Anne of Windy Willows (26 page)

‘Tomorrow?’

‘This is Tomorrow,’ explained Elizabeth. ‘I’ve always wanted to get into Tomorrow, and now I have.’

‘Oh, I see. Well, I’m sorry to say I don’t care much about Tomorrow.
I
would like to get back into Yesterday.’

Little Elizabeth was sorry for him. But how could he be unhappy? How could anyone living in Tomorrow be unhappy?

Elizabeth looked longingly back at Flying Cloud as they rowed away. Just as they pushed through the scrub spruces that fringed the shore to the road she turned for another farewell look at it. A flying team of horses attached to a truck wagon whirled round the bend, evidently quite beyond their driver’s control.

Elizabeth heard Miss Shirley shriek…

13

The room went round oddly. The furniture nodded and jigged. The bed – how came she to be in bed? Somebody with a white cap on was just going out of the door. What door? How funny one’s head felt! There were voices somewhere – low voices. She could not see who was talking, but somehow she knew it was Miss Shirley and the man.

What were they saying? Elizabeth heard sentences here and there, bobbing out of a confusion of murmuring.

‘Are you really?’ Miss Shirley’s voice sounded so excited.

‘Yes… Your letter… see for yourself… before approaching Mrs Campbell .. Flying Cloud is the summer home of our General Manager…’

If that room would only stay put! Really, things behaved rather queerly in Tomorrow. If she could only turn her head and see the talkers… Elizabeth gave a long sigh.

Then they came over to her bed – Miss Shirley and the man, Miss Shirley all tall and white, like a lily, looking as if she had been through some terrible experience, but with some inner radiance shining behind it all, a radiance that seemed part of the golden sunset light which suddenly flooded the room. The man was smiling down at her. Elizabeth felt that he loved her very much, and that there was some secret, tender and dear, between them which she would learn as soon as she had learned the language spoken in Tomorrow.

‘Are you feeling better, darling?’ said Miss Shirley.

‘Have I been sick?’

‘You were knocked down by a team of runaway horses on the mainland road,’ said Miss Shirley. ‘I – I wasn’t quick enough. I – I thought you were killed. I brought you right back here in the flat and your – this gentleman telephoned for a doctor and nurse.’

‘Will I die?’ said little Elizabeth.

‘No, indeed, darling! You were only stunned, and you will be all right soon… And, Elizabeth darling, this is your father.’

‘Father is in France. Am I in France too?’ Elizabeth would not have been surprised at it. Wasn’t this Tomorrow? Besides, things were still a bit wobbly.

‘Father is very much here, my sweet.’ He had such a delightful voice; you loved him for his voice. He bent and kissed her. ‘I’ve come for you. We’ll never be separated any more.’

The woman in the white cap was coming in again. Somehow Elizabeth knew whatever she had to say must be said before she got quite in.

‘Will we live together?’

‘Always,’ said Father.

‘And will Grandmother and the Woman live with us?’

‘They will not,’ said Father.

The sunset gold was fading, and the nurse was looking her disapproval. But Elizabeth didn’t care.

‘I’ve found Tomorrow,’ she said, as the nurse took Father and Miss Shirley out.

‘I’ve found a treasure I didn’t know I possessed,’ said Father, as the nurse shut the door on him. ‘And I can never thank you enough for that letter, Miss Shirley.’

‘And so,’ wrote Anne to Gilbert that night, ‘little Elizabeth’s road of mystery has led on to happiness and the end of her old world.’

14

Windy Willows

Spook’s Lane

(For the last time)

June 27

D
EAREST
,

I’ve come to another bend in the road. I’ve written you a good many letters in this old tower room these past three years. I suppose this is the last one I will write you for a long, long time. Because after this there won’t be any need of letters. In just a few weeks now we’ll belong to each other for ever. We’ll be together. Just think of it – being together, talking, walking, eating, dreaming, planning together, sharing each other’s wonderful moments, making a home out of our house of dreams!
Our
house! Doesn’t that sound ‘mystic and wonderful’, Gilbert? I’ve been building dream-houses all my life, and now one of them is going to come true. As to whom I really want to share my house of dreams with… Well, I’ll tell you that at four o’clock next year.

