Anne of Green Gables
Sunday-school choir after this. You can’t think how I was thrilled at
the mere thought. I’ve longed so to sing in the Sunday-school choir,
as Diana does, but I feared it was an honor I could never aspire to.
Lauretta had to go home early because there is a big concert in the
White Sands Hotel tonight and her sister is to recite at it. Lauretta
says that the Americans at the hotel give a concert every fortnight in
aid of the Charlottetown hospital, and they ask lots of the White
Sands people to recite. Lauretta said she expected to be asked herself
someday. I just gazed at her in awe. After she had gone Mrs. Allan and I
had a heart-to-heart talk. I told her everything--about Mrs. Thomas and
the twins and Katie Maurice and Violetta and coming to Green Gables and
my troubles over geometry. And would you believe it, Marilla? Mrs.
Allan told me she was a dunce at geometry too. You don’t know how that
encouraged me. Mrs. Lynde came to the manse just before I left, and what
do you think, Marilla? The trustees have hired a new teacher and it’s
a lady. Her name is Miss Muriel Stacy. Isn’t that a romantic name? Mrs.
Lynde says they’ve never had a female teacher in Avonlea before and she
thinks it is a dangerous innovation. But I think it will be splendid
to have a lady teacher, and I really don’t see how I’m going to live
through the two weeks before school begins. I’m so impatient to see
her.”
CHAPTER XXIII. Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honor
ANNE had to live through more than two weeks, as it happened. Almost a
month having elapsed since the liniment cake episode, it was high time
for her to get into fresh trouble of some sort, little mistakes, such as
absentmindedly emptying a pan of skim milk into a basket of yarn balls
in the pantry instead of into the pigs’ bucket, and walking clean over
the edge of the log bridge into the brook while wrapped in imaginative
reverie, not really being worth counting.
A week after the tea at the manse Diana Barry gave a party.
“Small and select,” Anne assured Marilla. “Just the girls in our class.”
They had a very good time and nothing untoward happened until after tea,
when they found themselves in the Barry garden, a little tired of all
their games and ripe for any enticing form of mischief which might
present itself. This presently took the form of “daring.”
Daring was the fashionable amusement among the Avonlea small fry just
then. It had begun among the boys, but soon spread to the girls, and all
the silly things that were done in Avonlea that summer because the doers
thereof were “dared” to do them would fill a book by themselves.
First of all Carrie Sloane dared Ruby Gillis to climb to a certain point
in the huge old willow tree before the front door; which Ruby Gillis,
albeit in mortal dread of the fat green caterpillars with which said
tree was infested and with the fear of her mother before her eyes if she
should tear her new muslin dress, nimbly did, to the discomfiture of the
aforesaid Carrie Sloane. Then Josie Pye dared Jane Andrews to hop on her
left leg around the garden without stopping once or putting her right
foot to the ground; which Jane Andrews gamely tried to do, but gave out
at the third corner and had to confess herself defeated.
Josie’s triumph being rather more pronounced than good taste permitted,
Anne Shirley dared her to walk along the top of the board fence which
bounded the garden to the east. Now, to “walk” board fences requires
more skill and steadiness of head and heel than one might suppose who
has never tried it. But Josie Pye, if deficient in some qualities
that make for popularity, had at least a natural and inborn gift, duly
cultivated, for walking board fences. Josie walked the Barry fence with
an airy unconcern which seemed to imply that a little thing like that
wasn’t worth a “dare.” Reluctant admiration greeted her exploit, for
most of the other girls could appreciate it, having suffered many things
themselves in their efforts to walk fences. Josie descended from her
perch, flushed with victory, and darted a defiant glance at Anne.
Anne tossed her red braids.
“I don’t think it’s such a very wonderful thing to walk a little, low,
board fence,” she said. “I knew a girl in Marysville who could walk the
ridgepole of a roof.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Josie flatly. “I don’t believe anybody could
walk a ridgepole. _You_ couldn’t, anyhow.”
“Couldn’t I?” cried Anne rashly.
“Then I dare you to do it,” said Josie defiantly. “I dare you to climb
up there and walk the ridgepole of Mr. Barry’s kitchen roof.”
Anne turned pale, but there was clearly only one thing to be done. She
walked toward the house, where a ladder was leaning against the kitchen
roof. All the fifth-class girls said, “Oh!” partly in excitement, partly
in dismay.
“Don’t you do it, Anne,” entreated Diana. “You’ll fall off and be
killed. Never mind Josie Pye. It isn’t fair to dare anybody to do
anything so dangerous.”
“I must do it. My honor is at stake,” said Anne solemnly. “I shall walk
that ridgepole, Diana, or perish in the attempt. If I am killed you are
to have my pearl bead ring.”
Anne climbed the ladder amid breathless silence, gained the ridgepole,
balanced herself uprightly on that precarious footing, and started to
walk along it, dizzily conscious that she was uncomfortably high up
in the world and that walking ridgepoles was not a thing in which your
imagination helped you out much. Nevertheless, she managed to take
several steps before the catastrophe came. Then she swayed, lost her
balance, stumbled, staggered, and fell, sliding down over the sun-baked
roof and crashing off it through the tangle of Virginia creeper
beneath--all before the dismayed circle below could give a simultaneous,
terrified shriek.
