Anne of the Island, Lucy Maud Montgomery [short story to read TXT] 📗

When Christmas holidays came the girls of Patty’s Place scattered to their respective homes, but Aunt Jamesina elected to stay where she was.

“I couldn’t go to any of the places I’ve been invited and take those three cats,” she said. “And I’m not going to leave the poor creatures here alone for nearly three weeks. If we had any decent neighbors who would feed them I might, but there’s nothing except millionaires on this street. So I’ll stay here and keep Patty’s Place warm for you.”

Anne went home with the usual joyous anticipations — which were not wholly fulfilled. She found Avonlea in the grip of such an early, cold, and stormy winter as even the “oldest inhabitant” could not recall. Green Gables was literally hemmed in by huge drifts. Almost every day of that ill-starred vacation it stormed fiercely; and even on fine days it drifted unceasingly. No sooner were the roads broken than they filled in again. It was almost impossible to stir out. The A.V.I.S. tried, on three evenings, to have a party in honor of the college students, and on each evening the storm was so wild that nobody could go, so they gave up the attempt in despair. Anne, despite her love of and loyalty to Green Gables, could not help thinking longingly of Patty’s Place, its cosy open fire, Aunt Jamesina’s mirthful eyes, the three cats, the merry chatter of the girls, the pleasantness of Friday evenings when college friends dropped in to talk of grave and gay.

Anne was lonely; Diana, during the whole of the holidays, was imprisoned at home with a bad attack of bronchitis. She could not come to Green Gables and it was rarely Anne could get to Orchard Slope, for the old way through the Haunted Wood was impassable with drifts, and the long way over the frozen Lake of Shining Waters was almost as bad. Ruby Gillis was sleeping in the white-heaped graveyard; Jane Andrews was teaching a school on western prairies. Gilbert, to be sure, was still faithful, and waded up to Green Gables every possible evening. But Gilbert’s visits were not what they once were. Anne almost dreaded them. It was very disconcerting to look up in the midst of a sudden silence and find Gilbert’s hazel eyes fixed upon her with a quite unmistakable expression in their grave depths; and it was still more disconcerting to find herself blushing hotly and uncomfortably under his gaze, just as if — just as if — well, it was very embarrassing. Anne wished herself back at Patty’s Place, where there was always somebody else about to take the edge off a delicate situation. At Green Gables Marilla went promptly to Mrs. Lynde’s domain when Gilbert came and insisted on taking the twins with her. The significance of this was unmistakable and Anne was in a helpless fury over it.

Davy, however, was perfectly happy. He reveled in getting out in the morning and shoveling out the paths to the well and henhouse. He gloried in the Christmas-tide delicacies which Marilla and Mrs. Lynde vied with each other in preparing for Anne, and he was reading an enthralling tale, in a school library book, of a wonderful hero who seemed blessed with a miraculous faculty for getting into scrapes from which he was usually delivered by an earthquake or a volcanic explosion, which blew him high and dry out of his troubles, landed him in a fortune, and closed the story with proper ECLAT.

“I tell you it’s a bully story, Anne,” he said ecstatically. “I’d ever so much rather read it than the Bible.”

“Would you?” smiled Anne.

Davy peered curiously at her.

“You don’t seem a bit shocked, Anne. Mrs. Lynde was awful shocked when I said it to her.”

“No, I’m not shocked, Davy. I think it’s quite natural that a nine-year-old boy would sooner read an adventure story than the Bible. But when you are older I hope and think that you will realize what a wonderful book the Bible is.”

“Oh, I think some parts of it are fine,” conceded Davy. “That story about Joseph now — it’s bully. But if I’d been Joseph I wouldn’t have forgive the brothers. No, siree, Anne. I’d have cut all their heads off. Mrs. Lynde was awful mad when I said that and shut the Bible up and said she’d never read me any more of it if I talked like that. So I don’t talk now when she reads it Sunday afternoons; I just think things and say them to Milty Boulter next day in school. I told Milty the story about Elisha and the bears and it scared him so he’s never made fun of Mr. Harrison’s bald head once. Are there any bears on P.E. Island, Anne? I want to know.”

