Anne of the Island
glorious time that morning—at least the Cottons certainly had, and Davy
seemed to have it. Not being entirely bereft of prudence, he had
discarded boots and stockings and borrowed Tommy Cotton’s overalls.
Thus accoutered, bog and marsh and undergrowth had no terrors for him.
Dora was frankly and manifestly miserable. She followed the others in
their peregrinations from pool to pool, clasping her Bible and
quarterly tightly and thinking with bitterness of soul of her beloved
class where she should be sitting that very moment, before a teacher
she adored. Instead, here she was roaming the woods with those
half-wild Cottons, trying to keep her boots clean and her pretty white
dress free from rents and stains. Mirabel had offered the loan of an
apron but Dora had scornfully refused.
The trout bit as they always do on Sundays. In an hour the
transgressors had all the fish they wanted, so they returned to the
house, much to Dora’s relief. She sat primly on a hencoop in the yard
while the others played an uproarious game of tag; and then they all
climbed to the top of the pig-house roof and cut their initials on the
saddleboard. The flat-roofed henhouse and a pile of straw beneath gave
Davy another inspiration. They spent a splendid half hour climbing on
the roof and diving off into the straw with whoops and yells.
But even unlawful pleasures must come to an end. When the rumble of
wheels over the pond bridge told that people were going home from
church Davy knew they must go. He discarded Tommy’s overalls, resumed
his own rightful attire, and turned away from his string of trout with
a sigh. No use to think of taking them home.
“Well, hadn’t we a splendid time?” he demanded defiantly, as they went
down the hill field.
“I hadn’t,” said Dora flatly. “And I don’t believe you
had—really—either,” she added, with a flash of insight that was not to
be expected of her.
“I had so,” cried Davy, but in the voice of one who doth protest too
much. “No wonder you hadn’t—just sitting there like a—like a mule.”
“I ain’t going to, ’sociate with the Cottons,” said Dora loftily.
“The Cottons are all right,” retorted Davy. “And they have far better
times than we have. They do just as they please and say just what they
like before everybody. _I_’m going to do that, too, after this.”
“There are lots of things you wouldn’t dare say before everybody,”
averred Dora.
“No, there isn’t.”
“There is, too. Would you,” demanded Dora gravely, “would you say
‘tomcat’ before the minister?”
This was a staggerer. Davy was not prepared for such a concrete example
of the freedom of speech. But one did not have to be consistent with
Dora.
“Of course not,” he admitted sulkily.
“‘Tomcat’ isn’t a holy word. I wouldn’t mention such an animal before a
minister at all.”
“But if you had to?” persisted Dora.
“I’d call it a Thomas pussy,” said Davy.
“_I_ think ‘gentleman cat’ would be more polite,” reflected Dora.
“_You_ thinking!” retorted Davy with withering scorn.
Davy was not feeling comfortable, though he would have died before he
admitted it to Dora. Now that the exhilaration of truant delights had
died away, his conscience was beginning to give him salutary twinges.
After all, perhaps it would have been better to have gone to Sunday
School and church. Mrs. Lynde might be bossy; but there was always a
box of cookies in her kitchen cupboard and she was not stingy. At this
inconvenient moment Davy remembered that when he had torn his new
school pants the week before, Mrs. Lynde had mended them beautifully
and never said a word to Marilla about them.
But Davy’s cup of iniquity was not yet full. He was to discover that
one sin demands another to cover it. They had dinner with Mrs. Lynde
that day, and the first thing she asked Davy was,
“Were all your class in Sunday School today?”
“Yes’m,” said Davy with a gulp. “All were there—’cept one.”
“Did you say your Golden Text and catechism?”
“Yes’m.”
“Did you put your collection in?”
“Yes’m.”
“Was Mrs. Malcolm MacPherson in church?”
“I don’t know.” This, at least, was the truth, thought wretched Davy.
“Was the Ladies’ Aid announced for next week?”
“Yes’m”—quakingly.
“Was prayer-meeting?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“_You_ should know. You should listen more attentively to the
announcements. What was Mr. Harvey’s text?”
Davy took a frantic gulp of water and swallowed it and the last protest
of conscience together. He glibly recited an old Golden Text learned
several weeks ago. Fortunately Mrs. Lynde now stopped questioning him;
but Davy did not enjoy his dinner.
He could only eat one helping of pudding.
“What’s the matter with you?” demanded justly astonished Mrs. Lynde.
“Are you sick?”
“No,” muttered Davy.
“You look pale. You’d better keep out of the sun this afternoon,”
admonished Mrs. Lynde.
“Do you know how many lies you told Mrs. Lynde?” asked Dora
reproachfully, as soon as they were alone after dinner.
Davy, goaded to desperation, turned fiercely.
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” he said. “You just shut up, Dora
Keith.”
Then poor Davy betook himself to a secluded retreat behind the woodpile
to think over the way of transgressors.
Green Gables was wrapped in darkness and silence when Anne reached
home. She lost no time going to bed, for she was very tired and sleepy.
There had been several Avonlea jollifications the preceding week,
involving rather late hours. Anne’s head was hardly on her pillow
before she was half asleep; but just then her door was softly opened
and a pleading voice said, “Anne.”
Anne sat up drowsily.
“Davy, is that you? What is the matter?”
A white-clad figure flung itself across the floor and on to the bed.
“Anne,” sobbed Davy, getting his arms about her neck. “I’m awful glad
you’re home. I couldn’t go to sleep till I’d told somebody.”
“Told somebody what?”
“How mis’rubul I am.”
“Why are you miserable, dear?”
