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"Yes,
and I think it is real pretty," said Diana, looking admiringly at the
short, silky curls that clustered over Anne's head and were held in place by
a very jaunty black velvet ribbon and bow.
They
were standing on the bank of the pond, below Orchard Slope, where a little
headland fringed with birches ran out from the bank; at its tip was a small
wooden platform built out into the water for the convenience of fishermen
and duck hunters. Ruby and Jane
were spending the midsummer afternoon with Diana, and Anne had come over to
play with them.
Anne
and Diana had spent most of their playtime that summer on and about the
pond. Idlewild was a thing of
the past, Mr. Bell having ruthlessly cut down the little circle of trees in
his back pasture in the spring. Anne
had sat among the stumps and wept, not without an eye to the romance of it;
but she was speedily consoled, for, after all, as she and Diana said, big
girls of thirteen, going on fourteen, were too old for such childish
amusements as playhouses, and there were more fascinating sports to be found
about the pond. It was splendid
to fish for trout over the bridge and the two girls learned to row
themselves about in the little flat-bottomed dory Mr. Barry kept for duck
shooting.
It
was Anne's idea that they dramatize Elaine.
They had studied Tennyson's poem in school the preceding winter, the
Superintendent of Education having prescribed it in the English course for
the Prince Edward Island schools. They
had analyzed and parsed it and torn it to pieces in general until it was a
wonder there was any meaning at all left in it for them, but at least the
fair lily maid and Lancelot and Guinevere and King Arthur had become very
real people to them, and Anne was devoured by secret regret that she had not
been born in Camelot. Those days, she said, were so much more romantic than the
present.
Anne's
plan was hailed with enthusiasm. The
girls had discovered that if the flat were pushed off from the landing place
it would drift down with the current under the bridge and finally strand
itself on another headland lower down which ran out at a curve in the pond.
They had often gone down like this and nothing could be more
convenient for playing Elaine.
"Well,
I'll be Elaine," said Anne, yielding reluctantly, for, although she
would have been delighted to play the principal character, yet her artistic
sense demanded fitness for it and this, she felt, her limitations made
impossible. "Ruby, you
must be King Arthur and Jane will be Guinevere and Diana must be Lancelot.
But first you must be the brothers and the father.
We can't have the old dumb servitor because there isn't room for two
in the flat when one is lying down. We
must pall the barge all its length in blackest samite.
That old black shawl of your mother's will be just the thing,
Diana."
The
black shawl having been procured, Anne spread it over the flat and then lay
down on the bottom, with closed eyes and hands folded over her breast.
"Oh,
she does look really dead," whispered Ruby Gillis nervously, watching
the still, white little face under the flickering shadows of the birches.
"It makes me feel frightened, girls. Do you suppose it's really
right to act like this? Mrs.
Lynde says that all play-acting is abominably wicked."
"Ruby,
you shouldn't talk about Mrs. Lynde," said Anne severely. "It
spoils the effect because this is hundreds of years before Mrs. Lynde was
born. Jane, you arrange this.
It's silly for Elaine to be talking when she's dead."
Jane
rose to the occasion. Cloth of gold for coverlet there was none, but an old piano
scarf of yellow Japanese crepe was an excellent substitute. A white lily was not obtainable just then, but the effect of
a tall blue iris placed in one of Anne's folded hands was all that could be
desired.
"Now,
she's all ready," said Jane. "We
must kiss her quiet brows and, Diana, you say, `Sister, farewell forever,'
and Ruby, you say, `Farewell, sweet sister,' both of you as sorrowfully as
you possibly can. Anne, for goodness sake smile a little.
You know Elaine `lay as though she smiled.'
That's better. Now push
the flat off."
The
flat was accordingly pushed off, scraping roughly over an old embedded stake
in the process. Diana and Jane and Ruby only waited long enough to see it
caught in the current and headed for the bridge before scampering up through
the woods, across the road, and down to the lower headland where, as
Lancelot and Guinevere and the King, they were to be in readiness to receive
the lily maid.
For
a few minutes Anne, drifting slowly down, enjoyed the romance of her
situation to the full. Then something happened not at all romantic.
The flat began to leak. In
a very few moments it was necessary for Elaine to scramble to her feet, pick
up her cloth of gold coverlet and pall of blackest samite and gaze blankly
at a big crack in the bottom of her barge through which the water was
literally pouring. That sharp
stake at the landing had torn off the strip of batting nailed on the flat.
