The Complete Anne of Green (117 page)

‘I suppose it is mercenary in some respects, but not in all, Hazel. And if you feel like this about Terry – we all make mistakes; it’s very hard to know our own minds sometimes –’

‘Oh, isn’t it? I
knew
you’d understand. I
did
think I cared for him, Miss Shirley. The first time I saw him I just sat and gazed at him the whole evening.
Waves
went over me when I met his eyes. He was
so
handsome – though I thought even then that his hair was
too
curly and his eyelashes too white.
That
should have warned me. But I always put my soul into everything, you know. I’m so intense. I felt little shivers of ecstasy whenever he came near me. And now I feel nothing.
Nothing!
Oh, I’ve grown old these past few weeks, Miss Shirley.
Old!
I’ve hardly eaten anything since I got engaged. Mother could tell you. I’m
sure
I don’t love him enough to marry him. Whatever else I may be in doubt about I know
that
.’

‘Then you shouldn’t –’

‘Even that moonlight night he proposed to me I was thinking of what dress I’d wear to Joan Pringle’s fancy-dress party. I thought it would be lovely to go as Queen of the May in pale green, with a sash of darker green and a cluster of pale pink roses in my hair, and a Maypole decked with tiny roses and hung with pink and green ribbons. Wouldn’t it have been fetching? And then Joan’s uncle had to go and die, and Joan couldn’t have the party after all, so it all went for nothing. But the point is, I really couldn’t have loved him when my thoughts were wandering like that, could I?’

‘I don’t know. Our thoughts play us curious tricks sometimes.’

‘I really don’t think I ever want to get married at all, Miss Shirley. Do you happen to have an orangewood stick handy?… Thanks. My half-moons are getting ragged. I might as well do them while I’m talking. Isn’t it just lovely to be exchanging confidences like this? It’s so seldom one gets the opportunity. The world intrudes itself so. Well, what was I talking of?… Oh yes – Terry. What am I to do, Miss Shirley? I want your advice. Oh, I feel like a trapped creature!’

‘But, Hazel, it’s so very simple –’

‘Oh, it isn’t simple at all, Miss Shirley. It’s dreadfully complicated. Mamma is so outrageously pleased, but Aunt Jean isn’t.
She
doesn’t like Terry, and everybody says she has such good judgement. I don’t want to marry anybody. I’m ambitious. I want a career. Sometimes I think I’d like to be a nun. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be the bride of heaven? I think the Catholic Church is
so
picturesque, don’t you? But of course I’m not a Catholic – and, anyway, I suppose you could hardly call it a career. I’ve always felt I’d love to be a nurse. It’s such a romantic profession, don’t you think? Smoothing fevered brows and all that, and some handsome millionaire patient falling in love with you and carrying you off to spend a honeymoon in a villa on the Riviera, facing the morning sun and the blue Mediterranean. I’ve
seen
myself in it. Foolish dreams, perhaps, but oh, so sweet! I
can’t
give them up for the prosaic reality of marrying Terry Garland and settling down in
Summerside
!’

Hazel shivered at the very idea, and scrutinized a half-moon critically.

‘I suppose –’ began Anne.

‘We haven’t
anything
in common, you know, Miss Shirley. He doesn’t care for poetry and romance, and they’re my very
life
. Sometimes I think I must be a reincarnation of Cleopatra – or would it be Helen of Troy? One of those languorous, seductive creatures, anyhow. I have such
wonderful
thoughts and feelings. I don’t know where I get them if that isn’t the explanation. And Terry is so terribly matter-of-fact He can’t be a reincarnation of anybody. What he said when I told him about Vera Fry’s quill pen proves that, doesn’t it, Miss Shirley?’

‘But I never heard of Vera Fry’s quill pen,’ said Anne patiently.

‘Oh, haven’t you? I thought I’d told you. I’ve told you so much. Vera’s
fiancé
gave her a quill pen he’d made out of a feather he’d picked up that had fallen from a crow’s wing. He said to her, “Let your spirit soar to heaven with it whenever you use it, like the bird who once bore it.” Wasn’t that just
wonderful
? But Terry said the pen would wear out very soon, especially if Vera wrote as much as she talked, and, anyway, he didn’t think crows ever soared to heaven. He just missed the meaning of the whole thing completely, its very essence.’

‘What
was
its meaning?’

‘Oh, why – why –
soaring
, you know. Getting away from the clods of earth. Did you notice Vera’s ring? A sapphire. I think sapphires are too dark for engagement rings. I’d rather have your dear, romantic little hoop of pearls. Terry wanted to give me my ring right away, but I said not yet awhile; it would seem like a fetter – so
irrevocable
, you know. I wouldn’t have felt like that if I’d really loved him, would I?’

‘No, I’m afraid not.’

‘It’s been so
wonderful
to tell somebody what I really feel like. Oh, Miss Shirley, if I could only find myself free again, free to seek the deeper meaning of life! Terry wouldn’t understand what I meant if I said
that
to him. And I know he has a temper: all the Garlands have. Oh, Miss Shirley, if you would just talk to him, tell him what I feel like… He thinks you’re
wonderful
. He’d be guided by what you say.

‘Hazel, my dear little girl, how could I do that?’

‘I don’t see why not.’ Hazel finished the last half-moon and laid the orangewood stick down tragically. ‘If you can’t there isn’t any help
anywhere
. But I can never,
never
,
NEVER
marry Terry Garland.’

‘If you don’t love Terry you ought to go to him and tell him so, no matter how badly it will make him feel. Some day you’ll meet someone you can really love, Hazel dear. You won’t have any doubts then. You’ll
know
.’

‘I shall never love
anybody
again,’ said Hazel, stonily calm. ‘Love brings only sorrow. Young as I am, I have learned
that
. This would make a wonderful plot for one of your stories, wouldn’t it, Miss Shirley?… I must be going. I’d no idea it was
so
late. I feel so much better since I’ve confided in you – “touched your soul in shadowland”, as Shakespeare says.’

‘I think it was Pauline Johnson,’ said Anne gently.

‘Well, I knew it was somebody, somebody who had
lived
. I think I shall sleep tonight, Miss Shirley. I’ve hardly slept since I found myself engaged to Terry – without the
least
notion how it had all come about.’

Hazel fluffed out her hair and put on her hat, a hat with a rosy lining to its brim and rosy blossoms round it. She looked so distractingly pretty in it that Anne kissed her impulsively.

‘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
.’