Anne of Avonlea
Fred . . . but I think it would be simply horrid to be engaged to
anyone else.”
“There’s not much comfort for the rest of us in that, seeing that there
is only one Fred,” laughed Anne.
“Oh, Anne, you don’t understand,” said Diana in vexation. “I didn’t
mean _that_ . . . it’s so hard to explain. Never mind, you’ll
understand sometime, when your own turn comes.”
“Bless you, dearest of Dianas, I understand now. What is an imagination
for if not to enable you to peep at life through other people’s eyes?”
“You must be my bridesmaid, you know, Anne. Promise me that . . .
wherever you may be when I’m married.”
“I’ll come from the ends of the earth if necessary,” promised Anne
solemnly.
“Of course, it won’t be for ever so long yet,” said Diana, blushing.
“Three years at the very least . . . for I’m only eighteen and mother
says no daughter of hers shall be married before she’s twenty-one.
Besides, Fred’s father is going to buy the Abraham Fletcher farm for
him and he says he’s got to have it two thirds paid for before he’ll
give it to him in his own name. But three years isn’t any too much time
to get ready for housekeeping, for I haven’t a speck of fancy work made
yet. But I’m going to begin crocheting doilies tomorrow. Myra Gillis
had thirty-seven doilies when she was married and I’m determined I
shall have as many as she had.”
“I suppose it would be perfectly impossible to keep house with only
thirty-six doilies,” conceded Anne, with a solemn face but dancing
eyes.
Diana looked hurt.
“I didn’t think you’d make fun of me, Anne,” she said reproachfully.
“Dearest, I wasn’t making fun of you,” cried Anne repentantly. “I was
only teasing you a bit. I think you’ll make the sweetest little
housekeeper in the world. And I think it’s perfectly lovely of you to
be planning already for your home o’dreams.”
Anne had no sooner uttered the phrase, “home o’dreams,” than it
captivated her fancy and she immediately began the erection of one of
her own. It was, of course, tenanted by an ideal master, dark, proud,
and melancholy; but oddly enough, Gilbert Blythe persisted in hanging
about too, helping her arrange pictures, lay out gardens, and
accomplish sundry other tasks which a proud and melancholy hero
evidently considered beneath his dignity. Anne tried to banish
Gilbert’s image from her castle in Spain but, somehow, he went on being
there, so Anne, being in a hurry, gave up the attempt and pursued her
aerial architecture with such success that her “home o’dreams” was
built and furnished before Diana spoke again.
“I suppose, Anne, you must think it’s funny I should like Fred so well
when he’s so different from the kind of man I’ve always said I would
marry . . . the tall, slender kind? But somehow I wouldn’t want Fred to
be tall and slender . . . because, don’t you see, he wouldn’t be Fred
then. Of course,” added Diana rather dolefully, “we will be a
dreadfully pudgy couple. But after all that’s better than one of us
being short and fat and the other tall and lean, like Morgan Sloane and
his wife. Mrs. Lynde says it always makes her think of the long and
short of it when she sees them together.”
“Well,” said Anne to herself that night, as she brushed her hair before
her gilt framed mirror, “I am glad Diana is so happy and satisfied. But
when my turn comes . . . if it ever does . . . I do hope there’ll be
something a little more thrilling about it. But then Diana thought so
too, once. I’ve heard her say time and again she’d never get engaged
any poky commonplace way . . . he’d _have_ to do something splendid to
win her. But she has changed. Perhaps I’ll change too. But I won’t . .
. and I’m determined I won’t. Oh, I think these engagements are
dreadfully unsettling things when they happen to your intimate
friends.”
XXX
A Wedding at the Stone House
The last week in August came. Miss Lavendar was to be married in it.
Two weeks later Anne and Gilbert would leave for Redmond College. In a
week’s time Mrs. Rachel Lynde would move to Green Gables and set up her
lares and penates in the erstwhile spare room, which was already
prepared for her coming. She had sold all her superfluous household
plenishings by auction and was at present reveling in the congenial
occupation of helping the Allans pack up. Mr. Allan was to preach his
farewell sermon the next Sunday. The old order was changing rapidly to
give place to the new, as Anne felt with a little sadness threading all
her excitement and happiness.
“Changes ain’t totally pleasant but they’re excellent things,” said Mr.
Harrison philosophically. “Two years is about long enough for things to
stay exactly the same. If they stayed put any longer they might grow
mossy.”
Mr. Harrison was smoking on his veranda. His wife had
self-sacrificingly told that he might smoke in the house if he took
care to sit by an open window. Mr. Harrison rewarded this concession by
going outdoors altogether to smoke in fine weather, and so mutual
goodwill reigned.
Anne had come over to ask Mrs. Harrison for some of her yellow dahlias.
She and Diana were going through to Echo Lodge that evening to help
Miss Lavendar and Charlotta the Fourth with their final preparations
for the morrow’s bridal. Miss Lavendar herself never had dahlias; she
did not like them and they would not have suited the fine retirement of
her old-fashioned garden. But flowers of any kind were rather scarce in
Avonlea and the neighboring districts that summer, thanks to Uncle
Abe’s storm; and Anne and Diana thought that a certain old
cream-colored stone jug, usually kept sacred to doughnuts, brimmed over
with yellow dahlias, would be just the thing to set in a dim angle of
the stone house stairs, against the dark background of red hall paper.
“I s’pose you’ll be starting off for college in a fortnight’s time?”
continued Mr. Harrison. “Well, we’re going to miss you an awful lot,
Emily and me. To be sure, Mrs. Lynde’ll be over there in your place.
