Anne of the Island, Lucy Maud Montgomery [short story to read TXT] 📗
- Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
- Performer: 0553213172
Book online «Anne of the Island, Lucy Maud Montgomery [short story to read TXT] 📗». Author Lucy Maud Montgomery
Anne ended with a laugh and a sigh commingled. With her sensitive nature all disapproval had weight, even the disapproval of those for whose opinions she had scant respect. For the time being life was savorless, and ambition had gone out like a snuffed candle.
“You surely don’t care for what they said,” protested Gilbert. “You know exactly how narrow their outlook on life is, excellent creatures though they are. To do anything THEY have never done is anathema maranatha. You are the first Avonlea girl who has ever gone to college; and you know that all pioneers are considered to be afflicted with moonstruck madness.”
“Oh, I know. But FEELING is so different from KNOWING. My common sense tells me all you can say, but there are times when common sense has no power over me. Common nonsense takes possession of my soul. Really, after Mrs. Elisha went away I hardly had the heart to finish packing.”
“You’re just tired, Anne. Come, forget it all and take a walk with me — a ramble back through the woods beyond the marsh. There should be something there I want to show you.”
“Should be! Don’t you know if it is there?”
“No. I only know it should be, from something I saw there in spring. Come on. We’ll pretend we are two children again and we’ll go the way of the wind.”
They started gaily off. Anne, remembering the unpleasantness of the preceding evening, was very nice to Gilbert; and Gilbert, who was learning wisdom, took care to be nothing save the schoolboy comrade again. Mrs. Lynde and Marilla watched them from the kitchen window.
“That’ll be a match some day,” Mrs. Lynde said approvingly.
Marilla winced slightly. In her heart she hoped it would, but it went against her grain to hear the matter spoken of in Mrs. Lynde’s gossipy matter-of-fact way.
“They’re only children yet,” she said shortly.
Mrs. Lynde laughed good-naturedly.
“Anne is eighteen; I was married when I was that age. We old folks, Marilla, are too much given to thinking children never grow up, that’s what. Anne is a young woman and Gilbert’s a man, and he worships the ground she walks on, as any one can see. He’s a fine fellow, and Anne can’t do better. I hope she won’t get any romantic nonsense into her head at Redmond. I don’t approve of them coeducational places and never did, that’s what. I don’t believe,” concluded Mrs. Lynde solemnly, “that the students at such colleges ever do much else than flirt.”
“They must study a little,” said Marilla, with a smile.
“Precious little,” sniffed Mrs. Rachel. “However, I think Anne will. She never was flirtatious. But she doesn’t appreciate Gilbert at his full value, that’s what. Oh, I know girls! Charlie Sloane is wild about her, too, but I’d never advise her to marry a Sloane. The Sloanes are good, honest, respectable people, of course. But when all’s said and done, they’re SLOANES.”
Marilla nodded. To an outsider, the statement that Sloanes were Sloanes might not be very illuminating, but she understood. Every village has such a family; good, honest, respectable people they may be, but SLOANES they are and must ever remain, though they speak with the tongues of men and angels.
Gilbert and Anne, happily unconscious that their future was thus being settled by Mrs. Rachel, were sauntering through the shadows of the Haunted Wood. Beyond, the harvest hills were basking in an amber sunset radiance, under a pale, aerial sky of rose and blue. The distant spruce groves were burnished bronze, and their long shadows barred the upland meadows. But around them a little wind sang among the fir tassels, and in it there was the note of autumn.
“This wood really is haunted now — by old memories,” said Anne, stooping to gather a spray of ferns, bleached to waxen whiteness by frost. “It seems to me that the little girls Diana and I used to be play here still, and sit by the Dryad’s Bubble in the twilights, trysting with the ghosts. Do you know, I can never go up this path in the dusk without feeling a bit of the old fright and shiver? There was one especially horrifying phantom which we created — the ghost of the murdered child that crept up behind you and laid cold fingers on yours. I confess that, to this day, I cannot help fancying its little, furtive footsteps behind me when I come here after nightfall. I’m not afraid of the White Lady or the headless man or the skeletons, but I wish I had never imagined that baby’s ghost into existence. How angry Marilla and Mrs. Barry were over that affair,” concluded Anne, with reminiscent laughter.
The woods around the head of the marsh were full of purple vistas, threaded with gossamers. Past a dour plantation of gnarled spruces and a maple-fringed, sun-warm valley they found the “something” Gilbert was looking for.
“Ah, here it is,” he said with satisfaction.
“An apple tree — and away back here!” exclaimed Anne delightedly.
