Further Chronicles of Avonlea - Lucy Maud Montgomery (best reads .TXT) š
- Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
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When I got home that night Nancy looked at me wonderingly, and said:
āYou look like a girl to-night, Miss Charlotte.ā
āI feel like one,ā I said laughing; and I ran to my room and did what I had never done beforeāwrote a second poem in the same day. I had to have some outlet for my feelings. I called it āIn Summer Days of Long Ago,ā and I worked Mary Gillespieās roses and Cecil Fenwickās eyes into it, and made it so sad and reminiscent and minor-musicky that I felt perfectly happy.
For the next two months all went well and merrily. Nobody ever said anything more to me about Cecil Fenwick, but the girls all chattered freely to me of their little love affairs, and I became a sort of general confidant for them. It just warmed up the cockles of my heart, and I began to enjoy the Sewing Circle famously. I got a lot of pretty new dresses and the dearest hat, and I went everywhere I was asked and had a good time.
But there is one thing you can be perfectly sure of. If you do wrong you are going to be punished for it sometime, somehow and somewhere. My punishment was delayed for two months, and then it descended on my head and I was crushed to the very dust.
Another new family besides the Mercers had come to Avonlea in the springāthe Maxwells. There were just Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell; they were a middle-aged couple and very well off. Mr. Maxwell had bought the lumber mills, and they lived up at the old Spencer place which had always been ātheā place of Avonlea. They lived quietly, and Mrs. Maxwell hardly ever went anywhere because she was delicate. She was out when I called and I was out when she returned my call, so that I had never met her.
It was the Sewing Circle day againāat Sarah Gardinerās this time. I was late; everybody else was there when I arrived, and the minute I entered the room I knew something had happened, although I couldnāt imagine what. Everybody looked at me in the strangest way. Of course, Wilhelmina Mercer was the first to set her tongue going.
āOh, Miss Holmes, have you seen him yet?ā she exclaimed.
āSeen whom?ā I said non-excitedly, getting out my thimble and patterns.
āWhy, Cecil Fenwick. Heās hereāin Avonleaāvisiting his sister, Mrs. Maxwell.ā
I suppose I did what they expected me to do. I dropped everything I held, and Josephine Cameron said afterwards that Charlotte Holmes would never be paler when she was in her coffin. If they had just known why I turned so pale!
āItās impossible!ā I said blankly.
āItās really true,ā said Wilhelmina, delighted at this development, as she supposed it, of my romance. āI was up to see Mrs. Maxwell last night, and I met him.ā
āItācanāt beāthe sameāCecil Fenwick,ā I said faintly, because I had to say something.
āOh, yes, it is. He belongs in Blakely, New Brunswick, and heās a lawyer, and heās been out West twenty-two years. Heās oh! so handsome, and just as you described him, except that his hair is quite gray. He has never marriedāI asked Mrs. Maxwellāso you see he has never forgotten you, Miss Holmes. And, oh, I believe everything is going to come out all right.ā
I couldnāt exactly share her cheerful belief. Everything seemed to me to be coming out most horribly wrong. I was so mixed up I didnāt know what to do or say. I felt as if I were in a bad dreamāit MUST be a dreamāthere couldnāt really be a Cecil Fenwick! My feelings were simply indescribable. Fortunately every one put my agitation down to quite a different cause, and they very kindly left me alone to recover myself. I shall never forget that awful afternoon. Right after tea I excused myself and went home as fast as I could go. There I shut myself up in my room, but NOT to write poetry in my blank book. No, indeed! I felt in no poetical mood.
I tried to look the facts squarely in the face. There was a Cecil Fenwick, extraordinary as the coincidence was, and he was here in Avonlea. All my friendsāand foesābelieved that he was the estranged lover of my youth. If he stayed long in Avonlea, one of two things was bound to happen. He would hear the story I had told about him and deny it, and I would be held up to shame and derision for the rest of my natural life; or else he would simply go away in ignorance, and everybody would suppose he had forgotten me and would pity me maddeningly. The latter possibility was bad enough, but it wasnāt to be compared to the former; and oh, how I prayedāyes, I DID pray about itāthat he would go right away. But Providence had other views for me.
Cecil Fenwick didnāt go away. He stayed right on in Avonlea, and the Maxwells blossomed out socially in his honor and tried to give him a good time. Mrs. Maxwell gave a party for him. I got a cardābut you may be very sure I didnāt go, although Nancy thought I was crazy not to. Then every one else gave parties in honor of Mr. Fenwick and I was invited and never went. Wilhelmina Mercer came and pleaded and scolded and told me if I avoided Mr. Fenwick like that he would think I still cherished bitterness against him, and he wouldnāt make any advances towards a reconciliation. Wilhelmina means well, but she hasnāt a great deal of sense.
