Anne of Windy Willows (19 page)

‘You’re the prettiest thing, darling,’ she said admiringly.

Hazel stood very still. Then she lifted her eyes and stared clear through the ceiling of the tower room, clear through the attic above it, and sought the stars.

‘I shall never,
never
forget this
wonderful
moment, Miss Shirley,’ she murmured rapturously. ‘I feel that my beauty – if I have any – has been
consecrated
. Oh, Miss Shirley, you don’t know how really terrible it is to have a reputation for beauty, and to be always afraid that when people meet you they will not think you as pretty as you were reported to be. It’s
torture
. Sometimes I just
die
of mortification because I fancy I can see they’re disappointed. Perhaps it’s only my imagination. I’m
so
imaginative – too much so for my own good, I fear. I
imagined
I was in love with Terry, you see. Oh, Miss Shirley,
can
you smell the apple-blossom fragrance?’

Having a nose, Anne could.

‘Isn’t it just
divine
? I hope heaven will be
all
flowers. One could be good if one lived in a lily, couldn’t one?’

‘I’m afraid it might be a little confining,’ said Anne perversely.

‘Oh, Miss Shirley, don’t,
don’t
be sarcastic with your little adorer! Sarcasm just
shrivels
me up like a leaf.’

‘I see she hasn’t talked you quite to death,’ said Rebecca Dew, when Anne had come back after seeing Hazel to the end of Spook’s Lane. ‘I don’t see how you put up with her.’

‘I like her, Rebecca, I really do.
I
was a dreadful little chatterbox when I was a child. I wonder if I sounded as silly to the people who had to listen to me as Hazel does sometimes?’

‘I didn’t know you when you was a child, but I’m sure you didn’t,’ said Rebecca. ‘Because you would
mean
what you said, no matter how you expressed it, and Hazel Marr doesn’t. She’s nothing but skim milk pretending to be cream.’

‘Oh, of course she dramatizes herself a bit, as most girls do, but I think she means some of the things she says,’ said Anne, thinking of Terry. Perhaps it was because she had a rather poor opinion of the said Terry that she believed Hazel was quite in earnest in all she said about him. Anne thought Hazel was throwing herself away on Terry in spite of the ten thousand he was ‘coming into’. Anne considered Terry a good-looking, rather weak youth who would fall in love with the first pretty girl who made eyes at him, and would, with equal facility, fall in love with the next one if Number One turned him down or left him alone too long.

Anne had seen a good deal of Terry that spring, for Hazel had insisted on her playing gooseberry frequently; and she was destined to see more of him, for Hazel went to visit friends in Kingsport, and during her absence Terry rather attached himself to Anne, taking her out for rides and ‘seeing her home’ from places. They called each other ‘Anne’ and ‘Terry’, for they were about the same age, although Anne felt quite motherly towards him. Terry felt immensely flattered that ‘the clever Miss Shirley’ seemed to like his companionship, and he became so sentimental the night of May Connelly’s party, in a moonlit garden where the shadows of the acacias blew crazily about, that Anne amusedly reminded him of the absent Hazel.

‘Oh, Hazel!’ said Terry. ‘That child!’

‘You’re engaged to “that child”, aren’t you?’ said Anne severely.

‘Not really engaged; nothing but some boy-and-girl nonsense. I – I guess I was just swept off my feet by the moonlight.’

Anne did a bit of rapid thinking. If Terry really cared as little for Hazel as this the child was far better freed from him. Perhaps this was a heaven-sent opportunity to extricate them both from the silly tangle they had got themselves into, and from which neither of them, taking things with all the deadly seriousness of youth, knew how to escape.

‘Of course,’ went on Terry, misinterpreting her silence, ‘I’m in a bit of a predicament, I’ll own. I’m afraid Hazel has taken me a little bit too seriously, and I don’t just know the best way to open her eyes to her mistake.’

Impulsive Anne assumed her most maternal look. ‘Terry, you are a couple of children playing at being grown up. Hazel doesn’t really care anything more for you than you do for her. Apparently the moonlight affected both of you.
She
wants to be free, but is afraid to tell you so for fear of hurting your feelings. She’s just a bewildered, romantic girl, and you’re a boy in love with love, and some day you’ll both have a good laugh at yourselves.’

‘I think I’ve put that very nicely,’ thought Anne complacently.

