Anne of Avonlea
frequently asked questions which made Marilla tremble for his fate.
“Chester Sloane says we’ll do nothing all the time in heaven but walk
around in white dresses and play on harps; and he says he hopes he
won’t have to go till he’s an old man, ’cause maybe he’ll like it
better then. And he thinks it will be horrid to wear dresses and I
think so too. Why can’t men angels wear trousers, Anne? Chester Sloane
is interested in those things, ’cause they’re going to make a minister
of him. He’s got to be a minister ’cause his grandmother left the money
to send him to college and he can’t have it unless he is a minister.
She thought a minister was such a ‘spectable thing to have in a family.
Chester says he doesn’t mind much . . . though he’d rather be a
blacksmith . . . but he’s bound to have all the fun he can before he
begins to be a minister, ’cause he doesn’t expect to have much
afterwards. _I_ ain’t going to be a minister. I’m going to be a
storekeeper, like Mr. Blair, and keep heaps of candy and bananas. But
I’d rather like going to your kind of a heaven if they’d let me play a
mouth organ instead of a harp. Do you s’pose they would?”
“Yes, I think they would if you wanted it,” was all Anne could trust
herself to say.
The A.V.I.S. met at Mr. Harmon Andrews’ that evening and a full
attendance had been requested, since important business was to be
discussed. The A.V.I.S. was in a flourishing condition, and had already
accomplished wonders. Early in the spring Mr. Major Spencer had
redeemed his promise and had stumped, graded, and seeded down all the
road front of his farm. A dozen other men, some prompted by a
determination not to let a Spencer get ahead of them, others goaded
into action by Improvers in their own households, had followed his
example. The result was that there were long strips of smooth velvet
turf where once had been unsightly undergrowth or brush. The farm
fronts that had not been done looked so badly by contrast that their
owners were secretly shamed into resolving to see what they could do
another spring. The triangle of ground at the cross roads had also been
cleared and seeded down, and Anne’s bed of geraniums, unharmed by any
marauding cow, was already set out in the center.
Altogether, the Improvers thought that they were getting on
beautifully, even if Mr. Levi Boulter, tactfully approached by a
carefully selected committee in regard to the old house on his upper
farm, did bluntly tell them that he wasn’t going to have it meddled
with.
At this especial meeting they intended to draw up a petition to the
school trustees, humbly praying that a fence be put around the school
grounds; and a plan was also to be discussed for planting a few
ornamental trees by the church, if the funds of the society would
permit of it . . . for, as Anne said, there was no use in starting
another subscription as long as the hall remained blue. The members
were assembled in the Andrews’ parlor and Jane was already on her feet
to move the appointment of a committee which should find out and report
on the price of said trees, when Gertie Pye swept in, pompadoured and
frilled within an inch of her life. Gertie had a habit of being late .
. . “to make her entrance more effective,” spiteful people said.
Gertie’s entrance in this instance was certainly effective, for she
paused dramatically on the middle of the floor, threw up her hands,
rolled her eyes, and exclaimed, “I’ve just heard something perfectly
awful. What _do_ you think? Mr. Judson Parker _is going to rent all the
road fence of his farm to a patent medicine company to paint
advertisements on_.”
For once in her life Gertie Pye made all the sensation she desired. If
she had thrown a bomb among the complacent Improvers she could hardly
have made more.
“It _can’t_ be true,” said Anne blankly.
“That’s just what _I_ said when I heard it first, don’t you know,” said
Gertie, who was enjoying herself hugely. “_I_ said it couldn’t be true
. . . that Judson Parker wouldn’t have the _heart_ to do it, don’t you
know. But father met him this afternoon and asked him about it and he
said it WAS true. Just fancy! His farm is side-on to the Newbridge road
and how perfectly awful it will look to see advertisements of pills and
plasters all along it, don’t you know?”
The Improvers _did_ know, all too well. Even the least imaginative
among them could picture the grotesque effect of half a mile of board
fence adorned with such advertisements. All thought of church and
school grounds vanished before this new danger. Parliamentary rules and
regulations were forgotten, and Anne, in despair, gave up trying to
keep minutes at all. Everybody talked at once and fearful was the
hubbub.
“Oh, let us keep calm,” implored Anne, who was the most excited of them
all, “and try to think of some way of preventing him.”
“I don’t know how you’re going to prevent him,” exclaimed Jane
bitterly. “Everybody knows what Judson Parker is. He’d do _anything_
for money. He hasn’t a _spark_ of public spirit or _any_ sense of the
beautiful.”
The prospect looked rather unpromising. Judson Parker and his sister
were the only Parkers in Avonlea, so that no leverage could be exerted
by family connections. Martha Parker was a lady of all too certain age
who disapproved of young people in general and the Improvers in
particular. Judson was a jovial, smooth-spoken man, so uniformly
goodnatured and bland that it was surprising how few friends he had.
Perhaps he had got the better in too many business transactions. . .
which seldom makes for popularity. He was reputed to be very “sharp”
and it was the general opinion that he “hadn’t much principle.”
“If Judson Parker has a chance to ‘turn an honest penny,’ as he says
himself, he’ll never lose it,” declared Fred Wright.
“Is there _nobody_ who has any influence over him?” asked Anne
despairingly.
