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"Not
that lovers ever really walk there," she explained to Marilla,
"but Diana and I are reading a perfectly magnificent book and there's a
Lover's Lane in it. So we want to have one, too.
And it's a very pretty name, don't you think? So romantic! We
can't imagine the lovers into it, you know.
I like that lane because you can think out loud there without people
calling you crazy."
Anne,
starting out alone in the morning, went down Lover's Lane as far as the
brook. Here Diana met her, and
the two little girls went on up the lane under the leafy arch of
maples--"maples are such sociable trees," said Anne; "they're
always rustling and whispering to you"--until they came to a rustic
bridge. Then they left the lane
and walked through Mr. Barry's back field and past Willowmere.
Beyond Willowmere came Violet Vale--a little green dimple in the
shadow of Mr. Andrew Bell's big woods.
"Of course there are no violets there now," Anne told
Marilla, "but Diana says there are millions of them in spring.
Oh, Marilla, can't you just imagine you see them?
It actually takes away my breath.
I named it Violet Vale. Diana
says she never saw the beat of me for hitting on fancy names for places.
It's nice to be clever at something, isn't it? But Diana named the Birch Path.
She wanted to, so I let her; but I'm sure I could have found
something more poetical than plain Birch Path.
Anybody can think of a name like that.
But the Birch Path is one of the prettiest places in the world,
Marilla."
It
was. Other people besides Anne
thought so when they stumbled on it. It
was a little narrow, twisting path, winding down over a long hill straight
through Mr. Bell's woods, where the light came down sifted through so many
emerald screens that it was as flawless as the heart of a diamond.
It was fringed in all its length with slim young birches, white
stemmed and lissom boughed; ferns and starflowers and wild
lilies-of-the-valley and scarlet tufts of pigeonberries grew thickly along
it; and always there was a delightful spiciness in the air and music of bird
calls and the murmur and laugh of wood winds in the trees overhead.
Now and then you might see a rabbit skipping across the road if you
were quiet--which, with Anne and Diana, happened about once in a blue moon.
Down in the valley the path came out to the main road and then it was
just up the spruce hill to the school.
The
Avonlea school was a whitewashed building, low in the eaves and wide in the
windows, furnished inside with comfortable substantial old-fashioned desks
that opened and shut, and were carved all over their lids with the initials
and hieroglyphics of three generations of school children.
The schoolhouse was set back from the road and behind it was a dusky
fir wood and a brook where all the children put their bottles of milk in the
morning to keep cool and sweet until dinner hour.
Marilla
had seen Anne start off to school on the first day of September with many
secret misgivings. Anne was such an odd girl. How would she get on with the other
children? And how on earth
would she ever manage to hold her tongue during school hours?
Things
went better than Marilla feared, however.
Anne came home that evening in high spirits.
"I
think I'm going to like school here," she announced.
"I don't think much of the master, through.
He's all the time curling his mustache and making eyes at Prissy
Andrews. Prissy is grown up,
you know. She's sixteen and
she's studying for the entrance examination into Queen's Academy at
Charlottetown next year. Tillie Boulter says the master is DEAD GONE on her.
She's got a beautiful complexion and curly brown hair and she does it
up so elegantly. She sits in
the long seat at the back and he sits there, too, most of the time--to
explain her lessons, he says. But Ruby Gillis says she saw him writing
something on her slate and when Prissy read it she blushed as red as a beet
and giggled; and Ruby Gillis says she doesn't believe it had anything to do
with the lesson."
"Anne
Shirley, don't let me hear you talking about your teacher in that way
again," said Marilla sharply. "You
don't go to school to criticize the master.
I guess he can teach YOU something, and it's your business to learn.
And I want you to understand right off that you are not to come home
telling tales about him. That is something I won't encourage.
I hope you were a good girl."
"Indeed
I was," said Anne comfortably. "It
wasn't so hard as you might imagine, either.
I sit with Diana. Our
seat is right by the window and we can look down to the Lake of Shining
Waters. There are a lot of nice girls in school and we had scrumptious fun
playing at dinnertime. It's so
nice to have a lot of little girls to play with.
But of course I like Diana best and always will.
