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Chronicles of Avonlea

L >> Lucy Maud Montgomery >> Chronicles of Avonlea



Typed and Corrected by Kjell Nedrelid.
Last modified 02.11.1996. (dd.mm.yyyy)
Uncorrected version released to Internet 12.10.1996.
This version released 02.11.1996.
You can freely distribute this text in any form as long as you
don't get paid for it.
Please include this short header.





CHRONICLES
OF
AVONLEA


by L. M. MONTGOMERY




TO THE MEMORY OF
Mrs. William A. Houston,
A DEAR FRIEND, WHO HAS GONE BEYOND







The unsung beauty hid
life's common things below.
--Whittier





Contents



I. The Hurrying of Ludovic

II. Old Lady Lloyd

III. Each In His Own Tongue

IV. Little Joscelyn

V. The Winning of Lucinda

VI. Old Man Shaw's Girl

VII. Aunt Olivia's Beau

VIII. The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's

IX. Pa Sloane's Purchase

X. The Courting of Prissy Strong

XI. The Miracle at Carmody

XII. The End of a Quarrel




Chronicles
of
Avonlea




I. The Hurrying of Ludovic


Anne Shirley was curled up on the window-seat of Theodora
Dix's sitting-room one Saturday evening, looking dreamily afar
at some fair starland beyond the hills of sunset. Anne was
visiting for a fortnight of her vacation at Echo Lodge, where
Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Irving were spending the summer, and she
often ran over to the old Dix homestead to chat for awhile
with Theodora. They had had their chat out, on this particular
evening, and Anne was giving herself over to the delight of
building an air-castle. She leaned her shapely head, with its
braided coronet of dark red hair, against the window-casing,
and her gray eyes were like the moonlight gleam of shadowy
pools.

Then she saw Ludovic Speed coming down the lane. He was yet
far from the house, for the Dix lane was a long one, but
Ludovic could be recognized as far as he could be seen. No one
else in Middle Grafton had such a tall, gently-stooping,
placidly-moving figure. In every kink and turn of it there was
an individuality all Ludovic's own.

Anne roused herself from her dreams, thinking it would only be
tactful to take her departure. Ludovic was courting Theodora.
Everyone in Grafton knew that, or, if anyone were in ignorance
of the fact, it was not because he had not had time to find
out. Ludovic had been coming down that lane to see Theodora,
in the same ruminating, unhastening fashion, for fifteen
years!

When Anne, who was slim and girlish and romantic, rose to go,
Theodora, who was plump and middle-aged and practical, said,
with a twinkle in her eye:

"There isn't any hurry, child. Sit down and have your call
out. You've seen Ludovic coming down the lane, and, I suppose,
you think you'll be a crowd. But you won't. Ludovic rather
likes a third person around, and so do I. It spurs up the
conversation as it were. When a man has been coming to see you
straight along, twice a week for fifteen years, you get rather
talked out by spells."

Theodora never pretended to bashfulness where Ludovic was
concerned. She was not at all shy of referring to him and his
dilatory courtship. Indeed, it seemed to amuse her.

Anne sat down again and together they watched Ludovic coming
down the lane, gazing calmly about him at the lush clover
fields and the blue loops of the river winding in and out of
the misty valley below.

Anne looked at Theodora's placid, finely-moulded face and
tried to imagine what she herself would feel like if she were
sitting there, waiting for an elderly lover who had,
seemingly, taken so long to make up his mind. But even Anne's
imagination failed her for this.

"Anyway," she thought, impatiently, "if I wanted him I think
I'd find some way of hurrying him up. Ludovic SPEED! Was
there ever such a misfit of a name? Such a name for such a man
is a delusion and a snare."

Presently Ludovic got to the house, but stood so long on the
doorstep in a brown study, gazing into the tangled green
boskage of the cherry orchard, that Theodora finally went and
opened the door before he knocked. As she brought him into the
sitting-room she made a comical grimace at Anne over his
shoulder.

Ludovic smiled pleasantly at Anne. He liked her; she was the
only young girl he knew, for he generally avoided young girls-
-they made him feel awkward and out of place. But Anne did not
affect him in this fashion. She had a way of getting on with
all sorts of people, and, although they had not known her very
long, both Ludovic and Theodora looked upon her as an old
friend.

Ludovic was tall and somewhat ungainly, but his unhesitating
placidity gave him the appearance of a dignity that did not
otherwise pertain to him. He had a drooping, silky, brown
moustache, and a little curly tuft of imperial,--a fashion
which was regarded as eccentric in Grafton, where men had
clean-shaven chins or went full-bearded. His eyes were dreamy
and pleasant, with a touch of melancholy in their blue depths.

