Anne of Windy Poplars Read online

  The narrow, steep stair was repellent. It didn't want you. Nobody would go up who didn't have to. The linoleum in the hall was worn to shreds. The little back hall bedroom where Anne presently found herself was even more cheerless than the parlour. It was lit by one glaring, unshaded gas-jet. There was an iron bed with a valley in the middle of it, and a narrow, sparsely draped window looking out on a backyard garden where a large crop of tin cans flourished. But beyond it was a marvellous sky and a row of Lombardies standing out against long purple, distant hills.

  'Oh, Miss Brooke, look at that sunset!' said Anne rapturously from the squeaky, cushionless rocker to which Katherine had ungraciously pointed her.

  'I've seen a good many sunsets,' said the latter coldly, without moving. 'Condescending to me with your sunsets!' she thought bitterly.

  'You haven't seen this one. No two sunsets are alike. Just sit down here and let us let it sink into our souls,' said Anne. Thought Anne, 'Do you ever say anything pleasant?'

  'Don't be ridiculous, please!'

  The most insulting words in the world! With an added edge of insult in Katherine's contemptuous tones. Anne turned from her sunset and looked at Katherine, much more than half inclined to get up and walk out. But Katherine's eyes looked a trifle strange. Had she been crying? Surely not. You couldn't imagine Katherine Brooke crying.

  'You don't make me feel very welcome,' Anne said slowly.

  'I can't pretend things. I haven't your notable gift for doing the queen act: saying exactly the right thing to everyone. You're not welcome. What sort of a room is this to welcome anyone to?'

  Katherine made a scornful gesture at the faded walls, the shabby, bare chairs, and the wobbly dressing-table with its petticoat of limp muslin.

  'It isn't a nice room, but why do you stay here if you don't like it?'

  'Oh, why, why? You wouldn't understand. It doesn't matter. I don't care what anybody thinks. What brought you here tonight? I don't suppose you came just to soak in the sunset.'

  'I came to ask if you would spend the Christmas holidays with me at Green Gables.'

  'Now,' thought Anne, 'for another broadside of sarcasm! I do wish she'd sit down at least. She just stands there as if waiting for me to go.'

  But there was silence for a moment. Then Katherine said slowly, 'Why do you ask me? It isn't because you like me. Even you couldn't pretend that.'

  'It's because I can't bear to think of any human being spending Christmas in a place like this,' said Anne candidly.

  The sarcasm came then. 'Oh, I see. A seasonable outburst of charity. I'm hardly a candidate for that yet, Miss Shirley.'

  Anne got up. She was out of patience with this strange, aloof creature. She walked across the room and looked Katherine squarely in the eye. 'Katherine Brooke, whether you know it or not, what you want is a good spanking.'

  They gazed at each other for a moment.

  'It must have relieved you to say that,' said Katherine. But somehow the insulting tone had gone out of her voice. There was even a faint twitch at the corners of her mouth.

  'It has,' said Anne. 'I've been wanting to tell you just that for some time. I didn't ask you to Green Gables out of charity; you know that perfectly well. I told you my true reason. Nobody ought to spend Christmas here. The very idea is indecent.'

  'You asked me to Green Gables just because you are sorry for me.'

  'I am sorry for you. Because you've shut out life - and now life is shutting you out. Stop it, Katherine. Open your doors to life, and life will come in.'

  'The Anne Shirley version of the old bromide:

  If you bring a smiling visage

  To the glass you meet a smile,'

  said Katherine, with a shrug.

  'Like all bromides, that's absolutely true. Now, are you coming to Green Gables, or are you not?'

  'What would you say if I accepted - to yourself, not to me?'

  'I'd say you were showing the first faint glimmer of common sense I'd ever detected in you,' retorted Anne.

  Katherine laughed, surprisingly. She walked across to the window, scowled at the fiery streak, which was all that was left of the scorned sunset, and then turned.

  'Very well; I'll go. Now you can go through the motions of telling me you're delighted, and that we'll have a jolly time.'

  'I am delighted. But I don't know if you'll have a jolly time or not. That will depend a good deal on yourself, Miss Brooke.'

