Chapter VIII: Part 8

“Of course, I don’t know what Miss Lavendar used to look like but I don’t fancy somehow that she has changed a great deal,” said Anne, after she had helped Davy to maple syrup, giving him two spoonfuls to pacify him. “Her hair is snow-white but her face is fresh and almost girlish, and she has the sweetest brown eyes . . . such a pretty shade of wood-brown with little golden glints in them . . . and her voice makes you think of white satin and tinkling water and fairy bells all mixed up together.”

“She was reckoned a great beauty when she was a girl,” said Marilla. “I never knew her very well but I liked her as far as I did know her. Some folks thought her peculiar even then. _Davy_, if ever I catch you at such a trick again you’ll be made to wait for your meals till everyone else is done, like the French.”

Most conversations between Anne and Marilla in the presence of the twins, were punctuated by these rebukes Davy-ward. In this instance, Davy, sad to relate, not being able to scoop up the last drops of his syrup with his spoon, had solved the difficulty by lifting his plate in both hands and applying his small pink tongue to it. Anne looked at him with such horrified eyes that the little sinner turned red and said, half shamefacedly, half defiantly,

“There ain’t any wasted that way.”

“People who are different from other people are always called peculiar,” said Anne. “And Miss Lavendar is certainly different, though it’s hard to say just where the difference comes in. Perhaps it is because she is one of those people who never grow old.”

“One might as well grow old when all your generation do,” said Marilla, rather reckless of her pronouns. “If you don’t, you don’t fit in anywhere. Far as I can learn Lavendar Lewis has just dropped out of everything. She’s lived in that out of the way place until everybody has forgotten her. That stone house is one of the oldest on the Island. Old Mr. Lewis built it eighty years ago when he came out from England. Davy, stop joggling Dora’s elbow. Oh, I saw you! You needn’t try to look innocent. What does make you behave so this morning?”

“Maybe I got out of the wrong side of the bed,” suggested Davy. “Milty Boulter says if you do that things are bound to go wrong with you all day. His grandmother told him. But which _is_ the right side? And what are you to do when your bed’s against the wall? I want to know.”

“I’ve always wondered what went wrong between Stephen Irving and Lavendar Lewis,” continued Marilla, ignoring Davy. “They were certainly engaged twenty-five years ago and then all at once it was broken off. I don’t know what the trouble was but it must have been something terrible, for he went away to the States and never come home since.”

“Perhaps it was nothing very dreadful after all. I think the little things in life often make more trouble than the big things,” said Anne, with one of those flashes of insight which experience could not have bettered. “Marilla, please don’t say anything about my being at Miss Lavendar’s to Mrs. Lynde. She’d be sure to ask a hundred questions and somehow I wouldn’t like it . . . nor Miss Lavendar either if she knew, I feel sure.”

“I daresay Rachel would be curious,” admitted Marilla, “though she hasn’t as much time as she used to have for looking after other people’s affairs. She’s tied home now on account of Thomas; and she’s feeling pretty downhearted, for I think she’s beginning to lose hope of his ever getting better. Rachel will be left pretty lonely if anything happens to him, with all her children settled out west, except Eliza in town; and she doesn’t like her husband.”

Marilla’s pronouns slandered Eliza, who was very fond of her husband.

“Rachel says if he’d only brace up and exert his will power he’d get better. But what is the use of asking a jellyfish to sit up straight?” continued Marilla. “Thomas Lynde never had any will power to exert. His mother ruled him till he married and then Rachel carried it on. It’s a wonder he dared to get sick without asking her permission. But there, I shouldn’t talk so. Rachel has been a good wife to him. He’d never have amounted to anything without her, that’s certain. He was born to be ruled; and it’s well he fell into the hands of a clever, capable manager like Rachel. He didn’t mind her way. It saved him the bother of ever making up his own mind about anything. Davy, do stop squirming like an eel.”

“I’ve nothing else to do,” protested Davy. “I can’t eat any more, and it’s no fun watching you and Anne eat.”

“Well, you and Dora go out and give the hens their wheat,” said Marilla. “And don’t you try to pull any more feathers out of the white rooster’s tail either.”

“I wanted some feathers for an Injun headdress,” said Davy sulkily. “Milty Boulter has a dandy one, made out of the feathers his mother give him when she killed their old white gobbler. You might let me have some. That rooster’s got ever so many more’n he wants.”

“You may have the old feather duster in the garret,” said Anne, “and I’ll dye them green and red and yellow for you.”

“You do spoil that boy dreadfully,” said Marilla, when Davy, with a radiant face, had followed prim Dora out. Marilla’s education had made great strides in the past six years; but she had not yet been able to rid herself of the idea that it was very bad for a child to have too many of its wishes indulged.

“All the boys of his class have Indian headdresses, and Davy wants one too,” said Anne. “_I_ know how it feels . . . I’ll never forget how I used to long for puffed sleeves when all the other girls had them. And Davy isn’t being spoiled. He is improving every day. Think what a difference there is in him since he came here a year ago.”

“He certainly doesn’t get into as much mischief since he began to go to school,” acknowledged Marilla. “I suppose he works off the tendency with the other boys. But it’s a wonder to me we haven’t heard from Richard Keith before this. Never a word since last May.”

“I’ll be afraid to hear from him,” sighed Anne, beginning to clear away the dishes. “If a letter should come I’d dread opening it, for fear it would tell us to send the twins to him.”