He sat down in the big bulgy old armchair that had belonged to
Theodora's father. Ludovic always sat there, and Anne declared
that the chair had come to look like him.

The conversation soon grew animated enough. Ludovic was a good
talker when he had somebody to draw him out. He was well read,
and frequently surprised Anne by his shrewd comments on men
and matters out in the world, of which only the faint echoes
reached Deland River. He had also a liking for religious
arguments with Theodora, who did not care much for politics or
the making of history, but was avid of doctrines, and read
everything pertaining thereto. When the conversation drifted
into an eddy of friendly wrangling between Ludovic and
Theodora over Christian Science, Anne understood that her
usefulness was ended for the time being, and that she would
not be missed.

"It's star time and good-night time," she said, and went away
quietly.

But she had to stop to laugh when she was well out of sight of
the house, in a green meadow bestarred with the white and gold
of daisies. A wind, odour-freighted, blew daintily across it.
Anne leaned against a white birch tree in the corner and
laughed heartily, as she was apt to do whenever she thought of
Ludovic and Theodora. To her eager youth, this courtship of
theirs seemed a very amusing thing. She liked Ludovic, but
allowed herself to be provoked with him.

"The dear, big, irritating goose!" she said aloud. "There
never was such a lovable idiot before. He's just like the
alligator in the old rhyme, who wouldn't go along, and
wouldn't keep still, but just kept bobbing up and down."

Two evenings later, when Anne went over to the Dix place, she
and Theodora drifted into a conversation about Ludovic.
Theodora, who was the most industrious soul alive, and had a
mania for fancy work into the bargain, was busying her smooth,
plump fingers with a very elaborate Battenburg lace centre-
piece. Anne was lying back in a little rocker, with her slim
hands folded in her lap, watching Theodora. She realized that
Theodora was very handsome, in a stately, Juno-like fashion of
firm, white flesh, large, clearly-chiselled outlines, and
great, cowey, brown eyes. When Theodora was not smiling, she
looked very imposing. Anne thought it likely that Ludovic held
her in awe.

"Did you and Ludovic talk about Christian Science ALL
Saturday evening?" she asked.

Theodora overflowed into a smile.

"Yes, and we even quarrelled over it. At least _I_ did.
Ludovic wouldn't quarrel with anyone. You have to fight air
when you spar with him. I hate to square up to a person who
won't hit back."

"Theodora," said Anne coaxingly, "I am going to be curious and
impertinent. You can snub me if you like. Why don't you and
Ludovic get married?"

Theodora laughed comfortably.

"That's the question Grafton folks have been asking for quite
a while, I reckon, Anne. Well, I'd have no objection to
marrying Ludovic. That's frank enough for you, isn't it? But
it's not easy to marry a man unless he asks you. And Ludovic
has never asked me."

"Is he too shy?" persisted Anne. Since Theodora was in the
mood, she meant to sift this puzzling affair to the bottom.

Theodora dropped her work and looked meditatively out over the
green slopes of the summer world.

"No, I don't think it is that. Ludovic isn't shy. It's just
his way--the Speed way. The Speeds are all dreadfully
deliberate. They spend years thinking over a thing before they
make up their minds to do it. Sometimes they get so much in
the habit of thinking about it that they never get over it--
like old Alder Speed, who was always talking of going to
England to see his brother, but never went, though there was
no earthly reason why he shouldn't. They're not lazy, you
know, but they love to take their time."

"And Ludovic is just an aggravated case of Speedism,"
suggested Anne.

"Exactly. He never hurried in his life. Why, he has been
thinking for the last six years of getting his house painted.
He talks it over with me every little while, and picks out the
colour, and there the matter stays. He's fond of me, and he
means to ask me to have him sometime. The only question is--
will the time ever come?"

"Why don't you hurry him up?" asked Anne impatiently.

Theodora went back to her stitches with another laugh.

"If Ludovic could be hurried up, I'm not the one to do it. I'm
too shy. It sounds ridiculous to hear a woman of my age and
inches say that, but it is true. Of course, I know it's the
only way any Speed ever did make out to get married. For
instance, there's a cousin of mine married to Ludovic's
brother. I don't say she proposed to him out and out, but,
mind you, Anne, it wasn't far from it. I couldn't do anything
like that. I DID try once. When I realized that I was
getting sere and mellow, and all the girls of my generation
were going off on either hand, I tried to give Ludovic a hint.
But it stuck in my throat. And now I don't mind. If I don't
change Dix to Speed until I take the initiative, it will be
Dix to the end of life. Ludovic doesn't realize that we are
growing old, you know. He thinks we are giddy young folks yet,
with plenty of time before us. That's the Speed failing. They
never find out they're alive until they're dead."

