Anne of Avonlea
confront Charlotta the Fourth, who was in the hall, all “nods and becks
and wreathed smiles.”
“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am,” she breathed, “I peeked from the kitchen
window . . . and he’s awful handsome . . . and just the right age for
Miss Lavendar. And oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am, do you think it would be
much harm to listen at the door?”
“It would be dreadful, Charlotta,” said Anne firmly, “so just you come
away with me out of the reach of temptation.”
“I can’t do anything, and it’s awful to hang round just waiting,”
sighed Charlotta. “What if he don’t propose after all, Miss Shirley,
ma’am? You can never be sure of them men. My older sister, Charlotta
the First, thought she was engaged to one once. But it turned out _he_
had a different opinion and she says she’ll never trust one of them
again. And I heard of another case where a man thought he wanted one
girl awful bad when it was really her sister he wanted all the time.
When a man don’t know his own mind, Miss Shirley, ma’am, how’s a poor
woman going to be sure of it?”
“We’ll go to the kitchen and clean the silver spoons,” said Anne.
“That’s a task which won’t require much thinking fortunately . . . for
I _couldn’t_ think tonight. And it will pass the time.”
It passed an hour. Then, just as Anne laid down the last shining spoon,
they heard the front door shut. Both sought comfort fearfully in each
other’s eyes.
“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am,” gasped Charlotta, “if he’s going away this
early there’s nothing into it and never will be.” They flew to the
window. Mr. Irving had no intention of going away. He and Miss Lavendar
were strolling slowly down the middle path to the stone bench.
“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am, he’s got his arm around her waist,” whispered
Charlotta the Fourth delightedly. “He _must_ have proposed to her or
she’d never allow it.”
Anne caught Charlotta the Fourth by her own plump waist and danced her
around the kitchen until they were both out of breath.
“Oh, Charlotta,” she cried gaily, “I’m neither a prophetess nor the
daughter of a prophetess but I’m going to make a prediction. There’ll
be a wedding in this old stone house before the maple leaves are red.
Do you want that translated into prose, Charlotta?”
“No, I can understand that,” said Charlotta. “A wedding ain’t poetry.
Why, Miss Shirley, ma’am, you’re crying! What for?”
“Oh, because it’s all so beautiful . . . and story bookish . . . and
romantic . . . and sad,” said Anne, winking the tears out of her eyes.
“It’s all perfectly lovely . . . but there’s a little sadness mixed up
in it too, somehow.”
“Oh, of course there’s a resk in marrying anybody,” conceded Charlotta
the Fourth, “but, when all’s said and done, Miss Shirley, ma’am,
there’s many a worse thing than a husband.”
XXIX
Poetry and Prose
For the next month Anne lived in what, for Avonlea, might be called a
whirl of excitement. The preparation of her own modest outfit for
Redmond was of secondary importance. Miss Lavendar was getting ready to
be married and the stone house was the scene of endless consultations
and plannings and discussions, with Charlotta the Fourth hovering on
the outskirts of things in agitated delight and wonder. Then the
dressmaker came, and there was the rapture and wretchedness of choosing
fashions and being fitted. Anne and Diana spent half their time at Echo
Lodge and there were nights when Anne could not sleep for wondering
whether she had done right in advising Miss Lavendar to select brown
rather than navy blue for her traveling dress, and to have her gray
silk made princess.
Everybody concerned in Miss Lavendar’s story was very happy. Paul
Irving rushed to Green Gables to talk the news over with Anne as soon
as his father had told him.
“I knew I could trust father to pick me out a nice little second
mother,” he said proudly. “It’s a fine thing to have a father you can
depend on, teacher. I just love Miss Lavendar. Grandma is pleased, too.
She says she’s real glad father didn’t pick out an American for his
second wife, because, although it turned out all right the first time,
such a thing wouldn’t be likely to happen twice. Mrs. Lynde says she
thoroughly approves of the match and thinks its likely Miss Lavendar
will give up her queer notions and be like other people, now that she’s
going to be married. But I hope she won’t give her queer notions up,
teacher, because I like them. And I don’t want her to be like other
people. There are too many other people around as it is. _You_ know,
teacher.”
Charlotta the Fourth was another radiant person.
“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am, it has all turned out so beautiful. When Mr.
Irving and Miss Lavendar come back from their tower I’m to go up to
Boston and live with them . . . and me only fifteen, and the other
girls never went till they were sixteen. Ain’t Mr. Irving splendid? He
just worships the ground she treads on and it makes me feel so queer
sometimes to see the look in his eyes when he’s watching her. It
beggars description, Miss Shirley, ma’am. I’m awful thankful they’re so
fond of each other. It’s the best way, when all’s said and done, though
some folks can get along without it. I’ve got an aunt who has been
married three times and says she married the first time for love and
the last two times for strictly business, and was happy with all three
except at the times of the funerals. But I think she took a resk, Miss
Shirley, ma’am.”
