“Oh, let us keep calm,” implored Anne, who was the most excited of them all, “and try to think of some way of preventing him.”
“I don’t know how you’re going to prevent him,” exclaimed Jane bitterly. “Everybody knows what Judson Parker is. He’d do ANYTHING for money. He hasn’t a SPARK of public spirit or ANY sense of the beautiful.”
The prospect looked rather unpromising. Judson Parker and his sister were the only Parkers in Avonlea, so that no leverage could be exerted by family connections. Martha Parker was a lady of all too certain age who disapproved of young people in general and the Improvers in particular. Judson was a jovial, smooth-spoken man, so uniformly goodnatured and bland that it was surprising how few friends he had. Perhaps he had got the better in too many business transactions… which seldom makes for popularity. He was reputed to be very “sharp” and it was the general opinion that he “hadn’t much principle.”
“If Judson Parker has a chance to ‘turn an honest penny,’ as he says himself, he’ll never lose it,” declared Fred Wright.
“Is there NOBODY who has any influence over him?” asked Anne despairingly.
“He goes to see Louisa Spencer at White Sands,” suggested Carrie Sloane. “Perhaps she could coax him not to rent his fences.”
“Not she,” said Gilbert emphatically. “I know Louisa Spencer well. She doesn’t ‘believe’ in Village Improvement Societies, but she DOES believe in dollars and cents. She’d be more likely to urge Judson on than to dissuade him.”
“The only thing to do is to appoint a committee to wait on him and protest,” said Julia Bell, “and you must send girls, for he’d hardly be civil to boys … but I won’t go, so nobody need nominate me.”
“Better send Anne alone,” said Oliver Sloane. “She can talk Judson over if anybody can.”
Anne protested. She was willing to go and do the talking; but she must have others with her “for moral support.” Diana and Jane were therefore appointed to support her morally and the Improvers broke up, buzzing like angry bees with indignation. Anne was so worried that she didn’t sleep until nearly morning, and then she dreamed that the trustees had put a fence around the school and painted “Try Purple Pills” all over it.
The committee waited on Judson Parker the next afternoon. Anne pleaded eloquently against his nefarious design and Jane and Diana supported her morally and valiantly. Judson was sleek, suave, flattering; paid them several compliments of the delicacy of sunflowers; felt real bad to refuse such charming young ladies … but business was business; couldn’t afford to let sentiment stand in the way these hard times.
“But I’ll tell what I WILL do,” he said, with a twinkle in his light, full eyes. “I’ll tell the agent he must use only handsome, tasty colors … red and yellow and so on. I’ll tell him he mustn’t paint the ads BLUE on any account.”
The vanquished committee retired, thinking things not lawful to be uttered.
“We have done all we can do and must simply trust the rest to Providence,” said Jane, with an unconscious imitation of Mrs. Lynde’s tone and manner.
“I wonder if Mr. Allan could do anything,” reflected Diana.
Anne shook her head.
“No, it’s no use to worry Mr. Allan, especially now when the baby’s so sick. Judson would slip away from him as smoothly as from us, although he HAS taken to going to church quite regularly just now. That is simply because Louisa Spencer’s father is an elder and very particular about such things.”
“Judson Parker is the only man in Avonlea who would dream of renting his fences,” said Jane indignantly. “Even Levi Boulter or Lorenzo White would never stoop to that, tightfisted as they are. They would have too much respect for public opinion.”
Public opinion was certainly down on Judson Parker when the facts became known, but that did not help matters much. Judson chuckled to himself and defied it, and the Improvers were trying to reconcile themselves to the prospect of seeing the prettiest part of the Newbridge road defaced by advertisements, when Anne rose quietly at the president’s call for reports of committees on the occasion of the next meeting of the Society, and announced that Mr. Judson Parker had instructed her to inform the Society that he was NOT going to rent his fences to the Patent Medicine Company.
Jane and Diana stared as if they found it hard to believe their ears. Parliamentary etiquette, which was generally very strictly enforced in the A.V.I.S., forbade them giving instant vent to their curiosity, but after the Society adjourned Anne was besieged for explanations. Anne had no explanation to give. Judson Parker had overtaken her on the road the preceding evening and told her that he had decided to humor the A.V.I.S. in its peculiar prejudice against patent medicine advertisements. That was all Anne would say, then or ever afterwards, and it was the simple truth; but when Jane Andrews, on her way home, confided to Oliver Sloane her firm belief that there was more behind Judson Parker’s mysterious change of heart than Anne Shirley had revealed, she spoke the truth also.
Anne had been down to old Mrs. Irving’s on the shore road the preceding evening and had come home by a short cut which led her first over the lowlying shore fields, and then through the beech wood below Robert Dickson’s, by a little footpath that ran out to the main road just above the Lake of Shining Waters … known to unimaginative people as Barry’s pond.
Two men were sitting in their buggies, reined off to the side of the road, just at the entrance of the path. One was Judson Parker; the other was Jerry Corcoran, a Newbridge man against whom, as Mrs. Lynde would have told you in eloquent italics, nothing shady had ever been PROVED. He was an agent for agricultural implements and a prominent personage in matters political. He had a finger … some people said ALL his fingers … in every political pie that was cooked; and as Canada was on the eve of a general election Jerry Corcoran had been a busy man for many weeks, canvassing the county in the interests of his party’s candidate. Just as Anne emerged from under the overhanging beech boughs she heard Corcoran say, “If you’ll vote for Amesbury, Parker … well, I’ve a note for that pair of harrows you’ve got in the spring. I suppose you wouldn’t object to having it back, eh?”
“We … ll, since you put it in that way,” drawled Judson with a grin, “I reckon I might as well do it. A man must look out for his own interests in these hard times.”
Both saw Anne at this moment and conversation abruptly ceased. Anne bowed frostily and walked on, with her chin slightly more tilted than usual. Soon Judson Parker overtook her.
“Have a lift, Anne?” he inquired genially.
“Thank you, no,” said Anne politely, but with a fine, needle-like disdain in her voice that pierced even Judson Parker’s none too sensitive consciousness. His face reddened and he twitched his reins angrily; but the next second prudential considerations checked him. He looked uneasily at Anne, as she walked steadily on, glancing neither to the right nor to the left. Had she heard Corcoran’s unmistakable offer and his own too plain acceptance of it? Confound Corcoran! If he couldn’t put his meaning into less dangerous phrases he’d get into trouble some of these long-come-shorts. And confound redheaded schoolma’ams with a habit of popping out of beechwoods where they had no business to be. If Anne had heard, Judson Parker, measuring her corn in his own half bushel, as the country saying went, and cheating himself thereby, as such people generally do, believed that she would tell it far and wide. Now, Judson Parker, as has been seen, was not overly regardful of public opinion; but to be known as having accepted a bribe would be a nasty thing; and if it ever reached Isaac Spencer’s ears farewell forever to all hope of winning Louisa Jane with her