"You're fond of Ludovic, aren't you?" asked Anne, detecting a
note of real bitterness among Theodora's paradoxes.

"Laws, yes," said Theodora candidly. She did not think it
worth while to blush over so settled a fact. "I think the
world and all of Ludovic. And he certainly does need somebody
to look after HIM. He's neglected--he looks frayed. You can
see that for yourself. That old aunt of his looks after his
house in some fashion, but she doesn't look after him. And
he's coming now to the age when a man needs to be looked after
and coddled a bit. I'm lonesome here, and Ludovic is lonesome
up there, and it does seem ridiculous, doesn't it? I don't
wonder that we're the standing joke of Grafton. Goodness
knows, I laugh at it enough myself. I've sometimes thought
that if Ludovic could be made jealous it might spur him along.
But I never could flirt and there's nobody to flirt with if I
could. Everybody hereabouts looks upon me as Ludovic's
property and nobody would dream of interfering with him."

"Theodora," cried Anne, "I have a plan!"

"Now, what are you going to do?" exclaimed Theodora.

Anne told her. At first Theodora laughed and protested. In the
end, she yielded somewhat doubtfully, overborne by Anne's
enthusiasm.

"Well, try it, then," she said, resignedly. "If Ludovic gets
mad and leaves me, I'll be worse off than ever. But nothing
venture, nothing win. And there is a fighting chance, I
suppose. Besides, I must admit I'm tired of his dilly-
dallying."

Anne went back to Echo Lodge tingling with delight in her
plot. She hunted up Arnold Sherman, and told him what was
required of him. Arnold Sherman listened and laughed. He was
an elderly widower, an intimate friend of Stephen Irving, and
had come down to spend part of the summer with him and his
wife in Prince Edward Island. He was handsome in a mature
style, and he had a dash of mischief in him still, so that he
entered readily enough into Anne's plan. It amused him to
think of hurrying Ludovic Speed, and he knew that Theodora Dix
could be depended on to do her part. The comedy would not be
dull, whatever its outcome.

The curtain rose on the first act after prayer meeting on the
next Thursday night. It was bright moonlight when the people
came out of church, and everybody saw it plainly. Arnold
Sherman stood upon the steps close to the door, and Ludovic
Speed leaned up against a corner of the graveyard fence, as he
had done for years. The boys said he had worn the paint off
that particular place. Ludovic knew of no reason why he should
paste himself up against the church door. Theodora would come
out as usual, and he would join her as she went past the
corner.

This was what happened, Theodora came down the steps, her
stately figure outlined in its darkness against the gush of
lamplight from the porch. Arnold Sherman asked her if he might
see her home. Theodora took his arm calmly, and together they
swept past the stupefied Ludovic, who stood helplessly gazing
after them as if unable to believe his eyes.

For a few moments he stood there limply; then he started down
the road after his fickle lady and her new admirer. The boys
and irresponsible young men crowded after, expecting some
excitement, but they were disappointed. Ludovic strode on
until he overtook Theodora and Arnold Sherman, and then fell
meekly in behind them.

Theodora hardly enjoyed her walk home, although Arnold Sherman
laid himself out to be especially entertaining. Her heart
yearned after Ludovic, whose shuffling footsteps she heard
behind her. She feared that she had been very cruel, but she
was in for it now. She steeled herself by the reflection that
it was all for his own good, and she talked to Arnold Sherman
as if he were the one man in the world. Poor, deserted
Ludovic, following humbly behind, heard her, and if Theodora
had known how bitter the cup she was holding to his lips
really was, she would never have been resolute enough to
present it, no matter for what ultimate good.

When she and Arnold turned in at her gate, Ludovic had to
stop. Theodora looked over her shoulder and saw him standing
still on the road. His forlorn figure haunted her thoughts all
night. If Anne had not run over the next day and bolstered up
her convictions, she might have spoiled everything by
prematurely relenting.

Ludovic, meanwhile, stood still on the road, quite oblivious
to the hoots and comments of the vastly amused small boy
contingent, until Theodora and his rival disappeared from his
view under the firs in the hollow of her lane. Then he turned
about and went home, not with his usual leisurely amble, but
with a perturbed stride which proclaimed his inward disquiet.

