Chapter I

The Shadow of Change

“Harvest is ended and summer is gone,” quoted Anne Shirley, gazing

across the shorn fields dreamily. She and Diana Barry had been picking

apples in the Green Gables orchard, but were now resting from their

labors in a sunny corner, where airy fleets of thistledown drifted by

on the wings of a wind that was still summer-sweet with the incense of

ferns in the Haunted Wood.

But everything in the landscape around them spoke of autumn. The sea

was roaring hollowly in the distance, the fields were bare and sere,

scarfed with golden rod, the brook valley below Green Gables overflowed

with asters of ethereal purple, and the Lake of Shining Waters was

blue—blue—blue; not the changeful blue of spring, nor the pale azure of

summer, but a clear, steadfast, serene blue, as if the water were past

all moods and tenses of emotion and had settled down to a tranquility

unbroken by fickle dreams.

“It has been a nice summer,” said Diana, twisting the new ring on her

left hand with a smile. “And Miss Lavendar’s wedding seemed to come as

a sort of crown to it. I suppose Mr. and Mrs. Irving are on the Pacific

coast now.”

“It seems to me they have been gone long enough to go around the

world,” sighed Anne.

“I can’t believe it is only a week since they were married. Everything

has changed. Miss Lavendar and Mr. and Mrs. Allan gone—how lonely the

manse looks with the shutters all closed! I went past it last night,

and it made me feel as if everybody in it had died.”

“We’ll never get another minister as nice as Mr. Allan,” said Diana,

with gloomy conviction. “I suppose we’ll have all kinds of supplies

this winter, and half the Sundays no preaching at all. And you and

Gilbert gone—it will be awfully dull.”

“Fred will be here,” insinuated Anne slyly.

“When is Mrs. Lynde going to move up?” asked Diana, as if she had not

heard Anne’s remark.

“Tomorrow. I’m glad she’s coming—but it will be another change. Marilla

and I cleared everything out of the spare room yesterday. Do you know,

I hated to do it? Of course, it was silly—but it did seem as if we were

committing sacrilege. That old spare room has always seemed like a

shrine to me. When I was a child I thought it the most wonderful

apartment in the world. You remember what a consuming desire I had to

sleep in a spare room bed—but not the Green Gables spare room. Oh, no,

never there! It would have been too terrible—I couldn’t have slept a

wink from awe. I never _walked_ through that room when Marilla sent me

in on an errand—no, indeed, I tiptoed through it and held my breath, as

if I were in church, and felt relieved when I got out of it. The

pictures of George Whitefield and the Duke of Wellington hung there,

one on each side of the mirror, and frowned so sternly at me all the

time I was in, especially if I dared peep in the mirror, which was the

only one in the house that didn’t twist my face a little. I always

wondered how Marilla dared houseclean that room. And now it’s not only

cleaned but stripped bare. George Whitefield and the Duke have been

relegated to the upstairs hall. ‘So passes the glory of this world,’”

concluded Anne, with a laugh in which there was a little note of

regret. It is never pleasant to have our old shrines desecrated, even

when we have outgrown them.

“I’ll be so lonesome when you go,” moaned Diana for the hundredth time.

“And to think you go next week!”

“But we’re together still,” said Anne cheerily. “We mustn’t let next

week rob us of this week’s joy. I hate the thought of going myself—home

and I are such good friends. Talk of being lonesome! It’s I who should

groan. _You’ll_ be here with any number of your old friends—_and_ Fred!

While I shall be alone among strangers, not knowing a soul!”

“_Except_ Gilbert—_and_ Charlie Sloane,” said Diana, imitating Anne’s

italics and slyness.

“Charlie Sloane will be a great comfort, of course,” agreed Anne

sarcastically; whereupon both those irresponsible damsels laughed.

Diana knew exactly what Anne thought of Charlie Sloane; but, despite

sundry confidential talks, she did not know just what Anne thought of

Gilbert Blythe. To be sure, Anne herself did not know that.

“The boys may be boarding at the other end of Kingsport, for all I

know,” Anne went on. “I am glad I’m going to Redmond, and I am sure I

shall like it after a while. But for the first few weeks I know I

won’t. I shan’t even have the comfort of looking forward to the weekend

visit home, as I had when I went to Queen’s. Christmas will seem like a

thousand years away.”

“Everything is changing—or going to change,” said Diana sadly. “I have

a feeling that things will never be the same again, Anne.”

“We have come to a parting of the ways, I suppose,” said Anne

thoughtfully. “We had to come to it. Do you think, Diana, that being

grown-up is really as nice as we used to imagine it would be when we

were children?”

