The Complete Anne of Green (118 page)

‘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:

DEAR MISS SHIRLEY,

I am writing this to tell you that
all misunderstanding
is cleared away between Terry and me, and we are so deeply, intensely,
wonderfully
happy that we have decided we can forgive you. Terry says he was just moonlighted into making love to you, but that his heart never
really
swerved in its allegiance to me. He says he really likes
sweet, simple
girls, that
all men
do, and has no use for
intriguing, designing ones
. We don’t understand why you behaved to us as you did; we never will understand. Perhaps you just wanted material for a story, and thought you could find it in tampering with the first sweet, tremulous love of a girl. But we thank you for
revealing us to ourselves
. Terry says he never realized the deeper meaning of life before. So really it was all for the best. We are
so
sympathetic; we can
feel
each other’s thoughts. Nobody understands him but me, and I want to be a
source of inspiration
to him for ever.
I
am not clever like
you
, but I feel I can be
that
, for we are
soul-mates
, and have vowed eternal
truth and constancy
to each other, no matter how many
jealous people
and
false friends
may try to make trouble between us.

We are going to be married as soon as I have my trousseau ready. I am going up to Boston to get it. There really isn’t
anything
in Summerside. My dress is to be
white moiré
, and my travelling suit will be dove grey, with hat, gloves, and blouse of
delphinium blue
. Of course, I’m very young, but I want to be married when I
am
young, before the
bloom
goes off life.

Terry is all that my
wildest dreams
could picture, and every
thought
of my heart is for him alone. I
know
we are going to be
rapturously happy. Once
I believed all my friends would
rejoice
with me in my happiness, but I have learned a
bitter lesson
in
worldly wisdom
since then.

Yours
truly
,

HAZEL MARR

P.S. You told me Terry had
such a temper
. Why, he’s a perfect lamb, his sister says.              H.M.

P.S. 2. I’ve heard that
lemon-juice
will bleach freckles. You might try it on your nose.              H.M.

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

13

Anne went home for her second Summerside vacation with mixed feelings. Gilbert was not to be in Avonlea that summer. He had gone west to work on a new railway that was being built. But Green Gables was still Green Gables, and Avonlea was still Avonlea. The Lake of Shining Waters shone and sparkled as of old. The ferns still grew as thickly over the Dryad’s Bubble, and the log bridge, though it was a little crumblier and mossier every year, still led up to the shadows and silences and wind-songs of the Haunted Wood.

And Anne had prevailed on Mrs Campbell to let little Elizabeth go home with her for a fortnight – no more. But Elizabeth, looking forward to two whole weeks with Miss Shirley, asked no more of life.

‘I feel like
Miss
Elizabeth today,’ she told Anne with a sigh of delightful excitement, as they drove away from Windy Willows. ‘Will you please call me “Miss Elizabeth” when you introduce me to your friends at Green Gables? It would make me feel so grown up.’

‘I will,’ promised Anne gravely, remembering a small, red-headed damsel who had once begged to be called Cordelia.

Elizabeth’s drive from Bright river to Green Gables, over a road which only Prince Edward Island in June can show, was almost as ecstatic a thing for her as it had been for Anne that memorable spring evening so many years ago. The world was beautiful, with wind-rippled meadows on every hand and surprises lurking round every corner. She was with her beloved Miss Shirley; she would be free from the Woman for two whole weeks; she had a new pink gingham dress and a pair of lovely new brown boots. It was almost as if Tomorrow was already there, with fourteen Tomorrows to follow. Elizabeth’s eyes were shining with dreams when they turned into the Green Gables lane, where the pink wild rose grew.

Things seemed to change magically for Elizabeth the moment she got to Green Gables. For two weeks she lived in a world of romance. You couldn’t step outside the door without stepping into something romantic. Things were just bound to happen in Avonlea, if not today, then tomorrow. Elizabeth knew she hadn’t
quite
got into Tomorrow yet, but she knew she was on the very fringes of it.

Everything in and about Green Gables seemed to be acquainted with her. Even Marilla’s pink rosebud tea-set was like an old friend. The rooms looked at her as if she had always known and loved them; the very grass was greener than grass anywhere else; and the people who lived at Green Gables were the kind of people who lived in Tomorrow. She loved them and was beloved by them. Davy and Dora adored her and spoiled her; Marilla and Mrs Lynde approved of her. She was neat; she was ladylike, she was polite to her elders. They knew Anne did not like Mrs Campbell’s methods, but it was plain to be seen that she had trained her great-granddaughter properly.

‘Oh, I don’t want to sleep, Miss Shirley,’ Elizabeth whispered, when they were in bed in the little porch gable after a rapturous evening. ‘I don’t want to sleep away a single minute of these wonderful two weeks. I wish I could get along without any sleep while I’m here.’