Charlie Sloane is wild about her, too, but I'd never advise her to marry a Sloane. The Sloanes are good, honest, respectable people, of course. But when all's said and done, they're SLOANES."Marilla nodded. To an outsider, the statement that Sloanes were Sloanes might not be very illuminating, but she understood.
Every village has such a family; good, honest, respectable people they may be, but SLOANES they are and must ever remain, though they speak with the tongues of men and angels.
Gilbert and Anne, happily unconscious that their future was thus being settled by Mrs. Rachel, were sauntering through the shadows of the Haunted Wood. Beyond, the harvest hills were basking in an amber sunset radiance, under a pale, aerial sky of rose and blue.
The distant spruce groves were burnished bronze, and their long shadows barred the upland meadows. But around them a little wind sang among the fir tassels, and in it there was the note of autumn.
"This wood really is haunted now -- by old memories," said Anne, stooping to gather a spray of ferns, bleached to waxen whiteness by frost. "It seems to me that the little girls Diana and I used to be play here still, and sit by the Dryad's Bubble in the twilights, trysting with the ghosts. Do you know, I can never go up this path in the dusk without feeling a bit of the old fright and shiver? There was one especially horrifying phantom which we created -- the ghost of the murdered child that crept up behind you and laid cold fingers on yours. I confess that, to this day, I cannot help fancying its little, furtive footsteps behind me when I come here after nightfall. I'm not afraid of the White Lady or the headless man or the skeletons, but I wish I had never imagined that baby's ghost into existence. How angry Marilla and Mrs. Barry were over that affair," concluded Anne, with reminiscent laughter.
The woods around the head of the marsh were full of purple vistas, threaded with gossamers. Past a dour plantation of gnarled spruces and a maple-fringed, sun-warm valley they found the "something"Gilbert was looking for.
"Ah, here it is," he said with satisfaction.
"An apple tree -- and away back here!" exclaimed Anne delightedly.
"Yes, a veritable apple-bearing apple tree, too, here in the very midst of pines and beeches, a mile away from any orchard. I was here one day last spring and found it, all white with blossom.
So I resolved I'd come again in the fall and see if it had been apples. See, it's loaded. They look good, too -- tawny as russets but with a dusky red cheek. Most wild seedlings are green and uninviting.""I suppose it sprang years ago from some chance-sown seed," said Anne dreamily." And how it has grown and flourished and held its own here all alone among aliens, the brave determined thing!""Here's a fallen tree with a cushion of moss. Sit down, Anne --it will serve for a woodland throne. I'll climb for some apples.
They all grow high -- the tree had to reach up to the sunlight."The apples proved to be delicious. Under the tawny skin was a white, white flesh, faintly veined with red; and, besides their own proper apple taste, they had a certain wild, delightful tang no orchard-grown apple ever possessed.
"The fatal apple of Eden couldn't have had a rarer flavor,"commented Anne. "But it's time we were going home. See, it was twilight three minutes ago and now it's moonlight. What a pity we couldn't have caught the moment of transformation. But such moments never are caught, I suppose.""Let's go back around the marsh and home by way of Lover's Lane.
Do you feel as disgruntled now as when you started out, Anne?""Not I. Those apples have been as manna to a hungry soul. I feel that I shall love Redmond and have a splendid four years there.""And after those four years -- what?"
"Oh, there's another bend in the road at their end," answered Anne lightly. "I've no idea what may be around it -- I don't want to have. It's nicer not to know."Lover's Lane was a dear place that night, still and mysteriously dim in the pale radiance of the moonlight. They loitered through it in a pleasant chummy silence, neither caring to talk.
"If Gilbert were always as he has been this evening how nice and simple everything would be," reflected Anne.
Gilbert was looking at Anne, as she walked along. In her light dress, with her slender delicacy, she made him think of a white iris.
"I wonder if I can ever make her care for me," he thought, with a pang of self-destruct.