“I don’t know—there are _some_ nice things about it,” answered Diana,

again caressing her ring with that little smile which always had the

effect of making Anne feel suddenly left out and inexperienced. “But

there are so many puzzling things, too. Sometimes I feel as if being

grown-up just frightened me—and then I would give anything to be a

little girl again.”

“I suppose we’ll get used to being grownup in time,” said Anne

cheerfully. “There won’t be so many unexpected things about it by and

by—though, after all, I fancy it’s the unexpected things that give

spice to life. We’re eighteen, Diana. In two more years we’ll be

twenty. When I was ten I thought twenty was a green old age. In no time

you’ll be a staid, middle-aged matron, and I shall be nice, old maid

Aunt Anne, coming to visit you on vacations. You’ll always keep a

corner for me, won’t you, Di darling? Not the spare room, of course—old

maids can’t aspire to spare rooms, and I shall be as ’umble as _Uriah

Heep_, and quite content with a little over-the-porch or off-the-parlor

cubby hole.”

“What nonsense you do talk, Anne,” laughed Diana. “You’ll marry

somebody splendid and handsome and rich—and no spare room in Avonlea

will be half gorgeous enough for you—and you’ll turn up your nose at

all the friends of your youth.”

“That would be a pity; my nose is quite nice, but I fear turning it up

would spoil it,” said Anne, patting that shapely organ. “I haven’t so

many good features that I could afford to spoil those I have; so, even

if I should marry the King of the Cannibal Islands, I promise you I

won’t turn up my nose at you, Diana.”

With another gay laugh the girls separated, Diana to return to Orchard

Slope, Anne to walk to the Post Office. She found a letter awaiting her

there, and when Gilbert Blythe overtook her on the bridge over the Lake

of Shining Waters she was sparkling with the excitement of it.

“Priscilla Grant is going to Redmond, too,” she exclaimed. “Isn’t that

splendid? I hoped she would, but she didn’t think her father would

consent. He has, however, and we’re to board together. I feel that I

can face an army with banners—or all the professors of Redmond in one

fell phalanx—with a chum like Priscilla by my side.”

“I think we’ll like Kingsport,” said Gilbert. “It’s a nice old burg,

they tell me, and has the finest natural park in the world. I’ve heard

that the scenery in it is magnificent.”

“I wonder if it will be—can be—any more beautiful than this,” murmured

Anne, looking around her with the loving, enraptured eyes of those to

whom “home” must always be the loveliest spot in the world, no matter

what fairer lands may lie under alien stars.

They were leaning on the bridge of the old pond, drinking deep of the

enchantment of the dusk, just at the spot where Anne had climbed from

her sinking Dory on the day Elaine floated down to Camelot. The fine,

empurpling dye of sunset still stained the western skies, but the moon

was rising and the water lay like a great, silver dream in her light.

Remembrance wove a sweet and subtle spell over the two young creatures.

“You are very quiet, Anne,” said Gilbert at last.

“I’m afraid to speak or move for fear all this wonderful beauty will

vanish just like a broken silence,” breathed Anne.

Gilbert suddenly laid his hand over the slender white one lying on the

rail of the bridge. His hazel eyes deepened into darkness, his still

boyish lips opened to say something of the dream and hope that thrilled

his soul. But Anne snatched her hand away and turned quickly. The spell

of the dusk was broken for her.

“I must go home,” she exclaimed, with a rather overdone carelessness.

“Marilla had a headache this afternoon, and I’m sure the twins will be

in some dreadful mischief by this time. I really shouldn’t have stayed

away so long.”

She chattered ceaselessly and inconsequently until they reached the

Green Gables lane. Poor Gilbert hardly had a chance to get a word in

edgewise. Anne felt rather relieved when they parted. There had been a

new, secret self-consciousness in her heart with regard to Gilbert,

ever since that fleeting moment of revelation in the garden of Echo

Lodge. Something alien had intruded into the old, perfect, school-day

comradeship—something that threatened to mar it.

“I never felt glad to see Gilbert go before,” she thought,

half-resentfully, half-sorrowfully, as she walked alone up the lane.

“Our friendship will be spoiled if he goes on with this nonsense. It

mustn’t be spoiled—I won’t let it. Oh, _why_ can’t boys be just

sensible!”

Anne had an uneasy doubt that it was not strictly “sensible” that she

should still feel on her hand the warm pressure of Gilbert’s, as

distinctly as she had felt it for the swift second his had rested

there; and still less sensible that the sensation was far from being an

unpleasant one—very different from that which had attended a similar

demonstration on Charlie Sloane’s part, when she had been sitting out a

dance with him at a White Sands party three nights before. Anne

shivered over the disagreeable recollection. But all problems connected

with infatuated swains vanished from her mind when she entered the

homely, unsentimental atmosphere of the Green Gables kitchen where an

eight-year-old boy was crying grievously on the sofa.

