That evening Miss Barry gave Diana a silver bangle bracelet and
told the senior members of the household that she had unpacked her
valise.
"I've made up my mind to stay simply for the sake of getting
better acquainted with that Anne-girl," she said frankly. "She amuses me,
and at my time of life an amusing person is a rarity."
Marilla's only
comment when she heard the story was, "I told you so." This was for Matthew's
benefit.
Miss Barry stayed her month out and over. She was a more
agreeable guest than usual, for Anne kept her in good humor. They became firm
friends.
When Miss Barry went away she said:
"Remember, you
Anne-girl, when you come to town you're to visit me and I'll put you in my
very sparest spare-room bed to sleep."
"Miss Barry was a kindred spirit,
after all," Anne confided to Marilla. "You wouldn't think so to look at her,
but she is. You don't find it right out at first, as in Matthew's case, but
after a while you come to see it. Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used
to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the
world."
CHAPTER XX. A Good Imagination Gone
Wrong
Spring had come once more to Green Gables--the beautiful
capricious, reluctant Canadian spring, lingering along through April and May
in a succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and
miracles of resurrection and growth. The maples in Lover's Lane were red
budded and little curly ferns pushed up around the Dryad's Bubble. Away up
in the barrens, behind Mr. Silas Sloane's place, the Mayflowers
blossomed out, pink and white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves.
All the school girls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them,
coming home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets full
of flowery spoil.
"I'm so sorry for people who live in lands where
there are no Mayflowers," said Anne. "Diana says perhaps they have something
better, but there couldn't be anything better than Mayflowers, could
there, Marilla? And Diana says if they don't know what they are like they
don't miss them. But I think that is the saddest thing of all. I think
it would be TRAGIC, Marilla, not to know what Mayflowers are like and
NOT to miss them. Do you know what I think Mayflowers are, Marilla? I
think they must be the souls of the flowers that died last summer and
this is their heaven. But we had a splendid time today, Marilla. We had
our lunch down in a big mossy hollow by an old well--such a ROMANTIC
spot. Charlie Sloane dared Arty Gillis to jump over it, and Arty did
because he wouldn't take a dare. Nobody would in school. It is very
FASHIONABLE to dare. Mr. Phillips gave all the Mayflowers he found to Prissy
Andrews and I heard him to say 'sweets to the sweet.' He got that out of
a book, I know; but it shows he has some imagination. I was offered
some Mayflowers too, but I rejected them with scorn. I can't tell you
the person's name because I have vowed never to let it cross my lips.
We made wreaths of the Mayflowers and put them on our hats; and when
the time came to go home we marched in procession down the road, two by
two, with our bouquets and wreaths, singing 'My Home on the Hill.' Oh, it
was so thrilling, Marilla. All Mr. Silas Sloane's folks rushed out to see
us and everybody we met on the road stopped and stared after us. We made
a real sensation."
"Not much wonder! Such silly doings!" was Marilla's
response.
After the Mayflowers came the violets, and Violet Vale was
empurpled with them. Anne walked through it on her way to school with
reverent steps and worshiping eyes, as if she trod on holy
ground.
"Somehow," she told Diana, "when I'm going through here I don't
really care whether Gil--whether anybody gets ahead of me in class or not.
But when I'm up in school it's all different and I care as much as
ever. There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that
is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it
would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half
so interesting."
One June evening, when the orchards were pink
blossomed again, when the frogs were singing silverly sweet in the marshes
about the head of the Lake of Shining Waters, and the air was full of the
savor of clover fields and balsamic fir woods, Anne was sitting by her gable
window. She had been studying her lessons, but it had grown too dark to see
the book, so she had fallen into wide-eyed reverie, looking out past
the boughs of the Snow Queen, once more bestarred with its tufts of
blossom.
In all essential respects the little gable chamber was
unchanged. The walls were as white, the pincushion as hard, the chairs as
stiffly and yellowly upright as ever. Yet the whole character of the room
was altered. It was full of a new vital, pulsing personality that seemed
to pervade it and to be quite independent of schoolgirl books and
dresses and ribbons, and even of the cracked blue jug full of apple
blossoms on the table. It was as if all the dreams, sleeping and waking, of
its vivid occupant had taken a visible although unmaterial form and
had tapestried the bare room with splendid filmy tissues of rainbow
and moonshine. Presently Marilla came briskly in with some of Anne's
freshly ironed school aprons. She hung them over a chair and sat down
with a short sigh. She had had one of her headaches that afternoon,
and although the pain had gone she felt weak and "tuckered out," as
she expressed it. Anne looked at her with eyes limpid with
sympathy.
"I do truly wish I could have had the headache in your place,
Marilla. I would have endured it joyfully for your sake."
"I guess you
did your part in attending to the work and letting me rest," said Marilla.
"You seem to have got on fairly well and made fewer mistakes than usual. Of
course it wasn't exactly necessary to starch Matthew's handkerchiefs! And
most people when they put a pie in the oven to warm up for dinner take it out
and eat it when it gets hot instead of leaving it to be burned to a crisp.
But that doesn't seem to be your way evidently."
