Chronicles of Avonlea. L. M. Montgomery
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