CHAPTER XXVIII. An Unfortunate Lily Maid
|OF course you must be Elaine, Anne," said Diana. "I could never havethe courage to float down there."
"Nor I," said Ruby Gillis, with a shiver. "I don't mind floating downwhen there's two or three of us in the flat and we can sit up. It's funthen. But to lie down and pretend I was dead--I just couldn't. I'd diereally of fright."
"Of course it would be romantic," conceded Jane Andrews, "but I know Icouldn't keep still. I'd be popping up every minute or so to see where Iwas and if I wasn't drifting too far out. And you know, Anne, that wouldspoil the effect."
"But it's so ridiculous to have a redheaded Elaine," mourned Anne. "I'mnot afraid to float down and I'd love to be Elaine. But it's ridiculousjust the same. Ruby ought to be Elaine because she is so fair and hassuch lovely long golden hair--Elaine had 'all her bright hair streamingdown,' you know. And Elaine was the lily maid. Now, a red-haired personcannot be a lily maid."
"Your complexion is just as fair as Ruby's," said Diana earnestly, "andyour hair is ever so much darker than it used to be before you cut it."
"Oh, do you really think so?" exclaimed Anne, flushing sensitively withdelight. "I've sometimes thought it was myself--but I never dared to askanyone for fear she would tell me it wasn't. Do you think it could becalled auburn now, Diana?"
"Yes, and I think it is real pretty," said Diana, looking admiringly atthe short, silky curls that clustered over Anne's head and were held inplace by a very jaunty black velvet ribbon and bow.
They were standing on the bank of the pond, below Orchard Slope, wherea little headland fringed with birches ran out from the bank; at its tipwas a small wooden platform built out into the water for the convenienceof fishermen and duck hunters. Ruby and Jane were spending the midsummerafternoon with Diana, and Anne had come over to play with them.
Anne and Diana had spent most of their playtime that summer on and aboutthe pond. Idlewild was a thing of the past, Mr. Bell having ruthlesslycut down the little circle of trees in his back pasture in the spring.Anne had sat among the stumps and wept, not without an eye to theromance of it; but she was speedily consoled, for, after all, as she andDiana said, big girls of thirteen, going on fourteen, were too old forsuch childish amusements as playhouses, and there were more fascinatingsports to be found about the pond. It was splendid to fish for troutover the bridge and the two girls learned to row themselves about in thelittle flat-bottomed dory Mr. Barry kept for duck shooting.
It was Anne's idea that they dramatize Elaine. They had studiedTennyson's poem in school the preceding winter, the Superintendent ofEducation having prescribed it in the English course for the PrinceEdward Island schools. They had analyzed and parsed it and torn it topieces in general until it was a wonder there was any meaning at allleft in it for them, but at least the fair lily maid and Lancelot andGuinevere and King Arthur had become very real people to them, and Annewas devoured by secret regret that she had not been born in Camelot.Those days, she said, were so much more romantic than the present.
Anne's plan was hailed with enthusiasm. The girls had discovered that ifthe flat were pushed off from the landing place it would drift downwith the current under the bridge and finally strand itself on anotherheadland lower down which ran out at a curve in the pond. They had oftengone down like this and nothing could be more convenient for playingElaine.
"Well, I'll be Elaine," said Anne, yielding reluctantly, for, althoughshe would have been delighted to play the principal character, yether artistic sense demanded fitness for it and this, she felt, herlimitations made impossible. "Ruby, you must be King Arthur and Janewill be Guinevere and Diana must be Lancelot. But first you must be thebrothers and the father. We can't have the old dumb servitor becausethere isn't room for two in the flat when one is lying down. We mustpall the barge all its length in blackest samite. That old black shawlof your mother's will be just the thing, Diana."
The black shawl having been procured, Anne spread it over the flat andthen lay down on the bottom, with closed eyes and hands folded over herbreast.
"Oh, she does look really dead," whispered Ruby Gillis nervously,watching the still, white little face under the flickering shadows ofthe birches. "It makes me feel frightened, girls. Do you suppose it'sreally right to act like this? Mrs. Lynde says that all play-acting isabominably wicked."
"Ruby, you shouldn't talk about Mrs. Lynde," said Anne severely. "Itspoils the effect because this is hundreds of years before Mrs. Lyndewas born. Jane, you arrange this. It's silly for Elaine to be talkingwhen she's dead."
Jane rose to the occasion. Cloth of gold for coverlet there was none,but an old piano scarf of yellow Japanese crepe was an excellentsubstitute. A white lily was not obtainable just then, but the effect ofa tall blue iris placed in one of Anne's folded hands was all that couldbe desired.
