“Mrs. Lynde is a—” began Anne hotly; then stopped. “Awful old gossip,” completed Davy calmly. “That’s what every one calls her. But is it a sure thing, Anne? I want to know.”
“You’re a very silly little boy, Davy,” said Anne, stalking haughtily out of the room. The kitchen was deserted and she sat down by the window in the fast falling wintry twilight. The sun had set and the wind had died down. A pale chilly moon looked out behind a bank of purple clouds in the west. The sky faded out, but the strip of yellow along the western horizon grew brighter and fiercer, as if all the stray gleams of light were concentrating in one spot; the distant hills, rimmed with priest-like firs, stood out in dark distinctness against it. Anne looked across the still, white fields, cold and lifeless in the harsh light of that grim sunset, and sighed. She was very lonely; and she was sad at heart; for she was wondering if she would be able to return to Redmond next year. It did not seem likely. The only scholarship possible in the Sophomore year was a very small affair. She would not take Marilla’s money; and there seemed little prospect of being able to earn enough in the summer vacation.
“I suppose I’ll just have to drop out next year,” she thought drearily, “and teach a district school again until I earn enough to finish my course. And by that time all my old class will have graduated and Patty’s Place will be out of the question. But there! I’m not going to be a coward. I’m thankful I can earn my way through if necessary.”
“Here’s Mr. Harrison wading up the lane,” announced Davy, running out. “I hope he’s brought the mail. It’s three days since we got it. I want to see what them pesky Grits are doing. I’m a Conservative, Anne. And I tell you, you have to keep your eye on them Grits.”
Mr. Harrison had brought the mail, and merry letters from Stella and Priscilla and Phil soon dissipated Anne’s blues. Aunt Jamesina, too, had written, saying that she was keeping the hearth-fire alight, and that the cats were all well, and the house plants doing fine.
“The weather has been real cold,” she wrote, “so I let the cats sleep in the house—Rusty and Joseph on the sofa in the living-room, and the Sarah-cat on the foot of my bed. It’s real company to hear her purring when I wake up in the night and think of my poor daughter in the foreign field. If it was anywhere but in India I wouldn’t worry, but they say the snakes out there are terrible. It takes all the Sarah-cats’s purring to drive away the thought of those snakes. I have enough faith for everything but the snakes. I can’t think why Providence ever made them. Sometimes I don’t think He did. I’m inclined to believe the Old Harry had a hand in making THEM.”
Anne had left a thin, typewritten communication till the last, thinking it unimportant. When she had read it she sat very still, with tears in her eyes.
“What is the matter, Anne?” asked Marilla.
“Miss Josephine Barry is dead,” said Anne, in a low tone.
“So she has gone at last,” said Marilla. “Well, she has been sick for over a year, and the Barrys have been expecting to hear of her death any time. It is well she is at rest for she has suffered dreadfully, Anne. She was always kind to you.”
“She has been kind to the last, Marilla. This letter is from her lawyer. She has left me a thousand dollars in her will.”
“Gracious, ain’t that an awful lot of money,” exclaimed Davy. “She’s the woman you and Diana lit on when you jumped into the spare room bed, ain’t she? Diana told me that story. Is that why she left you so much?”
“Hush, Davy,” said Anne gently. She slipped away to the porch gable with a full heart, leaving Marilla and Mrs. Lynde to talk over the news to their hearts’ content.
“Do you s’pose Anne will ever get married now?” speculated Davy anxiously. “When Dorcas Sloane got married last summer she said if she’d had enough money to live on she’d never have been bothered with a man, but even a widower with eight children was better’n living with a sister-in-law.”
“Davy Keith, do hold your tongue,” said Mrs. Rachel severely. “The way you talk is scandalous for a small boy, that’s what.”
Chapter XIX.An Interlude
“To think that this is my twentieth birthday, and that I’ve left my teens behind me forever,” said Anne, who was curled up on the hearth-rug with Rusty in her lap, to Aunt Jamesina who was reading in her pet chair. They were alone in the living room. Stella and Priscilla had gone to a committee meeting and Phil was upstairs adorning herself for a party.
