The Complete Anne of Green (46 page)

“No, he would never dream of such a thing. Paul is a perfect little gentleman.”

Davy screwed his eyes tight shut and seemed to meditate on this for a time. Then he crawled up and put his arms about Anne’s neck, snuggling his flushed little face down on her shoulder.

“Anne, don’t you like me a little bit, even if I ain’t a good boy like Paul?”

“Indeed I do,” said Anne sincerely. Somehow, it was impossible to help liking Davy. “But I’d like you better still if you weren’t so naughty.”

“I…did something else today,” went on Davy in a muffled voice. “I’m sorry now but I’m awful scared to tell you. You won’t be very cross, will you? And you won’t tell Marilla, will you?”

“I don’t know, Davy. Perhaps I ought to tell her. But I think I can promise you I won’t if you promise me that you will never do it again, whatever it is.”

“No, I never will. Anyhow, it’s not likely I’d find any more of them this year. I found this one on the cellar steps.”

“Davy, what is it you’ve done?”

“I put a toad in Marilla’s bed. You can go and take it out
if you like. But say, Anne, wouldn’t it be fun to leave it there?”

“Davy Keith!” Anne sprang from Davy’s clinging arms and flew across the hall to Marilla’s room. The bed was slightly rumpled. She threw back the blankets in nervous haste and there in very truth was the toad, blinking at her from under a pillow.

“How can I carry that awful thing out?” moaned Anne with a shudder. The fire shovel suggested itself to her and she crept down to get it while Marilla was busy in the pantry. Anne had her own troubles carrying that toad downstairs, for it hopped off the shovel three times and once she thought she had lost it in the hall. When she finally deposited it in the cherry orchard she drew a long breath of relief.

“If Marilla knew she’d never feel safe getting into bed again in her life. I’m so glad that little sinner repented in time. There’s Diana signaling to me from her window. I’m glad…I really feel the need of some diversion, for what with Anthony Pye in school and Davy Keith at home my nerves have had about all they can endure for one day.”

“
THAT OLD NUISANCE
of a Rachel Lynde was here again today, pestering me for a subscription towards buying a carpet for the vestry room,” said Mr. Harrison wrathfully. “I detest that woman more than anybody I know. She can put a whole sermon, text, comment, and application into six words and throw it at you like a brick.”

Anne, who was perched on the edge of the veranda, enjoying the charm of a mild west wind blowing across a newly ploughed field on a gray November twilight and piping a quaint little melody among the twisted firs below the garden, turned her dreamy face over her shoulder.

“The trouble is, you and Mrs. Lynde don’t understand one another,” she explained. “That is always what is wrong when people don’t like each other. I didn’t like Mrs. Lynde at first either; but as soon as I came to understand her I learned to.”

“Mrs. Lynde may be an acquired taste with some folks; but I
didn’t keep on eating bananas because I was told I’d learn to like them if I did,” growled Mr. Harrison. “And as for understanding her, I understand that she is a confirmed busybody and I told her so.”

“Oh, that must have hurt her feelings very much,” said Anne reproachfully. “How could you say such a thing?
I
said some dreadful things to Mrs. Lynde long ago but it was when I had lost my temper. I couldn’t say them
deliberately
.”

“It was the truth and I believe in telling the truth to everybody.”

“But you don’t tell the whole truth,” objected Anne. “You only tell the disagreeable part of the truth. Now, you’ve told me a dozen times that my hair was red, but you’ve never once told me that I had a nice nose.”

“I daresay you know it without any telling,” chuckled Mr. Harrison.

“I know I have red hair too…although it’s
much
darker than it used to be…so there’s no need of telling me that either.”

“Well, well, I’ll try and not mention it again since you’re so sensitive. You must excuse me, Anne. I’ve got a habit of being outspoken and folks mustn’t mind it.”

“But they can’t help minding it. And I don’t think it’s any help that it’s your habit. What would you think of a person who went about sticking pins and needles into people and saying, ‘Excuse me, you mustn’t mind it…it’s just a habit I’ve got.’ You’d think he was crazy, wouldn’t you? And as for Mrs. Lynde being a busybody, perhaps she is. But did you tell her she had a very kind heart and always helped the poor, and never said a word when Timothy Cotton stole a crock of butter out of her
dairy and told his wife he’d bought it from her? Mrs. Cotton cast it up to her the next time they met that it tasted of turnips and Mrs. Lynde just said she was sorry it had turned out so poorly.”

