Anne's House of Dreams
Read Anne's House of Dreams Online
Authors: Lucy Maud Montgomery
PUFFIN CLASSICS
A
NNE
’
S
H
OUSE OF
D
REAMS
L
UCY
M
AUDE
M
ONTGOMERY
(1874–1942) was born on Prince Edward Island, off the east coast of Canada. She lived there throughout her childhood with her grandparents (following her mother’s death in 1876). Readers of the
Anne of Green Gables
series of books will find plenty of scenes drawn from the author’s happy memories of the island and the farmhouse where she was brought up.
Like many a future writer, Lucy Maude Montgomery was not only an avid reader as a child, but also composed numerous short stories and poems. Her first published piece was a poem that appeared in the local paper when she was fifteen years old. Later, after she had finished school and university, she turned her love of books to good effect by becoming a teacher.
She continued to write, and was once asked to contribute a short story to a magazine. She dusted off an idea for a plot she had jotted down when she was much younger – and turned it into one of the most popular books ever written for children.
Anne of Green Gables
was first published in 1908.
Lucy herself said about
Anne of Green Gables:
‘I thought girls in their teens might like it. But grandparents, school and college boys, old pioneers in the Australian bush, girls in India, missionaries in China, monks in remote monasteries, premiers of Great Britain, and red-headed people all over the world have written to me, telling me how they loved Anne and her successors.’ The ‘successors’ are nine. further
Anne
books.
Lucy Maude Montgomery continued to write under her maiden name after marrying a Presbyterian minister, Ewan MacDonald, in 1911. And, despite moving with him to Toronto, she continued to set her stories on ‘the only island there is’, and where her heart always remained.
Some other Puffin Classics to enjoy
A
NNE OF
G
REEN
G
ABLES
A
NNE OF
A
VONLEA
A
NNE OF THE
I
SLAND
A
NNE OF
W
INDY
W
ILLOWS
A
NNE OF
I
NGLESIDE
L. M. Montgomery
ONTGOMERY
Anne’s House of Dreams
Our kin
Have built them temples, and therein
Pray to the gods we know; and dwell
In little houses lovable.
RUPERT BROOKE
PUFFIN BOOKS
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
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Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in Great Britain by George C. Harrap & Co Ltd 1926
Published in Puffin Books 1981
Reissued in this edition 1994
23
Copyright 1926 by L. M. Montgomery
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-194258-2
To Laura
in memory of the olden time
ONTENTS
1
In the Garret of Green Gables
4
The First Bride of Green Gables
8
Miss Cornelia Bryant Comes to Call
9
An Evening at Four Winds Point
22
Miss Cornelia Arranges Matters
24
The Life-book of Captain Jim
32
Miss Cornelia Discusses the Affair
34
The Ship o’ Dreams Comes to Harbour
37 Miss Cornelia Makes a Startling Announcement
40
Farewell to the House of Dreams
I
N THE
G
ARRET OF
G
REEN
G
ABLES
‘Thanks be, I’m done with geometry, learning or teaching it,’ said Anne Shirley, a trifle vindictively, as she thumped a somewhat battered volume of Euclid into a big chest of books, banged the lid in triumph, and sat down upon it, looking at Diana Wright across the Green Gables garret, with grey eyes that were like a morning sky.
The garret was a shadowy, suggestive, delightful place, as all garrets should be. Through the open window, by which Anne sat, blew the sweet, scented, sun-warm air of the August afternoon; outside, poplar boughs rustled and tossed in the wind; beyond them were the woods, where Lovers’ Lane wound its enchanted path, and the old apple orchard which still bore its rosy harvests munificently. And, over all, was a great mountain range of snowy clouds in the blue southern sky. Through the other window was glimpsed a distant, white-capped, blue sea – the beautiful St Lawrence Gulf, on which floats, like a jewel, Abegweit, whose softer, sweeter Indian name has long been forsaken for the more prosaic one of Prince Edward Island.
