A Good Imagination Gone Wrong

SPRING had come once more to Green Gables--the beautiful capricious,

reluctant Canadian spring, lingering along through April and May in a

succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles

of resurrection and growth. The maples in Lover’s Lane were red budded

and little curly ferns pushed up around the Dryad’s Bubble. Away up in

the barrens, behind Mr. Silas Sloane’s place, the Mayflowers blossomed

out, pink and white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves. All the

school girls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them, coming

home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets full of

flowery spoil.

“I’m so sorry for people who live in lands where there are no

Mayflowers,” said Anne. “Diana says perhaps they have something better,

but there couldn’t be anything better than Mayflowers, could there,

Marilla? And Diana says if they don’t know what they are like they don’t

miss them. But I think that is the saddest thing of all. I think it

would be _tragic_, Marilla, not to know what Mayflowers are like and _not_

to miss them. Do you know what I think Mayflowers are, Marilla? I think

they must be the souls of the flowers that died last summer and this

is their heaven. But we had a splendid time today, Marilla. We had our

lunch down in a big mossy hollow by an old well--such a _romantic_ spot.

Charlie Sloane dared Arty Gillis to jump over it, and Arty did because

he wouldn’t take a dare. Nobody would in school. It is very _fashionable_

to dare. Mr. Phillips gave all the Mayflowers he found to Prissy Andrews

and I heard him to say ‘sweets to the sweet.’ He got that out of a

book, I know; but it shows he has some imagination. I was offered some

Mayflowers too, but I rejected them with scorn. I can’t tell you the

person’s name because I have vowed never to let it cross my lips. We

made wreaths of the Mayflowers and put them on our hats; and when the

time came to go home we marched in procession down the road, two by two,

with our bouquets and wreaths, singing ‘My Home on the Hill.’ Oh, it was

so thrilling, Marilla. All Mr. Silas Sloane’s folks rushed out to see us

and everybody we met on the road stopped and stared after us. We made a

real sensation.”

“Not much wonder! Such silly doings!” was Marilla’s response.

After the Mayflowers came the violets, and Violet Vale was empurpled

with them. Anne walked through it on her way to school with reverent

steps and worshiping eyes, as if she trod on holy ground.

“Somehow,” she told Diana, “when I’m going through here I don’t really

care whether Gil--whether anybody gets ahead of me in class or not. But

when I’m up in school it’s all different and I care as much as ever.

There’s such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is

why I’m such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would

be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn’t be half so

interesting.”

One June evening, when the orchards were pink blossomed again, when the

frogs were singing silverly sweet in the marshes about the head of the

Lake of Shining Waters, and the air was full of the savor of clover

fields and balsamic fir woods, Anne was sitting by her gable window.

She had been studying her lessons, but it had grown too dark to see the

book, so she had fallen into wide-eyed reverie, looking out past the

boughs of the Snow Queen, once more bestarred with its tufts of blossom.

In all essential respects the little gable chamber was unchanged. The

walls were as white, the pincushion as hard, the chairs as stiffly

and yellowly upright as ever. Yet the whole character of the room was

altered. It was full of a new vital, pulsing personality that seemed to

pervade it and to be quite independent of schoolgirl books and dresses

and ribbons, and even of the cracked blue jug full of apple blossoms

on the table. It was as if all the dreams, sleeping and waking, of its

vivid occupant had taken a visible although unmaterial form and had

tapestried the bare room with splendid filmy tissues of rainbow and

moonshine. Presently Marilla came briskly in with some of Anne’s freshly

ironed school aprons. She hung them over a chair and sat down with

a short sigh. She had had one of her headaches that afternoon, and

although the pain had gone she felt weak and “tuckered out,” as she

expressed it. Anne looked at her with eyes limpid with sympathy.

“I do truly wish I could have had the headache in your place, Marilla. I

would have endured it joyfully for your sake.”

“I guess you did your part in attending to the work and letting me

rest,” said Marilla. “You seem to have got on fairly well and made fewer

mistakes than usual. Of course it wasn’t exactly necessary to starch

Matthew’s handkerchiefs! And most people when they put a pie in the oven

to warm up for dinner take it out and eat it when it gets hot instead of

leaving it to be burned to a crisp. But that doesn’t seem to be your way

evidently.”

Headaches always left Marilla somewhat sarcastic.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Anne penitently. “I never thought about that

pie from the moment I put it in the oven till now, although I felt

_instinctively_ that there was something missing on the dinner table. I

was firmly resolved, when you left me in charge this morning, not to

imagine anything, but keep my thoughts on facts. I did pretty well until

I put the pie in, and then an irresistible temptation came to me to

imagine I was an enchanted princess shut up in a lonely tower with a

handsome knight riding to my rescue on a coal-black steed. So that

is how I came to forget the pie. I didn’t know I starched the

handkerchiefs. All the time I was ironing I was trying to think of a

name for a new island Diana and I have discovered up the brook. It’s the

most ravishing spot, Marilla. There are two maple trees on it and the

brook flows right around it. At last it struck me that it would be

splendid to call it Victoria Island because we found it on the Queen’s

birthday. Both Diana and I are very loyal. But I’m sorry about that pie

and the handkerchiefs. I wanted to be extra good today because it’s an

anniversary. Do you remember what happened this day last year, Marilla?”

“No, I can’t think of anything special.”

“Oh, Marilla, it was the day I came to Green Gables. I shall never

forget it. It was the turning point in my life. Of course it wouldn’t

seem so important to you. I’ve been here for a year and I’ve been so

happy. Of course, I’ve had my troubles, but one can live down troubles.

