The Complete Works of L M Montgomery

by L. M. Montgomery

  “I daresay it will,” said Anne gravely. “You ARE a handsome boy, Davy,”

  . . . Marilla looked volumes of disapproval . . . “but you must live up to

  it and be just as nice and gentlemanly as you look to be.”

  “And you told Minnie May Barry the other day, when you found her crying ‘cause some one said she was ugly, that if she was nice and kind and loving people wouldn’t mind her looks,” said Davy discontentedly. “Seems to me you can’t get out of being good in this world for some reason or ‘nother. You just HAVE to behave.”

  “Don’t you want to be good?” asked Marilla, who had learned a great deal but had not yet learned the futility of asking such questions.

  “Yes, I want to be good but not TOO good,” said Davy cautiously. “You don’t have to be very good to be a Sunday School superintendent. Mr. Bell’s that, and he’s a real bad man.”

  “Indeed he’s not,” said Marila indignantly.

  “He is . . . he says he is himself,” asseverated Davy. “He said it when he prayed in Sunday School last Sunday. He said he was a vile worm and a miserable sinner and guilty of the blackest ‘niquity. What did he do that was so bad, Marilla? Did he kill anybody? Or steal the collection cents? I want to know.”

  Fortunately Mrs. Lynde came driving up the lane at this moment and Marilla made off, feeling that she had escaped from the snare of the fowler, and wishing devoutly that Mr. Bell were not quite so highly figurative in his public petitions, especially in the hearing of small boys who were always “wanting to know.”

  Anne, left alone in her glory, worked with a will. The floor was swept, the beds made, the hens fed, the muslin dress washed and hung out on the line. Then Anne prepared for the transfer of feathers. She mounted to the garret and donned the first old dress that came to hand . . . a navy blue cashmere she had worn at fourteen. It was decidedly on the short side and as “skimpy” as the notable wincey Anne had worn upon the occasion of her debut at Green Gables; but at least it would not be materially injured by down and feathers. Anne completed her toilet by tying a big red and white spotted handkerchief that had belonged to Matthew over her head, and, thus accoutred, betook herself to the kitchen chamber, whither Marilla, before her departure, had helped her carry the feather bed.

  A cracked mirror hung by the chamber window and in an unlucky moment Anne looked into it. There were those seven freckles on her nose, more rampant than ever, or so it seemed in the glare of light from the unshaded window.

  “Oh, I forgot to rub that lotion on last night,” she thought. “I’d better run down to the pantry and do it now.”

  Anne had already suffered many things trying to remove those freckles. On one occasion the entire skin had peeled off her nose but the freckles remained. A few days previously she had found a recipe for a freckle lotion in a magazine and, as the ingredients were within her reach, she straightway compounded it, much to the disgust of Marilla, who thought that if Providence had placed freckles on your nose it was your bounden duty to leave them there.

  Anne scurried down to the pantry, which, always dim from the big willow growing close to the window, was now almost dark by reason of the shade drawn to exclude flies. Anne caught the bottle containing the lotion from the shelf and copiously anointed her nose therewith by means of a little sponge sacred to the purpose. This important duty done, she returned to her work. Any one who has ever shifted feathers from one tick to another will not need to be told that when Anne finished she was a sight to behold. Her dress was white with down and fluff, and her front hair, escaping from under the handkerchief, was adorned with a veritable halo of feathers. At this auspicious moment a knock sounded at the kitchen door.

  “That must be Mr. Shearer,” thought Anne. “I’m in a dreadful mess but I’ll have to run down as I am, for he’s always in a hurry.”

  Down flew Anne to the kitchen door. If ever a charitable floor did open to swallow up a miserable, befeathered damsel the Green Gables porch floor should promptly have engulfed Anne at that moment. On the doorstep were standing Priscilla Grant, golden and fair in silk attire, a short, stout gray-haired lady in a tweed suit, and another lady, tall stately, wonderfully gowned, with a beautiful, highbred face and large, black-lashed violet eyes, whom Anne “instinctively felt,” as she would have said in her earlier days, to be Mrs. Charlotte E. Morgan.

