Anne of the Island
gay, frank, light-hearted lady, but not overburdened with tact, had a
very embarrassing habit of asking Anne, always in a painfully distinct
voice and always in the presence of a crowd, if she had heard from
Gilbert lately. Poor Anne could only blush horribly and murmur, “not
very lately,” which was taken by all, Mrs. Blythe included, to be
merely a maidenly evasion.
Apart from this, Anne enjoyed her summer. Priscilla came for a merry
visit in June; and, when she had gone, Mr. and Mrs. Irving, Paul and
Charlotta the Fourth came “home” for July and August.
Echo Lodge was the scene of gaieties once more, and the echoes over the
river were kept busy mimicking the laughter that rang in the old garden
behind the spruces.
“Miss Lavendar” had not changed, except to grow even sweeter and
prettier. Paul adored her, and the companionship between them was
beautiful to see.
“But I don’t call her ‘mother’ just by itself,” he explained to Anne.
“You see, _that_ name belongs just to my own little mother, and I can’t
give it to any one else. You know, teacher. But I call her ‘Mother
Lavendar’ and I love her next best to father. I—I even love her a
_little_ better than you, teacher.”
“Which is just as it ought to be,” answered Anne.
Paul was thirteen now and very tall for his years. His face and eyes
were as beautiful as ever, and his fancy was still like a prism,
separating everything that fell upon it into rainbows. He and Anne had
delightful rambles to wood and field and shore. Never were there two
more thoroughly “kindred spirits.”
Charlotta the Fourth had blossomed out into young ladyhood. She wore
her hair now in an enormous pompador and had discarded the blue ribbon
bows of auld lang syne, but her face was as freckled, her nose as
snubbed, and her mouth and smiles as wide as ever.
“You don’t think I talk with a Yankee accent, do you, Miss Shirley,
ma’am?” she demanded anxiously.
“I don’t notice it, Charlotta.”
“I’m real glad of that. They said I did at home, but I thought likely
they just wanted to aggravate me. I don’t want no Yankee accent. Not
that I’ve a word to say against the Yankees, Miss Shirley, ma’am.
They’re real civilized. But give me old P.E. Island every time.”
Paul spent his first fortnight with his grandmother Irving in Avonlea.
Anne was there to meet him when he came, and found him wild with
eagerness to get to the shore—Nora and the Golden Lady and the Twin
Sailors would be there. He could hardly wait to eat his supper. Could
he not see Nora’s elfin face peering around the point, watching for him
wistfully? But it was a very sober Paul who came back from the shore in
the twilight.
“Didn’t you find your Rock People?” asked Anne.
Paul shook his chestnut curls sorrowfully.
“The Twin Sailors and the Golden Lady never came at all,” he said.
“Nora was there—but Nora is not the same, teacher. She is changed.”
“Oh, Paul, it is you who are changed,” said Anne. “You have grown too
old for the Rock People. They like only children for playfellows. I am
afraid the Twin Sailors will never again come to you in the pearly,
enchanted boat with the sail of moonshine; and the Golden Lady will
play no more for you on her golden harp. Even Nora will not meet you
much longer. You must pay the penalty of growing-up, Paul. You must
leave fairyland behind you.”
“You two talk as much foolishness as ever you did,” said old Mrs.
Irving, half-indulgently, half-reprovingly.
“Oh, no, we don’t,” said Anne, shaking her head gravely. “We are
getting very, very wise, and it is such a pity. We are never half so
interesting when we have learned that language is given us to enable us
to conceal our thoughts.”
“But it isn’t—it is given us to exchange our thoughts,” said Mrs.
Irving seriously. She had never heard of Tallyrand and did not
understand epigrams.
Anne spent a fortnight of halcyon days at Echo Lodge in the golden
prime of August. While there she incidentally contrived to hurry
Ludovic Speed in his leisurely courting of Theodora Dix, as related
duly in another chronicle of her history.(1) Arnold Sherman, an elderly
friend of the Irvings, was there at the same time, and added not a
little to the general pleasantness of life.
(1 Chronicles of Avonlea.)
“What a nice play-time this has been,” said Anne. “I feel like a giant
refreshed. And it’s only a fortnight more till I go back to Kingsport,
and Redmond and Patty’s Place. Patty’s Place is the dearest spot, Miss
Lavendar. I feel as if I had two homes—one at Green Gables and one at
Patty’s Place. But where has the summer gone? It doesn’t seem a day
since I came home that spring evening with the Mayflowers. When I was
little I couldn’t see from one end of the summer to the other. It
stretched before me like an unending season. Now, ‘’tis a handbreadth,
’tis a tale.’”
“Anne, are you and Gilbert Blythe as good friends as you used to be?”
asked Miss Lavendar quietly.
“I am just as much Gilbert’s friend as ever I was, Miss Lavendar.”
Miss Lavendar shook her head.
“I see something’s gone wrong, Anne. I’m going to be impertinent and
ask what. Have you quarrelled?”
“No; it’s only that Gilbert wants more than friendship and I can’t give
him more.”
“Are you sure of that, Anne?”
“Perfectly sure.”
“I’m very, very sorry.”
“I wonder why everybody seems to think I ought to marry Gilbert
Blythe,” said Anne petulantly.
“Because you were made and meant for each other, Anne—that is why. You
needn’t toss that young head of yours. It’s a fact.”
Chapter XXIV
Enter Jonas
“PROSPECT POINT,
“August 20th.