A month later a letter did come. But it was not from Richard Keith. A friend of his wrote to say that Richard Keith had died of consumption a fortnight previously. The writer of the letter was the executor of his will and by that will the sum of two thousand dollars was left to Miss Marilla Cuthbert in trust for David and Dora Keith until they came of age or married. In the meantime the interest was to be used for their maintenance.

“It seems dreadful to be glad of anything in connection with a death,” said Anne soberly. “I’m sorry for poor Mr. Keith; but I _am_ glad that we can keep the twins.”

“It’s a very good thing about the money,” said Marilla practically. “I wanted to keep them but I really didn’t see how I could afford to do it, especially when they grew older. The rent of the farm doesn’t do any more than keep the house and I was bound that not a cent of your money should be spent on them. You do far too much for them as it is. Dora didn’t need that new hat you bought her any more than a cat needs two tails. But now the way is made clear and they are provided for.”

Davy and Dora were delighted when they heard that they were to live at Green Gables, “for good.” The death of an uncle whom they had never seen could not weigh a moment in the balance against that. But Dora had one misgiving.

“Was Uncle Richard buried?” she whispered to Anne.

“Yes, dear, of course.”

“He . . . he . . . isn’t like Mirabel Cotton’s uncle, is he?” in a still more agitated whisper. “He won’t walk about houses after being buried, will he, Anne?”

XXIII Miss Lavendar’s Romance

“I think I’ll take a walk through to Echo Lodge this evening,” said Anne, one Friday afternoon in December.

“It looks like snow,” said Marilla dubiously.

“I’ll be there before the snow comes and I mean to stay all night. Diana can’t go because she has company, and I’m sure Miss Lavendar will be looking for me tonight. It’s a whole fortnight since I was there.”

Anne had paid many a visit to Echo Lodge since that October day. Sometimes she and Diana drove around by the road; sometimes they walked through the woods. When Diana could not go Anne went alone. Between her and Miss Lavendar had sprung up one of those fervent, helpful friendships possible only between a woman who has kept the freshness of youth in her heart and soul, and a girl whose imagination and intuition supplied the place of experience. Anne had at last discovered a real “kindred spirit,” while into the little lady’s lonely, sequestered life of dreams Anne and Diana came with the wholesome joy and exhilaration of the outer existence, which Miss Lavendar, “the world forgetting, by the world forgot,” had long ceased to share; they brought an atmosphere of youth and reality to the little stone house. Charlotta the Fourth always greeted them with her very widest smile . . . and Charlotta’s smiles _were_ fearfully wide . . . loving them for the sake of her adored mistress as well as for their own. Never had there been such “high jinks” held in the little stone house as were held there that beautiful, late-lingering autumn, when November seemed October over again, and even December aped the sunshine and hazes of summer.

But on this particular day it seemed as if December had remembered that it was time for winter and had turned suddenly dull and brooding, with a windless hush predictive of coming snow. Nevertheless, Anne keenly enjoyed her walk through the great gray maze of the beechlands; though alone she never found it lonely; her imagination peopled her path with merry companions, and with these she carried on a gay, pretended conversation that was wittier and more fascinating than conversations are apt to be in real life, where people sometimes fail most lamentably to talk up to the requirements. In a “make believe” assembly of choice spirits everybody says just the thing you want her to say and so gives you the chance to say just what _you_ want to say. Attended by this invisible company, Anne traversed the woods and arrived at the fir lane just as broad, feathery flakes began to flutter down softly.

At the first bend she came upon Miss Lavendar, standing under a big, broad-branching fir. She wore a gown of warm, rich red, and her head and shoulders were wrapped in a silvery gray silk shawl.

“You look like the queen of the fir wood fairies,” called Anne merrily.

“I thought you would come tonight, Anne,” said Miss Lavendar, running forward. “And I’m doubly glad, for Charlotta the Fourth is away. Her mother is sick and she had to go home for the night. I should have been very lonely if you hadn’t come . . . even the dreams and the echoes wouldn’t have been enough company. Oh, Anne, how pretty you are,” she added suddenly, looking up at the tall, slim girl with the soft rose-flush of walking on her face. “How pretty and how young! It’s so delightful to be seventeen, isn’t it? I do envy you,” concluded Miss Lavendar candidly.

“But you are only seventeen at heart,” smiled Anne.

“No, I’m old . . . or rather middle-aged, which is far worse,” sighed Miss Lavendar. “Sometimes I can pretend I’m not, but at other times I realize it. And I can’t reconcile myself to it as most women seem to. I’m just as rebellious as I was when I discovered my first gray hair. Now, Anne, don’t look as if you were trying to understand. Seventeen _can’t_ understand. I’m going to pretend right away that I am seventeen too, and I can do it, now that you’re here. You always bring youth in your hand like a gift. We’re going to have a jolly evening. Tea first . . . what do you want for tea? We’ll have whatever you like. Do think of something nice and indigestible.”

