Anne of Windy Willows (20 page)

13

Anne went home for her second Summerside vacation with mixed feelings. Gilbert was not to be in Avonlea that summer. He had gone west to work on a new railway that was being built. But Green Gables was still Green Gables, and Avonlea was still Avonlea. The Lake of Shining Waters shone and sparkled as of old. The ferns still grew as thickly over the Dryad’s Bubble, and the log bridge, though it was a little crumblier and mossier every year, still led up to the shadows and silences and wind-songs of the Haunted Wood.

And Anne had prevailed on Mrs Campbell to let little Elizabeth go home with her for a fortnight – no more. But Elizabeth, looking forward to two whole weeks with Miss Shirley, asked no more of life.

‘I feel like
Miss
Elizabeth today,’ she told Anne with a sigh of delightful excitement, as they drove away from Windy Willows. ‘Will you please call me “Miss Elizabeth” when you introduce me to your friends at Green Gables? It would make me feel so grown up.’

‘I will,’ promised Anne gravely, remembering a small, red-headed damsel who had once begged to be called Cordelia.

Elizabeth’s drive from Bright river to Green Gables, over a road which only Prince Edward Island in June can show, was almost as ecstatic a thing for her as it had been for Anne that memorable spring evening so many years ago. The world was beautiful, with wind-rippled meadows on every hand and surprises lurking round every corner. She was with her beloved Miss Shirley; she would be free from the Woman for two whole weeks; she had a new pink gingham dress and a pair of lovely new brown boots. It was almost as if Tomorrow was already there, with fourteen Tomorrows to follow. Elizabeth’s eyes were shining with dreams when they turned into the Green Gables lane, where the pink wild rose grew.

Things seemed to change magically for Elizabeth the moment she got to Green Gables. For two weeks she lived in a world of romance. You couldn’t step outside the door without stepping into something romantic. Things were just bound to happen in Avonlea, if not today, then tomorrow. Elizabeth knew she hadn’t
quite
got into Tomorrow yet, but she knew she was on the very fringes of it.

Everything in and about Green Gables seemed to be acquainted with her. Even Marilla’s pink rosebud tea-set was like an old friend. The rooms looked at her as if she had always known and loved them; the very grass was greener than grass anywhere else; and the people who lived at Green Gables were the kind of people who lived in Tomorrow. She loved them and was beloved by them. Davy and Dora adored her and spoiled her; Marilla and Mrs Lynde approved of her. She was neat; she was ladylike, she was polite to her elders. They knew Anne did not like Mrs Campbell’s methods, but it was plain to be seen that she had trained her great-granddaughter properly.

‘Oh, I don’t want to sleep, Miss Shirley,’ Elizabeth whispered, when they were in bed in the little porch gable after a rapturous evening. ‘I don’t want to sleep away a single minute of these wonderful two weeks. I wish I could get along without any sleep while I’m here.’

For a while she didn’t sleep. It was heavenly to lie there and listen to the splendid low thunder Miss Shirley had told her was the sound of the sea. Elizabeth loved it, and the sigh of the wind round the eaves as well. Elizabeth had always been afraid of the night – who knew what queer thing might jump at you out of it? – but now she was afraid no longer. For the first time in her life the night seemed like a friend to her.

They would go to the shore tomorrow, Miss Shirley had promised, and have a dip in those silver-tipped waves they had seen breaking beyond the green dunes of Avonlea when they drove over the last hill. Elizabeth could see them coming in, one after the other. One of them was a great dark wave of sleep. It rolled right over here. Elizabeth drowned in it with a delicious sigh of surrender.

It’s… so… easy… to… love… God… here,’ was her last conscious thought.

But she lay awake for a while every night of her stay at Green Gables, long after Miss Shirley had gone to sleep, thinking over things. Why couldn’t life at the Evergreens be like life at Green Gables?

Elizabeth had never lived where she could make a noise if she wanted to. Everybody at the Evergreens had to move softly, speak softly, even, so Elizabeth felt,
think
softly. There were times when Elizabeth desired perversely to yell loud and long.

