The Complete Anne of Green (40 page)

Read The Complete Anne of Green Online

Authors: L. M. Montgomery

Tags: #Study Aids, #Book Notes, #Juvenile Fiction, #Biographical, #Canada, #Family, #Adoption, #General, #Schools, #Girls & Women, #Teachers, #Fiction, #Classics, #Social Issues, #Historical

BOOK: The Complete Anne of Green
2.73Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

 

      "Nonsense!" Anne laughed merrily. "There is no sacrifice. Nothing could be worse than giving up Green Gables--nothing could hurt me more. We must keep the dear old place. My mind is quite made up, Marilla. I'm NOT going to Redmond; and I AM going to stay here and teach. Don't you worry about me a bit."

 

      "But your ambitions--and--"

 

      "I'm just as ambitious as ever. Only, I've changed the object of my ambitions. I'm going to be a good teacher--and I'm going to save your eyesight. Besides, I mean to study at home here and take a little college course all by myself. Oh, I've dozens of plans, Marilla. I've been thinking them out for a week. I shall give life here my best, and I believe it will give its best to me in return. When I left Queen's my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend, Marilla. I wonder how the road beyond it goes--what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows--what new landscapes--what new beauties--what curves and hills and valleys further on."

 

      "I don't feel as if I ought to let you give it up," said Marilla, referring to the scholarship.

 

      "But you can't prevent me. I'm sixteen and a half, `obstinate as a mule,' as Mrs. Lynde once told me," laughed Anne. "Oh, Marilla, don't you go pitying me. I don't like to be pitied, and there is no need for it. I'm heart glad over the very thought of staying at dear Green Gables. Nobody could love it as you and I do--so we must keep it."

 

      "You blessed girl!" said Marilla, yielding. "I feel as if you'd given me new life. I guess I ought to stick out and make you go to college--but I know I can't, so I ain't going to try. I'll make it up to you though, Anne."

 

      When it became noised abroad in Avonlea that Anne Shirley had given up the idea of going to college and intended to stay home and teach there was a good deal of discussion over it. Most of the good folks, not knowing about Marilla's eyes, thought she was foolish. Mrs. Allan did not. She told Anne so in approving words that brought tears of pleasure to the girl's eyes. Neither did good Mrs. Lynde. She came up one evening and found Anne and Marilla sitting at the front door in the warm, scented summer dusk. They liked to sit there when the twilight came down and the white moths flew about in the garden and the odor of mint filled the dewy air.

 

      Mrs. Rachel deposited her substantial person upon the stone bench by the door, behind which grew a row of tall pink and yellow hollyhocks, with a long breath of mingled weariness and relief.

 

      "I declare I'm getting glad to sit down. I've been on my feet all day, and two hundred pounds is a good bit for two feet to carry round. It's a great blessing not to be fat, Marilla. I hope you appreciate it. Well, Anne, I hear you've given up your notion of going to college. I was real glad to hear it. You've got as much education now as a woman can be comfortable with. I don't believe in girls going to college with the men and cramming their heads full of Latin and Greek and all that nonsense."

 

      "But I'm going to study Latin and Greek just the same, Mrs. Lynde," said Anne laughing. "I'm going to take my Arts course right here at Green Gables, and study everything that I would at college."

 

      Mrs. Lynde lifted her hands in holy horror.

 

      "Anne Shirley, you'll kill yourself."

 

      "Not a bit of it. I shall thrive on it. Oh, I'm not going to overdo things. As `Josiah Allen's wife,' says, I shall be `mejum'. But I'll have lots of spare time in the long winter evenings, and I've no vocation for fancy work. I'm going to teach over at Carmody, you know."

 

      "I don't know it. I guess you're going to teach right here in Avonlea. The trustees have decided to give you the school."

 

      "Mrs. Lynde!" cried Anne, springing to her feet in her surprise. "Why, I thought they had promised it to Gilbert Blythe!"

 

      "So they did. But as soon as Gilbert heard that you had applied for it he went to them--they had a business meeting at the school last night, you know--and told them that he withdrew his application, and suggested that they accept yours. He said he was going to teach at White Sands. Of course he knew how much you wanted to stay with Marilla, and I must say I think it was real kind and thoughtful in him, that's what. Real self-sacrificing, too, for he'll have his board to pay at White Sands, and everybody knows he's got to earn his own way through college. So the trustees decided to take you. I was tickled to death when Thomas came home and told me."

 

      "I don't feel that I ought to take it," murmured Anne. "I mean--I don't think I ought to let Gilbert make such a sacrifice for--for me."

