Anne of the Island
meant to darken its door again, and she hoped a fearful judgment would
come upon it. Then she sat down out of breath, and the minister, who
hadn’t heard a word she said, immediately remarked, in a very devout
voice, ‘amen! The Lord grant our dear sister’s prayer!’ You ought to
hear father tell the story.”
“Speaking of stories, Diana,” remarked Anne, in a significant,
confidential tone, “do you know that lately I have been wondering if I
could write a short story—a story that would be good enough to be
published?”
“Why, of course you could,” said Diana, after she had grasped the
amazing suggestion. “You used to write perfectly thrilling stories
years ago in our old Story Club.”
“Well, I hardly meant one of that kind of stories,” smiled Anne. “I’ve
been thinking about it a little of late, but I’m almost afraid to try,
for, if I should fail, it would be too humiliating.”
“I heard Priscilla say once that all Mrs. Morgan’s first stories were
rejected. But I’m sure yours wouldn’t be, Anne, for it’s likely editors
have more sense nowadays.”
“Margaret Burton, one of the Junior girls at Redmond, wrote a story
last winter and it was published in the _Canadian Woman_. I really do
think I could write one at least as good.”
“And will you have it published in the _Canadian Woman?_”
“I might try one of the bigger magazines first. It all depends on what
kind of a story I write.”
“What is it to be about?”
“I don’t know yet. I want to get hold of a good plot. I believe this is
very necessary from an editor’s point of view. The only thing I’ve
settled on is the heroine’s name. It is to be _Averil Lester_. Rather
pretty, don’t you think? Don’t mention this to any one, Diana. I
haven’t told anybody but you and Mr. Harrison. _He_ wasn’t very
encouraging—he said there was far too much trash written nowadays as it
was, and he’d expected something better of me, after a year at
college.”
“What does Mr. Harrison know about it?” demanded Diana scornfully.
They found the Gillis home gay with lights and callers. Leonard
Kimball, of Spencervale, and Morgan Bell, of Carmody, were glaring at
each other across the parlor. Several merry girls had dropped in. Ruby
was dressed in white and her eyes and cheeks were very brilliant. She
laughed and chattered incessantly, and after the other girls had gone
she took Anne upstairs to display her new summer dresses.
“I’ve a blue silk to make up yet, but it’s a little heavy for summer
wear. I think I’ll leave it until the fall. I’m going to teach in White
Sands, you know. How do you like my hat? That one you had on in church
yesterday was real dinky. But I like something brighter for myself. Did
you notice those two ridiculous boys downstairs? They’ve both come
determined to sit each other out. I don’t care a single bit about
either of them, you know. Herb Spencer is the one I like. Sometimes I
really do think he’s _Mr. Right_. At Christmas I thought the
Spencervale schoolmaster was that. But I found out something about him
that turned me against him. He nearly went insane when I turned him
down. I wish those two boys hadn’t come tonight. I wanted to have a
nice good talk with you, Anne, and tell you such heaps of things. You
and I were always good chums, weren’t we?”
Ruby slipped her arm about Anne’s waist with a shallow little laugh.
But just for a moment their eyes met, and, behind all the luster of
Ruby’s, Anne saw something that made her heart ache.
“Come up often, won’t you, Anne?” whispered Ruby. “Come alone—I want
you.”
“Are you feeling quite well, Ruby?”
“Me! Why, I’m perfectly well. I never felt better in my life. Of
course, that congestion last winter pulled me down a little. But just
see my color. I don’t look much like an invalid, I’m sure.”
Ruby’s voice was almost sharp. She pulled her arm away from Anne, as if
in resentment, and ran downstairs, where she was gayer than ever,
apparently so much absorbed in bantering her two swains that Diana and
Anne felt rather out of it and soon went away.
Chapter XII
“Averil’s Atonement”
“What are you dreaming of, Anne?”
The two girls were loitering one evening in a fairy hollow of the
brook. Ferns nodded in it, and little grasses were green, and wild
pears hung finely-scented, white curtains around it.
Anne roused herself from her reverie with a happy sigh.
“I was thinking out my story, Diana.”
“Oh, have you really begun it?” cried Diana, all alight with eager
interest in a moment.
“Yes, I have only a few pages written, but I have it all pretty well
thought out. I’ve had such a time to get a suitable plot. None of the
plots that suggested themselves suited a girl named _Averil_.”
“Couldn’t you have changed her name?”
“No, the thing was impossible. I tried to, but I couldn’t do it, any
more than I could change yours. _Averil_ was so real to me that no
matter what other name I tried to give her I just thought of her as
_Averil_ behind it all. But finally I got a plot that matched her. Then
came the excitement of choosing names for all my characters. You have
no idea how fascinating that is. I’ve lain awake for hours thinking
over those names. The hero’s name is _Perceval Dalrymple_.”
“Have you named _all_ the characters?” asked Diana wistfully. “If you
hadn’t I was going to ask you to let me name one—just some unimportant
person. I’d feel as if I had a share in the story then.”
“You may name the little hired boy who lived with the _Lesters_,”
conceded Anne. “He is not very important, but he is the only one left
unnamed.”
“Call him _Raymond Fitzosborne_,” suggested Diana, who had a store of
such names laid away in her memory, relics of the old “Story Club,”
which she and Anne and Jane Andrews and Ruby Gillis had had in their
schooldays.
Anne shook her head doubtfully.
“I’m afraid that is too aristocratic a name for a chore boy, Diana. I
couldn’t imagine a Fitzosborne feeding pigs and picking up chips, could
you?”