“Dear Anne—spelled—with—an—E,” wrote Phil, “I must prop my eyelids open
long enough to write you. I’ve neglected you shamefully this summer,
honey, but all my other correspondents have been neglected, too. I have
a huge pile of letters to answer, so I must gird up the loins of my
mind and hoe in. Excuse my mixed metaphors. I’m fearfully sleepy. Last
night Cousin Emily and I were calling at a neighbor’s. There were
several other callers there, and as soon as those unfortunate creatures
left, our hostess and her three daughters picked them all to pieces. I
knew they would begin on Cousin Emily and me as soon as the door shut
behind us. When we came home Mrs. Lilly informed us that the aforesaid
neighbor’s hired boy was supposed to be down with scarlet fever. You
can always trust Mrs. Lilly to tell you cheerful things like that. I
have a horror of scarlet fever. I couldn’t sleep when I went to bed for
thinking of it. I tossed and tumbled about, dreaming fearful dreams
when I did snooze for a minute; and at three I wakened up with a high
fever, a sore throat, and a raging headache. I knew I had scarlet
fever; I got up in a panic and hunted up Cousin Emily’s ‘doctor book’
to read up the symptoms. Anne, I had them all. So I went back to bed,
and knowing the worst, slept like a top the rest of the night. Though
why a top should sleep sounder than anything else I never could
understand. But this morning I was quite well, so it couldn’t have been
the fever. I suppose if I did catch it last night it couldn’t have
developed so soon. I can remember that in daytime, but at three o’clock
at night I never can be logical.
“I suppose you wonder what I’m doing at Prospect Point. Well, I always
like to spend a month of summer at the shore, and father insists that I
come to his second-cousin Emily’s ‘select boardinghouse’ at Prospect
Point. So a fortnight ago I came as usual. And as usual old ‘Uncle Mark
Miller’ brought me from the station with his ancient buggy and what he
calls his ‘generous purpose’ horse. He is a nice old man and gave me a
handful of pink peppermints. Peppermints always seem to me such a
religious sort of candy—I suppose because when I was a little girl
Grandmother Gordon always gave them to me in church. Once I asked,
referring to the smell of peppermints, ‘Is that the odor of sanctity?’
I didn’t like to eat Uncle Mark’s peppermints because he just fished
them loose out of his pocket, and had to pick some rusty nails and
other things from among them before he gave them to me. But I wouldn’t
hurt his dear old feelings for anything, so I carefully sowed them
along the road at intervals. When the last one was gone, Uncle Mark
said, a little rebukingly, ‘Ye shouldn’t a’et all them candies to onct,
Miss Phil. You’ll likely have the stummick-ache.’
“Cousin Emily has only five boarders besides myself—four old ladies and
one young man. My right-hand neighbor is Mrs. Lilly. She is one of
those people who seem to take a gruesome pleasure in detailing all
their many aches and pains and sicknesses. You cannot mention any
ailment but she says, shaking her head, ‘Ah, I know too well what that
is’—and then you get all the details. Jonas declares he once spoke of
locomotor ataxia in hearing and she said she knew too well what that
was. She suffered from it for ten years and was finally cured by a
traveling doctor.
“Who is Jonas? Just wait, Anne Shirley. You’ll hear all about Jonas in
the proper time and place. He is not to be mixed up with estimable old
ladies.
“My left-hand neighbor at the table is Mrs. Phinney. She always speaks
with a wailing, dolorous voice—you are nervously expecting her to burst
into tears every moment. She gives you the impression that life to her
is indeed a vale of tears, and that a smile, never to speak of a laugh,
is a frivolity truly reprehensible. She has a worse opinion of me than
Aunt Jamesina, and she doesn’t love me hard to atone for it, as Aunty
J. does, either.
“Miss Maria Grimsby sits cati-corner from me. The first day I came I
remarked to Miss Maria that it looked a little like rain—and Miss Maria
laughed. I said the road from the station was very pretty—and Miss
Maria laughed. I said there seemed to be a few mosquitoes left yet—and
Miss Maria laughed. I said that Prospect Point was as beautiful as
ever—and Miss Maria laughed. If I were to say to Miss Maria, ‘My father
has hanged himself, my mother has taken poison, my brother is in the
penitentiary, and I am in the last stages of consumption,’ Miss Maria
would laugh. She can’t help it—she was born so; but is very sad and
awful.
“The fifth old lady is Mrs. Grant. She is a sweet old thing; but she
never says anything but good of anybody and so she is a very
uninteresting conversationalist.
“And now for Jonas, Anne.
“That first day I came I saw a young man sitting opposite me at the
table, smiling at me as if he had known me from my cradle. I knew, for
Uncle Mark had told me, that his name was Jonas Blake, that he was a
Theological Student from St. Columbia, and that he had taken charge of
the Point Prospect Mission Church for the summer.
“He is a very ugly young man—really, the ugliest young man I’ve ever
seen. He has a big, loose-jointed figure with absurdly long legs. His
hair is tow-color and lank, his eyes are green, and his mouth is big,
and his ears—but I never think about his ears if I can help it.
“He has a lovely voice—if you shut your eyes he is adorable—and he
certainly has a beautiful soul and disposition.
“We were good chums right way. Of course he is a graduate of Redmond,
and that is a link between us. We fished and boated together; and we
walked on the sands by moonlight. He didn’t look so homely by moonlight
and oh, he was nice. Niceness fairly exhaled from him. The old
ladies—except Mrs. Grant—don’t approve of Jonas, because he laughs and
jokes—and because he evidently likes the society of frivolous me better
than theirs.
“Somehow, Anne, I don’t want him to think me frivolous. This is
ridiculous. Why should I care what a tow-haired person called Jonas,
whom I never saw before thinks of me?
“Last Sunday Jonas preached in the village church. I went, of course,