Anne of Avonlea
“I don’t think it’s right for you to say such things, Anne, I really
don’t,” said Marilla severely. “Hester Gray has been dead for thirty
years and her spirit is in heaven . . . I hope.”
“Yes, but I believe she loves and remembers her garden here still,”
said Anne. “I’m sure no matter how long I’d lived in heaven I’d like to
look down and see somebody putting flowers on my grave. If I had had a
garden here like Hester Gray’s it would take me more than thirty years,
even in heaven, to forget being homesick for it by spells.”
“Well, don’t let the twins hear you talking like that,” was Marilla’s
feeble protest, as she carried her chicken into the house.
Anne pinned her narcissi on her hair and went to the lane gate, where
she stood for awhile sunning herself in the June brightness before
going in to attend to her Saturday morning duties. The world was
growing lovely again; old Mother Nature was doing her best to remove
the traces of the storm, and, though she was not to succeed fully for
many a moon, she was really accomplishing wonders.
“I wish I could just be idle all day today,” Anne told a bluebird, who
was singing and swinging on a willow bough, “but a schoolma’am, who is
also helping to bring up twins, can’t indulge in laziness, birdie. How
sweet you are singing, little bird. You are just putting the feelings
of my heart into song ever so much better than I could myself. Why, who
is coming?”
An express wagon was jolting up the lane, with two people on the front
seat and a big trunk behind. When it drew near Anne recognized the
driver as the son of the station agent at Bright River; but his
companion was a stranger . . . a scrap of a woman who sprang nimbly
down at the gate almost before the horse came to a standstill. She was
a very pretty little person, evidently nearer fifty than forty, but
with rosy cheeks, sparkling black eyes, and shining black hair,
surmounted by a wonderful beflowered and beplumed bonnet. In spite of
having driven eight miles over a dusty road she was as neat as if she
had just stepped out of the proverbial bandbox.
“Is this where Mr. James A. Harrison lives?” she inquired briskly.
“No, Mr. Harrison lives over there,” said Anne, quite lost in
astonishment.
“Well, I _did_ think this place seemed too tidy . . . _much_ too tidy
for James A. to be living here, unless he has greatly changed since I
knew him,” chirped the little lady. “Is it true that James A. is going
to be married to some woman living in this settlement?”
“No, oh no,” cried Anne, flushing so guiltily that the stranger looked
curiously at her, as if she half suspected her of matrimonial designs
on Mr. Harrison.
“But I saw it in an Island paper,” persisted the Fair Unknown. “A
friend sent a marked copy to me . . . friends are always so ready to do
such things. James A.‘s name was written in over ‘new citizen.’”
“Oh, that note was only meant as a joke,” gasped Anne. “Mr. Harrison
has no intention of marrying _anybody_. I assure you he hasn’t.”
“I’m very glad to hear it,” said the rosy lady, climbing nimbly back to
her seat in the wagon, “because he happens to be married already. _I_
am his wife. Oh, you may well look surprised. I suppose he has been
masquerading as a bachelor and breaking hearts right and left. Well,
well, James A.,” nodding vigorously over the fields at the long white
house, “your fun is over. I am here . . . though I wouldn’t have
bothered coming if I hadn’t thought you were up to some mischief. I
suppose,” turning to Anne, “that parrot of his is as profane as ever?”
“His parrot . . . is dead . . . I _think_,” gasped poor Anne, who
couldn’t have felt sure of her own name at that precise moment.
“Dead! Everything will be all right then,” cried the rosy lady
jubilantly. “I can manage James A. if that bird is out of the way.”
With which cryptic utterance she went joyfully on her way and Anne flew
to the kitchen door to meet Marilla.
“Anne, who was that woman?”
“Marilla,” said Anne solemnly, but with dancing eyes, “do I look as if
I were crazy?”
“Not more so than usual,” said Marilla, with no thought of being
sarcastic.
“Well then, do you think I am awake?”
“Anne, what nonsense has got into you? Who was that woman, I say?”
“Marilla, if I’m not crazy and not asleep she can’t be such stuff as
dreams are made of . . . she must be real. Anyway, I’m sure I couldn’t
have imagined such a bonnet. She says she is Mr. Harrison’s wife,
Marilla.”
Marilla stared in her turn.
“His wife! Anne Shirley! Then what has he been passing himself off as
an unmarried man for?”
“I don’t suppose he did, really,” said Anne, trying to be just. “He
never said he wasn’t married. People simply took it for granted. Oh
Marilla, what will Mrs. Lynde say to this?”
They found out what Mrs. Lynde had to say when she came up that
evening. Mrs. Lynde wasn’t surprised! Mrs. Lynde had always expected
something of the sort! Mrs. Lynde had always known there was
_something_ about Mr. Harrison!
“To think of his deserting his wife!” she said indignantly. “It’s like
something you’d read of in the States, but who would expect such a
thing to happen right here in Avonlea?”
“But we don’t know that he deserted her,” protested Anne, determined to
believe her friend innocent till he was proved guilty. “We don’t know
the rights of it at all.”
“Well, we soon will. I’m going straight over there,” said Mrs. Lynde,
who had never learned that there was such a word as delicacy in the
dictionary. “I’m not supposed to know anything about her arrival, and
Mr. Harrison was to bring some medicine for Thomas from Carmody today,
so that will be a good excuse. I’ll find out the whole story and come
in and tell you on the way back.”
Mrs. Lynde rushed in where Anne had feared to tread. Nothing would have
induced the latter to go over to the Harrison place; but she had her
natural and proper share of curiosity and she felt secretly glad that
Mrs. Lynde was going to solve the mystery. She and Marilla waited
expectantly for that good lady’s return, but waited in vain. Mrs. Lynde
did not revisit Green Gables that night. Davy, arriving home at nine
o’clock from the Boulter place, explained why.
