Anne's History (Anne of Green Gables)

01CHAPTER V.

02ANNE'S HISTORY Do you know, said Anne confidentially, I've made up my mind to enjoy this drive.

03It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.

04Of course, you must make it up firmly.

05I am not going to think about going back to the asylum while we're having our drive.

06I am just going to think about the drive.

07Oh, look!

08There's one little early wild rose out.

09Isn't it lovely?

10Don't you think it must be glad to be a rose?

11Wouldn't it be nice if roses could talk?

12I'm sure they could tell us such lovely things.

13And isn't pink the most bewitching color in the world?

14I love it, but I can't wear it.

15Red-headed people can't wear pink, not even in imagination.

16Did you ever know of anybody whose hair was red when she was young but got to be another color when she grew up?

17No, I don't know as I ever did, said Marilla mercilessly.

18And I shouldn't think it likely to happen in your case either.

19Anne sighed.

20Well, that is another hope gone.

21My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.

22That's a sentence I read in a book once, and I say it over to comfort myself whenever I'm disappointed in anything.

23I don't see where the comforting comes in myself, said Marilla.

24Why, because it sounds so nice and romantic, just as if I were a heroine in a book, you know.

25I'm so fond of romantic things, and a graveyard full of buried hopes is about as romantic a thing as one can imagine, isn't it?

26I'm rather glad I have one.

27Are we going across the Lake of Shining Waters to-day?

28We're not going over Barry's Pond, if that's what you mean by your Lake of Shining Waters.

29We're going by the Shore Road.

30Shore Road sounds nice, said Anne dreamily.

31Is it as nice as it sounds?

32Just when you said Shore Road, I saw it in a picture in my mind as quick as that.

33And White Sands is a pretty name, too.

34But I don't like it as well as Avonlea.

35Avonlea is a lovely name.

36It just sounds like music.

37How far is it to White Sands?

38It's five miles.

39And as you're evidently bent on talking, you might as well talk to some purpose by telling me what you know about yourself.

40Oh, what I know about myself isn't really worth telling, said Anne eagerly.

41If you'll only let me tell you what I imagine about myself, you'll think it ever so much more interesting.

42No, I don't want any of your imaginings.

43Just you stick to bald facts.

44Begin at the beginning.

45Where were you born, and how old are you?

46I was eleven last March, said Anne, resigning herself to bald facts with a little sigh.

47And I was born in Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia.

48My father's name was Walter Shirley, and he was a teacher in the Bolingbroke high school.

49My mother's name was Bertha Shirley.

50Aren't Walter and Bertha lovely names?

51I'm so glad my parents had nice names.

52It would be a real disgrace to have a father named, well, say, Jedediah, wouldn't it?

53I guess it doesn't matter what a person's name is as long as he behaves himself, said Marilla, feeling herself called upon to inculcate a good and useful moral.

54Well, I don't know.

55Anne looked thoughtful.

56I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it.

57I don't believe a rose would be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.

58I suppose my father could have been a good man even if he had been called Jedediah, but I'm sure it would have been a cross.

59Well, my mother was a teacher in the high school, too, but when she married father she gave up teaching, of course.

60A husband was enough responsibility.

61Mrs.

62Thomas said that they were a pair of babies and as poor as church mice.

63They went to live in a weeny, teeny little yellow house in Bolingbroke.

64I've never seen that house, but I've imagined it thousands of times.

65I think it must have had honeysuckle over the parlour window, and lilacs in the front yard, and lilies of the valley just inside the gate.

66Yes, and muslin curtains in all the windows.

67Muslin curtains give a house such an air.

68I was born in that house.

69Mrs.

70Thomas said I was the homeliest baby she ever saw.

71I was so scrawny and tiny and nothing but eyes, but that mother thought I was perfectly beautiful.

72I should think a mother would be a better judge than a poor woman who came in to scrub, wouldn't you?

73I'm glad she was satisfied with me anyhow.

74I would feel so sad if I thought I was a disappointment to her, because she didn't live very long after that, you see.

75She died of fever when I was just three months old.

76I do wish she'd lived long enough for me to remember calling her mother.

77I think it would be so sweet to say mother, don't you?

78And father died four days afterwards from fever too.

79That left me an orphan, and folks were at their wit's end, so Mrs.

80Thomas said, what to do with me.

81You see, nobody wanted me even then.

82It seems to be my fate.

83Father and mother had both come from places far away, and it was well known they hadn't any relatives living.

84Finally Mrs.

85Thomas said she'd take me, though she was poor and had a drunken husband.

86She brought me up by hand.

87Do you know if there is anything in being brought up by hand that ought to make a people who are brought up that way better than other people?

88Because whenever I was naughty Mrs.

89Thomas would ask me how I could be such a bad girl when she had brought me up by hand, reproachful like.

90Mr.

91and Mrs.

92Thomas moved away from Bolingbroke to Marysville, and I lived with them until I was eight years old.

93I helped look after the Thomas children.

94There were four of them younger than me, and I can tell you they took a lot of looking after.

95Then Mr.

96Thomas was killed falling under a train, and his mother offered to take Mrs.

97Thomas and the children, but she didn't want me.

98Mrs.

