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CHAPTER *** A Wedding at the Stone House
The last week in August came. Miss Lavendar was to be married in it.
Two weeks later Anne and Gilbert would leave for Redmond College.
In a week's time Mrs. Rachel Lynde would move to Green Gables and set up her lares
and penates in the erstwhile spare room, which was already prepared for her coming.
She had sold all her superfluous household plenishings by auction and was at present
reveling in the congenial occupation of helping the Allans pack up.
Mr. Allan was to preach his farewell sermon the next Sunday.
The old order was changing rapidly to give place to the new, as Anne felt with a
little sadness threading all her excitement and happiness.
"Changes ain't totally pleasant but they're excellent things," said Mr. Harrison
philosophically. "Two years is about long enough for things
to stay exactly the same.
If they stayed put any longer they might grow mossy."
Mr. Harrison was smoking on his veranda.
His wife had self-sacrificingly told that he might smoke in the house if he took care
to sit by an open window.
Mr. Harrison rewarded this concession by going outdoors altogether to smoke in fine
weather, and so mutual goodwill reigned. Anne had come over to ask Mrs. Harrison for
some of her yellow dahlias.
She and Diana were going through to Echo Lodge that evening to help Miss Lavendar
and Charlotta the Fourth with their final preparations for the morrow's bridal.
Miss Lavendar herself never had dahlias; she did not like them and they would not
have suited the fine retirement of her old- fashioned garden.
But flowers of any kind were rather scarce in Avonlea and the neighboring districts
that summer, thanks to Uncle Abe's storm; and Anne and Diana thought that a certain
old cream-colored stone jug, usually kept
sacred to doughnuts, brimmed over with yellow dahlias, would be just the thing to
set in a dim angle of the stone house stairs, against the dark background of red
hall paper.
"I s'pose you'll be starting off for college in a fortnight's time?" continued
Mr. Harrison. "Well, we're going to miss you an awful
lot, Emily and me.
To be sure, Mrs. Lynde'll be over there in your place.
There ain't nobody but a substitute can be found for them."
The irony of Mr. Harrison's tone is quite untransferable to paper.
In spite of his wife's intimacy with Mrs. Lynde, the best that could be said of the
relationship between her and Mr. Harrison even under the new regime, was that they
preserved an armed neutrality.
"Yes, I'm going," said Anne. "I'm very glad with my head...and very
sorry with my heart."
"I s'pose you'll be scooping up all the honors that are lying round loose at
Redmond."
"I may try for one or two of them," confessed Anne, "but I don't care so much
for things like that as I did two years ago.
What I want to get out of my college course is some knowledge of the best way of living
life and doing the most and best with it. I want to learn to understand and help
other people and myself."
Mr. Harrison nodded. "That's the idea exactly.
That's what college ought to be for, instead of for turning out a lot of B.A.'s,
so chock full of book-learning and vanity that there ain't room for anything else.
You're all right.
College won't be able to do you much harm, I reckon."
Diana and Anne drove over to Echo Lodge after tea, taking with them all the flowery
spoil that several predatory expeditions in their own and their neighbors' gardens had
yielded.
They found the stone house agog with excitement.
Charlotta the Fourth was flying around with such vim and briskness that her blue bows
seemed really to possess the power of being everywhere at once.
Like the helmet of Navarre, Charlotta's blue bows waved ever in the thickest of the
fray.
"Praise be to goodness you've come," she said devoutly, "for there's heaps of things
to do...and the frosting on that cake WON'T harden ...and there's all the silver to be
rubbed up yet... and the horsehair trunk to
be packed...and the roosters for the chicken salad are running out there beyant
the henhouse yet, crowing, Miss Shirley, ma'am.
And Miss Lavendar ain't to be trusted to do a thing.
I was thankful when Mr. Irving came a few minutes ago and took her off for a walk in
the woods.
Courting's all right in its place, Miss Shirley, ma'am, but if you try to mix it up
with cooking and scouring everything's spoiled.
That's MY opinion, Miss Shirley, ma'am."
Anne and Diana worked so heartily that by ten o'clock even Charlotta the Fourth was
satisfied. She braided her hair in innumerable plaits
and took her weary little bones off to bed.
"But I'm sure I shan't sleep a blessed wink, Miss Shirley, ma'am, for fear that
something'll go wrong at the last minute...the cream won't whip...or Mr.
Irving'll have a stroke and not be able to come."