“’Cause I was so bad today, Anne. Oh, I was awful bad—badder’n I’ve
ever been yet.”
“What did you do?”
“Oh, I’m afraid to tell you. You’ll never like me again, Anne. I
couldn’t say my prayers tonight. I couldn’t tell God what I’d done. I
was ’shamed to have Him know.”
“But He knew anyway, Davy.”
“That’s what Dora said. But I thought p’raps He mightn’t have noticed
just at the time. Anyway, I’d rather tell you first.”
“_What_ is it you did?”
Out it all came in a rush.
“I run away from Sunday School—and went fishing with the Cottons—and I
told ever so many whoppers to Mrs. Lynde—oh! ’most half a
dozen—and—and—I—I said a swear word, Anne—a pretty near swear word,
anyhow—and I called God names.”
There was silence. Davy didn’t know what to make of it. Was Anne so
shocked that she never would speak to him again?
“Anne, what are you going to do to me?” he whispered.
“Nothing, dear. You’ve been punished already, I think.”
“No, I haven’t. Nothing’s been done to me.”
“You’ve been very unhappy ever since you did wrong, haven’t you?”
“You bet!” said Davy emphatically.
“That was your conscience punishing you, Davy.”
“What’s my conscience? I want to know.”
“It’s something in you, Davy, that always tells you when you are doing
wrong and makes you unhappy if you persist in doing it. Haven’t you
noticed that?”
“Yes, but I didn’t know what it was. I wish I didn’t have it. I’d have
lots more fun. Where is my conscience, Anne? I want to know. Is it in
my stomach?”
“No, it’s in your soul,” answered Anne, thankful for the darkness,
since gravity must be preserved in serious matters.
“I s’pose I can’t get clear of it then,” said Davy with a sigh. “Are
you going to tell Marilla and Mrs. Lynde on me, Anne?”
“No, dear, I’m not going to tell any one. You are sorry you were
naughty, aren’t you?”
“You bet!”
“And you’ll never be bad like that again.”
“No, but—” added Davy cautiously, “I might be bad some other way.”
“You won’t say naughty words, or run away on Sundays, or tell
falsehoods to cover up your sins?”
“No. It doesn’t pay,” said Davy.
“Well, Davy, just tell God you are sorry and ask Him to forgive you.”
“Have _you_ forgiven me, Anne?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Then,” said Davy joyously, “I don’t care much whether God does or
not.”
“Davy!”
“Oh—I’ll ask Him—I’ll ask Him,” said Davy quickly, scrambling off the
bed, convinced by Anne’s tone that he must have said something
dreadful. “I don’t mind asking Him, Anne.—Please, God, I’m awful sorry
I behaved bad today and I’ll try to be good on Sundays always and
please forgive me.—There now, Anne.”
“Well, now, run off to bed like a good boy.”
“All right. Say, I don’t feel mis’rubul any more. I feel fine. Good
night.”
“Good night.”
Anne slipped down on her pillows with a sigh of relief. Oh—how
sleepy—she was! In another second—
“Anne!” Davy was back again by her bed. Anne dragged her eyes open.
“What is it now, dear?” she asked, trying to keep a note of impatience
out of her voice.
“Anne, have you ever noticed how Mr. Harrison spits? Do you s’pose, if
I practice hard, I can learn to spit just like him?”
Anne sat up.
“Davy Keith,” she said, “go straight to your bed and don’t let me catch
you out of it again tonight! Go, now!”
Davy went, and stood not upon the order of his going.
Chapter XIV
The Summons
Anne was sitting with Ruby Gillis in the Gillis’ garden after the day
had crept lingeringly through it and was gone. It had been a warm,
smoky summer afternoon. The world was in a splendor of out-flowering.
The idle valleys were full of hazes. The woodways were pranked with
shadows and the fields with the purple of the asters.
Anne had given up a moonlight drive to the White Sands beach that she
might spend the evening with Ruby. She had so spent many evenings that
summer, although she often wondered what good it did any one, and
sometimes went home deciding that she could not go again.
Ruby grew paler as the summer waned; the White Sands school was given
up—“her father thought it better that she shouldn’t teach till New
Year’s”—and the fancy work she loved oftener and oftener fell from
hands grown too weary for it. But she was always gay, always hopeful,
always chattering and whispering of her beaux, and their rivalries and
despairs. It was this that made Anne’s visits hard for her. What had
once been silly or amusing was gruesome, now; it was death peering
through a wilful mask of life. Yet Ruby seemed to cling to her, and
never let her go until she had promised to come again soon. Mrs. Lynde
grumbled about Anne’s frequent visits, and declared she would catch
consumption; even Marilla was dubious.
“Every time you go to see Ruby you come home looking tired out,” she
said.
“It’s so very sad and dreadful,” said Anne in a low tone. “Ruby doesn’t
seem to realize her condition in the least. And yet I somehow feel she
needs help—craves it—and I want to give it to her and can’t. All the
time I’m with her I feel as if I were watching her struggle with an
invisible foe—trying to push it back with such feeble resistance as she
has. That is why I come home tired.”
But tonight Anne did not feel this so keenly. Ruby was strangely quiet.
She said not a word about parties and drives and dresses and “fellows.”
She lay in the hammock, with her untouched work beside her, and a white
shawl wrapped about her thin shoulders. Her long yellow braids of
hair—how Anne had envied those beautiful braids in old schooldays!—lay
on either side of her. She had taken the pins out—they made her head
ache, she said. The hectic flush was gone for the time, leaving her
pale and childlike.
The moon rose in the silvery sky, empearling the clouds around her.
Below, the pond shimmered in its hazy radiance. Just beyond the Gillis