‘Indeed I didn’t,’ said Anne radiantly. ‘I know I’m not so freckled as I used to be, so I’ve much to be thankful for, but I really hadn’t dared to hope there was any other improvement. I’m so glad you think there is, Miss Barry.’
Miss Barry’s house was furnished with ‘great magnificence’, as Anne told Marilla afterwards. The two little country girls were rather abashed by the splendour of the parlour where Miss Barry left them when she went to see about dinner.
‘Isn’t is just like a palace?’ whispered Diana. ‘I never was in Aunt Josephine’s house before, and I’d no idea it was so grand. I just wish Julia Bell could see this — she puts on such airs about her mother’s parlour.’
‘Velvet carpet,’ sighed Anne luxuriously, ‘and silk curtains! I’ve dreamed of such things, Diana. But do you know I don’t believe I feel very comfortable with them after all. There are so many things in this room and all so splendid that there is no scope for imagination. That is one consolation when you are poor — there are so many more things you can imagine about.’
Their sojourn in town was something that Anne and Diana dated from for years. From first to last it was crowded with delights.
On Wednesday Miss Barry took them to the Exhibition grounds and kept them there all day.
‘It was splendid,’ Anne related to Marilla later on. ‘I never imagined anything so interesting. I don’t really know which department was the most interesting. I think I liked the horses and the flowers and the fancy work best. Josie Pye took first prize for knitted lace. I was real glad she did. And I was glad that I felt glad, for it shows I’m improving, don’t you think, Marilla, when I can rejoice in Josie’s success? Mr Harmon Andrews took second prize for Gravenstein apples and Mr Bell took first prize for a pig. Diana said she thought it was ridiculous for a Sunday-school superintendent to take a prize in pigs, but I don’t see why. Do you? She said she would always think of it after this when he was praying so solemnly. Clara Louise MacPherson took a prize for painting, and Mrs Lynde got first prize for home-made butter and cheese. So Avonlea was pretty well represented, wasn’t it? Mrs Lynde was there that day, and I never knew how much I really liked her until I saw her familiar face among all those strangers. There were thousands of people there, Marilla. It made me feel dreadfully insignificant. And Miss Barry took us up to the grand stand to see the horse-races. Mrs Lynde wouldn’t go; she said horse-racing was an abomination, and she being a church-member, thought it her bounden duty to set a good example by staying away. But there were so many there I don’t believe Mrs Lynde’s absence would ever be noticed. I don’t think, though, that I ought to go very often to horse-races, because they are awfully fascinating. Diana got so excited that she offered to bet me ten cents that the red horse would win. I didn’t believe he would, but I refused to bet, because I wanted to tell Mrs Allan all about everything, and I felt sure it wouldn’t do to tell her that. It’s always wrong to do anything you can’t tell the minister’s wife. It’s as good as an extra conscience to have a minister’s wife for your friend. And I was very glad I didn’t bet, because the red horse did win, and I would have lost ten cents. So you see that virtue was its own reward. We saw a man go up in a balloon. I’d love to go up in a balloon, Marilla; it would be simply thrilling; and we saw a man selling fortunes. You paid him ten cents and a little bird picked out your fortune for you. Miss Barry gave Diana and me ten cents each to have our fortunes told. Mine was that I would marry a dark-complected man who was very wealthy, and I would go across water to live. I looked carefully at all the dark men I saw after that, but I didn’t care much for any of them, and anyhow I suppose it’s too early to be looking out for him yet. Oh, it was a never-to-be-forgotten day, Marilla. I was so tired I couldn’t sleep at night. Miss Barry put us in the spare room, according to promise. It was an elegant room, Marilla, but somehow sleeping in a spare room isn’t what I used to think it was. That’s the worst of growing up, and I’m beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a child don’t seem half so wonderful to you when you get them.’
Thursday the girls had a drive in the park, and in the evening Miss Barry took them to a concert in the Academy of Music, where a noted prima donna was to sing. To Anne the evening was a glittering vision of delight.