If Anne had tumbled off the roof on the side up which she had ascended
Diana would probably have fallen heir to the pearl bead ring then and
there. Fortunately she fell on the other side, where the roof extended
down over the porch so nearly to the ground that a fall therefrom was
a much less serious thing. Nevertheless, when Diana and the other
girls had rushed frantically around the house--except Ruby Gillis, who
remained as if rooted to the ground and went into hysterics--they found
Anne lying all white and limp among the wreck and ruin of the Virginia
creeper.
“Anne, are you killed?” shrieked Diana, throwing herself on her knees
beside her friend. “Oh, Anne, dear Anne, speak just one word to me and
tell me if you’re killed.”
To the immense relief of all the girls, and especially of Josie Pye,
who, in spite of lack of imagination, had been seized with horrible
visions of a future branded as the girl who was the cause of Anne
Shirley’s early and tragic death, Anne sat dizzily up and answered
uncertainly:
“No, Diana, I am not killed, but I think I am rendered unconscious.”
“Where?” sobbed Carrie Sloane. “Oh, where, Anne?” Before Anne could
answer Mrs. Barry appeared on the scene. At sight of her Anne tried to
scramble to her feet, but sank back again with a sharp little cry of
pain.
“What’s the matter? Where have you hurt yourself?” demanded Mrs. Barry.
“My ankle,” gasped Anne. “Oh, Diana, please find your father and ask him
to take me home. I know I can never walk there. And I’m sure I couldn’t
hop so far on one foot when Jane couldn’t even hop around the garden.”
Marilla was out in the orchard picking a panful of summer apples when
she saw Mr. Barry coming over the log bridge and up the slope, with Mrs.
Barry beside him and a whole procession of little girls trailing after
him. In his arms he carried Anne, whose head lay limply against his
shoulder.
At that moment Marilla had a revelation. In the sudden stab of fear that
pierced her very heart she realized what Anne had come to mean to her.
She would have admitted that she liked Anne--nay, that she was very fond
of Anne. But now she knew as she hurried wildly down the slope that Anne
was dearer to her than anything else on earth.
“Mr. Barry, what has happened to her?” she gasped, more white and shaken
than the self-contained, sensible Marilla had been for many years.
Anne herself answered, lifting her head.
“Don’t be very frightened, Marilla. I was walking the ridgepole and I
fell off. I expect I have sprained my ankle. But, Marilla, I might have
broken my neck. Let us look on the bright side of things.”
“I might have known you’d go and do something of the sort when I let you
go to that party,” said Marilla, sharp and shrewish in her very relief.
“Bring her in here, Mr. Barry, and lay her on the sofa. Mercy me, the
child has gone and fainted!”
It was quite true. Overcome by the pain of her injury, Anne had one more
of her wishes granted to her. She had fainted dead away.
Matthew, hastily summoned from the harvest field, was straightway
dispatched for the doctor, who in due time came, to discover that the
injury was more serious than they had supposed. Anne’s ankle was broken.
That night, when Marilla went up to the east gable, where a white-faced
girl was lying, a plaintive voice greeted her from the bed.
“Aren’t you very sorry for me, Marilla?”
“It was your own fault,” said Marilla, twitching down the blind and
lighting a lamp.
“And that is just why you should be sorry for me,” said Anne, “because
the thought that it is all my own fault is what makes it so hard. If I
could blame it on anybody I would feel so much better. But what would
you have done, Marilla, if you had been dared to walk a ridgepole?”
“I’d have stayed on good firm ground and let them dare away. Such
absurdity!” said Marilla.
Anne sighed.
“But you have such strength of mind, Marilla. I haven’t. I just felt
that I couldn’t bear Josie Pye’s scorn. She would have crowed over me
all my life. And I think I have been punished so much that you needn’t
be very cross with me, Marilla. It’s not a bit nice to faint, after all.
And the doctor hurt me dreadfully when he was setting my ankle. I won’t
be able to go around for six or seven weeks and I’ll miss the new lady
teacher. She won’t be new any more by the time I’m able to go to school.
And Gil--everybody will get ahead of me in class. Oh, I am an afflicted
mortal. But I’ll try to bear it all bravely if only you won’t be cross
with me, Marilla.”
“There, there, I’m not cross,” said Marilla. “You’re an unlucky child,
there’s no doubt about that; but as you say, you’ll have the suffering
of it. Here now, try and eat some supper.”
“Isn’t it fortunate I’ve got such an imagination?” said Anne. “It will
help me through splendidly, I expect. What do people who haven’t any
imagination do when they break their bones, do you suppose, Marilla?”
Anne had good reason to bless her imagination many a time and oft during
the tedious seven weeks that followed. But she was not solely dependent
on it. She had many visitors and not a day passed without one or more of
the schoolgirls dropping in to bring her flowers and books and tell her
all the happenings in the juvenile world of Avonlea.
“Everybody has been so good and kind, Marilla,” sighed Anne happily,
on the day when she could first limp across the floor. “It isn’t very
pleasant to be laid up; but there is a bright side to it, Marilla. You
find out how many friends you have. Why, even Superintendent Bell came
to see me, and he’s really a very fine man. Not a kindred spirit, of
course; but still I like him and I’m awfully sorry I ever criticized his
prayers. I believe now he really does mean them, only he has got into
the habit of saying them as if he didn’t. He could get over that if he’d
take a little trouble. I gave him a good broad hint. I told him how hard
I tried to make my own little private prayers interesting. He told me