Headaches always left
Marilla somewhat sarcastic.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Anne penitently. "I
never thought about that pie from the moment I put it in the oven till now,
although I felt INSTINCTIVELY that there was something missing on the dinner
table. I was firmly resolved, when you left me in charge this morning, not
to imagine anything, but keep my thoughts on facts. I did pretty well
until I put the pie in, and then an irresistible temptation came to me
to imagine I was an enchanted princess shut up in a lonely tower with
a handsome knight riding to my rescue on a coal-black steed. So that is
how I came to forget the pie. I didn't know I starched the handkerchiefs. All
the time I was ironing I was trying to think of a name for a new island Diana
and I have discovered up the brook. It's the most ravishing spot, Marilla.
There are two maple trees on it and the brook flows right around it. At last
it struck me that it would be splendid to call it Victoria Island because we
found it on the Queen's birthday. Both Diana and I are very loyal. But I'm
sorry about that pie and the handkerchiefs. I wanted to be extra good today
because it's an anniversary. Do you remember what happened this day last
year, Marilla?"
"No, I can't think of anything special."
"Oh,
Marilla, it was the day I came to Green Gables. I shall never forget it. It
was the turning point in my life. Of course it wouldn't seem so important to
you. I've been here for a year and I've been so happy. Of course, I've had my
troubles, but one can live down troubles. Are you sorry you kept me,
Marilla?"
"No, I can't say I'm sorry," said Marilla, who sometimes
wondered how she could have lived before Anne came to Green Gables, "no, not
exactly sorry. If you've finished your lessons, Anne, I want you to run over
and ask Mrs. Barry if she'll lend me Diana's apron
pattern."
"Oh--it's--it's too dark," cried Anne.
"Too dark? Why,
it's only twilight. And goodness knows you've gone over often enough after
dark."
"I'll go over early in the morning," said Anne eagerly. "I'll get
up at sunrise and go over, Marilla."
"What has got into your head now,
Anne Shirley? I want that pattern to cut out your new apron this evening. Go
at once and be smart too."
"I'll have to go around by the road, then,"
said Anne, taking up her hat reluctantly.
"Go by the road and waste
half an hour! I'd like to catch you!"
"I can't go through the Haunted
Wood, Marilla," cried Anne desperately.
Marilla stared.
"The
Haunted Wood! Are you crazy? What under the canopy is the
Haunted Wood?"
"The spruce wood over the brook," said Anne in a
whisper.
"Fiddlesticks! There is no such thing as a haunted wood
anywhere. Who has been telling you such stuff?"
"Nobody," confessed
Anne. "Diana and I just imagined the wood was haunted. All the places around
here are so--so--COMMONPLACE. We just got this up for our own amusement. We
began it in April. A haunted wood is so very romantic, Marilla. We chose the
spruce grove because it's so gloomy. Oh, we have imagined the most harrowing
things. There's a white lady walks along the brook just about this time of
the night and wrings her hands and utters wailing cries. She appears when
there is to be a death in the family. And the ghost of a little murdered
child haunts the corner up by Idlewild; it creeps up behind you and lays its
cold fingers on your hand--so. Oh, Marilla, it gives me a shudder to think of
it. And there's a headless man stalks up and down the path and skeletons
glower at you between the boughs. Oh, Marilla, I wouldn't go through
the Haunted Wood after dark now for anything. I'd be sure that white
things would reach out from behind the trees and grab me."
"Did ever
anyone hear the like!" ejaculated Marilla, who had listened in dumb
amazement. "Anne Shirley, do you mean to tell me you believe all that wicked
nonsense of your own imagination?"
"Not believe EXACTLY," faltered Anne.
"At least, I don't believe it in daylight. But after dark, Marilla, it's
different. That is when ghosts walk."
"There are no such things as
ghosts, Anne."
"Oh, but there are, Marilla," cried Anne eagerly. "I know
people who have seen them. And they are respectable people. Charlie Sloane
says that his grandmother saw his grandfather driving home the cows one
night after he'd been buried for a year. You know Charlie Sloane's
grandmother wouldn't tell a story for anything. She's a very religious woman.
And Mrs. Thomas's father was pursued home one night by a lamb of fire
with its head cut off hanging by a strip of skin. He said he knew it was
the spirit of his brother and that it was a warning he would die within
nine days. He didn't, but he died two years after, so you see it was
really true. And Ruby Gillis says--"
"Anne Shirley," interrupted
Marilla firmly, "I never want to hear you talking in this fashion again. I've
had my doubts about that imagination of yours right along, and if this is
going to be the outcome of it, I won't countenance any such doings. You'll go
right over to Barry's, and you'll go through that spruce grove, just for a
lesson and a warning to you. And never let me hear a word out of your head
about haunted woods again."
Anne might plead and cry as she liked--and
did, for her terror was very real. Her imagination had run away with her and
she held the spruce grove in mortal dread after nightfall. But Marilla was
inexorable. She marched the shrinking ghost-seer down to the spring and
ordered her to proceed straightaway over the bridge and into the dusky
retreats of wailing ladies and headless specters beyond.