There were sounds of riot and mirth in the little stone house that night. What with cooking and feasting and making candy and laughing and “pretending,” it is quite true that Miss Lavendar and Anne comported themselves in a fashion entirely unsuited to the dignity of a spinster of forty-five and a sedate schoolma’am. Then, when they were tired, they sat down on the rug before the grate in the parlor, lighted only by the soft fireshine and perfumed deliciously by Miss Lavendar’s open rose-jar on the mantel. The wind had risen and was sighing and wailing around the eaves and the snow was thudding softly against the windows, as if a hundred storm sprites were tapping for entrance.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Anne,” said Miss Lavendar, nibbling at her candy. “If you weren’t I should be blue . . . very blue . . . almost navy blue. Dreams and make-believes are all very well in the daytime and the sunshine, but when dark and storm come they fail to satisfy. One wants real things then. But you don’t know this . . . seventeen never knows it. At seventeen dreams DO satisfy because you think the realities are waiting for you further on. When I was seventeen, Anne, I didn’t think forty-five would find me a white-haired little old maid with nothing but dreams to fill my life.”

“But you aren’t an old maid,” said Anne, smiling into Miss Lavendar’s wistful woodbrown eyes. “Old maids are _born_ . . . they don’t _become_.”

“Some are born old maids, some achieve old maidenhood, and some have old maidenhood thrust upon them,” parodied Miss Lavendar whimsically.

“You are one of those who have achieved it then,” laughed Anne, “and you’ve done it so beautifully that if every old maid were like you they would come into the fashion, I think.”

“I always like to do things as well as possible,” said Miss Lavendar meditatively, “and since an old maid I had to be I was determined to be a very nice one. People say I’m odd; but it’s just because I follow my own way of being an old maid and refuse to copy the traditional pattern. Anne, did anyone ever tell you anything about Stephen Irving and me?”

“Yes,” said Anne candidly, “I’ve heard that you and he were engaged once.”

“So we were . . . twenty-five years ago . . . a lifetime ago. And we were to have been married the next spring. I had my wedding dress made, although nobody but mother and Stephen ever knew _that_. We’d been engaged in a way almost all our lives, you might say. When Stephen was a little boy his mother would bring him here when she came to see my mother; and the second time he ever came . . . he was nine and I was six . . . he told me out in the garden that he had pretty well made up his mind to marry me when he grew up. I remember that I said ‘Thank you’; and when he was gone I told mother very gravely that there was a great weight off my mind, because I wasn’t frightened any more about having to be an old maid. How poor mother laughed!”

“And what went wrong?” asked Anne breathlessly.

“We had just a stupid, silly, commonplace quarrel. So commonplace that, if you’ll believe me, I don’t even remember just how it began. I hardly know who was the more to blame for it. Stephen did really begin it, but I suppose I provoked him by some foolishness of mine. He had a rival or two, you see. I was vain and coquettish and liked to tease him a little. He was a very high-strung, sensitive fellow. Well, we parted in a temper on both sides. But I thought it would all come right; and it would have if Stephen hadn’t come back too soon. Anne, my dear, I’m sorry to say” . . . Miss Lavendar dropped her voice as if she were about to confess a predilection for murdering people, “that I am a dreadfully sulky person. Oh, you needn’t smile, . . . it’s only too true. I _do_ sulk; and Stephen came back before I had finished sulking. I wouldn’t listen to him and I wouldn’t forgive him; and so he went away for good. He was too proud to come again. And then I sulked because he didn’t come. I might have sent for him perhaps, but I couldn’t humble myself to do that. I was just as proud as he was . . . pride and sulkiness make a very bad combination, Anne. But I could never care for anybody else and I didn’t want to. I knew I would rather be an old maid for a thousand years than marry anybody who wasn’t Stephen Irving. Well, it all seems like a dream now, of course. How sympathetic you look, Anne . . . as sympathetic as only seventeen can look. But don’t overdo it. I’m really a very happy, contented little person in spite of my broken heart. My heart did break, if ever a heart did, when I realized that Stephen Irving was not coming back. But, Anne, a broken heart in real life isn’t half as dreadful as it is in books. It’s a good deal like a bad tooth . . . though you won’t think _that_ a very romantic simile. It takes spells of aching and gives you a sleepless night now and then, but between times it lets you enjoy life and dreams and echoes and peanut candy as if there were nothing the matter with it. And now you’re looking disappointed. You don’t think I’m half as interesting a person as you did five minutes ago when you believed I was always the prey of a tragic memory bravely hidden beneath external smiles. That’s the worst . . . or the best . . . of real life, Anne. It _won’t_ let you be miserable. It keeps on trying to make you comfortable . . . and succeeding...even when you’re determined to be unhappy and romantic. Isn’t this candy scrumptious? I’ve eaten far more than is good for me already but I’m going to keep recklessly on.”

After a little silence Miss Lavendar said abruptly,

“It gave me a shock to hear about Stephen’s son that first day you were here, Anne. I’ve never been able to mention him to you since, but I’ve wanted to know all about him. What sort of a boy is he?”

“He is the dearest, sweetest child I ever knew, Miss Lavendar . . . and he pretends things too, just as you and I do.”

“I’d like to see him,” said Miss Lavendar softly, as if talking to herself. “I wonder if he looks anything like the little dream-boy who lives here with me . . . _my_ little dream-boy.”

“If you would like to see Paul I’ll bring him through with me sometime,” said Anne.

“I _would_ like it . . . but not too soon. I want to get used to the thought. There might be more pain than pleasure in it . . . if he looked too much like Stephen . . . or if he didn’t look enough like him. In a month’s time you may bring him.”

Accordingly, a month later Anne and Paul walked through the woods to the stone house, and met Miss Lavendar in the lane. She had not been expecting them just then and she turned very pale.

