Anne of the Island

The old year did not slip away in a green twilight, with a pinky-yellow sunset. Instead, it went out with a wild, white bluster and blow. It was one of the nights when the storm-wind hurtles over the frozen meadows and black hollows, and moans around the eaves like a lost creature, and drives the snow sharply against the shaking panes.

“Just the sort of night people like to cuddle down between their blankets and count their mercies,” said Anne to Jane Andrews, who had come up to spend the afternoon and stay all night. But when they were cuddled between their blankets, in Anne’s little porch room, it was not her mercies of which Jane was thinking.

“Anne,” she said very solemnly, “I want to tell you something. May I”

Anne was feeling rather sleepy after the party Ruby Gillis had given the night before. She would much rather have gone to sleep than listen to Jane’s confidences, which she was sure would bore her. She had no prophetic inkling of what was coming. Probably Jane was engaged, too; rumor averred that Ruby Gillis was engaged to the Spencervale schoolteacher, about whom all the girls were said to be quite wild.

“I’ll soon be the only fancy-free maiden of our old quartet,” thought Anne, drowsily. Aloud she said, “Of course.”

“Anne,” said Jane, still more solemnly, “what do you think of my brother Billy?”

Anne gasped over this unexpected question, and floundered helplessly in her thoughts. Goodness, what DID she think of Billy Andrews? She had never thought ANYTHING about him—round-faced, stupid, perpetually smiling, good-natured Billy Andrews. Did ANYBODY ever think about Billy Andrews?

“I—I don’t understand, Jane,” she stammered. “What do you mean—exactly?”

“Do you like Billy?” asked Jane bluntly.

“Why—why—yes, I like him, of course,” gasped Anne, wondering if she were telling the literal truth. Certainly she did not DISlike Billy. But could the indifferent tolerance with which she regarded him, when he happened to be in her range of vision, be considered positive enough for liking? WHAT was Jane trying to elucidate?

“Would you like him for a husband?” asked Jane calmly.

“A husband!” Anne had been sitting up in bed, the better to wrestle with the problem of her exact opinion of Billy Andrews. Now she fell flatly back on her pillows, the very breath gone out of her. “Whose husband?”

“Yours, of course,” answered Jane. “Billy wants to marry you. He’s always been crazy about you—and now father has given him the upper farm in his own name and there’s nothing to prevent him from getting married. But he’s so shy he couldn’t ask you himself if you’d have him, so he got me to do it. I’d rather not have, but he gave me no peace till I said I would, if I got a good chance. What do you think about it, Anne?”

Was it a dream? Was it one of those nightmare things in which you find yourself engaged or married to some one you hate or don’t know, without the slightest idea how it ever came about? No, she, Anne Shirley, was lying there, wide awake, in her own bed, and Jane Andrews was beside her, calmly proposing for her brother Billy. Anne did not know whether she wanted to writhe or laugh; but she could do neither, for Jane’s feelings must not be hurt.

“I—I couldn’t marry Bill, you know, Jane,” she managed to gasp. “Why, such an idea never occurred to me—never!”

“I don’t suppose it did,” agreed Jane. “Billy has always been far too shy to think of courting. But you might think it over, Anne. Billy is a good fellow. I must say that, if he is my brother. He has no bad habits and he’s a great worker, and you can depend on him. ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.’ He told me to tell you he’d be quite willing to wait till you got through college, if you insisted, though he’d RATHER get married this spring before the planting begins. He’d always be very good to you, I’m sure, and you know, Anne, I’d love to have you for a sister.”

“I can’t marry Billy,” said Anne decidedly. She had recovered her wits, and was even feeling a little angry. It was all so ridiculous. “There is no use thinking of it, Jane. I don’t care anything for him in that way, and you must tell him so.”

“Well, I didn’t suppose you would,” said Jane with a resigned sigh, feeling that she had done her best. “I told Billy I didn’t believe it was a bit of use to ask you, but he insisted. Well, you’ve made your decision, Anne, and I hope you won’t regret it.”

Jane spoke rather coldly. She had been perfectly sure that the enamored Billy had no chance at all of inducing Anne to marry him. Nevertheless, she felt a little resentment that Anne Shirley, who was, after all, merely an adopted orphan, without kith or kin, should refuse her brother—one of the Avonlea Andrews. Well, pride sometimes goes before a fall, Jane reflected ominously.

Anne permitted herself to smile in the darkness over the idea that she might ever regret not marrying Billy Andrews.

“I hope Billy won’t feel very badly over it,” she said nicely.

Jane made a movement as if she were tossing her head on her pillow.

“Oh, he won’t break his heart. Billy has too much good sense for that. He likes Nettie Blewett pretty well, too, and mother would rather he married her than any one. She’s such a good manager and saver. I think, when Billy is once sure you won’t have him, he’ll take Nettie. Please don’t mention this to any one, will you, Anne?”

“Certainly not,” said Anne, who had no desire whatever to publish abroad the fact that Billy Andrews wanted to marry her, preferring her, when all was said and done, to Nettie Blewett. Nettie Blewett!

“And now I suppose we’d better go to sleep,” suggested Jane.

To sleep went Jane easily and speedily; but, though very unlike MacBeth in most respects, she had certainly contrived to murder sleep for Anne. That proposed-to damsel lay on a wakeful pillow until the wee sma’s, but her meditations were far from being romantic. It was not, however, until the next morning that she had an opportunity to indulge in a good laugh over the whole affair. When Jane had gone home—still with a hint of frost in voice and manner because Anne had declined so ungratefully and decidedly the honor of an alliance with the House of Andrews—Anne retreated to the porch room, shut the door, and had her laugh out at last.

“If I could only share the joke with some one!” she thought. “But I can’t. Diana is the only one I’d want to tell, and, even if I hadn’t sworn secrecy to Jane, I can’t tell Diana things now. She tells everything to Fred—I know she does. Well, I’ve had my first proposal. I supposed it would come some day—but I certainly never thought it would be by proxy. It’s awfully funny—and yet there’s a sting in it, too, somehow.”

Anne knew quite well wherein the sting consisted, though she did not put it into words. She had had her secret dreams of the first time some one should ask her the great question. And it had, in those dreams, always been very romantic and beautiful: and the “some one” was to be very handsome and dark-eyed and distinguished-looking and eloquent, whether he were Prince Charming to be enraptured with “yes,” or one to whom a regretful, beautifully worded, but hopeless refusal must be given. If the latter, the refusal was to be expressed so delicately that it would be next best thing to acceptance, and he would go away, after kissing her hand, assuring her of his unalterable, life-long devotion. And it would always be a beautiful memory, to be proud of and a little sad about, also.

And now, this thrilling experience had turned out to be merely grotesque. Billy Andrews had got his sister to propose for him because his father had given him the upper farm; and if Anne wouldn’t “have him” Nettie Blewett would. There was romance for you, with a vengeance! Anne laughed—and then sighed. The bloom had been brushed from one little maiden dream. Would the painful process go on until everything became prosaic and hum-drum?