Anne of Green Gables (Penguin)
Page 18
‘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 some day 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’s 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 on 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 tea-time. 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 fruitcake, 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 mostly 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 round 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 up 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 its 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. Mrs Allan, don’t try to eat it. Anne, taste it yourself. What flavouring 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 labelled yellowly, ‘Best
Vanilla’.
Marilla took it, uncorked it, smelled it.
‘Mercy on us, Anne, you’ve flavoured 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 for ever. 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 flavoured 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 Buote.’
22
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 for ever 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 fulfilment 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 north-east 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 dull, 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 for 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 above the orchard and the fireflies were flitting over in Lovers’ 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.