowned the sparkle of her big gray eyes. She had worked
hard and faithfully for the A.V.I.S., and it warmed the cockles of her
heart that the members appreciated her efforts so sincerely. And they
were all so nice and friendly and jolly--even the Pye girls had their
merits; at that moment Anne loved all the world.
She enjoyed the evening tremendously, but the end of it rather spoiled
all. Gilbert again made the mistake of saying something sentimental
to her as they ate their supper on the moonlit verandah; and Anne, to
punish him, was gracious to Charlie Sloane and allowed the latter to
walk home with her. She found, however, that revenge hurts nobody quite
so much as the one who tries to inflict it. Gilbert walked airily off
with Ruby Gillis, and Anne could hear them laughing and talking gaily as
they loitered along in the still, crisp autumn air. They were evidently
having the best of good times, while she was horribly bored by Charlie
Sloane, who talked unbrokenly on, and never, even by accident, said one
thing that was worth listening to. Anne gave an occasional absent "yes"
or "no," and thought how beautiful Ruby had looked that night, how
very goggly Charlie's eyes were in the moonlight--worse even than by
daylight--and that the world, somehow, wasn't quite such a nice place as
she had believed it to be earlier in the evening.
"I'm just tired out--that is what is the matter with me," she said, when
she thankfully found herself alone in her own room. And she honestly
believed it was. But a certain little gush of joy, as from some secret,
unknown spring, bubbled up in her heart the next evening, when she saw
Gilbert striding down through the Haunted Wood and crossing the old log
bridge with that firm, quick step of his. So Gilbert was not going to
spend this last evening with Ruby Gillis after all!
"You look tired, Anne," he said.
"I am tired, and, worse than that, I'm disgruntled. I'm tired because
I've been packing my trunk and sewing all day. But I'm disgruntled
because six women have been here to say good-bye to me, and every one of
the six managed to say something that seemed to take the color right
out of life and leave it as gray and dismal and cheerless as a November
morning."
"Spiteful old cats!" was Gilbert's elegant comment.
"Oh, no, they weren't," said Anne seriously. "That is just the trouble.
If they had been spiteful cats I wouldn't have minded them. But they are
all nice, kind, motherly souls, who like me and whom I like, and that is
why what they said, or hinted, had such undue weight with me. They let
me see they thought I was crazy going to Redmond and trying to take
a B.A., and ever since I've been wondering if I am. Mrs. Peter Sloane
sighed and said she hoped my strength would hold out till I got through;
and at once I saw myself a hopeless victim of nervous prostration at the
end of my third year; Mrs. Eben Wright said it must cost an awful lot
to put in four years at Redmond; and I felt all over me that it was
unpardonable of me to squander Marilla's money and my own on such a
folly. Mrs. Jasper Bell said she hoped I wouldn't let college spoil me,
as it did some people; and I felt in my bones that the end of my four
Redmond years would see me a most insufferable creature, thinking I knew
it all, and looking down on everything and everybody in Avonlea; Mrs.
Elisha Wright said she understood that Redmond girls, especially those
who belonged to Kingsport, were 'dreadful dressy and stuck-up,' and she
guessed I wouldn't feel much at home among them; and I saw myself, a
snubbed, dowdy, humiliated country girl, shuffling through Redmond's
classic halls in coppertoned boots."
Anne ended with a laugh and a sigh commingled. With her sensitive nature
all disapproval had weight, even the disapproval of those for whose
opinions she had scant respect. For the time being life was savorless,
and ambition had gone out like a snuffed candle.
"You surely don't care for what they said," protested Gilbert. "You know
exactly how narrow their outlook on life is, excellent creatures though
they are. To do anything THEY have never done is anathema maranatha. You
are the first Avonlea girl who has ever gone to college; and you
know that all pioneers are considered to be afflicted with moonstruck
madness."
"Oh, I know. But FEELING is so different from KNOWING. My common sense
tells me all you can say, but there are times when common sense has
no power over me. Common nonsense takes possession of my soul. Really,
after Mrs. Elisha went away I hardly had the heart to finish packing."
"You're just tired, Anne. Come, forget it all and take a walk with
me--a ramble back through the woods beyond the marsh. There should be
something there I want to show you."
"Should be! Don't you know if it is there?"
"No. I only know it should be, from something I saw there in spring.
Come on. We'll pretend we are two children again and we'll go the way of
the wind."