Cecil Fenwick seemed to be a great favorite with everybody, young and old. He was very rich, too, and Wilhelmina declared that half the girls were after him.
āIf it wasnāt for you, Miss Holmes, I believe Iād have a try for him myself, in spite of his gray hair and quick temperāfor Mrs. Maxwell says he has a pretty quick temper, but itās all over in a minute,ā said Wilhelmina, half in jest and wholly in earnest.
As for me, I gave up going out at all, even to church. I fretted and pined and lost my appetite and never wrote a line in my blank book. Nancy was half frantic and insisted on dosing me with her favorite patent pills. I took them meekly, because it is a waste of time and energy to oppose Nancy, but, of course, they didnāt do me any good. My trouble was too deep-seated for pills to cure. If ever a woman was punished for telling a lie I was that woman. I stopped my subscription to the Weekly Advocate because it still carried that wretched porous plaster advertisement, and I couldnāt bear to see it. If it hadnāt been for that I would never have thought of Fenwick for a name, and all this trouble would have been averted.
One evening, when I was moping in my room, Nancy came up.
āThereās a gentleman in the parlor asking for you, Miss Charlotte.ā
My heart gave just one horrible bounce.
āWhatāsort of a gentleman, Nancy?ā I faltered.
āI think itās that Fenwick man that thereās been such a time about,ā said Nancy, who didnāt know anything about my imaginary escapades, āand he looks to be mad clean through about something, for such a scowl I never seen.ā
āTell him Iāll be down directly, Nancy,ā I said quite calmly.
As soon as Nancy had clumped downstairs again I put on my lace fichu and put two hankies in my belt, for I thought Iād probably need more than one. Then I hunted up an old Advocate for proof, and down I went to the parlor. I know exactly how a criminal feels going to execution, and Iāve been opposed to capital punishment ever since.
I opened the parlor door and went in, carefully closing it behind me, for Nancy has a deplorable habit of listening in the hall. Then my legs gave out completely, and I couldnāt have walked another step to save my life. I just stood there, my hand on the knob, trembling like a leaf.
A man was standing by the south window looking out; he wheeled around as I went in, and, as Nancy said, he had a scowl on and looked angry clear through. He was very handsome, and his gray hair gave him such a distinguished look. I recalled this afterward, but just at the moment you may be quite sure I wasnāt thinking about it at all.
Then all at once a strange thing happened. The scowl went right off his face and the anger out of his eyes. He looked astonished, and then foolish. I saw the color creeping up into his cheeks. As for me, I still stood there staring at him, not able to say a single word.
āMiss Holmes, I presume,ā he said at last, in a deep, thrilling voice. āIāIāoh, confound it! I have calledāI heard some foolish stories and I came here in a rage. Iāve been a foolāI know now they werenāt true. Just excuse me and Iāll go away and kick myself.ā
āNo,ā I said, finding my voice with a gasp, āyou mustnāt go until youāve heard the truth. Itās dreadful enough, but not as dreadful as you might otherwise think. Thoseāthose storiesāI have a confession to make. I did tell them, but I didnāt know there was such a person as Cecil Fenwick in existence.ā
He looked puzzled, as well he might. Then he smiled, took my hand and led me away from the doorāto the knob of which I was still holding with all my mightāto the sofa.
āLetās sit down and talk it over ācomfy,āā he said.
I just confessed the whole shameful business. It was terribly humiliating, but it served me right. I told him how people were always twitting me for never having had a beau, and how I had told them I had; and then I showed him the porous plaster advertisement.
He heard me right through without a word, and then he threw back his big, curly, gray head and laughed.
āThis clears up a great many mysterious hints Iāve been receiving ever since I came to Avonlea,ā he said, āand finally a Mrs. Gilbert came to my sister this afternoon with a long farrago of nonsense about the love affair I had once had with some Charlotte Holmes here. She declared you had told her about it yourself. I confess I flamed up. Iām a peppery chap, and I thoughtāI thoughtāoh, confound it, it might as well out: I thought you were some lank old maid who was amusing herself telling ridiculous stories about me. When you came into the room I knew that, whoever was to blame, you were not.ā
āBut I was,ā I said ruefully. āIt wasnāt right of me to tell such a storyāand it was very silly, too. But who would ever have supposed that there could be real Cecil Fenwick who had lived in Blakely? I never heard of such a coincidence.ā
āItās more than a coincidence,ā said Mr. Fenwick decidedly. āItās predestination; that is what it is. And now letās forget it and talk of something else.ā
We talked of something elseāor at least Mr. Fenwick did, for I was too ashamed to say muchāso long that Nancy got restive and clumped through the hall every five minutes; but Mr. Fenwick never took the hint. When he finally went away he asked if he might come again.
āItās time we made up that old quarrel, you know,ā he said, laughing.
And I, an old maid of forty, caught myself blushing like a girl. But I
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