Anne of the Island, Lucy Maud Montgomery [short story to read TXT] 📗
- Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
- Performer: 0553213172
Book online «Anne of the Island, Lucy Maud Montgomery [short story to read TXT] 📗». Author Lucy Maud Montgomery
Anne wondered why Gilbert should have sent her flowers for Convocation. She had seen very little of him during the past winter. He had come to Patty’s Place only one Friday evening since the Christmas holidays, and they rarely met elsewhere. She knew he was studying very hard, aiming at High Honors and the Cooper Prize, and he took little part in the social doings of Redmond. Anne’s own winter had been quite gay socially. She had seen a good deal of the Gardners; she and Dorothy were very intimate; college circles expected the announcement of her engagement to Roy any day. Anne expected it herself. Yet just before she left Patty’s Place for Convocation she flung Roy’s violets aside and put Gilbert’s lilies-of-the-valley in their place. She could not have told why she did it. Somehow, old Avonlea days and dreams and friendships seemed very close to her in this attainment of her long-cherished ambitions. She and Gilbert had once picturedout merrily the day on which they should be capped and gowned graduates in Arts. The wonderful day had come and Roy’s violets had no place in it. Only her old friend’s flowers seemed to belong to this fruition of old-blossoming hopes which he had once shared.
For years this day had beckoned and allured to her; but when it came the one single, keen, abiding memory it left with her was not that of the breathless moment when the stately president of Redmond gave her cap and diploma and hailed her B.A.; it was not of the flash in Gilbert’s eyes when he saw her lilies, nor the puzzled pained glance Roy gave her as he passed her on the platform. It was not of Aline Gardner’s condescending congratulations, or Dorothy’s ardent, impulsive good wishes. It was of one strange, unaccountable pang that spoiled this long-expected day for her and left in it a certain faint but enduring flavor of bitterness.
The Arts graduates gave a graduation dance that night. When Anne dressed for it she tossed aside the pearl beads she usually wore and took from her trunk the small box that had come to Green Gables on Christmas day. In it was a thread-like gold chain with a tiny pink enamel heart as a pendant. On the accompanying card was written, “With all good wishes from your old chum, Gilbert.” Anne, laughing over the memory the enamel heart conjured up the fatal day when Gilbert had called her “Carrots” and vainly tried to make his peace with a pink candy heart, had written him a nice little note of thanks. But she had never worn the trinket. Tonight she fastened it about her white throat with a dreamy smile.
She and Phil walked to Redmond together. Anne walked in silence; Phil chattered of many things. Suddenly she said,
“I heard today that Gilbert Blythe’s engagement to Christine Stuart was to be announced as soon as Convocation was over. Did you hear anything of it?”
“No,” said Anne.
“I think it’s true,” said Phil lightly.
Anne did not speak. In the darkness she felt her face burning. She slipped her hand inside her collar and caught at the gold chain. One energetic twist and it gave way. Anne thrust the broken trinket into her pocket. Her hands were trembling and her eyes were smarting.
But she was the gayest of all the gay revellers that night, and told Gilbert unregretfully that her card was full when he came to ask her for a dance. Afterwards, when she sat with the girls before the dying embers at Patty’s Place, removing the spring chilliness from their satin skins, none chatted more blithely than she of the day’s events.
“Moody Spurgeon MacPherson called here tonight after you left,” said Aunt Jamesina, who had sat up to keep the fire on. “He didn’t know about the graduation dance. That boy ought to sleep with a rubber band around his head to train his ears not to stick out. I had a beau once who did that and it improved him immensely. It was I who suggested it to him and he took my advice, but he never forgave me for it.”
“Moody Spurgeon is a very serious young man,” yawned Priscilla. “He is concerned with graver matters than his ears. He is going to be a minister, you know.”
“Well, I suppose the Lord doesn’t regard the ears of a man,” said Aunt Jamesina gravely, dropping all further criticism of Moody Spurgeon. Aunt Jamesina had a proper respect for the cloth even in the case of an unfledged parson.
“Just imagine — this night week I’ll be in Avonlea — delightful thought!” said Anne, bending over the box in which she was packing Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s quilts. “But just imagine — this night week I’ll be gone forever from Patty’s Place — horrible thought!”
“I wonder if the ghost of all our laughter will echo through the maiden dreams of Miss Patty and Miss Maria,” speculated Phil.
Miss Patty and Miss Maria were coming home, after having trotted over most of the habitable globe.
“We’ll be back the second week in May” wrote Miss Patty. “I expect Patty’s Place will seem rather small after the Hall of the Kings at Karnak, but I never did like big places to live in. And I’ll be glad enough to be home again. When you start traveling late in life you’re apt to do too much of it because you know you haven’t much time left, and it’s a thing that grows on you. I’m afraid Maria will never be contented again.”
