Anne of Green Gables
where she took it; but in any case she’ll have to be severely punished,
Matthew.”
“Well now, you’ll have to punish her,” said Matthew, reaching for his
hat. “I’ve nothing to do with it, remember. You warned me off yourself.”
Marilla felt deserted by everyone. She could not even go to Mrs. Lynde
for advice. She went up to the east gable with a very serious face and
left it with a face more serious still. Anne steadfastly refused to
confess. She persisted in asserting that she had not taken the brooch.
The child had evidently been crying and Marilla felt a pang of pity
which she sternly repressed. By night she was, as she expressed it,
“beat out.”
“You’ll stay in this room until you confess, Anne. You can make up your
mind to that,” she said firmly.
“But the picnic is tomorrow, Marilla,” cried Anne. “You won’t keep me
from going to that, will you? You’ll just let me out for the afternoon,
won’t you? Then I’ll stay here as long as you like _afterwards_
cheerfully. But I _must_ go to the picnic.”
“You’ll not go to picnics nor anywhere else until you’ve confessed,
Anne.”
“Oh, Marilla,” gasped Anne.
But Marilla had gone out and shut the door.
Wednesday morning dawned as bright and fair as if expressly made to
order for the picnic. Birds sang around Green Gables; the Madonna lilies
in the garden sent out whiffs of perfume that entered in on viewless
winds at every door and window, and wandered through halls and rooms
like spirits of benediction. The birches in the hollow waved joyful
hands as if watching for Anne’s usual morning greeting from the east
gable. But Anne was not at her window. When Marilla took her breakfast
up to her she found the child sitting primly on her bed, pale and
resolute, with tight-shut lips and gleaming eyes.
“Marilla, I’m ready to confess.”
“Ah!” Marilla laid down her tray. Once again her method had succeeded;
but her success was very bitter to her. “Let me hear what you have to
say then, Anne.”
“I took the amethyst brooch,” said Anne, as if repeating a lesson she
had learned. “I took it just as you said. I didn’t mean to take it when
I went in. But it did look so beautiful, Marilla, when I pinned it on my
breast that I was overcome by an irresistible temptation. I imagined how
perfectly thrilling it would be to take it to Idlewild and play I was
the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald. It would be so much easier to imagine I
was the Lady Cordelia if I had a real amethyst brooch on. Diana and
I make necklaces of roseberries but what are roseberries compared to
amethysts? So I took the brooch. I thought I could put it back before
you came home. I went all the way around by the road to lengthen out the
time. When I was going over the bridge across the Lake of Shining Waters
I took the brooch off to have another look at it. Oh, how it did shine
in the sunlight! And then, when I was leaning over the bridge, it
just slipped through my fingers--so--and went down--down--down, all
purply-sparkling, and sank forevermore beneath the Lake of Shining
Waters. And that’s the best I can do at confessing, Marilla.”
Marilla felt hot anger surge up into her heart again. This child had
taken and lost her treasured amethyst brooch and now sat there calmly
reciting the details thereof without the least apparent compunction or
repentance.
“Anne, this is terrible,” she said, trying to speak calmly. “You are the
very wickedest girl I ever heard of.”
“Yes, I suppose I am,” agreed Anne tranquilly. “And I know I’ll have to
be punished. It’ll be your duty to punish me, Marilla. Won’t you please
get it over right off because I’d like to go to the picnic with nothing
on my mind.”
“Picnic, indeed! You’ll go to no picnic today, Anne Shirley. That shall
be your punishment. And it isn’t half severe enough either for what
you’ve done!”
“Not go to the picnic!” Anne sprang to her feet and clutched Marilla’s
hand. “But you _promised_ me I might! Oh, Marilla, I must go to the
picnic. That was why I confessed. Punish me any way you like but that.
Oh, Marilla, please, please, let me go to the picnic. Think of the ice
cream! For anything you know I may never have a chance to taste ice
cream again.”
Marilla disengaged Anne’s clinging hands stonily.
“You needn’t plead, Anne. You are not going to the picnic and that’s
final. No, not a word.”
Anne realized that Marilla was not to be moved. She clasped her hands
together, gave a piercing shriek, and then flung herself face
downward on the bed, crying and writhing in an utter abandonment of
disappointment and despair.
“For the land’s sake!” gasped Marilla, hastening from the room. “I
believe the child is crazy. No child in her senses would behave as she
does. If she isn’t she’s utterly bad. Oh dear, I’m afraid Rachel was
right from the first. But I’ve put my hand to the plow and I won’t look
back.”
That was a dismal morning. Marilla worked fiercely and scrubbed the
porch floor and the dairy shelves when she could find nothing else to
do. Neither the shelves nor the porch needed it--but Marilla did. Then
she went out and raked the yard.
When dinner was ready she went to the stairs and called Anne. A
tear-stained face appeared, looking tragically over the banisters.
“Come down to your dinner, Anne.”
“I don’t want any dinner, Marilla,” said Anne, sobbingly. “I couldn’t
eat anything. My heart is broken. You’ll feel remorse of conscience
someday, I expect, for breaking it, Marilla, but I forgive you. Remember
when the time comes that I forgive you. But please don’t ask me to eat
anything, especially boiled pork and greens. Boiled pork and greens are
so unromantic when one is in affliction.”
Exasperated, Marilla returned to the kitchen and poured out her tale
of woe to Matthew, who, between his sense of justice and his unlawful
sympathy with Anne, was a miserable man.