 

      "I guess you can't prevent him now. He's signed papers with the White Sands trustees. So it wouldn't do him any good now if you were to refuse. Of course you'll take the school. You'll get along all right, now that there are no Pyes going. Josie was the last of them, and a good thing she was, that's what. There's been some Pye or other going to Avonlea school for the last twenty years, and I guess their mission in life was to keep school teachers reminded that earth isn't their home. Bless my heart! What does all that winking and blinking at the Barry gable mean?"

 

      "Diana is signaling for me to go over," laughed Anne. "You know we keep up the old custom. Excuse me while I run over and see what she wants."

 

      Anne ran down the clover slope like a deer, and disappeared in the firry shadows of the Haunted Wood. Mrs. Lynde looked after her indulgently.

 

      "There's a good deal of the child about her yet in some ways."

 

      "There's a good deal more of the woman about her in others," retorted Marilla, with a momentary return of her old crispness.

 

      But crispness was no longer Marilla's distinguishing characteristic. As Mrs. Lynde told her Thomas that night.

 

      "Marilla Cuthbert has got MELLOW. That's what."

 

      Anne went to the little Avonlea graveyard the next evening to put fresh flowers on Matthew's grave and water the Scotch rosebush. She lingered there until dusk, liking the peace and calm of the little place, with its poplars whose rustle was like low, friendly speech, and its whispering grasses growing at will among the graves. When she finally left it and walked down the long hill that sloped to the Lake of Shining Waters it was past sunset and all Avonlea lay before her in a dreamlike afterlight--"a haunt of ancient peace." There was a freshness in the air as of a wind that had blown over honey-sweet fields of clover. Home lights twinkled out here and there among the homestead trees. Beyond lay the sea, misty and purple, with its haunting, unceasing murmur. The west was a glory of soft mingled hues, and the pond reflected them all in still softer shadings. The beauty of it all thrilled Anne's heart, and she gratefully opened the gates of her soul to it.

 

      "Dear old world," she murmured, "you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you."

 

      Halfway down the hill a tall lad came whistling out of a gate before the Blythe homestead. It was Gilbert, and the whistle died on his lips as he recognized Anne. He lifted his cap courteously, but he would have passed on in silence, if Anne had not stopped and held out her hand.

 

      "Gilbert," she said, with scarlet cheeks, "I want to thank you for giving up the school for me. It was very good of you--and I want you to know that I appreciate it."

 

      Gilbert took the offered hand eagerly.

 

      "It wasn't particularly good of me at all, Anne. I was pleased to be able to do you some small service. Are we going to be friends after this? Have you really forgiven me my old fault?"

 

      Anne laughed and tried unsuccessfully to withdraw her hand.

 

      "I forgave you that day by the pond landing, although I didn't know it. What a stubborn little goose I was. I've been--I may as well make a complete confession--I've been sorry ever since."

 

      "We are going to be the best of friends," said Gilbert, jubilantly. "We were born to be good friends, Anne. You've thwarted destiny enough. I know we can help each other in many ways. You are going to keep up your studies, aren't you? So am I. Come, I'm going to walk home with you."

 

      Marilla looked curiously at Anne when the latter entered the kitchen.

 

      "Who was that came up the lane with you, Anne?"

 

      "Gilbert Blythe," answered Anne, vexed to find herself blushing. "I met him on Barry's hill."

 

      "I didn't think you and Gilbert Blythe were such good friends that you'd stand for half an hour at the gate talking to him," said Marilla with a dry smile.

 

      "We haven't been--we've been good enemies. But we have decided that it will be much more sensible to be good friends in the future. Were we really there half an hour? It seemed just a few minutes. But, you see, we have five years' lost conversations to catch up with, Marilla."

 

      Anne sat long at her window that night companioned by a glad content. The wind purred softly in the cherry boughs, and the mint breaths came up to her. The stars twinkled over the pointed firs in the hollow and Diana's light gleamed through the old gap.

 

      Anne's horizons had closed in since the night she had sat there after coming home from Queen's; but if the path set before her feet was to be narrow she knew that flowers of quiet happiness would bloom along it. The joy of sincere work and worthy aspiration and congenial friendship were to be hers; nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy or her ideal world of dreams. And there was always the bend in the road!

 

      "`God's in his heaven, all's right with the world,'" whispered Anne softly.

 

     
Anne of Avonlea
L. M. Montgomery

To my former teacher

HATTIE GORDON SMITH

in grateful remembrance of her sympathy and encouragement

Flowers spring to blossom where she walks

The careful ways of duty
,

Our hard, stiff lines of life with her

Are flowing curves of beauty
.

