|
"Oh,
I put it back on the bureau. I
hadn't it on a minute. Truly, I didn't mean to meddle, Marilla.
I didn't think about its being wrong to go in and try on the brooch;
but I see now that it was and I'll never do it again.
That's one good thing about me.
I never do the same naughty thing twice."
"You
didn't put it back," said Marilla.
"That brooch isn't anywhere on the bureau.
You've taken it out or something, Anne."
"I
did put it back," said Anne quickly--pertly, Marilla thought. "I
don't just remember whether I stuck it on the pincushion or laid it in the
china tray. But I'm perfectly certain I put it back."
"I'll
go and have another look," said Marilla, determining to be just.
"If you put that brooch back it's there still.
If it isn't I'll know you didn't, that's all!"
Marilla
went to her room and made a thorough search, not only over the bureau but in
every other place she thought the brooch might possibly be.
It was not to be found and she returned to the kitchen.
"Anne,
the brooch is gone. By your own
admission you were the last person to handle it.
Now, what have you done with it? Tell me the truth at once.
Did you take it out and lose it?"
"No,
I didn't," said Anne solemnly, meeting Marilla's angry gaze squarely.
"I never took the brooch out of your room and that is the truth,
if I was to be led to the block for it--although I'm not very certain what a
block is. So there, Marilla."
Anne's
"so there" was only intended to emphasize her assertion, but
Marilla took it as a display of defiance.
"I
believe you are telling me a falsehood, Anne," she said sharply.
"I know you are. There
now, don't say anything more unless you are prepared to tell the whole
truth. Go to your room and stay
there until you are ready to confess."
"Will
I take the peas with me?" said Anne meekly.
"No,
I'll finish shelling them myself. Do
as I bid you."
When
Anne had gone Marilla went about her evening tasks in a very disturbed state
of mind. She was worried about
her valuable brooch. What if Anne had lost it?
And how wicked of the child to deny having taken it, when anybody
could see she must have! With such an innocent face, too!
"I
don't know what I wouldn't sooner have had happen," thought Marilla, as
she nervously shelled the peas. "Of
course, I don't suppose she meant to steal it or anything like that.
She's just taken it to play with or help along that imagination of
hers. She must have taken it, that's clear, for there hasn't been a soul in
that room since she was in it, by her own story, until I went up tonight.
And the brooch is gone, there's nothing surer. I suppose she has lost
it and is afraid to own up for fear she'll be punished.
It's a dreadful thing to think she tells falsehoods. It's a far worse
thing than her fit of temper. It's
a fearful responsibility to have a child in your house you can't trust.
Slyness and untruthfulness--that's what she has displayed. I declare I feel
worse about that than about the brooch.
If she'd only have told the truth about it I wouldn't mind so
much."
Marilla
went to her room at intervals all through the evening and searched for the
brooch, without finding it. A
bedtime visit to the east gable produced no result.
Anne persisted in denying that she knew anything about the brooch but
Marilla was only the more firmly convinced that she did.
She
told Matthew the story the next morning.
Matthew was confounded and puzzled; he could not so quickly lose
faith in Anne but he had to admit that circumstances were against her.
"You're
sure it hasn't fell down behind the bureau?" was the only suggestion he
could offer.
"I've
moved the bureau and I've taken out the drawers and I've looked in every
crack and cranny" was Marilla's positive answer. "The brooch is
gone and that child has taken it and lied about it. That's the plain, ugly
truth, Matthew Cuthbert, and we might as well look it in the face."
"Well
now, what are you going to do about it?" Matthew asked forlornly,
feeling secretly thankful that Marilla and not he had to deal with the
situation. He felt no desire to
put his oar in this time.
"She'll
stay in her room until she confesses," said Marilla grimly, remembering
the success of this method in the former case.
"Then we'll see. Perhaps
we'll be able to find the brooch if she'll only tell where she took it; but
in any case she'll have to be severely punished, Matthew."
"Well
now, you'll have to punish her," said Matthew, reaching for his hat.
"I've nothing to do with it, remember. You warned me off yourself."
Marilla
felt deserted by everyone. She
could not even go to Mrs. Lynde for advice.
She went up to the east gable with a very serious face and left it
with a face more serious still. Anne
steadfastly refused to confess. She
persisted in asserting that she had not taken the brooch.
The child had evidently been crying and Marilla felt a pang of pity
which she sternly repressed. By
night she was, as she expressed it, "beat out."
"You'll
stay in this room until you confess, Anne.
You can make up your mind to that," she said firmly.
"But
the picnic is tomorrow, Marilla," cried Anne.
"You won't keep me from going to that, will you?
You'll just let me out for the afternoon, won't you?
Then I'll stay here as long as you like AFTERWARDS cheerfully.
