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
potentcurrant 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
lightningknocked 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 sorroly,
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