“Did you know your placket was open?” said Rebecca, setting a coconut pie before Aunt Kate.
“I haven’t time to be always staring at my face in the glass,” said Cousin Ernestine acidly. “What if my placket is open? I’ve got three petticoats on, haven’t I? They tell me the girls nowadays only wear one. I’m afraid the world is gitting dreadful gay and giddy. I wonder if they ever think of the judgment day.”
“Do you s’pose they’ll ask us at the judgment day how many petticoats we’ve got on?” asked Rebecca Dew, escaping to the kitchen before any one could register horror. Even Aunt Chatty thought Rebecca Dew really had gone a little too far.
“I s’pose you saw old Alec Crowdy’s death last week in the paper,” sighed Cousin Ernestine. “His wife died two years ago, lit’rally harried into her grave, poor creetur. They say he’s been awful lonely since she died, but I’m afraid that’s too good to be true. And I’m afraid they’re not through with their troubles with him yet, even if he is buried. I hear he wouldn’t make a will and I’m afraid there’ll be awful ructions over the estate. They say Annabel Crowdy is going to marry a jack-of-all-trades. Her mother’s first husband was one, so mebbe it’s heredit’ry. Annabel’s had a hard life of it, but I’m afraid she’ll find it’s out of the frying-pan into the fire, even if it don’t turn out he’s got a wife already.”
“What is Jane Goldwin doing with herself this winter?” asked Aunt Kate. “She hasn’t been in to town for a long time.”
“Ah, poor Jane! She’s just pining away mysteriously. They don’t know what’s the matter with her, but I’m afraid it’ll turn out to be an alibi. What is Rebecca Dew laughing like a hyenus out in the kitchen for? I’m afraid you’ll have her on your hands yet. There’s an awful lot of weak minds among the Dews.”
“I see Thyra Cooper has a baby,” said Aunt Chatty.
“Ah, yes, poor little soul. Only one, thank mercy. I was afraid it would be twins. Twins run so in the Coopers.”
“Thyra and Ned are such a nice young couple,” said Aunt Kate, as if determined to salvage something from the wreck of the universe.
But Cousin Ernestine would not admit that there was any balm in Gilead much less in Lowvale.
“Ah, she was real thankful to git him at last. There was a time she was afraid he wouldn’t come back from the west. I warned her. ‘You may be sure he’ll disappoint you,’ I told her. ‘He’s always disappointed people. Every one expected him to die afore he was a year old, but you see he’s alive yet.’ When he bought the Holly place I warned her again. ‘I’m afraid that well is full of typhoid,’ I told her. ‘The Holly hired man died of typhoid there five years ago.’ They can’t blame me if anything happens. Joseph Holly has some misery in his back. He calls it lumbago, but I’m afraid it’s the beginning of spinal meningitis.”
“Old Uncle Joseph Holly is one of the best men in the world,” said Rebecca Dew, bringing in a replenished teapot.
“Ah, he’s good,” said Cousin Ernestine lugubriously. “Too good! I’m afraid his sons will all go to the bad. You see it like that so often. Seems as if an average has to be struck. No, thank you, Kate, I won’t have any more tea . . . well, mebbe a macaroon. They don’t lie heavy on the stomach, but I’m afraid I’ve et far too much. I must be taking French leave, for I’m afraid it’ll be dark afore I git home. I don’t want to git my feet wet; I’m so afraid of ammonia. I’ve had something traveling from my arm to my lower limbs all winter. Night after night I’ve laid awake with it. Ah, nobody knows what I’ve gone through, but I ain’t one of the complaining sort. I was determined I’d git up to see you once more, for I may not be here another spring. But you’ve both failed terrible, so you may go afore me yet. Ah well, it’s best to go while there’s some one of your own left to lay you out. Dear me, how the wind is gitting up! I’m afraid our barn roof will blow off if it comes to a gale. We’ve had so much wind this spring I’m afraid the climate is changing. Thank you, Miss Shirley . . .” as Anne helped her into her coat . . . “Be careful of yourself. You look awful washed out. I’m afraid people with red hair never have real strong constitutions.”
“I think my constitution is all right,” smiled Anne, handing Cousin Ernestine an indescribable bit of millinery with a stringy ostrich feather dripping from its back. “I have a touch of sore throat tonight, Miss Bugle, that’s all.”
“Ah!” Another of Cousin Ernestine’s dark forebodings came to her. “You want to watch a sore throat. The symptoms of diptheria and tonsillitis are exactly the same till the third day. But there’s one consolation . . . you’ll be spared an awful lot of trouble if you die young.”
