Anne of the Island

“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 labours 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 tranquillity 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.”

“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 anyone, Davy-boy, and⁠—”

“I ain’t crying ’cause Dora fell down cellar,” said Davy, cutting short Anne’s well-meant 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?”

“Oh, I want to know who you two girls are,” she exclaimed eagerly. “I’ve been dying to know. I saw you at Redmond this morning. Say, wasn’t it awful there? For the time I wished I had stayed home and got married.”

Anne and Priscilla both broke into unconstrained laughter at this unexpected conclusion. The brown-eyed girl laughed, too.

“I really did. I could have, you know. Come, let’s all sit down on this gravestone and get acquainted. It won’t be hard. I know we’re going to adore each other⁠—I knew it as soon as I saw you at Redmond this morning. I wanted so much to go right over and hug you both.”

“Why didn’t you?” asked Priscilla.

“Because I simply couldn’t make up my mind to do it. I never can make up my mind about anything myself⁠—I’m always afflicted with indecision. Just as soon as I decide to do something I feel in my bones that another course would be the correct one. It’s a dreadful misfortune, but I was born that way, and there is no use in blaming me for it, as some people do. So I couldn’t make up my mind to go and speak to you, much as I wanted to.”

“We thought you were too shy,” said Anne.

“No, no, dear. Shyness isn’t among the many failings⁠—or virtues⁠—of Philippa Gordon⁠—Phil for short. Do call me Phil right off. Now, what are your handles?”

“I’ll soon be the only fancy-free maiden of our old quartet,” thought Anne, drowsily. Aloud she said, “Of course.”

“Anne,” said Jane, still more solemnly, “what do you think of my brother Billy?”

Anne gasped over this unexpected question, and floundered helplessly in her thoughts. Goodness, what did she think of Billy Andrews? She had never thought anything about him⁠—round-faced, stupid, perpetually smiling, good-natured Billy Andrews. Did anybody ever think about Billy Andrews?

“I⁠—I don’t understand, Jane,” she stammered. “What do you mean⁠—exactly?”

“Do you like Billy?” asked Jane bluntly.

“Why⁠—why⁠—yes, I like him, of course,” gasped Anne, wondering if she were telling the literal truth. Certainly she did not dislike Billy. But could the indifferent tolerance with which she regarded him, when he happened to be in her range of vision, be considered positive enough for liking? What was Jane trying to elucidate?

“Would you like him for a husband?” asked Jane calmly.

“A husband!” Anne had been sitting up in bed, the better to wrestle with the problem of her exact opinion of Billy Andrews. Now she fell flatly back on her pillows, the very breath gone out of her. “Whose husband?”

“Yours, of course,” answered Jane. “Billy wants to marry you. He’s always been crazy about you⁠—and now father has given him the upper farm in his own name and there’s nothing to prevent him from getting married. But he’s so shy he couldn’t ask you himself if you’d have him, so he got me to do it. I’d rather not have, but he gave me no peace till I said I would, if I got a good chance.

Suddenly the rain of Aunt Jamesina’s prophecy came with a swish and rush. Anne put up her umbrella and hurried down the slope. As she turned out on the harbour road a savage gust of wind tore along it. Instantly her umbrella turned wrong side out. Anne clutched at it in despair. And then⁠—there came a voice close to her:

“Pardon me⁠—may I offer you the shelter of my umbrella?”

Anne looked up. Tall and handsome and distinguished-looking⁠—dark, melancholy, inscrutable eyes⁠—melting, musical, sympathetic voice⁠—yes, the very hero of her dreams stood before her in the flesh. He could not have more closely resembled her ideal if he had been made to order.

“Thank you,” she said confusedly.

“We’d better hurry over to that little pavilion on the point,” suggested the unknown. “We can wait there until this shower is over. It is not likely to rain so heavily very long.”

The words were very commonplace, but oh, the tone! And the smile which accompanied them! Anne felt her heart beating strangely.

Together they scurried to the pavilion and sat breathlessly down under its friendly roof. Anne laughingly held up her false umbrella.

“It is when my umbrella turns inside out that I am convinced of the total depravity of inanimate things,” she said gaily.