“So this is Stephen’s boy,” she said in a low tone, taking Paul’s hand and looking at him as he stood, beautiful and boyish, in his smart little fur coat and cap. “He . . . he is very like his father.”

“Everybody says I’m a chip off the old block,” remarked Paul, quite at his ease.

Anne, who had been watching the little scene, drew a relieved breath. She saw that Miss Lavendar and Paul had “taken” to each other, and that there would be no constraint or stiffness. Miss Lavendar was a very sensible person, in spite of her dreams and romance, and after that first little betrayal she tucked her feelings out of sight and entertained Paul as brightly and naturally as if he were anybody’s son who had come to see her. They all had a jolly afternoon together and such a feast of fat things by way of supper as would have made old Mrs. Irving hold up her hands in horror, believing that Paul’s digestion would be ruined for ever.

“Come again, laddie,” said Miss Lavendar, shaking hands with him at parting.

“You may kiss me if you like,” said Paul gravely.

Miss Lavendar stooped and kissed him.

“How did you know I wanted to?” she whispered.

“Because you looked at me just as my little mother used to do when she wanted to kiss me. As a rule, I don’t like to be kissed. Boys don’t. _You_ know, Miss Lewis. But I think I rather like to have you kiss me. And of course I’ll come to see you again. I think I’d like to have you for a particular friend of mine, if you don’t object.”

“I . . . I don’t think I shall object,” said Miss Lavendar. She turned and went in very quickly; but a moment later she was waving a gay and smiling good-bye to them from the window.

“I like Miss Lavendar,” announced Paul, as they walked through the beech woods. “I like the way she looked at me, and I like her stone house, and I like Charlotta the Fourth. I wish Grandma Irving had a Charlotta the Fourth instead of a Mary Joe. I feel sure Charlotta the Fourth wouldn’t think I was wrong in my upper story when I told her what I think about things. Wasn’t that a splendid tea we had, teacher? Grandma says a boy shouldn’t be thinking about what he gets to eat, but he can’t help it sometimes when he is real hungry. _You_ know, teacher. I don’t think Miss Lavendar would make a boy eat porridge for breakfast if he didn’t like it. She’d get things for him he did like. But of course” . . . Paul was nothing if not fair-minded . . . “that mightn’t be very good for him. It’s very nice for a change though, teacher. _You_ know.”

XXIV A Prophet in His Own Country

One May day Avonlea folks were mildly excited over some “Avonlea Notes,” signed “Observer,” which appeared in the Charlottetown _Daily Enterprise_. Gossip ascribed the authorship thereof to Charlie Sloane, partly because the said Charlie had indulged in similar literary flights in times past, and partly because one of the notes seemed to embody a sneer at Gilbert Blythe. Avonlea juvenile society persisted in regarding Gilbert Blythe and Charlie Sloane as rivals in the good graces of a certain damsel with gray eyes and an imagination.

Gossip, as usual, was wrong. Gilbert Blythe, aided and abetted by Anne, had written the notes, putting in the one about himself as a blind. Only two of the notes have any bearing on this history:

“Rumor has it that there will be a wedding in our village ere the daisies are in bloom. A new and highly respected citizen will lead to the hymeneal altar one of our most popular ladies.

“Uncle Abe, our well-known weather prophet, predicts a violent storm of thunder and lightning for the evening of the twenty-third of May, beginning at seven o’clock sharp. The area of the storm will extend over the greater part of the Province. People traveling that evening will do well to take umbrellas and mackintoshes with them.”

“Uncle Abe really has predicted a storm for sometime this spring,” said Gilbert, “but do you suppose Mr. Harrison really does go to see Isabella Andrews?”

“No,” said Anne, laughing, “I’m sure he only goes to play checkers with Mr. Harrison Andrews, but Mrs. Lynde says she knows Isabella Andrews must be going to get married, she’s in such good spirits this spring.”

Poor old Uncle Abe felt rather indignant over the notes. He suspected that “Observer” was making fun of him. He angrily denied having assigned any particular date for his storm but nobody believed him.

Life in Avonlea continued on the smooth and even tenor of its way. The “planting” was put in; the Improvers celebrated an Arbor Day. Each Improver set out, or caused to be set out, five ornamental trees. As the society now numbered forty members, this meant a total of two hundred young trees. Early oats greened over the red fields; apple orchards flung great blossoming arms about the farmhouses and the Snow Queen adorned itself as a bride for her husband. Anne liked to sleep with her window open and let the cherry fragrance blow over her face all night. She thought it very poetical. Marilla thought she was risking her life.

“Thanksgiving should be celebrated in the spring,” said Anne one evening to Marilla, as they sat on the front door steps and listened to the silver-sweet chorus of the frogs. “I think it would be ever so much better than having it in November when everything is dead or asleep. Then you have to remember to be thankful; but in May one simply can’t help being thankful . . . that they are alive, if for nothing else. I feel exactly as Eve must have felt in the garden of Eden before the trouble began. _Is_ that grass in the hollow green or golden? It seems to me, Marilla, that a pearl of a day like this, when the blossoms are out and the winds don’t know where to blow from next for sheer crazy delight must be pretty near as good as heaven.”

Marilla looked scandalized and glanced apprehensively around to make sure the twins were not within earshot. They came around the corner of the house just then.