“I suppose you feel kind of, sorry” said Aunt Jamesina. “The teens are such a nice part of life. I’m glad I’ve never gone out of them myself.”
Anne laughed.
“You never will, Aunty. You’ll be eighteen when you should be a hundred. Yes, I’m sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well. Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my character would be formed, for good or evil. I don’t feel that it’s what it should be. It’s full of flaws.”
“So’s everybody’s,” said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully. “Mine’s cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you are twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or ‘tother, and would go on developing in that line. Don’t worry over it, Anne. Do your duty by God and your neighbor and yourself, and have a good time. That’s my philosophy and it’s always worked pretty well. Where’s Phil off to tonight?”
“She’s going to a dance, and she’s got the sweetest dress for it—creamy yellow silk and cobwebby lace. It just suits those brown tints of hers.”
“There’s magic in the words ‘silk’ and ‘lace,’ isn’t there?” said Aunt Jamesina. “The very sound of them makes me feel like skipping off to a dance. And YELLOW silk. It makes one think of a dress of sunshine. I always wanted a yellow silk dress, but first my mother and then my husband wouldn’t hear of it. The very first thing I’m going to do when I get to heaven is to get a yellow silk dress.”
Amid Anne’s peal of laughter Phil came downstairs, trailing clouds of glory, and surveyed herself in the long oval mirror on the wall.
“A flattering looking glass is a promoter of amiability,” she said. “The one in my room does certainly make me green. Do I look pretty nice, Anne?”
“Do you really know how pretty you are, Phil?” asked Anne, in honest admiration.
“Of course I do. What are looking glasses and men for? That wasn’t what I meant. Are all my ends tucked in? Is my skirt straight? And would this rose look better lower down? I’m afraid it’s too high—it will make me look lop-sided. But I hate things tickling my ears.”
“Everything is just right, and that southwest dimple of yours is lovely.”
“Anne, there’s one thing in particular I like about you—you’re so ungrudging. There isn’t a particle of envy in you.”
“Why should she be envious?” demanded Aunt Jamesina. “She’s not quite as goodlooking as you, maybe, but she’s got a far handsomer nose.”
“I know it,” conceded Phil.
“My nose always has been a great comfort to me,” confessed Anne.
“And I love the way your hair grows on your forehead, Anne. And that one wee curl, always looking as if it were going to drop, but never dropping, is delicious. But as for noses, mine is a dreadful worry to me. I know by the time I’m forty it will be Byrney. What do you think I’ll look like when I’m forty, Anne?”
“Like an old, matronly, married woman,” teased Anne.
“I won’t,” said Phil, sitting down comfortably to wait for her escort. “Joseph, you calico beastie, don’t you dare jump on my lap. I won’t go to a dance all over cat hairs. No, Anne, I WON’T look matronly. But no doubt I’ll be married.”
“To Alec or Alonzo?” asked Anne.
“To one of them, I suppose,” sighed Phil, “if I can ever decide which.”
“It shouldn’t be hard to decide,” scolded Aunt Jamesina.
“I
was born a see-saw Aunty, and nothing can ever prevent me from teetering.”
“You ought to be more levelheaded, Philippa.”
“It’s best to be levelheaded, of course,” agreed Philippa, “but you miss lots of fun. As for Alec and Alonzo, if you knew them you’d understand why it’s difficult to choose between them. They’re equally nice.”
“Then take somebody who is nicer” suggested Aunt Jamesina. “There’s that Senior who is so devoted to you—Will Leslie. He has such nice, large, mild eyes.”
“They’re a little bit too large and too mild—like a cow’s,” said Phil cruelly.
“What do you say about George Parker?”
“There’s nothing to say about him except that he always looks as if he had just been starched and ironed.”
“Marr Holworthy then. You can’t find a fault with him.”
“No, he would do if he wasn’t poor. I must marry a rich man, Aunt Jamesina. That—and good looks—is an indispensable qualification. I’d marry Gilbert Blythe if he were rich.”
