Anne Of The Island

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ANNE of the ISLAND

by Lucy Maud Montgomery




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all the girls
all over the world
who have "wanted more"
about ANNE



All precious things discovered late
To those that seek them issue forth,
For Love in sequel works with Fate,
And draws the veil from hidden worth.
--TENNYSON



Table of Contents

I The Shadow of Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
II Garlands of Autumn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
III Greeting and Farewell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
IV April's Lady . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
V Letters from Home. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
VI In the Park. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
VII Home Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
VIII Anne's First Proposal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105
IX An Unwelcome Lover and a Welcome Friend. . . . . . .113
X Patty's Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126
XI The Round of Life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .139
XII "Averil's Atonement" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .153
XIII The Way of Transgressors . . . . . . . . . . . . . .165
XIV The Summons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .181
XV A Dream Turned Upside Down . . . . . . . . . . . . .194
XVI Adjusted Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .202
XVII A Letter from Davy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .219
XVIII Miss Josepine Remembers the Anne-girl. . . . . . . .225
XIX An Interlude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .234
XX Gilbert Speaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .240
XXI Roses of Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .249
XXII Spring and Anne Return to Green Gables . . . . . . .256
XXIII Paul Cannot Find the Rock People . . . . . . . . . .263
XXIV Enter Jonas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .269
XXV Enter Prince Charming. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .278
XXVI Enter Christine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .288
XXVII Mutual Confidences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .294
XXVIII A June Evening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .303
XXIX Diana's Wedding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .311
XXX Mrs. Skinner's Romance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .317
XXXI Anne to Philippa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .323
XXXII Tea with Mrs. Douglas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .328
XXXIII "He Just Kept Coming and Coming" . . . . . . . . . .336
XXXIV John Douglas Speaks at Last. . . . . . . . . . . . .342
XXXV The Last Redmond Year Opens. . . . . . . . . . . . .350
XXXV1 The Gardners' Call . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .361
XXXVII Full-fledged B.A.'s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .370
XXXVIII False Dawn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .379
XXXIX Deals with Weddings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .388
XL A Book of Revelation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .400
XLI Love Takes Up the Glass of Time. . . . . . . . . . .407





ANNE of the ISLAND

by Lucy Maud Montgomery




Chapter I

The Shadow of Change


"Harvest is ended and summer is gone," quoted Anne Shirley, gazing
across the shorn fields dreamily. She and Diana Barry had been picking
apples in the Green Gables orchard, but were now resting from their
labors in a sunny corner, where airy fleets of thistledown drifted by
on the wings of a wind that was still summer-sweet with the incense of
ferns in the Haunted Wood.

But everything in the landscape around them spoke of autumn. The sea was
roaring hollowly in the distance, the fields were bare and sere, scarfed
with golden rod, the brook valley below Green Gables overflowed
with asters of ethereal purple, and the Lake of Shining Waters was
blue--blue--blue; not the changeful blue of spring, nor the pale azure
of summer, but a clear, steadfast, serene blue, as if the water
were past all moods and tenses of emotion and had settled down to a
tranquility unbroken by fickle dreams.

"It has been a nice summer," said Diana, twisting the new ring on her
left hand with a smile. "And Miss Lavendar's wedding seemed to come as
a sort of crown to it. I suppose Mr. and Mrs. Irving are on the Pacific
coast now."

"It seems to me they have been gone long enough to go around the world,"
sighed Anne.

"I can't believe it is only a week since they were married. Everything
has changed. Miss Lavendar and Mr. and Mrs. Allan gone--how lonely the
manse looks with the shutters all closed! I went past it last night, and
it made me feel as if everybody in it had died."

"We'll never get another minister as nice as Mr. Allan," said Diana,
with gloomy conviction. "I suppose we'll have all kinds of supplies this
winter, and half the Sundays no preaching at all. And you and Gilbert
gone--it will be awfully dull."

"Fred will be here," insinuated Anne slyly.

"When is Mrs. Lynde going to move up?" asked Diana, as if she had not
heard Anne's remark.

