The Complete Anne of Green (52 page)

“Well, you know she only bought it, so it isn’t the same as if it was an heirloom,” said Diana, trying to console.

The guests went away soon after, feeling that it was the most tactful thing to do, and Anne and Diana washed the dishes, talking less than they had ever been known to do before. Then Diana went home with a headache and Anne went with another to the east gable, where she stayed until Marilla came home from the post office at sunset, with a letter from Priscilla, written the day before. Mrs. Morgan had sprained her ankle so severely that she could not leave her room.

“And oh, Anne dear,” wrote Priscilla, “I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid we won’t get up to Green Gables at all now, for by the time Aunty’s ankle is well she will have to go back to Toronto. She has to be there by a certain date.”

“Well,” sighed Anne, laying the letter down on the red sandstone step of the back porch, where she was sitting, while the twilight rained down out of a dappled sky, “I always thought it was too good to be true that Mrs. Morgan should really come. But there…that speech sounds as pessimistic as Miss Eliza Andrews and I’m ashamed of making it. After all, it was
not
too good to be true…things just as good and far better are coming true for me all the time. And I suppose the events of today have a funny side too. Perhaps when Diana and I are old and gray we
shall be able to laugh over them. But I feel that I can’t expect to do it before then, for it has truly been a bitter disappointment.”

“You’ll probably have a good many more and worse disappointments than that before you get through life,” said Marilla, who honestly thought she was making a comforting speech. “It seems to me, Anne, that you are never going to outgrow your fashion of setting your heart so on things and then crashing down into despair because you don’t get them.”

“I know I’m too much inclined that way,” agreed Anne ruefully. “When I think something nice is going to happen I seem to fly right up on the wings of anticipation; and then the first thing I realize I drop down to earth with a thud. But really, Marilla, the flying part
is
glorious as long as it lasts…it’s like soaring through a sunset. I think it almost pays for the thud.”

“Well, maybe it does,” admitted Marilla. “I’d rather walk calmly along and do without both flying and thud. But everybody has her own way of living…I used to think there was only one right way…but since I’ve had you and the twins to bring up I don’t feel so sure of it. What are you going to do about Miss Barry’s platter?”

“Pay her back the twenty dollars she paid for it, I suppose. I’m so thankful it wasn’t a cherished heirloom because then no money could replace it.”

“Maybe you could find one like it somewhere and buy it for her.”

“I’m afraid not. Platters as old as that are very scarce. Mrs. Lynde couldn’t find one anywhere for the supper. I only wish I could, for of course Miss Barry would just as soon have one platter as another, if both were equally old and genuine. Marilla,
look at that big star over Mr. Harrison’s maple grove, with all that holy hush of silvery sky about it. It gives me a feeling that is like a prayer. After all, when one can see stars and skies like that, little disappointments and accidents can’t matter so much, can they?”

“Where’s Davy?” said Marilla, with an indifferent glance at the star.

“In bed. I’ve promised to take him and Dora to the shore for a picnic tomorrow. Of course, the original agreement was that he must be good. But he
tried
to be good…and I hadn’t the heart to disappoint him.”

“You’ll drown yourself or the twins, rowing about the pond in that flat,” grumbled Marilla. “I’ve lived here for sixty years and I’ve never been on the pond yet.”

“Well, it’s never too late to mend,” said Anne roguishly. “Suppose you come with us tomorrow. We’ll shut Green Gables up and spend the whole day at the shore, daffing the world aside.”

“No, thank you,” said Marilla, with indignant emphasis. “I’d be a nice sight, wouldn’t I, rowing down the pond in a flat? I think I hear Rachel pronouncing on it. There’s Mr. Harrison driving away somewhere. Do you suppose there is any truth in the gossip that Mr. Harrison is going to see Isabella Andrews?”

“No, I’m sure there isn’t. He just called there one evening on business with Mr. Harmon Andrews, and Mrs. Lynde saw him and said she knew he was courting because he had a white collar on. I don’t believe Mr. Harrison will ever marry. He seems to have a prejudice against marriage.”

“Well, you can never tell about those old bachelors. And if he
had a white collar on I’d agree with Rachel that it looks suspicious, for I’m sure he never was seen with one before.”

