Anne of Avonlea
“Those Yellow Duchess trees always bear well,” said Marilla
complacently. “That tree’ll be loaded this year. I’m real glad. . .
they’re great for pies.”
But neither Marilla nor Anne nor anybody else was fated to make pies
out of Yellow Duchess apples that year.
The twenty-third of May came . . . an unseasonably warm day, as none
realized more keenly than Anne and her little beehive of pupils,
sweltering over fractions and syntax in the Avonlea schoolroom. A hot
breeze blew all the forenoon; but after noon hour it died away into a
heavy stillness. At half past three Anne heard a low rumble of thunder.
She promptly dismissed school at once, so that the children might get
home before the storm came.
As they went out to the playground Anne perceived a certain shadow and
gloom over the world in spite of the fact that the sun was still
shining brightly. Annetta Bell caught her hand nervously.
“Oh, teacher, look at that awful cloud!”
Anne looked and gave an exclamation of dismay. In the northwest a mass
of cloud, such as she had never in all her life beheld before, was
rapidly rolling up. It was dead black, save where its curled and
fringed edges showed a ghastly, livid white. There was something about
it indescribably menacing as it gloomed up in the clear blue sky; now
and again a bolt of lightning shot across it, followed by a savage
growl. It hung so low that it almost seemed to be touching the tops of
the wooded hills.
Mr. Harmon Andrews came clattering up the hill in his truck wagon,
urging his team of grays to their utmost speed. He pulled them to a
halt opposite the school.
“Guess Uncle Abe’s hit it for once in his life, Anne,” he shouted. “His
storm’s coming a leetle ahead of time. Did ye ever see the like of that
cloud? Here, all you young ones, that are going my way, pile in, and
those that ain’t scoot for the post office if ye’ve more’n a quarter of
a mile to go, and stay there till the shower’s over.”
Anne caught Davy and Dora by the hands and flew down the hill, along
the Birch Path, and past Violet Vale and Willowmere, as fast as the
twins’ fat legs could go. They reached Green Gables not a moment too
soon and were joined at the door by Marilla, who had been hustling her
ducks and chickens under shelter. As they dashed into the kitchen the
light seemed to vanish, as if blown out by some mighty breath; the
awful cloud rolled over the sun and a darkness as of late twilight fell
across the world. At the same moment, with a crash of thunder and a
blinding glare of lightning, the hail swooped down and blotted the
landscape out in one white fury.
Through all the clamor of the storm came the thud of torn branches
striking the house and the sharp crack of breaking glass. In three
minutes every pane in the west and north windows was broken and the
hail poured in through the apertures covering the floor with stones,
the smallest of which was as big as a hen’s egg. For three quarters of
an hour the storm raged unabated and no one who underwent it ever
forgot it. Marilla, for once in her life shaken out of her composure by
sheer terror, knelt by her rocking chair in a corner of the kitchen,
gasping and sobbing between the deafening thunder peals. Anne, white as
paper, had dragged the sofa away from the window and sat on it with a
twin on either side. Davy at the first crash had howled, “Anne, Anne,
is it the Judgment Day? Anne, Anne, I never _meant_ to be naughty,” and
then had buried his face in Anne’s lap and kept it there, his little
body quivering. Dora, somewhat pale but quite composed, sat with her
hand clasped in Anne’s, quiet and motionless. It is doubtful if an
earthquake would have disturbed Dora.
Then, almost as suddenly as it began, the storm ceased. The hail
stopped, the thunder rolled and muttered away to the eastward, and the
sun burst out merry and radiant over a world so changed that it seemed
an absurd thing to think that a scant three quarters of an hour could
have effected such a transformation.
Marilla rose from her knees, weak and trembling, and dropped on her
rocker. Her face was haggard and she looked ten years older.
“Have we all come out of that alive?” she asked solemnly.
“You bet we have,” piped Davy cheerfully, quite his own man again. “I
wasn’t a bit scared either . . . only just at the first. It come on a
fellow so sudden. I made up my mind quick as a wink that I wouldn’t
fight Teddy Sloane Monday as I’d promised; but now maybe I will. Say,
Dora, was you scared?”
“Yes, I was a little scared,” said Dora primly, “but I held tight to
Anne’s hand and said my prayers over and over again.”
“Well, I’d have said my prayers too if I’d have thought of it,” said
Davy; “but,” he added triumphantly, “you see I came through just as
safe as you for all I didn’t say them.”
Anne got Marilla a glassful of her potent currant wine . . . _how_
potent it was Anne, in her earlier days, had had all too good reason to
know . . . and then they went to the door to look out on the strange
scene.
Far and wide was a white carpet, knee deep, of hailstones; drifts of
them were heaped up under the eaves and on the steps. When, three or
four days later, those hailstones melted, the havoc they had wrought
was plainly seen, for every green growing thing in the field or garden
was cut off. Not only was every blossom stripped from the apple trees
but great boughs and branches were wrenched away. And out of the two
hundred trees set out by the Improvers by far the greater number were
snapped off or torn to shreds.
“Can it possibly be the same world it was an hour ago?” asked Anne,
dazedly. “It _must_ have taken longer than that to play such havoc.”
“The like of this has never been known in Prince Edward Island,” said
Marilla, “never. I remember when I was a girl there was a bad storm,
but it was nothing to this. We’ll hear of terrible destruction, you may
be sure.”