Chapter 9
“Tower Room,
“Windy Poplars,
“April 20th.
“POOR DEAR GILBERT:
“‘I said of laughter, it is mad, and of mirth, what doeth it?’ I’m afraid I’ll turn gray young . . . I’m afraid I’ll end up in the poorhouse . . . I’m afraid none of my pupils will pass their finals . . . Mr. Hamilton’s dog barked at me Saturday night and I’m afraid I’ll have hydrophobia . . . I’m afraid my umbrella will turn inside out when I keep a tryst with Katherine tonight . . . I’m afraid Katherine likes me so much now that she can’t always like me as much . . . I’m afraid my hair isn’t auburn after all . . . I’m afraid I’ll have a mole on the end of my nose when I’m fifty . . . I’m afraid my school is a fire-trap . . . I’m afraid I’ll find a mouse in my bed tonight . . . I’m afraid you got engaged to me just because I was always around . . . I’m afraid I’ll soon be picking at the counterpane.
“No, dearest, I’m not crazy . . . not yet. It’s only that Cousin Ernestine Bugle is catching.
“I know now why Rebecca Dew has always called her ‘Miss Much-afraid.’ The poor soul has borrowed so much trouble, she must be hopelessly in debt to fate.
“There are so many Bugles in the world . . . not many quite so far gone in Buglism as Cousin Ernestine, perhaps, but so many kill-joys, afraid to enjoy today because of what tomorrow will bring.
“Gilbert darling, don’t let’s ever be afraid of things. It’s such dreadful slavery. Let’s be daring and adventurous and expectant. Let’s dance to meet life and all it can bring to us, even if it brings scads of trouble and typhoid and twins!
“Today has been a day dropped out of June into April. The snow is all gone and the fawn meadows and golden hills just sing of spring. I know I heard Pan piping in the little green hollow in my maple bush and my Storm King was bannered with the airiest of purple hazes. We’ve had a great deal of rain lately and I’ve loved sitting in my tower in the still, wet hours of the spring twilights. But tonight is a gusty, hurrying night . . . even the clouds racing over the sky are in a hurry and the moonlight that gushes out between them is in a hurry to flood the world.
“Suppose, Gilbert, we were walking hand in hand down one of the long roads in Avonlea tonight!
“Gilbert, I’m afraid I’m scandalously in love with you. You don’t think it’s irreverent, do you? But then, you’re not a minister.”
Chapter 10
“I’m so different,” sighed Hazel.
It was really dreadful to be so different from other people . . . and yet rather wonderful, too, as if you were a being strayed from another star. Hazel would not have been one of the common herd for anything . . . no matter what she suffered by reason of her differentness.
“Everybody is different,” said Anne amusedly.
“You are smiling.” Hazel clasped a pair of very white, very dimpled hands and gazed adoringly at Anne. She emphasized at least one syllable in every word she uttered. “You have such a fascinating smile . . . such a haunting smile. I knew the moment I first saw you that you would understand everything. We are on the same plane. Sometimes I think I must be psychic, Miss Shirley. I always know so instinctively the moment I meet any one whether I’m going to like them or not. I felt at once that you were sympathetic . . . that you would understand. It’s so sweet to be understood. Nobody
understands me, Miss Shirley . . . nobody. But when I saw you, some inner voice whispered to me, ‘She will understand . . . with her you can be your real self.’ Oh, Miss Shirley, let’s be real . . . let’s always be real. Oh, Miss Shirley, do you love me the leastest, tiniest bit?”
“I think you’re a dear,” said Anne, laughing a little and ruffling Hazel’s golden curls with her slender fingers. It was quite easy to be fond of Hazel.
Hazel had been pouring out her soul to Anne in the tower room, from which they could see a young moon hanging over the harbor and the twilight of a late May evening filling the crimson cups of the tulips below the windows.
“Don’t let’s have any light yet,” Hazel had begged, and Anne had responded,
“No . . . it’s lovely here when the dark is your friend, isn’t it? When you turn on the light, it makes the dark your enemy . . . and it glowers in at you resentfully.”
“I can think things like that but I can never express them so beautifully,” moaned Hazel in an anguish of rapture. “You talk in the language of the violets, Miss Shirley.”
Hazel couldn’t have explained in the least what she meant by that, but it didn’t matter. It sounded so poetic.
