CHAPTER XXXIII. The Hotel Concert
|PUT on your white organdy, by all means, Anne," advised Dianadecidedly.
They were together in the east gable chamber; outside it was onlytwilight--a lovely yellowish-green twilight with a clear-blue cloudlesssky. A big round moon, slowly deepening from her pallid luster intoburnished silver, hung over the Haunted Wood; the air was full of sweetsummer sounds--sleepy birds twittering, freakish breezes, farawayvoices and laughter. But in Anne's room the blind was drawn and the lamplighted, for an important toilet was being made.
The east gable was a very different place from what it had been on thatnight four years before, when Anne had felt its bareness penetrate tothe marrow of her spirit with its inhospitable chill. Changes had creptin, Marilla conniving at them resignedly, until it was as sweet anddainty a nest as a young girl could desire.
The velvet carpet with the pink roses and the pink silk curtains ofAnne's early visions had certainly never materialized; but her dreamshad kept pace with her growth, and it is not probable she lamentedthem. The floor was covered with a pretty matting, and the curtains thatsoftened the high window and fluttered in the vagrant breezes were ofpale-green art muslin. The walls, hung not with gold and silver brocadetapestry, but with a dainty apple-blossom paper, were adorned with a fewgood pictures given Anne by Mrs. Allan. Miss Stacy's photograph occupiedthe place of honor, and Anne made a sentimental point of keeping freshflowers on the bracket under it. Tonight a spike of white lilies faintlyperfumed the room like the dream of a fragrance. There was no "mahoganyfurniture," but there was a white-painted bookcase filled with books, acushioned wicker rocker, a toilet table befrilled with white muslin,a quaint, gilt-framed mirror with chubby pink Cupids and purple grapespainted over its arched top, that used to hang in the spare room, and alow white bed.
Anne was dressing for a concert at the White Sands Hotel. The guests hadgot it up in aid of the Charlottetown hospital, and had hunted out allthe available amateur talent in the surrounding districts to help italong. Bertha Sampson and Pearl Clay of the White Sands Baptist choirhad been asked to sing a duet; Milton Clark of Newbridge was to give aviolin solo; Winnie Adella Blair of Carmody was to sing a Scotch ballad;and Laura Spencer of Spencervale and Anne Shirley of Avonlea were torecite.
As Anne would have said at one time, it was "an epoch in her life," andshe was deliciously athrill with the excitement of it. Matthew was inthe seventh heaven of gratified pride over the honor conferred on hisAnne and Marilla was not far behind, although she would have died ratherthan admit it, and said she didn't think it was very proper for a lotof young folks to be gadding over to the hotel without any responsibleperson with them.
Anne and Diana were to drive over with Jane Andrews and her brotherBilly in their double-seated buggy; and several other Avonlea girls andboys were going too. There was a party of visitors expected out fromtown, and after the concert a supper was to be given to the performers.
"Do you really think the organdy will be best?" queried Anne anxiously."I don't think it's as pretty as my blue-flowered muslin--and itcertainly isn't so fashionable."
"But it suits you ever so much better," said Diana. "It's so softand frilly and clinging. The muslin is stiff, and makes you look toodressed up. But the organdy seems as if it grew on you."
Anne sighed and yielded. Diana was beginning to have a reputation fornotable taste in dressing, and her advice on such subjects was muchsought after. She was looking very pretty herself on this particularnight in a dress of the lovely wild-rose pink, from which Anne wasforever debarred; but she was not to take any part in the concert, soher appearance was of minor importance. All her pains were bestowed uponAnne, who, she vowed, must, for the credit of Avonlea, be dressed andcombed and adorned to the Queen's taste.
"Pull out that frill a little more--so; here, let me tie your sash; nowfor your slippers. I'm going to braid your hair in two thick braids,and tie them halfway up with big white bows--no, don't pull out a singlecurl over your forehead--just have the soft part. There is no way you doyour hair suits you so well, Anne, and Mrs. Allan says you look like aMadonna when you part it so. I shall fasten this little white house rosejust behind your ear. There was just one on my bush, and I saved it foryou."
