Anne

“ Leslie laid her splendid golden head against Anne’s knee.
“Anyhow, I have you,” she said. “Life can’t be altogether empty with such a friend. Anne, pat my head—just as if I were a little girl—mother me a bit—and let me tell you while my stubborn tongue is loosed a little just what you and your comradeship have meant to me since that night I met you on the rock shore.” ”

“ It was Anne who made the ventures, Anne who held aside hindering branches, Anne whose voice came laughing back to vow that the labyrinth grew more tangled, Anne who at last dropped by the side of a baby stream babbling over its stones, and bade Millie rest. She could not say enough of the fascinations of the spot.
“They will come back boasting of their fall with the hopeless name, only because it is big. What has size to do with beauty? This thing is perfect. Look at its curves, and its swirls, and its pools, and its grasses, and its small airs!” ”

“ ANNE. And thou unfit for any place but hell.
GLOUCESTER. Yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it.
ANNE. Some dungeon.
GLOUCESTER. Your bed-chamber.
ANNE. Ill rest betide the chamber where thou liest!
GLOUCESTER. So will it, madam, till I lie with you.
ANNE. I hope so.
GLOUCESTER. I know so. But, gentle Lady Anne,
To leave this keen encounter of our wits,
And fall something into a slower method-
Is not the causer of the timeless deaths
Of these Plantagenets, Henry and Edward,
As blameful as the executioner?
ANNE. Thou wast the cause and most accurs'd effect. ”

“ You should not have tortured yourself so unnecessarily, Anne. You know I never would imagine you guilty of such mean motives. You may have my brown silk dress, Anne, and the dark blue brocade. I had never worn either when I was called into mourning. I declare, Anne, you have the best heart in the world. You need not blush about it, child," said madame, as Anne covered her face with her handkerchief to conceal a laugh. "You are too modest by half, Anne; but it is always so with real merit." ”

“ Anne’s convalescence was rapid and happy. Folks came and worshipped the baby, as people have bowed before the kingship of the new-born since long before the Wise Men of the East knelt in homage to the Royal Babe of the Bethlehem manger. Leslie, slowly finding herself amid the new conditions of her life, hovered over it, like a beautiful, golden-crowned Madonna. Miss Cornelia nursed it as knackily as could any mother in Israel. Captain Jim held the small creature in his big brown hands and gazed tenderly at it, with eyes that saw the children who had never been born to him. ”

“ Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight. The evening had changed something for her. Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been stirred. It must not be with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the shrinking terror of something wholly different—something for which accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. ”

“ But I must go through my life, never seeing her, but always knowing what she is enduring. It’s hideous—hideous!”
“It is very hard,” said Anne sorrowfully. “We—her friends here—all know how hard it is for her.”
“And she is so richly fitted for life,” said Owen rebelliously.
“Her beauty is the least of her dower—and she is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. That laugh of hers! I’ve angled all summer to evoke that laugh, just for the delight of hearing it. And her eyes—they are as deep and blue as the gulf out there. I never saw such blueness—and gold! ”

“ Alas! never on earth should he hear that soft voice again! Anne, too, the gentle, childlike Anne, was afar; but she was happy,—a basker in the brief sunshine, and blind to the darkening clouds. His elder child, with her changeful moods, added but to his disquiet and unhappiness. ”

“ Even when we burnt incense,—and René at once began to send it up in clouds,—she thought we were laughing at her.” François laughed gently himself.
“You remember Anne? You know how she would take praise. Adorably, like a little girl who is almost too shy to be pleased. It was absurd, of course. She was by no means young even then, remember. But somehow that only made it more piquante. Anne is one of the few women for whom age is an absurd convention. Quite meaningless, quite beside the point. The goddesses are immortal.” ”

