Chronicles of Avonlea | Page 7

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