I ADORE Diana. I'm
dreadfully far behind the others. They're all in the fifth book and I'm only
in the fourth. I feel that it's
kind of a disgrace. But there's
not one of them has such an imagination as I have and I soon found that out. We had reading and geography and Canadian history and
dictation today. Mr. Phillips said my spelling was disgraceful and he held
up my slate so that everybody could see it, all marked over.
I felt so mortified, Marilla; he might have been politer to a
stranger, I think. Ruby Gillis
gave me an apple and Sophia Sloane lent me a lovely pink card with `May I
see you home?' on it. I'm to
give it back to her tomorrow. And
Tillie Boulter let me wear her bead ring all the afternoon.
Can I have some of those pearl beads off the old pincushion in the
garret to make myself a ring? And
oh, Marilla, Jane Andrews told me that Minnie MacPherson told her that she
heard Prissy Andrews tell Sara Gillis that I had a very pretty nose.
Marilla, that is the first compliment I have ever had in my life and
you can't imagine what a strange feeling it gave me.
Marilla, have I really a pretty nose?
I know you'll tell me the truth."
"Your
nose is well enough," said Marilla shortly.
Secretly she thought Anne's nose was a remarkable pretty one; but she
had no intention of telling her so.
That
was three weeks ago and all had gone smoothly so far.
And now, this crisp September morning, Anne and Diana were tripping
blithely down the Birch Path, two of the happiest little girls in Avonlea.
"I
guess Gilbert Blythe will be in school today," said Diana. "He's
been visiting his cousins over in New Brunswick all summer and he only came
home Saturday night. He's
AW'FLY handsome, Anne. And he teases the girls something terrible.
He just torments our lives out."
Diana's
voice indicated that she rather liked having her life tormented out than
not.
"Gilbert
Blythe?" said Anne. "Isn't
his name that's written up on the porch wall with Julia Bell's and a big
`Take Notice' over them?"
"Yes,"
said Diana, tossing her head, "but I'm sure he doesn't like Julia Bell
so very much. I've heard him
say he studied the multiplication table by her freckles."
"Oh,
don't speak about freckles to me," implored Anne.
"It isn't delicate when I've got so many.
But I do think that writing take-notices up on the wall about the
boys and girls is the silliest ever. I
should just like to see anybody dare to write my name up with a boy's. Not, of course," she hastened to add, "that anybody
would."
Anne
sighed. She didn't want her
name written up. But it was a
little humiliating to know that there was no danger of it.
"Nonsense,"
said Diana, whose black eyes and glossy tresses had played such havoc with
the hearts of Avonlea schoolboys that her name figured on the porch walls in
half a dozen take-notices. "It's only meant as a joke.
And don't you be too sure your name won't ever be written up.
Charlie Sloane is DEAD GONE on you. He told his mother--his MOTHER,
mind you--that you were the smartest girl in school.
That's better than being good looking."
"No,
it isn't," said Anne, feminine to the core.
"I'd rather be pretty than clever.
And I hate Charlie Sloane, I can't bear a boy with goggle eyes.
If anyone wrote my name up with his I'd never GET over it, Diana
Barry. But it IS nice to keep
head of your class."
"You'll
have Gilbert in your class after this," said Diana, "and he's used
to being head of his class, I can tell you.
He's only in the fourth book although he's nearly fourteen.
Four years ago his father was sick and had to go out to Alberta for
his health and Gilbert went with him. They
were there three years and Gil didn't go to school hardly any until they
came back. You won't find it so
easy to keep head after this, Anne."
"I'm
glad," said Anne quickly. "I
couldn't really feel proud of keeping head of little boys and girls of just
nine or ten. I got up yesterday
spelling `ebullition.' Josie
Pye was head and, mind you, she peeped in her book.
Mr. Phillips didn't see her--he was looking at Prissy Andrews--but I
did. I just swept her a look of freezing scorn and she got as red
as a beet and spelled it wrong after all."
"Those
Pye girls are cheats all round," said Diana indignantly, as they
climbed the fence of the main road. "Gertie
Pye actually went and put her milk bottle in my place in the brook
yesterday. Did you ever? I
don't speak to her now."
