Anne of the Island
by the dozen, with a very sentimental rhyme? Or why we should blush
divinest rosy-red when we look at his card? Anne, thy face betrayeth
thee.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Phil. Do you know Mr. Gardner?”
“I’ve met his two sisters, and I know of him. So does everybody
worthwhile in Kingsport. The Gardners are among the richest, bluest, of
Bluenoses. Roy is adorably handsome and clever. Two years ago his
mother’s health failed and he had to leave college and go abroad with
her—his father is dead. He must have been greatly disappointed to have
to give up his class, but they say he was perfectly sweet about it.
Fee—fi—fo—fum, Anne. I smell romance. Almost do I envy you, but not
quite. After all, Roy Gardner isn’t Jonas.”
“You goose!” said Anne loftily. But she lay long awake that night, nor
did she wish for sleep. Her waking fancies were more alluring than any
vision of dreamland. Had the real Prince come at last? Recalling those
glorious dark eyes which had gazed so deeply into her own, Anne was
very strongly inclined to think he had.
Chapter XXVI
Enter Christine
The girls at Patty’s Place were dressing for the reception which the
Juniors were giving for the Seniors in February. Anne surveyed herself
in the mirror of the blue room with girlish satisfaction. She had a
particularly pretty gown on. Originally it had been only a simple
little slip of cream silk with a chiffon overdress. But Phil had
insisted on taking it home with her in the Christmas holidays and
embroidering tiny rosebuds all over the chiffon. Phil’s fingers were
deft, and the result was a dress which was the envy of every Redmond
girl. Even Allie Boone, whose frocks came from Paris, was wont to look
with longing eyes on that rosebud concoction as Anne trailed up the
main staircase at Redmond in it.
Anne was trying the effect of a white orchid in her hair. Roy Gardner
had sent her white orchids for the reception, and she knew no other
Redmond girl would have them that night—when Phil came in with admiring
gaze.
“Anne, this is certainly your night for looking handsome. Nine nights
out of ten I can easily outshine you. The tenth you blossom out
suddenly into something that eclipses me altogether. How do you manage
it?”
“It’s the dress, dear. Fine feathers.”
“’Tisn’t. The last evening you flamed out into beauty you wore your old
blue flannel shirtwaist that Mrs. Lynde made you. If Roy hadn’t already
lost head and heart about you he certainly would tonight. But I don’t
like orchids on you, Anne. No; it isn’t jealousy. Orchids don’t seem to
_belong_ to you. They’re too exotic—too tropical—too insolent. Don’t
put them in your hair, anyway.”
“Well, I won’t. I admit I’m not fond of orchids myself. I don’t think
they’re related to me. Roy doesn’t often send them—he knows I like
flowers I can live with. Orchids are only things you can visit with.”
“Jonas sent me some dear pink rosebuds for the evening—but—he isn’t
coming himself. He said he had to lead a prayer-meeting in the slums! I
don’t believe he wanted to come. Anne, I’m horribly afraid Jonas
doesn’t really care anything about me. And I’m trying to decide whether
I’ll pine away and die, or go on and get my B.A. and be sensible and
useful.”
“You couldn’t possibly be sensible and useful, Phil, so you’d better
pine away and die,” said Anne cruelly.
“Heartless Anne!”
“Silly Phil! You know quite well that Jonas loves you.”
“But—he won’t _tell_ me so. And I can’t _make_ him. He _looks_ it, I’ll
admit. But speak-to-me-only-with-thine-eyes isn’t a really reliable
reason for embroidering doilies and hemstitching tablecloths. I don’t
want to begin such work until I’m really engaged. It would be tempting
Fate.”
“Mr. Blake is afraid to ask you to marry him, Phil. He is poor and
can’t offer you a home such as you’ve always had. You know that is the
only reason he hasn’t spoken long ago.”
“I suppose so,” agreed Phil dolefully. “Well”—brightening up—“if he
_won’t_ ask me to marry him I’ll ask him, that’s all. So it’s bound to
come right. I won’t worry. By the way, Gilbert Blythe is going about
constantly with Christine Stuart. Did you know?”
Anne was trying to fasten a little gold chain about her throat. She
suddenly found the clasp difficult to manage. _What_ was the matter
with it—or with her fingers?
“No,” she said carelessly. “Who is Christine Stuart?”
“Ronald Stuart’s sister. She’s in Kingsport this winter studying music.
I haven’t seen her, but they say she’s very pretty and that Gilbert is
quite crazy over her. How angry I was when you refused Gilbert, Anne.
But Roy Gardner was foreordained for you. I can see that now. You were
right, after all.”
Anne did not blush, as she usually did when the girls assumed that her
eventual marriage to Roy Gardner was a settled thing. All at once she
felt rather dull. Phil’s chatter seemed trivial and the reception a
bore. She boxed poor Rusty’s ears.
“Get off that cushion instantly, you cat, you! Why don’t you stay down
where you belong?”
Anne picked up her orchids and went downstairs, where Aunt Jamesina was
presiding over a row of coats hung before the fire to warm. Roy Gardner
was waiting for Anne and teasing the Sarah-cat while he waited. The
Sarah-cat did not approve of him. She always turned her back on him.