"Tomorrow. I'm glad she's coming--but it will be another change. Marilla
and I cleared everything out of the spare room yesterday. Do you know,
I hated to do it? Of course, it was silly--but it did seem as if we
were committing sacrilege. That old spare room has always seemed like
a shrine to me. When I was a child I thought it the most wonderful
apartment in the world. You remember what a consuming desire I had to
sleep in a spare room bed--but not the Green Gables spare room. Oh, no,
never there! It would have been too terrible--I couldn't have slept a
wink from awe. I never WALKED through that room when Marilla sent me in
on an errand--no, indeed, I tiptoed through it and held my breath, as if
I were in church, and felt relieved when I got out of it. The pictures
of George Whitefield and the Duke of Wellington hung there, one on each
side of the mirror, and frowned so sternly at me all the time I was in,
especially if I dared peep in the mirror, which was the only one in the
house that didn't twist my face a little. I always wondered how Marilla
dared houseclean that room. And now it's not only cleaned but stripped
bare. George Whitefield and the Duke have been relegated to the upstairs
hall. 'So passes the glory of this world,'" concluded Anne, with a
laugh in which there was a little note of regret. It is never pleasant
to have our old shrines desecrated, even when we have outgrown them.

"I'll be so lonesome when you go," moaned Diana for the hundredth time.
"And to think you go next week!"

"But we're together still," said Anne cheerily. "We mustn't let next
week rob us of this week's joy. I hate the thought of going myself--home
and I are such good friends. Talk of being lonesome! It's I who should
groan. YOU'LL be here with any number of your old friends--AND Fred!
While I shall be alone among strangers, not knowing a soul!"

"EXCEPT Gilbert--AND Charlie Sloane," said Diana, imitating Anne's
italics and slyness.

"Charlie Sloane will be a great comfort, of course," agreed Anne
sarcastically; whereupon both those irresponsible damsels laughed. Diana
knew exactly what Anne thought of Charlie Sloane; but, despite sundry
confidential talks, she did not know just what Anne thought of Gilbert
Blythe. To be sure, Anne herself did not know that.

"The boys may be boarding at the other end of Kingsport, for all I
know," Anne went on. "I am glad I'm going to Redmond, and I am sure I
shall like it after a while. But for the first few weeks I know I won't.
I shan't even have the comfort of looking forward to the weekend visit
home, as I had when I went to Queen's. Christmas will seem like a
thousand years away."

"Everything is changing--or going to change," said Diana sadly. "I have
a feeling that things will never be the same again, Anne."

"We have come to a parting of the ways, I suppose," said Anne
thoughtfully. "We had to come to it. Do you think, Diana, that being
grown-up is really as nice as we used to imagine it would be when we
were children?"

"I don't know--there are SOME nice things about it," answered Diana,
again caressing her ring with that little smile which always had the
effect of making Anne feel suddenly left out and inexperienced. "But
there are so many puzzling things, too. Sometimes I feel as if being
grown-up just frightened me--and then I would give anything to be a
little girl again."

"I suppose we'll get used to being grownup in time," said Anne
cheerfully. "There won't be so many unexpected things about it by and
by--though, after all, I fancy it's the unexpected things that give
spice to life. We're eighteen, Diana. In two more years we'll be twenty.
When I was ten I thought twenty was a green old age. In no time you'll
be a staid, middle-aged matron, and I shall be nice, old maid Aunt Anne,
coming to visit you on vacations. You'll always keep a corner for me,
won't you, Di darling? Not the spare room, of course--old maids can't
aspire to spare rooms, and I shall be as 'umble as Uriah Heep, and quite
content with a little over-the-porch or off-the-parlor cubby hole."

"What nonsense you do talk, Anne," laughed Diana. "You'll marry somebody
splendid and handsome and rich--and no spare room in Avonlea will be
half gorgeous enough for you--and you'll turn up your nose at all the
friends of your youth."

"That would be a pity; my nose is quite nice, but I fear turning it up
would spoil it," said Anne, patting that shapely organ. "I haven't so
many good features that I could afford to spoil those I have; so, even
if I should marry the King of the Cannibal Islands, I promise you I
won't turn up my nose at you, Diana."

With another gay laugh the girls separated, Diana to return to Orchard
Slope, Anne to walk to the Post Office. She found a letter awaiting her
there, and when Gilbert Blythe overtook her on the bridge over the Lake
of Shining Waters she was sparkling with the excitement of it.

"Priscilla Grant is going to Redmond, too," she exclaimed. "Isn't that
splendid? I hoped she would, but she didn't think her father would
consent. He has, however, and we're to board together. I feel that I can
face an army with banners--or all the professors of Redmond in one fell
phalanx--with a chum like Priscilla by my side."