  'Oh, I'll behave myself decently. You'll be surprised. You won't find me a very exhilarating guest, I suppose, but I promise you I won't eat with my knife, or insult people when they tell me it's a fine day. I tell you frankly that the only reason I'm going is because even I can't stick the thought of spending the holidays here alone. Mrs Dennis is going to spend Christmas week with her daughter in Charlottetown. It's a bore to think of getting my own meals. I'm a rotten cook. So much for the triumph of matter over mind. But will you give me your word of honour that you won't wish me a merry Christmas? I just don't want to be merry at Christmas.'

  'I won't. But I can't answer for the twins.'

  'I'm not going to ask you to sit down here. You'd freeze. But I see that there's a very fine moon in place of your sunset, and I'll walk home with you and help you to admire it, if you like.'

  'I do like,' said Anne. 'But I want to impress on your mind that we have much finer moons in Avonlea.'

  'So she's going?' said Rebecca Dew, as she filled Anne's hot-water bottle. 'Well, Miss Shirley, I hope you'll never try to induce me to turn Mohammedan - because you'd likely succeed. Where is That Cat? Out frisking round Summerside, and the weather at zero.'

  'Not by the new thermometer. And Dusty Miller is curled up on the rocking-chair by my stove in the tower, snoring with happiness.'

  'Ah, well,' said Rebecca Dew, with a little shiver, as she shut the kitchen door, 'I wish everyone in the world was as warm and sheltered as we are tonight.'

  5

  Anne did not know that out of one of the mansard windows of the Evergreens a wistful little Elizabeth was watching her drive away from Windy Willows, an Elizabeth with tears in her eyes who felt as if everything that made life worth living had gone out of her life for the time being, and that she was the very Lizziest of Lizzies. But when the livery sleigh vanished from her sight round the corner of Spook's Lane Elizabeth went and knelt down by her bed.

  'Dear God,' she whispered, 'I know it isn't any use to ask You for a Merry Christmas for me, because Grandmother and the Woman couldn't be merry. But please let my dear Miss Shirley have a merry, merry Christmas, and bring her back safe to me when it's over.'

  'Now,' said Elizabeth, getting up from her knees, 'I've done all that I can.'

  Anne was already tasting Christmas happiness. She fairly sparkled as the train left the station. The ugly streets slipped past her. She was going home - home to Green Gables. Out in the open country the world was all golden-white and pale violet, woven here and there with the dark magic of spruces and the leafless delicacy of birches. The low sun behind the bare woods seemed rushing through the trees like a splendid god as the train sped on. Katherine was silent, but did not seem ungracious.

  'Don't expect me to talk,' she had warned Anne curtly.

  'I won't. I hope you don't think I'm one of those terrible people who make you feel that you have to talk to them all the time. We'll just talk when we feel like it. I admit I'm likely to feel like it a good part of the time, but you're under no obligation to take any notice of what I'm saying.'

  Davy met them at Bright river with a big two-seated sleigh full of furry robes, and a bear hug for Anne. The two girls snuggled down in the back seat. The drive from the station to Green Gables had always been a very pleasant part of Anne's week-ends home. She always recalled her first drive home from Bright river with Matthew. That had been in late spring, and this was December, but everything along the road kept saying to her, 'Do you remember?' The snow crisped under the runners; the music of the bells tinkled through the ranks of tal
l, pointed firs, snow-laden. The White Way of Delight had little festoons of stars tangled in the trees. And on the last hill but one they saw the great Gulf white and mystical under the moon, but not yet ice-bound.

  'There's just one spot on this road where I always feel suddenly, "I'm home,"' said Anne. 'It's the top of the next hill, where we'll see the lights of Green Gables. I'm just thinking of the supper Marilla will have ready for us. I believe I can smell it here. Oh, it's good - good - good to be home again!'

  At Green Gables every tree in the yard seemed to welcome her back, every lighted window was beckoning. And how good Marilla's kitchen smelled as they opened the door! There were hugs and exclamations and laughter. Even Katherine seemed somehow no outsider, but one of them. Mrs Rachel Lynde had set her cherished parlour lamp on the supper-table and had lit it. It was really a hideous thing with a hideous red globe, but what a warm, rosy, becoming light it cast over everything! How warm and friendly were the shadows! How pretty Dora was growing! And Davy really seemed almost a man.

  There was news to tell. Diana had a small daughter; Josie Pye actually had a young man; and Charlie Sloane was said to be engaged. It was all just as exciting as news of empire could have been. Mrs Lynde's new patchwork quilt, just complete, containing five thousand pieces, was on display, and received its meed of praise.

