The Complete Anne of Green (112 page)

‘I am not a B.A.,’ said Rebecca, with awful humility, ‘and I do not deny your right to use words I cannot always understand. Neither do I deny that you can wind people round your little finger. Look how you managed the Pringles. But I do say I pity you if you take that iceberg and nutmeg-grater combined home with you for Christmas.’

Anne was by no means as confident as she pretended to be during her walk to Temple Street. Katherine Brooke had really been unbearable of late. Again and again Anne, rebuffed, had said, as grimly as Poe’s raven, ‘Nevermore!’ Only yesterday Katherine had been positively insulting at a staff meeting. But in an unguarded moment Anne had seen something looking out of the older girl’s eyes, a passionate, half-frantic something like a caged creature mad with discontent. Anne had spent the first half of the night trying to decide whether to invite Katherine Brooke to Green Gables or not. Finally she fell asleep with her mind irrevocably made up.

Katherine’s landlady showed Anne into the parlour, and shrugged a fat shoulder when she asked for Miss Brooke.

‘I’ll tell her you’re here, but I dunno if she’ll come down. She’s sulking. I told her at dinner tonight that Mrs Rawlins says it’s scandalous the way she dresses for a teacher in Summerside High, and she took it high-and-mighty as usual.’

‘I don’t think you should have told Miss Brooke that,’ said Anne reproachfully.

‘But I thought she ought to know,’ said Mrs Dennis somewhat waspishly.

‘Did you also think she ought to know that the Inspector said she was one of the best teachers in the Maritimes?’ asked Anne. ‘Or didn’t you know it?’

‘Oh, I heard it. But she’s stuck up enough now without making her any worse. Proud’s no name for it – though what she’s got to be proud of
I
dunno. Of course, she was mad anyhow tonight, because I’d said she couldn’t have a dog. She’s took a notion into her head she’d like to have a dog. Said she’d pay for his rations and see he was no bother. But what’d I do with him when she was in school? I put my foot down. “I’m boarding no dogs,” sez I.’

‘Oh, Mrs Dennis, won’t you let her have a dog? He wouldn’t bother you – much. You could keep him in the basement while she was in school. And a dog really is such a protection at night. I wish you would –
please
!’

There was always something about Anne Shirley’s eyes when she said ‘please’ that people found hard to resist. Mrs Dennis, in spite of fat shoulders and a meddlesome tongue, was not unkind at heart. Katherine Brooke simply got under her skin at times with her ungracious ways.

‘I dunno why you should worry as to her having a dog or not. I didn’t know you were such friends. She hasn’t
any
friends. I never had such an unsociable boarder.’

‘I think that is why she wants a dog, Mrs Dennis. None of us can live without some kind of companionship.’

‘Well, it’s the first human thing I’ve noticed about her,’ said Mrs Dennis. ‘I dunno’s I have any awful objection to a dog, but she sort of vexed me with her sarcastic way of asking. “I s’pose you wouldn’t consent if I asked you if I might have a dog, Mrs Dennis?” she sez, haughty-like. Set her up with it! “You’re s’posing right,” sez I, as haughty as herself. I don’t like eating my words any more than most people, but you can tell her she can have a dog if she’ll guarantee he won’t misbehave in the parlour.’

Anne did not think the parlour could be much the worse if the dog did misbehave. She eyed the dingy lace curtains and the hideous purple roses on the carpet with a shiver.

‘I’m sorry for anyone who has to spend Christmas in a boarding-house like this,’ she thought. ‘I don’t wonder Katherine hates the word. I’d like to give this place a good airing. It smells of a thousand meals.
Why
does Katherine go on boarding here when she has a good salary?’

‘She says you can come up,’ was the message Mrs Dennis brought back, rather dubiously, for Miss Brooke had run true to form.

The narrow, steep stair was repellent. It didn’t want you. Nobody would go up who didn’t have to. The linoleum in the hall was worn to shreds. The little back hall bedroom where Anne presently found herself was even more cheerless than the parlour. It was lit by one glaring, unshaded gas-jet. There was an iron bed with a valley in the middle of it, and a narrow, sparsely draped window looking out on a backyard garden where a large crop of tin cans flourished. But beyond it was a marvellous sky and a row of Lombardies standing out against long purple, distant hills.