Terry drew a long breath. ‘You’ve taken a weight off my mind, Anne. Hazel’s a sweet little thing, of course. I hated to think of hurting her, but I’ve realized my – our mistake for some weeks. When one meets a
woman – the
woman – You’re not going in yet, Anne? Is all this good moonlight to be wasted? You look like a white rose in the moonlight… Anne…’

But Anne had flown.

11

Anne, correcting examination papers in the tower room one mid-June evening, paused to wipe her nose. She had wiped it so often that evening that it was rosy-red and rather painful. The truth was that Anne was the victim of a very severe and very unromantic cold in the head. It would not allow her to enjoy the soft green sky behind the hemlocks of the Evergreens, the silver-white moon hanging over the Storm King, the haunting perfume of the lilacs below her window, or the frosty, blue-pencilled irises in the vase on her table. It darkened all her past and overshadowed all her future.

‘A cold in the head in June is an immoral thing,’ she told Dusty Miller, who was meditating on the window-sill. ‘But in two weeks from today I’ll be in dear Green Gables instead of stewing here over examination papers full of howlers and wiping a worn-out nose. Think of it, Dusty Miller!’

Apparently Dusty Miller thought of it. He may also have thought that the young lady who was hurrying along Spook’s Lane and down the road and along the perennial path looked angry and disturbed and un-June-like. It was Hazel Marr, only a day back from Kingsport, and evidently a much-disturbed Hazel Marr, who a few minutes later burst stormily into the tower room without waiting for a reply to her sharp knock.

‘Why, Hazel dear (
kershoo!
), are you back from Kingsport already? I didn’t expect you till next week.’

‘No, I suppose you didn’t,’ said Hazel sarcastically. ‘Yes, Miss Shirley, I
am
back. And what do I find? That you have been doing your best to lure Terry away from me – and all but succeeding!’

‘Hazel!’ (
Kershoo!
)

‘Oh, I know it all! You told Terry I didn’t love him, that I wanted to break our engagement – our
sacred
engagement!’

‘Hazel, child!’
(Kershoo!)

‘Oh, yes, sneer at me – sneer at everything. But don’t try to deny it. You did it, and you did it
deliberately
.’

‘Of course I did. You asked me to.’

‘I – asked – you – to!’

‘Here in this very room. You told me you didn’t love him, and could never marry him.’

‘Oh, just a mood, I suppose. I never dreamed you’d take me seriously. I thought
you
would understand the artistic temperament. You’re ages older than I am, of course, but even you can’t have forgotten the crazy way girls talk… feel. You, who pretended to be my friend!’

‘This must be a nightmare,’ thought poor Anne, wiping her nose. ‘Sit down, Hazel, do!’

‘Sit down!’ Hazel flew wildly up and down the room. ‘How can I sit down, how can
anybody
sit down when her life is in ruins all about her? Oh, if that is what being old does to you – jealous of younger people’s happiness and determined to wreck it – I shall pray never to grow old.’

Anne’s hand suddenly tingled to box Hazel’s ears with a strange, horrible, primitive tingle of desire. She slew it so instantly that she would never believe afterwards that she had really felt it. But she did think a little gentle chastisement was indicated.

‘If you can’t sit down and talk sensibly, Hazel, I wish you would go away.’ (A very violent
kershoo
.) ‘I have work to do.’ (Sniff… sniff… snuffle!)

‘I am not going away till I have told you just what I think of you. Oh, I know I’ve only myself to blame. I should have known – I
did
know. I felt instinctively the first time I saw you that you were
dangerous
. That red hair and those green eyes! But I never
dreamed
you’d go so far as to make trouble between me and Terry. I thought you were a
Christian
at least. I never
heard
of anyone doing such a thing. Well, you’ve broken my heart, if that is any satisfaction to you.’

‘You little goose –’

‘I won’t talk to you! Oh, Terry and I were so happy before you spoiled everything!
I
was so happy – the first girl of my set to be engaged. I even had my wedding all planned out: four bridesmaids in lovely pale blue silk dresses with black velvet ribbon on the flounces. So
chic
! Oh, I don’t know if
I
hate you the most or pity you the most! Oh, how
could
you treat me like this… after I’ve
loved
you so…
trusted
you so…
believed
in you so!’

