But when the boat steamed out of Charlottetown harbor things took a turn for the better. The rain ceased and the sun began to burst out goldenly now and again between the rents in the clouds, burnishing the gray seas with copper-hued radiance, and lighting up the mists that curtained the Island’s red shores with gleams of gold foretokening a fine day after all. Besides, Charlie Sloane promptly became so seasick that he had to go below, and Anne and Gilbert were left alone on deck.
“I am very glad that all the Sloanes get seasick as soon as they go on water,” thought Anne mercilessly. “I am sure I couldn’t take my farewell look at the ‘ould sod’ with Charlie standing there pretending to look sentimentally at it, too.”
“Well, we’re off,” remarked Gilbert unsentimentally.
“Yes, I feel like Byron’s ‘Childe Harold’ — only it isn’t really my ‘native shore’ that I’m watching,” said Anne, winking her gray eyes vigorously. “Nova Scotia is that, I suppose. But one’s native shore is the land one loves the best, and that’s good old P.E.I. for me. I can’t believe I didn’t always live here. Those eleven years before I came seem like a bad dream. It’s seven years since I crossed on this boat — the evening Mrs. Spencer brought me over from Hopetown. I can see myself, in that dreadful old wincey dress and faded sailor hat, exploring decks and cabins with enraptured curiosity. It was a fine evening; and how those red Island shores did gleam in the sunshine. Now I’m crossing the strait again. Oh, Gilbert, I do hope I’ll like Redmond and Kingsport, but I’m sure I won’t!”
“Where’s all your philosophy gone, Anne?”
“It’s all submerged under a great, swamping wave of loneliness and homesickness. I’ve longed for three years to go to Redmond — and now I’m going — and I wish I weren’t! Never mind! I shall be cheerful and philosophical again after I have just one good cry. I MUST have that, ‘as a went’ — and I’ll have to wait until I get into my boardinghouse bed tonight, wherever it may be, before I can have it. Then Anne will be herself again. I wonder if Davy has come out of the closet yet.”
It was nine that night when their train reached Kingsport, and they found themselves in the blue-white glare of the crowded station. Anne felt horribly bewildered, but a moment later she was seized by Priscilla Grant, who had come to Kingsport on Saturday.
“Here you are, beloved! And I suppose you’re as tired as I was when I got here Saturday night.”
“Tired! Priscilla, don’t talk of it. I’m tired, and green, and provincial, and only about ten years old. For pity’s sake take your poor, broken-down chum to some place where she can hear herself think.”
“I’ll take you right up to our boardinghouse. I’ve a cab ready outside.”
“It’s such a blessing you’re here, Prissy. If you weren’t I think I should just sit down on my suitcase, here and now, and weep bitter tears. What a comfort one familiar face is in a howling wilderness of strangers!”
“Is that Gilbert Blythe over there, Anne? How he has grown up this past year! He was only a schoolboy when I taught in Carmody. And of course that’s Charlie Sloane. HE hasn’t changed — couldn’t! He looked just like that when he was born, and he’ll look like that when he’s eighty. This way, dear. We’ll be home in twenty minutes.”
“Home!” groaned Anne. “You mean we’ll be in some horrible boardinghouse, in a still more horrible hall bedroom, looking out on a dingy back yard.”
“It isn’t a horrible boardinghouse, Anne-girl. Here’s our cab. Hop in — the driver will get your trunk. Oh, yes, the boardinghouse — it’s really a very nice place of its kind, as you’ll admit tomorrow morning when a good night’s sleep has turned your blues rosy pink. It’s a big, old-fashioned, gray stone house on St. John Street, just a nice little constitutional from Redmond. It used to be the ‘residence’ of great folk, but fashion has deserted St. John Street and its houses only dream now of better days. They’re so big that people living in them have to take boarders just to fill up. At least, that is the reason our landladies are very anxious to impress on us. They’re delicious, Anne — our landladies, I mean.”
“How many are there?”
“Two. Miss Hannah Harvey and Miss Ada Harvey. They were born twins about fifty years ago.”
“I can’t get away from twins, it seems,” smiled Anne. “Wherever I go they confront me.”