"Oh, Marilla,
how can you be so cruel?" sobbed Anne. "What would you feel like if a white
thing did snatch me up and carry me off?"
"I'll risk it," said Marilla
unfeelingly. "You know I always mean what I say. I'll cure you of imagining
ghosts into places. March, now."
Anne marched. That is, she stumbled over
the bridge and went shuddering up the horrible dim path beyond. Anne never
forgot that walk. Bitterly did she repent the license she had given to her
imagination. The goblins of her fancy lurked in every shadow about her,
reaching out their cold, fleshless hands to grasp the terrified small girl
who had called them into being. A white strip of birch bark blowing up from
the hollow over the brown floor of the grove made her heart stand still. The
long-drawn wail of two old boughs rubbing against each other brought out
the perspiration in beads on her forehead. The swoop of bats in the
darkness over her was as the wings of unearthly creatures. When she reached
Mr. William Bell's field she fled across it as if pursued by an army
of white things, and arrived at the Barry kitchen door so out of
breath that she could hardly gasp out her request for the apron
pattern. Diana was away so that she had no excuse to linger. The
dreadful return journey had to be faced. Anne went back over it with shut
eyes, preferring to take the risk of dashing her brains out among the
boughs to that of seeing a white thing. When she finally stumbled over the
log bridge she drew one long shivering breath of relief.
"Well, so
nothing caught you?" said Marilla unsympathetically.
"Oh, Mar--Marilla,"
chattered Anne, "I'll b-b-be contt-tented with c-c-commonplace places after
this."
CHAPTER XXI. A New Departure in
Flavorings
"Dear me, there is nothing but meetings and partings in
this world, as Mrs. Lynde says," remarked Anne plaintively, putting her slate
and books down on the kitchen table on the last day of June and wiping her
red eyes with a very damp handkerchief. "Wasn't it fortunate, Marilla,
that I took an extra handkerchief to school today? I had a presentiment
that it would be needed."
"I never thought you were so fond of Mr.
Phillips that you'd require two handkerchiefs to dry your tears just because
he was going away," said Marilla.
"I don't think I was crying because
I was really so very fond of him," reflected Anne. "I just cried because all
the others did. It was Ruby Gillis started it. Ruby Gillis has always
declared she hated Mr. Phillips, but just as soon as he got up to make his
farewell speech she burst into tears. Then all the girls began to cry, one
after the other. I tried to hold out, Marilla. I tried to remember the time
Mr. Phillips made me sit with Gil--with a, boy; and the time he spelled my
name without an e on the blackboard; and how he said I was the worst
dunce he ever saw at geometry and laughed at my spelling; and all the times
he had been so horrid and sarcastic; but somehow I couldn't, Marilla, and
I just had to cry too. Jane Andrews has been talking for a month about
how glad she'd be when Mr. Phillips went away and she declared she'd
never shed a tear. Well, she was worse than any of us and had to borrow
a handkerchief from her brother--of course the boys didn't
cry--because she hadn't brought one of her own, not expecting to need it.
Oh, Marilla, it was heartrending. Mr. Phillips made such a
beautiful farewell speech beginning, 'The time has come for us to part.' It
was very affecting. And he had tears in his eyes too, Marilla. Oh, I
felt dreadfully sorry and remorseful for all the times I'd talked in
school and drawn pictures of him on my slate and made fun of him and
Prissy. I can tell you I wished I'd been a model pupil like Minnie Andrews.
She hadn't anything on her conscience. The girls cried all the way home
from school. Carrie Sloane kept saying every few minutes, 'The time has
come for us to part,' and that would start us off again whenever we were
in any danger of cheering up. I do feel dreadfully sad, Marilla. But
one can't feel quite in the depths of despair with two months'
vacation before them, can they, Marilla? And besides, we met the new minister
and his wife coming from the station. For all I was feeling so bad about
Mr. Phillips going away I couldn't help taking a little interest in a
new minister, could I? His wife is very pretty. Not exactly regally
lovely, of course--it wouldn't do, I suppose, for a minister to have a
regally lovely wife, because it might set a bad example. Mrs. Lynde says
the minister's wife over at Newbridge sets a very bad example because
she dresses so fashionably. Our new minister's wife was dressed in
blue muslin with lovely puffed sleeves and a hat trimmed with roses. Jane
Andrews said she thought puffed sleeves were too worldly for a minister's
wife, but I didn't make any such uncharitable remark, Marilla, because I know
what it is to long for puffed sleeves. Besides, she's only been a minister's
wife for a little while, so one should make allowances, shouldn't they? They
are going to board with Mrs. Lynde until the manse is ready."
If
Marilla, in going down to Mrs. Lynde's that evening, was actuated by any
motive save her avowed one of returning the quilting frames she had borrowed
the preceding winter, it was an amiable weakness shared by most of the
Avonlea people. Many a thing Mrs. Lynde had lent, sometimes never expecting
to see it again, came home that night in charge of the borrowers thereof. A
new minister, and moreover a minister with a wife, was a lawful object of
curiosity in a quiet little country settlement where sensations were few and
far between.
