Anne of the Island
shivered over the disagreeable recollection. But all problems connected
with infatuated swains vanished from her mind when she entered the
homely, unsentimental atmosphere of the Green Gables kitchen where an
eight-year-old boy was crying grievously on the sofa.
“What is the matter, Davy?” asked Anne, taking him up in her arms.
“Where are Marilla and Dora?”
“Marilla’s putting Dora to bed,” sobbed Davy, “and I’m crying ’cause
Dora fell down the outside cellar steps, heels over head, and scraped
all the skin off her nose, and—”
“Oh, well, don’t cry about it, dear. Of course, you are sorry for her,
but crying won’t help her any. She’ll be all right tomorrow. Crying
never helps any one, Davy-boy, and—”
“I ain’t crying ’cause Dora fell down cellar,” said Davy, cutting short
Anne’s wellmeant preachment with increasing bitterness. “I’m crying,
cause I wasn’t there to see her fall. I’m always missing some fun or
other, seems to me.”
“Oh, Davy!” Anne choked back an unholy shriek of laughter. “Would you
call it fun to see poor little Dora fall down the steps and get hurt?”
“She wasn’t _much_ hurt,” said Davy, defiantly. “’Course, if she’d been
killed I’d have been real sorry, Anne. But the Keiths ain’t so easy
killed. They’re like the Blewetts, I guess. Herb Blewett fell off the
hayloft last Wednesday, and rolled right down through the turnip chute
into the box stall, where they had a fearful wild, cross horse, and
rolled right under his heels. And still he got out alive, with only
three bones broke. Mrs. Lynde says there are some folks you can’t kill
with a meat-axe. Is Mrs. Lynde coming here tomorrow, Anne?”
“Yes, Davy, and I hope you’ll be always very nice and good to her.”
“I’ll be nice and good. But will she ever put me to bed at nights,
Anne?”
“Perhaps. Why?”
“’Cause,” said Davy very decidedly, “if she does I won’t say my prayers
before her like I do before you, Anne.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause I don’t think it would be nice to talk to God before strangers,
Anne. Dora can say hers to Mrs. Lynde if she likes, but _I_ won’t. I’ll
wait till she’s gone and then say ’em. Won’t that be all right, Anne?”
“Yes, if you are sure you won’t forget to say them, Davy-boy.”
“Oh, I won’t forget, you bet. I think saying my prayers is great fun.
But it won’t be as good fun saying them alone as saying them to you. I
wish you’d stay home, Anne. I don’t see what you want to go away and
leave us for.”
“I don’t exactly _want_ to, Davy, but I feel I ought to go.”
“If you don’t want to go you needn’t. You’re grown up. When _I_’m grown
up I’m not going to do one single thing I don’t want to do, Anne.”
“All your life, Davy, you’ll find yourself doing things you don’t want
to do.”
“I won’t,” said Davy flatly. “Catch me! I have to do things I don’t
want to now ’cause you and Marilla’ll send me to bed if I don’t. But
when I grow up you can’t do that, and there’ll be nobody to tell me not
to do things. Won’t I have the time! Say, Anne, Milty Boulter says his
mother says you’re going to college to see if you can catch a man. Are
you, Anne? I want to know.”
For a second Anne burned with resentment. Then she laughed, reminding
herself that Mrs. Boulter’s crude vulgarity of thought and speech could
not harm her.
“No, Davy, I’m not. I’m going to study and grow and learn about many
things.”
“What things?”
“‘Shoes and ships and sealing wax
And cabbages and kings,’”
quoted Anne.
“But if you _did_ want to catch a man how would you go about it? I want
to know,” persisted Davy, for whom the subject evidently possessed a
certain fascination.
“You’d better ask Mrs. Boulter,” said Anne thoughtlessly. “I think it’s
likely she knows more about the process than I do.”
“I will, the next time I see her,” said Davy gravely.
“Davy! If you do!” cried Anne, realizing her mistake.
“But you just told me to,” protested Davy aggrieved.
“It’s time you went to bed,” decreed Anne, by way of getting out of the
scrape.
After Davy had gone to bed Anne wandered down to Victoria Island and
sat there alone, curtained with fine-spun, moonlit gloom, while the
water laughed around her in a duet of brook and wind. Anne had always
loved that brook. Many a dream had she spun over its sparkling water in
days gone by. She forgot lovelorn youths, and the cayenne speeches of
malicious neighbors, and all the problems of her girlish existence. In
imagination she sailed over storied seas that wash the distant shining
shores of “faery lands forlorn,” where lost Atlantis and Elysium lie,
with the evening star for pilot, to the land of Heart’s Desire. And she
was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass
away, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
Chapter II
Garlands of Autumn
The following week sped swiftly, crowded with innumerable “last
things,” as Anne called them. Good-bye calls had to be made and
received, being pleasant or otherwise, according to whether callers and
called-upon were heartily in sympathy with Anne’s hopes, or thought she
was too much puffed-up over going to college and that it was their duty
to “take her down a peg or two.”
The A.V.I.S. gave a farewell party in honor of Anne and Gilbert one
evening at the home of Josie Pye, choosing that place, partly because
Mr. Pye’s house was large and convenient, partly because it was
strongly suspected that the Pye girls would have nothing to do with the
affair if their offer of the house for the party was not accepted. It
was a very pleasant little time, for the Pye girls were gracious, and
said and did nothing to mar the harmony of the occasion—which was not
according to their wont. Josie was unusually amiable—so much so that
she even remarked condescendingly to Anne,
“Your new dress is rather becoming to you, Anne. Really, you look
_almost pretty_ in it.”