"I think we'll like Kingsport," said Gilbert. "It's a nice old burg,
they tell me, and has the finest natural park in the world. I've heard
that the scenery in it is magnificent."

"I wonder if it will be--can be--any more beautiful than this," murmured
Anne, looking around her with the loving, enraptured eyes of those to
whom "home" must always be the loveliest spot in the world, no matter
what fairer lands may lie under alien stars.

They were leaning on the bridge of the old pond, drinking deep of the
enchantment of the dusk, just at the spot where Anne had climbed from
her sinking Dory on the day Elaine floated down to Camelot. The fine,
empurpling dye of sunset still stained the western skies, but the moon
was rising and the water lay like a great, silver dream in her light.
Remembrance wove a sweet and subtle spell over the two young creatures.

"You are very quiet, Anne," said Gilbert at last.

"I'm afraid to speak or move for fear all this wonderful beauty will
vanish just like a broken silence," breathed Anne.

Gilbert suddenly laid his hand over the slender white one lying on the
rail of the bridge. His hazel eyes deepened into darkness, his still
boyish lips opened to say something of the dream and hope that thrilled
his soul. But Anne snatched her hand away and turned quickly. The spell
of the dusk was broken for her.

"I must go home," she exclaimed, with a rather overdone carelessness.
"Marilla had a headache this afternoon, and I'm sure the twins will be
in some dreadful mischief by this time. I really shouldn't have stayed
away so long."

She chattered ceaselessly and inconsequently until they reached the
Green Gables lane. Poor Gilbert hardly had a chance to get a word in
edgewise. Anne felt rather relieved when they parted. There had been a
new, secret self-consciousness in her heart with regard to Gilbert, ever
since that fleeting moment of revelation in the garden of Echo
Lodge. Something alien had intruded into the old, perfect, school-day
comradeship--something that threatened to mar it.

"I never felt glad to see Gilbert go before," she thought,
half-resentfully, half-sorrowfully, as she walked alone up the lane.
"Our friendship will be spoiled if he goes on with this nonsense.
It mustn't be spoiled--I won't let it. Oh, WHY can't boys be just
sensible!"

Anne had an uneasy doubt that it was not strictly "sensible" that
she should still feel on her hand the warm pressure of Gilbert's, as
distinctly as she had felt it for the swift second his had rested
there; and still less sensible that the sensation was far from being an
unpleasant one--very different from that which had attended a similar
demonstration on Charlie Sloane's part, when she had been sitting out a
dance with him at a White Sands party three nights before. Anne shivered
over the disagreeable recollection. But all problems connected with
infatuated swains vanished from her mind when she entered the
homely, unsentimental atmosphere of the Green Gables kitchen where an
eight-year-old boy was crying grievously on the sofa.

"What is the matter, Davy?" asked Anne, taking him up in her arms.
"Where are Marilla and Dora?"

"Marilla's putting Dora to bed," sobbed Davy, "and I'm crying 'cause
Dora fell down the outside cellar steps, heels over head, and scraped
all the skin off her nose, and--"

"Oh, well, don't cry about it, dear. Of course, you are sorry for her,
but crying won't help her any. She'll be all right tomorrow. Crying
never helps any one, Davy-boy, and--"

"I ain't crying 'cause Dora fell down cellar," said Davy, cutting short
Anne's wellmeant preachment with increasing bitterness. "I'm crying,
cause I wasn't there to see her fall. I'm always missing some fun or
other, seems to me."

"Oh, Davy!" Anne choked back an unholy shriek of laughter. "Would you
call it fun to see poor little Dora fall down the steps and get hurt?"

"She wasn't MUCH hurt," said Davy, defiantly. "'Course, if she'd been
killed I'd have been real sorry, Anne. But the Keiths ain't so easy
killed. They're like the Blewetts, I guess. Herb Blewett fell off the
hayloft last Wednesday, and rolled right down through the turnip chute
into the box stall, where they had a fearful wild, cross horse, and
rolled right under his heels. And still he got out alive, with only
three bones broke. Mrs. Lynde says there are some folks you can't kill
with a meat-axe. Is Mrs. Lynde coming here tomorrow, Anne?"

"Yes, Davy, and I hope you'll be always very nice and good to her."