But I MUST go to the picnic."
"You'll
not go to picnics nor anywhere else until you've confessed, Anne."
"Oh,
Marilla," gasped Anne.
But
Marilla had gone out and shut the door.
Wednesday
morning dawned as bright and fair as if expressly made to order for the
picnic. Birds sang around Green
Gables; the Madonna lilies in the garden sent out whiffs of perfume that
entered in on viewless winds at every door and window, and wandered through
halls and rooms like spirits of benediction. The birches in the hollow waved
joyful hands as if watching for Anne's usual morning greeting from the east
gable. But Anne was not at her
window. When Marilla took her
breakfast up to her she found the child sitting primly on her bed, pale and
resolute, with tight-shut lips and gleaming eyes.
"Marilla,
I'm ready to confess."
"Ah!"
Marilla laid down her tray. Once
again her method had succeeded; but her success was very bitter to her.
"Let me hear what you have to say then, Anne."
"I
took the amethyst brooch," said Anne, as if repeating a lesson she had
learned. "I took it just
as you said. I didn't mean to
take it when I went in. But it did look so beautiful, Marilla, when I pinned it on my
breast that I was overcome by an irresistible temptation.
I imagined how perfectly thrilling it would be to take it to Idlewild
and play I was the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald.
It would be so much easier to imagine I was the Lady Cordelia if I
had a real amethyst brooch on. Diana and I make necklaces of roseberries but what are
roseberries compared to amethysts? So
I took the brooch. I thought I
could put it back before you came home.
I went all the way around by the road to lengthen out the time.
When I was going over the bridge across the Lake of Shining Waters I
took the brooch off to have another look at it.
Oh, how it did shine in the sunlight! And then, when I was leaning
over the bridge, it just slipped through my fingers--so--and went
down--down--down, all purplysparkling, and sank forevermore beneath the Lake
of Shining Waters. And that's the best I can do at confessing, Marilla."
Marilla
felt hot anger surge up into her heart again.
This child had taken and lost her treasured amethyst brooch and now
sat there calmly reciting the details thereof without the least apparent
compunction or repentance.
"Anne,
this is terrible," she said, trying to speak calmly. "You are the
very wickedest girl I ever heard of"
"Yes,
I suppose I am," agreed Anne tranquilly.
"And I know I'll have to be punished.
It'll be your duty to punish me, Marilla. Won't you please get it
over right off because I'd like to go to the picnic with nothing on my
mind."
"Picnic,
indeed! You'll go to no picnic today, Anne Shirley. That shall be
your punishment. And it isn't
half severe enough either for what you've done!"
"Not
go to the picnic!" Anne
sprang to her feet and clutched Marilla's hand.
"But you PROMISED me I might!
Oh, Marilla, I must go to the picnic.
That was why I confessed. Punish
me any way you like but that. Oh,
Marilla, please, please, let me go to the picnic.
Think of the ice cream! For
anything you know I may never have a chance to taste ice cream again."
Marilla
disengaged Anne's clinging hands stonily.
"You
needn't plead, Anne. You are
not going to the picnic and that's final.
No, not a word."
Anne
realized that Marilla was not to be moved.
She clasped her hands together, gave a piercing shriek, and then
flung herself face downward on the bed, crying and writhing in an utter
abandonment of disappointment and despair.
"For
the land's sake!" gasped Marilla, hastening from the room. "I
believe the child is crazy. No
child in her senses would behave as she does.
If she isn't she's utterly bad.
Oh dear, I'm afraid Rachel was right from the first.
But I've put my hand to the plow and I won't look back."
That
was a dismal morning. Marilla worked fiercely and scrubbed the porch floor and the
dairy shelves when she could find nothing else to do. Neither the shelves nor the porch needed it--but Marilla did.
Then she went out and raked the yard.
When
dinner was ready she went to the stairs and called Anne.
A tear-stained face appeared, looking tragically over the banisters.
"Come
down to your dinner, Anne."
"I
don't want any dinner, Marilla," said Anne, sobbingly.
"I couldn't eat anything. My
heart is broken. You'll feel
remorse of conscience someday, I expect, for breaking it, Marilla, but I
forgive you. Remember when the time comes that I forgive you. But please
don't ask me to eat anything, especially boiled pork and greens.
Boiled pork and greens are so unromantic when one is in
affliction."
Exasperated,
Marilla returned to the kitchen and poured out her tale of woe to Matthew,
who, between his sense of justice and his unlawful sympathy with Anne, was a
miserable man.
"Well
now, she shouldn't have taken the brooch, Marilla, or told stories about
it," he admitted, mournfuly surveying his plateful of unromantic pork
and greens as if he, like Anne, thought it a food unsuited to crises of
feeling, "but she's such a little thing--such an interesting little
thing. Don't you think it's
pretty rough not to let her go to the picnic when she's so set on it?"