—
WHITTIER

Contents

 

I
An Irate Neighbor

II
Selling in Haste and Repenting at Leisure

III
Mr. Harrison at Home

IV
Different Opinions

V
A Full-fledged Schoolma’am

VI
All Sorts and Conditions of Men…and Women

VII
The Pointing of Duty

VIII
Marilla Adopts Twins

IX
A Question of Color

X
Davy in Search of a Sensation

XI
Facts and Fancies

XII
A Jonah Day

XIII
A Golden Picnic

XIV
A Danger Averted

XV
The Beginning of Vacation

XVI
The Substance of Things Hoped For

XVII
A Chapter of Accidents

XVIII
An Adventure on the Tory Road

XIX
Just a Happy Day

XX
The Way It Often Happens

XXI
Sweet Miss Lavendar

XXII
Odds and Ends

XXIII
Miss Lavendar’s Romance

XXIV
A Prophet in His Own Country

XXV
An Avonlea Scandal

XXVI
Round the Bend

XXVII
An Afternoon at the Stone House

XXVIII
The Prince Comes Back to the Enchanted Palace

XXIX
Poetry and Prose

XXX
A Wedding at the Stone House

 

I
An Irate Neighbor

A TALL, SLIM
girl, “half-past sixteen,” with serious gray eyes and hair which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil.

But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes, little winds whispering elfishly in the poplars, and a dancing splendor of red poppies outflaming against the dark coppice of young firs in a corner of the cherry orchard was fitter for dreams than dead languages. The Virgil soon slipped unheeded to the ground, and Anne, her chin propped on her clasped hands, and her eyes on the splendid mass of fluffy clouds that were heaping up just over Mr. J. A. Harrison’s house like a great white mountain, was far away in a delicious world where a certain schoolteacher was doing a wonderful work,
shaping the destinies of future statesmen, and inspiring youthful minds and hearts with high and lofty ambitions.

To be sure, if you came down to harsh facts…which, it must be confessed, Anne seldom did until she had to…it did not seem likely that there was much promising material for celebrities in Avonlea school; but you could never tell what might happen if a teacher used her influence for good. Anne had certain rose-tinted ideals of what a teacher might accomplish if she only went the right way about it; and she was in the midst of a delightful scene, forty years hence, with a famous personage…just exactly what he was to be famous for was left in convenient haziness, but Anne thought it would be rather nice to have him a college president or a Canadian premier…bowing low over her wrinkled hand and assuring her that it was she who had first kindled his ambition, and that all his success in life was due to the lessons she had instilled so long ago in Avonlea school. This pleasant vision was shattered by a most unpleasant interruption.

A demure little Jersey cow came scuttling down the lane, and, five seconds later Mr. Harrison arrived…if “arrived” be not too mild a term to describe the manner of his irruption into the yard.

He bounced over the fence without waiting to open the gate, and angrily confronted astonished Anne, who had risen to her feet and stood looking at him in some bewilderment. Mr. Harrison was their new right-hand neighbor, and she had never met him before, although she had seen him once or twice.

In early April, before Anne had come home from Queen’s, Mr. Robert Bell, whose farm adjoined the Cuthbert place on the
west, had sold out and moved to Charlottetown. His farm had been bought by a certain Mr. J. A. Harrison; whose name, and the fact that he was a New Brunswick man, were all that was known about him. But before he had been a month in Avonlea he had won the reputation of being an odd person…“a crank” Mrs. Rachel Lynde said. Mrs. Rachel was an outspoken lady, as those of you who may have already made her acquaintance will remember. Mr. Harrison was certainly different from other people…and that is the essential characteristic of a crank, as everybody knows.

In the first place he kept house for himself and had publicly stated that he wanted no fools of women around his diggings. Feminine Avonlea took its revenge by the gruesome tales it related about his housekeeping and cooking. He had hired little John Henry Carter of White Sands, and John Henry started the stories. For one thing, there was never any stated time for meals in the Harrison establishment. Mr. Harrison “got a bite” when he felt hungry, and if John Henry were around at the time, he came in for a share, but if he were not, he had to wait until Mr. Harrison’s next hungry spell. John Henry mournfully averred that he would have starved to death if it wasn’t that he got home on Sundays and got a good filling up, and that his mother always gave him a basket of “grub” to take back with him on Monday mornings.

As for washing dishes, Mr. Harrison never made any pretense of doing it unless a rainy Sunday came. Then he went to work and washed them all at once in the rainwater hogshead, and left them to drain dry.