“I suppose she has some good qualities,” conceded Mr. Harrison grudgingly. “Most folks have. I have some myself, though you might never suspect it. But anyhow I ain’t going to give anything to that carpet. Folks are everlasting begging for money here, it seems to me. How’s your project of painting the hall coming on?”

“Splendidly. We had a meeting of the A.V.I.S. last Friday night and found that we had plenty of money subscribed to paint the hall and shingle the roof too.
Most
people gave very liberally, Mr. Harrison.”

Anne was a sweet-souled lass, but she could instill some venom into innocent italics when occasion required.

“What color are you going to have it?”

“We have decided on a very pretty green. The roof will be dark red, of course. Mr. Roger Pye is going to get the paint in town today.”

“Who’s got the job?”

“Mr. Joshua Pye of Carmody. He has nearly finished the shingling. We had to give him the contract, for every one of the Pyes…and there are four families, you know…said they wouldn’t give a cent unless Joshua got it. They had subscribed twelve dollars between them and we thought that was too much to lose, although some people think we shouldn’t have given it to the Pyes. Mrs. Lynde says they try to run everything.”

“The main question is will this Joshua do his work well. If he
does I don’t see that it matters whether his name is Pye or Pudding.”

“He has the reputation of being a good workman, though they say he’s a very peculiar man. He hardly ever talks.”

“He’s peculiar enough all right then,” said Mr. Harrison drily. “Or at least, folks here will call him so. I never was much of a talker till I came to Avonlea and then I had to begin in self-defense or Mrs. Lynde would have said I was dumb and started a subscription to have me taught sign language. You’re not going yet, Anne?”

“I must. I have some sewing to do for Dora this evening. Besides, Davy is probably breaking Marilla’s heart with some new mischief by this time. This morning the first thing he said was, ‘Where does the dark go, Anne? I want to know.’ I told him it went around to the other side of the world but after breakfast he declared it didn’t…that it went down the well. Marilla says she caught him hanging over the well-box four times today, trying to reach down to the dark.”

“He’s a limb,” declared Mr. Harrison. “He came over here yesterday and pulled six feathers out of Ginger’s tail before I could get in from the barn. The poor bird has been moping ever since. Those children must be a sight of trouble to you folks.”

“Everything that’s worth having is some trouble,” said Anne, secretly resolving to forgive Davy’s next offense, whatever it might be, since he had avenged her on Ginger.

Mr. Roger Pye brought the hall paint home that night and Mr. Joshua Pye, a surly, taciturn man, began painting the next day. He was not disturbed in his task. The hall was situated on what was called “the lower road.” In late autumn this road was
always muddy and wet, and people going to Carmody traveled by the longer “upper” road. The hall was so closely surrounded by fir woods that it was invisible unless you were near it. Mr. Joshua Pye painted away in the solitude and independence that were so dear to his unsociable heart.

Friday afternoon he finished his job and went home to Carmody. Soon after his departure Mrs. Rachel Lynde drove by, having braved the mud of the lower road out of curiosity to see what the hall looked like in its new coat of paint. When she rounded the spruce curve she saw.

The sight affected Mrs. Lynde oddly. She dropped the reins, held up her hands, and said, “Gracious Providence!” She stared as if she could not believe her eyes. Then she laughed almost hysterically.

“There must be some mistake…there
must
. I knew those Pyes would make a mess of things.”

Mrs. Lynde drove home, meeting several people on the road and stopping to tell them about the hall. The news flew like wildfire. Gilbert Blythe, poring over a textbook at home, heard it from his father’s hired boy at sunset, and rushed breathlessly to Green Gables, joined on the way by Fred Wright. They found Diana Barry, Jane Andrews, and Anne Shirley, despair personified, at the yard gate of Green Gables, under the big leafless willows.

“It isn’t true surely, Anne?” exclaimed Gilbert.

