Morning at Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables)

01CHAPTER IV.

02MOURNING AT GREEN GABLES.

03It was broad daylight when Anne awoke and sat up in bed, staring confusedly at the window through which a flood of cheery sunshine was pouring, and outside of which something white and feathery waved across glimpses of blue sky.

04For a moment she could not remember where she was.

05First came a delightful thrill as of something very pleasant, then a horrible remembrance.

06This was green gables, and they didn't want her because she wasn't a boy.

07But it was morning, and yes, it was a cherry tree in full bloom outside of her window.

08With a bound she was out of bed and across the floor.

09She pushed up the sash—it went up stiffly and creakily as if it hadn't been open for a long time, which was the case—and it stuck so tight that nothing was needed to hold it up.

10Anne dropped on her knees and gazed out into the June morning, her eyes glistening with delight.

11Oh, wasn't it beautiful!

12Wasn't it a lovely place?

13Suppose she wasn't really going to stay here.

14She would imagine she was.

15There was scope for imagination here.

16A huge cherry tree grew outside, so close that its boughs tapped against the house, and it was so thick-set with blossoms that hardly a leaf was to be seen.

17On both sides of the house was a big orchard—one of apple trees and one of cherry trees, also showered over with blossoms, and their grass was all sprinkled with dandelions.

18In the garden below were lilac trees, purple with flowers, and their dizzily sweet fragrance drifted up to the window on the morning wind.

19Below the garden, a green field, lush with clover, sloped down to the hollow where the brook ran and where scores of white birches grew, up-springing airily out of an undergrowth suggestive of delightful possibilities in ferns and mosses and woodsy things generally.

20Beyond it was a hill, green and feathery with spruce and fir.

21There was a gap in it where the grey gable end of the little house she had seen from the other side of the Lake of Shining Waters was visible.

22Off to the left were the big barns, and beyond them, away down over green, low-sloping fields, was a sparkling blue glimpse of sea.

23Anne's beauty-loving eyes lingered on it all, taking everything greedily in.

24She had looked on so many unlovely places in her life, poor child, but this was as lovely as anything she had ever dreamed.

25She knelt there, lost to everything but the loveliness around her, until she was startled by a hand on her shoulder.

26Marilla had come in unheard by the small dreamer.

27"'It's time you were dressed,' she said curtly.

28Marilla really did not know how to talk to the child, and her uncomfortable ignorance made her crisp and curt when she did not mean to be." Anne stood up and drew a long breath.

29"'Oh, isn't it wonderful!' she said, waving her hand, comprehensively at the good world outside.

30"'It's a big tree,' said Marilla, and it blooms great.

31But the fruit don't amount to much never—small and wormy." "'Oh, I don't mean just the tree.

32Of course it's lovely, yes.

33It's radiantly lovely.

34It blooms as if it meant it.

35But I meant everything—the garden and the orchard and the brook and the woods—the whole big, dear world.

36Don't you feel as if you just loved the world on a morning like this?

37And I can hear the brook laughing all the way up here.

38Have you ever noticed what cheerful things brooks are?

39They're always laughing.

40Even in wintertime I've heard them under the ice.

41I am so glad there's a brook near Green Gables.

42Perhaps you think it doesn't make any difference to me when you're not going to keep me, but it does.

43I shall always like to remember that there is a brook at Green Gables, even if I never see it again.

44If there wasn't a brook I'd be haunted by the uncomfortable feeling that there ought to be one.

45I'm not in the depths of despair this morning.

46I never can be in the morning.

47Isn't it a splendid thing that there are mornings?

48But I feel very sad.

49I've just been imagining that it was really me you wanted, after all, and that I was to stay here forever and ever.

50It was a great comfort while it lasted.

51But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have to stop, and that hurts.

52You'd better get dressed and come downstairs and never mind your imaginings, said Marilla, as soon as she could get a word in edgewise.

53Breakfast is waiting.

54Wash your face and comb your hair.

55Leave the window up and turn your bedclothes back over the foot of the bed.

56Be as smart as you can.

57Anne could evidently be smart to some purpose, for she was downstairs in ten minutes' time with her clothes neatly on, her hair brushed and braided, her face washed, and a comfortable consciousness pervading her soul that she had fulfilled all Marilla's requirements.

58As a matter of fact, however, she had forgotten to turn back the bedclothes.

59I'm pretty hungry this morning, she announced as she slipped into the chair Marilla placed for her.

60The world doesn't seem such a howling wilderness as it did last night.

61Said Marilla, you talk entirely too much for a little girl.

62Thereupon, Anne held her tongue so obediently and thoroughly that her continued silence made Marilla rather nervous, as if in the presence of something not exactly natural.

63Matthew also held his tongue.

64But this was natural, so that the meal was a very silent one.

65As it progressed, Anne became more and more abstracted, eating mechanically, with her big eyes fixed unswervingly and unseeingly on the sky outside the window.

66This made Marilla more nervous than ever.

67She had an uncomfortable feeling that while this odd child's body might be there at the table, her spirit was far away in some remote, airy cloudland, borne aloft on the wings of imagination.

68Who would want such a child about the place?

69Yet Matthew wished a keeper, of all unaccountable things.

70Marilla felt that he wanted it just as much this morning as he had the night before, and that he would go on wanting it.

71That was Matthew's way.

72Take a whim into his head and cling to it with the most amazing silent persistency—a persistency ten times more potent and effectual in its very silence than if he had talked it out.

