Anne of Green Gables
mind, as quick as that! And White Sands is a pretty name, too; but I
don’t like it as well as Avonlea. Avonlea is a lovely name. It just
sounds like music. How far is it to White Sands?”
“It’s five miles; and as you’re evidently bent on talking you might as
well talk to some purpose by telling me what you know about yourself.”
“Oh, what I _know_ about myself isn’t really worth telling,” said Anne
eagerly. “If you’ll only let me tell you what I _imagine_ about myself
you’ll think it ever so much more interesting.”
“No, I don’t want any of your imaginings. Just you stick to bald facts.
Begin at the beginning. Where were you born and how old are you?”
“I was eleven last March,” said Anne, resigning herself to bald facts
with a little sigh. “And I was born in Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia.
My father’s name was Walter Shirley, and he was a teacher in the
Bolingbroke High School. My mother’s name was Bertha Shirley. Aren’t
Walter and Bertha lovely names? I’m so glad my parents had nice names.
It would be a real disgrace to have a father named--well, say Jedediah,
wouldn’t it?”
“I guess it doesn’t matter what a person’s name is as long as he behaves
himself,” said Marilla, feeling herself called upon to inculcate a good
and useful moral.
“Well, I don’t know.” Anne looked thoughtful. “I read in a book once
that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never
been able to believe it. I don’t believe a rose _would_ be as nice if
it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage. I suppose my father could
have been a good man even if he had been called Jedediah; but I’m sure
it would have been a cross. Well, my mother was a teacher in the High
School, too, but when she married father she gave up teaching, of
course. A husband was enough responsibility. Mrs. Thomas said that they
were a pair of babies and as poor as church mice. They went to live in
a weeny-teeny little yellow house in Bolingbroke. I’ve never seen that
house, but I’ve imagined it thousands of times. I think it must have
had honeysuckle over the parlor window and lilacs in the front yard and
lilies of the valley just inside the gate. Yes, and muslin curtains in
all the windows. Muslin curtains give a house such an air. I was born
in that house. Mrs. Thomas said I was the homeliest baby she ever saw,
I was so scrawny and tiny and nothing but eyes, but that mother thought
I was perfectly beautiful. I should think a mother would be a better
judge than a poor woman who came in to scrub, wouldn’t you? I’m glad
she was satisfied with me anyhow; I would feel so sad if I thought I
was a disappointment to her--because she didn’t live very long after
that, you see. She died of fever when I was just three months old. I
do wish she’d lived long enough for me to remember calling her mother.
I think it would be so sweet to say ‘mother,’ don’t you? And father
died four days afterwards from fever too. That left me an orphan and
folks were at their wits’ end, so Mrs. Thomas said, what to do with
me. You see, nobody wanted me even then. It seems to be my fate.
Father and mother had both come from places far away and it was well
known they hadn’t any relatives living. Finally Mrs. Thomas said she’d
take me, though she was poor and had a drunken husband. She brought
me up by hand. Do you know if there is anything in being brought up
by hand that ought to make people who are brought up that way better
than other people? Because whenever I was naughty Mrs. Thomas would
ask me how I could be such a bad girl when she had brought me up by
hand--reproachful-like.
“Mr. and Mrs. Thomas moved away from Bolingbroke to Marysville, and I
lived with them until I was eight years old. I helped look after the
Thomas children--there were four of them younger than me--and I can tell
you they took a lot of looking after. Then Mr. Thomas was killed
falling under a train and his mother offered to take Mrs. Thomas and the
children, but she didn’t want me. Mrs. Thomas was at _her_ wits’ end, so
she said, what to do with me. Then Mrs. Hammond from up the river came
down and said she’d take me, seeing I was handy with children, and
I went up the river to live with her in a little clearing among the
stumps. It was a very lonesome place. I’m sure I could never have
lived there if I hadn’t had an imagination. Mr. Hammond worked a little
sawmill up there, and Mrs. Hammond had eight children. She had twins
three times. I like babies in moderation, but twins three times in
succession is _too much_. I told Mrs. Hammond so firmly, when the last
pair came. I used to get so dreadfully tired carrying them about.
“I lived up river with Mrs. Hammond over two years, and then Mr. Hammond
died and Mrs. Hammond broke up housekeeping. She divided her children
among her relatives and went to the States. I had to go to the asylum
at Hopeton, because nobody would take me. They didn’t want me at the
asylum, either; they said they were overcrowded as it was. But they had
to take me and I was there four months until Mrs. Spencer came.”
Anne finished up with another sigh, of relief this time. Evidently
she did not like talking about her experiences in a world that had not
wanted her.
“Did you ever go to school?” demanded Marilla, turning the sorrel mare
down the shore road.
“Not a great deal. I went a little the last year I stayed with Mrs.
Thomas. When I went up river we were so far from a school that I
couldn’t walk it in winter and there was vacation in summer, so I could
only go in the spring and fall. But of course I went while I was at
the asylum. I can read pretty well and I know ever so many pieces of
poetry off by heart--‘The Battle of Hohenlinden’ and ‘Edinburgh after
Flodden,’ and ‘Bingen on the Rhine,’ and lots of the ‘Lady of the Lake’
and most of ‘The Seasons,’ by James Thompson. Don’t you just love
poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back? There
is a piece in the Fifth Reader--‘The Downfall of Poland’--that is just
full of thrills. Of course, I wasn’t in the Fifth Reader--I was only in
the Fourth--but the big girls used to lend me theirs to read.”