“It
is
true,” answered Anne, looking like the muse of tragedy. “Mrs. Lynde called on her way from Carmody to tell me. Oh, it is simply dreadful!
What
is the use of trying to improve anything?”

“What is dreadful?” asked Oliver Sloane, arriving at this moment with a bandbox he had brought from town for Marilla.

“Haven’t you heard?” said Jane wrathfully. “Well, it’s simply this…Joshua Pye
has gone and painted the hall blue instead of green…
a deep, brilliant blue, the shade they use for painting carts and wheelbarrows. And Mrs. Lynde says it is the most hideous color for a building, especially when combined with a red roof, that she ever saw or imagined. You could simply have knocked me down with a feather when I heard it. It’s heartbreaking, after all the trouble we’ve had.”

“How on earth could such a mistake have happened?” wailed Diana.

The blame of this unmerciful disaster was eventually narrowed down to the Pyes. The Improvers had decided to use Morton-Harris paints and the Morton-Harris paint cans were numbered according to a color card. A purchaser chose his shade on the card and ordered by the accompanying number. Number 147 was the shade of green desired and when Mr. Roger Pye sent word to the Improvers by his son, John Andrew, that he was going to town and would get their paint for them, the Improvers told John Andrew to tell his father to get 147. John Andrew always averred that he did so, but Mr. Roger Pye as staunchly declared that John Andrew told him 157; and there the matter stands to this day.

That night there was blank dismay in every Avonlea house where an Improver lived. The gloom at Green Gables was so intense that it quenched even Davy. Anne wept and would not be comforted.

“I
must
cry, even if I am almost seventeen, Marilla,” she
sobbed. “It is so mortifying. And it sounds the death knell of our society. We’ll simply be laughed out of existence.”

In life, as in dreams, however, things often go by contraries. The Avonlea people did not laugh; they were too angry.
Their
money had gone to paint the hall and consequently
they
felt themselves bitterly aggrieved by the mistake. Public indignation centered on the Pyes. Roger Pye and John Andrew had bungled the matter between them; and as for Joshua Pye, he must be a born fool not to suspect there was something wrong when he opened the cans and saw the color of the paint. Joshua Pye, when thus animadverted upon, retorted that the Avonlea taste in colors was no business of his, whatever his private opinion might be; he had been hired to paint the hall, not to talk about it; and he meant to have his money for it.

The Improvers paid him his money in bitterness of spirit, after consulting Mr. Peter Sloane, who was a magistrate.

“You’ll have to pay it,” Peter told him. “You can’t hold him responsible for the mistake, since he claims he was never told what the color was supposed to be but just given the cans and told to go ahead. But it’s a burning shame and that hall certainly does look awful.”

The luckless Improvers expected that Avonlea would be more prejudiced than ever against them; but instead, public sympathy veered around in their favor. People thought the eager, enthusiastic little band who had worked so hard for their object had been badly used. Mrs. Lynde told them to keep on and show the Pyes that there really were people in the world who could do things without making a muddle of them. Mr. Major Spencer sent them word that he would clean out all the
stumps along the road front of his farm and seed it down with grass at his own expense; and Mrs. Hiram Sloane called at the school one day and beckoned Anne mysteriously out into the porch to tell her that if the “Sassiety” wanted to make a geranium bed at the crossroads in the spring they needn’t be afraid of her cow, for she would see that the marauding animal was kept within safe bounds. Even Mr. Harrison chuckled, if he chuckled at all, in private, and was all sympathy outwardly.

“Never mind, Anne. Most paints fade uglier every year but that blue is as ugly as it can be to begin with, so it’s bound to fade prettier. And the roof is shingled and painted all right. Folks will be able to sit in the hall after this without being leaked on. You’ve accomplished so much anyhow.”

“But Avonlea’s blue hall will be a byword in all the neighboring settlements from this time out,” said Anne bitterly.

And it must be confessed that it was.

ANNE, WALKING HOME
from school through the Birch Path one November afternoon, felt convinced afresh that life was a very wonderful thing. The day had been a good day; all had gone well in her little kingdom. St. Clair Donnell had
not
fought any of the other boys over the question of his name; Prillie Rogerson’s face had been so puffed up from the effects of toothache that she did not once try to coquette with the boys in her vicinity. Barbara Shaw had met with only
one
accident…spilling a dipper of water over the floor…and Anthony Pye had not been in school at all.