“How kind of you to say so,” responded Anne, with dancing eyes. Her
sense of humor was developing, and the speeches that would have hurt
her at fourteen were becoming merely food for amusement now. Josie
suspected that Anne was laughing at her behind those wicked eyes; but
she contented herself with whispering to Gertie, as they went
downstairs, that Anne Shirley would put on more airs than ever now that
she was going to college—you’d see!
All the “old crowd” was there, full of mirth and zest and youthful
lightheartedness. Diana Barry, rosy and dimpled, shadowed by the
faithful Fred; Jane Andrews, neat and sensible and plain; Ruby Gillis,
looking her handsomest and brightest in a cream silk blouse, with red
geraniums in her golden hair; Gilbert Blythe and Charlie Sloane, both
trying to keep as near the elusive Anne as possible; Carrie Sloane,
looking pale and melancholy because, so it was reported, her father
would not allow Oliver Kimball to come near the place; Moody Spurgeon
MacPherson, whose round face and objectionable ears were as round and
objectionable as ever; and Billy Andrews, who sat in a corner all the
evening, chuckled when any one spoke to him, and watched Anne Shirley
with a grin of pleasure on his broad, freckled countenance.
Anne had known beforehand of the party, but she had not known that she
and Gilbert were, as the founders of the Society, to be presented with
a very complimentary “address” and “tokens of respect”—in her case a
volume of Shakespeare’s plays, in Gilbert’s a fountain pen. She was so
taken by surprise and pleased by the nice things said in the address,
read in Moody Spurgeon’s most solemn and ministerial tones, that the
tears quite drowned the sparkle of her big gray eyes. She had worked
hard and faithfully for the A.V.I.S., and it warmed the cockles of her
heart that the members appreciated her efforts so sincerely. And they
were all so nice and friendly and jolly—even the Pye girls had their
merits; at that moment Anne loved all the world.
She enjoyed the evening tremendously, but the end of it rather spoiled
all. Gilbert again made the mistake of saying something sentimental to
her as they ate their supper on the moonlit verandah; and Anne, to
punish him, was gracious to Charlie Sloane and allowed the latter to
walk home with her. She found, however, that revenge hurts nobody quite
so much as the one who tries to inflict it. Gilbert walked airily off
with Ruby Gillis, and Anne could hear them laughing and talking gaily
as they loitered along in the still, crisp autumn air. They were
evidently having the best of good times, while she was horribly bored
by Charlie Sloane, who talked unbrokenly on, and never, even by
accident, said one thing that was worth listening to. Anne gave an
occasional absent “yes” or “no,” and thought how beautiful Ruby had
looked that night, how very goggly Charlie’s eyes were in the
moonlight—worse even than by daylight—and that the world, somehow,
wasn’t quite such a nice place as she had believed it to be earlier in
the evening.
“I’m just tired out—that is what is the matter with me,” she said, when
she thankfully found herself alone in her own room. And she honestly
believed it was. But a certain little gush of joy, as from some secret,
unknown spring, bubbled up in her heart the next evening, when she saw
Gilbert striding down through the Haunted Wood and crossing the old log
bridge with that firm, quick step of his. So Gilbert was not going to
spend this last evening with Ruby Gillis after all!
“You look tired, Anne,” he said.
“I am tired, and, worse than that, I’m disgruntled. I’m tired because
I’ve been packing my trunk and sewing all day. But I’m disgruntled
because six women have been here to say good-bye to me, and every one
of the six managed to say something that seemed to take the color right
out of life and leave it as gray and dismal and cheerless as a November
morning.”
“Spiteful old cats!” was Gilbert’s elegant comment.
“Oh, no, they weren’t,” said Anne seriously. “That is just the trouble.
If they had been spiteful cats I wouldn’t have minded them. But they
are all nice, kind, motherly souls, who like me and whom I like, and
that is why what they said, or hinted, had such undue weight with me.
They let me see they thought I was crazy going to Redmond and trying to
take a B.A., and ever since I’ve been wondering if I am. Mrs. Peter
Sloane sighed and said she hoped my strength would hold out till I got
through; and at once I saw myself a hopeless victim of nervous
prostration at the end of my third year; Mrs. Eben Wright said it must
cost an awful lot to put in four years at Redmond; and I felt all over
me that it was unpardonable of me to squander Marilla’s money and my
own on such a folly. Mrs. Jasper Bell said she hoped I wouldn’t let
college spoil me, as it did some people; and I felt in my bones that
the end of my four Redmond years would see me a most insufferable
creature, thinking I knew it all, and looking down on everything and
everybody in Avonlea; Mrs. Elisha Wright said she understood that
Redmond girls, especially those who belonged to Kingsport, were
‘dreadful dressy and stuck-up,’ and she guessed I wouldn’t feel much at
home among them; and I saw myself, a snubbed, dowdy, humiliated country
girl, shuffling through Redmond’s classic halls in coppertoned boots.”
Anne ended with a laugh and a sigh commingled. With her sensitive
nature all disapproval had weight, even the disapproval of those for
whose opinions she had scant respect. For the time being life was
savorless, and ambition had gone out like a snuffed candle.
“You surely don’t care for what they said,” protested Gilbert. “You
know exactly how narrow their outlook on life is, excellent creatures
though they are. To do anything _they_ have never done is anathema
maranatha. You are the first Avonlea girl who has ever gone to college;