Anne of Windy Willows (9 page)

‘I think he is a great deal better father to you than you deserve,’ said Anne, quite in Rebecca Dew’s manner. ‘You were simply outrageous at that dinner, Trix.’

‘Well, you know you started it,’ said Trix, ‘and good old Pringle helped a bit. All’s well that ends well – and thank goodness I’ll never have to dust that vase again!’

11

Extract from a letter to Gilbert two weeks later

Esme Taylor’s engagement to Dr Lennox Carter is announced. By all I can gather from various bits of local gossip I think he decided that fatal Friday night that he wanted to protect her and save her from her father and her family – and perhaps from her friends! Her plight evidently appealed to his sense of chivalry. Trix persists in thinking I was the means of bringing it about, and perhaps I did take a hand; but I don’t think I’ll ever try an experiment like that again. It’s too much like picking up a lightning flash by the tail.

I really don’t know what got into me, Gilbert. It must have been a hang-over from my old detestation of anything savouring of Pringleism. It
does
seem old now. I’ve almost forgotten it. But other folks are still wondering. I hear Miss Valentine Courtaloe says she isn’t at all surprised I have won the Pringles over, because I have ‘such a way with me’; and the minister’s wife thinks it is an answer to the prayer she put up. Well, who knows but that it was?

Jen Pringle and I walked part of the way home from school yesterday, and talked of ‘shoes and ships and sealing-wax’ – of almost everything but geometry. We avoid that subject. Jen knows I don’t know too much about geometry, but my one wee bit of knowledge about Captain Myrom balances that. I lent Jen my Foxe’s
Book of Martyrs.
I hate to lend a book I
love
; it never seems quite the same when it comes back to me. But I love Foxe’s
Martyrs
only because dear Mrs Allan gave it to me for a Sunday School prize years ago. I don’t like reading about martyrs, because they always make me feel petty and ashamed – ashamed to admit I hate to get out of bed on frosty mornings and shrink from a visit to the dentist.

Well, I’m glad Esme and Trix are both happy. Since my own little romance is in flower I am all the more interested in other people’s. A
nice
interest, you know. Not curious or malicious, but just glad there’s such a lot of happiness spread about.

It’s still February, and ‘on the convent roof the snows are sparkling to the moon’. Only it isn’t a convent; just the roof of Mr Hamilton’s barn. But I’m beginning to think, ‘Only a few more weeks till spring, and a few more weeks then till summer – and holidays – and Green Gables – and golden sunlight on Avonlea meadows – and a gulf that will be silver at dawn and sapphire at noon and crimson at sunset – and
you
.’

Little Elizabeth and I have no end of plans for spring. We are such good friends. I take her her milk every evening, and once in so long she is allowed to go for a walk with me. We have discovered that our birthdays are on the same day, and Elizabeth flushed ‘divinest rosy red’ with the excitement of it. She is so sweet when she blushes. Ordinarily she is far too pale, and doesn’t get any pinker because of the new milk. Only when we come back from our twilight trysts with evening winds does she have a lovely rose colour in her little cheeks. Once she asked me gravely, ‘Will I have a lovely creamy skin like yours when I grow up, Miss Shirley, if I put buttermilk on my face every night?’ Buttermilk seems to be the preferred cosmetic in Spook’s Lane. I have discovered that Rebecca Dew uses it. She has bound me over to keep it secret from the widows, because they would think it too frivolous for her age. The number of secrets I have to keep at Windy Willows is ageing me before my time. I wonder if I buttermilked my nose if it would banish those seven freckles? By the way, did it ever occur to you, sir, that I had a ‘lovely creamy skin’? If it did you never told me so. And have you realized to the full that I am ‘comparatively beautiful’? Because I have discovered that I am.

‘What is it like to be beautiful, Miss Shirley?’ asked Rebecca Dew gravely the other day, when I was wearing my new biscuit coloured voile.

‘I’ve often wondered,’ said I.

‘But you
are
beautiful,’ said Rebecca Dew.

‘I never thought you could be sarcastic, Rebecca,’ I said reproachfully.

‘I did not mean to be sarcastic, Miss Shirley. You are beautiful – comparatively.’

