CHAPTER XX. A Good Imagination Gone Wrong
|SPRING had come once more to Green Gables--the beautiful capricious,reluctant Canadian spring, lingering along through April and May in asuccession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miraclesof resurrection and growth. The maples in Lover's Lane were red buddedand little curly ferns pushed up around the Dryad's Bubble. Away up inthe barrens, behind Mr. Silas Sloane's place, the Mayflowers blossomedout, pink and white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves. All theschool girls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them, cominghome in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets full offlowery spoil.
"I'm so sorry for people who live in lands where there are noMayflowers," said Anne. "Diana says perhaps they have something better,but there couldn't be anything better than Mayflowers, could there,Marilla? And Diana says if they don't know what they are like they don'tmiss them. But I think that is the saddest thing of all. I think itwould be _tragic_, Marilla, not to know what Mayflowers are like and _not_to miss them. Do you know what I think Mayflowers are, Marilla? I thinkthey must be the souls of the flowers that died last summer and thisis their heaven. But we had a splendid time today, Marilla. We had ourlunch down in a big mossy hollow by an old well--such a _romantic_ spot.Charlie Sloane dared Arty Gillis to jump over it, and Arty did becausehe wouldn't take a dare. Nobody would in school. It is very _fashionable_to dare. Mr. Phillips gave all the Mayflowers he found to Prissy Andrewsand I heard him to say 'sweets to the sweet.' He got that out of abook, I know; but it shows he has some imagination. I was offered someMayflowers too, but I rejected them with scorn. I can't tell you theperson's name because I have vowed never to let it cross my lips. Wemade wreaths of the Mayflowers and put them on our hats; and when thetime came to go home we marched in procession down the road, two by two,with our bouquets and wreaths, singing 'My Home on the Hill.' Oh, it wasso thrilling, Marilla. All Mr. Silas Sloane's folks rushed out to see usand everybody we met on the road stopped and stared after us. We made areal sensation."
"Not much wonder! Such silly doings!" was Marilla's response.
After the Mayflowers came the violets, and Violet Vale was empurpledwith them. Anne walked through it on her way to school with reverentsteps and worshiping eyes, as if she trod on holy ground.
"Somehow," she told Diana, "when I'm going through here I don't reallycare whether Gil--whether anybody gets ahead of me in class or not. Butwhen I'm up in school it's all different and I care as much as ever.There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that iswhy I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it wouldbe ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half sointeresting."
One June evening, when the orchards were pink blossomed again, when thefrogs were singing silverly sweet in the marshes about the head of theLake of Shining Waters, and the air was full of the savor of cloverfields and balsamic fir woods, Anne was sitting by her gable window.She had been studying her lessons, but it had grown too dark to see thebook, so she had fallen into wide-eyed reverie, looking out past theboughs of the Snow Queen, once more bestarred with its tufts of blossom.
In all essential respects the little gable chamber was unchanged. Thewalls were as white, the pincushion as hard, the chairs as stifflyand yellowly upright as ever. Yet the whole character of the room wasaltered. It was full of a new vital, pulsing personality that seemed topervade it and to be quite independent of schoolgirl books and dressesand ribbons, and even of the cracked blue jug full of apple blossomson the table. It was as if all the dreams, sleeping and waking, of itsvivid occupant had taken a visible although unmaterial form and hadtapestried the bare room with splendid filmy tissues of rainbow andmoonshine. Presently Marilla came briskly in with some of Anne's freshlyironed school aprons. She hung them over a chair and sat down witha short sigh. She had had one of her headaches that afternoon, andalthough the pain had gone she felt weak and "tuckered out," as sheexpressed it. Anne looked at her with eyes limpid with sympathy.
"I do truly wish I could have had the headache in your place, Marilla. Iwould have endured it joyfully for your sake."
"I guess you did your part in attending to the work and letting merest," said Marilla. "You seem to have got on fairly well and made fewermistakes than usual. Of course it wasn't exactly necessary to starchMatthew's handkerchiefs! And most people when they put a pie in the ovento warm up for dinner take it out and eat it when it gets hot instead ofleaving it to be burned to a crisp. But that doesn't seem to be your wayevidently."
Headaches always left Marilla somewhat sarcastic.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Anne penitently. "I never thought about thatpie from the moment I put it in the oven till now, although I felt_instinctively_ that there was something missing on the dinner table. Iwas firmly resolved, when you left me in charge this morning, not toimagine anything, but keep my thoughts on facts. I did pretty well untilI put the pie in, and then an irresistible temptation came to me toimagine I was an enchanted princess shut up in a lonely tower with ahandsome knight riding to my rescue on a coal-black steed. So thatis how I came to forget the pie. I didn't know I starched thehandkerchiefs. All the time I was ironing I was trying to think of aname for a new island Diana and I have discovered up the brook. It's themost ravishing spot, Marilla. There are two maple trees on it and thebrook flows right around it. At last it struck me that it would besplendid to call it Victoria Island because we found it on the Queen'sbirthday. Both Diana and I are very loyal. But I'm sorry about that pieand the handkerchiefs. I wanted to be extra good today because it's ananniversary. Do you remember what happened this day last year, Marilla?"
"No, I can't think of anything special."