  'When you come home, Anne,' said Davy, 'everything seems to come alive.'

  'Ah, this is how life should be,' purred Dora's kitten.

  'I've always found it hard to resist the lure of a moonlight night,' said Anne after supper. 'How about a snow-shoe tramp, Miss Brooke? I think I've heard you snow-shoe.'

  'Yes. It's the only thing I can do; but I haven't done it for six years,' said Katherine, with a shrug.

  Anne rooted out her snow-shoes from the garret, and Davy shot over to Orchard Slope to borrow an old pair of Diana's for Katherine. They went through Lovers' Lane, full of lovely tree shadows, and across fields where little fir-trees fringed the fences, and through woods which were full of secrets they seemed always on the point of whispering to you, but never did, and through open glades that were like pools of silver.

  They did not talk or want to talk. It was as if they were afraid to talk for fear of spoiling something beautiful. But Anne had never felt so near Katherine Brooke before. By some magic of its own the winter night had brought them together - almost together, but not quite.

  When they came out to the main road and a sleigh flashed by, bells ringing, laughter tinkling, both girls gave an involuntary sigh. It seemed to both that they were leaving behind a world that had nothing in common with the one to which they were returning, a world where time was not, which was young with immortal youth, where souls communed with each other in some medium that needed nothing so crude as words.

  'It's been wonderful,' said Katherine so obviously to herself that Anne made no response.

  They went down the road and up the long Green Gables lane, but just before they reached the yard gate they both paused as by a common impulse, and stood in silence, leaning against the old mossy fence and looking at the brooding, motherly old house seen dimly through its veil of trees. How beautiful Green Gables was on a winter night!

  Below it the Lake of Shining Waters was locked in ice, patterned round its edges with tree shadows. Silence was everywhere, save for the staccato clip of a horse trotting over the bridge. Anne smiled to recall how often she had heard that sound as she lay in her gable room and pretended to herself that it was the gallop of fairy horses passing in the night.

  Suddenly another sound broke the stillness.

  'Katherine! You're - why, you're not crying!'

  Somehow it seemed impossible to think of Katherine crying. But she was. And her tears suddenly humanized her. Anne no longer felt afraid of her.

  'Katherine, dear Katherine, what is the matter? Can I help?'

  'Oh, you can't understand!' gasped Katherine. 'Things have always been made easy for you. You - you seem to live in a little enchanted circle of beauty and romance. "I wonder what delightful discovery I'll make today?" - that seems to be your attitude to life, Anne. As for me, I've forgotten how to live - no, I never knew how. I'm - I'm like a creature caught in a trap. I can never get out. And it seems to me that somebody is always poking sticks at me through the bars. And you - you have more happiness than you know what to do with. Friends everywhere - a lover! Not that I want a lover; I hate men. But if I died tonight not one living soul would miss me. How would you like to be absolutely friendless in the world?' Katherine's voice broke on another sob.

  'Katherine, you say you like frankness. I'm going to be frank. If you are as friendless as you say it is your own fault. I've wanted to be friends with you. But you've been all prickles and stings.'

  'Oh, I know, I know! How I hated you when you first came! Flaunting your circlet of pearls -'

  'Katherine, I didn't "flaunt" it!'

  'Oh, I suppose not. That's just my natural hatefulness. But it seemed to flaunt itself. Not that I envied you your beau. I've never wanted to be married; I saw enough of that with Father and Mother. But I hated your being over me when you were younger than me. I was glad when the Pringles made trouble for you. You seemed to have everything I hadn't - charm, friendship, youth. Youth! I never had anything but starved youth. You know nothing about it. You don't know. You haven't the least idea what it is like not to be wanted by anyone - anyone!'

  'Oh, haven't I?' cried Anne. In a few poignant sentences she sketched her childhood before coming to Green Gables.

  'I wish I'd known that,' said Katherine. 'It would have made a difference. To me you seemed one of the favourites of fortune. I've been eating my heart out with envy of you. You got the position I wanted. Oh, I know you're better qualified than I am, but there it was. You're pretty - at least, you make people believe you're pretty. My earliest recollection is of someone saying, "What an ugly child!" You come into a room delightfully. Oh, I remember how you came into school that first morning. But I think the real reason I've hated you so is that you always seemed to have some secret delight, as if every day of life was an adventure. In spite of my hatred there were times when I acknowledged to myself that you might just have come from some far-off star.'