‘You may make all the noise you want to here,’ Anne had told her. But it was strange; she no longer wanted to yell, now that there was nothing to prevent her. She liked to go quietly, stepping gently among all the lovely things around her. But Elizabeth learned to laugh during that sojourn at Green Gables. And when she went back to Summerside she carried delightful memories with her, and left equally delightful ones behind her. To the Green Gables folks Green Gables seemed for months full of memories of little Elizabeth. For ‘little Elizabeth’ she was to them, in spite of the fact that Anne had solemnly introduced her as ‘Miss Elizabeth’. She was so tiny, so golden, so elf-like, that they couldn’t think of her as anything but little Elizabeth: little Elizabeth dancing in a twilit garden among the white June lilies; little Elizabeth coiled up on a bough of the big Duchess apple-tree reading fairytales, unlet and unhindered; little Elizabeth half drowned in a field of buttercups, where her golden head seemed just a larger buttercup; little Elizabeth chasing silver-green moths, or trying to count the fireflies in Lovers’ Lane; little Elizabeth listening to the bumblebees zooming in the Canterbury bells; little Elizabeth being fed with strawberries and cream by Dora in the pantry, or eating red-currants with her in the yard – ‘red-currants are such beautiful things, aren’t they, Dora? It’s just like eating jewels, isn’t it?’; little Elizabeth pleading with Davy to teach her how to waggle her ears; little Elizabeth singing to herself in the haunted dusk of the firs; little Elizabeth hovering over the bed of red and white daisies under the parlour windows; little Elizabeth with fingers sweet from gathering the big fat pink cabbage roses; little Elizabeth gazing at the great moon hanging over the brook valley – ‘I think the moon has
worried eyes
, don’t you, Mrs Lynde?’; little Elizabeth crying bitterly because a chapter in the serial story in Davy’s magazine left the hero in a sad predicament – ‘Oh, Miss Shirley, I’m sure he can never live through it!’; little Elizabeth curled up, all flushed and sweet like a wild rose, for an afternoon nap on the kitchen sofa, with Dora’s kittens cuddled about her; little Elizabeth shrieking with laughter to see the wind blowing the dignified old hens’ tails over their backs –
could
it be little Elizabeth laughing like that?; little Elizabeth helping Anne to frost cup-cakes, Mrs Lynde to cut the patches for a new ‘double Irish chain’ quilt, and Dora to rub the old brass candlesticks till they could see their faces in them; little Elizabeth learning to sing
Clementine
and carolling about ‘herring boxes without topses’ everywhere; little Elizabeth cutting out tiny biscuits with a thimble under Marilla’s tutelage. Why, the Green Gables folks could hardly look at a place or a thing without being reminded of little Elizabeth.

‘I wonder if I’ll ever have such a happy fortnight again?’ thought little Elizabeth as she drove away from Green Gables. The road to the station was just as beautiful as it had been two weeks before, but half the time little Elizabeth couldn’t see it for tears.

‘I couldn’t have believed I’d miss a child so much,’ said Mrs Lynde.

When little Elizabeth went Katherine Brooke and her dog came for the rest of the summer. Katherine had resigned from the staff of the High School at the close of the year, and meant to go to Redmond in the autumn to take a secretarial course at Redmond University. Anne had advised this.

‘I know you’d like it, and you’ve never liked teaching,’ said the latter, as they sat one evening in a ferny corner of a clover field and watched the glories of a sunset sky.

‘Life owes me something more than it has paid me, and I’m going out to collect it,’ said Katherine decidedly. ‘I feel so much younger than I did this time last year,’ she added, with a laugh.

‘I’m sure it’s the best thing for you to do, but I hate to think of Summerside and the High without you. What will the tower room be like next year without our evenings of confab and argument, and our hours of foolishness, when we turned everybody and everything into a joke?’

1

Windy Willows

Spook’s Lane

Sept. 8

D
EAREST
,

The summer is over, the summer in which I have seen you only that weekend in May. And I am back at Windy Willows for my third – and last – year in Summerside High. Katherine and I had a delightful time together at Green Gables, and I’m going to miss her dreadfully this year. The new Junior teacher is a jolly little personage, chubby and rosy and friendly as a puppy, but somehow there’s nothing more to her than that. She has sparkling, shallow blue eyes with no thought behind them. I like her; I’ll always like her – neither more nor less. There’s nothing to
discover
in her. There was so much to discover in Katherine when you once got past her guard.

