“What was its meaning?”
“Oh . . . why . . . why . . . soaring, you know . . . getting away from the clods of earth. Did you notice Vera’s ring? A sapphire. I think sapphires are too dark for engagement rings. I’d rather have your dear, romantic little hoop of pearls. Terry wanted to give me my ring right away . . . but I said not yet a while . . . it would seem like a fetter . . . so irrevocable, you know. I wouldn’t have felt like that if I’d really loved him, would I?”
“No, I’m afraid not . . .”
“It’s been so wonderful to tell somebody what I really feel like. Oh, Miss Shirley, if I could only find myself free again . . . free to seek the deeper meaning of life! Terry wouldn’t understand what I meant if I said that to him. And I know he has a temper . . . all the Garlands have. Oh, Miss Shirley . . . if you would just talk to him . . . tell him what I feel like . . . he thinks you’re wonderful . . . he’d be guided by what you say.”
“Hazel, my dear little girl, how could I do that?”
“I don’t see why not.” Hazel finished the last new moon and laid the orangewood stick down tragically. “If you can’t, there isn’t any help anywhere. But I can never, never, NEVER marry Terry Garland.”
“If you don’t love Terry, you ought to go to him and tell him so . . . no matter how badly it will make him feel. Some day you’ll meet some one you can really love, Hazel dear . . . you won’t have any doubts then . . . you’ll know.”
“I shall never love anybody again,” said Hazel, stonily calm. “Love brings only sorrow. Young as I am I have learned that. This would make a wonderful plot for one of your stories, wouldn’t it, Miss Shirley? I must be going . . . I’d no idea it was so late. I feel so much better since I’ve confided in you . . . ‘touched your soul in shadowland,’ as Shakespeare says.”
“I think it was Pauline Johnson,” said Anne gently.
“Well, I knew it was somebody . . . somebody who had lived. I think I shall sleep tonight, Miss Shirley. I’ve hardly slept since I found myself engaged to Terry, without the least notion how it had all come about.”
Hazel fluffed out her hair and put on her hat, a hat with a rosy lining to its brim and rosy blossoms around it. She looked so distractingly pretty in it that Anne kissed her impulsively. “You’re the prettiest thing, darling,” she said admiringly.
Hazel stood very still.
Then she lifted her eyes and stared clear through the ceiling of the tower room, clear through the attic above it, and sought the stars.
“I shall never, never forget this wonderful moment, Miss Shirley,” she murmured rapturously. “I feel that my beauty . . . if I have any . . . has been consecrated. Oh, Miss Shirley, you don’t know how really terrible it is to have a reputation for beauty and to be always afraid that when people meet you they will not think you as pretty as you were reported to be. It’s torture. Sometimes I just die of mortification because I fancy I can see they’re disappointed. Perhaps it’s only my imagination . . . I’m so imaginative . . . too much so for my own good, I fear. I imagined I was in love with Terry, you see. Oh, Miss Shirley, can you smell the apple-blossom fragrance?”
Having a nose, Anne could.
“Isn’t it just divine? I hope heaven will be all flowers. One could be good if one lived in a lily, couldn’t one?”
“I’m afraid it might be a little confining,” said Anne perversely.
“Oh, Miss Shirley, don’t . . . don’t be sarcastic with your little adorer. Sarcasm just shrivels me up like a leaf.”
“I see she hasn’t talked you quite to death,” said Rebecca Dew, when Anne had come back after seeing Hazel to the end of Spook’s Lane. “I don’t see how you put up with her.”
“I like her, Rebecca, I really do. I was a dreadful little chatterbox when I was a child. I wonder if I sounded as silly to the people who had to listen to me as Hazel does sometimes.”
“I didn’t know you when you was a child but I’m sure you didn’t,” said Rebecca. “Because you would mean what you said no matter how you expressed it and Hazel Marr doesn’t. She’s nothing but skim milk pretending to be cream.”
