Anne of Green Gables (Penguin) Page 9

  Anne started off irreproachably, arrayed in the stiff black-and-white sateen, which, while decent as regards length and certainly not open to the charge of skimpiness, contrived to emphasize every corner and angle of her thin figure. Her hat was a little, flat, glossy, new sailor, the extreme plainness of which had likewise much disappointed Anne, who had permitted herself secret visions of ribbon and flowers. The latter, however, were supplied before Anne reached the main road for, being confronted half-way down the lane with a golden frenzy of wind-stirred buttercups and a glory of wild roses, Anne promptly and liberally garlanded her hat with a heavy wreath of them. Whatever other people might have thought of the result it satisfied Anne, and she tripped gaily down the road, holding her ruddy head with its decoration of pink and yellow very proudly.

  When she reached Mrs Lynde’s house she found that lady gone. Nothing daunted, Anne proceeded onward to the church alone. In the porch she found a crowd of little girls, all more or less gaily attired in whites and blues and pinks, and all staring with curious eyes at this stranger in their midst, with her extraordinary head adornment. Avonlea little girls had already heard queer stories about Anne; Mrs Lynde said she had an awful temper; Jerry Buote, the hired boy at Green Gables, said she talked all the time to herself or to the trees and flowers like a crazy girl. They looked at her and whispered to each other behind their quarterlies. Nobody made any friendly advances, then or later on when the opening exercises were over and Anne found herself in Miss Rogerson’s class.

  Miss Rogerson was a middle-aged lady who had taught a Sunday-school class for twenty years. Her method of teaching was to ask the printed questions from the quarterly and look sternly over its edge at the particular little girl she thought ought to answer the question. She looked very often at Anne, and Anne, thanks to Marilla’s drilling, answered promptly; but it may be questioned if she understood very much about either question or answer.

  She did not think she liked Miss Rogerson, and she felt very miserable; every other little girl in the class had puffed sleeves. Anne felt that life was really not worth living without puffed sleeves.

  ‘Well, how did you like Sunday school?’ Marilla wanted to know when Anne came home. Her wreath having faded, Anne had discarded it in the lane, so Marilla was spared the knowledge of that for a time.

  ‘I didn’t like it a bit. It was horrid.’

  ‘Anne Shirley!’ said Marilla rebukingly.

  Anne sat down on the rocker with a long sigh, kissed one of Bonny’s leaves, and waved her hand to a blossoming fuchsia.

  ‘They might have been lonesome while I was away,’ she explained. And now about the Sunday school. I behaved well, just as you told me. Mrs Lynde was gone, but I went right on myself. I went into the church, with a lot of other little girls, and I sat in the corner of a pew by the window while the opening exercises went on. Mr Bell made an awfully long prayer. I would have been dreadfully tired before he got through if I hadn’t been sitting by that window. But it looked right out on the Lake of Shining Waters, so I just gazed at that and imagined all sorts of splendid things.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have done anything of the sort. You should have listened to Mr Bell.’

  ‘But he wasn’t talking to me,’ protested Anne. ‘He was talking to God and he didn’t seem to be very much interested in it, either. I think he thought God was too far off to make it worth while. I said a little prayer myself, though. There was a long row of white birches hanging over the lake and the sunshine fell down through them, ’way, ’way down, deep into the water. Oh, Marilla, it was like a beautiful dream! It gave me a thrill and I just said, “Thank you for it, God,” two or three times.’

  ‘Not out loud, I hope,’ said Marilla anxiously.

  ‘Oh, no, just under my breath. Well, Mr Bell did get through at last and they told me to go into the classroom with Miss Rogerson’s class. There were nine other girls in it. They all had puffed sleeves. I tried to imagine mine were puffed, too, but I couldn’t. Why couldn’t I? It was as easy as could be to imagine they were puffed when I was alone in the east gable, but it was awfully hard there among the others who had really truly puffs.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have been thinking about your sleeves in Sunday school. You should have been attending to the lesson. I hope you knew it.’