There is no change at Windy Willows – yes, there is. The old red cow has gone to her long home, so Rebecca Dew sadly informed me when I came down to supper Monday night. The widows have decided not to bother with another one, but to get milk and cream from Mr Cherry. This means that little Elizabeth will come no more to the garden gate for her new milk. But Mrs Campbell seems to have grown reconciled to her coming over here when she wants to, so that does not make so much difference now.

And another change is brewing. Aunt Kate told me, much to my sorrow, that they have decided to give Dusty Miller away as soon as they can find a suitable home for him. When I protested she said they were really driven to it for peace’ sake. Rebecca Dew has been constantly complaining about him all summer, and there seems to be no other way of satisfying her. Poor Dusty Miller, and he is such a nice prowly, purry darling!

Tomorrow being Saturday, I’m going to look after Mrs Raymond’s twins while she goes to Charlottetown to the funeral of some relative. Mrs Raymond is a widow who came to our town last winter. Rebecca Dew and the Windy Willows widows – really, Summerside is a great place for widows – think her a ‘little too grand’ for Summerside, but she was really a wonderful help to Katherine and me in our Dramatic Club activities. One good turn deserves another.

Gerald and Geraldine are eight, and are a pair of angelic-looking youngsters, but Rebecca Dew ‘pulled a mouth’, to use one of her own expressions, when I told her what I was going to do.

‘But I love children, Rebecca.’

‘Children, yes; but them’s holy terrors, Miss Shirley. Mrs Raymond doesn’t believe in punishing children no matter what they do. She says she’s determined they’ll have a “natural” life. They take people in by that saintly look of theirs, but I’ve heard what her neighbours have to say of them. The minister’s wife called one afternoon. Well, Mrs Raymond was sweet as sugar-pie to her, but when she was leaving a shower of Spanish onions came flying down the stairs, and one of them knocked her hat off. “Children always behave so abominably when you specially want them to be good,” was all Mrs Raymond said, kinder as if she was rather proud of them being so unmanageable. “They’re from the States, you know” – as if that explained everything!’

Rebecca has about as much use for ‘Yankees’ as Mrs Lynde has.

2

Saturday forenoon Anne betook herself to the pretty, old-fashioned cottage, on a street that straggled out into the country, where Mrs Raymond and her famous twins lived. Mrs Raymond was all ready to depart, rather gaily dressed for a funeral, perhaps, especially with regard to the beflowered hat perched on top of the smooth brown waves of hair that flowed round her head, but looking very beautiful. The eight-year-old twins, who had inherited her beauty, were sitting on the stairs, their delicate faces wreathed with a quite cherubic expression. They had complexions of pink and white, large china-blue eyes, and aureoles of fine, fluffy, pale yellow hair.

They smiled with engaging sweetness when their mother introduced them to Anne, and told them that dear Miss Shirley had been so kind as to come and take care of them while mother was away at dear Auntie Ella’s funeral, and of course they would be good and not give her one teeny weeny bit of trouble, wouldn’t they, darlings?

The darlings nodded gravely, and contrived, though it hadn’t seemed possible, to look more angelic than ever.

Mrs Raymond took Anne down the walk to the gate with her.

‘They’re all I’ve got – now,’ she said pathetically. ‘Perhaps I may have spoiled them a little – I know people say I have. People always know so much better how you ought to bring up your children than you know yourself, haven’t you noticed, Miss Shirley? But
I
think loving is better than spanking any day, don’t you, Miss Shirley? I’m sure
you
will have no trouble with them. Children always
know
whom they can play on and whom they can’t, don’t you think? That poor old Miss Prouty up the street, I had her to stay with them one day, but the poor darlings couldn’t bear her. So of course they teased her a good bit –
you
know what children are. She has revenged herself by telling the most ridiculous tales about them all over town. But they’ll just love you, and I know they’ll be angels. Of course, they have high spirits, but children should have, don’t you think? It’s so pitiful to see children with that cowed appearance, isn’t it? I like them to be natural, don’t you?
Too
good children don’t seem natural,
do
. they? Don’t let them sail their boats in the bathtub or go wading in the pond, will you? I’m
so
afraid of them catching cold. Their father died of pneumonia.’