“Oh, of course she dramatizes herself a bit as most girls do, but I think she means some of the things she says,” said Anne, thinking of Terry. Perhaps it was because she had a rather poor opinion of the said Terry that she believed Hazel was quite in earnest in all she said about him. Anne thought Hazel was throwing herself away on Terry in spite of the ten thousand he was “coming into.” Anne considered Terry a good-looking, rather weak youth who would fall in love with the first pretty girl who made eyes at him and would, with equal facility, fall in love with the next one if Number One turned him down or left him alone too long.
Anne had seen a good deal of Terry that spring, for Hazel had insisted on her playing gooseberry frequently; and she was destined to see more of him, for Hazel went to visit friends in Kingsport and during her absence Terry rather attached himself to Anne, taking her out for rides and “seeing her home” from places. They called each other “Anne” and “Terry,” for they were about the same age, although Anne felt quite motherly towards him. Terry felt immensely flattered that “the clever Miss Shirley” seemed to like his companionship and he became so sentimental the night of May Connelly’s party, in a moonlit garden, where the shadows of the acacias blew crazily about, that Anne amusedly reminded him of the absent Hazel.
“Oh, Hazel!” said Terry. “That child!”
“You’re engaged to ‘that child,’ aren’t you?” said Anne severely.
“Not really engaged . . . nothing but some boy-and-girl nonsense. I . . . I guess I was just swept off my feet by the moonlight.”
Anne did a bit of rapid thinking. If Terry really cared so little for Hazel as this, the child was far better freed from him. Perhaps this was a heaven-sent opportunity to extricate them both from the silly tangle they had got themselves into and from which neither of them, taking things with all the deadly seriousness of youth, knew how to escape.
“Of course,” went on Terry, misinterpreting her silence. “I’m in a bit of a predicament, I’ll own. I’m afraid Hazel has taken me a little bit too seriously, and I don’t just know the best way to open her eyes to her mistake.”
Impulsive Anne assumed her most maternal look.
“Terry, you are a couple of children playing at being grown up. Hazel doesn’t really care anything more for you than you do for her. Apparently the moonlight affected both of you. She wants to be free but is afraid to tell you so for fear of hurting your feelings. She’s just a bewildered, romantic girl and you’re a boy in love with love, and some day you’ll both have a good laugh at yourselves.”
(“I think I’ve put that very nicely,” thought Anne complacently.)
Terry drew a long breath.
“You’ve taken a weight off my mind, Anne. Hazel’s a sweet little thing, of course, I hated to think of hurting her, but I’ve realized my . . . our . . . mistake for some weeks. When one meets a woman . . . the woman . . . you’re not going in yet, Anne? Is all this good moonlight to be wasted? You look like a white rose in the moonlight . . . Anne. . . .”
But Anne had flown.
Chapter 11
Anne, correcting examination papers in the tower room one mid-June evening, paused to wipe her nose. She had wiped it so often that evening that it was rosy-red and rather painful. The truth was that Anne was the victim of a very severe and very unromantic cold in the head. It would not allow her to enjoy the soft green sky behind the hemlocks of The Evergreens, the silver-white moon hanging over the Storm King, the haunting perfume of the lilacs below her window or the frosty, blue-penciled irises in the vase on her table. It darkened all her past and overshadowed all her future.
“A cold in the head in June is an immoral thing,” she told Dusty Miller, who was meditating on the window-sill. “But in two weeks from today I’ll be in dear Green Gables instead of stewing here over examination papers full of howlers and wiping a worn-out nos
e. Think of it, Dusty Miller.”
Apparently Dusty Miller thought of it. He may also have thought that the young lady who was hurrying along Spook’s Lane and down the road and along the perennial path looked angry and disturbed and un-June-like. It was Hazel Marr, only a day back from Kingsport, and evidently a much disturbed Hazel Marr, who, a few minutes later, burst stormily into the tower room without waiting for a reply to her sharp knock.
“Why, Hazel dear . . .” (Kershoo!) . . . “are you back from Kingsport already? I didn’t expect you till next week.”
“No, I suppose you didn’t,” said Hazel sarcastically. “Yes, Miss Shirley, I am back. And what do I find? That you have been doing your best to lure Terry away from me . . . and all but succeeding.”
