XXIV
A Prophet in His Own Country
One May day Avonlea folks were mildly excited over some "AvonleaNotes," signed "Observer," which appeared in the Charlottetown 'DailyEnterprise.' Gossip ascribed the authorship thereof to Charlie Sloane,partly because the said Charlie had indulged in similar literary flightsin times past, and partly because one of the notes seemed to embody asneer at Gilbert Blythe. Avonlea juvenile society persisted in regardingGilbert Blythe and Charlie Sloane as rivals in the good graces of acertain damsel with gray eyes and an imagination.
Gossip, as usual, was wrong. Gilbert Blythe, aided and abetted by Anne,had written the notes, putting in the one about himself as a blind. Onlytwo of the notes have any bearing on this history:
"Rumor has it that there will be a wedding in our village ere thedaisies are in bloom. A new and highly respected citizen will lead tothe hymeneal altar one of our most popular ladies.
"Uncle Abe, our well-known weather prophet, predicts a violent stormof thunder and lightning for the evening of the twenty-third of May,beginning at seven o'clock sharp. The area of the storm will extend overthe greater part of the Province. People traveling that evening will dowell to take umbrellas and mackintoshes with them."
"Uncle Abe really has predicted a storm for sometime this spring," saidGilbert, "but do you suppose Mr. Harrison really does go to see IsabellaAndrews?"
"No," said Anne, laughing, "I'm sure he only goes to play checkers withMr. Harrison Andrews, but Mrs. Lynde says she knows Isabella Andrewsmust be going to get married, she's in such good spirits this spring."
Poor old Uncle Abe felt rather indignant over the notes. He suspectedthat "Observer" was making fun of him. He angrily denied having assignedany particular date for his storm but nobody believed him.
Life in Avonlea continued on the smooth and even tenor of its way.The "planting" was put in; the Improvers celebrated an Arbor Day. EachImprover set out, or caused to be set out, five ornamental trees. As thesociety now numbered forty members, this meant a total of two hundredyoung trees. Early oats greened over the red fields; apple orchardsflung great blossoming arms about the farmhouses and the Snow Queenadorned itself as a bride for her husband. Anne liked to sleep with herwindow open and let the cherry fragrance blow over her face all night.She thought it very poetical. Marilla thought she was risking her life.
"Thanksgiving should be celebrated in the spring," said Anne one eveningto Marilla, as they sat on the front door steps and listened to thesilver-sweet chorus of the frogs. "I think it would be ever so muchbetter than having it in November when everything is dead or asleep.Then you have to remember to be thankful; but in May one simply can'thelp being thankful . . . that they are alive, if for nothing else. Ifeel exactly as Eve must have felt in the garden of Eden before thetrouble began. IS that grass in the hollow green or golden? It seems tome, Marilla, that a pearl of a day like this, when the blossoms are outand the winds don't know where to blow from next for sheer crazy delightmust be pretty near as good as heaven."
Marilla looked scandalized and glanced apprehensively around to makesure the twins were not within earshot. They came around the corner ofthe house just then.
"Ain't it an awful nice-smelling evening?" asked Davy, sniffingdelightedly as he swung a hoe in his grimy hands. He had been workingin his garden. That spring Marilla, by way of turning Davy's passion forreveling in mud and clay into useful channels, had given him and Doraa small plot of ground for a garden. Both had eagerly gone to work ina characteristic fashion. Dora planted, weeded, and watered carefully,systematically, and dispassionately. As a result, her plot was alreadygreen with prim, orderly little rows of vegetables and annuals. Davy,however, worked with more zeal than discretion; he dug and hoed andraked and watered and transplanted so energetically that his seeds hadno chance for their lives.
"How is your garden coming on, Davy-boy?" asked Anne.
"Kind of slow," said Davy with a sigh. "I don't know why the thingsdon't grow better. Milty Boulter says I must have planted them in thedark of the moon and that's the whole trouble. He says you must neversow seeds or kill pork or cut your hair or do any 'portant thing in thewrong time of the moon. Is that true, Anne? I want to know."
"Maybe if you didn't pull your plants up by the roots every other day tosee how they're getting on 'at the other end,' they'd do better," saidMarilla sarcastically.
"I only pulled six of them up," protested Davy. "I wanted to see ifthere was grubs at the roots. Milty Boulter said if it wasn't the moon'sfault it must be grubs. But I only found one grub. He was a great bigjuicy curly grub. I put him on a stone and got another stone and smashedhim flat. He made a jolly SQUISH I tell you. I was sorry there wasn'tmore of them. Dora's garden was planted same time's mine and her thingsare growing all right. It CAN'T be the moon," Davy concluded in areflective tone.
"Marilla, look at that apple tree," said Anne. "Why, the thing is human.It is reaching out long arms to pick its own pink skirts daintily up andprovoke us to admiration."
"Those Yellow Duchess trees always bear well," said Marillacomplacently. "That tree'll be loaded this year. I'm real glad. . .they're great for pies."
But neither Marilla nor Anne nor anybody else was fated to make pies outof Yellow Duchess apples that year.
The twenty-third of May came . . . an unseasonably warm day, as nonerealized more keenly than Anne and her little beehive of pupils,sweltering over fractions and syntax in the Avonlea schoolroom. A hotbreeze blew all the forenoon; but after noon hour it died away into aheavy stillness. At half past three Anne heard a low rumble of thunder.She promptly dismissed school at once, so that the children might gethome before the storm came.
As they went out to the playground Anne perceived a certain shadow andgloom over the world in spite of the fact that the sun was still shiningbrightly. Annetta Bell caught her hand nervously.
"Oh, teacher, look at that awful cloud!"
