‘Well now, I dunno as I comprehend them all myself,’ acknowledged Matthew.
‘Well, I suppose I must finish up my lessons. I won’t allow myself to open that new book Jane lent me until I’m through. But it’s a terrible temptation, Matthew. Even when I turn my back on it I can see it there just as plain. Jane said she cried herself sick over it. I love a book that makes me cry. But I think I’ll carry that book into the sitting-room and lock it in the jam closet and give you the key. And you must not give it to me, Matthew, until my lessons are done, not even if I implore you on my bended knees. It’s all very well to say resist temptation, but it’s ever so much easier to resist it if you can’t get the key. And then shall I run down the cellar and get some russets, Matthew? Wouldn’t you like some russets?’
‘Well now, I dunno but what I would,’ said Matthew, who never ate russets but knew Anne’s weakness for them.
Just as Anne emerged triumphantly from the cellar with her plateful of russets came the sound of flying footsteps on the icy boardwalk outside and the next moment the kitchen door was flung open and in rushed Diana Barry, white-faced and breathless, with a shawl wrapped hastily around her head. Anne promptly let go of her candle and plate in her surprise, and plate, candle, and apples crashed together down the cellar ladder and were found at the bottom, embedded in melted grease, the next day, by Marilla, who gathered them up and thanked mercy the house hadn’t been set on fire.
‘Whatever is the matter, Diana?’ cried Anne. ‘Has your mother relented at last?’
‘Oh, Anne, do come quick,’ implored Diana nervously, ‘Minnie May is awful sick — she’s got croup, Young Mary Joe says — and Father and Mother are away to town and there’s nobody to go for the doctor. Minnie May is awful bad and Young Mary Joe doesn’t know what to do — and oh, Anne, I’m so scared!’
Matthew, without a word, reached out for cap and coat, slipped past Diana and away into the darkness of the yard.
‘He’s gone to harness the sorrel mare to go to Carmody for the doctor,’ said Anne, who was hurrying on hood and jacket. ‘I know it as well as if he’d said so. Matthew and I are such kindred spirits I can read his thoughts without words at all.’
‘I don’t believe he’ll find the doctor at Carmody,’ sobbed Diana. ‘I know that Doctor Blair went to town and I guess Doctor Spencer would go too. Young Mary Joe never saw anybody with croup and Mrs Lynde is away. Oh, Anne!’
‘Don’t cry, Di,’ said Anne cheerily. ‘I know exactly what to do for croup. You forget that Mrs Hammond had twins three times. When you look after three pairs of twins you naturally get a lot of experience. They all had croup regularly. Just wait till I get the ipecac bottle — you mayn’t have any at your house. Come on now.’
The two little girls hastened out hand in hand and hurried through Lovers’ Lane and across the crusted field beyond, for the snow was too deep to go by the shorter wood way. Anne, although sincerely sorry for Minnie May, was far from being insensible to the romance of the situation and to the sweetness of once more sharing that romance with a kindred spirit.
The night was clear and frosty, all ebony of shadow and silver of snowy slope; big stars were shining over the silent fields; here and there the dark pointed firs stood up with snow powdering their branches and the wind whistling through them. Anne thought it was truly delightful to go skimming through all this mystery and loveliness with your bosom friend who had been so long estranged.
Minnie May, aged three, was really very sick. She lay on the kitchen sofa, feverish and restless, while her hoarse breathing could be heard all over the house. Young Mary Joe, a buxom, broad-faced French girl from the Creek, whom Mrs Barry had engaged to stay with the children during her absence, was helpless and bewildered, quite incapable of thinking what to do, or doing it if she thought of it.
Anne went to work with skill and promptness.
‘Minnie May has croup all right; she’s pretty bad, but I’ve seen them worse. First we must have lots of hot water. I declare, Diana, there isn’t more than a cupful in the kettle! There, I’ve filled it up, and, Mary Joe, you may put some wood in the stove. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but it seems to me you might have thought of this before if you’d any imagination. Now, I’ll undress Minnie May and put her to bed, and you try to find some soft flannel cloths, Diana. I’m going to give her a dose of ipecac first of all.’
