Anne of Windy Poplars - L. M. Montgomery [85]
Hazel’s voice broke; her eyes filled with tears. She collapsed on a rocking-chair.
‘You can’t have many exclamation points left,’ thought Anne, ‘but no doubt the supply of italics is inexhaustible.’
‘This will just about kill poor Mamma,’ sobbed Hazel. ‘She was so pleased… Everybody was so pleased… They all thought it an ideal match. Oh, can anything ever again be like it used to be?’
‘Wait till the next moonlight night and try,’ said Anne gently.
‘Oh, yes, laugh, Miss Shirley – laugh at my suffering. I have not the least doubt that you find it all very amusing, very amusing indeed! You don’t know what suffering is! It is terrible – terrible!’
Anne looked at the clock and sneezed. ‘Then don’t suffer,’ she said unpityingly.
‘I will suffer. My feelings are very deep. Of course, a shallow soul wouldn’t suffer. But I am thankful I am not shallow, whatever else I am. Have you any idea what it means to be in love, Miss Shirley? Really terribly deeply, wonderfully in love? And then to trust and be deceived? I went to Kingsport so happy, loving all the world! I told Terry to be good to you while I was away, not to let you be lonesome. I came home last night so happy. And he told me he didn’t love me any longer, that it was all a mistake – a mistake! – and that you had told him I didn’t care for him any longer, and wanted to be free!’
‘My intentions were honourable,’ said Anne, laughing. Her impish sense of humour had come to her rescue, and she was laughing as much at herself as at Hazel.
‘Oh, how did I live through the night?’ said Hazel wildly. ‘I just walked the floor. And you don’t know – you can’t even imagine – what I’ve gone through today. I’ve had to sit and listen – actually listen – to people talking about Terry’s infatuation for you. Oh, people have been watching you! They know what you’ve been doing. And why? Why? That is what I cannot understand. You had your own lover; why couldn’t you have left me mine? What had you against me? What had I ever done to you?’
‘I think,’ said Anne, thoroughly exasperated, ‘that you and Terry both need a good spanking. If you weren’t too angry to listen to reason –’
‘Oh, I’m not angry, Miss Shirley; only hurt – terribly hurt,’ said Hazel, in a voice positively foggy with tears. ‘I feel that I have been betrayed in everything – in friendship as well as in love. Well, they say after your heart is broken you never suffer any more. I hope it’s true, but I fear it isn’t.’
‘What has become of your ambition, Hazel? And what about the millionaire patient and the honeymoon villa on the blue Mediterranean?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, Miss Shirley. I’m not a bit ambitious. I’m not one of those dreadful new women. My highest ambition was to be a happy wife, and make a happy home for my husband. Was! Was! To think it should be in the past tense! Well, it doesn’t do to trust anyone. I’ve learned that. A bitter, bitter lesson!’
Hazel wiped her eyes and Anne wiped her nose, and Dusty Miller glared at the evening star with the expression of a misanthrope.
‘You’d better go, I think, Hazel. I’m really very busy, and I can’t see that there is anything to be gained by prolonging this interview.’
With the air of Mary Queen of Scots advancing to the scaffold, Hazel walked to the door and turned there dramatically.
‘Farewell, Miss Shirley! I leave you to your conscience.’
Anne, left alone with her conscience, laid down her pen, sneezed three times, and gave herself a plain talking to. ‘You may be a B.A., Anne Shirley, but you have a few things to learn yet, things that even Rebecca Dew could have told you – did tell you. Be honest with yourself, my dear girl, and take your medicine like a gallant lady. Admit that you were carried off your feet – moonlighted – by flattery. Admit that you really liked Hazel’s professed adoration for you. Admit you found it pleasant to be worshipped. Admit that you liked the idea of being a sort of dea ex machina – saving people from their own folly when they didn’t in the least want to be saved from it. And, having admitted