“I met Mrs. Lynde and some strange woman in the Hollow,” he said, “and
gracious, how they were talking both at once! Mrs. Lynde said to tell
you she was sorry it was too late to call tonight. Anne, I’m awful
hungry. We had tea at Milty’s at four and I think Mrs. Boulter is real
mean. She didn’t give us any preserves or cake . . . and even the bread
was skurce.”
“Davy, when you go visiting you must never criticize anything you are
given to eat,” said Anne solemnly. “It is very bad manners.”
“All right . . . I’ll only think it,” said Davy cheerfully. “Do give a
fellow some supper, Anne.”
Anne looked at Marilla, who followed her into the pantry and shut the
door cautiously.
“You can give him some jam on his bread, I know what tea at Levi
Boulter’s is apt to be.”
Davy took his slice of bread and jam with a sigh.
“It’s a kind of disappointing world after all,” he remarked. “Milty has
a cat that takes fits . . . she’s took a fit regular every day for
three weeks. Milty says it’s awful fun to watch her. I went down today
on purpose to see her have one but the mean old thing wouldn’t take a
fit and just kept healthy as healthy, though Milty and me hung round
all the afternoon and waited. But never mind” . . . Davy brightened up
as the insidious comfort of the plum jam stole into his soul . . .
“maybe I’ll see her in one sometime yet. It doesn’t seem likely she’d
stop having them all at once when she’s been so in the habit of it,
does it? This jam is awful nice.”
Davy had no sorrows that plum jam could not cure.
Sunday proved so rainy that there was no stirring abroad; but by Monday
everybody had heard some version of the Harrison story. The school
buzzed with it and Davy came home, full of information.
“Marilla, Mr. Harrison has a new wife . . . well, not ezackly new, but
they’ve stopped being married for quite a spell, Milty says. I always
s’posed people had to keep on being married once they’d begun, but
Milty says no, there’s ways of stopping if you can’t agree. Milty says
one way is just to start off and leave your wife, and that’s what Mr.
Harrison did. Milty says Mr. Harrison left his wife because she throwed
things at him . . . _hard_ things . . . and Arty Sloane says it was
because she wouldn’t let him smoke, and Ned Clay says it was ’cause she
never let up scolding him. I wouldn’t leave MY wife for anything like
that. I’d just put my foot down and say, ‘Mrs. Davy, you’ve just got to
do what’ll please _me_ ’cause I’m a _man_.’ _That’d_ settle her pretty
quick I guess. But Annetta Clay says _she_ left _him_ because he
wouldn’t scrape his boots at the door and she doesn’t blame her. I’m
going right over to Mr. Harrison’s this minute to see what she’s like.”
Davy soon returned, somewhat cast down.
“Mrs. Harrison was away . . . she’s gone to Carmody with Mrs. Rachel
Lynde to get new paper for the parlor. And Mr. Harrison said to tell
Anne to go over and see him ’cause he wants to have a talk with her.
And say, the floor is scrubbed, and Mr. Harrison is shaved, though
there wasn’t any preaching yesterday.”
The Harrison kitchen wore a very unfamiliar look to Anne. The floor was
indeed scrubbed to a wonderful pitch of purity and so was every article
of furniture in the room; the stove was polished until she could see
her face in it; the walls were whitewashed and the window panes
sparkled in the sunlight. By the table sat Mr. Harrison in his working
clothes, which on Friday had been noted for sundry rents and tatters
but which were now neatly patched and brushed. He was sprucely shaved
and what little hair he had was carefully trimmed.
“Sit down, Anne, sit down,” said Mr. Harrison in a tone but two degrees
removed from that which Avonlea people used at funerals. “Emily’s gone
over to Carmody with Rachel Lynde . . . she’s struck up a lifelong
friendship already with Rachel Lynde. Beats all how contrary women are.
Well, Anne, my easy times are over . . . all over. It’s neatness and
tidiness for me for the rest of my natural life, I suppose.”
Mr. Harrison did his best to speak dolefully, but an irrepressible
twinkle in his eye betrayed him.
“Mr. Harrison, you are glad your wife is come back,” cried Anne,
shaking her finger at him. “You needn’t pretend you’re not, because I
can see it plainly.”
Mr. Harrison relaxed into a sheepish smile.
“Well . . . well . . . I’m getting used to it,” he conceded. “I can’t
say I was sorry to see Emily. A man really needs some protection in a
community like this, where he can’t play a game of checkers with a
neighbor without being accused of wanting to marry that neighbor’s
sister and having it put in the paper.”
“Nobody would have supposed you went to see Isabella Andrews if you
hadn’t pretended to be unmarried,” said Anne severely.
“I didn’t pretend I was. If anybody’d have asked me if I was married
I’d have said I was. But they just took it for granted. I wasn’t
anxious to talk about the matter . . . I was feeling too sore over it.
It would have been nuts for Mrs. Rachel Lynde if she had known my wife
had left me, wouldn’t it now?”
“But some people say that you left her.”
“She started it, Anne, she started it. I’m going to tell you the whole
story, for I don’t want you to think worse of me than I deserve . . .
nor of Emily neither. But let’s go out on the veranda. Everything is so
fearful neat in here that it kind of makes me homesick. I suppose I’ll
get used to it after awhile but it eases me up to look at the yard.
Emily hasn’t had time to tidy _it_ up yet.”
As soon as they were comfortably seated on the veranda Mr. Harrison