“Oh, it’s all so romantic,” breathed Anne to Marilla that night. “If I
hadn’t taken the wrong path that day we went to Mr. Kimball’s I’d never
have known Miss Lavendar; and if I hadn’t met her I’d never have taken
Paul there . . . and he’d never have written to his father about
visiting Miss Lavendar just as Mr. Irving was starting for San
Francisco. Mr. Irving says whenever he got that letter he made up his
mind to send his partner to San Francisco and come here instead. He
hadn’t heard anything of Miss Lavendar for fifteen years. Somebody had
told him then that she was to be married and he thought she was and
never asked anybody anything about her. And now everything has come
right. And I had a hand in bringing it about. Perhaps, as Mrs. Lynde
says, everything is foreordained and it was bound to happen anyway. But
even so, it’s nice to think one was an instrument used by
predestination. Yes indeed, it’s very romantic.”
“I can’t see that it’s so terribly romantic at all,” said Marilla
rather crisply. Marilla thought Anne was too worked up about it and had
plenty to do with getting ready for college without “traipsing” to Echo
Lodge two days out of three helping Miss Lavendar. “In the first place
two young fools quarrel and turn sulky; then Steve Irving goes to the
States and after a spell gets married up there and is perfectly happy
from all accounts. Then his wife dies and after a decent interval he
thinks he’ll come home and see if his first fancy’ll have him.
Meanwhile, she’s been living single, probably because nobody nice
enough came along to want her, and they meet and agree to be married
after all. Now, where is the romance in all that?”
“Oh, there isn’t any, when you put it that way,” gasped Anne, rather as
if somebody had thrown cold water over her. “I suppose that’s how it
looks in prose. But it’s very different if you look at it through
poetry . . . and _I_ think it’s nicer . . .” Anne recovered herself and
her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed . . . “to look at it through
poetry.”
Marilla glanced at the radiant young face and refrained from further
sarcastic comments. Perhaps some realization came to her that after all
it was better to have, like Anne, “the vision and the faculty divine” .
. . that gift which the world cannot bestow or take away, of looking at
life through some transfiguring . . . or revealing? . . . medium,
whereby everything seemed apparelled in celestial light, wearing a
glory and a freshness not visible to those who, like herself and
Charlotta the Fourth, looked at things only through prose.
“When’s the wedding to be?” she asked after a pause.
“The last Wednesday in August. They are to be married in the garden
under the honeysuckle trellis . . . the very spot where Mr. Irving
proposed to her twenty-five years ago. Marilla, that _is_ romantic,
even in prose. There’s to be nobody there except Mrs. Irving and Paul
and Gilbert and Diana and I, and Miss Lavendar’s cousins. And they will
leave on the six o’clock train for a trip to the Pacific coast. When
they come back in the fall Paul and Charlotta the Fourth are to go up
to Boston to live with them. But Echo Lodge is to be left just as it
is. . . only of course they’ll sell the hens and cow, and board up the
windows . . . and every summer they’re coming down to live in it. I’m
so glad. It would have hurt me dreadfully next winter at Redmond to
think of that dear stone house all stripped and deserted, with empty
rooms . . . or far worse still, with other people living in it. But I
can think of it now, just as I’ve always seen it, waiting happily for
the summer to bring life and laughter back to it again.”
There was more romance in the world than that which had fallen to the
share of the middle-aged lovers of the stone house. Anne stumbled
suddenly on it one evening when she went over to Orchard Slope by the
wood cut and came out into the Barry garden. Diana Barry and Fred
Wright were standing together under the big willow. Diana was leaning
against the gray trunk, her lashes cast down on very crimson cheeks.
One hand was held by Fred, who stood with his face bent toward her,
stammering something in low earnest tones. There were no other people
in the world except their two selves at that magic moment; so neither
of them saw Anne, who, after one dazed glance of comprehension, turned
and sped noiselessly back through the spruce wood, never stopping till
she gained her own gable room, where she sat breathlessly down by her
window and tried to collect her scattered wits.
“Diana and Fred are in love with each other,” she gasped. “Oh, it does
seem so . . . so . . . so _hopelessly_ grown up.”
Anne, of late, had not been without her suspicions that Diana was
proving false to the melancholy Byronic hero of her early dreams. But
as “things seen are mightier than things heard,” or suspected, the
realization that it was actually so came to her with almost the shock
of perfect surprise. This was succeeded by a queer, little lonely
feeling . . . as if, somehow, Diana had gone forward into a new world,
shutting a gate behind her, leaving Anne on the outside.
“Things are changing so fast it almost frightens me,” Anne thought, a
little sadly. “And I’m afraid that this can’t help making some
difference between Diana and me. I’m sure I can’t tell her all my
secrets after this . . . she might tell Fred. And what _can_ she see in
Fred? He’s very nice and jolly . . . but he’s just Fred Wright.”
It is always a very puzzling question . . . what can somebody see in
somebody else? But how fortunate after all that it is so, for if
everybody saw alike . . . well, in that case, as the old Indian said,
“Everybody would want my squaw.” It was plain that Diana _did_ see
something in Fred Wright, however Anne’s eyes might be holden. Diana
came to Green Gables the next evening, a pensive, shy young lady, and
told Anne the whole story in the dusky seclusion of the east gable.
Both girls cried and kissed and laughed.
“I’m so happy,” said Diana, “but it does seem ridiculous to think of me
being engaged.”
“What is it really like to be engaged?” asked Anne curiously.
“Well, that all depends on who you’re engaged to,” answered Diana, with
that maddening air of superior wisdom always assumed by those who are
engaged over those who are not. “It’s perfectly lovely to be engaged to