Chapter VI

In the Park

“What are you going to do with yourselves today, girls?” asked

Philippa, popping into Anne’s room one Saturday afternoon.

“We are going for a walk in the park,” answered Anne. “I ought to stay

in and finish my blouse. But I couldn’t sew on a day like this. There’s

something in the air that gets into my blood and makes a sort of glory

in my soul. My fingers would twitch and I’d sew a crooked seam. So it’s

ho for the park and the pines.”

“Does ‘we’ include any one but yourself and Priscilla?”

“Yes, it includes Gilbert and Charlie, and we’ll be very glad if it

will include you, also.”

“But,” said Philippa dolefully, “if I go I’ll have to be gooseberry,

and that will be a new experience for Philippa Gordon.”

“Well, new experiences are broadening. Come along, and you’ll be able

to sympathize with all poor souls who have to play gooseberry often.

But where are all the victims?”

“Oh, I was tired of them all and simply couldn’t be bothered with any

of them today. Besides, I’ve been feeling a little blue—just a pale,

elusive azure. It isn’t serious enough for anything darker. I wrote

Alec and Alonzo last week. I put the letters into envelopes and

addressed them, but I didn’t seal them up. That evening something funny

happened. That is, Alec would think it funny, but Alonzo wouldn’t be

likely to. I was in a hurry, so I snatched Alec’s letter—as I

thought—out of the envelope and scribbled down a postscript. Then I

mailed both letters. I got Alonzo’s reply this morning. Girls, I had

put that postscript to his letter and he was furious. Of course he’ll

get over it—and I don’t care if he doesn’t—but it spoiled my day. So I

thought I’d come to you darlings to get cheered up. After the football

season opens I won’t have any spare Saturday afternoons. I adore

football. I’ve got the most gorgeous cap and sweater striped in Redmond

colors to wear to the games. To be sure, a little way off I’ll look

like a walking barber’s pole. Do you know that that Gilbert of yours

has been elected Captain of the Freshman football team?”

“Yes, he told us so last evening,” said Priscilla, seeing that outraged

Anne would not answer. “He and Charlie were down. We knew they were

coming, so we painstakingly put out of sight or out of reach all Miss

Ada’s cushions. That very elaborate one with the raised embroidery I

dropped on the floor in the corner behind the chair it was on. I

thought it would be safe there. But would you believe it? Charlie

Sloane made for that chair, noticed the cushion behind it, solemnly

fished it up, and sat on it the whole evening. Such a wreck of a

cushion as it was! Poor Miss Ada asked me today, still smiling, but oh,

so reproachfully, why I had allowed it to be sat upon. I told her I

hadn’t—that it was a matter of predestination coupled with inveterate

Sloanishness and I wasn’t a match for both combined.”

“Miss Ada’s cushions are really getting on my nerves,” said Anne. “She

finished two new ones last week, stuffed and embroidered within an inch

of their lives. There being absolutely no other cushionless place to

put them she stood them up against the wall on the stair landing. They

topple over half the time and if we come up or down the stairs in the

dark we fall over them. Last Sunday, when Dr. Davis prayed for all

those exposed to the perils of the sea, I added in thought ‘and for all

those who live in houses where cushions are loved not wisely but too

well!’ There! we’re ready, and I see the boys coming through Old St.

John’s. Do you cast in your lot with us, Phil?”

“I’ll go, if I can walk with Priscilla and Charlie. That will be a

bearable degree of gooseberry. That Gilbert of yours is a darling,

Anne, but why does he go around so much with Goggle-eyes?”

Anne stiffened. She had no great liking for Charlie Sloane; but he was

of Avonlea, so no outsider had any business to laugh at him.

“Charlie and Gilbert have always been friends,” she said coldly.

“Charlie is a nice boy. He’s not to blame for his eyes.”

“Don’t tell me that! He is! He must have done something dreadful in a

previous existence to be punished with such eyes. Pris and I are going

to have such sport with him this afternoon. We’ll make fun of him to

his face and he’ll never know it.”

Doubtless, “the abandoned P’s,” as Anne called them, did carry out

their amiable intentions. But Sloane was blissfully ignorant; he

thought he was quite a fine fellow to be walking with two such coeds,

especially Philippa Gordon, the class beauty and belle. It must surely

impress Anne. She would see that some people appreciated him at his

real value.

Gilbert and Anne loitered a little behind the others, enjoying the

calm, still beauty of the autumn afternoon under the pines of the park,

on the road that climbed and twisted round the harbor shore.

“The silence here is like a prayer, isn’t it?” said Anne, her face

upturned to the shining sky. “How I love the pines! They seem to strike

their roots deep into the romance of all the ages. It is so comforting

to creep away now and then for a good talk with them. I always feel so

happy out here.”

“‘And so in mountain solitudes o’ertaken

As by some spell divine,

Their cares drop from them like the needles shaken

From out the gusty pine,’”

quoted Gilbert.

“They make our little ambitions seem rather petty, don’t they, Anne?”

“I think, if ever any great sorrow came to me, I would come to the

pines for comfort,” said Anne dreamily.

“I hope no great sorrow ever will come to you, Anne,” said Gilbert, who

could not connect the idea of sorrow with the vivid, joyous creature

beside him, unwitting that those who can soar to the highest heights

can also plunge to the deepest depths, and that the natures which enjoy

most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply.