“Oh, they’re not twins now, dear. After they reached the age of thirty they never were twins again. Miss Hannah has grown old, not too gracefully, and Miss Ada has stayed thirty, less gracefully still. I don’t know whether Miss Hannah can smile or not; I’ve never caught her at it so far, but Miss Ada smiles all the time and that’s worse. However, they’re nice, kind souls, and they take two boarders every year because Miss Hannah’s economical soul cannot bear to ‘waste room space’ — not because they need to or have to, as Miss Ada has told me seven times since Saturday night. As for our rooms, I admit they are hall bedrooms, and mine does look out on the back yard. Your room is a front one and looks out on Old St. John’s graveyard, which is just across the street.”
“That sounds gruesome,” shivered Anne. “I think I’d rather have the back yard view.”
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t. Wait and see. Old St. John’s is a darling place. It’s been a graveyard so long that it’s ceased to be one and has become one of the sights of Kingsport. I was all through it yesterday for a pleasure exertion. There’s a big stone wall and a row of enormous trees all around it, and rows of trees all through it, and the queerest old tombstones, with the queerest and quaintest inscriptions. You’ll go there to study, Anne, see if you don’t. Of course, nobody is ever buried there now. But a few years ago they put up a beautiful monument to the memory of Nova Scotian soldiers who fell in the Crimean War. It is just opposite the entrance gates and there’s ‘scope for imagination’ in it, as you used to say. Here’s your trunk at last — and the boys coming to say good night. Must I really shake hands with Charlie Sloane, Anne? His hands are always so cold and fishy-feeling. We must ask them to call occasionally. Miss Hannah gravely told me we could have ‘young gentlemen callers’ two evenings in the week, if they went away at a reasonable hour; and Miss Ada asked me, smiling, please to be sure they didn’t sit on her beautiful cushions. I promised to see to it; but goodness knows where else they CAN sit, unless they sit on the floor, for there are cushions on EVERYTHING. Miss Ada even has an elaborate Battenburg one on top of the piano.”
Anne was laughing by this time. Priscilla’s gay chatter had the intended effect of cheering her up; homesickness vanished for the time being, and did not even return in full force when she finally found herself alone in her little bedroom. She went to her window and looked out. The street below was dim and quiet. Across it the moon was shining above the trees in Old St. John’s, just behind the great dark head of the lion on the monument. Anne wondered if it could have been only that morning that she had left Green Gables. She had the sense of a long passage of time which one day of change and travel gives.
“I suppose that very moon is looking down on Green Gables now,” she mused. “But I won’t think about it — that way homesickness lies. I’m not even going to have my good cry. I’ll put that off to a more convenient season, and just now I’ll go calmly and sensibly to bed and to sleep.”
Chapter IV
April’s Lady
Kingsport is a quaint old town, hearking back to early Colonial days, and wrapped in its ancient atmosphere, as some fine old dame in garments fashioned like those of her youth. Here and there it sprouts out into modernity, but at heart it is still unspoiled; it is full of curious relics, and haloed by the romance of many legends of the past. Once it was a mere frontier station on the fringe of the wilderness, and those were the days when Indians kept life from being monotonous to the settlers. Then it grew to be a bone of contention between the British and the French, being occupied now by the one and now by the other, emerging from each occupation with some fresh scar of battling nations branded on it.
> It has in its park a martello tower, autographed all over by tourists, a dismantled old French fort on the hills beyond the town, and several antiquated cannon in its public squares. It has other historic spots also, which may be hunted out by the curious, and none is more quaint and delightful than Old St. John’s Cemetery at the very core of the town, with streets of quiet, old-time houses on two sides, and busy, bustling, modern thoroughfares on the others. Every citizen of Kingsport feels a thrill of possessive pride in Old St. John’s, for, if he be of any pretensions at all, he has an ancestor buried there, with a queer, crooked slab at his head, or else sprawling protectively over the grave, on which all the main facts of his history are recorded. For the most part no great art or skill was lavished on those old tombstones. The larger number are of roughly chiselled brown or gray native stone, and only in a few cases is there any attempt at ornamentation. Some are adorned with skull and cross-bones, and this grizzly decoration is frequently coupled with a cherub’s head. Many are prostrate and in ruins. Into almost all Time’s tooth has been gnawing, until some inscriptions have been completely effaced, and others can only be deciphered with difficulty. The graveyard is very full and very bowery, for it is surrounded and intersected by rows of elms and willows, beneath whose shade the sleepers must lie very dreamlessly, forever crooned to by the winds and leaves over them, and quite undisturbed by the clamor of traffic just beyond.
Anne took the first of many rambles in Old St. John’s the next afternoon. She and Priscilla had gone to Redmond in the forenoon and registered as students, after which there was nothing more to do that day. The girls gladly made their escape, for it was not exhilarating to be surrounded by crowds of strangers, most of whom had a rather alien appearance, as if not quite sure where they belonged.
