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

It rained heavily all the way to Bright River, to which station they had to go, since the branch line train from Carmody did not connect with the boat train. Charlie and Gilbert were on the station platform when they reached it, and the train was whistling. Anne had just time to get her ticket and trunk check, say a hurried farewell to Diana, and hasten on board. She wished she were going back with Diana to Avonlea; she knew she was going to die of homesickness. And oh, if only that dismal rain would stop pouring down as if the whole world were weeping over summer vanished and joys departed! Even Gilbert’s presence brought her no comfort, for Charlie Sloane was there, too, and Sloanishness could be tolerated only in fine weather. It was absolutely insufferable in rain.

But when the boat steamed out of Charlottetown harbor things took a turn for the better. The rain ceased and the sun began to burst out goldenly now and again between the rents in the clouds, burnishing the gray seas with copper-hued radiance, and lighting up the mists that curtained the Island’s red shores with gleams of gold foretokening a fine day after all. Besides, Charlie Sloane promptly became so seasick that he had to go below, and Anne and Gilbert were left alone on deck.

“I am very glad that all the Sloanes get seasick as soon as they go on water,” thought Anne mercilessly. “I am sure I couldn’t take my farewell look at the `ould sod’ with Charlie standing there pretending to look sentimentally at it, too.”

“Well, we’re off,” remarked Gilbert unsentimentally.

“Yes, I feel like Byron’s `Childe Harold’ — only it isn’t really my `native shore’ that I’m watching,” said Anne, winking her gray eyes vigorously. “Nova Scotia is that, I suppose. But one’s native shore is the land one loves the best, and that’s good old P.E.I. for me. I can’t believe I didn’t always live here. Those eleven years before I came seem like a bad dream. It’s seven years since I crossed on this boat — the evening Mrs. Spencer brought me over from Hopetown. I can see myself, in that dreadful old wincey dress and faded sailor hat, exploring decks and cabins with enraptured curiosity. It was a fine evening; and how those red Island shores did gleam in the sunshine. Now I’m crossing the strait again. Oh, Gilbert, I do hope I’ll like Redmond and Kingsport, but I’m sure I won’t!”

“Where’s all your philosophy gone, Anne?”

“It’s all submerged under a great, swamping wave of loneliness and homesickness. I’ve longed for three years to go to Redmond — and now I’m going — and I wish I weren’t! Never mind! I shall be cheerful and philosophical again after I have just one good cry. I MUST have that, `as a went’ — and I’ll have to wait until I get into my boardinghouse bed tonight, wherever it may be, before I can have it. Then Anne will be herself again. I wonder if Davy has come out of the closet yet.”

It was nine that night when their train reached Kingsport, and they found themselves in the blue-white glare of the crowded station. Anne felt horribly bewildered, but a moment later she was seized by Priscilla Grant, who had come to Kingsport on Saturday.

“Here you are, beloved! And I suppose you’re as tired as I was when I got here Saturday night.”

“Tired! Priscilla, don’t talk of it. I’m tired, and green, and provincial, and only about ten years old. For pity’s sake take your poor, broken-down chum to some place where she can hear herself think.”

“I’ll take you right up to our boardinghouse. I’ve a cab ready outside.”

“It’s such a blessing you’re here, Prissy. If you weren’t I think I should just sit down on my suitcase, here and now, and weep bitter tears. What a comfort one familiar face is in a howling wilderness of strangers!”

“Is that Gilbert Blythe over there, Anne? How he has grown up this past year! He was only a schoolboy when I taught in Carmody. And of course that’s Charlie Sloane. HE hasn’t changed — couldn’t! He looked just like that when he was born, and he’ll look like that when he’s eighty. This way, dear. We’ll be home in twenty minutes.”

“Home!” groaned Anne. “You mean we’ll be in some horrible boardinghouse, in a still more horrible hall bedroom, looking out on a dingy back yard.”

“It isn’t a horrible boardinghouse, Anne-girl. Here’s our cab. Hop in — the driver will get your trunk. Oh, yes, the boardinghouse — it’s really a very nice place of its kind, as you’ll admit tomorrow morning when a good night’s sleep has turned your blues rosy pink. It’s a big, old-fashioned, gray stone house on St. John Street, just a nice little constitutional from Redmond. It used to be the `residence’ of great folk, but fashion has deserted St. John Street and its houses only dream now of better days. They’re so big that people living in them have to take boarders just to fill up. At least, that is the reason our landladies are very anxious to impress on us. They’re delicious, Anne — our landladies, I mean.”

“How many are there?”

“Two. Miss Hannah Harvey and Miss Ada Harvey. They were born twins about fifty years ago.”

“I can’t get away from twins, it seems,” smiled Anne. “Wherever I go they confront me.”

“Oh, they’re not twins now, dear. After they reached the age of thirty they never were twins again. Miss Hannah has grown old, not too gracefully, and Miss Ada has stayed thirty, less gracefully still. I don’t know whether Miss Hannah can smile or not; I’ve never caught her at it so far, but Miss Ada smiles all the time and that’s worse. However, they’re nice, kind souls, and they take two boarders every year because Miss Hannah’s economical soul cannot bear to `waste room space’ — not because they need to or have to, as Miss Ada has told me seven times since Saturday night. As for our rooms, I admit they are hall bedrooms, and mine does look out on the back yard. Your room is a front one and looks out on Old St. John’s graveyard, which is just across the street.”

“That sounds gruesome,” shivered Anne. “I think I’d rather have the back yard view.”

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t. Wait and see. Old St. John’s is a darling place. It’s been a graveyard so long that it’s ceased to be one and has become one of the sights of Kingsport. I was all through it yesterday for a pleasure exertion. There’s a big stone wall and a row of enormous trees all around it, and rows of trees all through it, and the queerest old tombstones, with the queerest and quaintest inscriptions. You’ll go there to study, Anne, see if you don’t. Of course, nobody is ever buried there now. But a few years ago they put up a beautiful monument to the memory of Nova Scotian soldiers who fell in the Crimean War. It is just opposite the entrance gates and there’s `scope for imagination’ in it, as you used to say. Here’s your trunk at last — and the boys coming to say good night. Must I really shake hands with Charlie Sloane, Anne? His hands are always so cold and fishy-feeling. We must ask them to call occasionally. Miss Hannah gravely told me we could have `young gentlemen callers’ two evenings in the week, if they went away at a reasonable hour; and Miss Ada asked me, smiling, please to be sure they didn’t sit on her beautiful cushions. I promised to see to it; but goodness knows where else they CAN sit, unless they sit on the floor, for there are cushions on EVERYTHING. Miss Ada even has an elaborate Battenburg one on top of the piano.”

Anne was laughing by this time. Priscilla’s gay chatter had the intended effect of cheering her up; homesickness vanished for the time being, and did not even return in full force when she finally found herself alone in her little bedroom. She went to her window and looked out. The street below was dim and quiet. Across it the moon was shining above the trees in Old St. John’s, just behind the great dark head of the lion on the monument. Anne wondered if it could have been only that morning that she had left Green Gables. She had the sense of a long passage of time which one day of change and travel gives.

“I suppose that very moon is looking down on Green Gables now,” she mused. “But I won’t think about it — that way homesickness lies. I’m not even going to have my good cry. I’ll put that off to a more convenient season, and just now I’ll go calmly and sensibly to bed and to sleep.”