Old Mr. Bentley, the minister whom Anne had found lacking
in imagination, had been pastor of Avonlea for eighteen years. He was
a widower when he came, and a widower he remained, despite the fact
that gossip regularly married him to this, that, or the other one, every
year of his sojourn. In the preceding February he had resigned his charge
and departed amid the regrets of his people, most of whom had the
affection born of long intercourse for their good old minister in spite of
his shortcomings as an orator. Since then the Avonlea church had enjoyed
a variety of religious dissipation in listening to the many and
various candidates and "supplies" who came Sunday after Sunday to preach
on trial. These stood or fell by the judgment of the fathers and
mothers in Israel; but a certain small, red-haired girl who sat meekly in
the corner of the old Cuthbert pew also had her opinions about them
and discussed the same in full with Matthew, Marilla always declining
from principle to criticize ministers in any shape or form.
"I don't
think Mr. Smith would have done, Matthew" was Anne's final summing up. "Mrs.
Lynde says his delivery was so poor, but I think his worst fault was just
like Mr. Bentley's--he had no imagination. And Mr. Terry had too much; he let
it run away with him just as I did mine in the matter of the Haunted Wood.
Besides, Mrs. Lynde says his theology wasn't sound. Mr. Gresham was a very
good man and a very religious man, but he told too many funny stories and
made the people laugh in church; he was undignified, and you must have some
dignity about a minister, mustn't you, Matthew? I thought Mr. Marshall was
decidedly attractive; but Mrs. Lynde says he isn't married, or even engaged,
because she made special inquiries about him, and she says it would never do
to have a young unmarried minister in Avonlea, because he might marry in
the congregation and that would make trouble. Mrs. Lynde is a very
farseeing woman, isn't she, Matthew? I'm very glad they've called Mr. Allan.
I liked him because his sermon was interesting and he prayed as if
he meant it and not just as if he did it because he was in the habit of
it. Mrs. Lynde says he isn't perfect, but she says she supposes we
couldn't expect a perfect minister for seven hundred and fifty dollars a
year, and anyhow his theology is sound because she questioned him
thoroughly on all the points of doctrine. And she knows his wife's people and
they are most respectable and the women are all good housekeepers. Mrs.
Lynde says that sound doctrine in the man and good housekeeping in the
woman make an ideal combination for a minister's family."
The new
minister and his wife were a young, pleasant-faced couple, still on their
honeymoon, and full of all good and beautiful enthusiasms for their chosen
lifework. Avonlea opened its heart to them from the start. Old and young
liked the frank, cheerful young man with his high ideals, and the bright,
gentle little lady who assumed the mistress-ship of the manse. With Mrs.
Allan Anne fell promptly and wholeheartedly in love. She had discovered
another kindred spirit.
"Mrs. Allan is perfectly lovely," she announced
one Sunday afternoon. "She's taken our class and she's a splendid teacher.
She said right away she didn't think it was fair for the teacher to ask all
the questions, and you know, Marilla, that is exactly what I've always
thought. She said we could ask her any question we liked and I asked ever so
many. I'm good at asking questions, Marilla."
"I believe you" was
Marilla's emphatic comment.
"Nobody else asked any except Ruby Gillis,
and she asked if there was to be a Sunday-school picnic this summer. I didn't
think that was a very proper question to ask because it hadn't any connection
with the lesson--the lesson was about Daniel in the lions' den--but Mrs.
Allan just smiled and said she thought there would be. Mrs. Allan has
a lovely smile; she has such EXQUISITE dimples in her cheeks. I wish I
had dimples in my cheeks, Marilla. I'm not half so skinny as I was when
I came here, but I have no dimples yet. If I had perhaps I could
influence people for good. Mrs. Allan said we ought always to try to
influence other people for good. She talked so nice about everything. I never
knew before that religion was such a cheerful thing. I always thought
it was kind of melancholy, but Mrs. Allan's isn't, and I'd like to be
a Christian if I could be one like her. I wouldn't want to be one like
Mr. Superintendent Bell."
"It's very naughty of you to speak so about
Mr. Bell," said Marilla severely. "Mr. Bell is a real good man."
"Oh,
of course he's good," agreed Anne, "but he doesn't seem to get any comfort
out of it. If I could be good I'd dance and sing all day because I was glad
of it. I suppose Mrs. Allan is too old to dance and sing and of course it
wouldn't be dignified in a minister's wife. But I can just feel she's glad
she's a Christian and that she'd be one even if she could get to heaven
without it."
"I suppose we must have Mr. and Mrs. Allan up to tea someday
soon," said Marilla reflectively. "They've been most everywhere but here. Let
me see. Next Wednesday would be a good time to have them. But don't say
a word to Matthew about it, for if he knew they were coming he'd find
some excuse to be away that day. He'd got so used to Mr. Bentley he
didn't mind him, but he's going to find it hard to get acquainted with a
new minister, and a new minister's wife will frighten him to
death."
"I'll be as secret as the dead," assured Anne. "But oh, Marilla,
will you let me make a cake for the occasion? I'd love to do something
for Mrs. Allan, and you know I can make a pretty good cake by this
time."
"You can make a layer cake," promised Marilla.