"Shall I put my pearl beads on?" asked Anne. "Matthew brought me astring from town last week, and I know he'd like to see them on me."
Diana pursed up her lips, put her black head on one side critically,and finally pronounced in favor of the beads, which were thereupon tiedaround Anne's slim milk-white throat.
"There's something so stylish about you, Anne," said Diana, withunenvious admiration. "You hold your head with such an air. I supposeit's your figure. I am just a dumpling. I've always been afraid of it,and now I know it is so. Well, I suppose I shall just have to resignmyself to it."
"But you have such dimples," said Anne, smiling affectionately into thepretty, vivacious face so near her own. "Lovely dimples, like littledents in cream. I have given up all hope of dimples. My dimple-dreamwill never come true; but so many of my dreams have that I mustn'tcomplain. Am I all ready now?"
"All ready," assured Diana, as Marilla appeared in the doorway, a gauntfigure with grayer hair than of yore and no fewer angles, but with amuch softer face. "Come right in and look at our elocutionist, Marilla.Doesn't she look lovely?"
Marilla emitted a sound between a sniff and a grunt.
"She looks neat and proper. I like that way of fixing her hair. But Iexpect she'll ruin that dress driving over there in the dust and dewwith it, and it looks most too thin for these damp nights. Organdy's themost unserviceable stuff in the world anyhow, and I told Matthew so whenhe got it. But there is no use in saying anything to Matthew nowadays.Time was when he would take my advice, but now he just buys things forAnne regardless, and the clerks at Carmody know they can palm anythingoff on him. Just let them tell him a thing is pretty and fashionable,and Matthew plunks his money down for it. Mind you keep your skirt clearof the wheel, Anne, and put your warm jacket on."
Then Marilla stalked downstairs, thinking proudly how sweet Anne looked,with that
"One moonbeam from the forehead to the crown"
and regretting that she could not go to the concert herself to hear hergirl recite.
"I wonder if it _is_ too damp for my dress," said Anne anxiously.
"Not a bit of it," said Diana, pulling up the window blind. "It's aperfect night, and there won't be any dew. Look at the moonlight."
"I'm so glad my window looks east into the sun rising," said Anne, goingover to Diana. "It's so splendid to see the morning coming up over thoselong hills and glowing through those sharp fir tops. It's new everymorning, and I feel as if I washed my very soul in that bath of earliestsunshine. Oh, Diana, I love this little room so dearly. I don't know howI'll get along without it when I go to town next month."
"Don't speak of your going away tonight," begged Diana. "I don't want tothink of it, it makes me so miserable, and I do want to have a good timethis evening. What are you going to recite, Anne? And are you nervous?"
"Not a bit. I've recited so often in public I don't mind at all now.I've decided to give 'The Maiden's Vow.' It's so pathetic. Laura Spenceris going to give a comic recitation, but I'd rather make people cry thanlaugh."
"What will you recite if they encore you?"
"They won't dream of encoring me," scoffed Anne, who was not without herown secret hopes that they would, and already visioned herself tellingMatthew all about it at the next morning's breakfast table. "There areBilly and Jane now--I hear the wheels. Come on."
Billy Andrews insisted that Anne should ride on the front seat with him,so she unwillingly climbed up. She would have much preferred to sitback with the girls, where she could have laughed and chattered to herheart's content. There was not much of either laughter or chatterin Billy. He was a big, fat, stolid youth of twenty, with a round,expressionless face, and a painful lack of conversational gifts. But headmired Anne immensely, an
d was puffed up with pride over the prospectof driving to White Sands with that slim, upright figure beside him.
