Chapter XXXVIII
False Dawn
"Just imagine--this night week I'll be in Avonlea--delightful thought!"said Anne, bending over the box in which she was packing Mrs. RachelLynde's quilts. "But just imagine--this night week I'll be gone foreverfrom Patty's Place--horrible thought!"
"I wonder if the ghost of all our laughter will echo through the maidendreams of Miss Patty and Miss Maria," speculated Phil.
Miss Patty and Miss Maria were coming home, after having trotted overmost of the habitable globe.
"We'll be back the second week in May" wrote Miss Patty. "I expectPatty's Place will seem rather small after the Hall of the Kings atKarnak, but I never did like big places to live in. And I'll be gladenough to be home again. When you start traveling late in life you'reapt 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 becontented again."
"I shall leave here my fancies and dreams to bless the next comer," saidAnne, looking around the blue room wistfully--her pretty blue room whereshe had spent three such happy years. She had knelt at its window topray and had bent from it to watch the sunset behind the pines. Shehad heard the autumn raindrops beating against it and had welcomedthe spring robins at its sill. She wondered if old dreams could hauntrooms--if, when one left forever the room where she had joyed andsuffered and laughed and wept, something of her, intangible andinvisible, yet nonetheless real, did not remain behind like a voicefulmemory.
"I think," said Phil, "that a room where one dreams and grieves andrejoices and lives becomes inseparably connected with those processesand acquires a personality of its own. I am sure if I came into thisroom fifty years from now it would say 'Anne, Anne' to me. What nicetimes we've had here, honey! What chats and jokes and good chummyjamborees! Oh, dear me! I'm to marry Jo in June and I know I willbe rapturously happy. But just now I feel as if I wanted this lovelyRedmond life to go on forever."
"I'm unreasonable enough just now to wish that, too," admitted Anne. "Nomatter what deeper joys may come to us later on we'll never again havejust the same delightful, irresponsible existence we've had here. It'sover forever, Phil."
"What are you going to do with Rusty?" asked Phil, as that privilegedpussy 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 toseparate those cats now that they have learned to live together. It's ahard lesson for cats and humans to learn."
"I'm sorry to part with Rusty," said Anne regretfully, "but it would beno use to take him to Green Gables. Marilla detests cats, and Davy wouldtease 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 settleduntil Roy had spoken. He would soon--there was no doubt of that. Andthere was no doubt that Anne would say "yes" when he said "Willyou please?" Anne herself regarded the state of affairs with aseldom-ruffled complacency. She was deeply in love with Roy. True, itwas 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 olddiamond disillusion of childhood repeated--the same disappointment shehad 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 hadsaid. 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 camedown that evening and asked Anne to walk in the park every one atPatty's Place knew what he had come to say; and every one knew, orthought 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 nicefellow and all that. But there's really nothing in him."
"That sounds very like a jealous remark, Stella Maynard," said AuntJamesina rebukingly.
"It does--but I am not jealous," said Stella calmly. "I love Anne and Ilike 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 inheaven, 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 shorewhere they had talked on the rainy day of their first meeting. Annethought it very romantic that he should have chosen that spot. And hisproposal was as beautifully worded as if he had copied it, as one ofRuby Gillis' lovers had done, out of a Deportment of Courtship andMarriage. 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 noteto jar the symphony. Anne felt that she ought to be thrilling from headto foot. But she wasn't; she was horribly cool. When Roy paused for hisanswer she opened her lips to say her fateful yes. And then--she foundherself trembling as if she were reeling back from a precipice. To hercame one of those moments when we realize, as by a blinding flash ofillumination, more than all our previous years have taught us. Shepulled 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 tohim--felt very sure.
"What do you mean?" he stammered.
"I mean that I can't marry you," repeated Anne desperately. "I thought Icould--but I can't."
"Why can't you?" Roy asked more calmly.
"Because--I don't care enough for you."
A crimson streak 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? SheCOULDN'T explain. There are some things that cannot be explained. "I didthink 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 hecame 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 believeyou are not the woman I've believed you to be. But reproaches are idlebetween us. You are the only woman I can ever love. I thank you for yourfriendship, at least. Good-bye, Anne."
"Good-bye," faltered Anne. When Roy had gone she sat for a long time inthe pavilion, watching a white mist creeping subtly and remorselesslylandward up the harbor. It was her hour of humiliation and self-contemptand shame. Their waves went over her. And yet, underneath it all, was aqueer sense of recovered freedom.
She slipped into Patty's Place in the dusk and escaped to her room. ButPhil was there on the window seat.
"Wait," said Anne, flushing to anticipate the scene. "Wait til you hearwhat 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'tunderstand."
"I certainly don't understand. You've encouraged Roy Gardner in everyway for two years--and now you tell me you've refused him. Then you'vejust been flirting scandalously with him. Anne, I couldn't have believedit of YOU."
"I WASN'T flirting with him--I honestly thought I cared up to the lastminute--and then--well, I just knew I NEVER could marry him."
"I suppose," said Phil cruelly, "that you intended to marry him for hismoney, 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 toyou any more than I could to him."
"Well, I certainly think you have treated Roy shamefully," said Phil inexasperat
ion. "He's handsome and clever and rich and good. What more doyou want?"
"I want some one who BELONGS in my life. He doesn't. I was swept offmy feet at first by his good looks and knack of paying romanticcompliments; and later on I thought I MUST be in love because he was mydark-eyed ideal."
"I am bad enough for not knowing my own mind, but you are worse," saidPhil.
"_I_ DO know my own mind," protested Anne. "The trouble is, my mindchanges 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 everythingbackwards. I can never think of Redmond days without recalling thehumiliation of this evening. Roy despises me--and you despise me--and Idespise myself."
"You poor darling," said Phil, melting. "Just come here and let mecomfort you. I've no right to scold you. I'd have married Alec or Alonzoif I hadn't met Jo. Oh, Anne, things are so mixed-up in real life. Theyaren'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 Ilive," sobbed poor Anne, devoutly believing that she meant it.