Mrs Raymond’s large blue eyes looked as if they were going to overflow, but she gallantly blinked the tears away.

‘Don’t worry if they quarrel a little – children always
do
quarrel, don’t you think? But if any outsider attacks them… My dear! They really just worship each other, you know. I could have taken
one
of them to the funeral, but they simply wouldn’t hear of it. They’ve never been separated for a day in their lives. And I
couldn’t
look after twins at a funeral, could I, now?’

‘Don’t worry, Mrs Raymond,’ said Anne kindly. ‘I’m sure Gerald and Geraldine and I will have a beautiful day together. I love children.’

‘I know it. I felt sure the minute I saw you that you loved children. One can always tell, don’t you think? There’s
something
about a person who loves children. Poor old Miss Prouty detests them. She looks for the worst in children, and so, of course, she finds it. You can’t conceive what a comfort it is to me to reflect that my darlings are under the care of one who loves and understands children. I’m sure I’ll quite enjoy the day.’

‘You might take
us
to the funeral,’ shrieked Gerald, suddenly sticking his head out of an upstairs window. ‘We never have any fun like that.’

‘Oh, they’re in the bathroom!’ exclaimed Mrs Raymond tragically. ‘Dear Miss Shirley, please go and take them out. Gerald darling, you know Mother couldn’t take you
both
to the funeral. Oh, Miss Shirley, he’s got that coyote skin from the parlour floor tied round his neck again by the paws! He’ll ruin it. Please make him take it off at once. I
must
hurry, or I’ll miss the train.’

Mrs Raymond sailed elegantly away, and Anne ran upstairs to find that the angelic Geraldine had grasped her brother by the legs and was apparently trying to hurl him bodily out of the window.

‘Miss Shirley, make Gerald stop putting out his tongue at me’, she demanded fiercely.

‘Does it hurt you?’ asked Anne, with a smile.

‘Well, he’s not going to put out his tongue at
me
,’ retorted Geraldine, darting a baleful look at Gerald, who returned it with interest.

‘My tongue’s my own, and
you
can’t stop me from putting it out when I like, can she, Miss Shirley?’

Anne ignored the question. ‘Twins dear, it’s just an hour till lunch-time. Shall we go and sit in the garden and play games and tell stories? And, Gerald, won’t you put that coyote skin back on the floor?’

‘But I want to play wolf,’ said Gerald.

‘He wants to play wolf,’ cried Geraldine, suddenly aligning herself on her brother’s side.

‘We want to play wolf,’ they both cried together.

A peal from the doorbell cut the knot of Anne’s dilemma.

‘Come on and see who it is,’ cried Geraldine.

They flew to the stairs, and by reason of sliding down the banisters got to the front door more quickly than Anne, the coyote skin coming unloosed and drifting away in the process.

‘We never buy anything from pedlars,’ Gerald told the lady standing on the doorstep.

‘Can I see your mother?’ asked the caller.

‘No, you can’t. Mother’s gone to Aunt Ella’s funeral. Miss Shirley’s looking after us. That’s her coming down the stairs.
She’ll
make you scat.’

Anne
did
feel rather like making the caller ‘scat’ when she saw who it was. Miss Pamela Drake was not a popular caller in Summerside. She was always canvassing for something, and it was generally quite impossible to get rid of her unless you bought it, since she was utterly impervious to snubs and hints, and had apparently all the time in the world at her command.

This time she was ‘taking orders’ for an encyclopaedia, something no school-teacher could afford to be without. Vainly Anne protested that she did not need an encyclopaedia; the High School already possessed a very good one.

‘Ten years out of date,’ said Miss Pamela firmly. ‘We’ll just sit down here on this rustic bench, Miss Shirley, and I’ll show you my prospectus.’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t time, Miss Drake. I have the children to look after.’

‘It won’t take but a few minutes. I’ve been meaning to call on you, Miss Shirley, and I call it real fortunate to find you here. Run away and play, children, while Miss Shirley and I skim over this beautiful prospectus.’