Monday and
Tuesday great preparations went on at Green Gables. Having the minister and
his wife to tea was a serious and important undertaking, and Marilla was
determined not to be eclipsed by any of the Avonlea housekeepers. Anne was
wild with excitement and delight. She talked it all over with Diana Tuesday
night in the twilight, as they sat on the big red stones by the Dryad's
Bubble and made rainbows in the water with little twigs dipped in fir
balsam.
"Everything is ready, Diana, except my cake which I'm to make in
the morning, and the baking-powder biscuits which Marilla will make
just before teatime. I assure you, Diana, that Marilla and I have had a
busy two days of it. It's such a responsibility having a minister's family
to tea. I never went through such an experience before. You should just
see our pantry. It's a sight to behold. We're going to have jellied
chicken and cold tongue. We're to have two kinds of jelly, red and yellow,
and whipped cream and lemon pie, and cherry pie, and three kinds of
cookies, and fruit cake, and Marilla's famous yellow plum preserves that
she keeps especially for ministers, and pound cake and layer cake,
and biscuits as aforesaid; and new bread and old both, in case the
minister is dyspeptic and can't eat new. Mrs. Lynde says ministers are
dyspeptic, but I don't think Mr. Allan has been a minister long enough for it
to have had a bad effect on him. I just grow cold when I think of my
layer cake. Oh, Diana, what if it shouldn't be good! I dreamed last night
that I was chased all around by a fearful goblin with a big layer cake for
a head."
"It'll be good, all right," assured Diana, who was a very
comfortable sort of friend. "I'm sure that piece of the one you made that we
had for lunch in Idlewild two weeks ago was perfectly elegant."
"Yes;
but cakes have such a terrible habit of turning out bad just when you
especially want them to be good," sighed Anne, setting a particularly
well-balsamed twig afloat. "However, I suppose I shall just have to trust to
Providence and be careful to put in the flour. Oh, look, Diana, what a lovely
rainbow! Do you suppose the dryad will come out after we go away and take it
for a scarf?"
"You know there is no such thing as a dryad," said Diana.
Diana's mother had found out about the Haunted Wood and had been decidedly
angry over it. As a result Diana had abstained from any further imitative
flights of imagination and did not think it prudent to cultivate a spirit
of belief even in harmless dryads.
"But it's so easy to imagine there
is," said Anne. "Every night before I go to bed, I look out of my window and
wonder if the dryad is really sitting here, combing her locks with the spring
for a mirror. Sometimes I look for her footprints in the dew in the morning.
Oh, Diana, don't give up your faith in the dryad!"
Wednesday morning
came. Anne got up at sunrise because she was too excited to sleep. She had
caught a severe cold in the head by reason of her dabbling in the spring on
the preceding evening; but nothing short of absolute pneumonia could have
quenched her interest in culinary matters that morning. After breakfast she
proceeded to make her cake. When she finally shut the oven door upon it she
drew a long breath.
"I'm sure I haven't forgotten anything this time,
Marilla. But do you think it will rise? Just suppose perhaps the baking
powder isn't good? I used it out of the new can. And Mrs. Lynde says you can
never be sure of getting good baking powder nowadays when everything is so
adulterated. Mrs. Lynde says the Government ought to take the matter up, but
she says we'll never see the day when a Tory Government will do it. Marilla,
what if that cake doesn't rise?"
"We'll have plenty without it" was
Marilla's unimpassioned way of looking at the subject.
The cake did
rise, however, and came out of the oven as light and feathery as golden foam.
Anne, flushed with delight, clapped it together with layers of ruby jelly
and, in imagination, saw Mrs. Allan eating it and possibly asking for another
piece!
"You'll be using the best tea set, of course, Marilla," she said.
"Can I fix the table with ferns and wild roses?"
"I think that's all
nonsense," sniffed Marilla. "In my opinion it's the eatables that matter and
not flummery decorations."
"Mrs. Barry had HER table decorated," said
Anne, who was not entirely guiltless of the wisdom of the serpent, "and the
minister paid her an elegant compliment. He said it was a feast for the eye
as well as the palate."
"Well, do as you like," said Marilla, who was
quite determined not to be surpassed by Mrs. Barry or anybody else. "Only
mind you leave enough room for the dishes and the food."
Anne laid
herself out to decorate in a manner and after a fashion that should leave
Mrs. Barry's nowhere. Having abundance of roses and ferns and a very artistic
taste of her own, she made that tea table such a thing of beauty that when
the minister and his wife sat down to it they exclaimed in chorus over it
loveliness.
"It's Anne's doings," said Marilla, grimly just; and Anne
felt that Mrs. Allan's approving smile was almost too much happiness for this
world.
Matthew was there, having been inveigled into the party only
goodness and Anne knew how. He had been in such a state of shyness
and nervousness that Marilla had given him up in despair, but Anne took
him in hand so successfully that he now sat at the table in his best
clothes and white collar and talked to the minister not
uninterestingly. He never said a word to Mrs. Allan, but that perhaps was not
to be expected.