Diana didn’t see why, if you had an imagination at all, you couldn’t
stretch it to that extent; but probably Anne knew best, and the chore
boy was finally christened _Robert Ray_, to be called _Bobby_ should
occasion require.
“How much do you suppose you’ll get for it?” asked Diana.
But Anne had not thought about this at all. She was in pursuit of fame,
not filthy lucre, and her literary dreams were as yet untainted by
mercenary considerations.
“You’ll let me read it, won’t you?” pleaded Diana.
“When it is finished I’ll read it to you and Mr. Harrison, and I shall
want you to criticize it _severely_. No one else shall see it until it
is published.”
“How are you going to end it—happily or unhappily?”
“I’m not sure. I’d like it to end unhappily, because that would be so
much more romantic. But I understand editors have a prejudice against
sad endings. I heard Professor Hamilton say once that nobody but a
genius should try to write an unhappy ending. And,” concluded Anne
modestly, “I’m anything but a genius.”
“Oh I like happy endings best. You’d better let him marry her,” said
Diana, who, especially since her engagement to Fred, thought this was
how every story should end.
“But you like to cry over stories?”
“Oh, yes, in the middle of them. But I like everything to come right at
last.”
“I must have one pathetic scene in it,” said Anne thoughtfully. “I
might let _Robert Ray_ be injured in an accident and have a death
scene.”
“No, you mustn’t kill _Bobby_ off,” declared Diana, laughing. “He
belongs to me and I want him to live and flourish. Kill somebody else
if you have to.”
For the next fortnight Anne writhed or reveled, according to mood, in
her literary pursuits. Now she would be jubilant over a brilliant idea,
now despairing because some contrary character would _not_ behave
properly. Diana could not understand this.
“_Make_ them do as you want them to,” she said.
“I can’t,” mourned Anne. “Averil is such an unmanageable heroine. She
_will_ do and say things I never meant her to. Then that spoils
everything that went before and I have to write it all over again.”
Finally, however, the story was finished, and Anne read it to Diana in
the seclusion of the porch gable. She had achieved her “pathetic scene”
without sacrificing _Robert Ray_, and she kept a watchful eye on Diana
as she read it. Diana rose to the occasion and cried properly; but,
when the end came, she looked a little disappointed.
“Why did you kill _Maurice Lennox?_” she asked reproachfully.
“He was the villain,” protested Anne. “He had to be punished.”
“I like him best of them all,” said unreasonable Diana.
“Well, he’s dead, and he’ll have to stay dead,” said Anne, rather
resentfully. “If I had let him live he’d have gone on persecuting
_Averil_ and _Perceval_.”
“Yes—unless you had reformed him.”
“That wouldn’t have been romantic, and, besides, it would have made the
story too long.”
“Well, anyway, it’s a perfectly elegant story, Anne, and will make you
famous, of that I’m sure. Have you got a title for it?”
“Oh, I decided on the title long ago. I call it _Averil’s atonement_.
Doesn’t that sound nice and alliterative? Now, Diana, tell me candidly,
do you see any faults in my story?”
“Well,” hesitated Diana, “that part where _Averil_ makes the cake
doesn’t seem to me quite romantic enough to match the rest. It’s just
what anybody might do. Heroines shouldn’t do cooking, _I_ think.”
“Why, that is where the humor comes in, and it’s one of the best parts
of the whole story,” said Anne. And it may be stated that in this she
was quite right.
Diana prudently refrained from any further criticism, but Mr. Harrison
was much harder to please. First he told her there was entirely too
much description in the story.
“Cut out all those flowery passages,” he said unfeelingly.
Anne had an uncomfortable conviction that Mr. Harrison was right, and
she forced herself to expunge most of her beloved descriptions, though
it took three re-writings before the story could be pruned down to
please the fastidious Mr. Harrison.
“I’ve left out _all_ the descriptions but the sunset,” she said at
last. “I simply _couldn’t_ let it go. It was the best of them all.”
“It hasn’t anything to do with the story,” said Mr. Harrison, “and you
shouldn’t have laid the scene among rich city people. What do you know
of them? Why didn’t you lay it right here in Avonlea—changing the name,
of course, or else Mrs. Rachel Lynde would probably think she was the
heroine.”
“Oh, that would never have done,” protested Anne. “Avonlea is the
dearest place in the world, but it isn’t quite romantic enough for the
scene of a story.”
“I daresay there’s been many a romance in Avonlea—and many a tragedy,
too,” said Mr. Harrison drily. “But your folks ain’t like real folks
anywhere. They talk too much and use too high-flown language. There’s
one place where that _Dalrymple_ chap talks even on for two pages, and
never lets the girl get a word in edgewise. If he’d done that in real
life she’d have pitched him.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Anne flatly. In her secret soul she thought
that the beautiful, poetical things said to _Averil_ would win any
girl’s heart completely. Besides, it was gruesome to hear of _Averil_,
the stately, queen-like _Averil_, “pitching” any one. _Averil_
“declined her suitors.”
“Anyhow,” resumed the merciless Mr. Harrison, “I don’t see why _Maurice
Lennox_ didn’t get her. He was twice the man the other is. He did bad
things, but he did them. Perceval hadn’t time for anything but
mooning.”
“Mooning.” That was even worse than “pitching!”
“_Maurice Lennox_ was the villain,” said Anne indignantly. “I don’t see
why every one likes him better than _Perceval_.”
“Perceval is too good. He’s aggravating. Next time you write about a