“ Anne was the first to wake; and as the bright winter morn, robust with frosty sunbeams shone cheerily upon Sibyll’s face, she was struck with a beauty she had not sufficiently observed the day before; for in the sleep of the young the traces of thought and care vanish, the aching heart is lulled in the body’s rest, the hard lines relax into flexile ease, a softer, warmer bloom steals over the cheek, and, relieved from the stiff restraints of dress, the rounded limbs repose in a more alluring grace! Youth seems younger in its slumber, and beauty more beautiful, and purity more pure. ”

“ Anne drew the deep breath of delight. She took off her hat and gloves, and moved forward a few steps to a spot where the wood opened and the vivid light received her. Majendie hung back to look at her. She turned and stood before him, superb and still, shrined in a crescent of tall beech stems, column by column, with the light descending on the fine gold of her hair. Nothing in Anne even remotely suggested a sylvan and primeval creature; but, as she stood there in her temperate and alien beauty, she seemed to him to have yielded to a brief enchantment. ”

“ To Anne, as much as to any mediæval saint in any rock-ribbed cell, the longest, happiest earthly life measured nothing against a glorious eternity. Her husband was handsome, spirited, high-hearted, masterful, compelling, and kind, too, in his careless way; another woman might have been happy and proud to be his wife; but Anne's heart had ached from first to last for the one thing of which she never spoke, and for which she was always praying. ”

“ Barbara's sallow cheeks flushed and her eyes scorned Anne's insincerity. For five nights Anne had let her go on, in the dark intimacy of the same room, piling up the mass of her small perplexities, the annoying efforts at adjustment between herself and Janet and her mother. And all the time Anne had harbored a romance. Anne was not the small, shy cousin, so different from Belle, so like themselves in spite of her daily contact with the great world of business. Anne knew men. ”

“ Who can describe the feelings of the Lady Anne—alone, in her chamber, looking up at the portrait of her mother, upon which she had so often gazed with delight and reverence! "Is it possible?" said she to herself, "can this be she, of whom I have read such dreadful things? Have all my young and happy days been but a dream, from which I wake at last? Is not this dreadful certainty still as a hideous dream to me?"
She had another cause of bitter grief. She loved the young and noble-minded Lord Russell, the Earl of Bedford's eldest son; and she had heard him vow affection and faithfulness to her. ”

“ The library was also unaltered, and in this room, and in the garden, Anne found all the joy of her life.
She was permitted to do what she liked with the garden, and, under the direction of the old gardener, who rejoiced to find some one who loved the work, and, delighted in its results, Anne planned and planted and laid the foundation for the beauty that now surrounded her. The hours in the open air restored her health. Insensibly, she grew strong and straight. ”

“ Anne, despite her love of and loyalty to Green Gables, could not help thinking longingly of Patty’s Place, its cosy open fire, Aunt Jamesina’s mirthful eyes, the three cats, the merry chatter of the girls, the pleasantness of Friday evenings when college friends dropped in to talk of grave and gay. ”

“ Anne looked at her, and a wave of comprehension and pity passed over her heart.
The girl’s incoherent words were echoes; they touched painful memories of years for her, long past.
She recognized the despairing cry of youth, articulate in these modern times, no longer stifled as in the days of her own girlhood.
Youth, fettered, struggling with passionate clamour to be free. ”

“ Naturally gifted as a linguist, Anne learnt quickly, and often from choice, as time went on, the two women spoke French together, rather than English.
But it was to the English poets that Anne most often returned. Poetry suited her nature. It was the form of art which to her, most fully expressed the heights and depths, the beauty and the terror, the haunting melancholy, the fear, the inexpressible longings, the regrets, the sadness, the innocent delights of life, which, in all its complexity, she had begun to recognize through the world of books. ”

“ For Anne the days slipped by like golden beads on the necklace of the year. She was happy, eager, interested; there were lessons to be learned and honor to be won; delightful books to read; new pieces to be practiced for the Sunday-school choir; pleasant Saturday afternoons at the manse with Mrs. Allan; and then, almost before Anne realized it, spring had come again to Green Gables and all the world was abloom once more. ”