All went merry as a marriage bell until Anne's layer
cake was passed. Mrs. Allan, having already been helped to a bewildering
variety, declined it. But Marilla, seeing the disappointment on Anne's face,
said smilingly:
"Oh, you must take a piece of this, Mrs. Allan. Anne
made it on purpose for you."
"In that case I must sample it," laughed
Mrs. Allan, helping herself to a plump triangle, as did also the minister and
Marilla.
Mrs. Allan took a mouthful of hers and a most peculiar
expression crossed her face; not a word did she say, however, but steadily
ate away at it. Marilla saw the expression and hastened to taste the
cake.
"Anne Shirley!" she exclaimed, "what on earth did you put into
that cake?"
"Nothing but what the recipe said, Marilla," cried Anne
with a look of anguish. "Oh, isn't it all right?"
"All right! It's
simply horrible. Mr. Allan, don't try to eat it. Anne, taste it yourself.
What flavoring did you use?"
"Vanilla," said Anne, her face scarlet with
mortification after tasting the cake. "Only vanilla. Oh, Marilla, it must
have been the baking powder. I had my suspicions of that
bak--"
"Baking powder fiddlesticks! Go and bring me the bottle of vanilla
you used."
Anne fled to the pantry and returned with a small bottle
partially filled with a brown liquid and labeled yellowly, "Best
Vanilla."
Marilla took it, uncorked it, smelled it.
"Mercy on us,
Anne, you've flavored that cake with ANODYNE LINIMENT. I broke the liniment
bottle last week and poured what was left into an old empty vanilla bottle. I
suppose it's partly my fault--I should have warned you--but for pity's sake
why couldn't you have smelled it?"
Anne dissolved into tears under this
double disgrace.
"I couldn't--I had such a cold!" and with this she
fairly fled to the gable chamber, where she cast herself on the bed and wept
as one who refuses to be comforted.
Presently a light step sounded on
the stairs and somebody entered the room.
"Oh, Marilla," sobbed Anne,
without looking up, "I'm disgraced forever. I shall never be able to live
this down. It will get out--things always do get out in Avonlea. Diana will
ask me how my cake turned out and I shall have to tell her the truth. I shall
always be pointed at as the girl who flavored a cake with anodyne liniment.
Gil--the boys in school will never get over laughing at it. Oh, Marilla, if
you have a spark of Christian pity don't tell me that I must go down and wash
the dishes after this. I'll wash them when the minister and his wife are
gone, but I cannot ever look Mrs. Allan in the face again. Perhaps she'll
think I tried to poison her. Mrs. Lynde says she knows an orphan girl who
tried to poison her benefactor. But the liniment isn't poisonous. It's
meant to be taken internally--although not in cakes. Won't you tell Mrs.
Allan so, Marilla?"
"Suppose you jump up and tell her so yourself,"
said a merry voice.
Anne flew up, to find Mrs. Allan standing by her bed,
surveying her with laughing eyes.
"My dear little girl, you mustn't
cry like this," she said, genuinely disturbed by Anne's tragic face. "Why,
it's all just a funny mistake that anybody might make."
"Oh, no, it
takes me to make such a mistake," said Anne forlornly. "And I wanted to have
that cake so nice for you, Mrs. Allan."
"Yes, I know, dear. And I assure
you I appreciate your kindness and thoughtfulness just as much as if it had
turned out all right. Now, you mustn't cry any more, but come down with me
and show me your flower garden. Miss Cuthbert tells me you have a little plot
all your own. I want to see it, for I'm very much interested in
flowers."
Anne permitted herself to be led down and comforted, reflecting
that it was really providential that Mrs. Allan was a kindred spirit.
Nothing more was said about the liniment cake, and when the guests went
away Anne found that she had enjoyed the evening more than could have
been expected, considering that terrible incident. Nevertheless, she
sighed deeply.
"Marilla, isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new
day with no mistakes in it yet?"
"I'll warrant you'll make plenty in
it," said Marilla. "I never saw your beat for making mistakes,
Anne."
"Yes, and well I know it," admitted Anne mournfully. "But have you
ever noticed one encouraging thing about me, Marilla? I never make the
same mistake twice."
"I don't know as that's much benefit when you're
always making new ones."
"Oh, don't you see, Marilla? There must be a
limit to the mistakes one person can make, and when I get to the end of them,
then I'll be through with them. That's a very comforting
thought."
"Well, you'd better go and give that cake to the pigs," said
Marilla. "It isn't fit for any human to eat, not even Jerry
Boute."
CHAPTER XXII. Anne is Invited Out to
Tea
"And what are your eyes popping out of your head about. Now?"
asked Marilla, when Anne had just come in from a run to the post office.
"Have you discovered another kindred spirit?" Excitement hung around Anne
like a garment, shone in her eyes, kindled in every feature. She had
come dancing up the lane, like a wind-blown sprite, through the
mellow sunshine and lazy shadows of the August evening.
"No, Marilla,
but oh, what do you think? I am invited to tea at the manse tomorrow
afternoon! Mrs. Allan left the letter for me at the post office. Just look at
it, Marilla. 'Miss Anne Shirley, Green Gables.' That is the first time I was
ever called 'Miss.' Such a thrill as it gave me! I shall cherish it forever
among my choicest treasures."