‘Oh, Miss Brooke, look at that sunset!’ said Anne rapturously from the squeaky, cushionless rocker to which Katherine had ungraciously pointed her.

‘I’ve seen a good many sunsets,’ said the latter coldly, without moving. ‘Condescending to me with your sunsets!’ she thought bitterly.

‘You haven’t seen this one. No two sunsets are alike. Just sit down here and let us let it sink into our souls,’
said
Anne.
Thought
Anne, ‘Do you
ever
say anything pleasant?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, please!’

The most insulting words in the world! With an added edge of insult in Katherine’s contemptuous tones. Anne turned from her sunset and looked at Katherine, much more than half inclined to get up and walk out. But Katherine’s eyes looked a trifle strange.
Had
she been crying? Surely not. You couldn’t imagine Katherine Brooke crying.

‘You don’t make me feel very welcome,’ Anne said slowly.

‘I can’t pretend things. I haven’t
your
notable gift for doing the queen act: saying exactly the right thing to everyone. You’re
not
welcome. What sort of a room is this to welcome anyone to?’

Katherine made a scornful gesture at the faded walls, the shabby, bare chairs, and the wobbly dressing-table with its petticoat of limp muslin.

‘It isn’t a nice room, but why do you stay here if you don’t like it?’

‘Oh, why, why?
You
wouldn’t understand. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what anybody thinks. What brought you here tonight? I don’t suppose you came just to soak in the sunset.’

‘I came to ask if you would spend the Christmas holidays with me at Green Gables.’

‘Now,’ thought Anne, ‘for another broadside of sarcasm! I do wish she’d sit down at least. She just stands there as if waiting for me to go.’

But there was silence for a moment. Then Katherine said slowly, ‘Why do you ask me? It isn’t because you like me. Even you couldn’t pretend
that
.’

‘It’s because I can’t bear to think of any human being spending Christmas in a place like
this
,’ said Anne candidly.

The sarcasm came then. ‘Oh, I see. A seasonable outburst of charity. I’m hardly a candidate for that
yet
, Miss Shirley.’

Anne got up. She was out of patience with this strange, aloof creature. She walked across the room and looked Katherine squarely in the eye. ‘Katherine Brooke, whether you know it or not, what
you
want is a good spanking.’

They gazed at each other for a moment.

‘It must have relieved you to say that,’ said Katherine. But somehow the insulting tone had gone out of her voice. There was even a faint twitch at the corners of her mouth.

‘It has,’ said Anne. ‘I’ve been wanting to tell you just that for some time. I didn’t ask you to Green Gables out of charity; you know that perfectly well. I told you my true reason.
Nobody
ought to spend Christmas here. The very idea is indecent.’

‘You asked me to Green Gables just because you are sorry for me.’

‘I
am
sorry for you. Because you’ve shut out life – and now life is shutting you out. Stop it, Katherine. Open your doors to life, and life will come in.’

‘The Anne Shirley version of the old bromide:

If you bring a smiling visage

To the glass you meet a smile,’

said Katherine, with a shrug.

‘Like all bromides, that’s absolutely true. Now, are you coming to Green Gables, or are you not?’

‘What would you say if I accepted – to yourself, not to me?’

‘I’d say you were showing the first faint glimmer of common sense I’d ever detected in you,’ retorted Anne.

Katherine laughed, surprisingly. She walked across to the window, scowled at the fiery streak, which was all that was left of the scorned sunset, and then turned.

‘Very well; I’ll go. Now you can go through the motions of telling me you’re delighted, and that we’ll have a jolly time.’

‘I
am
delighted. But I don’t know if you’ll have a jolly time or not. That will depend a good deal on yourself, Miss Brooke.’

‘Oh, I’ll behave myself decently. You’ll be surprised. You won’t find me a very exhilarating guest, I suppose, but I promise you I won’t eat with my knife, or insult people when they tell me it’s a fine day. I tell you frankly that the only reason I’m going is because even I can’t stick the thought of spending the holidays here alone. Mrs Dennis is going to spend Christmas week with her daughter in Charlottetown. It’s a bore to think of getting my own meals. I’m a rotten cook. So much for the triumph of matter over mind. But will you give me your word of honour that you won’t wish me a merry Christmas? I just don’t want to be merry at Christmas.’

‘I won’t. But I can’t answer for the twins.’