“ To Anne, as to some of her companions, is attached a romance, which, after four hundred years, clings to her memory, and like the scent of rose leaves and lavender in some old-fashioned country house, the refrain of an ancient ballad or the quaint phrases traced in faded ink on some letter yellow with age coming to us from a long-vanished generation, seems to give us a momentary glimpse into the life of those far-off days. ”

“ Anne thought she had never seen a prettier one anywhere; the green grass above the quiet beach, the sparkling sea beyond the evergreen trees making a border. This was the view which her little mother had loved, too. In that very room she had sung Anne to sleep, a tiny baby. And that blue vastness was the ocean which all her Yankee ancestors had loved; so too had her Norse father, of a race of famous sailor-men. ”

“ For many lads went wooing aye Across the fields to Anne. The oaks, they have a wiser look; Mayhap they whispered to the brook: "The world by him shall yet be shook, It is in nature's plan; Though now he fleets like any rook Across the fields to Anne." And I am sure, that on some hour Coquetting soft 'twixt sun and shower, He stooped and broke a daisy-flower With heart of tiny span, And bore it as a lover's dower Across the fields to Anne. While from her cottage garden-bed She plucked a jasmine's goodlihede, To scent his jerkin's brown instead ”

“ But the sword of Damocles does not fall; in this instance, as in others, mademoiselle departed in safety, bearing Anne away to the woods, her face hidden in the depths of the Shaker.
Wild flowers, that seem so fresh and young, are, singularly enough, the especial prey of old maids. Young girls love the garden flowers; beautiful women surround themselves with hot-house hues and perfumes. ”

“ It had seemed to Nancy as she read that something gripped at her heart. It was Anne's presence which had kept her from the black despair of loneliness. Sulie was good and true, but she had no power to fill the void made by Richard's absence. If Anne went away, they would be two old women, gazing blankly into an empty future.
Yet it was Anne's opportunity. The opportunity which her soul had craved. "To see new things and new people." And she was young and wanting much to live. It would not be right or fair to hold her back. ”

“ After an hour of mute suffering, Anne sought the blessed oblivion of sleep. She had conquered herself; she was exhausted. She would try to gain strength for the effort of the coming day. But nothing avails against that fever, strong as life and sad as death, which we call Love, and which, in spite of the crowd of shallower feelings that masquerade under and mock its name, still remains the master-power of our human existence. ”

“ Anne herself would never believe that she had any claim to beauty. When she looked in the glass all she saw was a little pale face with seven freckles on the nose thereof. Her mirror never revealed to her the elusive, ever-varying play of feeling that came and went over her features like a rosy illuminating flame, or the charm of dream and laughter alternating in her big eyes. ”

“ She could not picture herself living alone in a little house in New York, dependent on Drovers and Tresseltons, and on the good Fred Landers, for [87] her moral sustenance. To be with Anne, to play the part of Anne’s mother—the one part, she now saw, that fate had meant her for—that was what she wanted with all her starved and world-worn soul. To be the background, the atmosphere, of her daughter’s life; to depend on Anne, to feel that Anne depended on her; it was the one perfect companionship she had ever known, the only close tie unmarred by dissimulation and distrust. ”

“ Anne believed that she would hate that white lace girl to the end of life.
Unfortunately for Anne, a professional elocutionist was staying at the hotel and had consented to recite. She was a lithe, dark-eyed woman in a wonderful gown of shimmering gray stuff like woven moonbeams, with gems on her neck and in her dark hair. She had a marvellously flexible voice and wonderful power of expression; the audience went wild over her selection. Anne, forgetting all about herself and her troubles for the time, listened with rapt and shining eyes ”

“ You are everywhere, Mistress Anne, not as I last saw you at Rose Acres in silken attire, but fluttering before me in your frock of many flounces, carrying your star of a lantern through the twilight on your way to Diogenes, scolding me on the stairs——! What days, what hours! And always you were the little school-teacher, showing your wayward scholars what to do with life! ”