“Were those women--Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Hammond--good to you?” asked
Marilla, looking at Anne out of the corner of her eye.
“O-o-o-h,” faltered Anne. Her sensitive little face suddenly flushed
scarlet and embarrassment sat on her brow. “Oh, they _meant_ to be--I
know they meant to be just as good and kind as possible. And when
people mean to be good to you, you don’t mind very much when they’re
not quite--always. They had a good deal to worry them, you know. It’s
very trying to have a drunken husband, you see; and it must be very
trying to have twins three times in succession, don’t you think? But I
feel sure they meant to be good to me.”
Marilla asked no more questions. Anne gave herself up to a silent
rapture over the shore road and Marilla guided the sorrel abstractedly
while she pondered deeply. Pity was suddenly stirring in her heart for
the child. What a starved, unloved life she had had--a life of drudgery
and poverty and neglect; for Marilla was shrewd enough to read between
the lines of Anne’s history and divine the truth. No wonder she had been
so delighted at the prospect of a real home. It was a pity she had to be
sent back. What if she, Marilla, should indulge Matthew’s unaccountable
whim and let her stay? He was set on it; and the child seemed a nice,
teachable little thing.
“She’s got too much to say,” thought Marilla, “but she might be trained
out of that. And there’s nothing rude or slangy in what she does say.
She’s ladylike. It’s likely her people were nice folks.”
The shore road was “woodsy and wild and lonesome.” On the right hand,
scrub firs, their spirits quite unbroken by long years of tussle with
the gulf winds, grew thickly. On the left were the steep red sandstone
cliffs, so near the track in places that a mare of less steadiness than
the sorrel might have tried the nerves of the people behind her. Down
at the base of the cliffs were heaps of surf-worn rocks or little sandy
coves inlaid with pebbles as with ocean jewels; beyond lay the sea,
shimmering and blue, and over it soared the gulls, their pinions
flashing silvery in the sunlight.
“Isn’t the sea wonderful?” said Anne, rousing from a long, wide-eyed
silence. “Once, when I lived in Marysville, Mr. Thomas hired an express
wagon and took us all to spend the day at the shore ten miles away.
I enjoyed every moment of that day, even if I had to look after the
children all the time. I lived it over in happy dreams for years.
But this shore is nicer than the Marysville shore. Aren’t those gulls
splendid? Would you like to be a gull? I think I would--that is, if I
couldn’t be a human girl. Don’t you think it would be nice to wake up at
sunrise and swoop down over the water and away out over that lovely blue
all day; and then at night to fly back to one’s nest? Oh, I can just
imagine myself doing it. What big house is that just ahead, please?”
“That’s the White Sands Hotel. Mr. Kirke runs it, but the season hasn’t
begun yet. There are heaps of Americans come there for the summer. They
think this shore is just about right.”
“I was afraid it might be Mrs. Spencer’s place,” said Anne mournfully.
“I don’t want to get there. Somehow, it will seem like the end of
everything.”
CHAPTER VI. Marilla Makes Up Her Mind
GET there they did, however, in due season. Mrs. Spencer lived in a big
yellow house at White Sands Cove, and she came to the door with surprise
and welcome mingled on her benevolent face.
“Dear, dear,” she exclaimed, “you’re the last folks I was looking for
today, but I’m real glad to see you. You’ll put your horse in? And how
are you, Anne?”
“I’m as well as can be expected, thank you,” said Anne smilelessly. A
blight seemed to have descended on her.
“I suppose we’ll stay a little while to rest the mare,” said Marilla,
“but I promised Matthew I’d be home early. The fact is, Mrs. Spencer,
there’s been a queer mistake somewhere, and I’ve come over to see where
it is. We sent word, Matthew and I, for you to bring us a boy from the
asylum. We told your brother Robert to tell you we wanted a boy ten or
eleven years old.”
“Marilla Cuthbert, you don’t say so!” said Mrs. Spencer in distress.
“Why, Robert sent word down by his daughter Nancy and she said you
wanted a girl--didn’t she, Flora Jane?” appealing to her daughter who
had come out to the steps.
“She certainly did, Miss Cuthbert,” corroborated Flora Jane earnestly.
“I’m dreadful sorry,” said Mrs. Spencer. “It’s too bad; but it certainly
wasn’t my fault, you see, Miss Cuthbert. I did the best I could and I
thought I was following your instructions. Nancy is a terrible flighty
thing. I’ve often had to scold her well for her heedlessness.”
“It was our own fault,” said Marilla resignedly. “We should have come
to you ourselves and not left an important message to be passed along
by word of mouth in that fashion. Anyhow, the mistake has been made and
the only thing to do now is to set it right. Can we send the child back
to the asylum? I suppose they’ll take her back, won’t they?”
“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Spencer thoughtfully, “but I don’t think
it will be necessary to send her back. Mrs. Peter Blewett was up here
yesterday, and she was saying to me how much she wished she’d sent by me
for a little girl to help her. Mrs. Peter has a large family, you know,
and she finds it hard to get help. Anne will be the very girl for her. I
call it positively providential.”
Marilla did not look as if she thought Providence had much to do with
the matter. Here was an unexpectedly good chance to get this unwelcome
orphan off her hands, and she did not even feel grateful for it.
She knew Mrs. Peter Blewett only by sight as a small, shrewish-faced