The tower room was the only peaceful room in the house. Rebecca Dew had said that morning, with a hunted look, “We must get the parlor and spare-room papered before the Ladies’ Aid meets here,” and had forthwith removed all the furniture from both to make way for a paper-hanger who then refused to come until the next day. Windy Poplars was a wilderness of confusion, with one sole oasis in the tower room.
Hazel Marr had a notorious “crush” on Anne. The Marrs were new-comers in Summerside, having moved there from Charlottetown during the winter. Hazel was an “October blonde,” as she liked to describe herself, with hair of golden bronze and brown eyes, and, so Rebecca Dew declared, had never been much good in the world since she found out she was pretty. But Hazel was popular, especially among the boys, who found her eyes and curls a quite irresistible combination.
Anne liked her. Earlier in the evening she had been tired and a trifle pessimistic, with the fag that comes with late afternoon in a schoolroom, but she felt rested now; whether as a result of the May breeze, sweet with apple blossom, blowing in at the window, or of Hazel’s chatter, she could not have told. Perhaps both. Somehow, to Anne, Hazel recalled her own early youth, with all its raptures and ideals and romantic visions.
Hazel caught Anne’s hand and pressed her lips to it reverently.
“I hate all the people you have loved before me, Miss Shirley. I hate all the other people you love now. I want to possess you exclusively.”
“Aren’t you a bit unreasonable, honey? You love other people besides me. How about Terry, for example?”
“Oh, Miss Shirley! It’s that I want to talk to you about. I can’t endure it in silence any longer . . . I cannot. I must talk to some one about it . . . some one who understands. I went out the night before last and walked round and round the pond all night . . . well, nearly . . . till twelve, anyhow. I’ve suffered everything . . . everything.”
Hazel looked as tragic as a round, pink-and-white face, long-lashed eyes and a halo of curls would let her.
“Why, Hazel dear, I thought you and Terry were so happy . . . that everything was settled.”
Anne could not be blamed for thinking so. During the preceding three weeks, Hazel had raved to her about Terry Garland, for Hazel’s attitude was, what was the use of having a beau if you couldn’t talk to some one about him?
“Everybody thinks that,” retorted Hazel with great bitterness. “Oh, Miss Shirley, life seems so full of perplexing problems. I feel sometimes as if I wanted to lie down somewhere . . . anywhere . . . and fold my hands and never think again.”
“My dear girl, what has gone wrong?”
“Nothing . . . and everything. Oh, Miss Shirley, can I tell you all about it . . . can I pour out my whole soul to you?”
“Of course, dear.”
“I have really no place to pour out my soul,” said Hazel pathetically. “Except in my journal, of course. Will you let me show you my journal some day, Miss Shirley? It is a self-revelation. And yet I cannot write out what burns in my soul. It . . . it stifles me!” Hazel clutched dramatically at her throat.
“Of course I’d like to see it if you want me to. But what is this trouble between you and Terry?”
“Oh, Terry!! Miss Shirley, will you believe me when I tell you that Terry seems like a stranger to me? A stranger! Some one I’d never seen before,” added Hazel, so that there might be no mistake.
“But, Hazel . . . I thought you loved him . . . you said . . .”
“Oh, I know. I thought I loved him, too. But now I know it was all a terrible mistake. Oh, Miss Shirley, you can’t dream how difficult my life is . . . how impossible.”
“I know something about it,” said Anne sympathetically, remembering Roy Gardiner.
“Oh, Miss Shirley, I’m sure I don’t love him enough to marry him. I realize that now . . . now that it is too late. I was just moonlighted into thinking I loved him. If it hadn’t been for the moon I’m sure I would have asked for time to think it over. But I was swept off my feet . . . I can see that now. Oh, I’ll run away . . . I’ll do something desperate!”
“But, Hazel dear, if you feel you’ve made a mistake, why not just tell him . . .”
“Oh, Miss Shirley, I couldn’t! It would kill him. He simply adores me. There isn’t any way out of it really. And Terry’s beginning to talk of getting married. Think of it . . . a child like me . . . I’m only eighteen. All the friends I’ve told about my engagement as a secret are congratulating me . . . and it’s such a farce. They think Terry is a great catch because he comes into ten thousand dollars when he is twenty-five. His grandmother left it to him. As if I cared about such a sordid thing as money! Oh, Miss Shirley, why is it such a mercenary world . . . why?”
“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 May-pole 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 some times.”
“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 judgment. 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?”
“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 fiance 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 . . . it’s very essence.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 99