Patty's Place will seem rather small after the Hall of the Kings at
Karnak, but I never did like big places to live in. And I'll be glad
enough to be home again. When you start traveling late in life you're
apt to do too much of it because you know you haven't much time left,
and it's a thing that grows on you. I'm afraid Maria will never be
contented again."
"I shall leave here my fancies and dreams to bless the next comer,"
said Anne, looking around the blue room
wistfully -- her pretty blue
room where she had spent three such happy years. She had knelt at
its window to pray and had bent from it to watch the
sunset behind
the pines. She had heard the autumn raindrops
beating against it
and had welcomed the spring robins at its sill. She wondered if
old dreams could haunt rooms -- if, when one left forever the room
where she had joyed and suffered and laughed and wept, something
of her, intangible and
invisible, yet nonetheless real, did not
remain behind like a voiceful memory.
"I think," said Phil, "that a room where one dreams and grieves
and rejoices and lives becomes inseparably connected with those
processes and acquires a
personality of its own. I am sure if I
came into this room fifty years from now it would say 'Anne, Anne'
to me. What nice times we've had here, honey! What chats and
jokes and good chummy jamborees! Oh, dear me! I'm to marry Jo
in June and I know I will be rapturously happy. But just now
I feel as if I wanted this lovely Redmond life to go on forever."
"I'm
unreasonable enough just now to wish that, too," admitted Anne.
"No matter what deeper joys may come to us later on we'll never again
have just the same
delightful, irresponsible
existence we've had here.
It's over forever, Phil."
"What are you going to do with Rusty?" asked Phil, as that
privileged pussy padded into the room.
"I am going to take him home with me and Joseph and the Sarah-cat,"
announced Aunt Jamesina, following Rusty. "It would be a shame
to separate those cats now that they have
learned to live together.
It's a hard lesson for cats and humans to learn."
"I'm sorry to part with Rusty," said Anne regretfully, "but it
would be no use to take him to Green Gables. Marilla detests
cats, and Davy would tease his life out. Besides, I don't
suppose I'll be home very long. I've been offered the
principalship of the Summerside High School."
"Are you going to accept it?" asked Phil.
"I -- I haven't
decided yet," answered Anne, with a confused flush.
Phil nodded understandingly. Naturally Anne's plans could not be
settled until Roy had
spoken. He would soon -- there was no doubt
of that. And there was no doubt that Anne would say "yes" when he
said "Will you please?" Anne herself regarded the state of affairs
with a seldom-ruffled complacency. She was deeply in love with Roy.
True, it was not just what she had imagined love to be. But was
anything in life, Anne asked herself
wearily, like one's imagination
of it? It was the old diamond
disillusion of
childhoodrepeated --
the same
disappointment she had felt when she had first seen the
chill
sparkle instead of the
purplesplendor she had
anticipated.
"That's not my idea of a diamond," she had said. But Roy was a
dear fellow and they would be very happy together, even if some
indefinable zest was
missing out of life. When Roy came down that
evening and asked Anne to walk in the park every one at Patty's
Place knew what he had come to say; and every one knew, or thought
they knew, what Anne's answer would be.
"Anne is a very
fortunate girl," said Aunt Jamesina.
"I suppose so," said Stella, shrugging her shoulders. "Roy is a
nice fellow and all that. But there's really nothing in him."
"That sounds very like a
jealous remark, Stella Maynard," said
Aunt Jamesina rebukingly.
"It does -- but I am not
jealous," said Stella
calmly. "I love
Anne and I like Roy. Everybody says she is making a brilliant
match, and even Mrs. Gardner thinks her
charming now. It all
sounds as if it were made in heaven, but I have my doubts.
Make the most of that, Aunt Jamesina."
Roy asked Anne to marry him in the little
pavilion on the harbor
shore where they had talked on the rainy day of their first meeting.
Anne thought it very
romantic that he should have chosen that spot.
And his proposal was as
beautifully worded as if he had copied it,
as one of Ruby Gillis' lovers had done, out of a Deportment of
Courtship and Marriage. The whole effect was quite flawless.
And it was also
sincere. There was no doubt that Roy meant
what he said. There was no false note to jar the symphony.
