XXIX
Poetry and Prose
For the next month Anne lived in what, for Avonlea, might be called
a whirl of excitement. The preparation of her own modest outfit
for Redmond was of secondary importance. Miss Lavendar was getting
ready to be married and the stone house was the scene of endless
consultations and plannings and discussions, with Charlotta the Fourth
hovering on the outskirts of things in agitated delight and wonder.
Then the dressmaker came, and there was the rapture and wretchedness
of choosing fashions and being fitted. Anne and Diana spent half their
time at Echo Lodge and there were nights when Anne could not sleep for
wondering whether she had done right in advising Miss Lavendar to select
brown rather than navy blue for her traveling dress, and to have her
gray silk made princess.
Everybody concerned in Miss Lavendar's story was very happy.
Paul Irving rushed to Green Gables to talk the news over with
Anne as soon as his father had told him.
"I knew I could trust father to pick me out a nice little second mother,"
he said proudly. "It's a fine thing to have a father you can depend on,
teacher. I just love Miss Lavendar. Grandma is pleased, too. She says
she's real glad father didn't pick out an American for his second wife,
because, although it turned out all right the first time, such a thing
wouldn't be likely to happen twice. Mrs. Lynde says she thoroughly
approves of the match and thinks its likely Miss Lavendar will give
up her queer notions and be like other people, now that she's going to
be married. But I hope she won't give her queer notions up, teacher,
because I like them. And I don't want her to be like other people.
There are too many other people around as it is. YOU know, teacher."
Charlotta the Fourth was another radiant person.
"Oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am, it has all turned out so beautiful.
When Mr. Irving and Miss Lavendar come back from their tower
I'm to go up to Boston and live with them. . .and me only fifteen,
and the other girls never went till they were sixteen. Ain't
Mr. Irving splendid? He just worships the ground she treads on
and it makes me feel so queer sometimes to see the look in his eyes
when he's watching her. It beggars description, Miss Shirley, ma'am.
I'm awful thankful they're so fond of each other. It's the best way,
when all's said and done, though some folks can get along without it.
I've got an aunt who has been married three times and says she married
the first time for love and the last two times for strictly business,
and was happy with all three except at the times of the funerals.
But I think she took a resk, Miss Shirley, ma'am."
"Oh, it's all so romantic," breathed Anne to Marilla that night.
"If I hadn't taken the wrong path that day we went to Mr. Kimball's
I'd never have known Miss Lavendar; and if I hadn't met her I'd
never have taken Paul there. . .and he'd never have written to his
father about visiting Miss Lavendar just as Mr. Irving was starting for
San Francisco. Mr. Irving says whenever he got that letter he made
up his mind to send his partner to San Francisco and come here instead.
He hadn't heard anything of Miss Lavendar for fifteen years. Somebody
had told him then that she was to be married and he thought she was and
never asked anybody anything about her. And now everything has come right.
And I had a hand in bringing it about. Perhaps, as Mrs. Lynde says,
everything is foreordained and it was bound to happen anyway. But even so,
it's nice to think one was an instrument used by predestination. Yes indeed,
it's very romantic."
"I can't see that it's so terribly romantic at all," said Marilla
rather crisply. Marilla thought Anne was too worked up about it
and had plenty to do with getting ready for college without "traipsing"
to Echo Lodge two days out of three helping Miss Lavendar. "In the
first place two young fools quarrel and turn sulky; then Steve Irving
goes to the States and after a spell gets married up there and is
perfectly happy from all accounts. Then his wife dies and after
a decent interval he thinks he'll come home and see if his first
fancy'll have him. Meanwhile, she's been living single, probably
because nobody nice enough came along to want her, and they meet and
agree to be married after all. Now, where is the romance in all that?"
"Oh, there isn't any, when you put it that way," gasped Anne,
rather as if somebody had thrown cold water over her. "I suppose
that's how it looks in prose. But it's very different if you look
at it through poetry. . .and _I_ think it's nicer. . ." Anne recovered
herself and her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed. . ."to look at
it through poetry."
Marilla glanced at the radiant young face and refrained from
further sarcastic comments. Perhaps some realization came to her
that after all it was better to have, like Anne, "the vision and
the faculty divine". . .that gift which the world cannot bestow or
take away, of looking at life through some transfiguring. . .or
revealing?. . .medium, whereby everything seemed apparelled in
celestial light, wearing a glory and a freshness not visible to
those who, like herself and Charlotta the Fourth, looked at things
only through prose.
"When's the wedding to be?" she asked after a pause.
"The last Wednesday in August. They are to be married in the
garden under the honeysuckle trellis. . .the very spot where
Mr. Irving proposed to her twenty-five years ago. Marilla, that
IS romantic, even in prose. There's to be nobody there except
Mrs. Irving and Paul and Gilbert and Diana and I, and Miss Lavendar's
cousins. And they will leave on the six o'clock train for a trip
to the Pacific coast. When they come back in the fall Paul and
Charlotta the Fourth are to go up to Boston to live with them.
But Echo Lodge is to be left just as it is. . .only of course they'll
sell the hens and cow, and board up the windows. . .and every summer
they're coming down to live in it. I'm so glad. It would have
hurt me dreadfully next winter at Redmond to think of that dear
stone house all stripped and deserted, with empty rooms. . .or far
worse still, with other people living in it. But I can think of it
now, just as I've always seen it, waiting happily for the summer to
bring life and laughter back to it again."
There was more romance in the world than that which had fallen
to the share of the middle-aged lovers of the stone house.
Anne stumbled suddenly on it one evening when she went over to
Orchard Slope by the wood cut and came out into the Barry garden.