‘Oh, comparatively!’ said I.

‘Look in the sideboard glass,’ said Rebecca Dew, pointing. ‘Compared to
me
you are.’

Well, I was!

But I haven’t finished with Elizabeth. One stormy evening when the wind was howling along Spook’s Lane we couldn’t go for a walk, so we came up to my room and drew a map of fairyland. Elizabeth sat on my blue doughnut cushion to make her higher and looked like a serious little gnome as she bent over the map. (By the way, no phonetic spelling for me! ‘
G
nome’ is far eerier and fairy-er than ‘nome’.)

Our map isn’t completed yet: every day we think of something more to go in it. Last night we located the house of the Witch of the Snow, and drew a triple hill, covered completely with wild cherry-trees in bloom, behind it. (By the way, I want some wild cherry-trees near our house of dreams, Gilbert.) Of course, we have a Tomorrow on the map – located east of today and west of yesterday – and we have no end of ‘times’ in fairyland: springtime, long time, short time, new-moon time, good-night time, next time – but no last time, because that is too sad a time for fairyland – old time, young time – because if there is an old time there ought to be a young time too, mountain time, because that has such a fascinating sound, night-time and daytime, but no bed-time or school time, Christmas-time – no only time, because that is too sad for fairyland – but lost time, because it is so nice to find it, some time, good time, fast time, slow time, half-past kissing time, going-home time, and time immemorial, which is one of the most beautiful phrases in the world. And we have cunning little red arrows everywhere pointing to the different ‘times’. I know Rebecca Dew thinks I’m quite childish. But, oh, Gilbert, don’t let’s ever grow too old and wise – no, nor too old and
silly
– for fairyland.

Rebecca Dew, I feel sure, is not quite certain that I am an influence for good in Elizabeth’s life. She thinks I encourage her in being ‘fanciful’. One evening when I was away Rebecca Dew took the milk to her, and found her already at the gate, looking at the sky so intently that she never heard Rebecca’s (anything but) fairy footfalls.

‘I was
listening
, Rebecca,’ she explained.

‘You do too much listening,’ said Rebecca disapprovingly.

Elizabeth smiled, remotely, austerely. (Rebecca Dew didn’t use those words, but I know exactly how Elizabeth smiled.)

‘You would be surprised, Rebecca, if you knew what I hear sometimes,’ she said, in a way that made Rebecca Dew’s flesh creep on her bones, or so she avers.

But Elizabeth is always touched with faery, and what can be done about it?

Your very Anne-est

A
NNE

P.S. Never, never, never shall I forget Cyrus Taylor’s face when his wife accused him of crocheting. But I shall always like him, because he hunted for those kittens. And I like Esme for standing up for her father under the supposed wreck of all her hopes.

P.S. 2. I have put in a new pen. And I love you because you aren’t pompous like Dr Carter, and I love you because you haven’t got sticky-out ears like Johnny, and – the very best reason of all – I love you for just being Gilbert!

12

Windy Willows

Spook’s Lane

May 30

D
EAREST
-
AND
-
THEN
-
MORE
-
DEAR
,

It’s spring!

Perhaps you, up to your eyes in a welter of exams in Kingsport, don’t know it. But I am aware of it from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes. Summerside is aware of it. Even the most unlovely streets are transfigured by arms of bloom reaching over old board fences and a ribbon of dandelions in the grass that borders the sidewalks. Even the china lady on my shelf is aware of it, and I know if I could only wake up quick enough some night I’d catch her dancing a
pas seul
in her pink, gilt-heeled shoes.

Everything is calling ‘spring’ to me – the little laughing brooks, the blue hazes on the Storm King, the maples in the grove where I go to read your letters, the white cherry-trees along Spook’s Lane, the sleek and saucy robins hopping defiance to Dusty Miller in the backyard, the creeper hanging greenly down over the half-door to which little Elizabeth comes for milk, the fir-trees preening in new tassel tips round the old graveyard, even the old graveyard itself, where all sorts of flowers planted at the heads of the graves are budding into leaf and bloom, as if to say, ‘Even here life is triumphant over death.’ I had a really lovely prowl about the graveyard the other night. (I’m sure Rebecca Dew thinks my taste in walks frightfully morbid. ‘I can’t think why you have such a hankering after that unchancy place,’ she says.) I roamed over it in the scented green cat’s light, and wondered if Stephen Pringle’s eyes were closed at last, and if Nathan Pringle’s wife really had tried to poison him. Her grave looked so innocent with its new grass and its June lilies that I concluded she had been entirely maligned.