Anne, by dint of talking over her shoulder to the girls and occasionallypassing a sop of civility to Billy--who grinned and chuckled and nevercould think of any reply until it was too late--contrived to enjoy thedrive in spite of all. It was a night for enjoyment. The road was fullof buggies, all bound for the hotel, and laughter, silver clear, echoedand reechoed along it. When they reached the hotel it was a blaze oflight from top to bottom. They were met by the ladies of the concertcommittee, one of whom took Anne off to the performers' dressing roomwhich was filled with the members of a Charlottetown Symphony Club,among whom Anne felt suddenly shy and frightened and countrified. Herdress, which, in the east gable, had seemed so dainty and pretty, nowseemed simple and plain--too simple and plain, she thought, among allthe silks and laces that glistened and rustled around her. What were herpearl beads compared to the diamonds of the big, handsome lady near her?And how poor her one wee white rose must look beside all the hothouseflowers the others wore! Anne laid her hat and jacket away, and shrankmiserably into a corner. She wished herself back in the white room atGreen Gables.
It was still worse on the platform of the big concert hall of the hotel,where she presently found herself. The electric lights dazzled her eyes,the perfume and hum bewildered her. She wished she were sitting downin the audience with Diana and Jane, who seemed to be having a splendidtime away at the back. She was wedged in between a stout lady in pinksilk and a tall, scornful-looking girl in a white-lace dress. The stoutlady occasionally turned her head squarely around and surveyed Annethrough her eyeglasses until Anne, acutely sensitive of being soscrutinized, felt that she must scream aloud; and the white-lace girlkept talking audibly to her next neighbor about the "country bumpkins"and "rustic belles" in the audience, languidly anticipating "such fun"from the displays of local talent on the program. Anne believed that shewould hate that white-lace girl to the end of life.
Unfortunately for Anne, a professional elocutionist was staying at thehotel and had consented to recite. She was a lithe, dark-eyed woman in awonderful gown of shimmering gray stuff like woven moonbeams, with gemson her neck and in her dark hair. She had a marvelously flexible voiceand wonderful power of expression; the audience went wild over herselection. Anne, forgetting all about herself and her troubles for thetime, listened with rapt and shining eyes; but when the recitation endedshe suddenly put her hands over her face. She could never get up andrecite after that--never. Had she ever thought she could recite? Oh, ifshe were only back at Green Gables!
At this unpropitious moment her name was called. Somehow Anne--who didnot notice the rather guilty little start of surprise the white-lacegirl gave, and would not have understood the subtle compliment impliedtherein if she had--got on her feet, and moved dizzily out to the front.She was so pale that Diana and Jane, down in the audience, clasped eachother's hands in nervous sympathy.
Anne was the victim of an overwhelming attack of stage fright. Often asshe had recited in public, she had never before faced such an audienceas this, and the sight of it paralyzed her energies completely.Everything was so strange, so brilliant, so bewildering--the rows ofladies in evening dress, the critical faces, the whole atmosphere ofwealth and culture about her. Very different this from the plain benchesat the Debating Club, filled with the homely, sympathetic faces offriends and neighbors. These people, she thought, would be mercilesscritics. Perhaps, like the white-lace girl, they anticipated amusementfrom her "rustic" efforts. She felt hopelessly, helplessly ashamed andmiserable. Her knees trembled, her heart fluttered, a horrible faintnesscame over her; not a word could she utter, and the next moment she wouldhave fled from the platform despite the humiliation which, she felt,must ever after be her portion if she did so.
But suddenly, as her dilated, frightened eyes gazed out over theaudience, she saw Gilbert Blythe away at the back of the room, bendingforward with a smile on his face--a smile which seemed to Anne at oncetriumphant and taunting. In reality it was nothing of the kind. Gilbertwas merely smiling with appreciation of the whole affair in general andof the effect produced by Anne's slender white form and spiritual faceagainst a background of palms in particular. Josie Pye, whom he haddriven over, sat beside him, and her face certainly was both triumphantand taunting. But Anne did not see Josie, and would not have cared ifshe had. She drew a long breath and flung her head up proudly, courageand determination tingling over her like an electric shock. She _wouldnot_ fail before Gilbert Blythe--he should never be able to laugh at her,never, never! Her fright and nervousness vanished; and she began herrecitation, her clear, sweet voice reaching to the farthest corner ofthe room without a tremor or a break. Self-possession was fully restoredto her, and in the reaction from that horrible moment of powerlessnessshe recited as she had never done before. When she finished there werebursts of honest applause. Anne, stepping back to her seat, blushingwith shyness and delight, found her hand vigorously clasped and shakenby the stout lady in pink silk.