“I think he only put it on because he wanted to conclude a business deal with Harmon Andrews,” said Anne. “I’ve heard him say that’s the only time a man needs to be particular about his appearance, because if he looks prosperous the party of the second part won’t be so likely to try to cheat him. I really feel sorry for Mr. Harrison; I don’t believe he feels satisfied with his life. It must be very lonely to have no one to care about except a parrot, don’t you think? But I notice Mr. Harrison doesn’t like to be pitied. Nobody does, I imagine.”

“There’s Gilbert coming up the lane,” said Marilla. “If he wants you to go for a row on the pond mind you put on your coat and rubbers. There’s a heavy dew tonight.”

“ANNE,” SAID DAVY
, sitting up in bed and propping his chin on his hands, “Anne, where is sleep? People go to sleep every night, and of course I know it’s the place where I do the things I dream, but I want to know
where
it is and how I get there and back without knowing anything about it…and in my nighty too. Where is it?”

Anne was kneeling at the west gable window watching the sunset sky that was like a great flower with petals of crocus and a heart of fiery yellow. She turned her head at Davy’s question and answered dreamily:

“‘Over the mountains of the moon,

Down the valley of the shadow.’”

Paul Irving would have known the meaning of this, or made a meaning out of it for himself, if he didn’t; but practical Davy, who, as Anne often despairingly remarked, hadn’t a particle of imagination, was only puzzled and disgusted.

“Anne, I believe you’re just talking nonsense.”

“Of course, I was, dear boy. Don’t you know that it is only very foolish folk who talk sense all the time?”

“Well, I think you might give a sensible answer when I ask a sensible question,” said Davy in an injured tone.

“Oh, you are too little to understand,” said Anne. But she felt rather ashamed of saying it; for had she not, in keen remembrance of many similar snubs administered in her own early years, solemnly vowed that she would never tell any child it was too little to understand? Yet here she was doing it…so wide sometimes is the gulf between theory and practice.

“Well, I’m doing my best to grow,” said Davy, “but it’s a thing you can’t hurry much. If Marilla wasn’t so stingy with her jam I believe I’d grow a lot faster.”

“Marilla is not stingy, Davy,” said Anne severely. “It is very ungrateful of you to say such a thing.”

“There’s another word that means the same thing and sounds a lot better, but I don’t just remember it,” said Davy, frowning intently. “I heard Marilla say she was it, herself, the other day.”

“If you mean
economical
, it’s a
very
different thing from being stingy. It is an excellent trait in a person if she is economical. If Marilla had been stingy she wouldn’t have taken you and Dora when your mother died. Would you have liked to live with Mrs. Wiggins?”

“You just bet I wouldn’t!” Davy was emphatic on that point. “Nor I don’t want to go out to Uncle Richard neither. I’d far rather live here, even if Marilla is that long-tailed word when it
comes to jam, ’cause
you’re
here, Anne. Say, Anne, won’t you tell me a story ’fore I go to sleep? I don’t want a fairy story. They’re all right for girls, I s’pose, but I want something exciting…lots of killing and shooting in it, and a house on fire, and in’trusting things like that.”

Fortunately for Anne, Marilla called out at this moment from her room.

“Anne, Diana’s signaling at a great rate. You’d better see what she wants.”

Anne ran to the east gable and saw flashes of light coming through the twilight from Diana’s window in groups of five, which meant, according to their old childish code, “Come over at once, for I have something important to reveal.” Anne threw her white shawl over her head and hastened through the Haunted Wood and across Mr. Bell’s pasture corner to Orchard Slope.

“I’ve good news for you, Anne,” said Diana. “Mother and I have just got home from Carmody, and I saw Mary Sentner from Spencervale in Mr. Blair’s store. She says the old Copp girls on the Tory Road have a willowware platter and she thinks it’s exactly like the one we had at the supper. She says they’ll likely sell it, for Martha Copp has never been known to keep anything she
could
sell; but if they won’t there’s a platter at Wesley Keyson’s at Spencervale and she knows they’d sell it, but she isn’t sure it’s just the same kind as Aunt Josephine’s.”

“I’ll go right over to Spencervale after it tomorrow,” said Anne resolutely, “and you must come with me. It will be such a weight off my mind, for I have to go to town day after tomorrow
and how can I face your Aunt Josephine without a willowware platter? It would be even worse than the time I had to confess about jumping on the spare room bed.”

Both girls laughed over the old memory…concerning which, if any of my readers are ignorant and curious, I must refer them to Anne’s earlier history.