When
Mr. Phillips was in the back of the room hearing Prissy Andrews's Latin,
Diana whispered to Anne,
"That's
Gilbert Blythe sitting right across the aisle from you, Anne.
Just look at him and see if you don't think he's handsome."
Anne
looked accordingly. She had a good chance to do so, for the said Gilbert Blythe
was absorbed in stealthily pinning the long yellow braid of Ruby Gillis, who
sat in front of him, to the back of her seat.
He was a tall boy, with curly brown hair, roguish hazel eyes, and a
mouth twisted into a teasing smile. Presently
Ruby Gillis started up to take a sum to the master; she fell back into her
seat with a little shriek, believing that her hair was pulled out by the
roots. Everybody looked at her
and Mr. Phillips glared so sternly that Ruby began to cry.
Gilbert had whisked the pin out of sight and was studying his history
with the soberest face in the world; but when the commotion subsided he
looked at Anne and winked with inexpressible drollery.
"I
think your Gilbert Blythe IS handsome," confided Anne to Diana,
"but I think he's very bold. It
isn't good manners to wink at a strange girl."
But
it was not until the afternoon that things really began to happen.
Mr.
Phillips was back in the corner explaining a problem in algebra to Prissy
Andrews and the rest of the scholars were doing pretty much as they pleased
eating green apples, whispering, drawing pictures on their slates, and
driving crickets harnessed to strings, up and down aisle.
Gilbert Blythe was trying to make Anne Shirley look at him and
failing utterly, because Anne was at that moment totally oblivious not only
to the very existence of Gilbert Blythe, but of every other scholar in
Avonlea school itself. With her chin propped on her hands and her eyes fixed
on the blue glimpse of the Lake of Shining Waters that the west window
afforded, she was far away in a gorgeous dreamland hearing and seeing
nothing save her own wonderful visions.
Gilbert
Blythe wasn't used to putting himself out to make a girl look at him and
meeting with failure. She SHOULD look at him, that red-haired Shirley girl with the
little pointed chin and the big eyes that weren't like the eyes of any other
girl in Avonlea school.
Gilbert
reached across the aisle, picked up the end of Anne's long red braid, held
it out at arm's length and said in a piercing whisper:
"Carrots!
Carrots!"
Then
Anne looked at him with a vengeance!
She
did more than look. She sprang to her feet, her bright fancies fallen into
cureless ruin. She flashed one
indignant glance at Gilbert from eyes whose angry sparkle was swiftly
quenched in equally angry tears.
"You
mean, hateful boy!" she exclaimed passionately.
"How dare you!"
And
then--thwack! Anne had brought her slate down on Gilbert's head and cracked
it--slate not head--clear across.
Avonlea
school always enjoyed a scene. This
was an especially enjoyable one. Everybody
said "Oh" in horrified delight.
Diana gasped. Ruby
Gillis, who was inclined to be hysterical, began to cry.
Tommy Sloane let his team of crickets escape him altogether while he
stared open-mouthed at the tableau.
Mr.
Phillips stalked down the aisle and laid his hand heavily on Anne's
shoulder.
"Anne
Shirley, what does this mean?" he said angrily.
Anne returned no answer. It
was asking too much of flesh and blood to expect her to tell before the
whole school that she had been called "carrots." Gilbert it was
who spoke up stoutly.
"It
was my fault Mr. Phillips. I
teased her."
Mr.
Phillips paid no heed to Gilbert.
"I
am sorry to see a pupil of mine displaying such a temper and such a
vindictive spirit," he said in a solemn tone, as if the mere fact of
being a pupil of his ought to root out all evil passions from the hearts of
small imperfect mortals. "Anne,
go and stand on the platform in front of the blackboard for the rest of the
afternoon."
Anne
would have infinitely preferred a whipping to this punishment under which
her sensitive spirit quivered as from a whiplash.
With a white, set face she obeyed.
Mr. Phillips took a chalk crayon and wrote on the blackboard above
her head.
"Ann
Shirley has a very bad temper. Ann
Shirley must learn to control her temper," and then read it out loud so
that even the primer class, who couldn't read writing, should understand it.
Anne
stood there the rest of the afternoon with that legend above her.
