Anne of Green Gables
not afraid to float down and I’d love to be Elaine. But it’s ridiculous
just the same. Ruby ought to be Elaine because she is so fair and has
such lovely long golden hair--Elaine had ‘all her bright hair streaming
down,’ you know. And Elaine was the lily maid. Now, a red-haired person
cannot be a lily maid.”
“Your complexion is just as fair as Ruby’s,” said Diana earnestly, “and
your hair is ever so much darker than it used to be before you cut it.”
“Oh, do you really think so?” exclaimed Anne, flushing sensitively with
delight. “I’ve sometimes thought it was myself--but I never dared to ask
anyone for fear she would tell me it wasn’t. Do you think it could be
called auburn now, Diana?”
“Yes, and I think it is real pretty,” said Diana, looking admiringly at
the short, silky curls that clustered over Anne’s head and were held in
place by a very jaunty black velvet ribbon and bow.
They were standing on the bank of the pond, below Orchard Slope, where
a little headland fringed with birches ran out from the bank; at its tip
was a small wooden platform built out into the water for the convenience
of fishermen and duck hunters. Ruby and Jane were spending the midsummer
afternoon with Diana, and Anne had come over to play with them.
Anne and Diana had spent most of their playtime that summer on and about
the pond. Idlewild was a thing of the past, Mr. Bell having ruthlessly
cut down the little circle of trees in his back pasture in the spring.
Anne had sat among the stumps and wept, not without an eye to the
romance of it; but she was speedily consoled, for, after all, as she and
Diana said, big girls of thirteen, going on fourteen, were too old for
such childish amusements as playhouses, and there were more fascinating
sports to be found about the pond. It was splendid to fish for trout
over the bridge and the two girls learned to row themselves about in the
little flat-bottomed dory Mr. Barry kept for duck shooting.
It was Anne’s idea that they dramatize Elaine. They had studied
Tennyson’s poem in school the preceding winter, the Superintendent of
Education having prescribed it in the English course for the Prince
Edward Island schools. They had analyzed and parsed it and torn it to
pieces in general until it was a wonder there was any meaning at all
left in it for them, but at least the fair lily maid and Lancelot and
Guinevere and King Arthur had become very real people to them, and Anne
was devoured by secret regret that she had not been born in Camelot.
Those days, she said, were so much more romantic than the present.
Anne’s plan was hailed with enthusiasm. The girls had discovered that if
the flat were pushed off from the landing place it would drift down
with the current under the bridge and finally strand itself on another
headland lower down which ran out at a curve in the pond. They had often
gone down like this and nothing could be more convenient for playing
Elaine.
“Well, I’ll be Elaine,” said Anne, yielding reluctantly, for, although
she would have been delighted to play the principal character, yet
her artistic sense demanded fitness for it and this, she felt, her
limitations made impossible. “Ruby, you must be King Arthur and Jane
will be Guinevere and Diana must be Lancelot. But first you must be the
brothers and the father. We can’t have the old dumb servitor because
there isn’t room for two in the flat when one is lying down. We must
pall the barge all its length in blackest samite. That old black shawl
of your mother’s will be just the thing, Diana.”
The black shawl having been procured, Anne spread it over the flat and
then lay down on the bottom, with closed eyes and hands folded over her
breast.
“Oh, she does look really dead,” whispered Ruby Gillis nervously,
watching the still, white little face under the flickering shadows of
the birches. “It makes me feel frightened, girls. Do you suppose it’s
really right to act like this? Mrs. Lynde says that all play-acting is
abominably wicked.”
“Ruby, you shouldn’t talk about Mrs. Lynde,” said Anne severely. “It
spoils the effect because this is hundreds of years before Mrs. Lynde
was born. Jane, you arrange this. It’s silly for Elaine to be talking
when she’s dead.”
Jane rose to the occasion. Cloth of gold for coverlet there was none,
but an old piano scarf of yellow Japanese crepe was an excellent
substitute. A white lily was not obtainable just then, but the effect of
a tall blue iris placed in one of Anne’s folded hands was all that could
be desired.
“Now, she’s all ready,” said Jane. “We must kiss her quiet brows
and, Diana, you say, ‘Sister, farewell forever,’ and Ruby, you say,
‘Farewell, sweet sister,’ both of you as sorrowfully as you possibly
can. Anne, for goodness sake smile a little. You know Elaine ‘lay as
though she smiled.’ That’s better. Now push the flat off.”
The flat was accordingly pushed off, scraping roughly over an old
embedded stake in the process. Diana and Jane and Ruby only waited long
enough to see it caught in the current and headed for the bridge before
scampering up through the woods, across the road, and down to the lower
headland where, as Lancelot and Guinevere and the King, they were to be
in readiness to receive the lily maid.
For a few minutes Anne, drifting slowly down, enjoyed the romance of her
situation to the full. Then something happened not at all romantic. The
flat began to leak. In a very few moments it was necessary for Elaine
to scramble to her feet, pick up her cloth of gold coverlet and pall
of blackest samite and gaze blankly at a big crack in the bottom of her
barge through which the water was literally pouring. That sharp stake at
the landing had torn off the strip of batting nailed on the flat. Anne
did not know this, but it did not take her long to realize that she was
in a dangerous plight. At this rate the flat would fill and sink long
before it could drift to the lower headland. Where were the oars? Left
behind at the landing!