"Mrs. Allan told me she meant to have all
the members of her Sunday-school class to tea in turn," said Marilla,
regarding the wonderful event very coolly. "You needn't get in such a fever
over it. Do learn to take things calmly, child."
For Anne to take
things calmly would have been to change her nature. All "spirit and fire and
dew," as she was, the pleasures and pains of life came to her with trebled
intensity. Marilla felt this and was vaguely troubled over it, realizing that
the ups and downs of existence would probably bear hardly on this impulsive
soul and not sufficiently understanding that the equally great capacity for
delight might more than compensate. Therefore Marilla conceived it to be her
duty to drill Anne into a tranquil uniformity of disposition as impossible
and alien to her as to a dancing sunbeam in one of the brook shallows. She
did not make much headway, as she sorrowfully admitted to herself. The
downfall of some dear hope or plan plunged Anne into "deeps of affliction."
The fulfillment thereof exalted her to dizzy realms of delight. Marilla
had almost begun to despair of ever fashioning this waif of the world
into her model little girl of demure manners and prim deportment.
Neither would she have believed that she really liked Anne much better as
she was.
Anne went to bed that night speechless with misery because
Matthew had said the wind was round northeast and he feared it would be a
rainy day tomorrow. The rustle of the poplar leaves about the house worried
her, it sounded so like pattering raindrops, and the full, faraway roar
of the gulf, to which she listened delightedly at other times, loving
its strange, sonorous, haunting rhythm, now seemed like a prophecy of
storm and disaster to a small maiden who particularly wanted a fine day.
Anne thought that the morning would never come.
But all things have an
end, even nights before the day on which you are invited to take tea at the
manse. The morning, in spite of Matthew's predictions, was fine and Anne's
spirits soared to their highest. "Oh, Marilla, there is something in me today
that makes me just love everybody I see," she exclaimed as she washed the
breakfast dishes. "You don't know how good I feel! Wouldn't it be nice if it
could last? I believe I could be a model child if I were just invited out to
tea every day. But oh, Marilla, it's a solemn occasion too. I feel so
anxious. What if I shouldn't behave properly? You know I never had tea at
a manse before, and I'm not sure that I know all the rules of
etiquette, although I've been studying the rules given in the Etiquette
Department of the Family Herald ever since I came here. I'm so afraid I'll
do something silly or forget to do something I should do. Would it be good
manners to take a second helping of anything if you wanted to
VERY much?"
"The trouble with you, Anne, is that you're thinking too
much about yourself. You should just think of Mrs. Allan and what would be
nicest and most agreeable to her," said Marilla, hitting for once in her
life on a very sound and pithy piece of advice. Anne instantly realized
this.
"You are right, Marilla. I'll try not to think about myself at
all."
Anne evidently got through her visit without any serious breach
of "etiquette," for she came home through the twilight, under a
great, high-sprung sky gloried over with trails of saffron and rosy cloud,
in a beatified state of mind and told Marilla all about it happily,
sitting on the big red-sandstone slab at the kitchen door with her tired
curly head in Marilla's gingham lap.
A cool wind was blowing down over
the long harvest fields from the rims of firry western hills and whistling
through the poplars. One clear star hung over the orchard and the fireflies
were flitting over in Lover's Lane, in and out among the ferns and rustling
boughs. Anne watched them as she talked and somehow felt that wind and stars
and fireflies were all tangled up together into something unutterably sweet
and enchanting.
"Oh, Marilla, I've had a most FASCINATING time. I feel
that I have not lived in vain and I shall always feel like that even if I
should never be invited to tea at a manse again. When I got there Mrs. Allan
met me at the door. She was dressed in the sweetest dress of pale-pink
organdy, with dozens of frills and elbow sleeves, and she looked just like
a seraph. I really think I'd like to be a minister's wife when I grow
up, Marilla. A minister mightn't mind my red hair because he wouldn't
be thinking of such worldly things. But then of course one would have
to be naturally good and I'll never be that, so I suppose there's no use
in thinking about it. Some people are naturally good, you know, and
others are not. I'm one of the others. Mrs. Lynde says I'm full of
original sin. No matter how hard I try to be good I can never make such a
success of it as those who are naturally good. It's a good deal like
geometry, I expect. But don't you think the trying so hard ought to count
for something? Mrs. Allan is one of the naturally good people. I love
her passionately. You know there are some people, like Matthew and
Mrs. Allan that you can love right off without any trouble. And there
are others, like Mrs. Lynde, that you have to try very hard to love.
You know you OUGHT to love them because they know so much and are
such active workers in the church, but you have to keep reminding yourself
of it all the time or else you forget. There was another little girl at
the manse to tea, from the White Sands Sunday school. Her name was
Laurette Bradley, and she was a very nice little girl. Not exactly a
kindred spirit, you know, but still very nice. We had an elegant tea, and
I think I kept all the rules of etiquette pretty well. After tea
Mrs. Allan played and sang and she got Lauretta and me to sing too. Mrs.
Allan says I have a good voice and she says I must sing in the Sunday-school
choir after this. You can't think how I was thrilled at the mere thought.
