Anne of the Island
I knew there was only one man in the world I could ever marry. I had
made up my own mind for once and it was real easy, too. It’s very
delightful to feel so sure, and know it’s your own sureness and not
somebody else’s.”
“Do you suppose you’ll be able to keep it up?”
“Making up my mind, you mean? I don’t know, but Jo has given me a
splendid rule. He says, when I’m perplexed, just to do what I would
wish I had done when I shall be eighty. Anyhow, Jo can make up his mind
quickly enough, and it would be uncomfortable to have too much mind in
the same house.”
“What will your father and mother say?”
“Father won’t say much. He thinks everything I do right. But mother
_will_ talk. Oh, her tongue will be as Byrney as her nose. But in the
end it will be all right.”
“You’ll have to give up a good many things you’ve always had, when you
marry Mr. Blake, Phil.”
“But I’ll have _him_. I won’t miss the other things. We’re to be
married a year from next June. Jo graduates from St. Columbia this
spring, you know. Then he’s going to take a little mission church down
on Patterson Street in the slums. Fancy me in the slums! But I’d go
there or to Greenland’s icy mountains with him.”
“And this is the girl who would _never_ marry a man who wasn’t rich,”
commented Anne to a young pine tree.
“Oh, don’t cast up the follies of my youth to me. I shall be poor as
gaily as I’ve been rich. You’ll see. I’m going to learn how to cook and
make over dresses. I’ve learned how to market since I’ve lived at
Patty’s Place; and once I taught a Sunday School class for a whole
summer. Aunt Jamesina says I’ll ruin Jo’s career if I marry him. But I
won’t. I know I haven’t much sense or sobriety, but I’ve got what is
ever so much better—the knack of making people like me. There is a man
in Bolingbroke who lisps and always testifies in prayer-meeting. He
says, ‘If you can’t thine like an electric thtar thine like a
candlethtick.’ I’ll be Jo’s little candlestick.”
“Phil, you’re incorrigible. Well, I love you so much that I can’t make
nice, light, congratulatory little speeches. But I’m heart-glad of your
happiness.”
“I know. Those big gray eyes of yours are brimming over with real
friendship, Anne. Some day I’ll look the same way at you. You’re going
to marry Roy, aren’t you, Anne?”
“My dear Philippa, did you ever hear of the famous Betty Baxter, who
‘refused a man before he’d axed her’? I am not going to emulate that
celebrated lady by either refusing or accepting any one before he
‘axes’ me.”
“All Redmond knows that Roy is crazy about you,” said Phil candidly.
“And you _do_ love him, don’t you, Anne?”
“I—I suppose so,” said Anne reluctantly. She felt that she ought to be
blushing while making such a confession; but she was not; on the other
hand, she always blushed hotly when any one said anything about Gilbert
Blythe or Christine Stuart in her hearing. Gilbert Blythe and Christine
Stuart were nothing to her—absolutely nothing. But Anne had given up
trying to analyze the reason of her blushes. As for Roy, of course she
was in love with him—madly so. How could she help it? Was he not her
ideal? Who could resist those glorious dark eyes, and that pleading
voice? Were not half the Redmond girls wildly envious? And what a
charming sonnet he had sent her, with a box of violets, on her
birthday! Anne knew every word of it by heart. It was very good stuff
of its kind, too. Not exactly up to the level of Keats or
Shakespeare—even Anne was not so deeply in love as to think that. But
it was very tolerable magazine verse. And it was addressed to _her_—not
to Laura or Beatrice or the Maid of Athens, but to her, Anne Shirley.
To be told in rhythmical cadences that her eyes were stars of the
morning—that her cheek had the flush it stole from the sunrise—that her
lips were redder than the roses of Paradise, was thrillingly romantic.
Gilbert would never have dreamed of writing a sonnet to her eyebrows.
But then, Gilbert could see a joke. She had once told Roy a funny
story—and he had not seen the point of it. She recalled the chummy
laugh she and Gilbert had had together over it, and wondered uneasily
if life with a man who had no sense of humor might not be somewhat
uninteresting in the long run. But who could expect a melancholy,
inscrutable hero to see the humorous side of things? It would be flatly
unreasonable.
Chapter XXVIII
A June Evening
“I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always
June,” said Anne, as she came through the spice and bloom of the twilit
orchard to the front door steps, where Marilla and Mrs. Rachel were
sitting, talking over Mrs. Samson Coates’ funeral, which they had
attended that day. Dora sat between them, diligently studying her
lessons; but Davy was sitting tailor-fashion on the grass, looking as
gloomy and depressed as his single dimple would let him.
“You’d get tired of it,” said Marilla, with a sigh.
“I daresay; but just now I feel that it would take me a long time to
get tired of it, if it were all as charming as today. Everything loves
June. Davy-boy, why this melancholy November face in blossom-time?”
“I’m just sick and tired of living,” said the youthful pessimist.
“At ten years? Dear me, how sad!”
“I’m not making fun,” said Davy with dignity. “I’m
dis—dis—discouraged”—bringing out the big word with a valiant effort.
“Why and wherefore?” asked Anne, sitting down beside him.
“’Cause the new teacher that come when Mr. Holmes got sick give me ten
sums to do for Monday. It’ll take me all day tomorrow to do them. It
isn’t fair to have to work Saturdays. Milty Boulter said he wouldn’t do
them, but Marilla says I’ve got to. I don’t like Miss Carson a bit.”
“Don’t talk like that about your teacher, Davy Keith,” said Mrs. Rachel
severely. “Miss Carson is a very fine girl. There is no nonsense about
her.”