73When the meal was ended, Anne came out of her reverie and offered to wash the dishes.

74"'Can you wash dishes right?' asked Marilla, distrustfully.

75"'Pretty well.

76I'm better at looking after children, though.

77I've had so much experience at that.

78It's such a pity you haven't any here for me to look after.' "'I don't feel as if I wanted any more children to look after than I've got at present.

79You're a problem enough in all conscience.' "'What's to be done with you I don't know.

80Matthew is a most ridiculous man.' "'I think he's lovely,' said Anne reproachfully.

81"'He is so very sympathetic.

82He didn't mind how much I talked.

83He seemed to like it.

84I felt that he was a kindred spirit as soon as ever I saw him.' "'You're both queer enough, if that's what you mean by kindred spirits,' said Marilla with a sniff.

85"'Yes, you may wash the dishes.

86Take plenty of hot water, and be sure you dry them well.

87I've got enough to attend to this morning, for I'll have to drive over to White Sands in the afternoon and see Mrs.

88Spencer.

89You'll come with me and we'll settle what's to be done with you.

90After you've finished the dishes, go upstairs and make your bed.' Anne washed the dishes deftly enough, as Marilla, who kept a sharp eye on the process, discerned.

91Later on she made her bed less successfully, for she had never learned the art of wrestling with a feather tick.

92But it was done somehow and smoothed down, and then Marilla, to get rid of her, told her she might go out of doors and amuse herself until dinner-time.

93Anne flew to the door, face alight, eyes glowing.

94On the very threshold she stopped short, wheeled about, came back and sat down by the table.

95Light and glow was effectually blotted out as if someone had clapped an extinguisher on her.

96"'What's the matter now?' demanded Marilla.

97"'I don't dare go out,' said Anne, in the tone of a martyr relinquishing all earthly joys.

98"'If I can't stay here, there's no use in my loving green gables.

99And if I go out there and get acquainted with all those trees and flowers and the orchard and the brook, I'll not be able to help loving it.

100It's hard enough now, so I won't make it any harder.

101I want to go out so much.

102Everything seems to be calling to me.

103Anne, Anne, come out to us.

104Anne, Anne, we want a playmate.

105But it's better not.

106There is no use in loving things if you have to be torn from them, is there?

107And it's so hard to keep from loving things, isn't it?

108That was why I was so glad when I thought I was going to live here.

109I thought I'd have so many things to love and nothing to hinder me.

110But that brief dream is over.

111I am resigned to my fate now, so I don't think I'll go out for fear I'll get unresigned again.

112What is the name of that geranium on the window sill, please?

113That's the apple-scented geranium.

114Oh, I don't mean that sort of a name.

115I mean just a name you gave it yourself.

116Didn't you give it a name?

117May I give it one, then?

118May I call it—let me see.

119Bonnie would do.

120May I call it Bonnie while I'm here?

121Oh, do let me.

122Goodness, I don't care.

123But where on earth is the sense of naming a geranium?

124Oh, I like things to have handles, even if they're only geraniums.

125It makes them seem more like people.

126How do you know but that it hurts a geranium's feelings just to be called a geranium and nothing else?

127You wouldn't like to be called nothing but a woman all the time.

128Yes, I shall call it Bonnie.

129I named that cherry tree outside my bedroom window this morning.

130I called it Snow Queen because it was so white.

131Of course it won't always be in blossom, but one can imagine that it is, can't one?

132I never in all my life saw or heard anything to equal her, muttered Marilla, beating a retreat down to the cellar after potatoes.

133She is kind of interesting, as Matthew says.

134I can feel already that I'm wondering what on earth she'll say next.

135She'll be casting a spell over me, too.

136She's cast it over Matthew.

137That look he gave me when he went out said everything he said or hinted last night over again.

138I wish he was like other men and would talk things out.

139A body could answer back then and argue him into reason.

140But what's to be done with a man who just looks?

141Anne had relapsed into reverie with her chin in her hands and her eyes on the sky, when Marilla returned from her cellar pilgrimage.

142There Marilla left her until the early dinner was on the table.

143"'I suppose I can have the mare and buggy this afternoon, Matthew,' said Marilla.

144Matthew nodded and looked wistfully at Anne.

145Marilla intercepted the look and said grimly, "'I'm going to drive over to White Sands and settle this thing.

146I'll take Anne with me and Mrs.

147Spencer will probably make arrangements to send her back to Nova Scotia at once.

148I'll set your tea out for you and I'll be home in time to milk the cows.' Still Matthew said nothing, and Marilla had a sense of having wasted words and breath.

149There is nothing more aggravating than a man who won't talk back, unless it is a woman who won't.

150Matthew hitched the sorrel into the buggy in due time and Marilla and Anne set off.

151Matthew opened the yard gate for them and as they drove slowly through he said, to nobody in particular as it seemed, "'Little Jerry Boat from the Creek was here this morning and I told him I guessed I'd hired him for the summer.' Marilla made no reply, but she hit the unlucky sorrel such a vicious clip with the whip that the fat mare, unused to such treatment, whizzed indignantly down the lane at an alarming pace.

152Marilla looked back once as the buggy bounced along and saw that aggravating Matthew, leaning over the gate, looking wistfully after them.

153End of chapter 4 End of chapter 4 End of chapter 4 End of chapter 4 End of chapter 4 End of chapter 4 End of chapter 4 End of chapter 5