"I'll be nice and good. But will she ever put me to bed at nights,
Anne?"

"Perhaps. Why?"

"'Cause," said Davy very decidedly, "if she does I won't say my prayers
before her like I do before you, Anne."

"Why not?"

"'Cause I don't think it would be nice to talk to God before strangers,
Anne. Dora can say hers to Mrs. Lynde if she likes, but _I_ won't. I'll
wait till she's gone and then say 'em. Won't that be all right, Anne?"

"Yes, if you are sure you won't forget to say them, Davy-boy."

"Oh, I won't forget, you bet. I think saying my prayers is great fun.
But it won't be as good fun saying them alone as saying them to you.
I wish you'd stay home, Anne. I don't see what you want to go away and
leave us for."

"I don't exactly WANT to, Davy, but I feel I ought to go."

"If you don't want to go you needn't. You're grown up. When _I_'m grown
up I'm not going to do one single thing I don't want to do, Anne."

"All your life, Davy, you'll find yourself doing things you don't want
to do."

"I won't," said Davy flatly. "Catch me! I have to do things I don't want
to now 'cause you and Marilla'll send me to bed if I don't. But when I
grow up you can't do that, and there'll be nobody to tell me not to do
things. Won't I have the time! Say, Anne, Milty Boulter says his mother
says you're going to college to see if you can catch a man. Are you,
Anne? I want to know."

For a second Anne burned with resentment. Then she laughed, reminding
herself that Mrs. Boulter's crude vulgarity of thought and speech could
not harm her.

"No, Davy, I'm not. I'm going to study and grow and learn about many
things."

"What things?"

"'Shoes and ships and sealing wax
And cabbages and kings,'"

quoted Anne.

"But if you DID want to catch a man how would you go about it? I want
to know," persisted Davy, for whom the subject evidently possessed a
certain fascination.

"You'd better ask Mrs. Boulter," said Anne thoughtlessly. "I think it's
likely she knows more about the process than I do."

"I will, the next time I see her," said Davy gravely.

"Davy! If you do!" cried Anne, realizing her mistake.

"But you just told me to," protested Davy aggrieved.

"It's time you went to bed," decreed Anne, by way of getting out of the
scrape.

After Davy had gone to bed Anne wandered down to Victoria Island and sat
there alone, curtained with fine-spun, moonlit gloom, while the water
laughed around her in a duet of brook and wind. Anne had always loved
that brook. Many a dream had she spun over its sparkling water in
days gone by. She forgot lovelorn youths, and the cayenne speeches of
malicious neighbors, and all the problems of her girlish existence. In
imagination she sailed over storied seas that wash the distant shining
shores of "faery lands forlorn," where lost Atlantis and Elysium lie,
with the evening star for pilot, to the land of Heart's Desire. And she
was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass away,
but the things that are unseen are eternal.




Chapter II

Garlands of Autumn


The following week sped swiftly, crowded with innumerable "last things,"
as Anne called them. Good-bye calls had to be made and received, being
pleasant or otherwise, according to whether callers and called-upon
were heartily in sympathy with Anne's hopes, or thought she was too much
puffed-up over going to college and that it was their duty to "take her
down a peg or two."

The A.V.I.S. gave a farewell party in honor of Anne and Gilbert one
evening at the home of Josie Pye, choosing that place, partly because
Mr. Pye's house was large and convenient, partly because it was strongly
suspected that the Pye girls would have nothing to do with the affair if
their offer of the house for the party was not accepted. It was a very
pleasant little time, for the Pye girls were gracious, and said and did
nothing to mar the harmony of the occasion--which was not according
to their wont. Josie was unusually amiable--so much so that she even
remarked condescendingly to Anne,

"Your new dress is rather becoming to you, Anne. Really, you look ALMOST
PRETTY in it."

"How kind of you to say so," responded Anne, with dancing eyes. Her
sense of humor was developing, and the speeches that would have hurt her
at fourteen were becoming merely food for amusement now. Josie suspected
that Anne was laughing at her behind those wicked eyes; but she
contented herself with whispering to Gertie, as they went downstairs,
that Anne Shirley would put on more airs than ever now that she was
going to college--you'd see!