“Oh, would you?” said Anne, rather viciously.
“We don’t like that idea a little bit, although we don’t want Gilbert ourselves, oh, no,” mocked Phil. “But don’t let’s talk of disagreeable subjects. I’ll have to marry sometime, I suppose, but I shall put off the evil day as long as I can.”
“You mustn’t marry anybody you don’t love, Phil, when all’s said and done,” said Aunt Jamesina.
“‘Oh, hearts that loved in the good old way
Have been out o’ the fashion this many a day.’”
trilled Phil mockingly. “There’s the carriage. I fly—Bi-bi, you two old-fashioned darlings.”
When Phil had gone Aunt Jamesina looked solemnly at Anne.
“That girl is pretty and sweet and goodhearted, but do you think she is quite right in her mind, by spells, Anne?”
“Oh, I don’t think there’s anything the matter with Phil’s mind,” said Anne, hiding a smile. “It’s just her way of talking.”
Aunt Jamesina shook her head.
“Well, I hope so, Anne. I do hope so, because I love her. But I can’t understand her—she beats me. She isn’t like any of the girls I ever knew, or any of the girls I was myself.”
“How many girls were you, Aunt Jimsie?”
“About half a dozen, my dear.”
Chapter XX.Gilbert Speaks
“This has been a dull, prosy day,” yawned Phil, stretching herself idly on the sofa, having previously dispossessed two exceedingly indignant cats.
Anne looked up from Pickwick Papers. Now that spring examinations were over she was treating herself to Dickens.
“It has been a prosy day for us,” she said thoughtfully, “but to some people it has been a wonderful day. Some one has been rapturously happy in it. Perhaps a great deed has been done somewhere today—or a great poem written—or a great man born. And some heart has been broken, Phil.”
“Why did you spoil your pretty thought by tagging that last sentence on, honey?” grumbled Phil. “I don’t like to think of broken hearts—or anything unpleasant.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to shirk unpleasant things all your life, Phil?”
“Dear me, no. Am I not up against them now? You don’t call Alec and Alonzo pleasant things, do you, when they simply plague my life out?”
“You never take anything seriously, Phil.”
“Why should I? There are enough folks who do. The world needs people like me, Anne, just to amuse it. It would be a terrible place if EVERYBODY were intellectual and serious and in deep, deadly earnest. MY mission is, as Josiah Allen says, ‘to charm and allure.’ Confess now. Hasn’t life at Patty’s Place been really much brighter and pleasanter this past winter because I’ve been here to leaven you?”
“Yes, it has,” owned Anne.
“And you all love me—even Aunt Jamesina, who thinks I’m stark mad. So why should I try to be different? Oh, dear, I’m so sleepy. I was awake until one last night, reading a harrowing ghost story. I read it in bed, and after I had finished it do you suppose I could get out of bed to put the light out? No! And if Stella had not fortunately come in late that lamp would have burned good and bright till morning. When I heard Stella I called her in, explained my predicament, and got her to put out the light. If I had got out myself to do it I knew something would grab me by the feet when I was getting in again. By the way, Anne, has Aunt Jamesina decided what to do this summer?”
“Yes, she’s going to stay here. I know she’s doing it for the sake of those blessed cats, although she says it’s too much trouble to open her own house, and she hates visiting.”
“What are you reading?”
“Pickwick.”
“That’s a book that always makes me hungry,” said Phil. “There’s so much good eating in it. The characters seem always to be reveling on ham and eggs and milk punch. I generally go on a cupboard rummage after reading Pickwick. The mere thought reminds me that I’m starving. Is there any tidbit in the pantry, Queen Anne?”
“I made a lemon pie this morning. You may have a piece of it.”
Phil dashed out to the pantry and Anne betook herself to the orchard in company with Rusty. It was a moist, pleasantly-odorous night in early spring. The snow was not quite all gone from the park; a little dingy bank of it yet lay under the pines of the harbor road, screened from the influence of April suns. It kept the harbor road muddy, and chilled the evening air. But grass was growing green in sheltered spots and Gilbert had found some pale, sweet arbutus in a hidden corner. He came up from the park, his hands full of it.