"Oh, Marilla, it was the day I came to Green Gables. I shall neverforget it. It was the turning point in my life. Of course it wouldn'tseem so important to you. I've been here for a year and I've been sohappy. Of course, I've had my troubles, but one can live down troubles.Are you sorry you kept me, Marilla?"
"No, I can't say I'm sorry," said Marilla, who sometimes wondered howshe could have lived before Anne came to Green Gables, "no, not exactlysorry. If you've finished your lessons, Anne, I want you to run over andask Mrs. Barry if she'll lend me Diana's apron pattern."
"Oh--it's--it's too dark," cried Anne.
"Too dark? Why, it's only twilight. And goodness knows you've gone overoften enough after dark."
"I'll go over early in the morning," said Anne eagerly. "I'll get up atsunrise and go over, Marilla."
"What has got into your head now, Anne Shirley? I want that pattern tocut out your new apron this evening. Go at once and be smart too."
"I'll have to go around by the road, then," said Anne, taking up her hatreluctantly.
"Go by the road and waste half an hour! I'd like to catch you!"
"I can't go through the Haunted Wood, Marilla," cried Anne desperately.
Marilla stared.
"The Haunted Wood! Are you crazy? What under the canopy is the HauntedWood?"
"The spruce wood over the brook," said Anne in a whisper.
"Fiddlesticks! There is no such thing as a haunted wood anywhere. Whohas been telling you such stuff?"
"Nobody," confessed Anne. "Diana and I just imagined the wood washaunted. All the places around here are so--so--_commonplace_. We just gotthis up for our own amusement. We began it in April. A haunted wood isso very romantic, Marilla. We chose the spruce grove because it's sogloomy. Oh, we have imagined the most harrowing things. There's a whitelady walks along the brook just about this time of the night and wringsher hands and utters wailing cries. She appears when there is to be adeath in the family. And the ghost of a little murdered child haunts thecorner up by Idlewild; it creeps up behind you and lays its cold fingerson your hand--so. Oh, Marilla, it gives me a shudder to think of it. Andthere's a headless man stalks up and down the path and skeletons glowerat you between the boughs. Oh, Marilla, I wouldn't go through theHaunted Wood after dark now for anything. I'd
be sure that white thingswould reach out from behind the trees and grab me."
"Did ever anyone hear the like!" ejaculated Marilla, who hadlistened in dumb amazement. "Anne Shirley, do you mean to tell me youbelieve all that wicked nonsense of your own imagination?"
"Not believe _exactly_," faltered Anne. "At least, I don't believe it indaylight. But after dark, Marilla, it's different. That is when ghostswalk."
"There are no such things as ghosts, Anne."
"Oh, but there are, Marilla," cried Anne eagerly. "I know people whohave seen them. And they are respectable people. Charlie Sloane saysthat his grandmother saw his grandfather driving home the cows one nightafter he'd been buried for a year. You know Charlie Sloane's grandmotherwouldn't tell a story for anything. She's a very religious woman. AndMrs. Thomas's father was pursued home one night by a lamb of fire withits head cut off hanging by a strip of skin. He said he knew it was thespirit of his brother and that it was a warning he would die within ninedays. He didn't, but he died two years after, so you see it was reallytrue. And Ruby Gillis says--"
"Anne Shirley," interrupted Marilla firmly, "I never want to hear youtalking in this fashion again. I've had my doubts about that imaginationof yours right along, and if this is going to be the outcome of it, Iwon't countenance any such doings. You'll go right over to Barry's, andyou'll go through that spruce grove, just for a lesson and a warning toyou. And never let me hear a word out of your head about haunted woodsagain."
Anne might plead and cry as she liked--and did, for her terror was veryreal. Her imagination had run away with her and she held the sprucegrove in mortal dread after nightfall. But Marilla was inexorable. Shemarched the shrinking ghost-seer down to the spring and ordered herto proceed straightaway over the bridge and into the dusky retreats ofwailing ladies and headless specters beyond.
"Oh, Marilla, how can you be so cruel?" sobbed Anne. "What would youfeel like if a white thing did snatch me up and carry me off?"
"I'll risk it," said Marilla unfeelingly. "You know I always mean what Isay. I'll cure you of imagining ghosts into places. March, now."
Anne marched. That is, she stumbled over the bridge and went shudderingup the horrible dim path beyond. Anne never forgot that walk. Bitterlydid she repent the license she had given to her imagination. The goblinsof her fancy lurked in every shadow about her, reaching out their cold,fleshless hands to grasp the terrified small girl who had called theminto being. A white strip of birch bark blowing up from the hollow overthe brown floor of the grove made her heart stand still. The long-drawnwail of two old boughs rubbing against each other brought out theperspiration in beads on her forehead. The swoop of bats in the darknessover her was as the wings of unearthly creatures. When she reached Mr.William Bell's field she fled across it as if pursued by an army ofwhite things, and arrived at the Barry kitchen door so out of breaththat she could hardly gasp out her request for the apron pattern.Diana was away so that she had no excuse to linger. The dreadfulreturn journey had to be faced. Anne went back over it with shut eyes,preferring to take the risk of dashing her brains out among the boughsto that of seeing a white thing. When she finally stumbled over the logbridge she drew one long shivering breath of relief.
"Well, so nothing caught you?" said Marilla unsympathetically.
"Oh, Mar--Marilla," chattered Anne, "I'll b-b-be contt-tented withc-c-commonplace places after this."