“I do hope none of the children were caught out in it,” murmured Anne
anxiously. As it was discovered later, none of the children had been,
since all those who had any distance to go had taken Mr. Andrews’
excellent advice and sought refuge at the post office.
“There comes John Henry Carter,” said Marilla.
John Henry came wading through the hailstones with a rather scared
grin.
“Oh, ain’t this awful, Miss Cuthbert? Mr. Harrison sent me over to see
if yous had come out all right.”
“We’re none of us killed,” said Marilla grimly, “and none of the
buildings was struck. I hope you got off equally well.”
“Yas’m. Not quite so well, ma’am. We was struck. The lightning knocked
over the kitchen chimbly and come down the flue and knocked over
Ginger’s cage and tore a hole in the floor and went into the sullar.
Yas’m.”
“Was Ginger hurt?” queried Anne.
“Yas’m. He was hurt pretty bad. He was killed.” Later on Anne went over
to comfort Mr. Harrison. She found him sitting by the table, stroking
Ginger’s gay dead body with a trembling hand.
“Poor Ginger won’t call you any more names, Anne,” he said mournfully.
Anne could never have imagined herself crying on Ginger’s account, but
the tears came into her eyes.
“He was all the company I had, Anne . . . and now he’s dead. Well,
well, I’m an old fool to care so much. I’ll let on I don’t care. I know
you’re going to say something sympathetic as soon as I stop talking . .
. but don’t. If you did I’d cry like a baby. Hasn’t this been a
terrible storm? I guess folks won’t laugh at Uncle Abe’s predictions
again. Seems as if all the storms that he’s been prophesying all his
life that never happened came all at once. Beats all how he struck the
very day though, don’t it? Look at the mess we have here. I must hustle
round and get some boards to patch up that hole in the floor.”
Avonlea folks did nothing the next day but visit each other and compare
damages. The roads were impassable for wheels by reason of the
hailstones, so they walked or rode on horseback. The mail came late
with ill tidings from all over the province. Houses had been struck,
people killed and injured; the whole telephone and telegraph system had
been disorganized, and any number of young stock exposed in the fields
had perished.
Uncle Abe waded out to the blacksmith’s forge early in the morning and
spent the whole day there. It was Uncle Abe’s hour of triumph and he
enjoyed it to the full. It would be doing Uncle Abe an injustice to say
that he was glad the storm had happened; but since it had to be he was
very glad he had predicted it . . . to the very day, too. Uncle Abe
forgot that he had ever denied setting the day. As for the trifling
discrepancy in the hour, that was nothing.
Gilbert arrived at Green Gables in the evening and found Marilla and
Anne busily engaged in nailing strips of oilcloth over the broken
windows.
“Goodness only knows when we’ll get glass for them,” said Marilla. “Mr.
Barry went over to Carmody this afternoon but not a pane could he get
for love or money. Lawson and Blair were cleaned out by the Carmody
people by ten o’clock. Was the storm bad at White Sands, Gilbert?”
“I should say so. I was caught in the school with all the children and
I thought some of them would go mad with fright. Three of them fainted,
and two girls took hysterics, and Tommy Blewett did nothing but shriek
at the top of his voice the whole time.”
“I only squealed once,” said Davy proudly. “My garden was all smashed
flat,” he continued mournfully, “but so was Dora’s,” he added in a tone
which indicated that there was yet balm in Gilead.
Anne came running down from the west gable.
“Oh, Gilbert, have you heard the news? Mr. Levi Boulter’s old house was
struck and burned to the ground. It seems to me that I’m dreadfully
wicked to feel glad over _that_, when so much damage has been done. Mr.
Boulter says he believes the A.V.I.S. magicked up that storm on
purpose.”
“Well, one thing is certain,” said Gilbert, laughing, “‘Observer’ has
made Uncle Abe’s reputation as a weather prophet. ‘Uncle Abe’s storm’
will go down in local history. It is a most extraordinary coincidence
that it should have come on the very day we selected. I actually have a
half guilty feeling, as if I really had ‘magicked’ it up. We may as
well rejoice over the old house being removed, for there’s not much to
rejoice over where our young trees are concerned. Not ten of them have
escaped.”
“Ah, well, we’ll just have to plant them over again next spring,” said
Anne philosophically. “That is one good thing about this world . . .
there are always sure to be more springs.”
XXV
An Avonlea Scandal
One blithe June morning, a fortnight after Uncle Abe’s storm, Anne came
slowly through the Green Gables yard from the garden, carrying in her
hands two blighted stalks of white narcissus.
“Look, Marilla,” she said sorrowfully, holding up the flowers before
the eyes of a grim lady, with her hair coifed in a green gingham apron,
who was going into the house with a plucked chicken, “these are the
only buds the storm spared . . . and even they are imperfect. I’m so
sorry . . . I wanted some for Matthew’s grave. He was always so fond of
June lilies.”
“I kind of miss them myself,” admitted Marilla, “though it doesn’t seem
right to lament over them when so many worse things have happened. . .
all the crops destroyed as well as the fruit.”
“But people have sown their oats over again,” said Anne comfortingly,
“and Mr. Harrison says he thinks if we have a good summer they will
come out all right though late. And my annuals are all coming up again
. . . but oh, nothing can replace the June lilies. Poor little Hester
Gray will have none either. I went all the way back to her garden last
night but there wasn’t one. I’m sure she’ll miss them.”