They started gaily off. Anne, remembering the unpleasantness of the
preceding evening, was very nice to Gilbert; and Gilbert, who was
learning wisdom, took care to be nothing save the schoolboy comrade
again. Mrs. Lynde and Marilla watched them from the kitchen window.
"That'll be a match some day," Mrs. Lynde said approvingly.
Marilla winced slightly. In her heart she hoped it would, but it went
against her grain to hear the matter spoken of in Mrs. Lynde's gossipy
matter-of-fact way.
"They're only children yet," she said shortly.
Mrs. Lynde laughed good-naturedly.
"Anne is eighteen; I was married when I was that age. We old folks,
Marilla, are too much given to thinking children never grow up, that's
what. Anne is a young woman and Gilbert's a man, and he worships the
ground she walks on, as any one can see. He's a fine fellow, and Anne
can't do better. I hope she won't get any romantic nonsense into her
head at Redmond. I don't approve of them coeducational places and never
did, that's what. I don't believe," concluded Mrs. Lynde solemnly, "that
the students at such colleges ever do much else than flirt."
"They must study a little," said Marilla, with a smile.
"Precious little," sniffed Mrs. Rachel. "However, I think Anne will. She
never was flirtatious. But she doesn't appreciate Gilbert at his full
value, that's what. Oh, I know girls! Charlie Sloane is wild about her,
too, but I'd never advise her to marry a Sloane. The Sloanes are good,
honest, respectable people, of course. But when all's said and done,
they're SLOANES."
Marilla nodded. To an outsider, the statement that Sloanes were Sloanes
might not be very illuminating, but she understood. Every village has
such a family; good, honest, respectable people they may be, but SLOANES
they are and must ever remain, though they speak with the tongues of men
and angels.
Gilbert and Anne, happily unconscious that their future was thus being
settled by Mrs. Rachel, were sauntering through the shadows of the
Haunted Wood. Beyond, the harvest hills were basking in an amber sunset
radiance, under a pale, aerial sky of rose and blue. The distant spruce
groves were burnished bronze, and their long shadows barred the upland
meadows. But around them a little wind sang among the fir tassels, and
in it there was the note of autumn.
"This wood really is haunted now--by old memories," said Anne, stooping
to gather a spray of ferns, bleached to waxen whiteness by frost. "It
seems to me that the little girls Diana and I used to be play here
still, and sit by the Dryad's Bubble in the twilights, trysting with
the ghosts. Do you know, I can never go up this path in the dusk without
feeling a bit of the old fright and shiver? There was one especially
horrifying phantom which we created--the ghost of the murdered child
that crept up behind you and laid cold fingers on yours. I confess that,
to this day, I cannot help fancying its little, furtive footsteps behind
me when I come here after nightfall. I'm not afraid of the White Lady or
the headless man or the skeletons, but I wish I had never imagined that
baby's ghost into existence. How angry Marilla and Mrs. Barry were over
that affair," concluded Anne, with reminiscent laughter.
The woods around the head of the marsh were full of purple vistas,
threaded with gossamers. Past a dour plantation of gnarled spruces and
a maple-fringed, sun-warm valley they found the "something" Gilbert was
looking for.
"Ah, here it is," he said with satisfaction.
"An apple tree--and away back here!" exclaimed Anne delightedly.
"Yes, a veritable apple-bearing apple tree, too, here in the very midst
of pines and beeches, a mile away from any orchard. I was here one day
last spring and found it, all white with blossom. So I resolved I'd come
again in the fall and see if it had been apples. See, it's loaded. They
look good, too--tawny as russets but with a dusky red cheek. Most wild
seedlings are green and uninviting."
"I suppose it sprang years ago from some chance-sown seed," said Anne
dreamily. "And how it has grown and flourished and held its own here all
alone among aliens, the brave determined thing!"
"Here's a fallen tree with a cushion of moss. Sit down, Anne--it will
serve for a woodland throne. I'll climb for some apples. They all grow
high--the tree had to reach up to the sunlight."
The apples proved to be delicious. Under the tawny skin was a white,
white flesh, faintly veined with red; and, besides their own proper
apple taste, they had a certain wild, delightful tang no orchard-grown
apple ever possessed.
"The fatal apple of Eden couldn't have had a rarer flavor," commented
Anne. "But it's time we were going home. See, it was twilight three
minutes ago and now it's moonlight. What a pity we couldn't have caught
the moment of transformation. But such moments never are caught, I
suppose."
"Let's go back around the marsh and home by way of Lover's Lane. Do you
feel as disgruntled now as when you started out, Anne?"