“Ain’t it an awful nice-smelling evening?” asked Davy, sniffing delightedly as he swung a hoe in his grimy hands. He had been working in his garden. That spring Marilla, by way of turning Davy’s passion for reveling in mud and clay into useful channels, had given him and Dora a small plot of ground for a garden. Both had eagerly gone to work in a characteristic fashion. Dora planted, weeded, and watered carefully, systematically, and dispassionately. As a result, her plot was already green with prim, orderly little rows of vegetables and annuals. Davy, however, worked with more zeal than discretion; he dug and hoed and raked and watered and transplanted so energetically that his seeds had no chance for their lives.

“How is your garden coming on, Davy-boy?” asked Anne.

“Kind of slow,” said Davy with a sigh. “I don’t know why the things don’t grow better. Milty Boulter says I must have planted them in the dark of the moon and that’s the whole trouble. He says you must never sow seeds or kill pork or cut your hair or do any ‘portant thing in the wrong time of the moon. Is that true, Anne? I want to know.”

“Maybe if you didn’t pull your plants up by the roots every other day to see how they’re getting on ‘at the other end,’ they’d do better,” said Marilla sarcastically.

“I only pulled six of them up,” protested Davy. “I wanted to see if there was grubs at the roots. Milty Boulter said if it wasn’t the moon’s fault it must be grubs. But I only found one grub. He was a great big juicy curly grub. I put him on a stone and got another stone and smashed him flat. He made a jolly sqush I tell you. I was sorry there wasn’t more of them. Dora’s garden was planted same time’s mine and her things are growing all right. It _can’t_ be the moon,” Davy concluded in a reflective tone.

“Marilla, look at that apple tree,” said Anne. “Why, the thing is human. It is reaching out long arms to pick its own pink skirts daintily up and provoke us to admiration.”

“Those Yellow Duchess trees always bear well,” said Marilla complacently. “That tree’ll be loaded this year. I’m real glad. . . they’re great for pies.”

But neither Marilla nor Anne nor anybody else was fated to make pies out of Yellow Duchess apples that year.

The twenty-third of May came . . . an unseasonably warm day, as none realized more keenly than Anne and her little beehive of pupils, sweltering over fractions and syntax in the Avonlea schoolroom. A hot breeze blew all the forenoon; but after noon hour it died away into a heavy stillness. At half past three Anne heard a low rumble of thunder. She promptly dismissed school at once, so that the children might get home before the storm came.

As they went out to the playground Anne perceived a certain shadow and gloom over the world in spite of the fact that the sun was still shining brightly. Annetta Bell caught her hand nervously.

“Oh, teacher, look at that awful cloud!”

Anne looked and gave an exclamation of dismay. In the northwest a mass of cloud, such as she had never in all her life beheld before, was rapidly rolling up. It was dead black, save where its curled and fringed edges showed a ghastly, livid white. There was something about it indescribably menacing as it gloomed up in the clear blue sky; now and again a bolt of lightning shot across it, followed by a savage growl. It hung so low that it almost seemed to be touching the tops of the wooded hills.

Mr. Harmon Andrews came clattering up the hill in his truck wagon, urging his team of grays to their utmost speed. He pulled them to a halt opposite the school.

“Guess Uncle Abe’s hit it for once in his life, Anne,” he shouted. “His storm’s coming a leetle ahead of time. Did ye ever see the like of that cloud? Here, all you young ones, that are going my way, pile in, and those that ain’t scoot for the post office if ye’ve more’n a quarter of a mile to go, and stay there till the shower’s over.”

Anne caught Davy and Dora by the hands and flew down the hill, along the Birch Path, and past Violet Vale and Willowmere, as fast as the twins’ fat legs could go. They reached Green Gables not a moment too soon and were joined at the door by Marilla, who had been hustling her ducks and chickens under shelter. As they dashed into the kitchen the light seemed to vanish, as if blown out by some mighty breath; the awful cloud rolled over the sun and a darkness as of late twilight fell across the world. At the same moment, with a crash of thunder and a blinding glare of lightning, the hail swooped down and blotted the landscape out in one white fury.

Through all the clamor of the storm came the thud of torn branches striking the house and the sharp crack of breaking glass. In three minutes every pane in the west and north windows was broken and the hail poured in through the apertures covering the floor with stones, the smallest of which was as big as a hen’s egg. For three quarters of an hour the storm raged unabated and no one who underwent it ever forgot it. Marilla, for once in her life shaken out of her composure by sheer terror, knelt by her rocking chair in a corner of the kitchen, gasping and sobbing between the deafening thunder peals. Anne, white as paper, had dragged the sofa away from the window and sat on it with a twin on either side. Davy at the first crash had howled, “Anne, Anne, is it the Judgment Day? Anne, Anne, I never _meant_ to be naughty,” and then had buried his face in Anne’s lap and kept it there, his little body quivering. Dora, somewhat pale but quite composed, sat with her hand clasped in Anne’s, quiet and motionless. It is doubtful if an earthquake would have disturbed Dora.

Then, almost as suddenly as it began, the storm ceased. The hail stopped, the thunder rolled and muttered away to the eastward, and the sun burst out merry and radiant over a world so changed that it seemed an absurd thing to think that a scant three quarters of an hour could have effected such a transformation.

Marilla rose from her knees, weak and trembling, and dropped on her rocker. Her face was haggard and she looked ten years older.

“Have we all come out of that alive?” she asked solemnly.