  'Really, Katherine, you take my breath away with all these compliments. But you don't hate me any longer, do you? We can be friends now.'

  'I don't know. I've never had a friend of any kind, much less one of anything like my own age. I don't belong anywhere; never have belonged. I don't think I know how to be a friend. No, I don't hate you any longer. I don't know how I feel about you... Oh, I suppose it's your noted charm beginning to work on me. I only know that I feel I'd like to tell you what my life has been like. I could never have told you if you hadn't told me about your life before you came to Green Gables. I want you to understand what has made me like I am. I don't know why I should want you to understand, but I do.'

  'Tell me, Katherine dear. I do want to understand you.'

  'You do know what it is like not to be wanted, I admit, but not what it is like to know that your father and mother don't want you. Mine didn't. They hated me from the moment I was born - and before - and they hated each other. Yes, they did. They quarrelled continually - just mean, nagging, petty quarrels. My childhood was a nightmare. They died when I was seven, and I went to live with Uncle Henry's family. They didn't want me either. They all looked down on me because I was "living on their charity". I remember all the snubs I got - every one. I can't remember a single kind word. I had to wear my cousins' cast-off clothes. I remember one hat in particular; it made me look like a mushroom. And they made fun of me whenever I put it on. One day I tore it off and threw it on the fire. I had to wear the most awful old tam to church all the rest of the winter. I never even had a dog, and I wanted one so. I had some brains. I longed for a B.A. course, but naturally I might just as well have yearned for the moon. However, Uncle Henry agreed to put me through Queen's if I would pay him back when I got a sc
hool. He paid my board in a miserable third-rate boarding-house, where I had a room over the kitchen that was ice-cold in winter and boiling hot in summer and full of stale cooking smells in all seasons. And the clothes I had to wear to Queen's! But I got my licence and I got the second room in Summerside High - the only bit of luck I've ever had. Ever since then I've been pinching and scrimping to pay Uncle Henry, not only what he spent putting me through Queen's, but what my board through all the years I lived there cost him. I was determined I would not owe him one cent. That is why I've boarded with Mrs Dennis and dressed shabbily. And I've just finished paying him. For the first time in my life I feel free. But meanwhile I've developed the wrong way. I know I'm unsocial. I know I can never think of the right thing to say. I know it's my own fault that I'm always neglected and overlooked at social functions. I know I've made being disagreeable into a fine art. I know I'm sarcastic. I know I'm regarded as a tyrant by my pupils. I know they hate me. Do you think it doesn't hurt me to know it? They always look afraid of me - I hate people who look at me as if they were afraid of me. Oh, Anne, hate's got to be a disease with me. I do want to be like other people - and I never can now. That is what makes me so bitter.'

  'Oh, but you can!' Anne put her arm about Katherine. 'You can put hate out of your mind, cure yourself of it. Life is only beginning for you now, since at last you're quite free and independent. And you never know what may be around the next bend in the road.'

  'I've heard you say that before. I've laughed at your "bend in the road". But the trouble is there aren't any bends in my road. I can see it stretching straight out before me to the skyline - endless monotony. Oh, does life ever frighten you, Anne, with its blankness, its swarms of cold, uninteresting people? No, of course it doesn't. You won't have to go on teaching all the rest of your life. And you seem to find everybody interesting, even that little round red being you call Rebecca Dew. The truth is, I hate teaching - and there's nothing else I can do. A school-teacher is simply a slave of time. Oh, I know you like it; I don't see how you can. Anne, I want to travel. It's the one thing I've always longed for. I remember the one and only picture that hung on the wall of my attic room at Uncle Henry's, a faded old print that had been discarded by the other rooms with scorn. It was a picture of palms round a spring in the desert, with a string of camels marching away in the distance. It literally fascinated me. I've always wanted to go and find it. I want to see the Southern Cross and the Taj Mahal and the pillars of Karnak. I want to know - not just believe - that the world is round. And I can never do it on a teacher's salary. I'll just have to go on for ever, prating of King Henry the Eighth's wives and the inexhaustible resources of the Dominion.'