Chapter XXXIX

Deals with Weddings

Anne felt that life partook of the nature of an anticlimax during the

first few weeks after her return to Green Gables. She missed the merry

comradeship of Patty’s Place. She had dreamed some brilliant dreams

during the past winter and now they lay in the dust around her. In her

present mood of self-disgust, she could not immediately begin dreaming

again. And she discovered that, while solitude with dreams is glorious,

solitude without them has few charms.

She had not seen Roy again after their painful parting in the park

pavilion; but Dorothy came to see her before she left Kingsport.

“I’m awfully sorry you won’t marry Roy,” she said. “I did want you for

a sister. But you are quite right. He would bore you to death. I love

him, and he is a dear sweet boy, but really he isn’t a bit interesting.

He looks as if he ought to be, but he isn’t.”

“This won’t spoil _our_ friendship, will it, Dorothy?” Anne had asked

wistfully.

“No, indeed. You’re too good to lose. If I can’t have you for a sister

I mean to keep you as a chum anyway. And don’t fret over Roy. He is

feeling terribly just now—I have to listen to his outpourings every

day—but he’ll get over it. He always does.”

“Oh—_always?_” said Anne with a slight change of voice. “So he has ‘got

over it’ before?”

“Dear me, yes,” said Dorothy frankly. “Twice before. And he raved to me

just the same both times. Not that the others actually refused him—they

simply announced their engagements to some one else. Of course, when he

met you he vowed to me that he had never really loved before—that the

previous affairs had been merely boyish fancies. But I don’t think you

need worry.”

Anne decided not to worry. Her feelings were a mixture of relief and

resentment. Roy had certainly told her she was the only one he had ever

loved. No doubt he believed it. But it was a comfort to feel that she

had not, in all likelihood, ruined his life. There were other

goddesses, and Roy, according to Dorothy, must needs be worshipping at

some shrine. Nevertheless, life was stripped of several more illusions,

and Anne began to think drearily that it seemed rather bare.

She came down from the porch gable on the evening of her return with a

sorrowful face.

“What has happened to the old Snow Queen, Marilla?”

“Oh, I knew you’d feel bad over that,” said Marilla. “I felt bad

myself. That tree was there ever since I was a young girl. It blew down

in the big gale we had in March. It was rotten at the core.”

“I’ll miss it so,” grieved Anne. “The porch gable doesn’t seem the same

room without it. I’ll never look from its window again without a sense

of loss. And oh, I never came home to Green Gables before that Diana

wasn’t here to welcome me.”

“Diana has something else to think of just now,” said Mrs. Lynde

significantly.

“Well, tell me all the Avonlea news,” said Anne, sitting down on the

porch steps, where the evening sunshine fell over her hair in a fine

golden rain.

“There isn’t much news except what we’ve wrote you,” said Mrs. Lynde.

“I suppose you haven’t heard that Simon Fletcher broke his leg last

week. It’s a great thing for his family. They’re getting a hundred

things done that they’ve always wanted to do but couldn’t as long as he

was about, the old crank.”

“He came of an aggravating family,” remarked Marilla.

“Aggravating? Well, rather! His mother used to get up in prayer-meeting

and tell all her children’s shortcomings and ask prayers for them.

’Course it made them mad, and worse than ever.”

“You haven’t told Anne the news about Jane,” suggested Marilla.

“Oh, Jane,” sniffed Mrs. Lynde. “Well,” she conceded grudgingly, “Jane

Andrews is home from the West—came last week—and she’s going to be

married to a Winnipeg millionaire. You may be sure Mrs. Harmon lost no

time in telling it far and wide.”

“Dear old Jane—I’m so glad,” said Anne heartily. “She deserves the good

things of life.”

“Oh, I ain’t saying anything against Jane. She’s a nice enough girl.

But she isn’t in the millionaire class, and you’ll find there’s not

much to recommend that man but his money, that’s what. Mrs. Harmon says

he’s an Englishman who has made money in mines but _I_ believe he’ll

turn out to be a Yankee. He certainly must have money, for he has just

showered Jane with jewelry. Her engagement ring is a diamond cluster so

big that it looks like a plaster on Jane’s fat paw.”