  In the dismay of the moment one thought stood out from the confusion of Anne’s mind and she grasped at it as at the proverbial straw. All Mrs. Morgan’s heroines were noted for “rising to the occasion.” No matter what their troubles were, they invariably rose to the occasion and showed their superiority over all ills of time, space, and quantity. Anne therefore felt it was HER duty to rise to the occasion and she did it, so perfectly that Priscilla afterward declared she never admired Anne Shirley more than at that moment. No matter what her outraged feelings were she did not show them. She greeted Priscilla and was introduced to her companions as calmly and composedly as if she had been arrayed in purple and fine linen. To be sure, it was somewhat of a shock to find that the lady she had instinctively felt to be Mrs. Morgan was not Mrs. Morgan at all, but an unknown Mrs. Pendexter, while the stout little gray-haired woman was Mrs. Morgan; but in the greater shock the lesser lost its power. Anne ushered her guests to the spare room and thence into the parlor, where she left them while she hastened out to help Priscilla unharness her horse.

  “It’s dreadful to come upon you so unexpectedly as this,” apologized Priscilla, “but I did not know till last night that we were coming. Aunt Charlotte is going away Monday and she had promised to spend today with a friend in town. But last night her friend telephoned to her not to come because they were quarantined for scarlet fever. So I suggested we come here instead, for I knew you were longing to see her. We called at the White Sands Hotel and brought Mrs. Pendexter with us. She is a friend of aunt’s and lives in New York and her husband is a millionaire. We can’t stay very long, for Mrs. Pendexter has to be back at the hotel by five o’clock.”

  Several times while they were putting away the horse Anne caught Priscilla looking at her in a furtive, puzzled way.

  “She needn’t stare at me so,” Anne thought a little resentfully. “If she doesn’t KNOW what it is to change a feather bed she might IMAGINE it.”

  When Priscilla had gone to the parlor, and before Anne could escape upstairs, Diana walked into the kitchen. Anne caught her astonished friend by the arm.

  “Diana Barry, who do you suppose is in that parlor at this very moment? Mrs. Charlotte E. Morgan . . . and a New York millionaire’s wife . . . and here I am like THIS . . . and NOT A THING IN THE HOUSE FOR DINNER BUT A COLD HAM BONE, Diana!”

  By this time Anne had become aware that Diana was staring at her in precisely the same bewildered fashion as Priscilla had done. It was really too much.

  “Oh, Diana, don’t look at me so,” she implored. “YOU, at least, must know that the neatest person in the world couldn’t empty feathers from one tick into another and remain neat in the process.”

  “It . . . it . . . isn’t the feathers,” hesitated Diana. “It’s . . . it’s . . . your nose, Anne.”

  “My nose? Oh, Diana, surely nothing has gone wrong with it!”

  Anne rushed to the little looking glass over the sink. One glance revealed the fatal truth. Her nose was a brilliant scarlet!

  Anne sat down on the sofa, her dauntless spirit subdued at last.

  “What is the matter with it?” asked Diana, curiosity overcoming delicacy.

  “I thought I was rubbing my freckle lotion on it, but I must have used that red dye Marilla has for marking the pattern on her rugs,” was the despairing response. “What shall I do?”

  “Wash it off,” said Diana practically.

  “Perhaps it won’t wash off. First I dye my hair; then I dye my nose. Marilla cut my hair off when I dyed it but that remedy would hardly be practicable in this case. Well, this is another punishment for vanity and I suppose I deserve it . .
. though there’s not much comfort in THAT. It is really almost enough to make one believe in ill-luck, though Mrs. Lynde says there is no such thing, because everything is foreordained.”

  Fortunately the dye washed off easily and Anne, somewhat consoled, betook herself to the east gable while Diana ran home. Presently Anne came down again, clothed and in her right mind. The muslin dress she had fondly hoped to wear was bobbing merrily about on the line outside, so she was forced to content herself with her black lawn. She had the fire on and the tea steeping when Diana returned; the latter wore HER muslin, at least, and carried a covered platter in her hand.

  “Mother sent you this,” she said, lifting the cover and displaying a nicely carved and jointed chicken to Anne’s greatful eyes.