She did not cry or hang her head.
Anger was still too hot in her heart for that and it sustained her
amid all her agony of humiliation. With
resentful eyes and passion-red cheeks she confronted alike Diana's
sympathetic gaze and Charlie Sloane's indignant nods and Josie Pye's
malicious smiles. As for
Gilbert Blythe, she would not even look at him.
She would NEVER look at him again! She would never speak to him!!
When
school was dismissed Anne marched out with her red head held high.
Gilbert Blythe tried to intercept her at the porch door.
"I'm
awfully sorry I made fun of your hair, Anne," he whispered contritely.
"Honest I am. Don't
be mad for keeps, now"
Anne
swept by disdainfully, without look or sign of hearing.
"Oh how could you, Anne?" breathed Diana as they went down
the road half reproachfully, half admiringly.
Diana felt that SHE could never have resisted Gilbert's plea.
"I
shall never forgive Gilbert Blythe," said Anne firmly. "And Mr.
Phillips spelled my name without an e, too. The iron has entered into my
soul, Diana."
Diana
hadn't the least idea what Anne meant but she understood it was something
terrible.
"You
mustn't mind Gilbert making fun of your hair," she said soothingly.
"Why, he makes fun of all the girls. He laughs at mine because it's so black.
He's called me a crow a dozen times; and I never heard him apologize
for anything before, either."
"There's
a great deal of difference between being called a crow and being called
carrots," said Anne with dignity.
"Gilbert Blythe has hurt my feelings EXCRUCIATINGLY,
Diana."
It
is possible the matter might have blown over without more excruciation if
nothing else had happened. But
when things begin to happen they are apt to keep on.
Avonlea
scholars often spent noon hour picking gum in Mr. Bell's spruce grove over
the hill and across his big pasture field. From there they could keep an eye
on Eben Wright's house, where the master boarded.
When they saw Mr. Phillips emerging therefrom they ran for the
schoolhouse; but the distance being about three times longer than Mr.
Wright's lane they were very apt to arrive there, breathless and gasping,
some three minutes too late.
On
the following day Mr. Phillips was seized with one of his spasmodic fits of
reform and announced before going home to dinner, that he should expect to
find all the scholars in their seats when he returned.
Anyone who came in late would be punished.
All
the boys and some of the girls went to Mr. Bell's spruce grove as usual,
fully intending to stay only long enough to "pick a chew." But
spruce groves are seductive and yellow nuts of gum beguiling; they picked
and loitered and strayed; and as usual the first thing that recalled them to
a sense of the flight of time was Jimmy Glover shouting from the top of a
patriarchal old spruce "Master's coming."
The
girls who were on the ground, started first and managed to reach the
schoolhouse in time but without a second to spare.
The boys, who had to wriggle hastily down from the trees, were later;
and Anne, who had not been picking gum at all but was wandering happily in
the far end of the grove, waist deep among the bracken, singing softly to
herself, with a wreath of rice lilies on her hair as if she were some wild
divinity of the shadowy places, was latest of all.
Anne could run like a deer, however; run she did with the impish
result that she overtook the boys at the door and was swept into the
schoolhouse among them just as Mr. Phillips was in the act of hanging up his
hat.
Mr.
Phillips's brief reforming energy was over; he didn't want the bother of
punishing a dozen pupils; but it was necessary to do something to save his
word, so he looked about for a scapegoat and found it in Anne, who had
dropped into her seat, gasping for breath, with a forgotten lily wreath
hanging askew over one ear and giving her a particularly rakish and
disheveled appearance.
"Anne
Shirley, since you seem to be so fond of the boys' company we shall indulge
your taste for it this afternoon," he said sarcastically.
"Take those flowers out of your hair and sit with Gilbert
Blythe."
The
other boys snickered. Diana, turning pale with pity, plucked the wreath from Anne's
hair and squeezed her hand. Anne
stared at the master as if turned to stone.
"Did
you hear what I said, Anne?" queried Mr. Phillips sternly.
"Yes,
sir," said Anne slowly "but I didn't suppose you really meant
it."
"I
assure you I did"--still with the sarcastic inflection which all the
children, and Anne especially, hated. It
flicked on the raw. "Obey me at once."