"Not I. Those apples have been as manna to a hungry soul. I feel that I
shall love Redmond and have a splendid four years there."
"And after those four years--what?"
"Oh, there's another bend in the road at their end," answered Anne
lightly. "I've no idea what may be around it--I don't want to have. It's
nicer not to know."
Lover's Lane was a dear place that night, still and mysteriously dim
in the pale radiance of the moonlight. They loitered through it in a
pleasant chummy silence, neither caring to talk.
"If Gilbert were always as he has been this evening how nice and simple
everything would be," reflected Anne.
Gilbert was looking at Anne, as she walked along. In her light dress,
with her slender delicacy, she made him think of a white iris.
"I wonder if I can ever make her care for me," he thought, with a pang
of self-distrust.
Chapter III
Greeting and Farewell
Charlie Sloane, Gilbert Blythe and Anne Shirley left Avonlea the
following Monday morning. Anne had hoped for a fine day. Diana was to
drive her to the station and they wanted this, their last drive together
for some time, to be a pleasant one. But when Anne went to bed Sunday
night the east wind was moaning around Green Gables with an ominous
prophecy which was fulfilled in the morning. Anne awoke to find
raindrops pattering against her window and shadowing the pond's gray
surface with widening rings; hills and sea were hidden in mist, and the
whole world seemed dim and dreary. Anne dressed in the cheerless gray
dawn, for an early start was necessary to catch the boat train; she
struggled against the tears that WOULD well up in her eyes in spite of
herself. She was leaving the home that was so dear to her, and something
told her that she was leaving it forever, save as a holiday refuge.
Things would never be the same again; coming back for vacations would
not be living there. And oh, how dear and beloved everything was--that
little white porch room, sacred to the dreams of girlhood, the old Snow
Queen at the window, the brook in the hollow, the Dryad's Bubble, the
Haunted Woods, and Lover's Lane--all the thousand and one dear spots
where memories of the old years bided. Could she ever be really happy
anywhere else?
Breakfast at Green Gables that morning was a rather doleful meal. Davy,
for the first time in his life probably, could not eat, but blubbered
shamelessly over his porridge. Nobody else seemed to have much appetite,
save Dora, who tucked away her rations comfortably. Dora, like the
immortal and most prudent Charlotte, who "went on cutting bread and
butter" when her frenzied lover's body had been carried past on a
shutter, was one of those fortunate creatures who are seldom disturbed
by anything. Even at eight it took a great deal to ruffle Dora's
placidity. She was sorry Anne was going away, of course, but was that
any reason why she should fail to appreciate a poached egg on toast? Not
at all. And, seeing that Davy could not eat his, Dora ate it for him.
Promptly on time Diana appeared with horse and buggy, her rosy face
glowing above her raincoat. The good-byes had to be said then somehow.
Mrs. Lynde came in from her quarters to give Anne a hearty embrace and
warn her to be careful of her health, whatever she did. Marilla, brusque
and tearless, pecked Anne's cheek and said she supposed they'd hear from
her when she got settled. A casual observer might have concluded that
Anne's going mattered very little to her--unless said observer had
happened to get a good look in her eyes. Dora kissed Anne primly and
squeezed out two decorous little tears; but Davy, who had been crying on
the back porch step ever since they rose from the table, refused to say
good-bye at all. When he saw Anne coming towards him he sprang to his
feet, bolted up the back stairs, and hid in a clothes closet, out of
which he would not come. His muffled howls were the last sounds Anne
heard as she left Green Gables.
It rained heavily all the way to Bright River, to which station they had
to go, since the branch line train from Carmody did not connect with the
boat train. Charlie and Gilbert were on the station platform when they
reached it, and the train was whistling. Anne had just time to get her
ticket and trunk check, say a hurried farewell to Diana, and hasten on
board. She wished she were going back with Diana to Avonlea; she knew
she was going to die of homesickness. And oh, if only that dismal rain
would stop pouring down as if the whole world were weeping over summer
vanished and joys departed! Even Gilbert's presence brought her no
comfort, for Charlie Sloane was there, too, and Sloanishness could be
tolerated only in fine weather. It was absolutely insufferable in rain.
But when the boat steamed out of Charlottetown harbor things took a turn
for the better. The rain ceased and the sun began to burst out goldenly
now and again between the rents in the clouds, burnishing the gray seas
with copper-hued radiance, and lighting up the mists that curtained the
Island's red shores with gleams of gold foretokening a fine day after
all. Besides, Charlie Sloane promptly became so seasick that he had to
go below, and Anne and Gilbert were left alone on deck.