“You bet we have,” piped Davy cheerfully, quite his own man again. “I wasn’t a bit scared either . . . only just at the first. It come on a fellow so sudden. I made up my mind quick as a wink that I wouldn’t fight Teddy Sloane Monday as I’d promised; but now maybe I will. Say, Dora, was you scared?”

“Yes, I was a little scared,” said Dora primly, “but I held tight to Anne’s hand and said my prayers over and over again.”

“Well, I’d have said my prayers too if I’d have thought of it,” said Davy; “but,” he added triumphantly, “you see I came through just as safe as you for all I didn’t say them.”

Anne got Marilla a glassful of her potent currant wine . . . _how_ potent it was Anne, in her earlier days, had had all too good reason to know . . . and then they went to the door to look out on the strange scene.

Far and wide was a white carpet, knee deep, of hailstones; drifts of them were heaped up under the eaves and on the steps. When, three or four days later, those hailstones melted, the havoc they had wrought was plainly seen, for every green growing thing in the field or garden was cut off. Not only was every blossom stripped from the apple trees but great boughs and branches were wrenched away. And out of the two hundred trees set out by the Improvers by far the greater number were snapped off or torn to shreds.

“Can it possibly be the same world it was an hour ago?” asked Anne, dazedly. “It _must_ have taken longer than that to play such havoc.”

“The like of this has never been known in Prince Edward Island,” said Marilla, “never. I remember when I was a girl there was a bad storm, but it was nothing to this. We’ll hear of terrible destruction, you may be sure.”

“I do hope none of the children were caught out in it,” murmured Anne anxiously. As it was discovered later, none of the children had been, since all those who had any distance to go had taken Mr. Andrews’ excellent advice and sought refuge at the post office.

“There comes John Henry Carter,” said Marilla.

John Henry came wading through the hailstones with a rather scared grin.

“Oh, ain’t this awful, Miss Cuthbert? Mr. Harrison sent me over to see if yous had come out all right.”

“We’re none of us killed,” said Marilla grimly, “and none of the buildings was struck. I hope you got off equally well.”

“Yas’m. Not quite so well, ma’am. We was struck. The lightning knocked over the kitchen chimbly and come down the flue and knocked over Ginger’s cage and tore a hole in the floor and went into the sullar. Yas’m.”

“Was Ginger hurt?” queried Anne.

“Yas’m. He was hurt pretty bad. He was killed.” Later on Anne went over to comfort Mr. Harrison. She found him sitting by the table, stroking Ginger’s gay dead body with a trembling hand.

“Poor Ginger won’t call you any more names, Anne,” he said mournfully.

Anne could never have imagined herself crying on Ginger’s account, but the tears came into her eyes.

“He was all the company I had, Anne . . . and now he’s dead. Well, well, I’m an old fool to care so much. I’ll let on I don’t care. I know you’re going to say something sympathetic as soon as I stop talking . . . but don’t. If you did I’d cry like a baby. Hasn’t this been a terrible storm? I guess folks won’t laugh at Uncle Abe’s predictions again. Seems as if all the storms that he’s been prophesying all his life that never happened came all at once. Beats all how he struck the very day though, don’t it? Look at the mess we have here. I must hustle round and get some boards to patch up that hole in the floor.”

Avonlea folks did nothing the next day but visit each other and compare damages. The roads were impassable for wheels by reason of the hailstones, so they walked or rode on horseback. The mail came late with ill tidings from all over the province. Houses had been struck, people killed and injured; the whole telephone and telegraph system had been disorganized, and any number of young stock exposed in the fields had perished.

Uncle Abe waded out to the blacksmith’s forge early in the morning and spent the whole day there. It was Uncle Abe’s hour of triumph and he enjoyed it to the full. It would be doing Uncle Abe an injustice to say that he was glad the storm had happened; but since it had to be he was very glad he had predicted it . . . to the very day, too. Uncle Abe forgot that he had ever denied setting the day. As for the trifling discrepancy in the hour, that was nothing.

Gilbert arrived at Green Gables in the evening and found Marilla and Anne busily engaged in nailing strips of oilcloth over the broken windows.

“Goodness only knows when we’ll get glass for them,” said Marilla. “Mr. Barry went over to Carmody this afternoon but not a pane could he get for love or money. Lawson and Blair were cleaned out by the Carmody people by ten o’clock. Was the storm bad at White Sands, Gilbert?”

“I should say so. I was caught in the school with all the children and I thought some of them would go mad with fright. Three of them fainted, and two girls took hysterics, and Tommy Blewett did nothing but shriek at the top of his voice the whole time.”

“I only squealed once,” said Davy proudly. “My garden was all smashed flat,” he continued mournfully, “but so was Dora’s,” he added in a tone which indicated that there was yet balm in Gilead.

Anne came running down from the west gable.

“Oh, Gilbert, have you heard the news? Mr. Levi Boulter’s old house was struck and burned to the ground. It seems to me that I’m dreadfully wicked to feel glad over _that_, when so much damage has been done. Mr. Boulter says he believes the A.V.I.S. magicked up that storm on purpose.”

“Well, one thing is certain,” said Gilbert, laughing, “‘Observer’ has made Uncle Abe’s reputation as a weather prophet. ‘Uncle Abe’s storm’ will go down in local history. It is a most extraordinary coincidence that it should have come on the very day we selected. I actually have a half guilty feeling, as if I really had ‘magicked’ it up. We may as well rejoice over the old house being removed, for there’s not much to rejoice over where our young trees are concerned. Not ten of them have escaped.”