For
a moment Anne looked as if she meant to disobey.
Then, realizing that there was no help for it, she rose haughtily,
stepped across the aisle, sat down beside Gilbert Blythe, and buried her
face in her arms on the desk. Ruby
Gillis, who got a glimpse of it as it went down, told the others going home
from school that she'd "acksually never seen anything like it--it was
so white, with awful little red spots in it."
To
Anne, this was as the end of all things.
It was bad enough to be singled out for punishment from among a dozen
equally guilty ones; it was worse still to be sent to sit with a boy, but
that that boy should be Gilbert Blythe was heaping insult on injury to a
degree utterly unbearable. Anne felt that she could not bear it and it would be of no
use to try. Her whole being
seethed with shame and anger and humiliation.
At
first the other scholars looked and whispered and giggled and nudged. But as
Anne never lifted her head and as Gilbert worked fractions as if his whole
soul was absorbed in them and them only, they soon returned to their own
tasks and Anne was forgotten. When Mr. Phillips called the history class out
Anne should have gone, but Anne did not move, and Mr. Phillips, who had been
writing some verses "To Priscilla" before he called the class, was
thinking about an obstinate rhyme still and never missed her. Once, when
nobody was looking, Gilbert took from his desk a little pink candy heart
with a gold motto on it, "You are sweet," and slipped it under the
curve of Anne's arm. Whereupon
Anne arose, took the pink heart gingerly between the tips of her fingers,
dropped it on the floor, ground it to powder beneath her heel, and resumed
her position without deigning to bestow a glance on Gilbert.
When
school went out Anne marched to her desk, ostentatiously took out everything
therein, books and writing tablet, pen and ink, testament and arithmetic,
and piled them neatly on her cracked slate.
"What
are you taking all those things home for, Anne?" Diana wanted to know,
as soon as they were out on the road. She
had not dared to ask the question before.
"I
am not coming back to school any more," said Anne. Diana gasped and
stared at Anne to see if she meant it.
"Will
Marilla let you stay home?" she asked.
"She'll
have to," said Anne. "I'll
NEVER go to school to that man again."
"Oh,
Anne!" Diana looked as if she were ready to cry.
"I do think you're mean. What
shall I do? Mr. Phillips will
make me sit with that horrid Gertie Pye--I know he will because she is
sitting alone. Do come back,
Anne."
"I'd
do almost anything in the world for you, Diana," said Anne sadly.
"I'd let myself be torn limb from limb if it would do you any good. But
I can't do this, so please don't ask it.
You harrow up my very soul."
"Just
think of all the fun you will miss," mourned Diana.
"We are going to build the loveliest new house down by the
brook; and we'll be playing ball next week and you've never played ball,
Anne. It's tremendously exciting. And
we're going to learn a new song-- Jane Andrews is practicing it up now; and
Alice Andrews is going to bring a new Pansy book next week and we're all
going to read it out loud, chapter about, down by the brook.
And you know you are so fond of reading out loud, Anne."
Nothing
moved Anne in the least. Her
mind was made up. She would not
go to school to Mr. Phillips again; she told Marilla so when she got home.
"Nonsense,"
said Marilla.
"It
isn't nonsense at all," said Anne, gazing at Marilla with solemn,
reproachful eyes. "Don't you understand, Marilla? I've been insulted."
"Insulted
fiddlesticks! You'll go to school tomorrow as usual."
"Oh,
no." Anne shook her head gently. "I'm
not going back, Marilla. "I'll
learn my lessons at home and I'll be as good as I can be and hold my tongue
all the time if it's possible at all. But I will not go back to school, I
assure you."
Marilla
saw something remarkably like unyielding stubbornness looking out of Anne's
small face. She understood that
she would have trouble in overcoming it; but she re-solved wisely to say
nothing more just then. "I'll run down and see Rachel about it this
evening," she thought. "There's
no use reasoning with Anne now. She's
too worked up and I've an idea she can be awful stubborn if she takes the
notion. Far as I can make out
from her story, Mr. Phillips has been carrying matters with a rather high
hand. But it would never do to say so to her.