Three years sounded endless at the beginning, Gilbert. And now they are gone like a watch in the night. They have been very happy years – except for those first few months with the Pringles. After that life has seemed to flow by like a pleasant golden river. And my old feud with the Pringles seems like a dream. They like me now for myself; they have forgotten they ever hated me. Cora Pringle, one of the Widow Pringle’s brood, brought me a bouquet of roses yesterday, and twisted round the stems was a bit of paper bearing the legend, ‘To the sweetest teacher in the whole world.’ Fancy that for a Pringle!

Jen is broken-hearted because I am leaving. I shall watch Jen’s career with interest. She is brilliant and rather unpredictable. One thing is certain: she will have no commonplace existence. She can’t look so much like Becky Sharp for nothing.

Lewis Allen is going to McGill. Sophy Sinclair is going to Queen’s; then she means to teach until she has saved up enough money to go to the School of Dramatic Expression in Kingsport. Myra Pringle is going to ‘enter Society’ in the fall. She is so pretty that it won’t matter a bit that she wouldn’t know a past perfect participle if she met it on the street.

And there is no longer a small neighbour on the other side of the vine-hung gate. Little Elizabeth has gone for ever from that sunshineless house – gone into her Tomorrow. If I were staying on in Summerside I would break my heart, missing her. But, as it is, I’m glad. Pierce Grayson took her away with him. He is not going back to Paris, but will be living in Boston. Elizabeth cried bitterly at our parting, but she is so happy with her father that I feel sure her tears will soon be dried. Mrs Campbell and the Woman were very dour over the whole affair, and put all the blame on me – which I accept cheerfully and unrepentantly.

‘She has had a good home here,’ said Mrs Campbell majestically.

‘Where she never heard a single word of affection,’ I thought, but did not say.

‘I think I’ll be Betty all the time now, darling Miss Shirley,’ were Elizabeth’s last words. ‘Except,’ she called back, ‘when I’m lonesome for you, and then I’ll be Lizzie.’

‘Don’t you ever dare to be Lizzie, no matter what happens!’ I said.

We threw kisses to each other as long as we could see, and I came up to my tower room with tears in my eyes. She’s been so sweet, the dear little golden thing. She always seemed to me like a little Aeolian harp, so responsive to the tiniest breath of affection that blew her way. It’s been an adventure to be her friend. I hope Pierce Grayson realizes what a daughter he has – and I think he does. He sounded very grateful and repentant.

‘I didn’t realize she was no longer a baby,’ he said, ‘nor how unsympathetic her environment was. Thank you a thousand times for all you have done for her.’

I had our map of fairyland framed and gave it to little Elizabeth for a farewell keepsake.

I’m sorry to leave Windy Willows. Of course, I’m really a bit tired of living in a trunk, but I’ve loved it here – loved my cool morning hours at my window, loved my bed into which I have veritably climbed every night, loved my blue doughnut cushion, loved all the winds that blew. I’m afraid I’ll never be quite so chummy with the winds again as I’ve been here. And will I ever have a room again from which I can see both the rising and the setting sun?

I’ve finished with Windy Willows and the years that have been linked with it. And I’ve kept the faith. I’ve never betrayed Aunt Chatty’s hidy-hole to Aunt Kate or the buttermilk secret of each to either of the others.

I think they are all sorry to see me go, and I’m glad of it. It would be terrible to think they were glad I am going, or that they would not miss me a little when I’m gone. Rebecca Dew has been making all my favourite dishes for a week now – she even devoted ten eggs to angel cake
twice
– and using the ‘company’ china. And Aunt Chatty’s soft brown eyes brim over whenever I mention my departure. Even Dusty Miller seems to gaze at me reproachfully as he sits about on his little haunches.