"He isn't in the habit of having strokes, is he?" asked Diana, the dimpled corners of
her mouth twitching.
To Diana, Charlotta the Fourth was, if not exactly a thing of beauty, certainly a joy
forever. "They're not things that go by habit," said
Charlotta the Fourth with dignity.
"They just HAPPEN...and there you are. ANYBODY can have a stroke.
You don't have to learn how.
Mr. Irving looks a lot like an uncle of mine that had one once just as he was
sitting down to dinner one day. But maybe everything'll go all right.
In this world you've just got to hope for the best and prepare for the worst and take
whatever God sends." "The only thing I'm worried about is that
it won't be fine tomorrow," said Diana.
"Uncle Abe predicted rain for the middle of the week, and ever since the big storm I
can't help believing there's a good deal in what Uncle Abe says."
Anne, who knew better than Diana just how much Uncle Abe had to do with the storm,
was not much disturbed by this.
She slept the sleep of the just and weary, and was roused at an unearthly hour by
Charlotta the Fourth.
"Oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am, it's awful to call you so early," came wailing through
the keyhole, "but there's so much to do yet...and oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am, I'm
skeered it's going to rain and I wish you'd get up and tell me you think it ain't."
Anne flew to the window, hoping against hope that Charlotta the Fourth was saying
this merely by way of rousing her effectually.
But alas, the morning did look unpropitious.
Below the window Miss Lavendar's garden, which should have been a glory of pale
*** sunshine, lay dim and windless; and the sky over the firs was dark with moody
clouds.
"Isn't it too mean!" said Diana. "We must hope for the best," said Anne
determinedly.
"If it only doesn't actually rain, a cool, pearly gray day like this would really be
nicer than hot sunshine."
"But it will rain," mourned Charlotta, creeping into the room, a figure of fun,
with her many braids wound about her head, the ends, tied up with white thread,
sticking out in all directions.
"It'll hold off till the last minute and then pour cats and dogs.
And all the folks will get sopping...and track mud all over the house...and they
won't be able to be married under the honeysuckle...and it's awful unlucky for no
sun to shine on a bride, say what you will, Miss Shirley, ma'am.
I knew things were going too well to last."
Charlotta the Fourth seemed certainly to have borrowed a leaf out of Miss Eliza
Andrews' book. It did not rain, though it kept on looking
as if it meant to.
By noon the rooms were decorated, the table beautifully laid; and upstairs was waiting
a bride, "adorned for her husband." "You do look sweet," said Anne rapturously.
"Lovely," echoed Diana.
"Everything's ready, Miss Shirley, ma'am, and nothing dreadful has happened YET," was
Charlotta's cheerful statement as she betook herself to her little back room to
dress.
Out came all the braids; the resultant rampant crinkliness was plaited into two
tails and tied, not with two bows alone, but with four, of brand-new ribbon,
brightly blue.
The two upper bows rather gave the impression of overgrown wings sprouting
from Charlotta's neck, somewhat after the fashion of Raphael's cherubs.
But Charlotta the Fourth thought them very beautiful, and after she had rustled into a
white dress, so stiffly starched that it could stand alone, she surveyed herself in
her glass with great satisfaction...a
satisfaction which lasted until she went out in the hall and caught a glimpse
through the spare room door of a tall girl in some softly clinging gown, pinning
white, star-like flowers on the smooth ripples of her ruddy hair.
"Oh, I'll NEVER be able to look like Miss Shirley," thought poor Charlotta
despairingly.
"You just have to be born so, I guess... don't seem's if any amount of practice
could give you that AIR."
By one o'clock the guests had come, including Mr. and Mrs. Allan, for Mr. Allan
was to perform the ceremony in the absence of the Grafton minister on his vacation.
There was no formality about the marriage.
Miss Lavendar came down the stairs to meet her bridegroom at the foot, and as he took
her hand she lifted her big brown eyes to his with a look that made Charlotta the
Fourth, who intercepted it, feel queerer than ever.
They went out to the honeysuckle arbor, where Mr. Allan was awaiting them.
The guests grouped themselves as they pleased.
Anne and Diana stood by the old stone bench, with Charlotta the Fourth between
them, desperately clutching their hands in her cold, tremulous little paws.
Mr. Allan opened his blue book and the ceremony proceeded.
Just as Miss Lavendar and Stephen Irving were pronounced man and wife a very
beautiful and symbolic thing happened.