‘Oh, Marilla, it was beyond description. I was so excited I couldn’t even talk, so you may know what it was like. I just sat in enraptured silence. Madame Selitsky was perfectly beautiful, and wore white satin and diamonds. But when she began to sing I never thought about anything else. Oh, I can’t tell you how I felt. But it seemed to me that it could never be hard to be good any more. I felt like I do when I look up to the stars. Tears came into my eyes, but, oh, they were such happy tears. I was so sorry when it was all over, and I told Miss Barry I didn’t see how I was ever to return to common life again. She said she thought if we went over to the restaurant across the street and had an ice-cream it might help me. That sounded so prosaic; but to my surprise I found it true. The ice-cream was delicious, Marilla, and it was so lovely and dissipated to be sitting there eating it at eleven o’clock at night. Diana said she believed she was born for city life. Miss Barry asked me what my opinion was, but I said I would have to think it over very seriously before I could tell her what I really thought. So I thought it over after I went to bed. That is the best time to think things out. And I came to the conclusion, Marilla, that I wasn’t born for city life and that I was glad of it. It’s nice to be eating ice-cream at brilliant restaurants at eleven o’clock at night once in a while; but as a regular thing I’d rather be in the east gable at eleven, sound asleep, but kind of knowing even in my sleep that the stars were shining outside and that the wind was blowing in the firs across the brook. I told Miss Barry so at breakfast the next morning and she laughed. Miss Barry generally laughed at anything I said, even when I said the most solemn things. I don’t think I liked it, Marilla, because I wasn’t trying to be funny. But she is a most hospitable lady and treated us royally.’
Friday brought going-home time, and Mr Barry drove in for the girls.
‘Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves,’ said Miss Barry, as she bade them good-bye.
‘Indeed we have,’ said Diana.
‘And you, Anne-girl?’
‘I’ve enjoyed every minute of the time,’ said Anne, throwing her arms impulsively about the old woman’s neck and kissing her wrinkled cheek. Diana would never have dared to do such a thing, and felt rather aghast at Anne’s freedom. But Miss Barry was pleased, and she stood on her veranda and watched the buggy out of sight. Then she went back into her big house with a sigh. It seemed very lonely, lacking those fresh young lives. Miss Barry was a rather selfish old lady, if the truth must be told, and had never cared much for anybody but herself. She valued people only as they were of service to her or amused her. Anne had amused her, and consequently stood high in the old lady’s good graces. But Miss Barry found herself thinking less about Anne’s quaint speeches than of her fresh enthusiasms, her transparent emotions, her little winning ways, and the sweetness of her eyes and lips.
‘I thought Marilla Cuthbert was an old fool when I heard she’d adopted a girl out of an orphan asylum,’ she said to herself, ‘but I guess she didn’t make much of a mistake after all. If I’d a child like Anne in the house all the time I’d be a better and happier woman.’
Anne and Diana found the drive home as pleasant as the drive in — pleasanter, indeed, since there was the delightful consciousness of home waiting at the end of it. It was sunset when they passed through White Sands and turned into the shore road. Beyond, the Avonlea hills came out darkly against the saffron sky. Behind them the moon was rising out of the sea that grew all radiant and transfigured in her light. Every little cove along the curving road was a marvel of dancing ripples. The waves broke with a soft swish on the rocks below them, and the tang of the sea was in the strong, fresh air.
‘Oh, but it’s good to be alive and to be going home,�
� breathed Anne.
When she crossed the log bridge over the brook the kitchen light of Green Gables winked her a friendly welcome back, and through the open door shone the hearth fire, sending out its warm red glow athwart the chilly autumn night. Anne ran blithely up the hill and into the kitchen, where a hot supper was waiting on the table.
‘So you’ve got back?’ said Marilla, folding up her knitting.
‘Yes, and oh, it’s so good to be back,’ said Anne joyously. ‘I could kiss everything, even to the clock. Marilla, a broiled chicken! You don’t mean to say you cooked that for me!’
‘Yes, I did,’ said Marilla. ‘I thought you’d be hungry after such a drive and need something real appetizing. Hurry and take off your things, and we’ll have supper as soon as Matthew comes in. I’m glad you’ve got back, I must say. It’s been fearful lonesome here without you, and I never put in four longer days.’