Anne did not know this, but it did not take her long to realize that
she was in a dangerous plight. At
this rate the flat would fill and sink long before it could drift to the
lower headland. Where were the oars? Left
behind at the landing!
Anne
gave one gasping little scream which nobody ever heard; she was white to the
lips, but she did not lose her self-possession. There was one chance--just
one.
"I
was horribly frightened," she told Mrs. Allan the next day, "and
it seemed like years while the flat was drifting down to the bridge and the
water rising in it every moment. I
prayed, Mrs. Allan, most earnestly, but I didn't shut my eyes to pray, for I
knew the only way God could save me was to let the flat float close enough
to one of the bridge piles for me to climb up on it. You know the piles are
just old tree trunks and there are lots of knots and old branch stubs on
them. It was proper to pray,
but I had to do my part by watching out and right well I knew it.
I just said, `Dear God, please take the flat close to a pile and I'll
do the rest,' over and over again. Under
such circumstances you don't think much about making a flowery prayer.
But mine was answered, for the flat bumped right into a pile for a
minute and I flung the scarf and the shawl over my shoulder and scrambled up
on a big providential stub. And
there I was, Mrs. Allan, clinging to that slippery old pile with no way of
getting up or down. It was a
very unromantic position, but I didn't think about that at the time. You don't think much about romance when you have just escaped
from a watery grave. I said a
grateful prayer at once and then I gave all my attention to holding on
tight, for I knew I should probably have to depend on human aid to get back
to dry land."
The
flat drifted under the bridge and then promptly sank in midstream.
Ruby, Jane, and Diana, already awaiting it on the lower headland, saw
it disappear before their very eyes and had not a doubt but that Anne had
gone down with it. For a moment
they stood still, white as sheets, frozen with horror at the tragedy; then,
shrieking at the tops of their voices, they started on a frantic run up
through the woods, never pausing as they crossed the main road to glance the
way of the bridge. Anne, clinging desperately to her precarious foothold,
saw their flying forms and heard their shrieks.
Help would soon come, but meanwhile her position was a very
uncomfortable one.
The
minutes passed by, each seeming an hour to the unfortunate lily maid.
Why didn't somebody come? Where
had the girls gone? Suppose they had fainted, one and all!
Suppose nobody ever came! Suppose she grew so tired and cramped that
she could hold on no longer! Anne
looked at the wicked green depths below her, wavering with long, oily
shadows, and shivered. Her
imagination began to suggest all manner of gruesome possibilities to her.
Then,
just as she thought she really could not endure the ache in her arms and
wrists another moment, Gilbert Blythe came rowing under the bridge in Harmon
Andrews's dory!
Gilbert
glanced up and, much to his amazement, beheld a little white scornful face
looking down upon him with big, frightened but also scornful gray eyes.
"Anne
Shirley! How on earth did you
get there?" he exclaimed.
Without
waiting for an answer he pulled close to the pile and extended his hand.
There was no help for it; Anne, clinging to Gilbert Blythe's hand,
scrambled down into the dory, where she sat, drabbled and furious, in the
stern with her arms full of dripping shawl and wet crepe.
It was certainly extremely difficult to be dignified under the
circumstances!
"What
has happened, Anne?" asked Gilbert, taking up his oars. "We were
playing Elaine" explained Anne frigidly, without even looking at her
rescuer, "and I had to drift down to Camelot in the barge--I mean the
flat. The flat began to leak
and I climbed out on the pile. The
girls went for help. Will you
be kind enough to row me to the landing?"
Gilbert
obligingly rowed to the landing and Anne, disdaining assistance, sprang
nimbly on shore.
"I'm
very much obliged to you," she said haughtily as she turned away. But
Gilbert had also sprung from the boat and now laid a detaining hand on her
arm.
"Anne,"
he said hurriedly, "look here. Can't
we be good friends? I'm awfully sorry I made fun of your hair that time. I didn't mean to vex you and I only meant it for a joke.
Besides, it's so long ago. I
think your hair is awfully pretty now--honest I do. Let's be friends."