“He goes to see Louisa Spencer at White Sands,” suggested Carrie
Sloane. “Perhaps she could coax him not to rent his fences.”
“Not she,” said Gilbert emphatically. “I know Louisa Spencer well. She
doesn’t ‘believe’ in Village Improvement Societies, but she _does_
believe in dollars and cents. She’d be more likely to urge Judson on
than to dissuade him.”
“The only thing to do is to appoint a committee to wait on him and
protest,” said Julia Bell, “and you must send girls, for he’d hardly be
civil to boys . . . but _I_ won’t go, so nobody need nominate me.”
“Better send Anne alone,” said Oliver Sloane. “She can talk Judson over
if anybody can.”
Anne protested. She was willing to go and do the talking; but she must
have others with her “for moral support.” Diana and Jane were therefore
appointed to support her morally and the Improvers broke up, buzzing
like angry bees with indignation. Anne was so worried that she didn’t
sleep until nearly morning, and then she dreamed that the trustees had
put a fence around the school and painted “Try Purple Pills” all over
it.
The committee waited on Judson Parker the next afternoon. Anne pleaded
eloquently against his nefarious design and Jane and Diana supported
her morally and valiantly. Judson was sleek, suave, flattering; paid
them several compliments of the delicacy of sunflowers; felt real bad
to refuse such charming young ladies . . . but business was business;
couldn’t afford to let sentiment stand in the way these hard times.
“But I’ll tell what I _will_ do,” he said, with a twinkle in his light,
full eyes. “I’ll tell the agent he must use only handsome, tasty colors
. . . red and yellow and so on. I’ll tell him he mustn’t paint the ads
_blue_ on any account.”
The vanquished committee retired, thinking things not lawful to be
uttered.
“We have done all we can do and must simply trust the rest to
Providence,” said Jane, with an unconscious imitation of Mrs. Lynde’s
tone and manner.
“I wonder if Mr. Allan could do anything,” reflected Diana.
Anne shook her head.
“No, it’s no use to worry Mr. Allan, especially now when the baby’s so
sick. Judson would slip away from him as smoothly as from us, although
he _has_ taken to going to church quite regularly just now. That is
simply because Louisa Spencer’s father is an elder and very particular
about such things.”
“Judson Parker is the only man in Avonlea who would dream of renting
his fences,” said Jane indignantly. “Even Levi Boulter or Lorenzo White
would never stoop to that, tightfisted as they are. They would have too
much respect for public opinion.”
Public opinion was certainly down on Judson Parker when the facts
became known, but that did not help matters much. Judson chuckled to
himself and defied it, and the Improvers were trying to reconcile
themselves to the prospect of seeing the prettiest part of the
Newbridge road defaced by advertisements, when Anne rose quietly at the
president’s call for reports of committees on the occasion of the next
meeting of the Society, and announced that Mr. Judson Parker had
instructed her to inform the Society that he was _not_ going to rent
his fences to the Patent Medicine Company.
Jane and Diana stared as if they found it hard to believe their ears.
Parliamentary etiquette, which was generally very strictly enforced in
the A.V.I.S., forbade them giving instant vent to their curiosity, but
after the Society adjourned Anne was besieged for explanations. Anne
had no explanation to give. Judson Parker had overtaken her on the road
the preceding evening and told her that he had decided to humor the
A.V.I.S. in its peculiar prejudice against patent medicine
advertisements. That was all Anne would say, then or ever afterwards,
and it was the simple truth; but when Jane Andrews, on her way home,
confided to Oliver Sloane her firm belief that there was more behind
Judson Parker’s mysterious change of heart than Anne Shirley had
revealed, she spoke the truth also.
Anne had been down to old Mrs. Irving’s on the shore road the preceding
evening and had come home by a short cut which led her first over the
low-lying shore fields, and then through the beech wood below Robert
Dickson’s, by a little footpath that ran out to the main road just
above the Lake of Shining Waters . . . known to unimaginative people as
Barry’s pond.
Two men were sitting in their buggies, reined off to the side of the
road, just at the entrance of the path. One was Judson Parker; the
other was Jerry Corcoran, a Newbridge man against whom, as Mrs. Lynde
would have told you in eloquent italics, nothing shady had ever been
_proved_. He was an agent for agricultural implements and a prominent
personage in matters political. He had a finger . . . some people said
_all_ his fingers . . . in every political pie that was cooked; and as
Canada was on the eve of a general election Jerry Corcoran had been a
busy man for many weeks, canvassing the county in the interests of his
party’s candidate. Just as Anne emerged from under the overhanging
beech boughs she heard Corcoran say, “If you’ll vote for Amesbury,
Parker . . . well, I’ve a note for that pair of harrows you’ve got in
the spring. I suppose you wouldn’t object to having it back, eh?”
“We . . . ll, since you put it in that way,” drawled Judson with a
grin, “I reckon I might as well do it. A man must look out for his own
interests in these hard times.”
Both saw Anne at this moment and conversation abruptly ceased. Anne
bowed frostily and walked on, with her chin slightly more tilted than
usual. Soon Judson Parker overtook her.
“Have a lift, Anne?” he inquired genially.
“Thank you, no,” said Anne politely, but with a fine, needle-like
disdain in her voice that pierced even Judson Parker’s none too
sensitive consciousness. His face reddened and he twitched his reins
angrily; but the next second prudential considerations checked him. He