Hazel’s voice broke; her eyes filled with tears. She collapsed on a rocking-chair.

‘You can’t have many exclamation points left,’ thought Anne, ‘but no doubt the supply of italics is inexhaustible.’

‘This will just about kill poor Mamma,’ sobbed Hazel. ‘She was so pleased…
Everybody
was so pleased… They all thought it an
ideal
match. Oh, can
anything
ever again be like it used to be?’

‘Wait till the next moonlight night and try,’ said Anne gently.

‘Oh, yes, laugh, Miss Shirley – laugh at my suffering. I have not the least doubt that you find it all very amusing, very amusing indeed!
You
don’t know what suffering is! It is terrible –
terrible
!’

Anne looked at the clock and sneezed. ‘Then don’t suffer,’ she said unpityingly.

‘I
will
suffer. My feelings are
very
deep. Of course, a
shallow
soul wouldn’t suffer. But I am thankful I am not shallow, whatever else I am. Have you
any
idea what it means to be in love, Miss Shirley? Really terribly deeply,
wonderfully
in love? And then to trust and be deceived? I went to Kingsport
so
happy, loving all the world! I told Terry to be good to you while I was away, not to let you be lonesome. I came home last night
so
happy. And he told me he didn’t love me any longer, that it was all a mistake – a
mistake
! – and that
you
had told him I didn’t care for him any longer, and wanted to be free!’

‘My intentions were honourable,’ said Anne, laughing. Her impish sense of humour had come to her rescue, and she was laughing as much at herself as at Hazel.

‘Oh,
how
did I live through the night?’ said Hazel wildly. ‘I just walked the floor. And you don’t know – you can’t even
imagine
– what I’ve gone through today. I’ve had to sit and listen – actually
listen
– to people talking about Terry’s infatuation for
you
. Oh, people have been watching you!
They
know what you’ve been doing. And why?
Why?
That is what I
cannot
understand. You had your own lover; why couldn’t you have left me mine? What had you against me? What had I ever
done
to you?’

‘I think,’ said Anne, thoroughly exasperated, ‘that you and Terry both need a good spanking. If you weren’t too angry to listen to reason –’

‘Oh, I’m not
angry
, Miss Shirley; only
hurt
– terribly hurt,’ said Hazel, in a voice positively foggy with tears. ‘I feel that I have been betrayed in
everything
– in friendship as well as in love. Well, they say after your heart is broken you never suffer any more. I hope it’s true, but I fear it isn’t.’

‘What has become of your ambition, Hazel? And what about the millionaire patient and the honeymoon villa on the blue Mediterranean?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, Miss Shirley. I’m not a bit ambitious. I’m not one of those dreadful new women.
My
highest ambition was to be a happy wife, and make a happy home for my husband.
Was! Was!
To think it should be in the past tense! Well, it doesn’t do to trust
anyone
. I’ve learned
that
. A bitter, bitter lesson!’

Hazel wiped her eyes and Anne wiped her nose, and Dusty Miller glared at the evening star with the expression of a misanthrope.

‘You’d better go, I think, Hazel. I’m really very busy, and I can’t see that there is anything to be gained by prolonging this interview.’

With the air of Mary Queen of Scots advancing to the scaffold, Hazel walked to the door and turned there dramatically.

‘Farewell, Miss Shirley! I leave you to your conscience.’

Anne, left alone with her conscience, laid down her pen, sneezed three times, and gave herself a plain talking to. ‘You may be a B.A., Anne Shirley, but you have a few things to learn yet, things that even Rebecca Dew could have told you –
did
tell you. Be honest with yourself, my dear girl, and take your medicine like a gallant lady. Admit that you were carried off your feet – moonlighted – by flattery. Admit that you really liked Hazel’s professed adoration for you. Admit you found it pleasant to be worshipped. Admit that you liked the idea of being a sort of
dea ex machina
– saving people from their own folly when they didn’t in the least want to be saved from it. And, having admitted all this and feeling wiser and sadder and a few thousand years older, pick up your pen and proceed with your examination papers, pausing to note in passing that Myra Pringle thinks a seraph is “an animal that abounds in Africa”.’

12

A week later a letter came for Anne, written on pale blue paper edged with silver:

‘To quote Rebecca Dew,’ remarked Anne to Dusty Miller, ‘postscript Number Two
is
the last straw.’