There ain’t nobody but a substitute can be found for them.”
The irony of Mr. Harrison’s tone is quite untransferable to paper. In
spite of his wife’s intimacy with Mrs. Lynde, the best that could be
said of the relationship between her and Mr. Harrison even under the
new regime, was that they preserved an armed neutrality.
“Yes, I’m going,” said Anne. “I’m very glad with my head . . . and very
sorry with my heart.”
“I s’pose you’ll be scooping up all the honors that are lying round
loose at Redmond.”
“I may try for one or two of them,” confessed Anne, “but I don’t care
so much for things like that as I did two years ago. What I want to get
out of my college course is some knowledge of the best way of living
life and doing the most and best with it. I want to learn to understand
and help other people and myself.”
Mr. Harrison nodded.
“That’s the idea exactly. That’s what college ought to be for, instead
of for turning out a lot of B.A.‘s, so chock full of book-learning and
vanity that there ain’t room for anything else. You’re all right.
College won’t be able to do you much harm, I reckon.”
Diana and Anne drove over to Echo Lodge after tea, taking with them all
the flowery spoil that several predatory expeditions in their own and
their neighbors’ gardens had yielded. They found the stone house agog
with excitement. Charlotta the Fourth was flying around with such vim
and briskness that her blue bows seemed really to possess the power of
being everywhere at once. Like the helmet of Navarre, Charlotta’s blue
bows waved ever in the thickest of the fray.
“Praise be to goodness you’ve come,” she said devoutly, “for there’s
heaps of things to do . . . and the frosting on that cake _won’t_
harden . . . and there’s all the silver to be rubbed up yet . . . and
the horsehair trunk to be packed . . . and the roosters for the chicken
salad are running out there beyant the henhouse yet, _crowing_, Miss
Shirley, ma’am. And Miss Lavendar ain’t to be trusted to do a thing. I
was thankful when Mr. Irving came a few minutes ago and took her off
for a walk in the woods. Courting’s all right in its place, Miss
Shirley, ma’am, but if you try to mix it up with cooking and scouring
everything’s spoiled. That’s _my_ opinion, Miss Shirley, ma’am.”
Anne and Diana worked so heartily that by ten o’clock even Charlotta
the Fourth was satisfied. She braided her hair in innumerable plaits
and took her weary little bones off to bed.
“But I’m sure I shan’t sleep a blessed wink, Miss Shirley, ma’am, for
fear that something’ll go wrong at the last minute . . . the cream
won’t whip . . . or Mr. Irving’ll have a stroke and not be able to
come.”
“He isn’t in the habit of having strokes, is he?” asked Diana, the
dimpled corners of her mouth twitching. To Diana, Charlotta the Fourth
was, if not exactly a thing of beauty, certainly a joy forever.
“They’re not things that go by habit,” said Charlotta the Fourth with
dignity. “They just _happen_ . . . and there you are. _Anybody_ can
have a stroke. You don’t have to learn how. Mr. Irving looks a lot like
an uncle of mine that had one once just as he was sitting down to
dinner one day. But maybe everything’ll go all right. In this world
you’ve just got to hope for the best and prepare for the worst and take
whatever God sends.”
“The only thing I’m worried about is that it won’t be fine tomorrow,”
said Diana. “Uncle Abe predicted rain for the middle of the week, and
ever since the big storm I can’t help believing there’s a good deal in
what Uncle Abe says.”
Anne, who knew better than Diana just how much Uncle Abe had to do with
the storm, was not much disturbed by this. She slept the sleep of the
just and weary, and was roused at an unearthly hour by Charlotta the
Fourth.
“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am, it’s awful to call you so early,” came
wailing through the keyhole, “but there’s so much to do yet . . . and
oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am, I’m skeered it’s going to rain and I wish
you’d get up and tell me you think it ain’t.” Anne flew to the window,
hoping against hope that Charlotta the Fourth was saying this merely by
way of rousing her effectually. But alas, the morning did look
unpropitious. Below the window Miss Lavendar’s garden, which should
have been a glory of pale virgin sunshine, lay dim and windless; and
the sky over the firs was dark with moody clouds.
“Isn’t it too mean!” said Diana.
“We must hope for the best,” said Anne determinedly. “If it only
doesn’t actually rain, a cool, pearly gray day like this would really
be nicer than hot sunshine.”
“But it will rain,” mourned Charlotta, creeping into the room, a figure
of fun, with her many braids wound about her head, the ends, tied up
with white thread, sticking out in all directions. “It’ll hold off till
the last minute and then pour cats and dogs. And all the folks will get
sopping . . . and track mud all over the house . . . and they won’t be
able to be married under the honeysuckle . . . and it’s awful unlucky
for no sun to shine on a bride, say what you will, Miss Shirley, ma’am.
I _knew_ things were going too well to last.”
Charlotta the Fourth seemed certainly to have borrowed a leaf out of
Miss Eliza Andrews’ book.
It did not rain, though it kept on looking as if it meant to. By noon
the rooms were decorated, the table beautifully laid; and upstairs was
waiting a bride, “adorned for her husband.”
“You do look sweet,” said Anne rapturously.
“Lovely,” echoed Diana.
“Everything’s ready, Miss Shirley, ma’am, and nothing dreadful has
happened _yet_,” was Charlotta’s cheerful statement as she betook
herself to her little back room to dress. Out came all the braids; the
resultant rampant crinkliness was plaited into two tails and tied, not
with two bows alone, but with four, of brand-new ribbon, brightly blue.