He felt bewildered. If the world had come suddenly to an end
or if the lazy, meandering Grafton River had turned about and
flowed up hill, Ludovic could not have been more astonished.
For fifteen years he had walked home from meetings with
Theodora; and now this elderly stranger, with all the glamour
of "the States" hanging about him, had coolly walked off with
her under Ludovic's very nose. Worse--most unkindest cut of
all--Theodora had gone with him willingly; nay, she had
evidently enjoyed his company. Ludovic felt the stirring of a
righteous anger in his easy-going soul.

When he reached the end of his lane, he paused at his gate,
and looked at his house, set back from the lane in a crescent
of birches. Even in the moonlight, its weather-worn aspect was
plainly visible. He thought of the "palatial residence" rumour
ascribed to Arnold Sherman in Boston, and stroked his chin
nervously with his sunburnt fingers. Then he doubled up his
fist and struck it smartly on the gate-post.

"Theodora needn't think she is going to jilt me in this
fashion, after keeping company with me for fifteen years," he
said. "I'LL have something to say to it, Arnold Sherman or
no Arnold Sherman. The impudence of the puppy!"

The next morning Ludovic drove to Carmody and engaged Joshua
Pye to come and paint his house, and that evening, although he
was not due till Saturday night, he went down to see Theodora.

Arnold Sherman was there before him, and was actually sitting
in Ludovic's own prescriptive chair. Ludovic had to deposit
himself in Theodora's new wicker rocker, where he looked and
felt lamentably out of place.

If Theodora felt the situation to be awkward, she carried it
off superbly. She had never looked handsomer, and Ludovic
perceived that she wore her second best silk dress. He
wondered miserably if she had donned it in expectation of his
rival's call. She had never put on silk dresses for him.
Ludovic had always been the meekest and mildest of mortals,
but he felt quite murderous as he sat mutely there and
listened to Arnold Sherman's polished conversation.

"You should just have been here to see him glowering,"
Theodora told the delighted Anne the next day. "It may be
wicked of me, but I felt real glad. I was afraid he might stay
away and sulk. So long as he comes here and sulks I don't
worry. But he is feeling badly enough, poor soul, and I'm
really eaten up by remorse. He tried to outstay Mr. Sherman
last night, but he didn't manage it. You never saw a more
depressed-looking creature than he was as he hurried down the
lane. Yes, he actually hurried."

The following Sunday evening Arnold Sherman walked to church
with Theodora, and sat with her. When they came in Ludovic
Speed suddenly stood up in his pew under the gallery. He sat
down again at once, but everybody in view had seen him, and
that night folks in all the length and breadth of Grafton
River discussed the dramatic occurrence with keen enjoyment.

"Yes, he jumped right up as if he was pulled on his feet,
while the minister was reading the chapter," said his cousin,
Lorella Speed, who had been in church, to her sister, who had
not. "His face was as white as a sheet, and his eyes were just
glaring out of his head. I never felt so thrilled, I declare!
I almost expected him to fly at them then and there. But he
just gave a sort of gasp and set down again. I don't know
whether Theodora Dix saw him or not. She looked as cool and
unconcerned as you please."

Theodora had not seen Ludovic, but if she looked cool and
unconcerned, her appearance belied her, for she felt miserably
flustered. She could not prevent Arnold Sherman coming to
church with her, but it seemed to her like going too far.
People did not go to church and sit together in Grafton unless
they were the next thing to being engaged. What if this filled
Ludovic with the narcotic of despair instead of wakening him
up! She sat through the service in misery and heard not one
word of the sermon.

But Ludovic's spectacular performances were not yet over. The
Speeds might be hard to get started, but once they were
started their momentum was irresistible. When Theodora and Mr.
Sherman came out, Ludovic was waiting on the steps. He stood
up straight and stern, with his head thrown back and his
shoulders squared. There was open defiance in the look he cast
on his rival, and masterfulness in the mere touch of the hand
he laid on Theodora's arm.

"May I see you home, Miss Dix?" his words said. His tone said,
"I am going to see you home whether or no."

Theodora, with a deprecating look at Arnold Sherman, took his
arm, and Ludovic marched her across the green amid a silence
which the very horses tied to the storm fence seemed to share.
For Ludovic 'twas a crowded hour of glorious life.

Anne walked all the way over from Avonlea the next day to hear
the news. Theodora smiled consciously.

"Yes, it is really settled at last, Anne. Coming home last
night Ludovic asked me plump and plain to marry him,--Sunday
and all as it was. It's to be right away--for Ludovic won't be
put off a week longer than necessary."