Again, Mr. Harrison was “close.” When he was asked to sub
scribe to the Rev. Mr. Allan’s salary he said he’d wait and see how many dollars’ worth of good he got out of his preaching first
…he
didn’t believe in buying a pig in a poke. And when Mrs. Lynde went to ask for a contribution to missions…and incidentally to see the inside of the house…he told her there were more heathens among the old woman gossips in Avonlea than anywhere else he knew of, and he’d cheerfully contribute to a mission for Christianizing them if she’d undertake it. Mrs. Rachel got herself away and said it was a mercy poor Mrs. Robert Bell was safe in her grave, for it would have broken her heart to see the state of her house in which she used to take so much pride.

“Why, she scrubbed the kitchen floor every second day,” Mrs. Lynde told Marilla Cuthbert indignantly, “and if you could see it now! I had to hold up my skirts as I walked across it.”

Finally, Mr. Harrison kept a parrot called Ginger. Nobody in Avonlea had ever kept a parrot before; consequently that proceeding was considered barely respectable. And such a parrot! If you took John Henry Carter’s word for it, never was such an unholy bird. It swore terribly. Mrs. Carter would have taken John Henry away at once if she had been sure she could get another place for him. Besides, Ginger had bitten a piece right out of the back of John Henry’s neck one day when he had stooped down too near the cage. Mrs. Carter showed everybody the mark when the luckless John Henry went home on Sundays.

All these things flashed through Anne’s mind as Mr. Harrison stood, quite speechless with wrath apparently, before her.
In his most amiable mood Mr. Harrison could not have been considered a handsome man; he was short and fat and bald; and now, with his round face purple with rage and his prominent blue eyes almost sticking out of his head, Anne thought he was really the ugliest person she had ever seen.

All at once Mr. Harrison found his voice.

“I’m not going to put up with this,” he spluttered, “not a day longer, do you hear, miss. Bless my soul, this is the third time, miss…the third time! Patience has ceased to be a virtue, miss. I warned your aunt the last time not to let it occur again…and she’s let it…she’s done it…what does she mean by it, that is what I want to know. That is what I’m here about, miss.”

“Will you explain what the trouble is?” asked Anne, in her most dignified manner. She had been practicing it considerably of late to have it in good working order when school began; but it had no apparent effect on the irate J. A. Harrison.

“Trouble, is it? Bless my soul, trouble enough, I should think. The trouble is, miss, that I found that Jersey cow of your aunt’s in my oats again, not half an hour ago. The third time, mark you. I found her in last Tuesday and I found her in yesterday. I came here and told your aunt not to let it occur again. She
has
let it occur again. Where’s your aunt, miss? I just want to see her for a minute and give her a piece of my mind…a piece of J. A. Harrison’s mind, miss.”

“If you mean Miss Marilla Cuthbert, she is
not
my aunt, and she has gone down to East Grafton to see a distant relative of hers who is very ill,” said Anne, with due increase of dignity at every word. “I am very sorry that my cow should have broken into your oats…she
is
my cow and not Miss Cuthbert’s…
Matthew gave her to me three years ago when she was a little calf and he bought her from Mr. Bell.”

“Sorry, miss! Sorry isn’t going to help matters any. You’d better go and look at the havoc that animal has made in my oats…trampled them from center to circumference, miss.”

“I am very sorry,” repeated Anne firmly, “but perhaps if you kept your fences in better repair Dolly might not have broken in. It is your part of the line fence that separates your oatfield from our pasture, and I noticed the other day that it was not in very good condition.”

“My fence is all right,” snapped Mr. Harrison, angrier than ever at this carrying of the war into the enemy’s country. “The jail fence couldn’t keep a demon of a cow like that out. And I can tell you, you redheaded snippet, that if the cow is yours, as you say, you’d be better employed in watching her out of other people’s grain than in sitting round reading yellow-covered novels”…with a scathing glance at the innocent tan-colored Virgil by Anne’s feet.

Something at that moment was red besides Anne’s hair…which had always been a tender point with her.

“I’d rather have red hair than none at all, except a little fringe round my ears,” she flashed.

The shot told, for Mr. Harrison was really very sensitive about his bald head. His anger choked him up again, and he could only glare speechlessly at Anne, who recovered her temper and followed up her advantage.

“I can make allowance for you, Mr. Harrison, because I have an imagination. I can easily imagine how very trying it must be to find a cow in your oats, and I shall not cherish any hard feel
ings against you for the things you’ve said. I promise you that Dolly shall never break into your oats again. I give you my word of honor on
that
point.”

“Well, mind you she doesn’t,” muttered Mr. Harrison in a somewhat subdued tone; but he stamped off angrily enough, and Anne heard him growling to himself until he was out of earshot.

Grievously disturbed in mind, Anne marched across the yard and shut the naughty Jersey up in the milking pen.