  ‘Oh, yes; and I answered a lot of questions. Miss Rogerson asked ever so many. I don’t think it was fair for her to do all the asking. There were lots I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t like to because I didn’t think she was a kindred spirit. Then all the other little girls recited a paraphrase. She asked me if I knew any. I told her I didn’t, but I could recite “The Dog at his Master’s Grave” if she liked. That’s in the Third Royal Reader. It isn’t a really truly religious piece of poetry, but it’s so sad and melancholy that it might as well be. She said it wouldn’t do and she told me to learn the nineteenth paraphrase for next Sunday. I read it over in church afterwards and it’s splendid. There are two lines in particular that just thrill me.

  Quick as the slaughtered squadrons fell

  In Midian’s evil day.

  ‘I don’t know what “squadrons” means nor “Midian”, either, but it sounds so tragical. I can hardly wait until next Sunday to recite it. I’ll practise it all the week. After Sunday school I asked Miss Rogerson — because Mrs Lynde was too far away — to show me your pew. I sat just as still as I could and the text was Revelations, third chapter, second and third verses. It was a very long text. If I was a minister I’d pick the short, snappy ones. The sermon was awfully long, too. I suppose the minister had to match it to the text. I didn’t think he was a bit interesting. The trouble with him seems to be that he hasn’t enough imagination. I didn’t listen to him very much. I just let my thoughts run and I thought of the most surprising things.’

  Marilla felt helplessly that all this should be sternly reproved, but she was hampered by the undeniable fact that some of the things Anne had said, especially about the minister’s sermons and Mr Bell’s prayers, were what she herself had really thought deep down in her heart for years, but had never given expression to. It almost seemed to her that those secret, unuttered, critical thoughts had suddenly taken visible and accusing shape and form in the person of this outspoken morsel of neglected humanity.

  12

  A Solemn Vow and Promise

  It was not until the next Friday that Marilla heard the story of the flower-wreathed hat. She came home from Mrs Lynde’s and called Anne to account.

  ‘Anne, Mrs Rachel says you went to church last Sunday with your hat rigged out ridiculous with roses and buttercups. What on earth put you up to such a caper? A pretty-looking object you must have been!’

  ‘Oh, I know pink and yellow aren’t becoming to me,’ began Anne.

  ‘Becoming fiddlesticks! It was putting flowers on your hat at all, no matter what colour they were, that was ridiculous. You are the most aggravating child!’

  ‘I don’t see why it’s any more ridiculous to wear flowers on your hat than on your dress,’ protested Anne. ‘Lots of little girls there had bouquets pinned on their dresses. What was the difference?’

  Marilla was not to be drawn from the safe concrete into dubious paths of the abstract.

  ‘Don’t answer me back like that, Anne. It was very silly of you to do such a thing. Never let me catch you at such a trick again. Mrs Rachel says she thought she would sink through the floor when she saw you come in all rigged out like that. She couldn’t get near enough to tell you to take them off till it was too late. She says people talked about it something dreadful. Of course they would think I had no better sense than to let you go decked out like that.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Anne, tears welling into her eyes. ‘I never thought you’d mind. The roses and buttercups were so sweet and pretty I thought they’d look lovely on my hat. Lots of the little girls had artificial flowers on their hats. I’m afraid I’m going to be a dreadful trial to you. Maybe you’d better send me back to the
asylum. That would be terrible; I don’t think I could endure it; most likely I would go into consumption; I’m so thin as it is, you see. But that would be better than being a trial to you.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Marilla, vexed at herself for having made the child cry. ‘I don’t want to send you back to the asylum, I’m sure. All I want is that you should behave like other little girls and not make yourself ridiculous. Don’t cry any more. I’ve got some news for you. Diana Barry came home this afternoon. I’m going up to see if I can borrow a skirt pattern from Mrs Barry, and if you like you can come with me and get acquainted with Diana.’

  Anne rose to her feet, with clasped hands, the tears still glistening on her cheeks; the dish-towel she had been hemming slipped unheeded to the floor.

  ‘Oh, Marilla, I’m frightened — now that it has come I’m actually frightened. What if she shouldn’t like me! It would be the most tragical disappointment of my life.’

