“How are you going to end it — happily or unhappily?”
“I’m not sure. I’d like it to end unhappily, because that would be so much more romantic. But I understand editors have a prejudice against sad endings. I heard Professor Hamilton say once that nobody but a genius should try to write an unhappy ending. And,” concluded Anne modestly, “I’m anything but a genius.”
“Oh I like happy endings best. You’d better let him marry her,” said Diana, who, especially since her engagement to Fred, thought this was how every story should end.
“But you like to cry over stories?”
“Oh, yes, in the middle of them. But I like everything to come right at last.”
“I must have one pathetic scene in it,” said Anne thoughtfully. “I might let ROBERT RAY be injured in an accident and have a death scene.”
“No, you mustn’t kill BOBBY off,” declared Diana, laughing. “He belongs to me and I want him to live and flourish. Kill somebody else if you have to.”
For the next fortnight Anne writhed or reveled, according to mood, in her literary pursuits. Now she would be jubilant over a brilliant idea, now despairing because some contrary character would NOT behave properly. Diana could not understand this.
“MAKE them do as you want them to,” she said.
“I can’t,” mourned Anne. “Averil is such an unmanageable heroine. She WILL do and say things I never meant her to. Then that spoils everything that went before and I have to write it all over again.”
Finally, however, the story was finished, and Anne read it to Diana in the seclusion of the porch gable. She had achieved her “pathetic scene” without sacrificing ROBERT RAY, and she kept a watchful eye on Diana as she read it. Diana rose to the occasion and cried properly; but, when the end came, she looked a little disappointed.
“Why did you kill MAURICE LENNOX?” she asked reproachfully.
“He was the villain,” protested Anne. “He had to be punished.”
“I like him best of them all,” said unreasonable Diana.
“Well, he’s dead, and he’ll have to stay dead,” said Anne, rather resentfully. “If I had let him live he’d have gone on persecuting AVERIL and PERCEVAL.”
“Yes — unless you had reformed him.”
“That wouldn’t have been romantic, and, besides, it would have made the story too long.”
“Well, anyway, it’s a perfectly elegant story, Anne, and will make you famous, of that I’m sure. Have you got a title for it?”
“Oh, I decided on the title long ago. I call it AVERIL’S ATONEMENT. Doesn’t that sound nice and alliterative? Now, Diana, tell me candidly, do you see any faults in my story?”
“Well,” hesitated Diana, “that part where AVERIL makes the cake doesn’t seem to me quite romantic enough to match the rest. It’s just what anybody might do. Heroines shouldn’t do cooking, I think.”
“Why, that is where the humor comes in, and it’s one of the best parts of the whole story,” said Anne. And it may be stated that in this she was quite right.
Diana prudently refrained from any further criticism, but Mr. Harrison was much harder to please. First he told her there was entirely too much description in the story.
“Cut out all those flowery passages,” he said unfeelingly.
Anne had an uncomfortable conviction that Mr. Harrison was right, and she forced herself to expunge most of her beloved descriptions, though it took three rewritings before the story could be pruned down to please the fastidious Mr. Harrison.
“I’ve left out ALL the descriptions but the sunset,” she said at last. “I simply COULDN’T let it go. It was the best of them all.”
“It hasn’t anything to do with the story,” said Mr. Harrison, “and you shouldn’t have laid the scene among rich city people. What do you know of them? Why didn’t you lay it right here in Avonlea — changing the name, of course, or else Mrs. Rachel Lynde would probably think she was the heroine.”
“Oh, that would never have done,” protested Anne. “Avonlea is the dearest place in the world, but it isn’t quite romantic enough for the scene of a story.”
“I daresay there’s been many a romance in Avonlea — and many a tragedy, too,” said Mr. Harrison drily. “But your folks ain’t like real folks anywhere. They talk too much and use too high-flown language. There’s one place where that DALRYMPLE chap talks even on for two pages, and never lets the girl get a word in edgewise. If he’d done that in real life she’d have pitched him.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Anne flatly. In her secret soul she thought that the beautiful, poetical things said to AVERIL would win any girl’s heart completely. Besides, it was gruesome to hear of AVERIL, the stately, queen-like AVERIL, “pitching” any one. AVERIL “declined her suitors.”
“Anyhow,” resumed the merciless Mr. Harrison, “I don’t see why MAURICE LENNOX didn’t get her. He was twice the man the other is. He did bad things, but he did them. Perceval hadn’t time for anything but mooning.”
“Mooning.” That was even worse than “pitching!”
“MAURICE LENNOX was the villain,” said Anne indignantly. “I don’t see why every one likes him better than PERCEVAL.”
“Perceval is too good. He’s aggravating. Next time you write about a hero put a little spice of human nature in him.”
“AVERIL couldn’t have married MAURICE. He was bad.”
“She’d have reformed him. You can reform a man; you can’t reform a jellyfish, of course. Your story isn’t bad — it’s kind of interesting, I’ll admit. But you’re too young to write a story that would be worth while. Wait ten years.”
Anne made up her mind that the next time she wrote a story she wouldn’t ask anybody to criticize it. It was too discouraging. She would not read the story to Gilbert, although she told him about it.
“If it is a success you’ll see it when it is published, Gilbert, but if it is a failure nobody shall ever see it.”
Marilla knew nothing about the venture. In imagination Anne saw herself reading a story out of a magazine to Marilla, entrapping her into praise of it — for in imagination all things are possible — and then triumphantly announcing herself the author.
One day Anne took to the Post Office a long, bulky envelope, addressed, with the delightful confidence of youth and inexperience, to the very biggest of the “big” magazines. Diana was as excited over it as Anne herself.
“How long do you suppose it will be before you hear from it?” she asked.
“It shouldn’t be longer than a fortnight. Oh, how happy and proud I shall be if it is accepted!”
“Of course it will be accepted, and they will likely ask you to send them more. You may be as famous as Mrs. Morgan some day, Anne, and then how proud I’ll be of knowing you,” said Diana, who possessed, at least, the striking merit of an unselfish admiration of the gifts and graces of her friends.
A week of delightful dreaming followed, and then came a bitter awakening. One evening Diana found Anne in the porch gable, with suspicious-looking eyes. On the table lay a long envelope and a crumpled manuscript.
“Anne, your story hasn’t come back?” cried Diana incredulously.
“Yes, it has,” said Anne shortly.