I've longed so to sing in the Sunday-school choir, as Diana does, but I
feared it was an honor I could never aspire to. Lauretta had to go home early
because there is a big concert in the White Sands Hotel tonight and her
sister is to recite at it. Lauretta says that the Americans at the hotel give
a concert every fortnight in aid of the Charlottetown hospital, and they ask
lots of the White Sands people to recite. Lauretta said she expected to be
asked herself someday. I just gazed at her in awe. After she had gone Mrs.
Allan and I had a heart-to-heart talk. I told her everything--about Mrs.
Thomas and the twins and Katie Maurice and Violetta and coming to Green
Gables and my troubles over geometry. And would you believe it, Marilla?
Mrs. Allan told me she was a dunce at geometry too. You don't know how
that encouraged me. Mrs. Lynde came to the manse just before I left, and
what do you think, Marilla? The trustees have hired a new teacher and
it's a lady. Her name is Miss Muriel Stacy. Isn't that a romantic name?
Mrs. Lynde says they've never had a female teacher in Avonlea before and
she thinks it is a dangerous innovation. But I think it will be
splendid to have a lady teacher, and I really don't see how I'm going to
live through the two weeks before school begins. I'm so impatient to
see her."
CHAPTER XXIII. Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair
of Honor
Anne had to live through more than two weeks, as it
happened. Almost a month having elapsed since the liniment cake episode, it
was high time for her to get into fresh trouble of some sort, little
mistakes, such as absentmindedly emptying a pan of skim milk into a basket of
yarn balls in the pantry instead of into the pigs' bucket, and walking clean
over the edge of the log bridge into the brook while wrapped in
imaginative reverie, not really being worth counting.
A week after the
tea at the manse Diana Barry gave a party.
"Small and select," Anne
assured Marilla. "Just the girls in our class."
They had a very good time
and nothing untoward happened until after tea, when they found themselves in
the Barry garden, a little tired of all their games and ripe for any enticing
form of mischief which might present itself. This presently took the form of
"daring."
Daring was the fashionable amusement among the Avonlea small
fry just then. It had begun among the boys, but soon spread to the girls, and
all the silly things that were done in Avonlea that summer because the
doers thereof were "dared" to do them would fill a book by
themselves.
First of all Carrie Sloane dared Ruby Gillis to climb to a
certain point in the huge old willow tree before the front door; which Ruby
Gillis, albeit in mortal dread of the fat green caterpillars with which
said tree was infested and with the fear of her mother before her eyes if
she should tear her new muslin dress, nimbly did, to the discomfiture of
the aforesaid Carrie Sloane. Then Josie Pye dared Jane Andrews to hop on
her left leg around the garden without stopping once or putting her
right foot to the ground; which Jane Andrews gamely tried to do, but gave
out at the third corner and had to confess herself defeated.
Josie's
triumph being rather more pronounced than good taste permitted, Anne Shirley
dared her to walk along the top of the board fence which bounded the garden
to the east. Now, to "walk" board fences requires more skill and steadiness
of head and heel than one might suppose who has never tried it. But Josie
Pye, if deficient in some qualities that make for popularity, had at least a
natural and inborn gift, duly cultivated, for walking board fences. Josie
walked the Barry fence with an airy unconcern which seemed to imply that a
little thing like that wasn't worth a "dare." Reluctant admiration greeted
her exploit, for most of the other girls could appreciate it, having suffered
many things themselves in their efforts to walk fences. Josie descended from
her perch, flushed with victory, and darted a defiant glance at
Anne.
Anne tossed her red braids.
"I don't think it's such a very
wonderful thing to walk a little, low, board fence," she said. "I knew a girl
in Marysville who could walk the ridgepole of a roof."
"I don't
believe it," said Josie flatly. "I don't believe anybody could walk a
ridgepole. YOU couldn't, anyhow."
"Couldn't I?" cried Anne
rashly.
"Then I dare you to do it," said Josie defiantly. "I dare you to
climb up there and walk the ridgepole of Mr. Barry's kitchen
roof."
Anne turned pale, but there was clearly only one thing to be done.
She walked toward the house, where a ladder was leaning against the
kitchen roof. All the fifth-class girls said, "Oh!" partly in excitement,
partly in dismay.
"Don't you do it, Anne," entreated Diana. "You'll
fall off and be killed. Never mind Josie Pye. It isn't fair to dare anybody
to do anything so dangerous."
"I must do it. My honor is at stake,"
said Anne solemnly. "I shall walk that ridgepole, Diana, or perish in the
attempt. If I am killed you are to have my pearl bead ring."
Anne
climbed the ladder amid breathless silence, gained the ridgepole, balanced
herself uprightly on that precarious footing, and started to walk along it,
dizzily conscious that she was uncomfortably high up in the world and that
walking ridgepoles was not a thing in which your imagination helped you out
much. Nevertheless, she managed to take several steps before the catastrophe
came. Then she swayed, lost her balance, stumbled, staggered, and fell,
sliding down over the sun-baked roof and crashing off it through the tangle
of Virginia creeper beneath--all before the dismayed circle below could give
a simultaneous, terrified shriek. |
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