Anne of the Island
myself, in that dreadful old wincey dress and faded sailor hat,
exploring decks and cabins with enraptured curiosity. It was a fine
evening; and how those red Island shores did gleam in the sunshine. Now
I’m crossing the strait again. Oh, Gilbert, I do hope I’ll like Redmond
and Kingsport, but I’m sure I won’t!”
“Where’s all your philosophy gone, Anne?”
“It’s all submerged under a great, swamping wave of loneliness and
homesickness. I’ve longed for three years to go to Redmond—and now I’m
going—and I wish I weren’t! Never mind! I shall be cheerful and
philosophical again after I have just one good cry. I _must_ have that,
‘as a went’—and I’ll have to wait until I get into my boardinghouse bed
tonight, wherever it may be, before I can have it. Then Anne will be
herself again. I wonder if Davy has come out of the closet yet.”
It was nine that night when their train reached Kingsport, and they
found themselves in the blue-white glare of the crowded station. Anne
felt horribly bewildered, but a moment later she was seized by
Priscilla Grant, who had come to Kingsport on Saturday.
“Here you are, beloved! And I suppose you’re as tired as I was when I
got here Saturday night.”
“Tired! Priscilla, don’t talk of it. I’m tired, and green, and
provincial, and only about ten years old. For pity’s sake take your
poor, broken-down chum to some place where she can hear herself think.”
“I’ll take you right up to our boardinghouse. I’ve a cab ready
outside.”
“It’s such a blessing you’re here, Prissy. If you weren’t I think I
should just sit down on my suitcase, here and now, and weep bitter
tears. What a comfort one familiar face is in a howling wilderness of
strangers!”
“Is that Gilbert Blythe over there, Anne? How he has grown up this past
year! He was only a schoolboy when I taught in Carmody. And of course
that’s Charlie Sloane. _He_ hasn’t changed—couldn’t! He looked just
like that when he was born, and he’ll look like that when he’s eighty.
This way, dear. We’ll be home in twenty minutes.”
“Home!” groaned Anne. “You mean we’ll be in some horrible
boardinghouse, in a still more horrible hall bedroom, looking out on a
dingy back yard.”
“It isn’t a horrible boardinghouse, Anne-girl. Here’s our cab. Hop
in—the driver will get your trunk. Oh, yes, the boardinghouse—it’s
really a very nice place of its kind, as you’ll admit tomorrow morning
when a good night’s sleep has turned your blues rosy pink. It’s a big,
old-fashioned, gray stone house on St. John Street, just a nice little
constitutional from Redmond. It used to be the ‘residence’ of great
folk, but fashion has deserted St. John Street and its houses only
dream now of better days. They’re so big that people living in them
have to take boarders just to fill up. At least, that is the reason our
landladies are very anxious to impress on us. They’re delicious,
Anne—our landladies, I mean.”
“How many are there?”
“Two. Miss Hannah Harvey and Miss Ada Harvey. They were born twins
about fifty years ago.”
“I can’t get away from twins, it seems,” smiled Anne. “Wherever I go
they confront me.”
“Oh, they’re not twins now, dear. After they reached the age of thirty
they never were twins again. Miss Hannah has grown old, not too
gracefully, and Miss Ada has stayed thirty, less gracefully still. I
don’t know whether Miss Hannah can smile or not; I’ve never caught her
at it so far, but Miss Ada smiles all the time and that’s worse.
However, they’re nice, kind souls, and they take two boarders every
year because Miss Hannah’s economical soul cannot bear to ‘waste room
space’—not because they need to or have to, as Miss Ada has told me
seven times since Saturday night. As for our rooms, I admit they are
hall bedrooms, and mine does look out on the back yard. Your room is a
front one and looks out on Old St. John’s graveyard, which is just
across the street.”
“That sounds gruesome,” shivered Anne. “I think I’d rather have the
back yard view.”
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t. Wait and see. Old St. John’s is a darling place.
It’s been a graveyard so long that it’s ceased to be one and has become
one of the sights of Kingsport. I was all through it yesterday for a
pleasure exertion. There’s a big stone wall and a row of enormous trees
all around it, and rows of trees all through it, and the queerest old
tombstones, with the queerest and quaintest inscriptions. You’ll go
there to study, Anne, see if you don’t. Of course, nobody is ever
buried there now. But a few years ago they put up a beautiful monument
to the memory of Nova Scotian soldiers who fell in the Crimean War. It
is just opposite the entrance gates and there’s ‘scope for imagination’
in it, as you used to say. Here’s your trunk at last—and the boys
coming to say good night. Must I really shake hands with Charlie
Sloane, Anne? His hands are always so cold and fishy-feeling. We must
ask them to call occasionally. Miss Hannah gravely told me we could
have ‘young gentlemen callers’ two evenings in the week, if they went
away at a reasonable hour; and Miss Ada asked me, smiling, please to be
sure they didn’t sit on her beautiful cushions. I promised to see to
it; but goodness knows where else they _can_ sit, unless they sit on
the floor, for there are cushions on _everything_. Miss Ada even has an
elaborate Battenburg one on top of the piano.”
Anne was laughing by this time. Priscilla’s gay chatter had the
intended effect of cheering her up; homesickness vanished for the time
being, and did not even return in full force when she finally found
herself alone in her little bedroom. She went to her window and looked
out. The street below was dim and quiet. Across it the moon was shining
above the trees in Old St. John’s, just behind the great dark head of
the lion on the monument. Anne wondered if it could have been only that
morning that she had left Green Gables. She had the sense of a long
passage of time which one day of change and travel gives.