Diana Wright, three years older than when we last saw her, had grown somewhat matronly in the intervening time. But her eyes were as black and brilliant, her cheeks as rosy, and her dimples as enchanting, as in the long-ago days when she and Anne Shirley had vowed eternal friendship in the garden at Orchard Slope. In her arms she held a small, sleeping, black-curled creature, who for two happy years had been known to the world of Avonlea as ‘Small Anne Cordelia’. Avonlea folks knew why Diana had called her Anne, of course, but Avonlea folks were puzzled by the Cordelia. There had never been a Cordelia in the Wright or Barry connections. Mrs Harmon Andrews said she supposed Diana had found the name in some trashy novel, and wondered that Fred hadn’t more sense than to allow it. But Diana and Anne smiled at each other. They knew how Small Anne Cordelia had come by her name.
‘You always hated geometry,’ said Diana with a retrospective smile. ‘I should think you’d be real glad to be through with teaching, anyhow.’
‘Oh, I’ve always liked teaching, apart from geometry. These past three years in Summerside have been very pleasant ones. Mrs Harmon Andrews told me when I came home that I wouldn’t likely find married life as much better than teaching as I expected. Evidently Mrs Harmon is of Hamlet’s opinion that it may be better to bear the ills that we have than fly to others that we know not of.’
Anne’s laugh, as blithe and irresistible as of yore, with an added note of sweetness and maturity, rang through the garret. Marilla in the kitchen below, compounding blue-plum preserve, heard it and smiled; then sighed to think how seldom that dear laugh would echo through Green Gables in the years to come. Nothing in her life had ever given Marilla so much happiness as the knowledge that Anne was going to marry Gilbert Blythe; but every joy must bring with it its little shadow of sorrow. During the three Summerside years Anne had been home often for vacations and week-ends; but after this a bi-annual visit would be as much as could be hoped for.
‘You needn’t let what Mrs Harmon says worry you,’ said Diana, with the calm assurance of the four-years matron. ‘Married life has its ups and downs, of course. You mustn’t expect that everything will always go smoothly. But I can assure you, Anne, that it’s a happy life, when you’re married to the right man.’
Anne smothered a smile. Diana’s airs of vast experience always amused her a little.
‘I dare say I’ll be putting them on too, when I’ve been married four years,’ she thought. ‘Surely my sense of humour will preserve me from it, though.’
‘Is it settled yet where you are going to live?’ asked Diana, cuddling Small Anne Cordelia with the inimitable gesture of motherhood which always sent through Anne’s heart, filled with sweet, unuttered dreams and hopes, a thrill that was half pure pleasure and half a strange, ethereal pain.
‘Yes. That was what I wanted to tell you when I phoned to you to come down today. By the way, I can’t realize that we really have telephones in Avonlea now. It sounds so preposterously up-to-date and modernish for this darling, leisurely old place.’
‘We can thank the A.V.I.S. for them,’ said Diana. ‘We should never have got the line if they hadn’t taken the matter up and carried it through. There was enough cold water thrown to discourage any society. But they stuck to it, nevertheless. You did a splendid thing for Avonlea when you founded that society, Anne. What fun we did have at
our
meetings! Will you ever forget the blue hall and Judson Parker’s scheme for painting medicine advertisements on his fence?’
‘I don’t know that I’m wholly grateful to the A.V.I.S. in the matter of the telephone,’ said Anne. ‘Oh, I know it’s most convenient – even more so than our old device of signalling to each other by flashes of candlelight! And, as Mrs Rachel says, “Avonlea must keep up with the procession, that’s what.” But somehow I feel as if I don’t want Avonlea spoiled by what Mr Harrison, when he wants to be witty, calls “modern inconveniences”. I should like to have it kept always just as it was in the dear old years. That’s foolish – and sentimental – and impossible. So I shall immediately become wise and practical and possible. The telephone, as Mr Harrison concedes, is “a buster of a good thing” – even if you do know that probably half a dozen interested people are listening along the line.’
‘That’s the worst of it,’ sighed Diana. ‘It’s so annoying to hear the receivers going down whenever you ring anyone up. They say Mrs Harmon Andrews insisted that their phone should be put in their kitchen just so that she could listen whenever it rang and keep an eye on the dinner at the same time. Today, when you called me, I distinctly heard that queer clock of the Pyes’ striking. So no doubt Josie or Gertie was listening.’