The sun suddenly burst through the gray and poured a flood of radiance on the happy
bride. Instantly the garden was alive with dancing
shadows and flickering lights.
"What a lovely omen," thought Anne, as she ran to kiss the bride.
Then the three girls left the rest of the guests laughing around the bridal pair
while they flew into the house to see that all was in readiness for the feast.
"Thanks be to goodness, it's over, Miss Shirley, ma'am," breathed Charlotta the
Fourth, "and they're married safe and sound, no matter what happens now.
The bags of rice are in the pantry, ma'am, and the old shoes are behind the door, and
the cream for whipping is on the sullar steps."
At half past two Mr. and Mrs. Irving left, and everybody went to Bright River to see
them off on the afternoon train.
As Miss Lavendar...I beg her pardon, Mrs. Irving...stepped from the door of her old
home Gilbert and the girls threw the rice and Charlotta the Fourth hurled an old shoe
with such excellent aim that she struck Mr. Allan squarely on the head.
But it was reserved for Paul to give the prettiest send-off.
He popped out of the porch ringing furiously a huge old brass dinner bell
which had adorned the dining room mantel.
Paul's only motive was to make a joyful noise; but as the clangor died away, from
point and curve and hill across the river came the chime of "fairy wedding bells,"
ringing clearly, sweetly, faintly and more
faint, as if Miss Lavendar's beloved echoes were bidding her greeting and farewell.
And so, amid this benediction of sweet sounds, Miss Lavendar drove away from the
old life of dreams and make-believes to a fuller life of realities in the busy world
beyond.
Two hours later Anne and Charlotta the Fourth came down the lane again.
Gilbert had gone to West Grafton on an errand and Diana had to keep an engagement
at home.
Anne and Charlotta had come back to put things in order and lock up the little
stone house.
The garden was a pool of late golden sunshine, with butterflies hovering and
bees booming; but the little house had already that indefinable air of desolation
which always follows a festivity.
"Oh dear me, don't it look lonesome?" sniffed Charlotta the Fourth, who had been
crying all the way home from the station.
"A wedding ain't much cheerfuller than a funeral after all, when it's all over, Miss
Shirley, ma'am." A busy evening followed.
The decorations had to be removed, the dishes washed, the uneaten delicacies
packed into a basket for the delectation of Charlotta the Fourth's young brothers at
home.
Anne would not rest until everything was in apple-pie order; after Charlotta had gone
home with her plunder Anne went over the still rooms, feeling like one who trod
alone some banquet hall deserted, and closed the blinds.
Then she locked the door and sat down under the silver poplar to wait for Gilbert,
feeling very tired but still unweariedly thinking "long, long thoughts."
"What are you thinking of, Anne?" asked Gilbert, coming down the walk.
He had left his horse and buggy out at the road.
"Of Miss Lavendar and Mr. Irving," answered Anne dreamily.
"Isn't it beautiful to think how everything has turned out...how they have come
together again after all the years of separation and misunderstanding?"
"Yes, it's beautiful," said Gilbert, looking steadily down into Anne's uplifted
face, "but wouldn't it have been more beautiful still, Anne, if there had been NO
separation or misunderstanding... if they
had come hand in hand all the way through life, with no memories behind them but
those which belonged to each other?"
For a moment Anne's heart fluttered queerly and for the first time her eyes faltered
under Gilbert's gaze and a rosy flush stained the paleness of her face.
It was as if a veil that had hung before her inner consciousness had been lifted,
giving to her view a revelation of unsuspected feelings and realities.
Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one's life with pomp and blare, like a
gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one's side like an old friend through quiet
ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming
prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages
betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps... perhaps...love unfolded
naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as
a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.
Then the veil dropped again; but the Anne who walked up the dark lane was not quite
the same Anne who had driven gaily down it the evening before.
The page of girlhood had been turned, as by an unseen finger, and the page of womanhood
was before her with all its charm and mystery, its pain and gladness.
Gilbert wisely said nothing more; but in his silence he read the history of the next
four years in the light of Anne's remembered blush.
Four years of earnest, happy work...and then the guerdon of a useful knowledge
gained and a sweet heart won. Behind them in the garden the little stone
house brooded among the shadows.
It was lonely but not forsaken. It had not yet done with dreams and
laughter and the joy of life; there were to be future summers for the little stone
house; meanwhile, it could wait.
And over the river in purple durance the echoes bided their time.