"Matthew
Cuthbert, I'm amazed at you. I
think I've let her off entirely too easy.
And she doesn't appear to realize how wicked she's been at
all--that's what worries me most. If
she'd really felt sorry it wouldn't be so bad.
And you don't seem to realize it, neither; you're making excuses for
her all the time to yourself--I can see that."
"Well
now, she's such a little thing," feebly reiterated Matthew. "And
there should be allowances made, Marilla.
You know she's never had any bringing up."
"Well,
she's having it now" retorted Marilla.
The
retort silenced Matthew if it did not convince him.
That dinner was a very dismal meal.
The only cheerful thing about it was Jerry Buote, the hired boy, and
Marilla resented his cheerfulness as a personal insult.
When
her dishes were washed and her bread sponge set and her hens fed Marilla
remembered that she had noticed a small rent in her best black lace shawl
when she had taken it off on Monday afternoon on returning from the Ladies'
Aid.
She
would go and mend it. The shawl was in a box in her trunk. As Marilla lifted it
out, the sunlight, falling through the vines that clustered thickly about
the window, struck upon something caught in the shawl--something that
glittered and sparkled in facets of violet light.
Marilla snatched at it with a gasp.
It was the amethyst brooch, hanging to a thread of the lace by its
catch!
"Dear
life and heart," said Marilla blankly, "what does this mean?
Here's my brooch safe and sound that I thought was at the bottom of
Barry's pond. Whatever did that
girl mean by saying she took it and lost it?
I declare I believe Green Gables is bewitched. I remember now that when I took off my shawl Monday afternoon
I laid it on the bureau for a minute. I
suppose the brooch got caught in it somehow.
Well!"
Marilla
betook herself to the east gable, brooch in hand.
Anne had cried herself out and was sitting dejectedly by the window.
"Anne
Shirley," said Marilla solemnly, "I've just found my brooch
hanging to my black lace shawl. Now
I want to know what that rigmarole you told me this morning meant."
"Why,
you said you'd keep me here until I confessed," returned Anne wearily,
"and so I decided to confess because I was bound to get to the picnic.
I thought out a confession last night after I went to bed and made it
as interesting as I could. And
I said it over and over so that I wouldn't forget it.
But you wouldn't let me go to the picnic after all, so all my trouble
was wasted."
Marilla
had to laugh in spite of herself. But
her conscience pricked her.
"Anne,
you do beat all! But I was
wrong--I see that now. I shouldn't have doubted your word when I'd never
known you to tell a story. Of
course, it wasn't right for you to confess to a thing you hadn't done--it
was very wrong to do so. But I
drove you to it. So if you'll
forgive me, Anne, I'll forgive you and we'll start square again.
And now get yourself ready for the picnic."
Anne
flew up like a rocket.
"Oh,
Marilla, isn't it too late?"
"No,
it's only two o'clock. They
won't be more than well gathered yet and it'll be an hour before they have
tea. Wash your face and comb
your hair and put on your gingham. I'll
fill a basket for you. There's
plenty of stuff baked in the house. And I'll get Jerry to hitch up the
sorrel and drive you down to the picnic ground."
"Oh,
Marilla," exclaimed Anne, flying to the washstand.
"Five minutes ago I was so miserable I was wishing I'd never
been born and now I wouldn't change places with an angel!"
That
night a thoroughly happy, completely tired-out Anne returned to Green Gables
in a state of beatification impossible to describe.
"Oh,
Marilla, I've had a perfectly scrumptious time.
Scrumptious is a new word I learned today.
I heard Mary Alice Bell use it. Isn't it very expressive?
Everything was lovely. We
had a splendid tea and then Mr. Harmon Andrews took us all for a row on the
Lake of Shining Waters--six of us at a time.
And Jane Andrews nearly fell overboard.
She was leaning out to pick water lilies and if Mr. Andrews hadn't
caught her by her sash just in the nick of time she'd fallen in and prob'ly
been drowned. I wish it had been me. It
would have been such a romantic experience to have been nearly drowned. It would be such a thrilling tale to tell.
And we had the ice cream. Words
fail me to describe that ice cream. Marilla,
I assure you it was sublime."
That
evening Marilla told the whole story to Matthew over her stocking basket.
"I'm
willing to own up that I made a mistake," she concluded candidly,
"but I've learned a lesson. I
have to laugh when I think of Anne's `confession,' although I suppose I
shouldn't for it really was a falsehood.
But it doesn't seem as bad as the other would have been, somehow, and
anyhow I'm responsible for it. That
child is hard to understand in some respects.
But I believe she'll turn out all right yet.
And there's one thing certain, no house will ever be dull that she's
in."
|
Table of Contents