“Hazel!” (Kershoo!)
“Oh, I know it all! You told Terry I didn’t love him . . . that I wanted to break our engagement . . . our sacred engagement!”
“Hazel . . . child!” (Kershoo!)
“Oh, yes, sneer at me . . . sneer at everything. But don’t try to deny it. You did it . . . and you did it deliberately.”
“Of course, I did. You asked me to.”
“I . . . asked . . . you . . . to!”
“Here, in this very room. You told me you didn’t love him and could never marry him.”
“Oh, just a mood, I suppose. I never dreamed you’d take me seriously. I thought you would understand the artistic temperament. You’re ages older than I am, of course, but even you can’t have forgotten the crazy ways girls talk . . . feel. You who pretended to be my friend!”
“This must be a nightmare,” thought poor Anne, wiping her nose. “Sit down, Hazel . . . do.”
“Sit down!” Hazel flew wildly up and down the room. “How can I sit down . . . how can anybody sit down when her life is in ruins all about her? Oh, if that is what being old does to you . . . jealous of younger people’s happiness and determined to wreck it . . . I shall pray never to grow old.”
Anne’s hand suddenly tingled to box Hazel’s ears with a strange horrible primitive tingle of desire. She slew it so instantly that she would never believe afterwards that she had really felt it. But she did think a little gentle chastisement was indicated.
“If you can’t sit down and talk sensibly, Hazel, I wish you would go away.” (A very violent kershoo.) “I have work to do.” (Sniff . . . sniff . . . snuffle!)
“I am not going away till I have told you just what I think of you. Oh, I know I’ve only myself to blame . . . I should have known . . . I did know. I felt instinctively the first time I saw you that you were dangerous. That red hair and those green eyes! But I never dreamed you’d go so far as to make trouble between me and Terry. I thought you were a Christian at least. I never heard of any one doing such a thing. Well, you’ve broken my heart, if that is any satisfaction to you.”
“You little goose . . .”
“I won’t talk to you! Oh, Terry and I were so happy before you spoiled everything. I was so happy . . . the first girl of my set to be engaged. I even had my wedding all planned out . . . four bridesmaids in lovely pale blue silk dresses with black velvet ribbon on the flounces. So chic! Oh, I don’t know if I hate you the most or pity you the most! Oh, how could you treat me like this . . . after I’ve loved you so . . . trusted you so . . . believed in you so!”
Hazel’s voice broke . . . her eyes filled with tears . . . she collapsed on a rocking-chair.
“You can’t have many exclamation points left,” thought Anne, “but no doubt the supply of italics is inexhaustible.”
“This will just about kill poor Momma,” sobbed Hazel. “She was so pleased . . . everybody was so pleased . . . they all thought it an ideal match. Oh, can anything ever again be like it used to be?”
“Wait till the next moonlight night and try,” said Anne gently.
“Oh, yes, laugh, Miss Shirley . . . laugh at my suffering. I have not the least doubt that you find it all very amusing . . . very amusing indeed! You don’t know what suffering is! It is terrible . . . terrible!”
Anne looked at the clock and sneezed.
“Then don’t suffer,” she said unpityingly.
“I will suffer. My feelings are very deep. Of course a shallow soul wouldn’t suffer. But I am thankful I am not shallow whatever else I am. Have you any idea what it means to be in love, Miss Shirley? Really, terribly deeply, wonderfully in love? And then to trust and be deceived? I went to Kingsport so happy . . . loving all the world! I told Terry to be good to you while I was away . . . not to let you be lonesome. I came home last night so happy. And he told me he didn’t love me any longer . . . that it was all a mistake . . . a mistake! . . . and that you had told him I didn’t care for him any longer, and wanted to be free!”
“My intentions were honorable,” said Anne, laughing. Her impish sense of humor had come to her rescue and she was laughing as much at herself as at Hazel.