Anne gave one gasping little scream which nobody ever heard; she was
white to the lips, but she did not lose her self-possession. There was
one chance--just one.
“I was horribly frightened,” she told Mrs. Allan the next day, “and it
seemed like years while the flat was drifting down to the bridge and the
water rising in it every moment. I prayed, Mrs. Allan, most earnestly,
but I didn’t shut my eyes to pray, for I knew the only way God could
save me was to let the flat float close enough to one of the bridge
piles for me to climb up on it. You know the piles are just old tree
trunks and there are lots of knots and old branch stubs on them. It was
proper to pray, but I had to do my part by watching out and right well
I knew it. I just said, ‘Dear God, please take the flat close to a pile
and I’ll do the rest,’ over and over again. Under such circumstances you
don’t think much about making a flowery prayer. But mine was answered,
for the flat bumped right into a pile for a minute and I flung the scarf
and the shawl over my shoulder and scrambled up on a big providential
stub. And there I was, Mrs. Allan, clinging to that slippery old pile
with no way of getting up or down. It was a very unromantic position,
but I didn’t think about that at the time. You don’t think much about
romance when you have just escaped from a watery grave. I said a
grateful prayer at once and then I gave all my attention to holding on
tight, for I knew I should probably have to depend on human aid to get
back to dry land.”
The flat drifted under the bridge and then promptly sank in midstream.
Ruby, Jane, and Diana, already awaiting it on the lower headland, saw it
disappear before their very eyes and had not a doubt but that Anne
had gone down with it. For a moment they stood still, white as sheets,
frozen with horror at the tragedy; then, shrieking at the tops of
their voices, they started on a frantic run up through the woods, never
pausing as they crossed the main road to glance the way of the bridge.
Anne, clinging desperately to her precarious foothold, saw their flying
forms and heard their shrieks. Help would soon come, but meanwhile her
position was a very uncomfortable one.
The minutes passed by, each seeming an hour to the unfortunate lily
maid. Why didn’t somebody come? Where had the girls gone? Suppose they
had fainted, one and all! Suppose nobody ever came! Suppose she grew so
tired and cramped that she could hold on no longer! Anne looked at the
wicked green depths below her, wavering with long, oily shadows, and
shivered. Her imagination began to suggest all manner of gruesome
possibilities to her.
Then, just as she thought she really could not endure the ache in her
arms and wrists another moment, Gilbert Blythe came rowing under the
bridge in Harmon Andrews’s dory!
Gilbert glanced up and, much to his amazement, beheld a little white
scornful face looking down upon him with big, frightened but also
scornful gray eyes.
“Anne Shirley! How on earth did you get there?” he exclaimed.
Without waiting for an answer he pulled close to the pile and extended
his hand. There was no help for it; Anne, clinging to Gilbert Blythe’s
hand, scrambled down into the dory, where she sat, drabbled and furious,
in the stern with her arms full of dripping shawl and wet crepe. It was
certainly extremely difficult to be dignified under the circumstances!
“What has happened, Anne?” asked Gilbert, taking up his oars.
“We were playing Elaine,” explained Anne frigidly, without even looking
at her rescuer, “and I had to drift down to Camelot in the barge--I
mean the flat. The flat began to leak and I climbed out on the pile.
The girls went for help. Will you be kind enough to row me to the
landing?”
Gilbert obligingly rowed to the landing and Anne, disdaining assistance,
sprang nimbly on shore.
“I’m very much obliged to you,” she said haughtily as she turned away.
But Gilbert had also sprung from the boat and now laid a detaining hand
on her arm.
“Anne,” he said hurriedly, “look here. Can’t we be good friends? I’m
awfully sorry I made fun of your hair that time. I didn’t mean to vex
you and I only meant it for a joke. Besides, it’s so long ago. I think
your hair is awfully pretty now--honest I do. Let’s be friends.”
For a moment Anne hesitated. She had an odd, newly awakened
consciousness under all her outraged dignity that the half-shy,
half-eager expression in Gilbert’s hazel eyes was something that was
very good to see. Her heart gave a quick, queer little beat. But the
bitterness of her old grievance promptly stiffened up her wavering
determination. That scene of two years before flashed back into her
recollection as vividly as if it had taken place yesterday. Gilbert had
called her “carrots” and had brought about her disgrace before the whole
school. Her resentment, which to other and older people might be as
laughable as its cause, was in no whit allayed and softened by time
seemingly. She hated Gilbert Blythe! She would never forgive him!
“No,” she said coldly, “I shall never be friends with you, Gilbert
Blythe; and I don’t want to be!”
“All right!” Gilbert sprang into his skiff with an angry color in his
cheeks. “I’ll never ask you to be friends again, Anne Shirley. And I
don’t care either!”
He pulled away with swift defiant strokes, and Anne went up the steep,
ferny little path under the maples. She held her head very high, but
she was conscious of an odd feeling of regret. She almost wished she had
answered Gilbert differently. Of course, he had insulted her terribly,
but still--! Altogether, Anne rather thought it would be a relief to
sit down and have a good cry. She was really quite unstrung, for the
reaction from her fright and cramped clinging was making itself felt.