Just another month and I’ll be home for vacation! I keep thinking of the old orchard at Green Gables, with its trees now in full snow, the old bridge over the Lake of Shining Waters, the murmur of the sea in your ears, a summer afternoon in Lovers’ Lane – and
you
!

I have just the right kind of a pen tonight, Gilbert, and so…

(
Two pages omitted
)

I was around to the Gibsons’ this evening for a call. Marilla asked me some time ago to look them up, because she once knew them when they lived in White Sands. Accordingly I looked them up, and have been looking them up weekly ever since, because Pauline seems to enjoy my visits, and I’m so sorry for her. She is simply a slave to her mother, who is a terrible old woman.

Mrs Adoniram Gibson is eighty, and spends her days in a wheelchair. They moved to Summerside fifteen years ago. Pauline, who is forty-five, is the youngest of the family, all her brothers and sisters being married, and all of them determined not to have Mrs Adoniram in their homes. She keeps the house and waits on her mother hand and foot. She is a little pale, fawn-eyed thing, with golden-brown hair that is glossy and pretty still. They are quite comfortably off, and if it was not for her mother Pauline could have a very pleasant, easy life. She just loves church work, and would be perfectly happy attending Ladies’ Aids and Missionary Societies, planning for church suppers and Welcome socials, not to speak of exulting proudly in being the possessor of the finest wandering Jew in town. But she can hardly ever get away from the house, even to go to church on Sundays. I can’t see any way of escape for her, for old Mrs Gibson will probably live to be a hundred. And while she may not have the use of her legs, there is certainly nothing the matter with her tongue. It always fills me with helpless rage to sit there and hear her making poor Pauline the target for her sarcasm. And yet Pauline has told me that her mother ‘thinks quite highly’ of me, and is much nicer to her when I am around. If this be so, I shiver to think what she must be like when I am not around.

Pauline dares not do
anything
without asking her mother. She can’t even buy her own clothes – not so much as a pair of stockings. Everything has to be sent up for Mrs Gibson’s approval; everything has to be worn until it has been turned twice. Pauline has worn the same hat for four years.

Mrs Gibson can’t bear any noise in the house or a breath of fresh air. It is said she has never smiled in her life. I’ve never caught her at it, anyway, and when I look at her I find myself wondering what would happen to her face if she did smile. Pauline can’t even have a room to herself. She has to sleep in the same room with her mother, and be up almost every hour of the night rubbing Mrs Gibson’s back, or giving her a pill, or getting a hot-water bottle for her –
hot
, not lukewarm! – or changing her pillows, or seeing what that mysterious noise is in the backyard. Mrs Gibson does her sleeping in the afternoons and spends her nights devising tasks for Pauline.

Yet nothing has ever made Pauline bitter. She is sweet and unselfish and patient, and I am glad she has a dog to love. The only thing she has ever had her own way about is keeping that dog, and then only because there was a burglary somewhere in town, and Mrs Gibson thought it would be a protection. Pauline never dares to let her mother see how much she loves the dog. Mrs Gibson hates him, and complains of his bringing bones in, but she never actually says he must go for her own selfish reason.

But at last I have a chance to give Pauline something, and I’m going to do it. I’m going to give her a
day
, though it will mean giving up my next week-end at Green Gables.

Tonight when I went in I could see that Pauline had been crying. Mrs Gibson did not leave me in doubt about it long.

‘Pauline wants to go and leave me, Miss Shirley,’ she said. ‘Nice grateful daughter I’ve got, haven’t I?’

‘Only for a day, Ma,’ said Pauline, swallowing a sob and trying to smile.