"I am very glad that all the Sloanes get seasick as soon as they go on
water," thought Anne mercilessly. "I am sure I couldn't take my farewell
look at the 'ould sod' with Charlie standing there pretending to look
sentimentally at it, too."
"Well, we're off," remarked Gilbert unsentimentally.
"Yes, I feel like Byron's 'Childe Harold'--only it isn't really my
'native shore' that I'm watching," said Anne, winking her gray eyes
vigorously. "Nova Scotia is that, I suppose. But one's native shore is
the land one loves the best, and that's good old P.E.I. for me. I can't
believe I didn't always live here. Those eleven years before I came seem
like a bad dream. It's seven years since I crossed on this boat--the
evening Mrs. Spencer brought me over from Hopetown. I can see myself, in
that dreadful old wincey dress and faded sailor hat, exploring decks and
cabins with enraptured curiosity. It was a fine evening; and how those
red Island shores did gleam in the sunshine. Now I'm crossing the strait
again. Oh, Gilbert, I do hope I'll like Redmond and Kingsport, but I'm
sure I won't!"
"Where's all your philosophy gone, Anne?"
"It's all submerged under a great, swamping wave of loneliness and
homesickness. I've longed for three years to go to Redmond--and now
I'm going--and I wish I weren't! Never mind! I shall be cheerful and
philosophical again after I have just one good cry. I MUST have that,
'as a went'--and I'll have to wait until I get into my boardinghouse
bed tonight, wherever it may be, before I can have it. Then Anne will be
herself again. I wonder if Davy has come out of the closet yet."
It was nine that night when their train reached Kingsport, and they
found themselves in the blue-white glare of the crowded station. Anne
felt horribly bewildered, but a moment later she was seized by Priscilla
Grant, who had come to Kingsport on Saturday.
"Here you are, beloved! And I suppose you're as tired as I was when I
got here Saturday night."
"Tired! Priscilla, don't talk of it. I'm tired, and green, and
provincial, and only about ten years old. For pity's sake take your
poor, broken-down chum to some place where she can hear herself think."
"I'll take you right up to our boardinghouse. I've a cab ready outside."
"It's such a blessing you're here, Prissy. If you weren't I think I
should just sit down on my suitcase, here and now, and weep bitter
tears. What a comfort one familiar face is in a howling wilderness of
strangers!"
"Is that Gilbert Blythe over there, Anne? How he has grown up this past
year! He was only a schoolboy when I taught in Carmody. And of course
that's Charlie Sloane. HE hasn't changed--couldn't! He looked just like
that when he was born, and he'll look like that when he's eighty. This
way, dear. We'll be home in twenty minutes."
"Home!" groaned Anne. "You mean we'll be in some horrible boardinghouse,
in a still more horrible hall bedroom, looking out on a dingy back
yard."
"It isn't a horrible boardinghouse, Anne-girl. Here's our cab. Hop
in--the driver will get your trunk. Oh, yes, the boardinghouse--it's
really a very nice place of its kind, as you'll admit tomorrow morning
when a good night's sleep has turned your blues rosy pink. It's a big,
old-fashioned, gray stone house on St. John Street, just a nice little
constitutional from Redmond. It used to be the 'residence' of great
folk, but fashion has deserted St. John Street and its houses only dream
now of better days. They're so big that people living in them have
to take boarders just to fill up. At least, that is the reason our
landladies are very anxious to impress on us. They're delicious,
Anne--our landladies, I mean."
"How many are there?"
"Two. Miss Hannah Harvey and Miss Ada Harvey. They were born twins about
fifty years ago."
"I can't get away from twins, it seems," smiled Anne. "Wherever I go
they confront me."
"Oh, they're not twins now, dear. After they reached the age of
thirty they never were twins again. Miss Hannah has grown old, not too
gracefully, and Miss Ada has stayed thirty, less gracefully still. I
don't know whether Miss Hannah can smile or not; I've never caught
her at it so far, but Miss Ada smiles all the time and that's worse.
However, they're nice, kind souls, and they take two boarders every
year because Miss Hannah's economical soul cannot bear to 'waste room
space'--not because they need to or have to, as Miss Ada has told me
seven times since Saturday night. As for our rooms, I admit they are
hall bedrooms, and mine does look out on the back yard. Your room is
a front one and looks out on Old St. John's graveyard, which is just
across the street."