  ‘Now, don’t get into a fluster. And I do wish you wouldn’t use such long words. It sounds so funny in a little girl. I guess Diana’ll like you well enough. It’s her mother you’ve got to reckon with. If she doesn’t like you it won’t matter how much Diana does. If she has heard about your outburst to Mrs Lynde and going to church with buttercups round your hat I don’t know what she’ll think of you. You must be polite and well-behaved, and don’t make any of your startling speeches. For pity‘s sake, if the child isn’t actually trembling!’

  Anne was trembling. Her face was pale and tense.

  ‘Oh, Marilla, you’d be excited, too, if you were going to meet a little girl you hoped to be your bosom friend and whose mother mightn’t like you,’ she said as she hastened to get her hat.

  They went over to Orchard Slope by the short cut across the brook and up the firry hill grove. Mrs Barry came to the kitchen door in answer to Marilla’s knock. She was a tall, black-eyed, black-haired woman, with a very resolute mouth. She had the reputation of being very strict with her children.

  ‘How do you do, Marilla?’ she said cordially. ‘Come in. And this is the little girl you have adopted, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, this is Anne Shirley,’ said Marilla.

  ‘Spelled with an e,’ gasped Anne, who, tremulous and excited as she was, was determined there should be no misunderstanding on that important point.

  Mrs Barry, not hearing or not comprehending, merely shook hands and said kindly:

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘I am well in body although considerably rumpled up in spirit, thank you, ma’am,’ said Anne gravely. Then aside to Marilla in an audible whisper, ‘There wasn’t anything startling in that, was there, Marilla?’

  Diana was sitting on the sofa, reading a book which she dropped when the callers entered. She was a very pretty little girl, with her mother’s black eyes and hair, and rosy cheeks, and the merry expression which was her inheritance from her father.

  ‘This is my little girl, Diana,’ said Mrs Barry. ‘Diana, you might take Anne out into the garden and show her your flowers. It will be better for you than straining your eyes over that book. She reads entirely too much’ — this to Marilla as the little girls went out — ‘and I can’t prevent her, for her father aids and abets her. She’s always poring over a book. I’m glad she has the prospect of a playmate — perhaps it will take her more out-of-doors.’

  Outside in the garden, which was full of mellow sunset light streaming through the dark old firs to the west of it, stood Anne and Diana, gazing bashfully at one another over a clump of gorgeous tiger lilies.

  The Barry garden was a bowery wilderness of flowers which would have delighted Anne’s heart at any time less fraught with destiny. It was encircled by huge old willows and tall firs, beneath which flourished flowers that loved the shade. Prim, right-angled paths, neatly bordered with clam-shells, intersected it like moist red ribbons, and in the beds between old-fashioned flowers ran riot. There were rosy bleeding-hearts and great splendid crimson peonies; white, fragrant narcissi and thorny, sweet Scotch roses; pink and blue and white columbines and lilac-tinted Bouncing Bets; clumps of southernwood and ribbon grass and mint; purple Adam-and-Eve, daffodils, and masses of sweet clover white with its delicate, fragrant, feathery sprays; scarlet lightning that shot its fiery lances over prim white musk-flowers; a garden it was where sunshine lingered and bees hummed, and winds, beguiled into loitering, purred and rustled.

  ‘Oh, Diana,’ said Anne at last, clasping her hands and speaking almost in a whisper, ‘do you think — oh, do you think you can like me a little — enough to be my bosom friend?’

  Diana laughed. Diana always laughed before she spoke.

  ‘Why, I guess so,’ she said frankly. ‘I’m awfully glad you’ve come to live at Green Gables. It will be jolly to have somebody to play with. There isn’t any other girl who lives near enough to play with, and I’ve no sisters big enough.’

  ‘Will you swear to be my friend for ever and ever?’ demanded Anne eagerly.

  Diana looked shocked.

  ‘Why, it’s dreadfully wicked to swear,’ she said rebukingly.

  ‘Oh, no, not my kind of swearing. There are two kinds, you know.’

  ‘I never heard of but one kind,’ said Diana doubtfully.

  ‘There really is another. Oh, it isn’t wicked at all. It just means vowing and promising solemnly.’

  ‘Well, I don’t mind doing that,’ agreed Diana, relieved. ‘How do you do it?’

  ‘We must join hands — so,’ said Anne gravely. ‘It ought to be over running water. We’ll just imagine this path is running water. I’ll repeat the oath first. I solemnly swear to be faithful to my bosom friend, Diana Barry, as long as the sun and moon shall endure. Now you say it and put my name in.’