‘Only for a day, says she! Well,
you
know what my days are like, Miss Shirley. Everyone knows what my days are like. But you don’t know
yet
, Miss Shirley, and I hope you never will, how long a day can be when you are suffering.’

I knew Mrs Gibson didn’t suffer at all now, so I didn’t try to be sympathetic.

‘I’d get someone to stay with you, of course, Ma,’ said Pauline. ‘You see,’ she explained to me, ‘my cousin Louisa is going to celebrate her silver wedding at White Sands next Saturday week, and she wants me to go. I was her bridesmaid when she was married to Maurice Hilton. I
would
like to go so much if Ma would give her consent.’

‘If I must die alone I must,’ said Mrs Gibson. ‘I leave it to your conscience, Pauline.’

I knew Pauline’s battle was lost the moment Mrs Gibson left it to her conscience. Mrs Gibson has got her way all her life by leaving things to people’s consciences. I’ve heard that years ago somebody wanted to marry Pauline, and Mrs Gibson prevented it by leaving it to her conscience.

Pauline wiped her eyes, summoned up a piteous smile, and picked up a dress she was making over – a hideous green and black plaid.

‘Now don’t sulk, Pauline,’ said Mrs Gibson. ‘I can’t abide people who sulk. And mind you put a collar on that dress. Would you believe it, Miss Shirley, she actually wanted to make the dress without a collar. She’d wear a low-necked dress, that one, if I’d let her.’

I looked at poor Pauline with her slender little throat, which is rather plump and pretty yet, enclosed in a high, stiff-boned net collar.

‘Collarless dresses are coming in,’ I said.

‘Collarless dresses,’ said Mrs Gibson, ‘are indecent.’

(Item: I was wearing a collarless dress.)

‘Moreover,’ went on Mrs Gibson, as if it were all of a piece, ‘I never liked Maurice Hilton. His mother was a Crockett. He never had any sense of decorum. Always kissing his wife in the most unsuitable places!’

(Are you sure you kiss me in suitable places, Gilbert? I’m afraid Mrs Gibson would think the nape of the neck, for instance, most unsuitable.)

‘But, Ma, you know that was the day she nearly escaped being trampled by Harvey Wither’s horse running amuck on the church green. It was only natural Maurice should feel a little excited.’

‘Pauline, please don’t contradict me. I
still
think it was an unsuitable place for anyone to be kissed. But, of course,
my
opinions don’t matter to
anyone
any longer. Of course, everyone wishes I was dead. Well, there’ll be room for me in the grave. I know what a burden I am to you. I might as well die. Nobody wants me.’

‘Don’t say that, Ma!’ begged Pauline.

‘I
will
say it. Here you are, determined to go to that silver wedding, although you know I’m not willing.’

‘Ma, dear, I’m not going. I’d never think of going of you weren’t willing. Don’t excite yourself so.’

‘Oh, I can’t even have a little excitement, can’t I, to brighten my dull life? Surely you’re not going so soon, Miss Shirley?’

I felt that if I stayed any longer I’d either go crazy or slap Mrs Adoniram’s nut-cracker face. So I said I had exam papers to correct.

‘Ah, well, I suppose two old women like us are very poor company for a young girl,’ sighed Mrs Gibson. ‘Pauline isn’t very cheerful, are you, Pauline? Not very cheerful. I don’t wonder Miss Shirley doesn’t want to stay long.’

Pauline came out to the porch with me. The moon was shining down on her little garden and sparkling on the harbour. A soft, delightful wind was talking to a white apple-tree. It was spring – spring – spring! Even Mrs Gibson can’t stop plum-trees from blooming. And Pauline’s soft grey-blue eyes were full of tears.

‘I
would
like to go to Louie’s wedding so much,’ she said, with a long sigh of despairing resignation.

‘You are going,’ I said.

‘Oh, no, dear, I can’t go. Poor Ma will never consent. I’ll just put it out of my mind. Isn’t the moon beautiful tonight?’ she added, in a loud, cheerful tone.

‘I’ve never heard of any good that came from moon-gazing,’ called out Mrs Gibson from the sitting-room. ‘Stop chirruping there, Pauline, and come in and get my red bedroom slippers with the fur round the tops for me. These shoes pinch my feet something terrible. But nobody cares how I suffer.’