“But there must—sometime,” mused Anne. “Life seems like a cup of glory

held to my lips just now. But there must be some bitterness in it—there

is in every cup. I shall taste mine some day. Well, I hope I shall be

strong and brave to meet it. And I hope it won’t be through my own

fault that it will come. Do you remember what Dr. Davis said last

Sunday evening—that the sorrows God sent us brought comfort and

strength with them, while the sorrows we brought on ourselves, through

folly or wickedness, were by far the hardest to bear? But we mustn’t

talk of sorrow on an afternoon like this. It’s meant for the sheer joy

of living, isn’t it?”

“If I had my way I’d shut everything out of your life but happiness and

pleasure, Anne,” said Gilbert in the tone that meant “danger ahead.”

“Then you would be very unwise,” rejoined Anne hastily. “I’m sure no

life can be properly developed and rounded out without some trial and

sorrow—though I suppose it is only when we are pretty comfortable that

we admit it. Come—the others have got to the pavilion and are beckoning

to us.”

They all sat down in the little pavilion to watch an autumn sunset of

deep red fire and pallid gold. To their left lay Kingsport, its roofs

and spires dim in their shroud of violet smoke. To their right lay the

harbor, taking on tints of rose and copper as it stretched out into the

sunset. Before them the water shimmered, satin smooth and silver gray,

and beyond, clean shaven William’s Island loomed out of the mist,

guarding the town like a sturdy bulldog. Its lighthouse beacon flared

through the mist like a baleful star, and was answered by another in

the far horizon.

“Did you ever see such a strong-looking place?” asked Philippa. “I

don’t want William’s Island especially, but I’m sure I couldn’t get it

if I did. Look at that sentry on the summit of the fort, right beside

the flag. Doesn’t he look as if he had stepped out of a romance?”

“Speaking of romance,” said Priscilla, “we’ve been looking for

heather—but, of course, we couldn’t find any. It’s too late in the

season, I suppose.”

“Heather!” exclaimed Anne. “Heather doesn’t grow in America, does it?”

“There are just two patches of it in the whole continent,” said Phil,

“one right here in the park, and one somewhere else in Nova Scotia, I

forget where. The famous Highland Regiment, the Black Watch, camped

here one year, and, when the men shook out the straw of their beds in

the spring, some seeds of heather took root.”

“Oh, how delightful!” said enchanted Anne.

“Let’s go home around by Spofford Avenue,” suggested Gilbert. “We can

see all ‘the handsome houses where the wealthy nobles dwell.’ Spofford

Avenue is the finest residential street in Kingsport. Nobody can build

on it unless he’s a millionaire.”

“Oh, do,” said Phil. “There’s a perfectly killing little place I want

to show you, Anne. _it_ wasn’t built by a millionaire. It’s the first

place after you leave the park, and must have grown while Spofford

Avenue was still a country road. It _did_ grow—it wasn’t built! I don’t

care for the houses on the Avenue. They’re too brand new and

plateglassy. But this little spot is a dream—and its name—but wait till

you see it.”

They saw it as they walked up the pine-fringed hill from the park. Just

on the crest, where Spofford Avenue petered out into a plain road, was

a little white frame house with groups of pines on either side of it,

stretching their arms protectingly over its low roof. It was covered

with red and gold vines, through which its green-shuttered windows

peeped. Before it was a tiny garden, surrounded by a low stone wall.

October though it was, the garden was still very sweet with dear,

old-fashioned, unworldly flowers and shrubs—sweet may, southern-wood,

lemon verbena, alyssum, petunias, marigolds and chrysanthemums. A tiny

brick wall, in herring-bone pattern, led from the gate to the front

porch. The whole place might have been transplanted from some remote

country village; yet there was something about it that made its nearest

neighbor, the big lawn-encircled palace of a tobacco king, look

exceedingly crude and showy and ill-bred by contrast. As Phil said, it

was the difference between being born and being made.

“It’s the dearest place I ever saw,” said Anne delightedly. “It gives

me one of my old, delightful funny aches. It’s dearer and quainter than

even Miss Lavendar’s stone house.”

“It’s the name I want you to notice especially,” said Phil. “Look—in

white letters, around the archway over the gate. ‘Patty’s Place.’ Isn’t

that killing? Especially on this Avenue of Pinehursts and Elmwolds and

Cedarcrofts? ‘Patty’s Place,’ if you please! I adore it.”

“Have you any idea who Patty is?” asked Priscilla.

“Patty Spofford is the name of the old lady who owns it, I’ve

discovered. She lives there with her niece, and they’ve lived there for

hundreds of years, more or less—maybe a little less, Anne. Exaggeration

is merely a flight of poetic fancy. I understand that wealthy folk have

tried to buy the lot time and again—it’s really worth a small fortune

now, you know—but ‘Patty’ won’t sell upon any consideration. And

there’s an apple orchard behind the house in place of a back

yard—you’ll see it when we get a little past—a real apple orchard on

Spofford Avenue!”

“I’m going to dream about ‘Patty’s Place’ tonight,” said Anne. “Why, I

feel as if I belonged to it. I wonder if, by any chance, we’ll ever see

the inside of it.”

“It isn’t likely,” said Priscilla.

Anne smiled mysteriously.

“No, it isn’t likely. But I believe it will happen. I have a queer,

creepy, crawly feeling—you can call it a presentiment, if you like—that

‘Patty’s Place’ and I are going to be better acquainted yet.”