Diana Barry and Fred Wright were standing together under the big willow.
Diana was leaning against the gray trunk, her lashes cast down on
very crimson cheeks. One hand was held by Fred, who stood with his
face bent toward her, stammering something in low earnest tones.
There were no other people in the world except their two selves at
that magic moment; so neither of them saw Anne, who, after one
dazed glance of comprehension, turned and sped noiselessly back
through the spruce wood, never stopping till she gained her own
gable room, where she sat breathlessly down by her window and tried
to collect her scattered wits.
"Diana and Fred are in love with each other," she gasped.
"Oh, it does seem so. . .so. . .so HOPELESSLY grown up."
Anne, of late, had not been without her suspicions that Diana was
proving false to the melancholy Byronic hero of her early dreams.
But as "things seen are mightier than things heard," or suspected,
the realization that it was actually so came to her with almost the
shock of perfect surprise. This was succeeded by a queer, little
lonely feeling. . .as if, somehow, Diana had gone forward into a
new world, shutting a gate behind her, leaving Anne on the outside.
"Things are changing so fast it almost frightens me," Anne thought,
a little sadly. "And I'm afraid that this can't help making some
difference between Diana and me. I'm sure I can't tell her all my
secrets after this. . .she might tell Fred. And what CAN she see
in Fred? He's very nice and jolly. . .but he's just Fred Wright."
It is always a very puzzling question. . .what can somebody see in
somebody else? But how fortunate after all that it is so, for if
everybody saw alike. . .well, in that case, as the old Indian said,
"Everybody would want my squaw." It was plain that Diana DID see
something in Fred Wright, however Anne's eyes might be holden.
Diana came to Green Gables the next evening, a pensive, shy young
lady, and told Anne the whole story in the dusky seclusion of the
east gable. Both girls cried and kissed and laughed.
"I'm so happy," said Diana, "but it does seem ridiculous to think
of me being engaged."
"What is it really like to be engaged?" asked Anne curiously.
"Well, that all depends on who you're engaged to," answered Diana,
with that maddening air of superior wisdom always assumed by those
who are engaged over those who are not. "It's perfectly lovely to
be engaged to Fred. . .but I think it would be simply horrid to be
engaged to anyone else."
"There's not much comfort for the rest of us in that, seeing that
there is only one Fred," laughed Anne.
"Oh, Anne, you don't understand," said Diana in vexation. "I didn't
mean THAT. . .it's so hard to explain. Never mind, you'll understand
sometime, when your own turn comes."
"Bless you, dearest of Dianas, I understand now. What is an imagination
for if not to enable you to peep at life through other people's eyes?"
"You must be my bridesmaid, you know, Anne. Promise me that. . .
wherever you may be when I'm married."
"I'll come from the ends of the earth if necessary," promised Anne solemnly.
"Of course, it won't be for ever so long yet," said Diana, blushing.
"Three years at the very least. . .for I'm only eighteen and mother
says no daughter of hers shall be married before she's twenty-one.
Besides, Fred's father is going to buy the Abraham Fletcher farm
for him and he says he's got to have it two thirds paid for before
he'll give it to him in his own name. But three years isn't any too
much time to get ready for housekeeping, for I haven't a speck of fancy
work made yet. But I'm going to begin crocheting doilies tomorrow.
Myra Gillis had thirty-seven doilies when she was married and I'm
determined I shall have as many as she had."
"I suppose it would be perfectly impossible to keep house with only
thirty-six doilies," conceded Anne, with a solemn face but dancing eyes.
Diana looked hurt.
"I didn't think you'd make fun of me, Anne," she said reproachfully.
"Dearest, I wasn't making fun of you," cried Anne repentantly.
"I was only teasing you a bit. I think you'll make the sweetest
little housekeeper in the world. And I think it's perfectly lovely
of you to be planning already for your home o'dreams."
Anne had no sooner uttered the phrase, "home o'dreams," than it
captivated her fancy and she immediately began the erection of one
of her own. It was, of course, tenanted by an ideal master, dark,
proud, and melancholy; but oddly enough, Gilbert Blythe persisted
in hanging about too, helping her arrange pictures, lay out gardens,
and accomplish sundry other tasks which a proud and melancholy hero
evidently considered beneath his dignity. Anne tried to banish
Gilbert's image from her castle in Spain but, somehow, he went
on being there, so Anne, being in a hurry, gave up the attempt
and pursued her aerial architecture with such success that her
"home o'dreams" was built and furnished before Diana spoke again.
"I suppose, Anne, you must think it's funny I should like Fred so
well when he's so different from the kind of man I've always said I
would marry. . .the tall, slender kind? But somehow I wouldn't
want Fred to be tall and slender. . .because, don't you see, he
wouldn't be Fred then. Of course," added Diana rather dolefully,
"we will be a dreadfully pudgy couple. But after all that's better
than one of us being short and fat and the other tall and lean,
like Morgan Sloane and his wife. Mrs. Lynde says it always makes
her think of the long and short of it when she sees them together."
"Well," said Anne to herself that night, as she brushed her hair
before her gilt framed mirror, "I am glad Diana is so happy and
satisfied. But when my turn comes. . .if it ever does. . .I do
hope there'll be something a little more thrilling about it. But
then Diana thought so too, once. I've heard her say time and again
she'd never get engaged any poky commonplace way. . .he'd HAVE to
do something splendid to win her. But she has changed. Perhaps
I'll change too. But I won't. . .and I'm determined I won't. Oh,
I think these engagements are dreadfully unsettling things when
they happen to your intimate friends."
