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 potent currant 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 lightning knocked 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 sorrowfully, 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 woman living in this settlement?”
“No, oh no,” cried Anne, flushing so guiltily that the stranger looked curiously at her, as if she half suspected her of matrimonial designs on Mr. Harrison.
“But I saw it in an Island paper,” persisted the Fair Unknown. “A friend sent a marked copy to me . . . friends are always so ready to do such things. James A.‘s name was written in over ‘new citizen.’”
“Oh, that note was only meant as a joke,” gasped Anne. “Mr. Harrison has no intention of marrying ANYBODY. I assure you he hasn’t.”
“I’m very glad to hear it,” said the rosy lady, climbing nimbly back to her seat in the wagon, “because he happens to be married already. I am his wife. Oh, you may well look surprised. I suppose he has been masquerading as a bachelor and breaking hearts right and left. Well, well, James A.,” nodding vigorously over the fields at the long white house, “your fun is over. I am here . . . though I wouldn’t have bothered coming if I hadn’t thought you were up to some mischief. I suppose,” turning to Anne, “that parrot of his is as profane as ever?”
“His parrot . . . is dead . . . I THINK,” gasped poor Anne, who couldn’t have felt sure of her own name at that precise moment.
“Dead! Everything will be all right then,” cried the rosy lady jubilantly. “I can manage James A. if that bird is out of the way.”
With which cryptic utterance she went joyfully on her way and Anne flew to the kitchen door to meet Marilla.
“Anne, who was that woman?”
“Marilla,” said Anne solemnly, but with dancing eyes, “do I look as if I were crazy?”
“Not more so than usual,” said Marilla, with no thought of being sarcastic.
“Well then, do you think I am awake?”
“Anne, what nonsense has got into you? Who was that woman, I say?”
“Marilla, if I’m not crazy and not asleep she can’t be such stuff as dreams are made of . . . she must be real. Anyway, I’m sure I couldn’t have imagined such a bonnet. She says she is Mr. Harrison’s wife, Marilla.”
Marilla stared in her turn.
“His wife! Anne Shirley! Then what has he been passing himself off as an unmarried man for?”
“I don’t suppose he did, really,” said Anne, trying to be just. “He never said he wasn’t married. People simply took it for granted. Oh Marilla, what will Mrs. Lynde say to this?”
They found out what Mrs. Lynde had to say when she came up that evening. Mrs. Lynde wasn’t surprised! Mrs. Lynde had always expected something of the sort! Mrs. Lynde had always known there was SOMETHING about Mr. Harrison!
“To think of his deserting his wife!” she said indignantly. “It’s like something you’d read of in the States, but who would expect such a thing to happen right here in Avonlea?”
“But we don’t know that he deserted her,” protested Anne, determined to believe her friend innocent till he was proved guilty. “We don’t know the rights of it at all.”
“Well, we soon will. I’m going straight over there,” said Mrs. Lynde, who had never learned that there was such a word as delicacy in the dictionary. “I’m not supposed to know anything about her arrival, and Mr. Harrison was to bring some medicine for Thomas from Carmody today, so that will be a good excuse. I’ll find out the whole story and come in and tell you on the way back.”
Mrs. Lynde rushed in where Anne had feared to tread. Nothing would have induced the latter to go over to the Harrison place; but she had her natural and proper share of curiosity and she felt secretly glad that Mrs. Lynde was going to solve the mystery. She and Marilla waited expectantly for that good lady’s return, but waited in vain. Mrs. Lynde did not revisit Green Gables that night. Davy, arriving home at nine o’clock from the Boulter place, explained why.