"So Ludovic Speed has been hurried up to some purpose at
last," said Mr. Sherman, when Anne called in at Echo Lodge,
brimful with her news. "And you are delighted, of course, and
my poor pride must be the scapegoat. I shall always be
remembered in Grafton as the man from Boston who wanted
Theodora Dix and couldn't get her."

"But that won't be true, you know," said Anne comfortingly.

Arnold Sherman thought of Theodora's ripe beauty, and the
mellow companionableness she had revealed in their brief
intercourse.

"I'm not perfectly sure of that," he said, with a half sigh.





II. Old Lady Lloyd


I. The May Chapter


Spencervale gossip always said that "Old Lady Lloyd" was rich
and mean and proud. Gossip, as usual, was one-third right and
two-thirds wrong. Old Lady Lloyd was neither rich nor mean; in
reality she was pitifully poor--so poor that "Crooked Jack"
Spencer, who dug her garden and chopped her wood for her, was
opulent by contrast, for he, at least, never lacked three
meals a day, and the Old Lady could sometimes achieve no more
than one. But she WAS very proud--so proud that she would
have died rather than let the Spencervale people, among whom
she had queened it in her youth, suspect how poor she was and
to what straits was sometimes reduced. She much preferred to
have them think her miserly and odd--a queer old recluse who
never went anywhere, even to church, and who paid the smallest
subscription to the minister's salary of anyone in the
congregation.

"And her just rolling in wealth!" they said indignantly.
"Well, she didn't get her miserly ways from her parents.
THEY were real generous and neighbourly. There never was a
finer gentleman than old Doctor Lloyd. He was always doing
kindnesses to everybody; and he had a way of doing them that
made you feel as if you was doing the favour, not him. Well,
well, let Old Lady Lloyd keep herself and her money to herself
if she wants to. If she doesn't want our company, she doesn't
have to suffer it, that's all. Reckon she isn't none too happy
for all her money and pride."

No, the Old Lady was none too happy, that was unfortunately
true. It is not easy to be happy when your life is eaten up
with loneliness and emptiness on the spiritual side, and when,
on the material side, all you have between you and starvation
is the little money your hens bring you in.

The Old Lady lived "away back at the old Lloyd place," as it
was always called. It was a quaint, low-eaved house, with big
chimneys and square windows and with spruces growing thickly
all around it. The Old Lady lived there all alone and there
were weeks at a time when she never saw a human being except
Crooked Jack. What the Old Lady did with herself and how she
put in her time was a puzzle the Spencervale people could not
solve. The children believed she amused herself counting the
gold in the big black box under her bed. Spencervale children
held the Old Lady in mortal terror; some of them--the "Spencer
Road" fry--believed she was a witch; all of them would run if,
when wandering about the woods in search of berries or spruce
gum, they saw at a distance the spare, upright form of the Old
Lady, gathering sticks for her fire. Mary Moore was the only
one who was quite sure she was not a witch.

"Witches are always ugly," she said decisively, "and Old Lady
Lloyd isn't ugly. She's real pretty--she's got such a soft
white hair and big black eyes and a little white face. Those
Road children don't know what they're talking of. Mother says
they're a very ignorant crowd."

"Well, she doesn't ever go to church, and she mutters and
talks to herself all the time she's picking up sticks,"
maintained Jimmy Kimball stoutly.

The Old Lady talked to herself because she was really very
fond of company and conversation. To be sure, when you have
talked to nobody but yourself for nearly twenty years, it is
apt to grow somewhat monotonous; and there were times when the
Old Lady would have sacrificed everything but her pride for a
little human companionship. At such times she felt very bitter
and resentful toward Fate for having taken everything from
her. She had nothing to love, and that is about as unwholesome
a condition as is possible to anyone.

It was always hardest in the spring. Once upon a time the Old
Lady--when she had not been the Old Lady, but pretty, wilful,
high-spirited Margaret Lloyd--had loved springs; now she hated
them because they hurt her; and this particular spring of this
particular May chapter hurt her more than any that had gone
before. The Old Lady felt as if she could NOT endure the
ache of it. Everything hurt her--the new green tips on the
firs, the fairy mists down in the little beech hollow below
the house, the fresh smell of the red earth Crooked Jack
spaded up in her garden. The Old Lady lay awake all one
moonlit night and cried for very heartache. She even forgot
her body hunger in her soul hunger; and the Old Lady had been
hungry, more or less, all that week. She was living on store
biscuits and water, so that she might be able to pay Crooked
Jack for digging her garden. When the pale, lovely dawn-colour
came stealing up the sky behind the spruces, the Old Lady
buried her face in her pillow and refused to look at it.

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