“What a nice month this November has been!” said Anne, who had never quite got over her childish habit of talking to herself. “November is usually such a disagreeable month…as if the year had suddenly found out that she was growing old and could do nothing but weep and fret over it. This year is growing old gracefully…just like a stately old lady who knows she can
be charming even with gray hair and wrinkles. We’ve had lovely days and delicious twilights. This last fortnight has been so peaceful, and even Davy has been almost well-behaved. I really think he is improving a great deal. How quiet the woods are today…not a murmur except that soft wind purring in the tree-tops! It sounds like surf on a faraway shore. How dear the woods are! You beautiful trees! I love every one of you as a friend.”

Anne paused to throw her arm about a slim young birch and kiss its cream-white trunk. Diana, rounding a curve in the path, saw her and laughed.

“Anne Shirley, you’re only pretending to be grown-up. I believe when you’re alone you’re as much a little girl as you ever were.”

“Well, one can’t get over the habit of being a little girl all at once,” said Anne gaily. “You see, I was little for fourteen years and I’ve only been grown-uppish for scarcely three. I’m sure I shall always feel like a child in the woods. These walks home from school are almost the only time I have for dreaming…except the half-hour or so before I go to sleep. I’m so busy with teaching and studying and helping Marilla with the twins that I haven’t another moment for imagining things. You don’t know what splendid adventures I have for a little while after I go to bed in the east gable every night. I always imagine I’m something very brilliant and triumphant and splendid…a great prima donna or a Red Cross nurse or a queen. Last night I was a queen. It’s really splendid to imagine you are a queen. You have all the fun of it without any of the inconveniences and you can stop being a queen whenever you want to, which you couldn’t
in real life. But here in the woods I like best to imagine quite different things…I’m a dryad living in an old pine, or a little brown wood-elf hiding under a crinkled leaf. That white birch you caught me kissing is a sister of mine. The only difference is, she’s a tree and I’m a girl, but that’s no real difference. Where are you going, Diana?”

“Down to the Dicksons. I promised to help Alberta cut out her new dress. Can’t you walk down in the evening, Anne, and come home with me?”

“I might…since Fred Wright is away in town,” said Anne with a rather too innocent face.

Diana blushed, tossed her head, and walked on. She did not look offended, however.

Anne fully intended to go down to the Dicksons’ that evening, but she did not. When she arrived at Green Gables she found a state of affairs which banished every other thought from her mind. Marilla met her in the yard…a wild-eyed Marilla.

“Anne, Dora is lost!”

“Dora! Lost!” Anne looked at Davy, who was swinging on the yard gate, and detected merriment in his eyes. “Davy, do you know where she is?”

“No, I don’t,” said Davy stoutly. “I haven’t seen her since dinnertime, cross my heart.”

“I’ve been away ever since one o’clock,” said Marilla. “Thomas Lynde took sick all of a sudden and Rachel sent up for me to go at once. When I left here Dora was playing with her doll in the kitchen and Davy was making mud pies behind the barn. I only got home half an hour ago…and no Dora to be seen. Davy declares he never saw her since I left.”

“Neither I did,” avowed Davy solemnly.

“She must be somewhere around,” said Anne. “She would never wander far away alone…you know how timid she is. Perhaps she has fallen asleep in one of the rooms.”

Marilla shook her head.

“I’ve hunted the whole house through. But she may be in some of the buildings.”

A thorough search followed. Every corner of house, yard, and outbuildings was ransacked by those two distracted people. Anne roved the orchards and the Haunted Wood, calling Dora’s name. Marilla took a candle and explored the cellar. Davy accompanied each of them in turn, and was fertile in thinking of places where Dora could possibly be. Finally they met again in the yard.

“It’s a most mysterious thing,” groaned Marilla.

“Where can she be?” said Anne miserably.

“Maybe she’s tumbled into the well,” suggested Davy cheerfully.

Anne and Marilla looked fearfully into each other’s eyes. The thought had been with them both through their entire search but neither had dared to put it into words.

