Anne of Green Gables (Penguin) Page 10

  A series of staccato taps on the west window brought Anne flying in from the yard, eyes shining, cheeks faintly flushed with pink, unbraided hair streaming behind her in a torrent of brightness.

  ‘Oh, Marilla,’ she exclaimed breathlessly, ‘there’s going to be a Sunday-school picnic next week — in Mr Harmon Andrews’s field, right near the Lake of Shining Waters. And Mrs Superintendent Bell and Mrs Rachel Lynde are going to make ice-cream — think of it, Marilla — ice-cream! And oh, Marilla, can I go to it?’

  ‘Just look at the clock, if you please, Anne. What time did I tell you to come in?’

  ‘Two o’clock — but isn’t it splendid about the picnic, Marilla? Please can I go? Oh, I’ve never been to a picnic — I’ve dreamed of picnics, but I’ve never —’

  ‘Yes, I told you to come at two o’clock. And it’s a quarter to three. I’d like to know why you didn’t obey me, Anne.’

  ‘Why, I meant to, Marilla, as much as could be. But you have no idea how fascinating Idlewild is. And then, of course, I had to tell Matthew about the picnic. Matthew is such a sympathetic listener. Please can I go?’

  ‘You’ll have to learn to resist the fascination of Idle-what-ever-you-call-it. When I tell you to come in at a certain time I mean that time and not half an hour later. And you needn’t stop to discourse with sympathetic listeners on your way, either. As for the picnic, of course you can go. You’re a Sunday-school scholar, and it’s not likely I’d refuse to let you go when all the other little girls are going.’

  ‘But — but,’ faltered Anne, ‘Diana says that everybody must take a basket of things to eat. I can’t cook, as you know, Marilla, and — and — I don’t mind going to a picnic without puffed sleeves so much, but I’d feel terribly humiliated if I had to go without a basket. It’s been preying on my mind ever since Diana told me.’

  ‘Well, it needn’t prey any longer. I’ll bake you a basket.’

  ‘Oh, you dear good Marilla. Oh, you are so kind to me. Oh, I’m so much obliged to you.’

  Getting through with her ‘ohs’ Anne cast herself into Marilla’s arms and rapturously kissed her sallow cheek. It was the first time in her whole life that childish lips had voluntarily touched Marilla’s face. Again that sudden sensation of startling sweetness thrilled her. She was secretly vastly pleased at Anne’s impulsive caress, which was probably the reason why she said brusquely:

  ‘There, there, never mind your kissing nonsense. I’d sooner see you doing strictly as you’re told. As for cooking, I mean to begin giving you lessons in that some of these days. But you’re so feather-brained, Anne, I’ve been waiting to see if you’d sober down a little and learn to be steady before I begin. You’ve got to keep your wits about you in cooking and not stop in the middle of things to let your thoughts rove over all creation. Now, get out your patchwork and have your square done before tea-time.’