"My dear, you did splendidly," she puffed. "I've been crying like ababy, actually I have. There, they're encoring you--they're bound tohave you back!"
"Oh, I can't go," said Anne confusedly. "But yet--I must, or Matthewwill be disappointed. He said they would encore me."
"Then don't disappoint Matthew," said the pink lady, laughing.
Smiling, blushing, limpid eyed, Anne tripped back and gave a quaint,funny little selection that captivated her audience still further. Therest of the evening was quite a little triumph for her.
When the concert was over, the stout, pink lady--who was the wife ofan American millionaire--took her under her wing, and introduced herto everybody; and everybody was very nice to her. The professionalelocutionist, Mrs. Evans, came and chatted with her, telling her thatshe had a charming voice and "interpreted" her selections beautifully.Even the white-lace girl paid her a languid little compliment. They hadsupper in the big, beautifully decorated dining room; Diana and Janewere invited to partake of this, also, since they had come with Anne,but Billy was nowhere to be found, having decamped in mortal fearof some such invitation. He was in waiting for them, with the team,however, when it was all over, and the three girls came merrily out intothe calm, white moonshine radiance. Anne breathed deeply, and lookedinto the clear sky beyond the dark boughs of the firs.
Oh, it was good to be out again in the purity and silence of the night!How great and still and wonderful everything was, with the murmur of thesea sounding through it and the darkling cliffs beyond like grim giantsguarding enchanted coasts.
"Hasn't it been a perfectly splendid time?" sighed Jane, as they droveaway. "I just wish I was a rich American and could spend my summer ata hotel and wear jewels and low-necked dresses and have ice cream andchicken salad every blessed day. I'm sure it would be ever so muchmore fun than teaching school. Anne, your recitation was simply great,although I thought at first you were never going to begin. I think itwas better than Mrs. Evans's."
"Oh, no, don't say things like that, Jane," said Anne quickly, "becauseit sounds silly. It couldn't be better than Mrs. Evans's, you know, forshe is a professional, and I'm only a schoolgirl, with a little knackof reciting. I'm quite satisfied if the people just liked mine prettywell."
"I've a compliment for you, Anne," said Diana. "At least I think itmust be a compliment because of the tone he said it in. Part of itwas anyhow. There was an American sitting behind Jane and me--such aromantic-looking man, with coal-black hair and eyes. Josie Pye says heis a distinguished artist, and that her mother's cousin in Boston ismarried to a man that used to go to school with him. Well, we heardhim say--didn't we, Jane?--'Who is that girl on the platform with thesplendid Titian hair? She has a face I should like to paint.' There now,Anne. But what does Titian hair mean?"
"Being interpreted it means plain red, I guess," laughed Anne. "Titianwas a very famous artist who liked to paint red-haired women."
"_Did_ you see all the diamonds
those ladies wore?" sighed Jane. "Theywere simply dazzling. Wouldn't you just love to be rich, girls?"
"We _are_ rich," said Anne staunchly. "Why, we have sixteen years to ourcredit, and we're happy as queens, and we've all got imaginations, moreor less. Look at that sea, girls--all silver and shadow and vision ofthings not seen. We couldn't enjoy its loveliness any more if we hadmillions of dollars and ropes of diamonds. You wouldn't change into anyof those women if you could. Would you want to be that white-lace girland wear a sour look all your life, as if you'd been born turning upyour nose at the world? Or the pink lady, kind and nice as she is, sostout and short that you'd really no figure at all? Or even Mrs. Evans,with that sad, sad look in her eyes? She must have been dreadfullyunhappy sometime to have such a look. You _know_ you wouldn't, JaneAndrews!"
"I _don't_ know--exactly," said Jane unconvinced. "I think diamonds wouldcomfort a person for a good deal."
"Well, I don't want to be anyone but myself, even if I go uncomforted bydiamonds all my life," declared Anne. "I'm quite content to be Anne ofGreen Gables, with my string of pearl beads. I know Matthew gave me asmuch love with them as ever went with Madame the Pink Lady's jewels."