Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:
Chronicles of Avonlea
So this is the last story in the collection known as The Chronicles of Avonlea. I really like it. It has another Lucy Maud leitmotif: the couple who quarrel over NOTHING, or have a mere misunderstanding – and yet the two have such personal pride that nobody makes up with the other for, oh, 20 years. And suddenly – in one dramatic moment – all those years are brushed away, and all is forgiven. All it takes, in Lucy Maud’s world, is 2 minutes to wipe away 20 years of anger. I think she might be onto something there – but still …
I love the last scene of this story (when all the years are brushed away) – and I think it’s actually kind of SEXY. Lucy Maud wasn’t really a SEXY writer – she always does the fade-out at sexy moments – and she still does here, but I always just LOVE this last moment … it’s kinda like Rhett Butler taking Scarlett up the stairs. You don’t get to SEE what happens next but it’s fun to imagine.
Nancy Rogerson grew up in Avonlea. She and Peter Wright “went together” for quite some time – until they mysteriously quarreled – and that was that. What did they quarrel over? Nancy corrected his grammar and he flipped OUT. Nancy was (is) a bit of a snob. She got educated. Peter Wright was just a simple farmer, and he didn’t like his school-marm girlfriend telling him not to say “ain’t”, thank you very much. So after they quarreled – Nancy went off to school to become a nurse – and she has since then lived far away from Avonlea, having a career. She is a career woman. At a time when, you know, women were not doing such a thing. She never married. She thinks she’s FINE with that. (Oh, and that’s another Lucy Maud theme: people who have no idea what is going on in their own hearts. They literally go for YEARS thinking: “I am fine with this situation, I got no problems with it” – and they truly believe that – until they have one moment of revelation and then they realize: “Wait a minute – I am actually viciously unhappy and I am in LOVE with him!!” etc.) Peter Wright, meanwhile, stayed on his farm, and has (conveniently) never married. In real life, they always marry. Like – when you lose someone in real life, you really LOSE them. But we’re in Lucy Maud’s world now. Nancy Rogerson has not thought of Peter Wright in 15 years. But she has now come back to Avonlea for a visit, and she sits out on her porch reminiscing with her childhood friend (who has that kind of smiling pity for Nancy, because Nancy has never gotten married or had children). Nancy catches a glimpse of Peter’s farm through the trees and asks, innocently, “How is he doing?” She learns he never married. But Nancy doesn’t believe that that matters to her. She has forgotten Peter. He belongs to the past. Whether or not he is married makes no difference to HER.
But then one night … she’s taking a walk … she passes by his house … and suddenly ……… she finds herself peeking through the windows, he’s not home, and she sees what a freakin’ MESS the place is. Because we all know that men are perfectly helpless to, you know, wash the damn dishes if he doesn’t have a wife. Nancy sees the filth and feels bad … and suddenly she gets a little mischievous plan. What if she went inside and cleaned up his kitchen for him? And made him a little tea, and a snack – and had it waiting for him when he got back? SHE wouldn’t be waiting for him – she would just do this thing as a joke, and then sneak away, and he would come home and wonder: who has been in my house? What good fairy has been here? Nancy thinks this would be very funny, so she gets to work.
This is the last scene of the book. I just find it perfect. I think the two of them have behaved like perfect IDIOTS for 20 years – what a waste of time – but still – I love this drawing-back-the-veil scene, and I love how she has written it.
Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea
Nancy went in, threw off her hat, and seized a broom. The first thing she did was to give the kitchen a thorough sweeping. Then she kindled a fire, put a kettle full of water on to heat, and attacked the dishes. From the number of them, she rightly concluded that Peter hadn’t washed any for at least a week.
“I suppose he just uses the clean ones as long as they hold out, and then has a grand wash-up,” she laughed. “I wonder where he keeps his dish-towels, if he has any.”
Evidently Peter hadn’t any. At least, Nancy couldn’t find any. She marched boldly into the dusty sitting-room and explored the drawers of an old-fashioned sideboard, confiscating a towel she found there. As she worked, she hummed a song; her steps were light and her eyes bright with excitement. Nancy was enjoying herself thoroughly, there was no doubt of that. The spice of mischief in the adventure pleased her mightily.