  ‘I do not like patchwork,’ said Anne dolefully, hunting out her workbasket and sitting down before a little heap of red and white diamonds with a sigh. ‘I think some kinds of sewing would be nice; but there’s no scope for imagination in patchwork. It’s just one little seam after another and you never seem to be getting anywhere. But of course I’d rather be Anne of Green Gables, sewing patchwork, than Anne of any other place with nothing to do but play. I wish time went as quick sewing patches as it does when I’m playing with Diana, though. Oh, we do have such elegant times, Marilla. I have to furnish most of the imagination, but I’m well able to do that. Diana is simply perfect in every other way. You know that little piece of land across the brook that runs up between our farm and Mr Barry’s. It belongs to Mr William Bell, and right in the corner there is a little ring of white birch-trees — the most romantic spot, Marilla. Diana and I have our playhouse there. We call it Idlewild. Isn’t that a poetical name? I assure you it took me some time to think it out. I stayed awake nearly a whole night before I invented it. Then, just as I was dropping off to sleep, it came like an inspiration. Diana was enraptured when she heard it. We have got our house fixed up elegantly. You must come and see it, Marilla — won’t you? We have great big stones, all covered with moss, for seats, and boards from tree to tree for shelves. And we have all our dishes on them. Of course, they’re all broken but it’s the easiest thing in the world to imagine that they are whole. There’s a piece of a plate with a spray of red and yellow ivy on it that is especially beautiful. We keep it in the parlour and we have the fairy glass there, too. The fairy glass is as lovely as a dream. Diana found it out in the woods behind their chicken house. It’s all full of rainbows — just little young rainbows that haven’t grown big yet — and Diana’s mother told her it was broken off a hanging lamp they once had. But it’s nicer to imagine the fairies lost it one night when they had a ball, so we call it the fairy glass. Matthew is going to make us a table. Oh, we have named that little round pool over in Mr Barry’s field Willowmere. I got that name out of the book Diana lent me. That was a thrilling book, Marilla. The heroine had five lovers. I’d be satisfied with one, wouldn’t you? She was very handsome and she went through great tribulations. She could faint as easy as anything. I’d love to be able to faint, wouldn’t you, Marilla? It’s so romantic. But I’m really very healthy for all I’m so thin. I believe I’m getting fatter, though. Don’t you think I am? I look at my elbows every morning when I get up to see if any dimples are coming. Diana is having a new dress made with elbow sleeves. She is going to wear it at the picnic. Oh, I do hope it will be fine next Wednesday. I don’t feel that I could endure the disappointment if anything happened to prevent me from getting to the picnic. I suppose I’d live through it, but I’m certain it would be a lifelong sorrow. It wouldn’t matter if I got to a hundred picnics in after years; they wouldn’t make up for missing this one. They’re going to have boats on the Lake of Shining Waters — and icecream as I told you. I have never tasted ice-cream. Diana tried to explain what it was like, but I guess ice-cream is one of those things that are beyond imagination.’

  ‘Anne, you have talked even on for ten minutes by the clock,’ said Marilla. ‘Now, just for curiosity’s sake, see if you can hold your tongue for the same length of time.’

  Anne held her tongue as desired. But the rest of the week she talked picnic and thought picnic and dreamed picnic. On Saturday it rained and she worked herself up into such a frantic state lest it should keep on raining until and over Wednesday, that Marilla made her sew an extra patchwork square by way of steadying her nerves.

  On Sunday Anne confided to Marilla on the way home from church that she grew actually cold all over with excitement when the minister announced the picnic from the pulpit.

  ‘Such a thrill as went up and down my back, Marilla! I don’t think I’d ever really believed until then that there was honestly going to be a picnic. I couldn’t help fearing I’d only imagined it. But when a minister says a thing in the pulpit you just have to believe it.’

  ‘You set your heart too much on things, Anne,’ said Marilla with a sigh. ‘I’m afraid there’ll be a great many disappointments in store for you through life.’

  ‘Oh, Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them,’ exclaimed Anne. ‘You mayn’t get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them. Mrs Lynde says, “Blessed are they who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed.” But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed.’

  Marilla wore her amethyst brooch to church that day as usual. Marilla always wore her amethyst brooch to church. She would have thought it rather sacrilegious to leave it off — as bad as forgetting her Bible or her collection dime. That amethyst brooch was Marilla’s most treasured possession. A seafaring uncle had given it to her mother, who in turn had bequeathed it to Marilla. It was an old-fashioned oval, containing a braid of her mother’s hair, surrounded by a border of very fine amethysts. Marilla knew too little about precious stones to realize how fine the amethysts actually were
; but she thought them very beautiful and was always pleasantly conscious of their violet shimmer at her throat, above her good brown satin dress, even although she could not see it.

  Anne had been smitten with delighted admiration when she first saw that brooch.

  ‘Oh, Marilla, it’s a perfectly elegant brooch. I don’t know how you can pay attention to the sermon or the prayers when you have it on. I couldn’t, I know. I think amethysts are just sweet. They are what I used to think diamonds were like. Long ago, before I had ever seen a diamond, I read about them, and I tried to imagine what they would be like. I thought they would be lovely glimmering purple stones. When I saw a real diamond in a lady’s ring one day I was so disappointed I cried. Of course, it was very lovely, but it wasn’t my idea of a diamond. Will you let me hold the brooch for one minute, Marilla? Do you think amethysts can be the souls of good violets?’

  14

  Anne’s Confession

  On the Monday evening before the picnic Marilla came down from her room with a troubled face.