“Well now, she shouldn’t have taken the brooch, Marilla, or told stories
about it,” he admitted, mournfully surveying his plateful of unromantic
pork and greens as if he, like Anne, thought it a food unsuited to
crises of feeling, “but she’s such a little thing--such an interesting
little thing. Don’t you think it’s pretty rough not to let her go to the
picnic when she’s so set on it?”
“Matthew Cuthbert, I’m amazed at you. I think I’ve let her off entirely
too easy. And she doesn’t appear to realize how wicked she’s been at
all--that’s what worries me most. If she’d really felt sorry it wouldn’t
be so bad. And you don’t seem to realize it, neither; you’re making
excuses for her all the time to yourself--I can see that.”
“Well now, she’s such a little thing,” feebly reiterated Matthew. “And
there should be allowances made, Marilla. You know she’s never had any
bringing up.”
“Well, she’s having it now” retorted Marilla.
The retort silenced Matthew if it did not convince him. That dinner was
a very dismal meal. The only cheerful thing about it was Jerry Buote,
the hired boy, and Marilla resented his cheerfulness as a personal
insult.
When her dishes were washed and her bread sponge set and her hens fed
Marilla remembered that she had noticed a small rent in her best black
lace shawl when she had taken it off on Monday afternoon on returning
from the Ladies’ Aid.
She would go and mend it. The shawl was in a box in her trunk. As
Marilla lifted it out, the sunlight, falling through the vines that
clustered thickly about the window, struck upon something caught in the
shawl--something that glittered and sparkled in facets of violet light.
Marilla snatched at it with a gasp. It was the amethyst brooch, hanging
to a thread of the lace by its catch!
“Dear life and heart,” said Marilla blankly, “what does this mean?
Here’s my brooch safe and sound that I thought was at the bottom of
Barry’s pond. Whatever did that girl mean by saying she took it and lost
it? I declare I believe Green Gables is bewitched. I remember now that
when I took off my shawl Monday afternoon I laid it on the bureau for a
minute. I suppose the brooch got caught in it somehow. Well!”
Marilla betook herself to the east gable, brooch in hand. Anne had cried
herself out and was sitting dejectedly by the window.
“Anne Shirley,” said Marilla solemnly, “I’ve just found my brooch
hanging to my black lace shawl. Now I want to know what that rigmarole
you told me this morning meant.”
“Why, you said you’d keep me here until I confessed,” returned Anne
wearily, “and so I decided to confess because I was bound to get to the
picnic. I thought out a confession last night after I went to bed and
made it as interesting as I could. And I said it over and over so that I
wouldn’t forget it. But you wouldn’t let me go to the picnic after all,
so all my trouble was wasted.”
Marilla had to laugh in spite of herself. But her conscience pricked
her.
“Anne, you do beat all! But I was wrong--I see that now. I shouldn’t
have doubted your word when I’d never known you to tell a story.
Of course, it wasn’t right for you to confess to a thing you hadn’t
done--it was very wrong to do so. But I drove you to it. So if you’ll
forgive me, Anne, I’ll forgive you and we’ll start square again. And now
get yourself ready for the picnic.”
Anne flew up like a rocket.
“Oh, Marilla, isn’t it too late?”
“No, it’s only two o’clock. They won’t be more than well gathered yet
and it’ll be an hour before they have tea. Wash your face and comb your
hair and put on your gingham. I’ll fill a basket for you. There’s plenty
of stuff baked in the house. And I’ll get Jerry to hitch up the sorrel
and drive you down to the picnic ground.”
“Oh, Marilla,” exclaimed Anne, flying to the wash-stand. “Five minutes
ago I was so miserable I was wishing I’d never been born and now I
wouldn’t change places with an angel!”
That night a thoroughly happy, completely tired-out Anne returned to
Green Gables in a state of beatification impossible to describe.
“Oh, Marilla, I’ve had a perfectly scrumptious time. Scrumptious is a
new word I learned today. I heard Mary Alice Bell use it. Isn’t it very
expressive? Everything was lovely. We had a splendid tea and then Mr.
Harmon Andrews took us all for a row on the Lake of Shining Waters--six
of us at a time. And Jane Andrews nearly fell overboard. She was leaning
out to pick water lilies and if Mr. Andrews hadn’t caught her by her
sash just in the nick of time she’d fallen in and prob’ly been drowned.
I wish it had been me. It would have been such a romantic experience to
have been nearly drowned. It would be such a thrilling tale to tell. And
we had the ice cream. Words fail me to describe that ice cream. Marilla,
I assure you it was sublime.”
That evening Marilla told the whole story to Matthew over her stocking
basket.
“I’m willing to own up that I made a mistake,” she concluded candidly,
“but I’ve learned a lesson. I have to laugh when I think of Anne’s
‘confession,’ although I suppose I shouldn’t for it really was a
falsehood. But it doesn’t seem as bad as the other would have been,
somehow, and anyhow I’m responsible for it. That child is hard to
understand in some respects. But I believe she’ll turn out all right
yet. And there’s one thing certain, no house will ever be dull that
she’s in.”
CHAPTER XV. A Tempest in the School Teapot
WHAT a splendid day!” said Anne, drawing a long breath. “Isn’t it good
just to be alive on a day like this? I pity the people who aren’t born
yet for missing it. They may have good days, of course, but they can
never have this one. And it’s splendider still to have such a lovely way
to go to school by, isn’t it?”
“It’s a lot nicer than going round by the road; that is so dusty
and hot,” said Diana practically, peeping into her dinner basket and
mentally calculating if the three juicy, toothsome, raspberry tarts