‘Mother’s hired Miss Shirley to look after us,’ said Geraldine, with a toss of her aerial curls. But Gerald had tugged her backward, and they slammed the door shut.

‘You see, Miss Shirley, what this encyclopaedia
means
. Look at the beautiful paper…
Feel
it… The splendid engravings… No other encyclopaedia on the market has half the number of engravings. The wonderful print – a blind man could read it – and all for eighty dollars, eight dollars down and eight dollars a month till it’s all paid. You’ll never have such another chance. We’re just doing this to introduce it. Next year it will be a hundred and twenty.’

‘But I don’t want an encyclopaedia, Miss Drake,’ said Anne desperately.

‘Of course you want an encyclopaedia.
Everyone
wants an encyclopaedia – a
National
encyclopaedia.
I
don’t know how I lived before I became acquainted with the
National
encyclopaedia.
Live!
I didn’t live; I merely existed.
Look
at that engraving of the cassowary, Miss Shirley. Did you ever really
see
a cassowary before?’

‘But, Miss Drake, I –’

‘If you think the terms a little too onerous I feel sure I can make a special arrangement for you, being a school-teacher: six a month instead of eight. You simply can’t refuse an offer like that, Miss Shirley.’

Anne almost felt she couldn’t. Wouldn’t it be worth six dollars a month to get rid of this terrible woman who had so evidently made up her mind not to go until she had got an order? Besides,
what
were the twins doing? They were alarmingly quiet. Suppose they were sailing their boats in the bathtub. Or had sneaked out of the back door and gone wading in the pond.

She made one more pitiful effort to escape. ‘I’ll think this over, Miss Drake, and let you know.’

‘There’s no time like the present,’ said Miss Drake, briskly getting out her fountain-pen. ‘You
know
you’re going to take the
National
, so you might just as well sign for it now as any other time. Nothing is ever gained by putting things off. The price may go up any moment, and then you’d have to pay a hundred and twenty. Sign here, Miss Shirley.’

Anne felt the fountain-pen being forced into her hand. Another moment… and then there was such a blood-curdling shriek from Miss Drake that Anne dropped the fountain-pen under the clump of golden glow that flanked the rustic seat and gazed in amazed horror at her companion.

Was
that
Miss Drake – that indescribable object, hatless, spectacleless, almost hairless? Hat, spectacles, false front, were floating in the air above her head halfway up to the bathroom window, out of which two golden heads were hanging. Gerald was grasping a fishing-rod, to which were tied two cords ending in fish-hooks. By what magic he had contrived to make a triple catch only he could have told. Probably it was sheer luck.

Anne flew into the house and upstairs. By the time she reached the bathroom the twins had fled. Gerald had dropped the fishing-rod, and a peep from the window revealed a furious Miss Drake retrieving her belongings, including the fountain-pen and marching to the gate. For once in her life Miss Pamela Drake had failed to land her order.

Anne discovered the twins seraphically eating apples on the back porch. It was hard to know what to do. Certainly such behaviour could not be allowed to pass without a rebuke, but Gerald had undoubtedly rescued her from a difficult position, and Miss Drake
was
an odious creature who needed a lesson. Still…

‘You’ve et a great big worm!’ shrieked Gerald. ‘I saw it disappear down your throat.’

Geraldine laid down her apple and promptly turned sick – very sick. Anne had her hands full for some time. And when Geraldine was better it was the lunch hour, and Anne suddenly decided to let Gerald off with a very mild reproof. After all, no lasting harm had been done to Miss Drake, who for her own sake would probably hold her tongue religiously about the incident.

‘Do you think, Gerald,’ she said gently, ‘that what you did was a gentlemanly action?’

‘Nope,’ said Gerald, ‘but it was good fun. Gee, I’m some fisherman, ain’t I?’

The lunch was excellent. Mrs Raymond had prepared it before she left, and whatever her shortcomings as a disciplinarian might be she was a good cook. Gerald and Geraldine, being occupied with gorging, did not quarrel or display worse table manners than the general run of children. After lunch Anne washed the dishes, getting Geraldine to help dry them and Gerald to put them carefully away in the cupboard. They were both quite handy at it, and Anne reflected complacently that all they needed was wise training and a little firmness.