Anne of the Island, Lucy Maud Montgomery [short story to read TXT] 📗

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 goodhearted,” said Anne