“I shall leave here my fancies and dreams to bless the next comer,” said Anne, looking around the blue room wistfully — her pretty blue room where she had spent three such happy years. She had knelt at its window to pray and had bent from it to watch the sunset behind the pines. She had heard the autumn raindrops beating against it and had welcomed the spring robins at its sill. She wondered if old dreams could haunt rooms — if, when one left forever the room where she had joyed and suffered and laughed and wept, something of her, intangible and invisible, yet nonetheless real, did not remain behind like a voiceful memory.
“I think,” said Phil, “that a room where one dreams and grieves and rejoices and lives becomes inseparably connected with those processes and acquires a personality of its own. I am sure if I came into this room fifty years from now it would say ‘Anne, Anne’ to me. What nice times we’ve had here, honey! What chats and jokes and good chummy jamborees! Oh, dear me! I’m to marry Jo in June and I know I will be rapturously happy. But just now I feel as if I wanted this lovely Redmond life to go on forever.”
“I’m unreasonable enough just now to wish that, too,” admitted Anne. “No matter what deeper joys may come to us later on we’ll never again have just the same delightful, irresponsible existence we’ve had here. It’s over forever, Phil.”
“What are you going to do with Rusty?” asked Phil, as that privileged pussy padded into the room.
“I am going to take him home with me and Joseph and the Sarah-cat,” announced Aunt Jamesina, following Rusty. “It would be a shame to separate those cats now that they have learned to live together. It’s a hard lesson for cats and humans to learn.”
“I’m sorry to part with Rusty,” said Anne regretfully, “but it would be no use to take him to Green Gables. Marilla detests cats, and Davy would tease his life out. Besides, I don’t suppose I’ll be home very long. I’ve been offered the principalship of the Summerside High School.”
“Are you going to accept it?” asked Phil.
“I — I haven’t decided yet,” answered Anne, with a confused flush.
Phil nodded understandingly. Naturally Anne’s plans could not be settled until Roy had spoken. He would soon — there was no doubt of that. And there was no doubt that Anne would say “yes” when he said “Will you please?” Anne herself regarded the state of affairs with a seldom-ruffled complacency. She was deeply in love with Roy. True, it was not just what she had imagined love to be. But was anything in life, Anne asked herself wearily, like one’s imagination of it? It was the old diamond disillusion of childhood repeated — the same disappointment she had felt when she had first seen the chill sparkle instead of the purple splendor she had anticipated. “That’s not my idea of a diamond,” she had said. But Roy was a dear fellow and they would be very happy together, even if some indefinable zest was missing out of life. When Roy came down that evening and asked Anne to walk in the park every one at Patty’s Place knew what he had come to say; and every one knew, or thought they knew, what Anne’s answer would be.
“Anne is a very fortunate girl,” said Aunt Jamesina.
“I suppose so,” said Stella, shrugging her shoulders. “Roy is a nice fellow and all that. But there’s really nothing in him.”
“That sounds very like a jealous remark, Stella Maynard,” said Aunt Jamesina rebukingly.
“It does — but I am not jealous,” said Stella calmly. “I love Anne and I like Roy. Everybody says she is making a brilliant match, and even Mrs. Gardner thinks her charming now. It all sounds as if it were made in heaven, but I have my doubts. Make the most of that, Aunt Jamesina.”
Roy asked Anne to marry him in the little pavilion on the harbor shore where they had talked on the rainy day of their first meeting. Anne thought it very romantic that he should have chosen that spot. And his proposal was as beautifully worded as if he had copied it, as one of Ruby Gillis’ lovers had done, out of a Deportment of Courtship and Marriage. The whole effect was quite flawless. And it was also sincere. There was no doubt that Roy meant what he said. There was no false note to jar the symphony. Anne felt that she ought to be thrilling from head to foot. But she wasn’t; she was horribly cool. When Roy paused for his answer she opened her lips to say her fateful yes. And then — she found herself trembling as if she were reeling back from a precipice. To her came one of those moments when we realize, as by a blinding flash of illumination, more than all our previous years have taught us. She pulled her hand from Roy’s.
“Oh, I can’t marry you — I can’t — I can’t,” she cried, wildly.
Roy turned pale — and also looked rather foolish. He had — small blame to him — felt very sure.
“What do you mean?” he stammered.
“I mean that I can’t marry you,” repeated Anne desperately. “I thought I could — but I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?” Roy asked more calmly.
“Because — I don’t care enough for you.”
A crimson streak came into Roy’s face.
“So you’ve just been amusing yourself these two years?” he said slowly.
“No, no, I haven’t,” gasped poor Anne. Oh, how could she explain? She COULDN’T explain. There are some things that cannot be explained. “I did think I cared — truly I did — but I know now I don’t.”
“You have ruined my life,” said Roy bitterly.
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