"That sounds gruesome," shivered Anne. "I think I'd rather have the back
yard view."
"Oh, no, you wouldn't. Wait and see. Old St. John's is a darling place.
It's been a graveyard so long that it's ceased to be one and has become
one of the sights of Kingsport. I was all through it yesterday for a
pleasure exertion. There's a big stone wall and a row of enormous trees
all around it, and rows of trees all through it, and the queerest old
tombstones, with the queerest and quaintest inscriptions. You'll go
there to study, Anne, see if you don't. Of course, nobody is ever buried
there now. But a few years ago they put up a beautiful monument to the
memory of Nova Scotian soldiers who fell in the Crimean War. It is just
opposite the entrance gates and there's 'scope for imagination' in it,
as you used to say. Here's your trunk at last--and the boys coming to
say good night. Must I really shake hands with Charlie Sloane, Anne?
His hands are always so cold and fishy-feeling. We must ask them to call
occasionally. Miss Hannah gravely told me we could have 'young gentlemen
callers' two evenings in the week, if they went away at a reasonable
hour; and Miss Ada asked me, smiling, please to be sure they didn't sit
on her beautiful cushions. I promised to see to it; but goodness knows
where else they CAN sit, unless they sit on the floor, for there are
cushions on EVERYTHING. Miss Ada even has an elaborate Battenburg one on
top of the piano."
Anne was laughing by this time. Priscilla's gay chatter had the intended
effect of cheering her up; homesickness vanished for the time being, and
did not even return in full force when she finally found herself alone
in her little bedroom. She went to her window and looked out. The street
below was dim and quiet. Across it the moon was shining above the trees
in Old St. John's, just behind the great dark head of the lion on the
monument. Anne wondered if it could have been only that morning that she
had left Green Gables. She had the sense of a long passage of time which
one day of change and travel gives.
"I suppose that very moon is looking down on Green Gables now," she
mused. "But I won't think about it--that way homesickness lies. I'm not
even going to have my good cry. I'll put that off to a more convenient
season, and just now I'll go calmly and sensibly to bed and to sleep."
Chapter IV
April's Lady
Kingsport is a quaint old town, hearking back to early Colonial days,
and wrapped in its ancient atmosphere, as some fine old dame in garments
fashioned like those of her youth. Here and there it sprouts out into
modernity, but at heart it is still unspoiled; it is full of curious
relics, and haloed by the romance of many legends of the past. Once it
was a mere frontier station on the fringe of the wilderness, and those
were the days when Indians kept life from being monotonous to the
settlers. Then it grew to be a bone of contention between the British
and the French, being occupied now by the one and now by the other,
emerging from each occupation with some fresh scar of battling nations
branded on it.
It has in its park a martello tower, autographed all over by tourists,
a dismantled old French fort on the hills beyond the town, and several
antiquated cannon in its public squares. It has other historic spots
also, which may be hunted out by the curious, and none is more quaint
and delightful than Old St. John's Cemetery at the very core of the
town, with streets of quiet, old-time houses on two sides, and busy,
bustling, modern thoroughfares on the others. Every citizen of Kingsport
feels a thrill of possessive pride in Old St. John's, for, if he be of
any pretensions at all, he has an ancestor buried there, with a queer,
crooked slab at his head, or else sprawling protectively over the grave,
on which all the main facts of his history are recorded. For the most
part no great art or skill was lavished on those old tombstones. The
larger number are of roughly chiselled brown or gray native stone, and
only in a few cases is there any attempt at ornamentation. Some are
adorned with skull and cross-bones, and this grizzly decoration is
frequently coupled with a cherub's head. Many are prostrate and in
ruins. Into almost all Time's tooth has been gnawing, until some
inscriptions have been completely effaced, and others can only be
deciphered with difficulty. The graveyard is very full and very bowery,
for it is surrounded and intersected by rows of elms and willows,
beneath whose shade the sleepers must lie very dreamlessly, forever
crooned to by the winds and leaves over them, and quite undisturbed by
the clamor of traffic just beyond.
Anne took the first of many rambles in Old St. John's the next
afternoon. She and Priscilla had gone to Redmond in the forenoon and
registered as students, after which there was nothing more to do that
day. The girls gladly made their escape, for it was not exhilarating to
be surrounded by crowds of strangers, most of whom had a rather alien
appearance, as if not quite sure where they belonged.