All the "old crowd" was there, full of mirth and zest and youthful
lightheartedness. Diana Barry, rosy and dimpled, shadowed by the
faithful Fred; Jane Andrews, neat and sensible and plain; Ruby Gillis,
looking her handsomest and brightest in a cream silk blouse, with red
geraniums in her golden hair; Gilbert Blythe and Charlie Sloane, both
trying to keep as near the elusive Anne as possible; Carrie Sloane,
looking pale and melancholy because, so it was reported, her father
would not allow Oliver Kimball to come near the place; Moody Spurgeon
MacPherson, whose round face and objectionable ears were as round and
objectionable as ever; and Billy Andrews, who sat in a corner all the
evening, chuckled when any one spoke to him, and watched Anne Shirley
with a grin of pleasure on his broad, freckled countenance.

Anne had known beforehand of the party, but she had not known that she
and Gilbert were, as the founders of the Society, to be presented with
a very complimentary "address" and "tokens of respect"--in her case a
volume of Shakespeare's plays, in Gilbert's a fountain pen. She was so
taken by surprise and pleased by the nice things said in the address,
read in Moody Spurgeon's most solemn and ministerial tones, that the
tears quite drowned the sparkle of her big gray eyes. She had worked
hard and faithfully for the A.V.I.S., and it warmed the cockles of her
heart that the members appreciated her efforts so sincerely. And they
were all so nice and friendly and jolly--even the Pye girls had their
merits; at that moment Anne loved all the world.

She enjoyed the evening tremendously, but the end of it rather spoiled
all. Gilbert again made the mistake of saying something sentimental
to her as they ate their supper on the moonlit verandah; and Anne, to
punish him, was gracious to Charlie Sloane and allowed the latter to
walk home with her. She found, however, that revenge hurts nobody quite
so much as the one who tries to inflict it. Gilbert walked airily off
with Ruby Gillis, and Anne could hear them laughing and talking gaily as
they loitered along in the still, crisp autumn air. They were evidently
having the best of good times, while she was horribly bored by Charlie
Sloane, who talked unbrokenly on, and never, even by accident, said one
thing that was worth listening to. Anne gave an occasional absent "yes"
or "no," and thought how beautiful Ruby had looked that night, how
very goggly Charlie's eyes were in the moonlight--worse even than by
daylight--and that the world, somehow, wasn't quite such a nice place as
she had believed it to be earlier in the evening.

"I'm just tired out--that is what is the matter with me," she said, when
she thankfully found herself alone in her own room. And she honestly
believed it was. But a certain little gush of joy, as from some secret,
unknown spring, bubbled up in her heart the next evening, when she saw
Gilbert striding down through the Haunted Wood and crossing the old log
bridge with that firm, quick step of his. So Gilbert was not going to
spend this last evening with Ruby Gillis after all!

"You look tired, Anne," he said.

"I am tired, and, worse than that, I'm disgruntled. I'm tired because
I've been packing my trunk and sewing all day. But I'm disgruntled
because six women have been here to say good-bye to me, and every one of
the six managed to say something that seemed to take the color right
out of life and leave it as gray and dismal and cheerless as a November
morning."

"Spiteful old cats!" was Gilbert's elegant comment.

"Oh, no, they weren't," said Anne seriously. "That is just the trouble.
If they had been spiteful cats I wouldn't have minded them. But they are
all nice, kind, motherly souls, who like me and whom I like, and that is
why what they said, or hinted, had such undue weight with me. They let
me see they thought I was crazy going to Redmond and trying to take
a B.A., and ever since I've been wondering if I am. Mrs. Peter Sloane
sighed and said she hoped my strength would hold out till I got through;
and at once I saw myself a hopeless victim of nervous prostration at the
end of my third year; Mrs. Eben Wright said it must cost an awful lot
to put in four years at Redmond; and I felt all over me that it was
unpardonable of me to squander Marilla's money and my own on such a
folly. Mrs. Jasper Bell said she hoped I wouldn't let college spoil me,
as it did some people; and I felt in my bones that the end of my four
Redmond years would see me a most insufferable creature, thinking I knew
it all, and looking down on everything and everybody in Avonlea; Mrs.
Elisha Wright said she understood that Redmond girls, especially those
who belonged to Kingsport, were 'dreadful dressy and stuck-up,' and she
guessed I wouldn't feel much at home among them; and I saw myself, a
snubbed, dowdy, humiliated country girl, shuffling through Redmond's
classic halls in coppertoned boots."

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."