"Now, she's all ready," said Jane. "We must kiss her quiet browsand, Diana, you say, 'Sister, farewell forever,' and Ruby, you say,'Farewell, sweet sister,' both of you as sorrowfully as you possiblycan. Anne, for goodness sake smile a little. You know Elaine 'lay asthough she smiled.' That's better. Now push the flat off."
The flat was accordingly pushed off, scraping roughly over an oldembedded stake in the process. Diana and Jane and Ruby only waited longenough to see it caught in the current and headed for the bridge beforescampering up through the woods, across the road, and down to the lowerheadland where, as Lancelot and Guinevere and the King, they were to bein readiness to receive the lily maid.
For a few minutes Anne, drifting slowly down, enjoyed the romance of hersituation to the full. Then something happened not at all romantic. Theflat began to leak. In a very few moments it was necessary for Elaineto scramble to her feet, pick up her cloth of gold coverlet and pallof blackest samite and gaze blankly at a big crack in the bottom of herbarge through which the water was literally pouring. That sharp stake atthe landing had torn off the strip of batting nailed on the flat. Annedid not know this, but it did not take her long to realize that she wasin a dangerous plight. At this rate the flat would fill and sink longbefore it could drift to the lower headland. Where were the oars? Leftbehind at the landing!
Anne gave one gasping little scream which nobody ever heard; she waswhite to the lips, but she did not lose her self-possession. There wasone chance--just one.
"I was horribly frightened," she told Mrs. Allan the next day, "and itseemed like years while the flat was drifting down to the bridge and thewater rising in it every moment. I prayed, Mrs. Allan, most earnestly,but I didn't shut my eyes to pray, for I knew the only way God couldsave me was to let the flat float close enough to one of the bridgepiles for me to climb up on it. You know the piles are just old treetrunks and there are lots of knots and old branch stubs on them. It wasproper to pray, but I had to do my part by watching out and right wellI knew it. I just said, 'Dear God, please take the flat close to a pileand I'll do the rest,' over and over again. Under such circumstances youdon't think much about making a flowery prayer. But mine was answered,for the flat bumped right into a pile for a minute and I flung the scarfand the shawl over my shoulder and scrambled up on a big providentialstub. And there I was, Mrs. Allan, clinging to that slippery old pilewith no way of getting up or down. It was a very unromantic position,but I didn't think about that at the time. You don't think much aboutromance when you have just escaped from a watery grave. I said agrateful prayer at once and then I gave all my attention to holding ontight, for I knew I should probably have to depend on human aid to getback to dry land."
The flat drifted under the bridge and then promptly sank in midstream.Ruby, Jane, and Diana, already awaiting it on the lower headland, saw itdisappear before their very eyes and had not a doubt but that Annehad gone down with it. For a moment they stood still, white as sheets,frozen with horror at the tragedy; then, shrieking at the tops oftheir voices, they started on a frantic run up through the woods, neverpausing as they crossed the main road to glance the way of the bridge.Anne, clinging despe
rately to her precarious foothold, saw their flyingforms and heard their shrieks. Help would soon come, but meanwhile herposition was a very uncomfortable one.
The minutes passed by, each seeming an hour to the unfortunate lilymaid. Why didn't somebody come? Where had the girls gone? Suppose theyhad fainted, one and all! Suppose nobody ever came! Suppose she grew sotired and cramped that she could hold on no longer! Anne looked at thewicked green depths below her, wavering with long, oily shadows, andshivered. Her imagination began to suggest all manner of gruesomepossibilities to her.
Then, just as she thought she really could not endure the ache in herarms and wrists another moment, Gilbert Blythe came rowing under thebridge in Harmon Andrews's dory!
Gilbert glanced up and, much to his amazement, beheld a little whitescornful face looking down upon him with big, frightened but alsoscornful gray eyes.
"Anne Shirley! How on earth did you get there?" he exclaimed.
Without waiting for an answer he pulled close to the pile and extendedhis hand. There was no help for it; Anne, clinging to Gilbert Blythe'shand, scrambled down into the dory, where she sat, drabbled and furious,in the stern with her arms full of dripping shawl and wet crepe. It wascertainly extremely difficult to be dignified under the circumstances!
"What has happened, Anne?" asked Gilbert, taking up his oars. "We wereplaying Elaine" explained Anne frigidly, without even looking at herrescuer, "and I had to drift down to Camelot in the barge--I mean theflat. The flat began to leak and I climbed out on the pile. The girlswent for help. Will you be kind enough to row me to the landing?"
Gilbert obligingly rowed to the landing and Anne, disdaining assistance,sprang nimbly on shore.