I felt that
I
didn’t care how much she suffered. Poor darling Pauline! But a day off is certainly coming to Pauline, and she is going to have her silver wedding. I, Anne Shirley, have spoken it.

I told Rebecca Dew and the widows all about it when I came home, and we had such fun, thinking up all the lovely insulting things I might have said to Mrs Gibson. Aunt Kate does not think I will succeed in getting Mrs Gibson to let Pauline go, but Rebecca Dew has faith in me. ‘Anyhow, if
you
can’t nobody can,’ she said.

I was to supper recently with Mrs Tom Pringle, who wouldn’t take me to board. (Rebecca says I am the best paying boarder she ever heard of, because I am invited out to supper so often.) I’m very glad she didn’t. She’s nice and purry and her pies praise her in the gates, but her home isn’t Windy Willows, and she doesn’t live in Spook’s Lane, and she isn’t Aunt Kate and Aunt Chatty and Rebecca Dew. I love them all three, and I’m going to board here next year and the year after. My chair is always called ‘Miss Shirley’s chair’, and Aunt Chatty tells me that when I’m not here Rebecca Dew sets my place at the table just the same, ‘so it won’t seem so lonesome’. Sometimes Aunt Chatty’s feelings have complicated matters a bit, but she says she understands me now, and knows I would never hurt her intentionally.

Little Elizabeth and I go out for a walk twice a week now. Mrs Campbell has agreed to that, but it must not be oftener, and
never
on Sundays. Things are better for little Elizabeth in spring. Some sunshine gets into even that grim old house, and outwardly it is even beautiful because of the dancing shadows of tree-tops. Still, Elizabeth likes to escape from it whenever she can. Once in a while we go up-town, so that Elizabeth can see the lighted shop-windows. But mostly we go as far as we dare down the Road that Leads to the End of the World, rounding every corner adventurously and expectantly, as if we were going to find Tomorrow behind it, while all the little green evening hills nestle softly together in the distance. One of the things Elizabeth is going to do in Tomorrow is ‘go to Philadelphia and see the angel in the church’. I haven’t told her – I never will tell her – that the Philadelphia St John was writing about was
not
Phila. Pa. We lose our illusions soon enough. And, anyhow, if we
could
get into Tomorrow who knows what we might find there? Angels everywhere, perhaps.

Sometimes we watch the ships coming up the harbour before a fair wind, over a glistening pathway, through the transparent spring air, and Elizabeth wonders if her father may be on board one of them. She clings to the hope that he may come some day. I can’t imagine why he doesn’t. I’m sure he would if he knew what a darling little daughter he has here longing for him. I suppose he never realizes she is quite a girl now. I suppose he still thinks of her as the little baby who cost his wife her life.

I’ll soon have finished my first year in Summerside High. The first term was a nightmare, but the last two have been very pleasant. The Pringles are
delightful people
. How could I ever have compared them to the Pyes? Sid Pringle brought me a bunch of trilliums today. Jen is going to lead her class, and Miss Ellen is reported to have said that I am the only teacher who ever
really understood
the child! The only fly in my ointment is Katherine Brooke, who continues unfriendly and distant. I’m going to give up trying to be friends with her. After all, as Rebecca Dew says, there
are
limits.

Oh, I nearly forgot to tell you. Sally Nelson has asked me to be one of her bridesmaids. She is going to be married the last of June at Bonnyview, Dr Nelson’s summer home down at the jumping-off place. She is marrying Gordon Hill. Then Nora Nelson will be the only one of Dr Nelson’s six girls left unmarried. Jim Wilcox has been going with her for years, ‘off and on’, as Rebecca Dew says, but it never seems to come to anything, and nobody thinks it will now. I’m very fond of Sally, but I’ve never made much headway getting acquainted with Nora. She’s a good deal older than I am, of course, and rather reserved and proud. Yet I’d like to be friends with her. She isn’t pretty or clever or charming, but somehow she’s got a
tang
. I’ve a feeling she’d be worth while.