  ‘Anne,’ she said to that small personage, who was shelling peas by the spotless table and singing ‘Nelly of the Hazel Dell’ with a vigour and expression that did credit to Diana’s teaching, ‘did you see anything of my amethyst brooch? I thought I stuck it in my pincushion when I came home from church yesterday evening, but I can’t find it anywhere.’

  ‘I — I saw it this afternoon when you were away at the Aid Society,’ said Anne, a little slowly. ‘I was passing your door when I saw it on the cushion, so I went in to look at it.’

  ‘Did you touch it?’ said Marilla sternly.

  ‘Y-e-s-s,’ admitted Anne. ‘I took it up and I pinned it on my breast just to see how it would look.’

  ‘You had no business to do anything of the sort. It’s very wrong in a little girl to meddle. You shouldn’t have gone into my room in the first place and you shouldn’t have touched a brooch that didn’t belong to you in the second. Where did you put it?’

  ‘Oh, I put it back on the bureau. I hadn’t it on a minute. Truly, I didn’t mean to meddle, Marilla. I didn’t think about its being wrong to go in and try on the brooch; but I see now that it was, and I’ll never do it again. That’s one good thing about me. I never do the same naughty thing twice.’

  ‘You didn’t put it back,’ said Marilla. ‘That brooch isn’t anywhere on the bureau. You’ve taken it out or something, Anne.’

  ‘I did put it back,’ said Anne quickly — pertly, Marilla thought. ‘I don’t just remember whether I stuck it on the pincushion or laid it in the china tray. But I’m perfectly certain I put it back.’

  ‘I’ll go and have another look,’ said Marilla, determined to be just. ‘If you put that brooch back it’s there still. If it isn’t I’ll know you didn’t, that’s all!’

  Marilla went to her room and made a thorough search, not only over the bureau but in every other place she thought the brooch might possibly be. It was not to be found and she returned to the kitchen.

  ‘Anne, the brooch is gone. By your own admission you were the last person to handle it. Now, what have you done with it? Tell me the truth at once. Did you take it out and lose it?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Anne solemnly, meeting Marilla’s angry gaze squarely. ‘I never took the brooch out of your room and that is the truth, if I was to be led to the block for it — although I’m not very certain what a block is. So there, Marilla.’

  Anne’s ‘so there’ was only intended to emphasize her assertion, but Marilla took it as a display of defiance.

  ‘I believe you are telling me a falsehood, Anne,’ she said sharply. ‘I know you are. There, now, don’t say anything more unless you are prepared to tell the whole truth. Go to your room and stay there until you are ready to confess.’

  ‘Will I take the peas with me?’ said Anne meekly.

  ‘No, I’ll finish shelling them myself. Do as I bid you.’

  When Anne had gone, Marilla went about her evening tasks in a very disturbed state of mind. She was worried about her valuable brooch. What if Anne had lost it? And how wicked of the child to deny having taken it, when anybody could see she must have! With such an innocent face, too!

  ‘I don’t know what I wouldn’t sooner have had happen,’ thought Marilla, as she nervously shelled the peas. ‘Of course I don’t suppose she meant to steal it or anything like that. She’s just taken it to play with or help along that imagination of hers. She must have taken it, that’s clear, for there hasn’t been a soul in that room since she was in it, by her own story, until I went up tonight. And the brooch is gone, there’s nothing surer. I suppose she has lost it and is afraid to own up for fear she’ll be punished. It’s a dreadful thing to think she tells falsehoods. It’s a far worse thing than her fit of temper. It’s a fearful responsibility to have a child in your house you can’t trust. Slyness and untruthfulness — that’s what she has displayed. I declare I feel worse about that than about the brooch. If she’d only have told the truth about it I wouldn’t mind so much.’

  Marilla went to her room at intervals all through the evening and searched for the brooch, without finding it. A bed-time visit to the east gable produced no result. Anne persisted in denying that she knew anything about the brooch but Marilla was only the more firmly convinced that she did.

  She told Matthew the story the next morning. Matthew was confounded and puzzled; he could not so quickly lose faith in Anne but he had to admit that circumstances were against her.

  ‘You’re sure it hasn’t fell down behind the bureau?’ was the only suggestion he could offer.