Anne felt that she ought to be thrilling from head to foot.
But she wasn't; she was
horribly cool. When Roy paused
for his answer she opened her lips to say her fateful yes.
And then -- she found herself trembling as if she were reeling
back from a
precipice. To her came one of those moments when we
realize, as by a blinding flash of
illumination, more than all
our
previous years have taught us. She pulled her hand from Roy's.
"Oh, I can't marry you -- I can't -- I can't," she cried, wildly.
Roy turned pale -- and also looked rather foolish. He had --
small blame to him -- felt very sure.
"What do you mean?" he stammered.
"I mean that I can't marry you,"
repeated Anne desperately.
"I thought I could -- but I can't."
"Why can't you?" Roy asked more
calmly.
"Because -- I don't care enough for you."
A
crimsonstreak came into Roy's face.
"So you've just been
amusing yourself these two years?" he said slowly.
"No, no, I haven't," gasped poor Anne. Oh, how could she explain?
She COULDN'T explain. There are some things that cannot be explained.
"I did think I cared -- truly I did -- but I know now I don't."
"You have ruined my life," said Roy bitterly.
"Forgive me," pleaded Anne
miserably, with hot cheeks and
stinging eyes.
Roy turned away and stood for a few minutes looking out seaward.
When he came back to Anne, he was very pale again.
"You can give me no hope?" he said.
Anne shook her head mutely.
"Then -- good-bye," said Roy. "I can't understand it -- I
can't believe you are not the woman I've believed you to be.
But reproaches are idle between us. You are the only woman
I can ever love. I thank you for your friendship, at least.
Good-bye, Anne."
"Good-bye," faltered Anne. When Roy had gone she sat for a long
time in the
pavilion, watching a white mist creeping subtly and
remorselessly landward up the harbor. It was her hour of
humiliationand self-contempt and shame. Their waves went over her. And yet,
underneath it all, was a queer sense of recovered freedom.
She slipped into Patty's Place in the dusk and escaped to her room.
But Phil was there on the window seat.
"Wait," said Anne, flushing to
anticipate the scene. "Wait til
you hear what I have to say. Phil, Roy asked me to marry him-and
I refused."
"You -- you REFUSED him?" said Phil blankly.
"Yes."
"Anne Shirley, are you in your senses?"
"I think so," said Anne
wearily. "Oh, Phil, don't scold me.
You don't understand."
"I certainly don't understand. You've encouraged Roy Gardner in
every way for two years -- and now you tell me you've refused him.
Then you've just been flirting scandalously with him. Anne, I
couldn't have believed it of YOU."
"I WASN'T flirting with him -- I
honestly thought I cared up to the
last minute -- and then -- well, I just knew I NEVER could marry him."
"I suppose," said Phil
cruelly, "that you intended to marry him
for his money, and then your better self rose up and prevented you."
"I DIDN'T. I never thought about his money. Oh, I can't explain
it to you any more than I could to him."
"Well, I certainly think you have treated Roy shamefully," said Phil
in exasperation. "He's handsome and clever and rich and good.
What more do you want?"
"I want some one who BELONGS in my life. He doesn't. I was
swept off my feet at first by his good looks and knack of paying
romantic compliments; and later on I thought I MUST be in love
because he was my dark-eyed ideal."
"I am bad enough for not
knowing my own mind, but you are worse,"
said Phil.
"_I_ DO know my own mind," protested Anne. "The trouble is, my mind
changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again."
"Well, I suppose there is no use in
saying anything to you."
"There is no need, Phil. I'm in the dust. This has spoiled
everything
backwards. I can never think of Redmond days without
recalling the
humiliation of this evening. Roy
despises me --
and you
despise me -- and I
despise myself."
"You poor darling," said Phil, melting. "Just come here and let
me comfort you. I've no right to scold you. I'd have married
Alec or Alonzo if I hadn't met Jo. Oh, Anne, things are so
mixed-up in real life. They aren't clear-cut and trimmed off,
as they are in novels."
"I hope that NO one will ever again ask me to marry him as long as
I live," sobbed poor Anne, devoutly believing that she meant it.
Chapter XXXIX
Deals with Weddings
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
painfulparting 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