Anne looked and gave an exclamation of dismay. In the northwest a massof cloud, such as she had never in all her life beheld before, wasrapidly rolling up. It was dead black, save where its curled and fringededges showed a ghastly, livid white. There was something about itindescribably menacing as it gloomed up in the clear blue sky; now andagain a bolt of lightning shot across it, followed by a savage growl. Ithung so low that it almost seemed to be touching the tops of the woodedhills.
Mr. Harmon Andrews came clattering up the hill in his truck wagon,urging his team of grays to their utmost speed. He pulled them to a haltopposite the school.
"Guess Uncle Abe's hit it for once in his life, Anne," he shouted. "Hisstorm's coming a leetle ahead of time. Did ye ever see the like of thatcloud? Here, all you young ones, that are going my way, pile in, andthose that ain't scoot for the post office if ye've more'n a quarter ofa 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 theBirch 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 andwere joined at the door by Marilla, who had been hustling her ducks andchickens under shelter. As they dashed into the kitchen the light seemedto vanish, as if blown out by some mighty breath; the awful cloud rolledover 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 oflightning, the hail swooped down and blotted the landscape out in onewhite fury.
Through all the clamor of the storm came the thud of torn branchesstriking the house and the sharp crack of breaking glass. In threeminutes every pane in the west and north windows was broken and thehail poured in through the apertures covering the floor with stones, thesmallest of which was as big as a hen's egg. For three quarters of anhour the storm raged unabated and no one who underwent it ever forgotit. Marilla, for once in her life shaken out of her composure by sheerterror, knelt by her rocking chair in a corner of the kitchen, gaspingand 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 oneither side. Davy at the first crash had howled, "Anne, Anne, is it theJudgment Day? Anne, Anne, I never meant to be naughty," and thenhad buried his face in Anne's lap and kept it there, his little bodyquivering. Dora, somewhat pale but quite composed, sat with her handclasped in Anne's, quiet and motionless. It is doubtful if an earthquakewould have disturbed Dora.
Then, almost as suddenly as it began, the storm ceased. The hailstopped, the thunder rolled and muttered away to the eastward, and thesun burst out merry and radiant over a world so changed that it seemedan absurd thing to think that a scant three quarters of an hour couldhave effected such a transformation.
Marilla rose from her knees, weak and trembling, and dropped on herrocker. 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. "Iwasn't a bit scared either . . . only just at the first. It come on afellow so sudden. I made up my mind quick as a wink that I wouldn'tfight 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 toAnne'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," saidDavy; "but," he added triumphantly, "you see I came through just as safeas you for all I didn't say them."
Anne got Marilla a glassful of her potent currant wine . . . HOW potentit 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 ofthem were heaped up under the eaves and on the steps. When, three orfour days later, those hailstones melted, the havoc they had wrought wasplainly seen, for every green growing thing in the field or garden wascut off. Not only was every blossom stripped from the apple trees butgreat boughs and branches were wrenched away. And out of the two hundredtrees set out by the Improvers by far the greater number were snappedoff 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," saidMarilla, "never. I remember when I was a girl there was a bad storm, butit was nothing to this. We'll hear of terrible destruction, you may besure."
"I do hope none of the children were caught out in it," murmured Anneanxiously. 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 seeif yous had come out all right."
"We're none of us killed," said Marilla grimly, "and none of thebuildings was struck. I hope you got off equally well."
"Yas'm. Not quite so well, ma'am. We was struck. The lightning knockedover the kitchen chimbly and come down the flue and knocked overGinger'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 overto comfort Mr. Harrison. She found him sitting by the table, strokingGinger'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, butthe 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'regoing to say something sympathetic as soon as I stop talking . . . butdon't. If you did I'd cry like a baby. Hasn't this been a terriblestorm? I guess folks won't laugh at Uncle Abe's predictions again. Seemsas if all the storms that he's been prophesying all his life that neverhappened 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 getsome boards to patch up that hole in the floor."
Avonlea folks did nothing the next day but visit each other andcompare damages. The roads were impassable for wheels by reason of thehailstones, so they walked or rode on horseback. The mail came late withill tidings from all over the province. Houses had been struck, peoplekilled and injured; the whole telephone and telegraph system had beendisorganized, and any number of young stock exposed in the fields hadperished.
Uncle Abe waded out to the blacksmith's forge early in the morning andspent the whole day there. It was Uncle Abe's hour of triumph and heenjoyed it to the full. It would be doing Uncle Abe an injustice to saythat he was glad the storm had happened; but since it had to be he wasvery glad he had predicted it . . . to the very day, too. Uncle Abe forgotthat he had ever denied setting the day. As for the trifling discrepancyin the hour, that was nothing.
Gilbert arrived at Green Gables in the evening and found Marilla andAnne busily engaged in nailing strips of oilcloth over the brokenwindows.
"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 getfor love or money. Lawson and Blair were cleaned out by the Carmodypeople 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 andI thought some of them would go mad with fright. Three of them fainted,and two girls took hysterics, and Tommy Blewett did nothing but shriekat the top of his voice the whole time."
"I only squealed once," said Davy proudly. "My garden was all smashedflat," he continued mournfully, "but so was Dora's," he added in a tonewhich 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 housewas struck and burned to the ground. It seems to me that I'm dreadfullywicked 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 onpurpose."
"Well, one thing is certain," said Gilbert, laughing, "'Observer' hasmade Uncle Abe's reputation as a weather prophet. 'Uncle Abe's storm'will go down in local history. It is a most extraordinary coincidencethat it should have come on the very day we selected. I actually have ahalf guilty feeling, as if I really had 'magicked' it up. We may aswell rejoice over the old house being removed, for there's not much torejoice over where our young trees are concerned. Not ten of them haveescaped."
"Ah, well, we'll just have to plant them over again next spring," saidAnne philosophically. "That is one good thing about this world . . . thereare always sure to be more springs."