A Bend in the Road Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Warm Welcome

 "All four trunks, three carpetbags, two valises, and two handbags present and accounted for, Miss Brooke, Ma'am!" Anne announced with a soldierly salute. "Gracious providence, Katherine!" cried she within the next breath, dropping into Aunt Kate's overstuffed armchair with a sigh of weary relief. "Only a two-week vacation and to look at this ridiculous mountain of luggage, you'd think it was two years!"

"But we come bearing gifts," Katherine countered, laughingly. "You'd hardly think we could return to Avonlea empty-handed now, could we? Besides, it was you who insisted I get those new dresses made, and the hats alone occupy one of those trunks!"

"And so you blame me," Anne's eyes twinkled merrily. "You'll forgive me during the Christmas Eve ball when your beauty in that crimson taffeta will be the toast of Avonlea! How I wish I could wear crimson," she added ruefully.

"But you can wear green and I can't." Katherine shot back. "Green makes me look positively…"

"Green?" Anne offered with a grin.

"Consumptive," Katherine stated firmly. "But, oh Anne! To think I should see the day when I actually cared how I looked! Ha! You'd never have thought it to see me last year, would you now?"

"Actually," Anne lifted her chin with an air of satisfaction. "I pride myself on my ability to find kindred spirits beneath any kind of outer shell they hide in. I could see it in you, even then."

Rebecca Dew appeared in the doorway at that opportune moment, looking rather more red in the face than usual.

"The carriage is here," she announced mournfully, shaking her head at the pile of luggage in the center of the room. "Will you really be taking all that along? 'Twill be a wonder if the carriage even makes it to the station under such a load as that!"

In spite of Rebecca Dew's concerns, the carriage did make it to the station after all. But the driver was none too happy about hauling the heavy load from the carriage to the luggage car. Within the hour, the two teachers, tired and yet brimming with anticipation, were speeding across the frozen landscape towards Green Gables and home.

"I do believe this has been the best year of teaching yet!" Katherine leaned back against the hard leather seat of the coach with a sigh of contentment. "I can't remember when I've seen my students so attentive and hardworking. And in spite of it all, I am rather relieved to have an entire two weeks stretching out before me with absolutely nothing to do but to enjoy myself!" With that, she withdrew a tattered and much cherished copy of Sense and Sensibility from her handbag and settled in to enjoy her hard-won moments of leisure. Anne only smiled dreamily as she took from her own handbag a packet of letters, well-worn from frequent reading and tied with an old blue hair-ribbon from her school days in Avonlea. She knew nearly every word of those letters by heart but remembering them wasn't exactly the same as reading them in that dear, familiar old scrawl. And so she gave herself up to daydreaming and looking forward with longing to the moment the train pulled into the Carmody station where she knew someone very dear would be waiting for her.

oOo

As Gilbert turned the buggy with its weary travelers and overwhelming amount of luggage in at the gate of Green Gables, the sun had set and the moon risen in all its brilliant glory… for the December moon was very bright that night. It was an icy white night in which the midnight blue of the sky was studded with diamonds rather than stars and the blanket of snow crunched like so many crystals beneath the horses' hooves.

But in spite of the cold, the door to Green Gables was flung open wide, sending a warm yellow light across the frozen landscape to combat the wild and dazzling white of the winter's night. Already a small dark shape was hurtling itself toward the buggy as Gilbert helped Anne out and reached up again to assist Katherine, with another, smaller dark shape following more slowly, and both shouting unintelligible phrases at the top of their lungs.

"Anne! Anne!" Davy hollered uncontrollably as he flung himself at her, nearly knocking her over in his excitement. "You gotta come in an' see the cake Marilla is making! She said we couldn't have a piece until you got home."

"Davy," Anne laughed as she reached down to wrap him in a warm hug. "I can't go in until you let go of me. I can't walk!"

"Oh. Right." Davy disentangled himself and ran to heft one of the oversized carpetbags from the back of the buggy. Although considerably slower than Davy, Marilla was wasting no time in hurrying to meet Anne, coatless, with skirts dragging in the snow, and apparently oblivious to the fact that she was in danger of catching cold. At least, according to Mrs. Lynde, who was standing in the doorway, as far as she dared venture from the warmth of the house as she shouted her welcome.

"You'll come in, won't you, Gilbert?" Anne spoke over her shoulder as Marilla hurried her into the house with one hand and Katherine with the other. "You'll have to have a piece of that cake too!"

"Wouldn't miss it," he grinned in reply.

Marilla's cake proved to be everything a cake should be. Which fact is an unfortunate one for cakes as within the quarter of an hour, every evidence that a cake even existed had vanished without a trace. With due excitement, Anne and Katherine were already going over their plans for the following two weeks. Their excited chatter combined with Mrs. Lynde's profusion of gossip (as it had been building up greatly in the months the girls had been gone, Mrs. Lynde being unable to chronicle everything in her letters) somehow contributed to an air of perfect contentment. The fire flickering lazily on the hearth, Davy and Dora playing rather noisily in the corner, Marilla smiling satisfactorily over her knitting and Mrs. Lynde over her apple leaf quilt, Anne and Gilbert sitting as near the fire as they possibly could without actually getting scorched… Katherine sighed comfortably as she settled back in the overstuffed armchair. This… this was life as it should be. But how could Anne and Gilbert possibly be comfortable sitting on the hearth like that?

"…have invited David for Christmas dinner," Marilla was saying and Katherine sat up straighter. "Since his father died, he's usually alone on Christmas day. I thought he would enjoy it."

"Yes," Katherine smiled softly as she remembered her first conversation with David. "Someone to sit around the fire with at night. Someone to open presents with on Christmas."