“Ah, well, we’ll just have to plant them over again next spring,” said Anne philosophically. “That is one good thing about this world . . . there are always sure to be more springs.”

XXV An Avonlea Scandal

One blithe June morning, a fortnight after Uncle Abe’s storm, Anne came slowly through the Green Gables yard from the garden, carrying in her hands two blighted stalks of white narcissus.

“Look, Marilla,” she said sorrowfully, holding up the flowers before the eyes of a grim lady, with her hair coifed in a green gingham apron, who was going into the house with a plucked chicken, “these are the only buds the storm spared . . . and even they are imperfect. I’m so sorry . . . I wanted some for Matthew’s grave. He was always so fond of June lilies.”

“I kind of miss them myself,” admitted Marilla, “though it doesn’t seem right to lament over them when so many worse things have happened. . . all the crops destroyed as well as the fruit.”

“But people have sown their oats over again,” said Anne comfortingly, “and Mr. Harrison says he thinks if we have a good summer they will come out all right though late. And my annuals are all coming up again . . . but oh, nothing can replace the June lilies. Poor little Hester Gray will have none either. I went all the way back to her garden last night but there wasn’t one. I’m sure she’ll miss them.”

“I don’t think it’s right for you to say such things, Anne, I really don’t,” said Marilla severely. “Hester Gray has been dead for thirty years and her spirit is in heaven . . . I hope.”

“Yes, but I believe she loves and remembers her garden here still,” said Anne. “I’m sure no matter how long I’d lived in heaven I’d like to look down and see somebody putting flowers on my grave. If I had had a garden here like Hester Gray’s it would take me more than thirty years, even in heaven, to forget being homesick for it by spells.”

“Well, don’t let the twins hear you talking like that,” was Marilla’s feeble protest, as she carried her chicken into the house.

Anne pinned her narcissi on her hair and went to the lane gate, where she stood for awhile sunning herself in the June brightness before going in to attend to her Saturday morning duties. The world was growing lovely again; old Mother Nature was doing her best to remove the traces of the storm, and, though she was not to succeed fully for many a moon, she was really accomplishing wonders.

“I wish I could just be idle all day today,” Anne told a bluebird, who was singing and swinging on a willow bough, “but a schoolma’am, who is also helping to bring up twins, can’t indulge in laziness, birdie. How sweet you are singing, little bird. You are just putting the feelings of my heart into song ever so much better than I could myself. Why, who is coming?”

An express wagon was jolting up the lane, with two people on the front seat and a big trunk behind. When it drew near Anne recognized the driver as the son of the station agent at Bright River; but his companion was a stranger . . . a scrap of a woman who sprang nimbly down at the gate almost before the horse came to a standstill. She was a very pretty little person, evidently nearer fifty than forty, but with rosy cheeks, sparkling black eyes, and shining black hair, surmounted by a wonderful beflowered and beplumed bonnet. In spite of having driven eight miles over a dusty road she was as neat as if she had just stepped out of the proverbial bandbox.

“Is this where Mr. James A. Harrison lives?” she inquired briskly.

“No, Mr. Harrison lives over there,” said Anne, quite lost in astonishment.

“Well, I _did_ think this place seemed too tidy . . . _much_ too tidy for James A. to be living here, unless he has greatly changed since I knew him,” chirped the little lady. “Is it true that James A. is going to be married to some woman living in this settlement?”

“No, oh no,” cried Anne, flushing so guiltily that the stranger looked curiously at her, as if she half suspected her of matrimonial designs on Mr. Harrison.

“But I saw it in an Island paper,” persisted the Fair Unknown. “A friend sent a marked copy to me . . . friends are always so ready to do such things. James A.‘s name was written in over ‘new citizen.’”

“Oh, that note was only meant as a joke,” gasped Anne. “Mr. Harrison has no intention of marrying _anybody_. I assure you he hasn’t.”

“I’m very glad to hear it,” said the rosy lady, climbing nimbly back to her seat in the wagon, “because he happens to be married already. _I_ am his wife. Oh, you may well look surprised. I suppose he has been masquerading as a bachelor and breaking hearts right and left. Well, well, James A.,” nodding vigorously over the fields at the long white house, “your fun is over. I am here . . . though I wouldn’t have bothered coming if I hadn’t thought you were up to some mischief. I suppose,” turning to Anne, “that parrot of his is as profane as ever?”

“His parrot . . . is dead . . . I _think_,” gasped poor Anne, who couldn’t have felt sure of her own name at that precise moment.

“Dead! Everything will be all right then,” cried the rosy lady jubilantly. “I can manage James A. if that bird is out of the way.”

With which cryptic utterance she went joyfully on her way and Anne flew to the kitchen door to meet Marilla.

“Anne, who was that woman?”

“Marilla,” said Anne solemnly, but with dancing eyes, “do I look as if I were crazy?”

“Not more so than usual,” said Marilla, with no thought of being sarcastic.

“Well then, do you think I am awake?”

“Anne, what nonsense has got into you? Who was that woman, I say?”

“Marilla, if I’m not crazy and not asleep she can’t be such stuff as dreams are made of . . . she must be real. Anyway, I’m sure I couldn’t have imagined such a bonnet. She says she is Mr. Harrison’s wife, Marilla.”