Minnie May did not take kindly to the ipecac, but Anne had not brought up three pairs of twins for nothing. Down that ipecac went, not only once, but many times during the long, anxious night when the two little girls worked patiently over the suffering Minnie May, and Young Mary Joe, honestly anxious to do all she could, kept on a roaring fire and heated more water than would have been needed for a hospital of croupy babies.
It was three o’clock when Matthew came with the doctor, for he had been obliged to go all the way to Spencervale for one. But the pressing need for assistance was past. Minnie May was much better and was sleeping soundly.
‘I was awfully near giving up in despair,’ explained Anne. ‘She got worse and worse until she was sicker than ever the Hammond twins were, even the last pair. I actually thought she was going to choke to death. I gave her every drop of ipecac in that bottle, and when the last dose went down I said to myself — not to Diana or Young Mary Joe, because I didn’t want to worry them any more than they were worried, but I had to say it to myself just to relieve my feelings — “This is the last lingering hope and I fear ’tis a vain one.” But in about three minutes she coughed up the phlegm and began to get better right away. You must just imagine my relief, doctor, because I can’t express it in words. You know there are some things that cannot be expressed in words.’
‘Yes, I know,’ nodded the doctor. He looked at Anne as if he were thinking some things about her that couldn’t be expressed in words. Later on, however, he expressed them to Mr and Mrs Barry.
‘That little red-headed girl they have over at Cuthberts’ is as smart as they make ’em. I tell you she saved that baby’s life, for it would have been too late by the time I got here. She seems to have a skill and presence of mind perfectly wonderful in a child of her age. I never saw anything like the eyes of her when she was explaining the case out to me.’
Anne had gone home in wonderful, white-frosted winter morning, heavy-eyed from loss of sleep, but still talking unweariedly to Matthew as they crossed the long white field and walked under the glittering fairy arch of the Lovers’ Lane maples.
‘Oh, Matthew, isn’t it a wonderful morning? The world looks like something God had just imagined for His own pleasure, doesn’t it? Those trees look as if I could blow them away with a breath — pouf! I’m so glad I live in a world where there are white frosts, aren’t you? And I’m so glad Mrs Hammond had three pairs of twins after all. If she hadn’t I mightn’t have known what to do for Minnie May. I’m real sorry I was ever cross with Mrs Hammond for having twins. But, oh, Matthew, I’m so sleepy. I can’t go to school. I just know I couldn’t keep my eyes open and I’d be so stupid. But I hate to stay home for Gil — some of the others will get head of the class, and it’s so hard to get up again — although of course the harder it is the more satisfaction you have when you do get up, haven’t you?’
‘Well now, I guess you’ll manage all right,’ said Matthew, looking at Anne’s white little face, and the dark shadows under her eyes. ‘You just go right to bed and have a good sleep. I’ll do all the chores.’
Anne accordingly went to bed and slept so long and soundly that it was well on in the white and rosy winter afternoon when she awoke and descended to the kitchen where Marilla, who had arrived home in the meantime, was sitting knitting.
‘Oh, did you see the Premier?’ exclaimed Anne at once. ‘What did he look like, Marilla?’
‘Well, he never got to be Premier on account of his looks,’ said Marilla. ‘Such a nose as that man had! But he can speak. I was proud of being a Conservative. Rachel Lynde, of course, being a Liberal, ha
d no use for him. Your dinner is in the oven, Anne; and you can get yourself some blue-plum preserve out of the pantry. I guess you’re hungry. Matthew has been telling me about last night. I must say it was fortunate you knew what to do. I wouldn’t have had any idea myself, for I never saw a case of croup. There now, never mind talking till you’ve had your dinner. I can tell by the look of you that you’re just full up with speeches, but they’ll keep.’