I'll just talk it over with Rachel.
She's sent ten children to school and she ought to know something
about it. She'll have heard the
whole story, too, by this time."
Marilla
found Mrs. Lynde knitting quilts as industriously and cheerfully as usual.
"I
suppose you know what I've come about," she said, a little
shamefacedly.
Mrs.
Rachel nodded.
"About
Anne's fuss in school, I reckon," she said.
"Tillie Boulter was in on her way home from school and told me
about it." "I don't know what to do with her," said Marilla.
"She declares she won't go back to school.
I never saw a child so worked up. I've been expecting trouble ever
since she started to school. I knew things were going too smooth to last.
She's so high strung. What would you advise, Rachel?"
"Well,
since you've asked my advice, Marilla," said Mrs. Lynde amiably--Mrs.
Lynde dearly loved to be asked for advice--"I'd just humor her a little
at first, that's what I'd do. It's
my belief that Mr. Phillips was in the wrong.
Of course, it doesn't do to say so to the children, you know.
And of course he did right to punish her yesterday for giving way to
temper. But today it was
different. The others who were
late should have been punished as well as Anne, that's what.
And I don't believe in making the girls sit with the boys for
punishment. It isn't modest.
Tillie Boulter was real indignant.
She took Anne's part right through and said all the scholars did too.
Anne seems real popular among them, somehow.
I never thought she'd take with them so well."
"Then
you really think I'd better let her stay home," said Marilla in
amazement.
"Yes.
That is I wouldn't say school to her again until she said it herself.
Depend upon it, Marilla, she'll cool off in a week or so and be ready
enough to go back of her own accord, that's what, while, if you were to make
her go back right off, dear knows what freak or tantrum she'd take next and
make more trouble than ever. The
less fuss made the better, in my opinion. She won't miss much by not going
to school, as far as THAT goes. Mr. Phillips isn't any good at all as a
teacher. The order he keeps is scandalous, that's what, and he
neglects the young fry and puts all his time on those big scholars he's
getting ready for Queen's. He'd
never have got the school for another year if his uncle hadn't been a
trustee--THE trustee, for he just leads the other two around by the nose,
that's what. I declare, I don't
know what education in this Island is coming to."
Mrs.
Rachel shook her head, as much as to say if she were only at the head of the
educational system of the Province things would be much better managed.
Marilla
took Mrs. Rachel's advice and not another word was said to Anne about going
back to school. She learned her lessons at home, did her chores, and played
with Diana in the chilly purple autumn twilights; but when she met Gilbert
Blythe on the road or encountered him in Sunday school she passed him by
with an icy contempt that was no whit thawed by his evident desire to
appease her. Even Diana's
efforts as a peacemaker were of no avail. Anne had evidently made up her
mind to hate Gilbert Blythe to the end of life.
As
much as she hated Gilbert, however, did she love Diana, with all the love of
her passionate little heart, equally intense in its likes and dislikes.
One evening Marilla, coming in from the orchard with a basket of
apples, found Anne sitting along by the east window in the twilight, crying
bitterly.
"Whatever's
the matter now, Anne?" she asked.
"It's
about Diana," sobbed Anne luxuriously.
"I love Diana so, Marilla.
I cannot ever live without her.
But I know very well when we grow up that Diana will get married and
go away and leave me. And oh,
what shall I do? I hate her
husband--I just hate him furiously. I've
been imagining it all out--the wedding and everything--Diana dressed in
snowy garments, with a veil, and looking as beautiful and regal as a queen;
and me the bridesmaid, with a lovely dress too, and puffed sleeves, but with
a breaking heart hid beneath my smiling face.
And then bidding Diana goodbye-e-e--" Here Anne broke down
entirely and wept with increasing bitterness.
Marilla
turned quickly away to hide her twitching face; but it was no use; she
collapsed on the nearest chair and burst into such a hearty and unusual peal
of laughter that Matthew, crossing the yard outside, halted in amazement.
When had he heard Marilla laugh like that before?
"Well,
Anne Shirley," said Marilla as soon as she could speak, "if you
must borrow trouble, for pity's sake borrow it handier home.
I should think you had an imagination, sure enough."
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