“She…she might have,” whispered Marilla.

Anne, feeling faint and sick, went to the wellbox and peered over. The bucket sat on the shelf inside. Far down below was a tiny glimmer of still water. The Cuthbert well was the deepest in Avonlea. If Dora…but Anne could not face the idea. She shuddered and turned away.

“Run across for Mr. Harrison,” said Marilla, wringing her hands.

“Mr. Harrison and John Henry are both away…they went to town today. I’ll go for Mr. Barry.”

Mr. Barry came back with Anne, carrying a coil of rope to which was attached a clawlike instrument that had been the business end of a grubbing fork. Marilla and Anne stood by, cold and shaken with horror and dread, while Mr. Barry dragged the well, and Davy, astride the gate, watched the group with a face indicative of huge enjoyment.

Finally Mr. Barry shook his head, with a relieved air.

“She can’t be down there. It’s a mighty curious thing where she could have got to, though. Look here, young man, are you sure you’ve no idea where your sister is?”

“I’ve told you a dozen times that I haven’t,” said Davy, with an injured air. “Maybe a tramp come and stole her.”

“Nonsense,” said Marilla sharply, relieved from her horrible fear of the well. “Anne, do you suppose she could have strayed over to Mr. Harrison’s? She has always been talking about his parrot ever since that time you took her over.”

“I can’t believe Dora would venture so far alone, but I’ll go over and see,” said Anne.

Nobody was looking at Davy just then or it would have been seen that a very decided change came over his face. He quietly slipped off the gate and ran, as fast as his fat legs could carry him, to the barn.

Anne hastened across the fields to the Harrison establishment in no very hopeful frame of mind. The house was locked, the window shades were down, and there was no sign of anything living about the place. She stood on the veranda and called Dora loudly.

Ginger, in the kitchen behind her, shrieked and swore with sudden fierceness; but between his outbursts Anne heard a plaintive cry from the little building in the yard which served Mr. Harrison as a toolhouse. Anne flew to the door, unhasped it, and caught up a small mortal with a tear-stained face who was sitting forlornly on an upturned nail keg.

“Oh, Dora, Dora, what a fright you have given us! How came you to be here?”

“Davy and I came over to see Ginger,” sobbed Dora, “but we couldn’t see him after all, only Davy made him swear by kicking the door. And then Davy brought me here and run out and shut the door; and I couldn’t get out. I cried and cried, I was frightened, and oh, I’m so hungry and cold; and I thought you’d never come, Anne.”

“Davy?” But Anne could say no more. She carried Dora home with a heavy heart. Her joy at finding the child safe and sound was drowned out in the pain caused by Davy’s behavior. The freak of shutting Dora up might easily have been pardoned. But Davy had told falsehoods…downright cold-blooded falsehoods about it. That was the ugly fact and Anne could not shut her eyes to it. She could have sat down and cried with sheer disappointment. She had grown to love Davy dearly…how dearly she had not known until this minute…and it hurt her unbearably to discover that he was guilty of deliberate falsehood.

Marilla listened to Anne’s tale in a silence that boded no good Davy-ward; Mr. Barry laughed and advised that Davy be summarily dealt with. When he had gone home Anne soothed
and warmed the sobbing, shivering Dora, got her her supper and put her to bed. Then she returned to the kitchen, just as Marilla came grimly in, leading, or rather pulling, the reluctant, cobwebby Davy, whom she had just found hidden away in the darkest corner of the stable.

She jerked him to the mat on the middle of the floor and then went and sat down by the east window. Anne was sitting limply by the west window. Between them stood the culprit. His back was toward Marilla and it was a meek, subdued, frightened back; but his face was toward Anne and although it was a little shamefaced there was a gleam of comradeship in Davy’s eyes, as if he knew he had done wrong and was going to be punished for it, but could count on a laugh over it all with Anne later on.

But no half-hidden smile answered him in Anne’s gray eyes, as there might have done had it been only a question of mischief. There was something else…something ugly and repulsive.

“How could you behave so, Davy?” she asked sorrowfully.

Davy squirmed uncomfortably.