  ‘I’ve moved the bureau and I’ve taken out the drawers and I’ve looked in every crack and cranny,’ was Marilla’s positive answer. ‘The brooch is gone and that child has taken it and lied about it. That’s the plain, ugly truth Matthew Cuthbert, and we might as well look it in the face.’

  ‘Well, now, what are you going to do about it?’ Matthew asked forlornly, feeling secretly thankful that Marilla and not he had to deal with the situation. He felt no desire to put his oar in this time.

  ‘She’ll stay in her room until she confesses,’ said Marilla grimly, remembering the success of this method in the former case. ‘Then we’ll see. Perhaps we’ll be able to find the brooch if she’ll only tell where she took it; but in any case she’ll have to be severely punished, Matthew.’

  ‘Well now, you’ll have to punish her,’ said Matthew, reaching for his hat. ‘I’ve nothing to do with it, remember. You warned me off yourself.’

  Marilla felt deserted by everyone. She could not even go to Mrs Lynde for advice. She went up to the east gable with a very serious face and left it with a face more serious still. Anne steadfastly refused to confess. She persisted in asserting that she had not taken the brooch. The child had evidently been crying and Marilla felt a pang of pity which she sternly repressed. By night she was, as she expressed it, ‘beat out’.

  ‘You’ll stay in this room until you confess, Anne. You can make up your mind to that,’ she said firmly.

  ‘But the picnic is tomorrow, Marilla,’ cried Anne. ‘You won’t keep me from going to that, will you? You’ll just let me out for the afternoon, won’t you? Then I’ll stay here as long as you like afterwards cheerfully. But I must go to the picnic.’

  ‘You’ll not go to picnics nor anywhere else until you’ve confessed, Anne.’

  ‘Oh, Marilla,’ gasped Anne.

  But Marilla had gone out and shut the door.

  Wednesday morning dawned as bright and fair as if expressly made to order for the picnic. Birds sang around Green Gables; the Madonna lilies in the garden sent out whiffs of perfume that entered in on viewless winds at every door and window, and wandered through halls and rooms like spirits of benediction. The birches in the hollow waved joyful hands as if watching for Anne’s usual morning greeting from the east gable. But Anne was not at her window. When Marilla took her breakfast up to her she found the child sitting primly on her bed, pale and resol
ute, with tightshut lips and gleaming eyes.

  ‘Marilla, I’m ready to confess.’

  ‘Ah!’ Marilla laid down her tray. Once again her method had succeeded; but her success was very bitter to her. ‘Let me hear what you have to say then, Anne.’

  ‘I took the amethyst brooch,’ said Anne, as if repeating a lesson she had learned. ‘I took it just as you said. I didn’t mean to take it when I went in. But it did look so beautiful, Marilla, when I pinned it on my breast that I was overcome by an irresistible temptation. I imagined how perfectly thrilling it would be to take it to Idlewild and play I was the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald. It would be so much easier to imagine I was the Lady Cordelia if I had a real amethyst brooch on. Diana and I made necklaces of roseberries, but what are roseberries compared to amethysts? So I took the brooch. I thought I could put it back before you came home. I went all the way around by the road to lengthen out the time. When I was going over the bridge across the Lake of Shining Waters I took the brooch off to have another look at it. Oh, how it did shine in the sunlight! And then, when I was leaning over the bridge, it just slipped through my fingers — so — and went down — down — down, all purply-sparkling, and sank for evermore beneath the Lake of Shining Waters. And that’s the best I can do at confessing, Marilla.’

  Marilla felt hot anger surge up into her heart again. This child had taken and lost her treasured amethyst brooch and now sat there calmly reciting the details thereof without the least apparent compunction or repentance.

  ‘Anne, this is terrible,’ she said, trying to speak calmly. ‘You are the very wickedest girl I ever heard of.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am,’ agreed Anne tranquilly. And I know I’ll have to be punished. It’ll be your duty to punish me, Marilla. Won’t you please get it over right off because I’d like to go to the picnic with nothing on my mind.’

  ‘Picnic, indeed! You’ll go to no picnic today, Anne Shirley! That shall be your punishment. And it isn’t half severe enough either for what you’ve done!’