  Diana repeated the ‘oath’ with a laugh fore and aft. Then she said:

  ‘You’re a queer girl, Anne. I heard before that you were queer. But I believe I’m going to like you real well.’

  When Marilla and Anne went home, Diana went with them as far as the log bridge. The two little girls walked with their arms about each other. At the brook they parted with many promises to spend the next afternoon together.

  ‘Well, did you find Diana a kindred spirit?’ asked Marilla as they went up through the garden of Green Gables.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ sighed Anne, blissfully unconscious of any sarcasm on Marilla’s part. ‘Oh, Marilla, I’m the happiest girl on Prince Edward Island this very moment. I assure you I’ll say my prayers with a right good will tonight. Diana and I are going to build a playhouse in Mr William Bell’s birch grove tomorrow. Can I have those broken pieces of china that are out in the wood-shed? Diana’s birthday is in February and mine is in March. Don’t you think that is a very strange coincidence? Diana is going to lend me a book to read. She says it’s perfectly splendid and tremendously exciting. She’s going to show me a place back in the woods where rice lilies grow. Don’t you think Diana has got very soulful eyes? I wish I had soulful eyes. Diana is going to teach me to sing a song called “Nelly in the Hazel Dell”. She’s going to give me a picture to put up in my room; it’s a perfectly beautiful picture, she says — a lovely lady in a pale blue silk dress. A sewing-machine agent gave it to her. I wish I had something to give Diana. I’m an inch taller than Diana, but she is ever so much fatter; she says she’d like to be thin because it’s so much more graceful, but I’m afraid she only said it to soothe my feelings. We’re going to the shore some day to gather shells. We have agreed to call the spring down by the log bridge the Dryad’s Bubble. Isn’t that a perfectly elegant name? I read a story once about a spring called that. A dryad is a sort of grown-up fairy, I think.’

  ‘Well, all I hope is you won’t talk Diana to death,’ said Marilla. ‘But remember this in all your planning, Anne. You’re not going to play all the time nor most of it. You’ll have your work to do and it’ll have to be done first.’

  Anne’s cup of happiness was full, and Matthew caused it to overflow. He had just got home from a trip
to the store at Carmody, and he sheepishly produced a small parcel from his pocket and handed it to Anne, with a deprecatory look at Marilla.

  ‘I heard you say you liked chocolate sweeties, so I got you some,’ he said.

  ‘Humph,’ sniffed Marilla. ‘It’ll ruin her teeth and stomach. There, there, child, don’t look so dismal. You can eat those, since Matthew has gone and got them. He’d better have brought you peppermints. They’re wholesomer. Don’t sicken yourself eating them all at once now.’

  ‘Oh, no, indeed I won’t,’ said Anne eagerly. ‘I’ll just eat one tonight, Marilla. And I can give Diana half of them, can’t I? The other half will taste twice as sweet to me if I give some to her. It’s delightful to think I have something to give her.’

  ‘I will say it for the child,’ said Marilla when Anne had gone to her gable, ‘she isn’t stingy. I’m glad, for of all faults I detest stinginess in a child. Dear me, it’s only three weeks since she came, and it seems as if she’s been here always. I can’t imagine the place without her. Now, don’t be looking I-told-you-so, Matthew. That’s bad enough in a woman, but it isn’t to be endured in a man. I’m perfectly willing to own up that I’m glad I consented to keep the child and that I’m getting fond of her, but don’t you rub it in, Matthew Cuthbert.’

  13

  The Delights of Anticipation

  ‘It’s time Anne was into do her sewing,’ said Marilla, glancing at the clock and then out into the yellow August afternoon where everything drowsed in the heat. ‘She stayed playing with Diana more than half an hour more’n I gave her leave to; and now she’s perched out there on the wood-pile talking to Matthew, nineteen to the dozen, when she knows perfectly well that she ought to be at her work. And of course he’s listening to her like a perfect ninny. I never saw such an infatuated man. The more she talks and the odder the things she says, the more he’s delighted evidently. Anne Shirley, you come right in here this minute, do you hear me!’