I had a long letter from Katherine last week. She has a gift for writing letters. She has got a position as private secretary to a globe-trotting M.P. What a fascinating phrase ‘globe-trotter’ is! A person who would say ‘Let’s go to Egypt’ as one might say ‘Let’s go to Charlottetown’ – and
go
! That life will just suit Katherine.

She persists in ascribing all her changed outlook and prospects to me. ‘I wish I could tell you what you’ve brought into my life,’ she wrote. I suppose I did help. And it wasn’t easy at first. She seldom said anything without a sting in it, and listened to any suggestion I made in regard to the school work with the air of disdainfully humouring a lunatic. But somehow I’ve forgotten it all. It was just born of her secret bitterness against life.

Everybody has been inviting me to supper, even Pauline Gibson. Old Mrs Gibson died a few months ago, so Pauline dared do it. And I’ve been to Tomgallon House for another supper with Miss Minerva of that ilk and another one-sided conversation. But I had a very good time eating the delicious meal Miss Minerva provided, and she had a good time airing a few more tragedies. She couldn’t quite hide the fact that she was sorry for anyone who was not a Tomgallon, but she paid me several nice compliments, and gave me a lovely ring set with an aquamarine – a moonlight blend of blue and green – that her father had given her on her eighteenth birthday: ‘when I was young and handsome, dear –
quite
handsome. I may say that
now
, I suppose.’ I was glad it belonged to Miss Minerva and not to Annabella. I’m sure I could never have worn it if it had. It is very beautiful. There is a mysterious charm about the jewels of the sea.

Tomgallon House is certainly very splendid, especially now, when its grounds are all a-leaf and a-flower, but I wouldn’t give my as yet unfound house of dreams for Tomgallon House and grounds with the ghost thrown in.

Not but what a ghost might be a nice aristocratic sort of thing to have around. My only quarrel with Spook’s Lane is that there are no spooks.

I went to my old graveyard yesterday evening for a last prowl. Walked all round it and wondered if Stephen Pringle had closed his eyes at last, and if Herbert Pringle occasionally chuckled to himself in his grave. And I’m saying goodbye tonight to the old Storm King, with the sunset on its brow, and my little winding valley full of dusk.

I’m a wee bit tired after a month of exams and farewells and ‘last things’. For a week after I get back to Green Gables I’m going to be lazy – do absolutely nothing but run free in a green world of summer lovelinesse. I’ll dream by the Dryad’s Bubble in the twilight; I’ll drift on the Lake of Shining Waters in a shallop shaped from a moonbeam – or in Mr Barry’s flat if moonbeam shallops are not in season; I’ll gather starflowers and June bells in the Haunted Wood; I’ll find plots of wild strawberries in Mr Harrison’s hill pasture; I’ll join the dance of fireflies in Lovers’ Lane, and visit Hester Gray’s old, forgotten garden, and sit out on the back doorstep under the stars and listen to the sea calling in its sleep.

And when the Week is ended
you
will be home – and I won’t want anything else.

15

When the time came the next day for Anne to say goodbye to the folks at Windy Willows Rebecca Dew was not on hand. Instead Aunt Kate gravely handed Anne a letter.

Anne’s eyes were misty as she folded the letter up. Though she strongly suspected Rebecca Dew had got most of her phrases out of her favourite
Book of Deportment and Etiquette
that did not make them any the less sincere, and the P.S. certainly came straight from Rebecca Dew’s affectionate heart.

‘Tell dear Rebecca Dew I’ll never forget her, and that I’m coming back to see you all every summer.’

‘We have memories of you that nothing can take away,’ sobbed Aunt Chatty.

‘Nothing,’ said Aunt Kate emphatically.

But as Anne drove away from Windy Willows the last message from it was a large white bath-towel fluttering frantically from the tower window. Rebecca Dew was waving it.