The "freshettes" stood about in detached groups of two or three,
looking askance at each other; the "freshies," wiser in their day and
generation, had banded themselves together on the big staircase of the
entrance hall, where they were shouting out glees with all the vigor of
youthful lungs, as a species of defiance to their traditional enemies,
the Sophomores, a few of whom were prowling loftily about, looking
properly disdainful of the "unlicked cubs" on the stairs. Gilbert and
Charlie were nowhere to be seen.
"Little did I think the day would ever come when I'd be glad of the
sight of a Sloane," said Priscilla, as they crossed the campus, "but I'd
welcome Charlie's goggle eyes almost ecstatically. At least, they'd be
familiar eyes."
"Oh," sighed Anne. "I can't describe how I felt when I was standing
there, waiting my turn to be registered--as insignificant as the
teeniest drop in a most enormous bucket. It's bad enough to feel
insignificant, but it's unbearable to have it grained into your soul
that you will never, can never, be anything but insignificant, and that
is how I did feel--as if I were invisible to the naked eye and some of
those Sophs might step on me. I knew I would go down to my grave unwept,
unhonored and unsung."
"Wait till next year," comforted Priscilla. "Then we'll be able to look
as bored and sophisticated as any Sophomore of them all. No doubt it is
rather dreadful to feel insignificant; but I think it's better than
to feel as big and awkward as I did--as if I were sprawled all over
Redmond. That's how I felt--I suppose because I was a good two inches
taller than any one else in the crowd. I wasn't afraid a Soph might walk
over me; I was afraid they'd take me for an elephant, or an overgrown
sample of a potato-fed Islander."
"I suppose the trouble is we can't forgive big Redmond for not being
little Queen's," said Anne, gathering about her the shreds of her old
cheerful philosophy to cover her nakedness of spirit. "When we left
Queen's we knew everybody and had a place of our own. I suppose we have
been unconsciously expecting to take life up at Redmond just where we
left off at Queen's, and now we feel as if the ground had slipped from
under our feet. I'm thankful that neither Mrs. Lynde nor Mrs. Elisha
Wright know, or ever will know, my state of mind at present. They would
exult in saying 'I told you so,' and be convinced it was the beginning
of the end. Whereas it is just the end of the beginning."
"Exactly. That sounds more Anneish. In a little while we'll be
acclimated and acquainted, and all will be well. Anne, did you notice
the girl who stood alone just outside the door of the coeds' dressing
room all the morning--the pretty one with the brown eyes and crooked
mouth?"
"Yes, I did. I noticed her particularly because she seemed the only
creature there who LOOKED as lonely and friendless as I FELT. I had YOU,
but she had no one."
"I think she felt pretty all-by-herselfish, too. Several times I saw her
make a motion as if to cross over to us, but she never did it--too shy,
I suppose. I wished she would come. If I hadn't felt so much like the
aforesaid elephant I'd have gone to her. But I couldn't lumber across
that big hall with all those boys howling on the stairs. She was the
prettiest freshette I saw today, but probably favor is deceitful and
even beauty is vain on your first day at Redmond," concluded Priscilla
with a laugh.
"I'm going across to Old St. John's after lunch," said Anne. "I don't
know that a graveyard is a very good place to go to get cheered up, but
it seems the only get-at-able place where there are trees, and trees
I must have. I'll sit on one of those old slabs and shut my eyes and
imagine I'm in the Avonlea woods."
Anne did not do that, however, for she found enough of interest in Old
St. John's to keep her eyes wide open. They went in by the entrance
gates, past the simple, massive, stone arch surmounted by the great lion
of England.
"'And on Inkerman yet the wild bramble is gory,
And those bleak heights henceforth shall be famous in story,'"
quoted Anne, looking at it with a thrill. They found themselves in a
dim, cool, green place where winds were fond of purring. Up and down
the long grassy aisles they wandered, reading the quaint, voluminous
epitaphs, carved in an age that had more leisure than our own.
"'Here lieth the body of Albert Crawford, Esq.,'" read Anne from a
worn, gray slab, "'for many years Keeper of His Majesty's Ordnance at
Kingsport. He served in the army till the peace of 1763, when he retired
from bad health. He was a brave officer, the best of husbands, the best
of fathers, the best of friends. He died October 29th, 1792, aged 84
years.' There's an epitaph for you, Prissy. There is certainly some
'scope for imagination' in it. How full such a life must have been of
adventure! And as for his personal qualities, I'm sure human eulogy
couldn't go further. I wonder if they told him he was all those best