‘I’m not going to ask you to sit down here. You’d freeze. But I see that there’s a very fine moon in place of your sunset, and I’ll walk home with you and help you to admire it, if you like.’

‘I do like,’ said Anne. ‘But I want to impress on your mind that we have
much
finer moons in Avonlea.’

‘So she’s going?’ said Rebecca Dew, as she filled Anne’s hot-water bottle. ‘Well, Miss Shirley, I hope you’ll never try to induce me to turn Mohammedan – because you’d likely succeed. Where
is
That Cat? Out frisking round Summerside, and the weather at zero.’

‘Not by the new thermometer. And Dusty Miller is curled up on the rocking-chair by my stove in the tower, snoring with happiness.’

‘Ah, well,’ said Rebecca Dew, with a little shiver, as she shut the kitchen door, ‘I wish everyone in the world was as warm and sheltered as we are tonight.’

5

Anne did not know that out of one of the mansard windows of the Evergreens a wistful little Elizabeth was watching her drive away from Windy Willows, an Elizabeth with tears in her eyes who felt as if everything that made life worth living had gone out of her life for the time being, and that she was the very Lizziest of Lizzies. But when the livery sleigh vanished from her sight round the corner of Spook’s Lane Elizabeth went and knelt down by her bed.

‘Dear God,’ she whispered, ‘I know it isn’t any use to ask You for a Merry Christmas for me, because Grandmother and the Woman couldn’t be merry. But please let my dear Miss Shirley have a merry, merry Christmas, and bring her back safe to me when it’s over.’

‘Now,’ said Elizabeth, getting up from her knees, ‘I’ve done all that I can.’

Anne was already tasting Christmas happiness. She fairly sparkled as the train left the station. The ugly streets slipped past her. She was going home – home to Green Gables. Out in the open country the world was all golden-white and pale violet, woven here and there with the dark magic of spruces and the leafless delicacy of birches. The low sun behind the bare woods seemed rushing through the trees like a splendid god as the train sped on. Katherine was silent, but did not seem ungracious.

‘Don’t expect me to talk,’ she had warned Anne curtly.

‘I won’t. I hope you don’t think I’m one of those terrible people who make you feel that you
have
to talk to them all the time. We’ll just talk when we feel like it. I admit I’m likely to feel like it a good part of the time, but you’re under no obligation to take any notice of what I’m saying.’

Davy met them at Bright river with a big two-seated sleigh full of furry robes, and a bear hug for Anne. The two girls snuggled down in the back seat. The drive from the station to Green Gables had always been a very pleasant part of Anne’s week-ends home. She always recalled her first drive home from Bright river with Matthew. That had been in late spring, and this was December, but everything along the road kept saying to her, ‘Do you remember?’ The snow crisped under the runners; the music of the bells tinkled through the ranks of tall, pointed firs, snow-laden. The White Way of Delight had little festoons of stars tangled in the trees. And on the last hill but one they saw the great Gulf white and mystical under the moon, but not yet ice-bound.

‘There’s just one spot on this road where I always feel suddenly, “I’m
home
,”’ said Anne. ‘It’s the top of the next hill, where we’ll see the lights of Green Gables. I’m just thinking of the supper Marilla will have ready for us. I believe I can smell it here. Oh, it’s good – good – good to be home again!’

At Green Gables every tree in the yard seemed to welcome her back, every lighted window was beckoning. And how good Marilla’s kitchen smelled as they opened the door! There were hugs and exclamations and laughter. Even Katherine seemed somehow no outsider, but one of them. Mrs Rachel Lynde had set her cherished parlour lamp on the supper-table and had lit it. It was really a hideous thing with a hideous red globe, but what a warm, rosy, becoming light it cast over everything! How warm and friendly were the shadows! How pretty Dora was growing! And Davy really seemed almost a man.

There was news to tell. Diana had a small daughter; Josie Pye actually had a young man; and Charlie Sloane was said to be engaged. It was all just as exciting as news of empire could have been. Mrs Lynde’s new patchwork quilt, just complete, containing five thousand pieces, was on display, and received its meed of praise.

‘When you come home, Anne,’ said Davy, ‘everything seems to come alive.’

‘Ah, this is how life should be,’ purred Dora’s kitten.

‘I’ve always found it hard to resist the lure of a moonlight night,’ said Anne after supper. ‘How about a snow-shoe tramp, Miss Brooke? I think I’ve heard you snow-shoe.’