“That doesn’t sound very attractive,” laughed Anne. “I like people to
have a little nonsense about them. But I’m inclined to have a better
opinion of Miss Carson than you have. I saw her in prayer-meeting last
night, and she has a pair of eyes that can’t always look sensible. Now,
Davy-boy, take heart of grace. ‘Tomorrow will bring another day’ and
I’ll help you with the sums as far as in me lies. Don’t waste this
lovely hour ’twixt light and dark worrying over arithmetic.”
“Well, I won’t,” said Davy, brightening up. “If you help me with the
sums I’ll have ’em done in time to go fishing with Milty. I wish old
Aunt Atossa’s funeral was tomorrow instead of today. I wanted to go to
it ’cause Milty said his mother said Aunt Atossa would be sure to rise
up in her coffin and say sarcastic things to the folks that come to see
her buried. But Marilla said she didn’t.”
“Poor Atossa laid in her coffin peaceful enough,” said Mrs. Lynde
solemnly. “I never saw her look so pleasant before, that’s what. Well,
there weren’t many tears shed over her, poor old soul. The Elisha
Wrights are thankful to be rid of her, and I can’t say I blame them a
mite.”
“It seems to me a most dreadful thing to go out of the world and not
leave one person behind you who is sorry you are gone,” said Anne,
shuddering.
“Nobody except her parents ever loved poor Atossa, that’s certain, not
even her husband,” averred Mrs. Lynde. “She was his fourth wife. He’d
sort of got into the habit of marrying. He only lived a few years after
he married her. The doctor said he died of dyspepsia, but I shall
always maintain that he died of Atossa’s tongue, that’s what. Poor
soul, she always knew everything about her neighbors, but she never was
very well acquainted with herself. Well, she’s gone anyhow; and I
suppose the next excitement will be Diana’s wedding.”
“It seems funny and horrible to think of Diana’s being married,” sighed
Anne, hugging her knees and looking through the gap in the Haunted Wood
to the light that was shining in Diana’s room.
“I don’t see what’s horrible about it, when she’s doing so well,” said
Mrs. Lynde emphatically. “Fred Wright has a fine farm and he is a model
young man.”
“He certainly isn’t the wild, dashing, wicked, young man Diana once
wanted to marry,” smiled Anne. “Fred is extremely good.”
“That’s just what he ought to be. Would you want Diana to marry a
wicked man? Or marry one yourself?”
“Oh, no. I wouldn’t want to marry anybody who was wicked, but I think
I’d like it if he _could_ be wicked and _wouldn’t_. Now, Fred is
_hopelessly_ good.”
“You’ll have more sense some day, I hope,” said Marilla.
Marilla spoke rather bitterly. She was grievously disappointed. She
knew Anne had refused Gilbert Blythe. Avonlea gossip buzzed over the
fact, which had leaked out, nobody knew how. Perhaps Charlie Sloane had
guessed and told his guesses for truth. Perhaps Diana had betrayed it
to Fred and Fred had been indiscreet. At all events it was known; Mrs.
Blythe no longer asked Anne, in public or private, if she had heard
lately from Gilbert, but passed her by with a frosty bow. Anne, who had
always liked Gilbert’s merry, young-hearted mother, was grieved in
secret over this. Marilla said nothing; but Mrs. Lynde gave Anne many
exasperated digs about it, until fresh gossip reached that worthy lady,
through the medium of Moody Spurgeon MacPherson’s mother, that Anne had
another “beau” at college, who was rich and handsome and good all in
one. After that Mrs. Rachel held her tongue, though she still wished in
her inmost heart that Anne had accepted Gilbert. Riches were all very
well; but even Mrs. Rachel, practical soul though she was, did not
consider them the one essential. If Anne “liked” the Handsome Unknown
better than Gilbert there was nothing more to be said; but Mrs. Rachel
was dreadfully afraid that Anne was going to make the mistake of
marrying for money. Marilla knew Anne too well to fear this; but she
felt that something in the universal scheme of things had gone sadly
awry.
“What is to be, will be,” said Mrs. Rachel gloomily, “and what isn’t to
be happens sometimes. I can’t help believing it’s going to happen in
Anne’s case, if Providence doesn’t interfere, that’s what.” Mrs. Rachel
sighed. She was afraid Providence wouldn’t interfere; and she didn’t
dare to.
Anne had wandered down to the Dryad’s Bubble and was curled up among
the ferns at the root of the big white birch where she and Gilbert had
so often sat in summers gone by. He had gone into the newspaper office
again when college closed, and Avonlea seemed very dull without him. He
never wrote to her, and Anne missed the letters that never came. To be
sure, Roy wrote twice a week; his letters were exquisite compositions
which would have read beautifully in a memoir or biography. Anne felt
herself more deeply in love with him than ever when she read them; but
her heart never gave the queer, quick, painful bound at sight of his
letters which it had given one day when Mrs. Hiram Sloane had handed
her out an envelope addressed in Gilbert’s black, upright handwriting.
Anne had hurried home to the east gable and opened it eagerly—to find a
typewritten copy of some college society report—“only that and nothing
more.” Anne flung the harmless screed across her room and sat down to
write an especially nice epistle to Roy.
Diana was to be married in five more days. The gray house at Orchard
Slope was in a turmoil of baking and brewing and boiling and stewing,
for there was to be a big, old-timey wedding. Anne, of course, was to
be bridesmaid, as had been arranged when they were twelve years old,
and Gilbert was coming from Kingsport to be best man. Anne was enjoying
the excitement of the various preparations, but under it all she
carried a little heartache. She was, in a sense, losing her dear old
chum; Diana’s new home would be two miles from Green Gables, and the