“What is the matter, Davy?” asked Anne, taking him up in her arms.

“Where are Marilla and Dora?”

“Marilla’s putting Dora to bed,” sobbed Davy, “and I’m crying ’cause

Dora fell down the outside cellar steps, heels over head, and scraped

all the skin off her nose, and—”

“Oh, well, don’t cry about it, dear. Of course, you are sorry for her,

but crying won’t help her any. She’ll be all right tomorrow. Crying

never helps any one, Davy-boy, and—”

“I ain’t crying ’cause Dora fell down cellar,” said Davy, cutting short

Anne’s wellmeant preachment with increasing bitterness. “I’m crying,

cause I wasn’t there to see her fall. I’m always missing some fun or

other, seems to me.”

“Oh, Davy!” Anne choked back an unholy shriek of laughter. “Would you

call it fun to see poor little Dora fall down the steps and get hurt?”

“She wasn’t _much_ hurt,” said Davy, defiantly. “’Course, if she’d been

killed I’d have been real sorry, Anne. But the Keiths ain’t so easy

killed. They’re like the Blewetts, I guess. Herb Blewett fell off the

hayloft last Wednesday, and rolled right down through the turnip chute

into the box stall, where they had a fearful wild, cross horse, and

rolled right under his heels. And still he got out alive, with only

three bones broke. Mrs. Lynde says there are some folks you can’t kill

with a meat-axe. Is Mrs. Lynde coming here tomorrow, Anne?”

“Yes, Davy, and I hope you’ll be always very nice and good to her.”

“I’ll be nice and good. But will she ever put me to bed at nights,

Anne?”

“Perhaps. Why?”

“’Cause,” said Davy very decidedly, “if she does I won’t say my prayers

before her like I do before you, Anne.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause I don’t think it would be nice to talk to God before strangers,

Anne. Dora can say hers to Mrs. Lynde if she likes, but _I_ won’t. I’ll

wait till she’s gone and then say ’em. Won’t that be all right, Anne?”

“Yes, if you are sure you won’t forget to say them, Davy-boy.”

“Oh, I won’t forget, you bet. I think saying my prayers is great fun.

But it won’t be as good fun saying them alone as saying them to you. I

wish you’d stay home, Anne. I don’t see what you want to go away and

leave us for.”

“I don’t exactly _want_ to, Davy, but I feel I ought to go.”

“If you don’t want to go you needn’t. You’re grown up. When _I_’m grown

up I’m not going to do one single thing I don’t want to do, Anne.”

“All your life, Davy, you’ll find yourself doing things you don’t want

to do.”

“I won’t,” said Davy flatly. “Catch me! I have to do things I don’t

want to now ’cause you and Marilla’ll send me to bed if I don’t. But

when I grow up you can’t do that, and there’ll be nobody to tell me not

to do things. Won’t I have the time! Say, Anne, Milty Boulter says his

mother says you’re going to college to see if you can catch a man. Are

you, Anne? I want to know.”

For a second Anne burned with resentment. Then she laughed, reminding

herself that Mrs. Boulter’s crude vulgarity of thought and speech could

not harm her.

“No, Davy, I’m not. I’m going to study and grow and learn about many

things.”

“What things?”

“‘Shoes and ships and sealing wax

And cabbages and kings,’”

quoted Anne.

“But if you _did_ want to catch a man how would you go about it? I want

to know,” persisted Davy, for whom the subject evidently possessed a

certain fascination.

“You’d better ask Mrs. Boulter,” said Anne thoughtlessly. “I think it’s

likely she knows more about the process than I do.”

“I will, the next time I see her,” said Davy gravely.

“Davy! If you do!” cried Anne, realizing her mistake.

“But you just told me to,” protested Davy aggrieved.

“It’s time you went to bed,” decreed Anne, by way of getting out of the

scrape.

After Davy had gone to bed Anne wandered down to Victoria Island and

sat there alone, curtained with fine-spun, moonlit gloom, while the

water laughed around her in a duet of brook and wind. Anne had always

loved that brook. Many a dream had she spun over its sparkling water in

days gone by. She forgot lovelorn youths, and the cayenne speeches of

malicious neighbors, and all the problems of her girlish existence. In

imagination she sailed over storied seas that wash the distant shining

shores of “faery lands forlorn,” where lost Atlantis and Elysium lie,

with the evening star for pilot, to the land of Heart’s Desire. And she

was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass

away, but the things that are unseen are eternal.