"I'm very much obliged to you," she said haughtily as she turned away.But Gilbert had also sprung from the boat and now laid a detaining handon her arm.
"Anne," he said hurriedly, "look here. Can't we be good friends? I'mawfully sorry I made fun of your hair that time. I didn't mean to vexyou and I only meant it for a joke. Besides, it's so long ago. I thinkyour hair is awfully pretty now--honest I do. Let's be friends."
For a moment Anne hesitated. She had an odd, newly awakenedconsciousness under all her outraged dignity that the half-shy,half-eager expression in Gilbert's hazel eyes was something that wasvery good to see. Her heart gave a quick, queer little beat. But thebitterness of her old grievance promptly stiffened up her waveringdetermination. That scene of two years before flashed back into herrecollection as vividly as if it had taken place yesterday. Gilbert hadcalled her "carrots" and had brought about her disgrace before the wholeschool. Her resentment, which to other and older people might be aslaughable as its cause, was in no whit allayed and softened by timeseemingly. She hated Gilbert Blythe! She would never forgive him!
"No," she said coldly, "I shall never be friends with you, GilbertBlythe; and I don't want to be!"
"All right!" Gilbert sprang into his skiff with an angry color in hischeeks. "I'll never ask you to be friends again, Anne Shirley. And Idon't care either!"
He pulled away with swift defiant strokes, and Anne went up the steep,ferny little path under the maples. She held her head very high, butshe was conscious of an odd feeling of regret. She almost wished she hadanswered Gilbert differently. Of course, he had insulted her terribly,but still--! Altogether, Anne rather thought it would be a relief tosit down and have a good cry. She was really quite unstrung, for thereaction from her fright and cramped clinging was making itself felt.
Halfway up the path she met Jane and Diana rushing back to the pond ina state narrowly removed from positive frenzy. They had found nobody atOrchard Slope, both Mr. and Mrs. Barry being away. Here Ruby Gillis hadsuccumbed to hysterics, and was left to recover from them as best shemight, while Jane and Diana flew through the Haunted Wood and across thebrook to Green Gables. There they had found nobody either, for Marillahad gone to Carmody and Matthew was making hay in the back field.
"Oh, Anne," gasped Diana, fairly falling on the former's neckand weeping with relief and delight, "oh, Anne--we thought--youwere--drowned--and we felt like murderers--because we had made--yoube--Elaine. And Ruby is in hysterics--oh, Anne, how did you escape?"
"I climbed up on one of the piles," explained Anne wearily, "and GilbertBlythe came along in Mr. Andrews's dory and brought me to land."
"Oh, Anne, how splendid of him! Why, it's so romantic!" said Jane,finding breath enough for utterance at last. "Of course you'll speak tohim after this."
"Of course I won't," flashed Anne, with a momentary return of her oldspirit. "And I don't want ever to hear the word 'romantic' again, JaneAndrews. I'm awfully sorry you were so frightened, girls. It is all myfault. I feel sure I was born under an unlucky star. Everything I dogets me or my dearest friends into a scrape. We've gone and lost yourfather's flat, Diana, and I have a presentiment that we'll not beallowed to row on the pond any more."
Anne's presentiment proved more trustworthy than presentiments are aptto do. Great was the consternation in the Barry and Cuthbert householdswhen the events of the afternoon became known.
"Will you ever have any sense, Anne?" groaned Marilla.
"Oh, yes, I think I will, Marilla," returned Anne optimistically. A goodcry, indulged in the grateful solitude of the east gable, had soothedher nerves and restored her to her wonted cheerfulness. "I think myprospects of becoming sensible are brighter now than ever."
"I don't see how," said Marilla.
"Well," explained Anne, "I've learned a new and valuable lesson today.Ever since I came to Green Gables I've been making mistakes, and eachmistake has helped to cure me of some great shortcoming. The affair ofthe amethyst brooch cured me of meddling with things that didn't belongto me. The Haunted Wood mistake cured me of letting my imagination runaway with me. The liniment cake mistake cured me of carelessness incooking. Dyeing my hair cured me of vanity. I never think about my hairand nose now--at least, very seldom. And today's mistake is going tocure me of being too romantic. I have come to the conclusion that it isno use trying to be romantic in Avonlea. It was probably easy enough intowered Camelot hundreds of years ago, but romance is not appreciatednow. I feel quite sure that you will soon see a great improvement in mein this respect, Marilla."
"I'm sure I hope so," said Marilla skeptically.
But Matthew, who had been sitting mutely in his corner, laid a hand onAnne's shoulder when Marilla had gone out.
"Don't give up all your romance, Anne," he whispered shyly, "a littleof it is a good thing--not too much, of course--but keep a little of it,Anne, keep a little of it."