“Oh, how did I live through the night?” said Hazel wildly. “I just walked the floor. And you don’t know . . . you can’t even imagine what I’ve gone through today. I’ve had to sit and listen . . . actually listen . . . to people talking about Terry’s infatuation for you. Oh, people have been watching you! They know what you’ve been doing. And why . . . why! That is what I cannot understand. You had your own lover . . . why couldn’t you have left me mine? What had you against me? What had I ever done to you?”
“I think,” said Anne, thoroughly exasperated, “that you and Terry both need a good spanking. If you weren’t too angry to listen to reason . . .”
“Oh, I’m not angry, Miss Shirley . . . only hurt . . . terribly hurt,” said Hazel in a voice positively foggy with tears. “I feel that I have been betrayed in everything . . . in friendship as well as in love. Well, they say after your heart is broken you never suffer any more. I hope it’s true, but I fear it isn’t.”
“What has become of your ambition, Hazel? And what about the millionaire patient and the honeymoon villa on the blue Mediterranean?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, Miss Shirley. I’m not a bit ambitious . . . I’m not one of those dreadful new women. My highest ambition was to be a happy wife and make a happy home for my husband. Was . . . was! To think it should be in the past tense! Well, it doesn’t do to trust any one. I’ve learned that. A bitter, bitter lesson!”
Hazel wiped her eyes and Anne wiped her nose, and Dusty Miller glared at the evening star with the expression of a misanthrope.
“You’d better go, I think, Hazel. I’m really very busy and I can’t see that there is anything to be gained by prolonging this interview.”
Hazel walked to the door with the air of Mary Queen of Scots advancing to the scaffold, and turned there dramatically.
“Farewell, Miss Shirley. I leave you to your conscience.”
Anne, left alone with her conscience, laid down her pen, sneezed three times and gave herself a plain talking-to.
“You may be a B.A., Anne Shirley, but you have a few things to learn yet . . . things that even Rebecca Dew could have told you . . . did tell you. Be honest with yourself, my dear girl, and take your medicine like a gallant lady. Admit that you were carried off your feet by flattery. Admit that you really liked Hazel’s professed adoration for you. Admit you found it pleasant to be worshiped. Admit that you liked the idea of being a sort of dea ex machina . . . saving people from their own folly when they didn’t in the least want to be saved from it. And having admitted all this and feeling wiser and sadder and a few thousand years older, pick up your pen and proceed with your examination papers, pausing to note in passing that Myra Pringle thinks a seraph is ‘an animal that abounds in Africa.’”
Chapter 12
A week later a letter came for Anne, written on pale blue paper edged with silver.
“DEAR MISS SHIRLEY:
“I am writing this to tell you that all misunderstanding is cleared away between Terry and me and we are so deeply, intensely, wonderfully happy that we h
ave decided we can forgive you. Terry says he was just moonlighted into making love to you but that his heart never really swerved in its allegiance to me. He says he really likes sweet, simple girls . . . that all men do . . . and has no use for intriguing, designing ones. We don’t understand why you behaved to us as you did . . . we never will understand. Perhaps you just wanted material for a story and thought you could find it in tampering with the first sweet, tremulous love of a girl. But we thank you for revealing us to ourselves. Terry says he never realized the deeper meaning of life before. So really it was all for the best. We are so sympathetic . . . we can feel each other’s thoughts. Nobody understands him but me and I want to be a source of inspiration to him forever. I am not clever like you but I feel I can be that, for we are soul-mates and have vowed eternal truth and constancy to each other, no matter how many jealous people and false friends may try to make trouble between us.
“We are going to be married as soon as I have my trousseau ready. I am going up to Boston to get it. There really isn’t anything in Summerside. My dress is to be white moire and my traveling-suit will be dove gray with hat, gloves and blouse of delphinium blue. Of course I’m very young, but I want to be married when I am young, before the bloom goes off life.
“Terry is all that my wildest dreams could picture and every thought of my heart is for him alone. I know we are going to be rapturously happy. Once I believed all my friends would rejoice with me in my happiness, but I have learned a bitter lesson in worldly wisdom since then.
“Yours truly,
“HAZEL MARR.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 100