99Thomas was at her wit's end, so she said what to do with me.

100Then Mrs.

101Hammond from up the river came down and said she'd take me, seeing I was handy with children, and I went up the river to live with her in a little clearing among the stumps.

102It was a very lonely place.

103I'm sure I could never have lived there if I hadn't had an imagination.

104Mr.

105Hammond worked a little sawmill up there, and Mrs.

106Hammond had eight children.

107She had twins three times.

108I like babies in moderation, but twins three times in succession is too much.

109I told Mrs.

110Hammond so firmly when the last pair came.

111I used to get so dreadfully tired of carrying them about.

112I lived upriver with Mrs.

113Hammond over two years, and then Mr.

114Hammond died, and Mrs.

115Hammond broke up housekeeping.

116She divided her children among her relatives and went to the States.

117I had to go to the asylum at Hopeton, because nobody would take me.

118They didn't want me at the asylum, either.

119They said they were overcrowded as it was.

120But they had to take me, and I was there four months until Mrs.

121Spencer came." Anne finished up with another sigh, of relief this time.

122Evidently she did not like talking about her experiences in a world that had not wanted her.

123"'Did you ever go to school?' demanded Marilla, turning the sorrel mare down the shore road.

124Not a great deal.

125I went a little the last year I stayed with Mrs.

126Thomas.

127When I went upriver we were so far from a school that I couldn't walk it in winter, and there was a vacation in summer, so I could only go in the spring and fall.

128But of course I went when I was at the asylum.

129I can read pretty well, and I know ever so many pieces of poetry off by heart.

130The Battle of Hohenlinden, and Edinburgh after Floden, and Bingen of the Rhine, and Most of the Lady of the Lake and Most of the Seasons by James Thompson.

131Don't you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back?

132There is a piece in the fifth reader, The Downfall of Poland, that is just full of thrills.

133Of course, I wasn't in the fifth reader.

134I was only in the fourth.

135But the big girls used to lend me theirs to read.

136Were those women—Mrs.

137Thomas and Mrs.

138Hammond—good to you?

139asked Marilla, looking at Anne out of the corner of her eye.

140Oh!

141faltered Anne.

142Her sensitive little face suddenly flushed scarlet and embarrassment sat on her brow.

143Oh, they meant to be.

144I know they meant to be just as good and kind as possible.

145And when people mean to be good to you, you don't mind very much when they're not quite—always.

146They had a good deal to worry them, you know.

147It's very trying to have a drunken husband, you see, and it must be very trying to have twins three times in succession, don't you think?

148But I feel sure they meant to be good to me.

149Marilla asked no more questions.

150Anne gave herself up to a silent rapture over the shore road, and Marilla guided the sorrel abstractedly while she pondered deeply.

151Pity was suddenly stirring in her heart for the child.

152What a starved, unloved life she had had—a life of drudgery and poverty and neglect.

153For Marilla was shrewd enough to read between the lines of Anne's history and divine the truth.

154No wonder she had been so delighted at the prospect of a real home.

155It was a pity she had to be sent back.

156What if she, Marilla, should indulge Matthew's unaccountable whim and let her stay?

157He was set on it.

158And the child seemed a nice, teachable little thing.

159She's got too much to say, thought Marilla.

160But she might be trained out of that.

161And there's nothing rude or slangy in what she does say.

162She's ladylike.

163It's likely her people were nice folks.

164The shore was woodsy and wild and lonesome.

165On the right hand, scrub-furs, their spirits quite unbroken by long years of tussle with the gulf winds, grew thickly.

166On the left were the steep, red sandstone cliffs, so near the track-in places that a mare of less steadiness than the sorrel might have tried the nerves of the people behind her.

167Down at the base of the cliffs were heaps of surf-worn rocks, or little sandy coves inlaid with pebbles as with ocean jewels.

168Beyond lay the sea, shimmering and blue, and over it soared the gulls, their pinions flashing silvery in the sunlight.

169"'Isn't the sea wonderful?' said Anne, rousing from a long, wide-eyed silence.

170"'Once, when I lived in Marysville, Mr.

171Thomas hired an express wagon and took us all to spend the day at the shore ten miles away.

172I enjoyed every moment of that day, even if I had to look after the children all the time.

173I lived it over in happy dreams for years.

174But this shore is nicer than the Marysville shore.

175Aren't those gulls splendid?

176Would you like to be a gull?

177I think I would.

178That is, if I couldn't be a human girl.

179Don't you think it would be nice to wake up at sunrise and swoop down over the water and away over that lovely blue all day, and then at night to fly back to one's nest?

180Oh, I can just imagine myself doing it.

181What big house is that just ahead, please?' "'That's the White Sands Hotel.

182Mr.

183Kirk runs it, but the season hasn't begun yet.

184There are heaps of Americans come there for the summer.

185They think this shore is just about right.' "'I was afraid it might be Mrs.

186Spencer's place,' said Anne, mournfully.

187"'I don't want to get there.

188Somehow it will seem like the end of everything.'" End of Chapter 5 End of Chapter 5 End of Chapter 5 End of Chapter 5 End of Chapter 5 End of Chapter 5 End of Chapter 5 End of Chapter 5