“She can’t possibly get out of that unless she tears the fence down,” she reflected. “She looks pretty quiet now. I daresay she has sickened herself on those oats. I wish I’d sold her to Mr. Shearer when he wanted her last week, but I thought it was just as well to wait until we had the auction of the stock and let them all go together. I believe it is true about Mr. Harrison being a crank. Certainly there’s nothing of the kindred spirit about
him
.”

Anne had always a weather eye open for kindred spirits.

Marilla Cuthbert was driving into the yard as Anne returned from the house, and the latter flew to get tea ready. They discussed the matter at the tea table.

“I’ll be glad when the auction is over,” said Marilla. “It is too much responsibility having so much stock about the place and nobody but that unreliable Martin to look after them. He has never come back yet, and he promised that he would certainly be back last night if I’d give him the day off to go to his aunt’s funeral. I don’t know how many aunts he has got, I am sure. That’s the fourth that’s died since he hired here a year ago. I’ll be more than thankful when the crop is in and Mr. Barry takes
over the farm. We’ll have to keep Dolly shut up in the pen till Martin comes, for she must be put in the back pasture, and the fences there have to be fixed. I declare it is a world of trouble, as Rachel says. Here’s poor Mary Keith dying, and what is to become of those two children of hers is more than I know. She has a brother in British Columbia and she has written to him about them, but she hasn’t heard from him yet.”

“What are the children like? How old are they?”

“Six past…they’re twins.”

“Oh, I’ve always been especially interested in twins ever since Mrs. Hammond had so many,” said Anne eagerly. “Are they pretty?”

“Goodness, you couldn’t tell…they were too dirty. Davy had been out making mud pies and Dora went out to call him in. Davy pushed her headfirst into the biggest pie and then, because she cried, he got into it himself and wallowed in it to show her it was nothing to cry about. Mary said Dora was really a very good child, but that Davy was full of mischief. He has never had any bringing up, you might say. His father died when he was a baby and Mary has been sick almost ever since.”

“I’m always sorry for children that have no bringing up,” said Anne soberly. “You know I hadn’t any till you took me in hand. I hope their uncle will look after them. Just what relation is Mrs. Keith to you?”

“Mary? None in the world. It was her husband…he was our third cousin. There’s Mrs. Lynde coming through the yard. I thought she’d be up to hear about Mary.”

“Don’t tell her about Mr. Harrison and the cow,” implored Anne.

Marilla promised; but the promise was quite unnecessary, for Mrs. Lynde was no sooner fairly seated than she said:

“I saw Mr. Harrison chasing your Jersey out of his oats today when I was coming home from Carmody. I thought he looked pretty mad. Did he make much of a rumpus?”

Anne and Marilla furtively exchanged amused smiles. Few things in Avonlea ever escaped Mrs. Lynde. It was only that morning Anne had said: “If you went to your own room at midnight, locked the door, pulled down the blind, and
sneezed
, Mrs. Lynde would ask you the next day how your cold was!”

“I believe he did,” admitted Marilla. “I was away. He gave Anne a piece of his mind.”

“I think he is a very disagreeable man,” said Anne, with a resentful toss of her ruddy head.

“You never said a truer word,” said Mrs. Rachel solemnly. “I knew there’d be trouble when Robert Bell sold his place to a New Brunswick man, that’s what. I don’t know what. Avonlea is coming to, with so many strange people rushing into it. It’ll soon not be safe to go to sleep in our beds.”

“Why, what other strangers are coming in?” asked Marilla.

“Haven’t you heard? Well, there’s a family of Donnells, for one thing. They’ve rented Peter Sloane’s old house. Peter has hired the man to run his mill. They belong down east and nobody knows anything about them. Then that shiftless Timothy Cotton family are going to move up from White Sands, and they’ll simply be a burden on the public. He is in consumption…when he isn’t stealing…and his wife is a slack-twisted creature that can’t turn her hand to a thing. She washes her dishes
sitting down
. Mrs. George Pye has taken her husband’s orphan
nephew, Anthony Pye. He’ll be going to school to you, Anne, so you many expect trouble, that’s what. And you’ll have another strange pupil, too. Paul Irving is coming from the States to live with his grandmother. You remember his father, Marilla…Stephen Irving, him that jilted Lavendar Lewis over at Grafton?”

“I don’t think he jilted her. There was a quarrel…I suppose there was blame on both sides.”

Other books

Destiny and Deception by Shannon Delany
Dark Oil by Nora James
Disciplining Little Abby by Serafine Laveaux
Pink Slip Prophet by Donnelly, George
Shadow and claw by Gene Wolfe
Desires of a Baron by Gordon, Rose
Ghost Stalker by Jenna Kernan