Mrs. Lynde could not keep some bitterness out of her tone. Here was

Jane Andrews, that plain little plodder, engaged to a millionaire,

while Anne, it seemed, was not yet bespoken by any one, rich or poor.

And Mrs. Harmon Andrews did brag insufferably.

“What has Gilbert Blythe been doing to at college?” asked Marilla. “I

saw him when he came home last week, and he is so pale and thin I

hardly knew him.”

“He studied very hard last winter,” said Anne. “You know he took High

Honors in Classics and the Cooper Prize. It hasn’t been taken for five

years! So I think he’s rather run down. We’re all a little tired.”

“Anyhow, you’re a B.A. and Jane Andrews isn’t and never will be,” said

Mrs. Lynde, with gloomy satisfaction.

A few evenings later Anne went down to see Jane, but the latter was

away in Charlottetown—“getting sewing done,” Mrs. Harmon informed Anne

proudly. “Of course an Avonlea dressmaker wouldn’t do for Jane under

the circumstances.”

“I’ve heard something very nice about Jane,” said Anne.

“Yes, Jane has done pretty well, even if she isn’t a B.A.,” said Mrs.

Harmon, with a slight toss of her head. “Mr. Inglis is worth millions,

and they’re going to Europe on their wedding tour. When they come back

they’ll live in a perfect mansion of marble in Winnipeg. Jane has only

one trouble—she can cook so well and her husband won’t let her cook. He

is so rich he hires his cooking done. They’re going to keep a cook and

two other maids and a coachman and a man-of-all-work. But what about

_you_, Anne? I don’t hear anything of your being married, after all

your college-going.”

“Oh,” laughed Anne, “I am going to be an old maid. I really can’t find

any one to suit me.” It was rather wicked of her. She deliberately

meant to remind Mrs. Andrews that if she became an old maid it was not

because she had not had at least one chance of marriage. But Mrs.

Harmon took swift revenge.

“Well, the over-particular girls generally get left, I notice. And

what’s this I hear about Gilbert Blythe being engaged to a Miss Stuart?

Charlie Sloane tells me she is perfectly beautiful. Is it true?”

“I don’t know if it is true that he is engaged to Miss Stuart,” replied

Anne, with Spartan composure, “but it is certainly true that she is

very lovely.”

“I once thought you and Gilbert would have made a match of it,” said

Mrs. Harmon. “If you don’t take care, Anne, all of your beaux will slip

through your fingers.”

Anne decided not to continue her duel with Mrs. Harmon. You could not

fence with an antagonist who met rapier thrust with blow of battle axe.

“Since Jane is away,” she said, rising haughtily, “I don’t think I can

stay longer this morning. I’ll come down when she comes home.”

“Do,” said Mrs. Harmon effusively. “Jane isn’t a bit proud. She just

means to associate with her old friends the same as ever. She’ll be

real glad to see you.”

Jane’s millionaire arrived the last of May and carried her off in a

blaze of splendor. Mrs. Lynde was spitefully gratified to find that Mr.

Inglis was every day of forty, and short and thin and grayish. Mrs.

Lynde did not spare him in her enumeration of his shortcomings, you may

be sure.

“It will take all his gold to gild a pill like him, that’s what,” said

Mrs. Rachel solemnly.

“He looks kind and good-hearted,” said Anne loyally, “and I’m sure he

thinks the world of Jane.”

“Humph!” said Mrs. Rachel.

Phil Gordon was married the next week and Anne went over to Bolingbroke

to be her bridesmaid. Phil made a dainty fairy of a bride, and the Rev.

Jo was so radiant in his happiness that nobody thought him plain.

“We’re going for a lovers’ saunter through the land of Evangeline,”

said Phil, “and then we’ll settle down on Patterson Street. Mother

thinks it is terrible—she thinks Jo might at least take a church in a

decent place. But the wilderness of the Patterson slums will blossom

like the rose for me if Jo is there. Oh, Anne, I’m so happy my heart

aches with it.”