Are you sorry you kept me, Marilla?”

“No, I can’t say I’m sorry,” said Marilla, who sometimes wondered how

she could have lived before Anne came to Green Gables, “no, not exactly

sorry. If you’ve finished your lessons, Anne, I want you to run over and

ask Mrs. Barry if she’ll lend me Diana’s apron pattern.”

“Oh--it’s--it’s too dark,” cried Anne.

“Too dark? Why, it’s only twilight. And goodness knows you’ve gone over

often enough after dark.”

“I’ll go over early in the morning,” said Anne eagerly. “I’ll get up at

sunrise and go over, Marilla.”

“What has got into your head now, Anne Shirley? I want that pattern to

cut out your new apron this evening. Go at once and be smart too.”

“I’ll have to go around by the road, then,” said Anne, taking up her hat

reluctantly.

“Go by the road and waste half an hour! I’d like to catch you!”

“I can’t go through the Haunted Wood, Marilla,” cried Anne desperately.

Marilla stared.

“The Haunted Wood! Are you crazy? What under the canopy is the Haunted

Wood?”

“The spruce wood over the brook,” said Anne in a whisper.

“Fiddlesticks! There is no such thing as a haunted wood anywhere. Who

has been telling you such stuff?”

“Nobody,” confessed Anne. “Diana and I just imagined the wood was

haunted. All the places around here are so--so--_commonplace_. We just got

this up for our own amusement. We began it in April. A haunted wood is

so very romantic, Marilla. We chose the spruce grove because it’s so

gloomy. Oh, we have imagined the most harrowing things. There’s a white

lady walks along the brook just about this time of the night and wrings

her hands and utters wailing cries. She appears when there is to be a

death in the family. And the ghost of a little murdered child haunts the

corner up by Idlewild; it creeps up behind you and lays its cold fingers

on your hand--so. Oh, Marilla, it gives me a shudder to think of it. And

there’s a headless man stalks up and down the path and skeletons glower

at you between the boughs. Oh, Marilla, I wouldn’t go through the

Haunted Wood after dark now for anything. I’d be sure that white things

would reach out from behind the trees and grab me.”

“Did ever anyone hear the like!” ejaculated Marilla, who had

listened in dumb amazement. “Anne Shirley, do you mean to tell me you

believe all that wicked nonsense of your own imagination?”

“Not believe _exactly_,” faltered Anne. “At least, I don’t believe it in

daylight. But after dark, Marilla, it’s different. That is when ghosts

walk.”

“There are no such things as ghosts, Anne.”

“Oh, but there are, Marilla,” cried Anne eagerly. “I know people who

have seen them. And they are respectable people. Charlie Sloane says

that his grandmother saw his grandfather driving home the cows one night

after he’d been buried for a year. You know Charlie Sloane’s grandmother

wouldn’t tell a story for anything. She’s a very religious woman. And

Mrs. Thomas’s father was pursued home one night by a lamb of fire with

its head cut off hanging by a strip of skin. He said he knew it was the

spirit of his brother and that it was a warning he would die within nine

days. He didn’t, but he died two years after, so you see it was really

true. And Ruby Gillis says--”

“Anne Shirley,” interrupted Marilla firmly, “I never want to hear you

talking in this fashion again. I’ve had my doubts about that imagination

of yours right along, and if this is going to be the outcome of it, I

won’t countenance any such doings. You’ll go right over to Barry’s, and

you’ll go through that spruce grove, just for a lesson and a warning to

you. And never let me hear a word out of your head about haunted woods

again.”

Anne might plead and cry as she liked--and did, for her terror was very

real. Her imagination had run away with her and she held the spruce

grove in mortal dread after nightfall. But Marilla was inexorable. She

marched the shrinking ghost-seer down to the spring and ordered her

to proceed straightway over the bridge and into the dusky retreats of

wailing ladies and headless specters beyond.

“Oh, Marilla, how can you be so cruel?” sobbed Anne. “What would you

feel like if a white thing did snatch me up and carry me off?”

“I’ll risk it,” said Marilla unfeelingly. “You know I always mean what I

say. I’ll cure you of imagining ghosts into places. March, now.”

Anne marched. That is, she stumbled over the bridge and went shuddering

up the horrible dim path beyond. Anne never forgot that walk. Bitterly

did she repent the license she had given to her imagination. The goblins

of her fancy lurked in every shadow about her, reaching out their cold,

fleshless hands to grasp the terrified small girl who had called them

into being. A white strip of birch bark blowing up from the hollow over

the brown floor of the grove made her heart stand still. The long-drawn

wail of two old boughs rubbing against each other brought out the

perspiration in beads on her forehead. The swoop of bats in the darkness

over her was as the wings of unearthly creatures. When she reached Mr.

William Bell’s field she fled across it as if pursued by an army of

white things, and arrived at the Barry kitchen door so out of breath

that she could hardly gasp out her request for the apron pattern.

Diana was away so that she had no excuse to linger. The dreadful

return journey had to be faced. Anne went back over it with shut eyes,

preferring to take the risk of dashing her brains out among the boughs

to that of seeing a white thing. When she finally stumbled over the log

bridge she drew one long shivering breath of relief.

“Well, so nothing caught you?” said Marilla unsympathetically.

“Oh, Mar--Marilla,” chattered Anne, “I’ll b-b-be contt-tented with

c-c-commonplace places after this.”