After supper Anne sat before the fire between Matthew and Marilla, and gave them a full account of her visit.
‘I’ve had a splendid time,’ she concluded happily, ‘and I feel that it marks an epoch in my life. But the best of it all was the coming home.’
30
The Queen’s Class is Organized
Marilla laid her knitting on her lap and leaned back in her chair. Her eyes were tired, and she thought vaguely that she must see about having her glasses changed the next time she went to town, for her eyes had grown tired very often of late.
It was nearly dark, for the dull November twilight had fallen around Green Gables, and the only light in the kitchen came from the dancing red flames in the stove.
Anne was curled up Turk-fashion on the hearth-rug, gazing into that joyous glow where the sunshine of a hundred summers was being distilled from the maple cord-wood. She had been reading, but her book had slipped to the floor, and now she was dreaming, with a smile on her parted lips. Glittering castles in Spain were shaping themselves out of the mists and rainbows of her lively fancy; adventures wonderful and enthralling were happening to her in cloudland — adventures that always turned out triumphantly and never involved her in scrapes like those of actual life.
Marilla looked at her with a tenderness that would never have been suffered to reveal itself in any clearer light than that soft mingling of fireshine and shadow. The lesson of a love that should display itself easily in spoken word and open look was one Marilla could never learn. But she had learned to love this slim, grey-eyed girl with an affection all the deeper and stronger from its very undemonstrativeness. Her love made her afraid of being unduly indulgent indeed. She had an uneasy feeling that it was rather sinful to set one’s heart so intensely on any human creature as she had set hers on Anne, and perhaps she performed a sort of unconscious penance for this by being stricter and more critical than if the girl had been less dear to her. Certainly Anne herself had no idea how Marilla loved her. She sometimes thought wistfully that Marilla was very hard to please and distinctly lacking in sympathy and understanding. But she always checked the thought reproachfully, remembering what she owed to Marilla.
‘Anne,’ said Marilla abruptly, ‘Miss Stacy was here this afternoon when you were out with Diana.’
Anne came back from her other world with a start and a sigh.
‘Was she? Oh, I’m so sorry I wasn’t in. Why didn’t you call me, Marilla? Diana and I were only over in the Haunted Wood. It’s lovely in the woods now. All the little wood things — the ferns and the satin leaves and the cracker-berries – have gone to sleep, just as if somebody had tucked them away until spring under a blanket of leaves. I think it was a little grey fairy with a rainbow scarf that came tiptoeing along the last moonlight night and did it. Diana wouldn’t say much about that, though. Diana has never forgotten the scolding her mother gave her about imagining ghosts into the Haunted Wood. It had a very bad effect on Diana’s imagination. It blighted it. Mrs Lynde says Myrtle Bell is a blighted being. I asked Ruby Gillis why Myrtle was blighted, and Ruby said she guessed it was because her young man had gone back on her. Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but young men, and the older she gets the worse she is. Young men are all very well in their place, but it doesn’t do to drag them into everything, does it? Diana and I are thinking seriously of promising each other that we will never marry, but be nice old maids and live together for ever. Diana hasn’t quite made up her mind though, because she thinks perhaps it would be nobler to marry some wild, dashing, wicked young man and reform him. Diana and I talk a great deal about serious subjects now, you know. We feel that we are so much older than we used to be that it isn’t becoming to talk of childish matters. It’s such a solemn thing to be almost fourteen, Marilla. Miss Stacy took all us girls who are in our teens down to the brook last Wednesday, and talked to us about it. She said we couldn’t be too careful what habits we formed and what ideals we acquired in our teens, because by the time we were twenty our characters would be developed and the foundation laid for our whole future life. And she said if the foundation was shaky we could never build anything really worth while on it. Diana and I talked the matter over coming home from school. We felt extremely solemn, Marilla. And we decided that we would try to be very careful indeed and form respectable habits and learn all we could and be as sensible as possible, so that by the time we were twenty our characters would be properly developed. It’s perfectly appalling to think of being twenty, Marilla. It sounds so fearfully old and grown up. But why was Miss Stacy here this afternoon?’
‘That is what I want to tell you, Anne, if you’ll ever give me a chance to get a word in edgewise. She was talking about you.’