The dishes washed, she hunted up a clean, but yellow and evidently long unused, tablecloth out of the sideboard, and proceeded to set the table and get Peter’s tea. She found bread and butter in the pantry, a trip to the cellar furnished a pitcher of cream, and Nancy recklessly heaped the contents of her strawberry jug on Peter’s plate. The tea was made and set back to keep warm. And, as a finishing touch, Nancy ravaged the old neglected garden and set a huge bowl of crimson roses in the centre of the table.
“Now I must go,” she said aloud. “Wouldn’t it be fun to see Peter’s face when he comes in, thugh? Ha-hum! I’ve enjoyed doing this – but why? Nancy Rogerson, don’t be asking yourself conundrums. Put on your hat and proceed homeward, constructing on our way some reliable fib to account to Louisa for the absence of your strawberries.”
Nancy paused a moment and looked around wistfully. She had made the place look cheery and neat and homelike. She felt that queer tugging of her heartstrings again. Suppose she belonged here, and was waiting for Peter to come home to tea. Suppose — Nancy whirled around with a sudden horrible prescience of what she was going to see! Peter Wright was standing in the doorway.
Nancy’s face went crimson. For the first time in her life she had not a word to say for herself. Peter looked at her and then at the table, with its fruit and flowers.
“Thank you,” he said politely.
Nancy recovered herself. With a shame-faced laugh, she held out her hand.
“Don’t have me arrested for trespass, Peter. I came and looked in at your kitchen out of impertinent curiosity, and, just for fun, I thought I’d come in and get your tea. I thought you’d be so surprised – and I meant to go before you came home, of course.”
“I wouldn’t have been surprised,” said Peter, shaking hands. “I saw you go past the field and I tied the horses and followed you down through the woods. I’ve been sitting on the fence back yonder, watching your comings and goings.”
“Why didn’t you come and speak to me at church yesterday, Peter?” demanded Nancy boldly.
“I was afraid I would say something ungrammatical,” answered Peter drily.
The crimson flamed over Nancy’s face again. She pulled her hand away.
“That’s cruel of you, Peter.”
Peter suddenly laughed. There was a note of boyishness in the laughter.
“So it is,” he said, “but I had to get rid of the accumulated malice and spite of twenty years somehow. It’s all gone now, and I’ll be as amiable as I know how. But since you have gone to the trouble of getting my supper for me, Nancy, you must stay and help me eat it. Them strawberries look good. I haven’t had any this summer – been too busy to pick them.”
Nancy stayed. She sat at the head of Peter’s table and poured his tea for him. Sje talked to him wittily of the Avonlea people and the changes in their old set. Peter followed her lead with an apparent absence of self-consciousness, eating his supper like a man whose heart and mind were alike on good terms with him. Nancy felt wretched – and, at the same time, ridiculously happy. It seemed the most grotesque thing in the world that she should be presiding there at Peter’s table, and yet the most natural. There were moments when she felt like crying – other moments when her laughter was as ready and spontaneous as a girl’s. Sentiment and humour had always waged an equal contest in Nancy’s nature.
When Peter had finished his strawberries, he folded his arms on the table and looked admiringly at Nancy.
“You look well at the head of a table, Nancy,” he said critically. “How is it that you haven’t been presiding over one of your own long before this? I thought you’d eet with lots of men out in the wordl that you’d like – men who talked good grammar.”
“Peter, don’t!” said Nancy, wincing. “I was a goose.”
“No, you were quite right. I was a tetchy fool. If I’d had any sense, I’d have felt thankful you thought enough of me to want to improve me, and I’d have tried to kerrect my mistakes instead of getting mad. It’s too late now, I suppose.”
“Too late for what?” said Nancy, plucking up heart of grace at something in Peter’s tone and look.
“For — kerrecting mistakes.”
“Grammatical ones?”
“Not exactly. I guess them mistakes are past kerrecting in an old fellow like me. Worse mistakes, Nancy. I wonder what you would say if I asked you to forgive me, and have me after all.”
“I’d snap you up before you’d have time to change your mind,” said Nancy brazenly. She tried to look Peter in the face, but her blue eyes, where tears and mirth were blending, faltered before his gray ones.
Peter stood up, knocking over his chair, and strode around the table to her.
“Nancy, my girl!” he said.
