Chronicles of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Lucy Maud Montgomery(1)

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Title: Chronicles of Avonlea
Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
Release Date: August 13, 2008 [EBook #1354]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRONICLES OF AVONLEA ***
Produced by Kjell Nedrelid, and David Widger
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
CHRONICLES OF AVONLEA
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
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Chronicles of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Lucy Maud Montgomery(1)

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