The next afternoon the girls fared forth on their platter-hunting expedition. It was ten miles to Spencervale and the day was not especially pleasant for traveling. It was very warm and windless, and the dust on the road was such as might have been expected after six weeks of dry weather.

“Oh, I do wish it would rain soon,” sighed Anne. “Everything is so parched up. The poor fields just seem pitiful to me and the trees seem to be stretching out their hands pleading for rain. As for my garden, it hurts me every time I go into it. I suppose I shouldn’t complain about a garden when the farmers’ crops are suffering so. Mr. Harrison says his pastures are so scorched up that his poor cows can hardly get a bite to eat and he feels guilty of cruelty to animals every time he meets their eyes.”

After a wearisome drive the girls reached Spencervale and turned down the “Tory” Road…a green, solitary highway where the strips of grass between the wheel tracks bore evidence to lack of travel. Along most of its extent it was lined with thickset young spruces crowding down to the roadway, with here and there a break where the back field of a Spencervale farm came out to the fence or an expanse of stumps was aflame with fireweed and goldenrod.

“Why is it called the Tory Road?” asked Anne.

“Mr. Allan says it is on the principle of calling a place a grove because there are no trees in it,” said Diana, “for nobody lives along the road except the Copp girls and old Martin Bovyer at the further end, who is a Liberal. The Tory government ran the road through when they were in power just to show they were doing something.”

Diana’s father was a Liberal, for which reason she and Anne never discussed politics. Green Gables folk had always been Conservatives.

Finally the girls came to the old Copp homestead…a place of such exceeding external neatness that even Green Gables would have suffered by contrast. The house was a very old-fashioned one, situated on a slope, which fact had necessitated the building of a stone basement under one end. The house and outbuildings were all whitewashed to a condition of blinding perfection and not a weed was visible in the prim kitchen garden surrounded by its white paling.

“The shades are all down,” said Diana ruefully. “I believe that nobody is home.”

This proved to be the case. The girls looked at each other in perplexity.

“I don’t know what to do,” said Anne. “If I were sure the platter was the right kind I would not mind waiting until they came home. But if it isn’t it may be too late to go to Wesley Keyson’s afterward.”

Diana looked at a certain little square window over the basement.

“That is the pantry window, I feel sure,” she said, “because this house is just like Uncle Charles’ at Newbridge, and that is
their pantry window. The shade isn’t down, so if we climbed up on the roof of that little house we could look into the pantry and might be able to see the platter. Do you think it would be any harm?”

“No, I don’t think so,” decided Anne, after due reflection, “since our motive is not idle curiosity.”

This important point of ethics being settled, Anne prepared to mount the aforesaid “little house,” a construction of lathes, with a peaked roof, which had in times past served as a habitation for ducks. The Copp girls had given up keeping ducks…“because they were such untidy birds”…and the house had not been in use for some years, save as an abode of correction for setting hens. Although scrupulously whitewashed it had become somewhat shaky, and Anne felt rather dubious as she scrambled up from the vantage point of a keg placed on a box.

“I’m afraid it won’t bear my weight,” she said as she gingerly stepped on the roof.

“Lean on the windowsill,” advised Diana, and Anne accordingly leaned. Much to her delight, she saw, as she peered through the pane, a willowware platter, exactly such as she was in quest of, on the shelf in front of the window. So much she saw before the catastrophe came. In her joy Anne forgot the precarious nature of her footing, incautiously ceased to lean on the windowsill, gave an impulsive little hop of pleasure…and the next moment she had crashed through the roof up to her armpits, and there she hung, quite unable to extricate herself. Diana dashed into the duck house and, seizing her unfortunate friend by the waist, tried to draw her down.

“Ow…don’t,” shrieked poor Anne. “There are some long
splinters sticking into me. See if you can put something under my feet…then perhaps I can draw myself up.”

Diana hastily dragged in the previously mentioned keg and Anne found that it was just sufficiently high to furnish a secure resting place for her feet. But she could not release herself.

“Could I pull you out if I crawled up?” suggested Diana.

Anne shook her head hopelessly.

“No…the splinters hurt too badly. If you can find an axe you might chop me out, though. Oh dear, I do really begin to believe that I was born under an ill-omened star.”

Diana searched faithfully but no axe was to be found.

“I’ll have to go for help,” she said, returning to the prisoner.