“Not nowadays,” said Anne, absently, as the wind blew a scud of snow against the window. “Oh, dear, will it ever stop storming.”

“God knows,” said Davy airily, preparing to resume his reading.

Anne WAS shocked this time.

“Davy!” she exclaimed reproachfully.

“Mrs. Lynde says that,” protested Davy. “One night last week Marilla said `Will Ludovic Speed and Theodora Dix EVER get married” and Mrs. Lynde said, `God knows’ — just like that.”

“Well, it wasn’t right for her to say it,” said Anne, promptly deciding upon which horn of this dilemma to empale herself. “It isn’t right for anybody to take that name in vain or speak it lightly, Davy. Don’t ever do it again.”

“Not if I say it slow and solemn, like the minister?” queried Davy gravely.

“No, not even then.”

“Well, I won’t. Ludovic Speed and Theodora Dix live in Middle Grafton and Mrs. Rachel says he has been courting her for a hundred years. Won’t they soon be too old to get married, Anne? I hope Gilbert won’t court YOU that long. When are you going to be married, Anne? Mrs. Lynde says it’s a sure thing.”

“Mrs. Lynde is a —” began Anne hotly; then stopped. “Awful old gossip,” completed Davy calmly. “That’s what every one calls her. But is it a sure thing, Anne? I want to know.”

“You’re a very silly little boy, Davy,” said Anne, stalking haughtily out of the room. The kitchen was deserted and she sat down by the window in the fast falling wintry twilight. The sun had set and the wind had died down. A pale chilly moon looked out behind a bank of purple clouds in the west. The sky faded out, but the strip of yellow along the western horizon grew brighter and fiercer, as if all the stray gleams of light were concentrating in one spot; the distant hills, rimmed with priest-like firs, stood out in dark distinctness against it. Anne looked across the still, white fields, cold and lifeless in the harsh light of that grim sunset, and sighed. She was very lonely; and she was sad at heart; for she was wondering if she would be able to return to Redmond next year. It did not seem likely. The only scholarship possible in the Sophomore year was a very small affair. She would not take Marilla’s money; and there seemed little prospect of being able to earn enough in the summer vacation.

“I suppose I’ll just have to drop out next year,” she thought drearily, “and teach a district school again until I earn enough to finish my course. And by that time all my old class will have graduated and Patty’s Place will be out of the question. But there! I’m not going to be a coward. I’m thankful I can earn my way through if necessary.”

“Here’s Mr. Harrison wading up the lane,” announced Davy, running out. “I hope he’s brought the mail. It’s three days since we got it. I want to see what them pesky Grits are doing. I’m a Conservative, Anne. And I tell you, you have to keep your eye on them Grits.”

Mr. Harrison had brought the mail, and merry letters from Stella and Priscilla and Phil soon dissipated Anne’s blues. Aunt Jamesina, too, had written, saying that she was keeping the hearth-fire alight, and that the cats were all well, and the house plants doing fine.

“The weather has been real cold,” she wrote, “so I let the cats sleep in the house — Rusty and Joseph on the sofa in the livingroom, and the Sarah-cat on the foot of my bed. It’s real company to hear her purring when I wake up in the night and think of my poor daughter in the foreign field. If it was anywhere but in India I wouldn’t worry, but they say the snakes out there are terrible. It takes all the Sarah-cats’s purring to drive away the thought of those snakes. I have enough faith for everything but the snakes. I can’t think why Providence ever made them. Sometimes I don’t think He did. I’m inclined to believe the Old Harry had a hand in making THEM.”

Anne had left a thin, typewritten communication till the last, thinking it unimportant. When she had read it she sat very still, with tears in her eyes.

“What is the matter, Anne?” asked Marilla.

“Miss Josephine Barry is dead,” said Anne, in a low tone.

“So she has gone at last,” said Marilla. “Well, she has been sick for over a year, and the Barrys have been expecting to hear of her death any time. It is well she is at rest