Marilla stared in her turn.

“His wife! Anne Shirley! Then what has he been passing himself off as an unmarried man for?”

“I don’t suppose he did, really,” said Anne, trying to be just. “He never said he wasn’t married. People simply took it for granted. Oh Marilla, what will Mrs. Lynde say to this?”

They found out what Mrs. Lynde had to say when she came up that evening. Mrs. Lynde wasn’t surprised! Mrs. Lynde had always expected something of the sort! Mrs. Lynde had always known there was _something_ about Mr. Harrison!

“To think of his deserting his wife!” she said indignantly. “It’s like something you’d read of in the States, but who would expect such a thing to happen right here in Avonlea?”

“But we don’t know that he deserted her,” protested Anne, determined to believe her friend innocent till he was proved guilty. “We don’t know the rights of it at all.”

“Well, we soon will. I’m going straight over there,” said Mrs. Lynde, who had never learned that there was such a word as delicacy in the dictionary. “I’m not supposed to know anything about her arrival, and Mr. Harrison was to bring some medicine for Thomas from Carmody today, so that will be a good excuse. I’ll find out the whole story and come in and tell you on the way back.”

Mrs. Lynde rushed in where Anne had feared to tread. Nothing would have induced the latter to go over to the Harrison place; but she had her natural and proper share of curiosity and she felt secretly glad that Mrs. Lynde was going to solve the mystery. She and Marilla waited expectantly for that good lady’s return, but waited in vain. Mrs. Lynde did not revisit Green Gables that night. Davy, arriving home at nine o’clock from the Boulter place, explained why.

“I met Mrs. Lynde and some strange woman in the Hollow,” he said, “and gracious, how they were talking both at once! Mrs. Lynde said to tell you she was sorry it was too late to call tonight. Anne, I’m awful hungry. We had tea at Milty’s at four and I think Mrs. Boulter is real mean. She didn’t give us any preserves or cake . . . and even the bread was skurce.”

“Davy, when you go visiting you must never criticize anything you are given to eat,” said Anne solemnly. “It is very bad manners.”

“All right . . . I’ll only think it,” said Davy cheerfully. “Do give a fellow some supper, Anne.”

Anne looked at Marilla, who followed her into the pantry and shut the door cautiously.

“You can give him some jam on his bread, I know what tea at Levi Boulter’s is apt to be.”

Davy took his slice of bread and jam with a sigh.

“It’s a kind of disappointing world after all,” he remarked. “Milty has a cat that takes fits . . . she’s took a fit regular every day for three weeks. Milty says it’s awful fun to watch her. I went down today on purpose to see her have one but the mean old thing wouldn’t take a fit and just kept healthy as healthy, though Milty and me hung round all the afternoon and waited. But never mind” . . . Davy brightened up as the insidious comfort of the plum jam stole into his soul . . . “maybe I’ll see her in one sometime yet. It doesn’t seem likely she’d stop having them all at once when she’s been so in the habit of it, does it? This jam is awful nice.”

Davy had no sorrows that plum jam could not cure.

Sunday proved so rainy that there was no stirring abroad; but by Monday everybody had heard some version of the Harrison story. The school buzzed with it and Davy came home, full of information.

“Marilla, Mr. Harrison has a new wife . . . well, not ezackly new, but they’ve stopped being married for quite a spell, Milty says. I always s’posed people had to keep on being married once they’d begun, but Milty says no, there’s ways of stopping if you can’t agree. Milty says one way is just to start off and leave your wife, and that’s what Mr. Harrison did. Milty says Mr. Harrison left his wife because she throwed things at him . . . _hard_ things . . . and Arty Sloane says it was because she wouldn’t let him smoke, and Ned Clay says it was ’cause she never let up scolding him. I wouldn’t leave MY wife for anything like that. I’d just put my foot down and say, ‘Mrs. Davy, you’ve just got to do what’ll please _me_ ’cause I’m a _man_.’ _That’d_ settle her pretty quick I guess. But Annetta Clay says _she_ left _him_ because he wouldn’t scrape his boots at the door and she doesn’t blame her. I’m going right over to Mr. Harrison’s this minute to see what she’s like.”

Davy soon returned, somewhat cast down.

“Mrs. Harrison was away . . . she’s gone to Carmody with Mrs. Rachel Lynde to get new paper for the parlor. And Mr. Harrison said to tell Anne to go over and see him ’cause he wants to have a talk with her. And say, the floor is scrubbed, and Mr. Harrison is shaved, though there wasn’t any preaching yesterday.”

The Harrison kitchen wore a very unfamiliar look to Anne. The floor was indeed scrubbed to a wonderful pitch of purity and so was every article of furniture in the room; the stove was polished until she could see her face in it; the walls were whitewashed and the window panes sparkled in the sunlight. By the table sat Mr. Harrison in his working clothes, which on Friday had been noted for sundry rents and tatters but which were now neatly patched and brushed. He was sprucely shaved and what little hair he had was carefully trimmed.

“Sit down, Anne, sit down,” said Mr. Harrison in a tone but two degrees removed from that which Avonlea people used at funerals. “Emily’s gone over to Carmody with Rachel Lynde . . . she’s struck up a lifelong friendship already with Rachel Lynde. Beats all how contrary women are. Well, Anne, my easy times are over . . . all over. It’s neatness and tidiness for me for the rest of my natural life, I suppose.”