About me?’ Anne looked rather scared. Then she flushed and exclaimed:
‘Oh, I know what she was saying. I meant to tell you, Marilla, honestly I did, but I forgot. Miss Stacy caught me reading Ben-Hur in school yesterday afternoon when I should have been studying my Canadian history. Jane Andrews lent it to me. I was reading it at dinner-hour, and I had just got to the chariot-race when school went in. I was simply wild to know how it turned out — although I felt sure Ben-Hur must win, because it wouldn’t be poetical justice if he didn’t — so I spread the history open on my desk-lid and then tucked Ben-Hur between the desk and my knee. It just looked as if I were studying Canadian history, you know, while all the while I was revelling in Ben-Hur. I was so interested in it that I never noticed Miss Stacy coming down the aisle until all at once I just looked up and there she was looking down at me, so reproachful like. I can’t tell you how ashamed I felt, Marilla, especially when I heard Josie Pye giggling. Miss Stacy took Ben-Hur away, but she never said a word then. She kept me in at recess and talked to me. She said I had done very wrong in two respects. First, I was wasting the time I ought to have put on my studies; and secondly I was deceiving my teacher in trying to make it appear I was reading a history when it was a story-book instead. I had never realized until that moment, Marilla, that what I was doing was deceitful. I was shocked. I cried bitterly, and asked Miss Stacy to forgive me and I’d never do such a thing again; and I offered to do penance by never so much as looking at Ben-Hur for a whole week, not even to see how the chariot-race turned out. But Miss Stacy said she wouldn’t require that, and she forgave me freely. So I think it wasn’t very kind of her to come up here to you about it after all.’
‘Miss Stacy never mentioned such a thing to me, Anne, and it’s only your guilty conscience that’s the matter with you. You have no business to be taking story-books to school. You read too many novels anyhow. When I was a girl I wasn’t so much as allowed to look at a novel.’
‘Oh, how can you call Ben-Hur a novel when it’s really such a religious book?’ protested Anne. ‘Of course it’s a little too exciting to be proper reading for Sunday, and I only read it on weekdays. And I never read any book now unless either Miss Stacy or Mrs Allan thinks it is a proper book for a girl thirteen and three-quarters to read. Miss Stacy made me promise that. She found me reading a book one day called The Lurid Mystery of the Haunted
Hall. It was one Ruby Gillis had lent me, and, oh, Marilla, it was so fascinating and creepy. It just curdled the blood in my veins. But Miss Stacy said it was a very silly, unwholesome book, and she asked me not to read any more of it or any like it. I didn’t mind promising not to read any more like it, but it was agonizing to give back that book without knowing how it turned out. But my love for Miss Stacy stood the test and I did. It’s really wonderful, Marilla, what you can do when you’re truly anxious to please a certain person.’
‘Well, I guess I’ll light the lamp and get to work,’ said Marilla. ‘I see plainly that you don’t want to hear what Miss Stacy had to say. You’re more interested in the sound of your own tongue than in anything else.’
‘Oh, indeed, Marilla, I do want to hear it,’ cried Anne contritely. ‘I won’t say another word — not one. I know I talk too much, but I am really trying to overcome it, and although I say far too much, yet if you only knew how many things I want to say and don’t, you’d give me some credit for it. Please tell me, Marilla.’
‘Well, Miss Stacy wants to organize a class among her advanced students who mean to study for the entrance examination into Queen’s. She intends to give them extra lessons for an hour after school. And she came to ask Matthew and me if we would like to have you join it. What do you think about it yourself, Anne? Would you like to go to Queen’s and pass for a teacher?’
‘Oh, Marilla!’ Anne straightened to her knees and clasped her hands. ‘It’s been the dream of my life — that is, for the last six months, ever since Ruby and Jane began to talk of studying for the entrance. But I didn’t say anything about it, because I supposed it would be perfectly useless. I’d love to be a teacher. But won’t it be dreadfully expensive? Mr Andrews says it cost him one hundred and fifty dollars to put Prissy through, and Prissy wasn’t a dunce in geometry.’
Anne of Green Gables (Penguin) Page 24