“Yes, a veritable apple-bearing apple tree, too, here in the very midst of pines and beeches, a mile away from any orchard. I was here one day last spring and found it, all white with blossom. So I resolved I’d come again in the fall and see if it had been apples. See, it’s loaded. They look good, too — tawny as russets but with a dusky red cheek. Most wild seedlings are green and uninviting.”
“I suppose it sprang years ago from some chance-sown seed,” said Anne dreamily.” And how it has grown and flourished and held its own here all alone among aliens, the brave determined thing!”
“Here’s a fallen tree with a cushion of moss. Sit down, Anne — it will serve for a woodland throne. I’ll climb for some apples. They all grow high — the tree had to reach up to the sunlight.”
The apples proved to be delicious. Under the tawny skin was a white, white flesh, faintly veined with red; and, besides their own proper apple taste, they had a certain wild, delightful tang no orchard-grown apple ever possessed.
“The fatal apple of Eden couldn’t have had a rarer flavor,” commented Anne. “But it’s time we were going home. See, it was twilight three minutes ago and now it’s moonlight. What a pity we couldn’t have caught the moment of transformation. But such moments never are caught, I suppose.”
“Let’s go back around the marsh and home by way of Lover’s Lane. Do you feel as disgruntled now as when you started out, Anne?”
“Not I. Those apples have been as manna to a hungry soul. I feel that I shall love Redmond and have a splendid four years there.”
“And after those four years — what?”
“Oh, there’s another bend in the road at their end,” answered Anne lightly. “I’ve no idea what may be around it — I don’t want to have. It’s nicer not to know.”
Lover’s Lane was a dear place that night, still and mysteriously dim in the pale radiance of the moonlight. They loitered through it in a pleasant chummy silence, neither caring to talk.
“If Gilbert were always as he has been this evening how nice and simple everything would be,” reflected Anne.
Gilbert was looking at Anne, as she walked along. In her light dress, with her slender delicacy, she made him think of a white iris.
“I wonder if I can ever make her care for me,” he thought, with a pang of self-destruct.
Charlie Sloane, Gilbert Blythe and Anne Shirley left Avonlea the following Monday morning. Anne had hoped for a fine day. Diana was to drive her to the station and they wanted this, their last drive together for some time, to be a pleasant one. But when Anne went to bed Sunday night the east wind was moaning around Green Gables with an ominous prophecy which was fulfilled in the morning. Anne awoke to find raindrops pattering against her window and shadowing the pond’s gray surface with widening rings; hills and sea were hidden in mist, and the whole world seemed dim and dreary. Anne dressed in the cheerless gray dawn, for an early start was necessary to catch the boat train; she struggled against the tears that WOULD well up in her eyes in spite of herself. She was leaving the home that was so dear to her, and something told her that she was leaving it forever, save as a holiday refuge. Things would never be the same again; coming back for vacations would not be living there. And oh, how dear and beloved everything was — that little white porch room, sacred to the dreams of girlhood, the old Snow Queen at the window, the brook in the hollow, the Dryad’s Bubble, the Haunted Woods, and Lover’s Lane — all the thousand and one dear spots where memories of the old years bided. Could she ever be really happy anywhere else?
Breakfast at Green Gables that morning was a rather doleful meal. Davy, for the first time in his life probably, could not eat, but blubbered shamelessly over his porridge. Nobody else seemed to have much appetite, save Dora, who tucked away her rations comfortably. Dora, like the immortal and most prudent Charlotte, who “went on cutting bread and butter” when her frenzied lover’s body had been carried past on a shutter, was one of those fortunate creatures who are seldom disturbed by anything. Even at eight it took a great deal to ruffle Dora’s placidity. She was sorry Anne was going away, of course, but was that any reason why she should fail to appreciate a poached egg on toast? Not at all. And, seeing that Davy could not eat his, Dora ate it for him.
Promptly on time Diana appeared with horse and buggy, her rosy face glowing above her raincoat. The good-byes had to be said then somehow. Mrs. Lynde came in from her quarters to give Anne a hearty embrace and warn her to be careful of her health, whatever she did. Marilla, brusque and tearless, pecked Anne’s cheek and said she supposed they’d hear from her when she got settled. A casual observer might have concluded that Anne’s going mattered very little to her — unless said observer had happened to get a good look in her eyes. Dora kissed Anne primly and squeezed out two decorous little tears; but Davy, who had been crying on the back porch step ever since they rose from the table, refused to say good-bye at all. When he saw Anne coming towards him he sprang to his feet, bolted up the back stairs, and hid in a clothes closet, out of which he would not come. His muffled howls
Comments (0)