Marilla had something to tell Anne, but she did not tell it just then, for she knew if she did Anne’s consequent excitement would lift her clear out of the region of such material matters as appetite or dinner. Not until Anne had finished her saucer of blue plums did Marilla say:
‘Mrs Barry was here this afternoon, Anne. She wanted to see you, but I wouldn’t wake you up. She says you saved Minnie May’s life, and she is very sorry she acted as she did in that affair of the currant wine. She says she knows now you didn’t mean to set Diana drunk, and she hopes you’ll forgive her and be good friends with Diana again. You’re to go over this evening if you like, for Diana can’t stir outside the door on account of a bad cold she caught last night. Now, Anne Shirley, for pity’s sake don’t fly clean up into the air.’
The warning seemed not unnecessary, so uplifted and aerial was Anne’s expression and attitude as she sprang to her feet, her face irradiated with the flame of her spirit.
‘Oh, Marilla, can I go right now — without washing my dishes? I’ll wash them when I come back, but I cannot tie myself down to anything so unromantic as dish-washing at this thrilling moment.’
‘Yes, yes, run along,’ said Marilla indulgently. ‘Anne Shirley — are you crazy? Come back this instant and put something on you. I might as well call to the wind. She’s gone without a cap or wrap. Look at her tearing through the orchard with her hair streaming. It’ll be a mercy if she doesn’t catch her death of cold.’
Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy places. Afar in the south-west was the great shimmering, pearl-like sparkle of an evening star in a sky that was pale golden and ethereal rose over gleaming white spaces and dark glens of spruce. The tinkles of sleigh-bells among the snowy hills came like elfin chimes through the frosty air, but their music was not sweeter than the song in Anne’s heart and on her lips.
‘You see before you a perfectly happy person, Marilla,’ she announced. ‘I’m perfectly happy — yes, in spite of my red hair. Just at present I have a soul above red hair. Mrs Barry kissed me and cried and said she was so sorry and she could never repay me. I felt fearfully embarrassed, Marilla, but I just said as politely as I could, “I have no hard feelings for you, Mrs Barry. I assure you once for all that I did not mean to intoxicate Diana and henceforth I shall cover the past with the mantle of oblivion.” That was a pretty dignified way of speaking, wasn’t it, Marilla? I felt that I was heaping coals of fire on Mrs Barry’s head. And Diana and I had a lovely afternoon. Diana showed me a new fancy crochet stitch her aunt over at Carmody taught her. Not a soul in Avonlea knows it but us, and we pledged a solemn vow never to reveal it to anyone else. Diana gave me a beautiful card with a wreath of roses on it and a verse of poetry:
If you love me as I love you
Nothing but death can part us two.
And that is true, Marilla. We’re going to ask Mr Phillips to let us sit together in school again, and Gertie Pye can go with Minnie Andrews. We had an elegant tea. Mrs Barry had the very best china set out, just as if I was real company. I can’t tell you what a thrill it gave me. Nobody ever used their very best china on my account before. And we had fruit-cake and pound-cake and dough-nuts and two kinds of preserves, Marilla. And Mrs Barry asked me if I took tea and said, “Pa, why don’t you pass the biscuits to Anne?” It must be lovely to be grown up, Marilla, when just being treated as if you were is so nice.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Marilla, with a brief sigh.
‘Well, anyway, when I am grown up,’ said Anne decidedly, ‘I’m always going to talk to little girls as if they were, too, and I’ll never laugh when they use big words. I know from sorrowful experience how that hurts one’s feelings. After tea Diana and I made taffy. The taffy wasn’t very good, I suppose because neither Diana nor I had ever made any before. Diana left me to stir it while she buttered the plates and I forgot and let it burn and then when we set it out on the platform to cool the cat walked over one plate and that had to be thrown away. But the making of it was splendid fun. Then when I came home Mrs Barry asked me to come over as often as I could and Diana stood at the window and threw kisses to me all the way down to Lovers’ Lane. I assure you, Marilla, that I feel like praying tonight and I’m going to think out a special brand-new prayer in honour of the occasion.’
19
A Concert, a Catastrophe, and a Confession
‘Marilla, can I go over to see Diana just for a minute?’ asked Anne, running breathlessly down from the east gable one February evening.
‘I don’t see what you want to be traipsing about after dark for,’ said Marilla shortly. ‘You and Diana walked home from school together and then stood down there in the snow for half an hour more, your tongues going the whole blessed time, clickety-clack. So I don’t think you’re very badly off to see her again.’