“No, indeed, you won’t,” said Anne vehemently. “If you do the story of this will get out everywhere and I shall be ashamed to show my face. No, we must just wait until the Copp girls come home and bind them to secrecy. They’ll know where the axe is and get me out. I’m not uncomfortable, as long as I keep perfectly still…not uncomfortable in
body
I mean. I wonder what the Copp girls value this house at. I shall have to pay for the damage I’ve done, but I wouldn’t mind that if I were only sure they would understand my motive in peeping in at their pantry window. My sole comfort is that the platter is just the kind I want and if Miss Copp will only sell it to me I shall be resigned to what has happened.”

“What if the Copp girls don’t come home until after night…or till tomorrow?” suggested Diana.

“If they’re not back by sunset you’ll have to go for other assistance, I suppose,” said Anne reluctantly, “but you mustn’t go until you really have to. Oh dear, this is a dreadful predicament.
I wouldn’t mind my misfortunes so much if they were romantic, as Mrs. Morgan’s heroines’ always are, but they are always just simply ridiculous. Fancy what the Copp girls will think when they drive into their yard and see a girl’s head and shoulders sticking out of the roof of one of their outhouses. Listen…is that a wagon? No, Diana, I believe it is thunder.”

Thunder it was undoubtedly, and Diana, having made a hasty pilgrimage around the house, returned to announce that a very black cloud was rising rapidly in the northwest.

“I believe we’re going to have a heavy thundershower,” she exclaimed in dismay. “Oh, Anne, what will we do?”

“We must prepare for it,” said Anne tranquilly. A thunderstorm seemed a trifle in comparison with what had already happened. “You’d better drive the horse and buggy into that open shed. Fortunately my parasol is in the buggy. Here…take my hat with you. Marilla told me I was a goose to put on my best hat to come to the Tory Road and she was right, as she always is.”

Diana untied the pony and drove into the shed just as the first heavy drops of rain fell. There she sat and watched the resulting downpour, which was so thick and heavy that she could hardly see Anne through it, holding the parasol bravely over her bare head. There was not a great deal of thunder, but for the best part of an hour the rain came merrily down. Occasionally Anne slanted back her parasol and waved an encouraging hand to her friend; but conversation at that distance was quite out of the question. Finally the rain ceased, the sun came out, and Diana ventured across the puddles of the yard.

“Did you get very wet?” she asked anxiously.

“Oh, no,” returned Anne cheerfully. “My head and shoul
ders are quite dry and my skirt is only a little damp where the rain beat through the lathes. Don’t pity me, Diana, for I haven’t minded it at all. I kept thinking how much good the rain will do and how glad my garden must be for it, and imagining what the flowers and buds would think when the drops began to fall. I imagined out a most interesting dialogue between the asters and the sweet peas and the wild canaries in the lilac bush and the guardian spirit of the garden. When I go home I mean to write it down. I wish I had a pencil and paper to do it now, because I daresay I’ll forget the best parts before I reach home.”

Diana the faithful had a pencil and discovered a sheet of wrapping paper in the box of the buggy. Anne folded up her dripping parasol, put on her hat, spread the wrapping paper on a shingle Diana handed up, and wrote out her garden idyll under conditions that could hardly be considered as favorable to literature. Nevertheless, the result was quite pretty, and Diana was “enraptured” when Anne read it to her.

“Oh, Anne, it’s sweet…just sweet.
Do
send it to the
Canadian Woman
.”

Anne shook her head.

“Oh, no, it wouldn’t be suitable at all. There is no
plot
in it, you see. It’s just a string of fancies. I like writing such things, but of course nothing of the sort would ever do for publication, for editors insist on plots, so Priscilla says. Oh, there’s Miss Sarah Copp now.
Please
, Diana, go and explain.”

Miss Sarah Copp was a small person, garbed in shabby black, with a hat chosen less for vain adornment than for qualities that would wear well. She looked as amazed as might be expected on seeing the curious tableau in her yard, but when
she heard Diana’s explanation she was all sympathy. She hurriedly unlocked the back door, produced the axe, and with a few skillful blows set Anne free. The latter, somewhat tired and stiff, ducked down into the interior of her prison and thankfully emerged into liberty once more.

“Miss Copp,” she said earnestly, “I assure you I looked into your pantry window
only
to discover if you had a willowware platter. I didn’t see anything else—I didn’t
look
for anything else.”