Anne was sitting on the big gray boulder in the orchard looking at the poem of a bare, birchen bough hanging against the pale red sunset with the very perfection of grace. She was building a castle in air—a wondrous mansion whose sunlit courts and stately halls were steeped in Araby’s perfume, and where she reigned queen and chatelaine. She frowned as she saw Gilbert coming through the orchard. Of late she had managed not to be left alone with Gilbert. But he had caught her fairly now; and even Rusty had deserted her.
Gilbert sat down beside her on the boulder and held out his Mayflowers.
“Don’t these remind you of home and our old schoolday picnics, Anne?”
Anne took them and buried her face in them.
“I’m in Mr. Silas Sloane’s barrens this very minute,” she said rapturously.
“I suppose you will be there in reality in a few days?”
“No, not for a fortnight. I’m going to visit with Phil in Bolingbroke before I go home. You’ll be in Avonlea before I will.”
“No, I shall not be in Avonlea at all this summer, Anne. I’ve been offered a job in the Daily News office and I’m going to take it.”
“Oh,” said Anne vaguely. She wondered what a whole Avonlea summer would be like without Gilbert. Somehow she did not like the prospect. “Well,” she concluded flatly, “it is a good thing for you, of course.”
“Yes, I’ve been hoping I would get it. It will help me out next year.”
“You mustn’t work too HARD,” said Anne, without any very clear idea of what she was saying. She wished desperately that Phil would come out. “You’ve studied very constantly this winter. Isn’t this a delightful evening? Do you know, I found a cluster of white violets under that old twisted tree over there today? I felt as if I had discovered a gold mine.”
“You are always discovering gold mines,” said Gilbert—also absently.
“Let us go and see if we can find some more,” suggested Anne eagerly. “I’ll call Phil and—”
“Never mind Phil and the violets just now, Anne,” said Gilbert quietly, taking her hand in a clasp from which she could not free it. “There is something I want to say to you.”
“Oh, don’t say it,” cried Anne, pleadingly. “Don’t—PLEASE,
Gilbert.”
“I must. Things can’t go on like this any longer. Anne, I love you. You know I do. I—I can’t tell you how much. Will you promise me that some day you’ll be my wife?”
“I—I can’t,” said Anne miserably. “Oh, Gilbert—you—you’ve spoiled everything.”
“Don’t you care for me at all?” Gilbert asked after a very dreadful pause, during which Anne had not dared to look up.
“Not—not in that way. I do care a great deal for you as a friend. But I don’t love you, Gilbert.”
“But can’t you give me some hope that you will—yet?”
“No, I can’t,” exclaimed Anne desperately. “I never, never can love you—in that way—Gilbert. You must never speak of this to me again.”
There was another pause—so long and so dreadful that Anne was driven at last to look up. Gilbert’s face was white to the lips. And his eyes—but Anne shuddered and looked away. There was nothing romantic about this. Must proposals be either grotesque or—horrible? Could she ever forget Gilbert’s face?
“Is there anybody else?” he asked at last in a low voice.
“No—no,” said Anne eagerly. “I don’t care for any one like THAT—and I LIKE you better than anybody else in the world, Gilbert. And we must—we must go on being friends, Gilbert.”
Gilbert gave a bitter little laugh.
“Friends! Your friendship can’t satisfy me, Anne. I want your love—and you tell me I can never have that.”
“I’m sorry. Forgive me, Gilbert,” was all Anne could say. Where, oh, where were all the gracious and graceful speeches wherewith, in imagination, she had been wont to dismiss rejected suitors?
Gilbert released her hand gently.
“There isn’t anything to forgive. There have been times when I thought you did care. I’ve deceived myself, that’s all. Goodbye, Anne.”
Anne got herself to her room, sat down on her window seat behind the pines, and cried bitterly. She felt as if something incalculably precious had gone out of her life. It was Gilbert’s friendship, of course. Oh, why must she lose it after this fashion?
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