‘But she wants to see me,’ pleaded Anne. ‘She has something very important to tell me.’
‘How do you know she has?’
‘Because she just signalled to me from her window. We have arranged a way to signal with our candles and cardboard. We set the candle on the window-sill and make flashes by passing the cardboard back and forth. So many flashes mean a certain thing. It was my idea, Marilla.’
‘I’ll warrant you it was,’ said Marilla emphatically. ‘And the next thing you’ll be setting fire to the curtain with your signalling nonsense.’
‘Oh, we’re very careful, Marilla. And it’s so interesting. Two flashes mean, “Are you there?” Three mean “yes” and four “no”. Five mean, “Come over as soon as possible, because I have something important to reveal.” Diana has just signalled five flashes, and I’m really suffering to know what it is.’
‘Well, you needn’t suffer any longer,’ said Marilla sarcastically. ‘You can go, but you’re to be back here in just ten minutes, remember that.’
Anne did remember it and was back in the stipulated time, although probably no mortal will ever know just what it cost her to confine the discussion of Diana’s important communication within the limits of ten minutes. But at least she had made good use of them.
‘Oh, Marilla, what do you think? You know tomorrow is Diana’s birthday. Well, her mother told her she could ask me to go home with her from school and stay all night with her. And her cousins are coming over from Newbridge in a big pung sleigh to go to the Debating Club concert at the hall tomorrow night. And they are going to take Diana and me to the concert — if you’ll let me go, that is. You will, won’t you, Marilla? Oh, I feel so excited.’
‘You can calm down then, because you’re not going. You’re better at home in your own bed, and as for that Club concert, it’s all nonsense, and little girls should not be allowed to go out to such places at all.’
‘I’m sure the Debating Club is a most respectable affair,’ pleaded Anne.
‘I’m not saying it isn’t. But you’re not going to begin gadding about to concerts and staying out all hours of the night. Pretty doings for children. I’m surprised at Mrs Barry letting Diana go.’
‘But it’s such a very special occasion,’ mourned Anne, on the verge of tears. ‘Diana has only one birthday in a year. It isn’t as if birthdays were common things, Marilla. Prissy Andrews is going to recite “Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight”. That is such a good moral piece, Marilla, I’m sure it would do me lots of good to hear it. And the choir are going to sing four lovely pathetic songs that are pretty near as good as hymns. And oh, Marilla, the minister is going to take part; yes, indeed, he is; he’s going to give an address. That will be just about
the same thing as a sermon. Please, mayn’t I go, Marilla?’
‘You heard what I said, Anne, didn’t you? Take off your boots now and go to bed. It’s past eight.’
‘There’s just one more thing, Marilla,’ said Anne, with the air of producing the last shot in her locker. ‘Mrs Barry told Diana that we might sleep in the spare-room bed. Think of the honour of your little Anne being put in the spare-room bed.’
‘It’s an honour you’ll have to get along without. Go to bed, Anne, and don’t let me hear another word out of you.’
When Anne, with tears rolling over her cheeks had gone sorrowfully upstairs, Matthew, who had been apparently sound asleep on the lounge during the whole dialogue, opened his eyes and said decidedly:
‘Well, now, Marilla, I think you ought to let Anne go.’
‘I don’t then,’ retorted Marilla. ‘Who’s bringing this child up, Matthew, you or me?’
‘Well now, you,’ admitted Matthew.
‘Don’t interfere then.’
‘Well now, I ain’t interfering. It ain’t interfering to have your own opinion. And my opinion is that you ought to let Anne go.’
‘You’d think I ought to let Anne go to the moon if she took the notion, I’ve no doubt,’ was Marilla’s amiable rejoinder. ‘I might have let her spend the night with Diana, if that was all. But I don’t approve of this concert plan. She’d go there and catch cold like as not, and have her head filled up with nonsense and excitement. It would unsettle her for a week. I understand that child’s disposition and what’s good for it better than you, Matthew.’
Anne of Green Gables (Penguin) Page 15