For
a moment Anne hesitated. She
had an odd, newly awakened consciousness under all her outraged dignity that
the half-shy, half-eager expression in Gilbert's hazel eyes was something
that was very good to see. Her
heart gave a quick, queer little beat. But the bitterness of her old
grievance promptly stiffened up her wavering determination.
That scene of two years before flashed back into her recollection as
vividly as if it had taken place yesterday.
Gilbert had called her "carrots" and had brought about her
disgrace before the whole school. Her
resentment, which to other and older people might be as laughable as its
cause, was in no whit allayed and softened by time seemingly. She hated
Gilbert Blythe! She would never forgive him!
"No,"
she said coldly, "I shall never be friends with you, Gilbert Blythe;
and I don't want to be!"
"All
right!" Gilbert sprang into his skiff with an angry color in his
cheeks. "I'll never ask
you to be friends again, Anne Shirley. And I don't care either!"
He
pulled away with swift defiant strokes, and Anne went up the steep, ferny
little path under the maples. She
held her head very high, but she was conscious of an odd feeling of regret.
She almost wished she had answered Gilbert differently.
Of course, he had insulted her terribly, but still--!
Altogether, Anne rather thought it would be a relief to sit down and
have a good cry. She was really
quite unstrung, for the reaction from her fright and cramped clinging was
making itself felt.
Halfway
up the path she met Jane and Diana rushing back to the pond in a state
narrowly removed from positive frenzy.
They had found nobody at Orchard Slope, both Mr. and Mrs. Barry being
away. Here Ruby Gillis had succumbed to hysterics, and was left to recover
from them as best she might, while Jane and Diana flew through the Haunted
Wood and across the brook to Green Gables. There they had found nobody
either, for Marilla had gone to Carmody and Matthew was making hay in the
back field.
"Oh,
Anne," gasped Diana, fairly falling on the former's neck and weeping
with relief and delight, "oh, Anne--we thought--you were--drowned--and
we felt like murderers--because we had made--you be--Elaine.
And Ruby is in hysterics--oh, Anne, how did you escape?"
"I
climbed up on one of the piles," explained Anne wearily, "and
Gilbert Blythe came along in Mr. Andrews's dory and brought me to
land."
"Oh,
Anne, how splendid of him! Why,
it's so romantic!" said Jane, finding breath enough for utterance at
last. "Of course you'll
speak to him after this."
"Of
course I won't," flashed Anne, with a momentary return of her old
spirit. "And I don't want
ever to hear the word `romantic' again, Jane Andrews.
I'm awfully sorry you were so frightened, girls. It is all my fault.
I feel sure I was born under an unlucky star. Everything I do gets me or my dearest friends into a scrape.
We've gone and lost your father's flat, Diana, and I have a
presentiment that we'll not be allowed to row on the pond any more."
Anne's
presentiment proved more trustworthy than presentiments are apt to do.
Great was the consternation in the Barry and Cuthbert households when
the events of the afternoon became known.
"Will
you ever have any sense, Anne?" groaned Marilla.
"Oh,
yes, I think I will, Marilla," returned Anne optimistically. A good
cry, indulged in the grateful solitude of the east gable, had soothed her
nerves and restored her to her wonted cheerfulness. "I think my
prospects of becoming sensible are brighter now than ever"
"I
don't see how," said Marilla.
"Well,"
explained Anne, "I've learned a new and valuable lesson today. Ever
since I came to Green Gables I've been making mistakes, and each mistake has
helped to cure me of some great shortcoming.
The affair of the amethyst brooch cured me of meddling with things
that didn't belong to me. The
Haunted Wood mistake cured me of letting my imagination run away with me.
The liniment cake mistake cured me of carelessness in cooking. Dyeing
my hair cured me of vanity. I never think about my hair and nose now--at
least, very seldom. And today's mistake is going to cure me of being too
romantic. I have come to the conclusion that it is no use trying to be
romantic in Avonlea. It was
probably easy enough in towered Camelot hundreds of years ago, but romance
is not appreciated now. I feel quite sure that you will soon see a great
improvement in me in this respect, Marilla."
"I'm
sure I hope so," said Marilla skeptically.
But
Matthew, who had been sitting mutely in his corner, laid a hand on Anne's
shoulder when Marilla had gone out.
"Don't
give up all your romance, Anne," he whispered shyly, "a little of
it is a good thing--not too much, of course--but keep a little of it, Anne,
keep a little of it."
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