“I just did it for fun. Things have been so awful quiet here for so long that I thought it would be fun to give you folks a big scare. It was, too.”

In spite of fear and a little remorse Davy grinned over the recollection.

“But you told a falsehood about it, Davy,” said Anne, more sorrowfully than ever.

Davy looked puzzled.

“What’s a falsehood? Do you mean a whopper?”

“I mean a story that was not true.”

“Course I did,” said Davy frankly. “If I hadn’t you wouldn’t have been scared. I
had
to tell it.”

Anne was feeling the reaction from her fright and exertions. Davy’s impenitent attitude gave the finishing touch. Two big tears brimmed up in her eyes.

“Oh, Davy, how could you?” she said, with a quiver in her voice. “Don’t you know how wrong it was?”

Davy was aghast. Anne crying…he had made Anne cry! A flood of real remorse rolled like a wave over his warm little heart and engulfed it. He rushed to Anne, hurled himself into her lap, flung his arms around her neck, and burst into tears.

“I didn’t know it was wrong to tell whoppers,” he sobbed. “How did you expect me to know it was wrong? All Mr. Sprott’s children told them
regular
every day, and cross their hearts too. I s’pose Paul Irving never tells whoppers and here I’ve been trying awful hard to be as good as him, but now I s’pose you’ll never love me again. But I think you might have told me it was wrong. I’m awful sorry I’ve made you cry, Anne, and I’ll never tell a whopper again.”

Davy buried his face in Anne’s shoulder and cried stormily. Anne, in a sudden glad flash of understanding, held him tight and looked over his curly thatch at Marilla.

“He didn’t know it was wrong to tell falsehoods, Marilla. I think we must forgive him for that part of it this time if he will promise never to say what isn’t true again.”

“I never will, now that I know it’s bad,” asseverated Davy between sobs. “If you ever catch me telling a whopper again
you can…” Davy groped mentally for a suitable penance…“you can skin me alive, Anne.”

“Don’t say ‘whopper,’ Davy…say ‘falsehood,’” said the schoolma’am.

“Why?” queried Davy, settling comfortably down and looking up with a tear-stained, investigating face. “Why ain’t whopper as good as falsehood? I want to know. It’s just as big a word.”

“It’s slang; and it’s wrong for little boys to use slang.”

“There’s an awful lot of things it’s wrong to do,” said Davy with a sigh. “I never s’posed there was so many. I’m sorry it’s wrong to tell whop…falsehoods, ’cause it’s awful handy, but since it is I’m never going to tell any more. What are you going to do to me for telling them this time? I want to know.” Anne looked beseechingly at Marilla.

“I don’t want to be too hard on the child,” said Marilla. “I daresay nobody ever did tell him it was wrong to tell lies, and those Sprott children were no fit companions for him. Poor Mary was too sick to train him properly and I presume you couldn’t expect a six-year-old child to know things like that by instinct. I suppose we’ll just have to assume he doesn’t know
anything
right and begin at the beginning. But he’ll have to be punished for shutting Dora up, and I can’t think of any way except to send him to bed without his supper and we’ve done that so often. Can’t you suggest something else, Anne? I should think you ought to be able to, with that imagination you’re always talking of.”

“But punishments are so horrid and I like to imagine only
pleasant things,” said Anne, cuddling Davy. “There are so many unpleasant things in the world already that there is no use in imagining any more.”

In the end Davy was sent to bed, as usual, there to remain until noon next day. He evidently did some thinking, for when Anne went up to her room a little later she heard him calling her name softly. Going in, she found him sitting up in bed, with his elbows on his knees and his chin propped on his hands.

“Anne,” he said solemnly, “is it wrong for everybody to tell whop…falsehoods? I want to know.”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Is it wrong for a grown-up person?”

“Yes.”

“Then,” said Davy decidedly, “Marilla is bad, for
she
tells them. And she’s worse’n me, for I didn’t know it was wrong but she does.”

“Davy Keith, Marilla never told a story in her life,” said Anne indignantly.

“She did so. She told me last Tuesday that something dreadful
would
happen to me if I didn’t say my prayers every night. And I haven’t said them for over a week, just to see what
would
happen…and nothing has,” concluded Davy in an aggrieved tone.