“I suppose that very moon is looking down on Green Gables now,” she
mused. “But I won’t think about it—that way homesickness lies. I’m not
even going to have my good cry. I’ll put that off to a more convenient
season, and just now I’ll go calmly and sensibly to bed and to sleep.”
Chapter IV
April’s Lady
Kingsport is a quaint old town, hearking back to early Colonial days,
and wrapped in its ancient atmosphere, as some fine old dame in
garments fashioned like those of her youth. Here and there it sprouts
out into modernity, but at heart it is still unspoiled; it is full of
curious relics, and haloed by the romance of many legends of the past.
Once it was a mere frontier station on the fringe of the wilderness,
and those were the days when Indians kept life from being monotonous to
the settlers. Then it grew to be a bone of contention between the
British and the French, being occupied now by the one and now by the
other, emerging from each occupation with some fresh scar of battling
nations branded on it.
It has in its park a martello tower, autographed all over by tourists,
a dismantled old French fort on the hills beyond the town, and several
antiquated cannon in its public squares. It has other historic spots
also, which may be hunted out by the curious, and none is more quaint
and delightful than Old St. John’s Cemetery at the very core of the
town, with streets of quiet, old-time houses on two sides, and busy,
bustling, modern thoroughfares on the others. Every citizen of
Kingsport feels a thrill of possessive pride in Old St. John’s, for, if
he be of any pretensions at all, he has an ancestor buried there, with
a queer, crooked slab at his head, or else sprawling protectively over
the grave, on which all the main facts of his history are recorded. For
the most part no great art or skill was lavished on those old
tombstones. The larger number are of roughly chiselled brown or gray
native stone, and only in a few cases is there any attempt at
ornamentation. Some are adorned with skull and cross-bones, and this
grizzly decoration is frequently coupled with a cherub’s head. Many are
prostrate and in ruins. Into almost all Time’s tooth has been gnawing,
until some inscriptions have been completely effaced, and others can
only be deciphered with difficulty. The graveyard is very full and very
bowery, for it is surrounded and intersected by rows of elms and
willows, beneath whose shade the sleepers must lie very dreamlessly,
forever crooned to by the winds and leaves over them, and quite
undisturbed by the clamor of traffic just beyond.
Anne took the first of many rambles in Old St. John’s the next
afternoon. She and Priscilla had gone to Redmond in the forenoon and
registered as students, after which there was nothing more to do that
day. The girls gladly made their escape, for it was not exhilarating to
be surrounded by crowds of strangers, most of whom had a rather alien
appearance, as if not quite sure where they belonged.
The “freshettes” stood about in detached groups of two or three,
looking askance at each other; the “freshies,” wiser in their day and
generation, had banded themselves together on the big staircase of the
entrance hall, where they were shouting out glees with all the vigor of
youthful lungs, as a species of defiance to their traditional enemies,
the Sophomores, a few of whom were prowling loftily about, looking
properly disdainful of the “unlicked cubs” on the stairs. Gilbert and
Charlie were nowhere to be seen.
“Little did I think the day would ever come when I’d be glad of the
sight of a Sloane,” said Priscilla, as they crossed the campus, “but
I’d welcome Charlie’s goggle eyes almost ecstatically. At least, they’d
be familiar eyes.”
“Oh,” sighed Anne. “I can’t describe how I felt when I was standing
there, waiting my turn to be registered—as insignificant as the
teeniest drop in a most enormous bucket. It’s bad enough to feel
insignificant, but it’s unbearable to have it grained into your soul
that you will never, can never, be anything but insignificant, and that
is how I did feel—as if I were invisible to the naked eye and some of
those Sophs might step on me. I knew I would go down to my grave
unwept, unhonored and unsung.”
“Wait till next year,” comforted Priscilla. “Then we’ll be able to look
as bored and sophisticated as any Sophomore of them all. No doubt it is
rather dreadful to feel insignificant; but I think it’s better than to
feel as big and awkward as I did—as if I were sprawled all over
Redmond. That’s how I felt—I suppose because I was a good two inches
taller than any one else in the crowd. I wasn’t afraid a Soph might
walk over me; I was afraid they’d take me for an elephant, or an
overgrown sample of a potato-fed Islander.”
“I suppose the trouble is we can’t forgive big Redmond for not being
little Queen’s,” said Anne, gathering about her the shreds of her old
cheerful philosophy to cover her nakedness of spirit. “When we left
Queen’s we knew everybody and had a place of our own. I suppose we have
been unconsciously expecting to take life up at Redmond just where we
left off at Queen’s, and now we feel as if the ground had slipped from
under our feet. I’m thankful that neither Mrs. Lynde nor Mrs. Elisha
Wright know, or ever will know, my state of mind at present. They would
exult in saying ‘I told you so,’ and be convinced it was the beginning
of the end. Whereas it is just the end of the beginning.”
“Exactly. That sounds more Anneish. In a little while we’ll be
acclimated and acquainted, and all will be well. Anne, did you notice
the girl who stood alone just outside the door of the coeds’ dressing
room all the morning—the pretty one with the brown eyes and crooked
mouth?”
“Yes, I did. I noticed her particularly because she seemed the only