Anne of Windy Poplars

by L. M. Montgomery

  '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 heavensent 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? A
nd 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 moire, 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.'

  For a while she didn't sleep. It was heavenly to lie there and listen to the splendid low thunder Miss Shirley had told her was the sound of the sea. Elizabeth loved it, and the sigh of the wind round the eaves as well. Elizabeth had always been afraid of the night - who knew what queer thing might jump at you out of it? - but now she was afraid no longer. For the first time in her life the night seemed like a friend to her.

  They would go to the shore tomorrow, Miss Shirley had promised, and have a dip in those silver-tipped waves they had seen breaking beyond the green dunes of Avonlea when they drove over the last hill. Elizabeth could see them coming in, one after the other. One of them was a great dark wave of sleep. It rolled right over here. Elizabeth drowned in it with a delicious sigh of surrender.

  It's... so... easy... to... love... God... here,' was her last conscious thought.

  But she lay awake for a while every night of her stay at Green Gables, long after Miss Shirley had gone to sleep, thinking over things. Why couldn't life at the Evergreens be like life at Green Gables?

  Elizabeth had never lived where she could make a noise if she wanted to. Everybody at the Evergreens had to move softly, speak softly, even, so Elizabeth felt, think softly. There wer
e times when Elizabeth desired perversely to yell loud and long.

  'You may make all the noise you want to here,' Anne had told her. But it was strange; she no longer wanted to yell, now that there was nothing to prevent her. She liked to go quietly, stepping gently among all the lovely things around her. But Elizabeth learned to laugh during that sojourn at Green Gables. And when she went back to Summerside she carried delightful memories with her, and left equally delightful ones behind her. To the Green Gables folks Green Gables seemed for months full of memories of little Elizabeth. For 'little Elizabeth' she was to them, in spite of the fact that Anne had solemnly introduced her as 'Miss Elizabeth'. She was so tiny, so golden, so elf-like, that they couldn't think of her as anything but little Elizabeth: little Elizabeth dancing in a twilit garden among the white June lilies; little Elizabeth coiled up on a bough of the big Duchess apple-tree reading fairytales, unlet and unhindered; little Elizabeth half drowned in a field of buttercups, where her golden head seemed just a larger buttercup; little Elizabeth chasing silver-green moths, or trying to count the fireflies in Lovers' Lane; little Elizabeth listening to the bumblebees zooming in the Canterbury bells; little Elizabeth being fed with strawberries and cream by Dora in the pantry, or eating red-currants with her in the yard - 'red-currants are such beautiful things, aren't they, Dora? It's just like eating jewels, isn't it?'; little Elizabeth pleading with Davy to teach her how to waggle her ears; little Elizabeth singing to herself in the haunted dusk of the firs; little Elizabeth hovering over the bed of red and white daisies under the parlour windows; little Elizabeth with fingers sweet from gathering the big fat pink cabbage roses; little Elizabeth gazing at the great moon hanging over the brook valley - 'I think the moon has worried eyes, don't you, Mrs Lynde?'; little Elizabeth crying bitterly because a chapter in the serial story in Davy's magazine left the hero in a sad predicament - 'Oh, Miss Shirley, I'm sure he can never live through it!'; little Elizabeth curled up, all flushed and sweet like a wild rose, for an afternoon nap on the kitchen sofa, with Dora's kittens cuddled about her; little Elizabeth shrieking with laughter to see the wind blowing the dignified old hens' tails over their backs - could it be little Elizabeth laughing like that?; little Elizabeth helping Anne to frost cup-cakes, Mrs Lynde to cut the patches for a new 'double Irish chain' quilt, and Dora to rub the old brass candlesticks till they could see their faces in them; little Elizabeth learning to sing Clementine and carolling about 'herring boxes without topses' everywhere; little Elizabeth cutting out tiny biscuits with a thimble under Marilla's tutelage. Why, the Green Gables folks could hardly look at a place or a thing without being reminded of little Elizabeth.