  The chicken was supplemented by light new bread, excellent butter and cheese, Marilla’s fruit cake and a dish of preserved plums, floating in their golden syrup as in congealed summer sunshine. There was a big bowlful of pink-and-white asters also, by way of decoration; yet the spread seemed very meager beside the elaborate one formerly prepared for Mrs. Morgan.

  Anne’s hungry guests, however, did not seem to think anything was lacking and they ate the simple viands with apparent enjoyment. But after the first few moments Anne thought no more of what was or was not on her bill of fare. Mrs. Morgan’s appearance might be somewhat disappointing, as even her loyal worshippers had been forced to admit to each other; but she proved to be a delightful conversationalist. She had traveled extensively and was an excellent storyteller. She had seen much of men and women, and crystalized her experiences into witty little sentences and epigrams which made her hearers feel as if they were listening to one of the people in clever books. But under all her sparkle there was a strongly felt undercurrent of true, womanly sympathy and kindheartedness which won affection as easily as her brilliancy won admiration. Nor did she monopolize the conversation. She could draw others out as skillfully and fully as she could talk herself, and Anne and Diana found themselves chattering freely to her. Mrs. Pendexter said little; she merely smiled with her lovely eyes and lips, and ate chicken and fruit cake and preserves with such exquisite grace that she conveyed the impression of dining on ambrosia and honeydew. But then, as Anne said to Diana later on, anybody so divinely beautiful as Mrs. Pendexter didn’t need to talk; it was enough for her just to LOOK.

  After dinner they all had a walk through Lover’s Lane and Violet Vale and the Birch Path, then back through the Haunted Wood to the Dryad’s Bubble, where they sat down and talked for a delightful last half hour. Mrs. Morgan wanted to know how the Haunted Wood came by its name, and laughed until she cried when she heard the story and Anne’s dramatic account of a certain memorable walk through it at the witching hour of twilight.

  “It has indeed been a feast of reason and flow of soul, hasn’t it?” said Anne, when her guests had gone and she and Diana were alone again. “I don’t know which I enjoyed more . . . listening to Mrs. Morgan or gazing at Mrs. Pendexter. I believe we had a nicer time than if we’d known they were coming and been cumbered with much serving. You must stay to tea with me, Diana, and we’ll talk it all over.”

  “Priscilla says Mrs. Pendexter’s husband’s sister is married to an English earl; and yet she took a second helping of the plum preserves,” said Diana, as if the two facts were somehow incompatible.

  “I daresay even the English earl himself wouldn’t have turned up his aristocratic nose at Marilla’s plum preserves,” said Anne proudly.

  Anne did not mention the misfortune which had befallen HER nose when she related the day’s history to Marilla that evening. But she took the bottle of freckle lotion and emptied it out of the window.

  “I shall never try any beautifying messes again,” she said, darkly resolute. “They may do for careful, deliberate people; but for anyone so hopelessly given over to making mistakes as I seem to be it’s tempting fate to meddle with them.”

  XXI

  Sweet Miss Lavendar

  School opened and Anne returned to her work, with fewer theories but considerably more experience. She had several new pupils, six- and seven-year-olds just venturing, round-eyed, into a world of wonder. Among them were Davy and Dora. Davy sat with Milty Boulter, who had been going to school for a year and was therefore quite a man of the world. Dora had made a compact at Sunday School the previous Sunday to sit with Lily Sloane; but Lily Sloane not coming the first day, she was temporarily assigned to Mirabel Cotton, who was ten years old and therefore, in Dora’s eyes, one of the “big girls.”

  “I think school is great fun,” Davy told Marilla when he got home that night. “You said I’d find it hard to sit still and I did . . . you mostly do tell the truth, I notice . . . but you can wriggle your legs about under the desk and that helps a lot. It’s splendid to have so many boys to play with. I sit with Milty Boulter and he’s fine. He’s longer than me but I’m wider. It’s nicer to sit in the back seats but you can’t sit there till your legs grow long enough to touch the floor. Milty drawed a picture of Anne on his slate and it was awful ugly and I told him if he made pictures of Anne like that I’d lick him at recess. I thought first I’d draw one of him and put horns and a tail on it, but I was afraid it would hurt his feelings, and Anne says you should never hurt anyone’s feelings. It seems it’s dreadful to have your feelings hurt. It’s better to knock a boy down than hurt his feelings if you MUST do something. Milty said he wasn’t scared of me but he’d just as soon call it somebody else to ‘blige me, so he rubbed out Anne’s name and printed Barbara Shaw’s under it. Milty doesn’t like Barbara ‘cause she calls him a sweet little boy and once she patted him on his head.”