But everybody else at Patty’s Place liked him very much. Aunt Jamesina,
carried away by his unfailing and deferential courtesy, and the
pleading tones of his delightful voice, declared he was the nicest
young man she ever knew, and that Anne was a very fortunate girl. Such
remarks made Anne restive. Roy’s wooing had certainly been as romantic
as girlish heart could desire, but—she wished Aunt Jamesina and the
girls would not take things so for granted. When Roy murmured a
poetical compliment as he helped her on with her coat, she did not
blush and thrill as usual; and he found her rather silent in their
brief walk to Redmond. He thought she looked a little pale when she
came out of the coeds’ dressing room; but as they entered the reception
room her color and sparkle suddenly returned to her. She turned to Roy
with her gayest expression. He smiled back at her with what Phil called
“his deep, black, velvety smile.” Yet she really did not see Roy at
all. She was acutely conscious that Gilbert was standing under the
palms just across the room talking to a girl who must be Christine
Stuart.
She was very handsome, in the stately style destined to become rather
massive in middle life. A tall girl, with large dark-blue eyes, ivory
outlines, and a gloss of darkness on her smooth hair.
“She looks just as I’ve always wanted to look,” thought Anne miserably.
“Rose-leaf complexion—starry violet eyes—raven hair—yes, she has them
all. It’s a wonder her name isn’t Cordelia Fitzgerald into the bargain!
But I don’t believe her figure is as good as mine, and her nose
certainly isn’t.”
Anne felt a little comforted by this conclusion.
Chapter XXVII
Mutual Confidences
March came in that winter like the meekest and mildest of lambs,
bringing days that were crisp and golden and tingling, each followed by
a frosty pink twilight which gradually lost itself in an elfland of
moonshine.
Over the girls at Patty’s Place was falling the shadow of April
examinations. They were studying hard; even Phil had settled down to
text and notebooks with a doggedness not to be expected of her.
“I’m going to take the Johnson Scholarship in Mathematics,” she
announced calmly. “I could take the one in Greek easily, but I’d rather
take the mathematical one because I want to prove to Jonas that I’m
really enormously clever.”
“Jonas likes you better for your big brown eyes and your crooked smile
than for all the brains you carry under your curls,” said Anne.
“When I was a girl it wasn’t considered lady-like to know anything
about Mathematics,” said Aunt Jamesina. “But times have changed. I
don’t know that it’s all for the better. Can you cook, Phil?”
“No, I never cooked anything in my life except a gingerbread and it was
a failure—flat in the middle and hilly round the edges. You know the
kind. But, Aunty, when I begin in good earnest to learn to cook don’t
you think the brains that enable me to win a mathematical scholarship
will also enable me to learn cooking just as well?”
“Maybe,” said Aunt Jamesina cautiously. “I am not decrying the higher
education of women. My daughter is an M.A. She can cook, too. But I
taught her to cook _before_ I let a college professor teach her
Mathematics.”
In mid-March came a letter from Miss Patty Spofford, saying that she
and Miss Maria had decided to remain abroad for another year.
“So you may have Patty’s Place next winter, too,” she wrote. “Maria and
I are going to run over Egypt. I want to see the Sphinx once before I
die.”
“Fancy those two dames ‘running over Egypt’! I wonder if they’ll look
up at the Sphinx and knit,” laughed Priscilla.
“I’m so glad we can keep Patty’s Place for another year,” said Stella.
“I was afraid they’d come back. And then our jolly little nest here
would be broken up—and we poor callow nestlings thrown out on the cruel
world of boardinghouses again.”
“I’m off for a tramp in the park,” announced Phil, tossing her book
aside. “I think when I am eighty I’ll be glad I went for a walk in the
park tonight.”
“What do you mean?” asked Anne.
“Come with me and I’ll tell you, honey.”
They captured in their ramble all the mysteries and magics of a March
evening. Very still and mild it was, wrapped in a great, white,
brooding silence—a silence which was yet threaded through with many
little silvery sounds which you could hear if you hearkened as much
with your soul as your ears. The girls wandered down a long pineland
aisle that seemed to lead right out into the heart of a deep-red,
overflowing winter sunset.
“I’d go home and write a poem this blessed minute if I only knew how,”
declared Phil, pausing in an open space where a rosy light was staining
the green tips of the pines. “It’s all so wonderful here—this great,
white stillness, and those dark trees that always seem to be thinking.”
“‘The woods were God’s first temples,’” quoted Anne softly. “One can’t
help feeling reverent and adoring in such a place. I always feel so
near Him when I walk among the pines.”
“Anne, I’m the happiest girl in the world,” confessed Phil suddenly.
“So Mr. Blake has asked you to marry him at last?” said Anne calmly.
“Yes. And I sneezed three times while he was asking me. Wasn’t that
horrid? But I said ‘yes’ almost before he finished—I was so afraid he
might change his mind and stop. I’m besottedly happy. I couldn’t really
believe before that Jonas would ever care for frivolous me.”
“Phil, you’re not really frivolous,” said Anne gravely. “‘Way down
underneath that frivolous exterior of yours you’ve got a dear, loyal,
womanly little soul. Why do you hide it so?”
“I can’t help it, Queen Anne. You are right—I’m not frivolous at heart.
But there’s a sort of frivolous skin over my soul and I can’t take it
off. As Mrs. Poyser says, I’d have to be hatched over again and hatched
different before I could change it. But Jonas knows the real me and
loves me, frivolity and all. And I love him. I never was so surprised
in my life as I was when I found out I loved him. I’d never thought it
possible to fall in love with an ugly man. Fancy me coming down to one
solitary beau. And one named Jonas! But I mean to call him Jo. That’s
such a nice, crisp little name. I couldn’t nickname Alonzo.”
“What about Alec and Alonzo?”
“Oh, I told them at Christmas that I never could marry either of them.
It seems so funny now to remember that I ever thought it possible that
I might. They felt so badly I just cried over both of them—howled. But