Anne was always glad in the happiness of her friends; but it is

sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded everywhere by a happiness

that is not your own. And it was just the same when she went back to

Avonlea. This time it was Diana who was bathed in the wonderful glory

that comes to a woman when her first-born is laid beside her. Anne

looked at the white young mother with a certain awe that had never

entered into her feelings for Diana before. Could this pale woman with

the rapture in her eyes be the little black-curled, rosy-cheeked Diana

she had played with in vanished schooldays? It gave her a queer

desolate feeling that she herself somehow belonged only in those past

years and had no business in the present at all.

“Isn’t he perfectly beautiful?” said Diana proudly.

The little fat fellow was absurdly like Fred—just as round, just as

red. Anne really could not say conscientiously that she thought him

beautiful, but she vowed sincerely that he was sweet and kissable and

altogether delightful.

“Before he came I wanted a girl, so that I could call her ANNE,” said

Diana. “But now that little Fred is here I wouldn’t exchange him for a

million girls. He just _couldn’t_ have been anything but his own

precious self.”

“‘Every little baby is the sweetest and the best,’” quoted Mrs. Allan

gaily. “If little Anne _had_ come you’d have felt just the same about

her.”

Mrs. Allan was visiting in Avonlea, for the first time since leaving

it. She was as gay and sweet and sympathetic as ever. Her old girl

friends had welcomed her back rapturously. The reigning minister’s wife

was an estimable lady, but she was not exactly a kindred spirit.

“I can hardly wait till he gets old enough to talk,” sighed Diana. “I

just long to hear him say ‘mother.’ And oh, I’m determined that his

first memory of me shall be a nice one. The first memory I have of my

mother is of her slapping me for something I had done. I am sure I

deserved it, and mother was always a good mother and I love her dearly.

But I do wish my first memory of her was nicer.”

“I have just one memory of my mother and it is the sweetest of all my

memories,” said Mrs. Allan. “I was five years old, and I had been

allowed to go to school one day with my two older sisters. When school

came out my sisters went home in different groups, each supposing I was

with the other. Instead I had run off with a little girl I had played

with at recess. We went to her home, which was near the school, and

began making mud pies. We were having a glorious time when my older

sister arrived, breathless and angry.

“‘You naughty girl” she cried, snatching my reluctant hand and dragging

me along with her. ‘Come home this minute. Oh, you’re going to catch

it! Mother is awful cross. She is going to give you a good whipping.’

“I had never been whipped. Dread and terror filled my poor little

heart. I have never been so miserable in my life as I was on that walk

home. I had not meant to be naughty. Phemy Cameron had asked me to go

home with her and I had not known it was wrong to go. And now I was to

be whipped for it. When we got home my sister dragged me into the

kitchen where mother was sitting by the fire in the twilight. My poor

wee legs were trembling so that I could hardly stand. And mother—mother

just took me up in her arms, without one word of rebuke or harshness,

kissed me and held me close to her heart. ‘I was so frightened you were

lost, darling,’ she said tenderly. I could see the love shining in her

eyes as she looked down on me. She never scolded or reproached me for

what I had done—only told me I must never go away again without asking

permission. She died very soon afterwards. That is the only memory I

have of her. Isn’t it a beautiful one?”

Anne felt lonelier than ever as she walked home, going by way of the

Birch Path and Willowmere. She had not walked that way for many moons.

It was a darkly-purple bloomy night. The air was heavy with blossom

fragrance—almost too heavy. The cloyed senses recoiled from it as from

an overfull cup. The birches of the path had grown from the fairy

saplings of old to big trees. Everything had changed. Anne felt that

she would be glad when the summer was over and she was away at work

again. Perhaps life would not seem so empty then.

“‘I’ve tried the world—it wears no more

The coloring of romance it wore,’”

sighed Anne—and was straightway much comforted by the romance in the

idea of the world being denuded of romance!