Lucy Maud Montgomery - The Complete Novels of Lucy Maud Montgomery - 20 Titles in One Volume - Including Anne of Green Gables Series, Emily Starr Trilogy, The Blue Castle, The Story Girl & Pat of Silver Bush Series

“Oh, Miss Shirley, I’m sure I don’t love him enough to marry him. I realize that now … now that it is too late. I was just moonlighted into thinking I loved him. If it hadn’t been for the moon I’m sure I would have asked for time to think it over. But I was swept off my feet … I can see that now. Oh, I’ll run away … I’ll do something desperate!”

“But, Hazel dear, if you feel you’ve made a mistake, why not just tell him …”

“Oh, Miss Shirley, I couldn’t! It would kill him. He simply adores me. There isn’t any way out of it really. And Terry’s beginning to talk of getting married. Think of it … a child like me … I’m only eighteen. All the friends I’ve told about my engagement as a secret are congratulating me … and it’s such a farce. They think Terry is a great catch because he comes into ten thousand dollars when he is twenty-five. His grandmother left it to him. As if I cared about such a sordid thing as money! Oh, Miss Shirley, why is it such a mercenary world … why?”

“I suppose it is mercenary in some respects, but not in all, Hazel. And if you feel like this about Terry … we all make mistakes … it’s very hard to know our own minds sometimes… .”

“Oh, isn’t it? I knew you’d understand. I did think I cared for him, Miss Shirley. The first time I saw him I just sat and gazed at him the whole evening. Waves went over me when I met his eyes. He was so handsome … though I thought even then that his hair was too curly and his eyelashes too white. That should have warned me. But I always put my soul into everything, you know … I’m so intense. I felt little shivers of ecstasy whenever he came near me. And now I feel nothing … nothing ! Oh, I’ve grown old these past few weeks, Miss Shirley … old ! I’ve hardly eaten anything since I got engaged. Mother could tell you. I’m sure I don’t love him enough to marry him. Whatever else I may be in doubt about, I know that .”

“Then you shouldn’t …”

“Even that moonlight night he proposed to me, I was thinking of what dress I’d wear to Joan Pringle’s fancy dress party. I thought it would be lovely to go as Queen of the May in pale green, with a sash of darker green and a cluster of pale pink roses in my hair. And a May-pole decked with tiny roses and hung with pink and green ribbons. Wouldn’t it have been fetching? And then Joan’s uncle had to go and die and Joan couldn’t have the party after all, so it all went for nothing. But the point is … I really couldn’t have loved him when my thoughts were wandering like that, could I?”

“I don’t know … our thoughts play us curious tricks some times.”

“I really don’t think I ever want to get married at all, Miss Shirley. Do you happen to have an orangewood stick handy? Thanks. My half-moons are getting ragged. I might as well do them while I’m talking. Isn’t it just lovely to be exchanging confidences like this? It’s so seldom one gets the opportunity … the world intrudes itself so. Well, what was I talking of … oh, yes, Terry. What am I to do, Miss Shirley? I want your advice. Oh, I feel like a trapped creature!”

“But, Hazel, it’s so very simple …”

“Oh, it isn’t simple at all, Miss Shirley! It’s dreadfully complicated. Mamma is so outrageously pleased, but Aunt Jean isn’t. She doesn’t like Terry, and everybody says she has such good judgment. I don’t want to marry anybody. I’m ambitious … I want a career. Sometimes I think I’d like to be a nun. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be the bride of heaven? I think the Catholic church is so picturesque, don’t you? But of course I’m not a Catholic … and anyway, I suppose you could hardly call it a career. I’ve always felt I’d love to be a nurse. It’s such a romantic profession, don’t you think? Smoothing fevered brows and all that … and some handsome millionaire patient falling in love with you and carrying you off to spend a honeymoon in a villa on the Riviera, facing the morning sun and the blue Mediterranean. I’ve seen myself in it. Foolish dreams, perhaps, but, oh, so sweet. I can’t give them up for the prosaic reality of marrying Terry Garland and settling down in Summerside!”

Hazel shivered at the very idea and scrutinized a half-moon critically.

“I suppose …” began Anne.

“We haven’t anything in common, you know, Miss Shirley. He doesn’t care for poetry and romance, and they’re my very life. Sometimes I think I must be a reincarnation of Cleopatra … or would it be Helen of Troy? … one of those languorous, seductive creatures, anyhow. I have such wonderful thoughts and feelings … I don’t know where I get them if that isn’t the explanation. And Terry is so terribly matter-of-fact … he can’t be a reincarnation of anybody. What he said when I told him about Vera Fry’s quill pen proves that, doesn’t it?”

“But I never heard of Vera Fry’s quill pen,” said Anne patiently.

“Oh, haven’t you? I thought I’d told you. I’ve told you so much. Vera’s fiance gave her a quill pen he’d made out of a feather he’d picked up that had fallen from a crow’s wing. He said to her, ‘Let your spirit soar to heaven with it whenever you use it, like the bird who once bore it.’ Wasn’t that just wonderful? But Terry said the pen would wear out very soon, especially if Vera wrote as much as she talked, and anyway he didn’t think crows ever soared to heaven. He just missed the meaning of the whole thing completely … it’s very essence.”

“What was its meaning?”

“Oh … why … why … soaring, you know … getting away from the clods of earth. Did you notice Vera’s ring? A sapphire. I think sapphires are too dark for engagement rings. I’d rather have your dear, romantic little hoop of pearls. Terry wanted to give me my ring right away … but I said not yet a while … it would seem like a fetter … so irrevocable, you know. I wouldn’t have felt like that if I’d really loved him, would I?”

“No, I’m afraid not …”

“It’s been so wonderful to tell somebody what I really feel like. Oh, Miss Shirley, if I could only find myself free again … free to seek the deeper meaning of life! Terry wouldn’t understand what I meant if I said that to him. And I know he has a temper … all the Garlands have. Oh, Miss Shirley … if you would just talk to him … tell him what I feel like … he thinks you’re wonderful … he’d be guided by what you say.”

“Hazel, my dear little girl, how could I do that?”

“I don’t see why not.” Hazel finished the last new moon and laid the orangewood stick down tragically. “If you can’t, there isn’t any help anywhere. But I can never, never, NEVER marry Terry Garland.”

“If you don’t love Terry, you ought to go to him and tell him so … no matter how badly it will make him feel. Some day you’ll meet some one you can really love, Hazel dear … you won’t have any doubts then … you’ll know.”

“I shall never love anybody again,” said Hazel, stonily calm. “Love brings only sorrow. Young as I am I have learned that. This would make a wonderful plot for one of your stories, wouldn’t it, Miss Shirley? I must be going … I’d no idea it was so late. I feel so much better since I’ve confided in you … ‘touched your soul in shadowland,’ as Shakespeare says.”

“I think it was Pauline Johnson,” said Anne gently.

“Well, I knew it was somebody … somebody who had lived. I think I shall sleep tonight, Miss Shirley. I’ve hardly slept since I found myself engaged to Terry, without the least notion how it had all come about.”