  Dora said primly that she liked school; but she was very quiet, even for her; and when at twilight Marilla bade her go upstairs to bed she hesitated and began to cry.

  “I’m . . . I’m frightened,” she sobbed. “I . . . I don’t want to go upstairs alone in the dark.”

  “What notion have you got into your head now?” demanded Marilla. “I’m sure you’ve gone to bed alone all summer and never been frightened before.”

  Dora still continued to cry, so Anne picked her up, cuddled her sympathetically, and whispered,

  “Tell Anne all about it, sweetheart. What are you frightened of?”

  “Of . . . of Mirabel Cotton’s uncle,” sobbed Dora. “Mirabel Cotton told me all about her family today in school. Nearly everybody in her family has died . . . all her grandfathers and grandmothers and ever so many uncles and aunts. They have a habit of dying, Mirabel says. Mirabel’s awful proud of having so many dead relations, and she told me what they all died of, and what they said, and how they looked in their coffins. And Mirabel says one of her uncles was seen walking around the house after he was buried. Her mother saw him. I don’t mind the rest so much but I can’t help thinking about that uncle.”

  Anne went upstairs with Dora and sat by her until she fell asleep. The next day Mirabel Cotton was kept in at recess and “gently but firmly” given to understand that when you were so unfortunate as to possess an uncle who persisted in walking about houses after he had been decently interred it was not in good taste to talk about that eccentric gentleman to your deskmate of tender years. Mirabel thought this very harsh. The Cottons had not much to boast of. How was she to keep up her prestige among her schoolmates if she were forbidden to make capital out of the family ghost?

  September slipped by into a gold and crimson graciousness of October. One Friday evening Diana came over.

  “I’d a letter from Ella Kimball today, Anne, and she wants us to go over to tea tomorrow afternoon to meet her cousin, Irene Trent, from town. But we can’t get one of our horses to go, for they’ll all be in use tomorrow, and your pony is lame . . . so I suppose we can’t go.”

  “Why can’t we walk?” suggested Anne. “If we go straight back through the woods we’ll strike the West Grafton road not far from the Kimball place. I was through that way last winter and I know the road. It’s no more than four
miles and we won’t have to walk home, for Oliver Kimball will be sure to drive us. He’ll be only too glad of the excuse, for he goes to see Carrie Sloane and they say his father will hardly ever let him have a horse.”

  It was accordingly arranged that they should walk, and the following afternoon they set out, going by way of Lover’s Lane to the back of the Cuthbert farm, where they found a road leading into the heart of acres of glimmering beech and maple woods, which were all in a wondrous glow of flame and gold, lying in a great purple stillness and peace.

  “It’s as if the year were kneeling to pray in a vast cathedral full of mellow stained light, isn’t it?” said Anne dreamily. “It doesn’t seem right to hurry through it, does it? It seems irreverent, like running in a church.”

  “We MUST hurry though,” said Diana, glancing at her watch. “We’ve left ourselves little enough time as it is.”

  “Well, I’ll walk fast but don’t ask me to talk,” said Anne, quickening her pace. “I just want to drink the day’s loveliness in . . . I feel as if she were holding it out to my lips like a cup of airy wine and I’ll take a sip at every step.”

  Perhaps it was because she was so absorbed in “drinking it in” that Anne took the left turning when they came to a fork in the road. She should have taken the right, but ever afterward she counted it the most fortunate mistake of her life. They came out finally to a lonely, grassy road, with nothing in sight along it but ranks of spruce saplings.

  “Why, where are we?” exclaimed Diana in bewilderment. “This isn’t the West Grafton road.”

  “No, it’s the base line road in Middle Grafton,” said Anne, rather shamefacedly. “I must have taken the wrong turning at the fork. I don’t know where we are exactly, but we must be all of three miles from Kimballs’ still.”