The “freshettes” stood about in detached groups of two or three, looking askance at each other; the “freshies,” wiser in their day and generation, had banded themselves together on the big staircase of the entrance hall, where they were shouting out glees with all the vigor of youthful lungs, as a species of defiance to their traditional enemies, the Sophomores, a few of whom were prowling loftily about, looking properly disdainful of the “unlicked cubs” on the stairs. Gilbert and Charlie were nowhere to be seen.
“Little did I think the day would ever come when I’d be glad of the sight of a Sloane,” said Priscilla, as they crossed the campus, “but I’d welcome Charlie’s goggle eyes almost ecstatically. At least, they’d be familiar eyes.”
“Oh,” sighed Anne. “I can’t describe how I felt when I was standing there, waiting my turn to be registered — as insignificant as the teeniest drop in a most enormous bucket. It’s bad enough to feel insignificant, but it’s unbearable to have it grained into your soul that you will never, can never, be anything but insignificant, and that is how I did feel — as if I were invisible to the naked eye and some of those Sophs might step on me. I knew I would go down to my grave unwept, unhonored and unsung.”
“Wait till next year,” comforted Priscilla. “Then we’ll be able to look as bored and sophisticated as any Sophomore of them all. No doubt it is rather dreadful to feel insignificant; but I think it’s better than to feel as big and awkward as I did — as if I were sprawled all over Redmond. That’s how I felt — I suppose because I was a good two inches taller than any one else in the crowd. I wasn’t afraid a Soph might walk over me; I was afraid they’d take me for an elephant, or an overgrown sample of a potato-fed Islander.”
“I suppose the trouble is we can’t forgive big Redmond for not being little Queen’s,” said Anne, gathering about her the shreds of her old cheerful philosophy to cover her nakedness of spirit. “When we left Queen’s we knew everybody and had a place of our own. I suppose we have been unconsciously expecting to take life up at Redmond just where we left off at Queen’s, and now we feel as if the ground had slipped from under our feet. I’m thankful that neither Mrs. Lynde nor Mrs. Elisha Wright know, or ever will know, my state of mind at present. They would exult in saying ‘I told you so,’ and be convinced it was the beginning of the end. Whereas it is just the end of the beginning.”
“Exactly. That sounds more Anneish. In a little while we’ll be acclimated and acquainted, and all will be well. Anne, did you notice the girl who stood alone just outside the door of the coeds’ dressing room all the morning — the pretty one with the brown eyes and crooked mouth?”
“Yes, I did. I noticed her particularly because she seemed the only creature there who LOOKED as lonely and friendless as I FELT. I had YOU, but she had no one.”
“I think she felt pretty all-by-herselfish, too. Several times I saw her make a motion as if to cross over to us, but she never did it — too shy, I suppose. I wished she would come. If I hadn’t felt so much like the aforesaid elephant I’d have gone to her. But I couldn’t lumber across that big hall with all those boys howling on the stairs. She was the prettiest freshette I saw today, but probably favor is deceitful and even beauty is vain on your first day at Redmond,” concluded Priscilla with a laugh.
“I’m going across to Old St. John’s after lunch,” said Anne. “I don’t know that a graveyard is a very good place to go to get cheered up, but it seems the only get-at-able place where there are trees, and trees I must have. I’ll sit on one of those old slabs and shut my eyes and imagine I’m in the Avonlea woods.”
Anne did not do that, however, for she found enough of interest in Old St. John’s to keep her eyes wide open. They went in by the entrance gates, past the simple, massive, stone arch surmounted by the great lion of England.
“‘And on Inkerman yet the wild bramble is gory,
And those bleak heights henceforth shall be famous in story,’”
quoted Anne, looking at it with a thrill. They found themselves in a dim, cool, green place where winds were fond of purring. Up and down the long grassy aisles they wandered, reading the quaint, voluminous epitaphs, carved in an age that had more leisure than our own.
“‘Here lieth the body of Albert Crawford, Esq.,’” read Anne from a worn, gray slab, “‘for many years Keeper of His Majesty’s Ordnance at Kingsport. He served in the army till the peace of 1763, when he retired from bad health. He was a brave officer, the best of husbands, the best of fathers, the best of friends. He died October 29th, 1792, aged 84 years.’ There’s an epitaph for you, Prissy. There is certainly some ‘scope for imagination’ in it. How full such a life must have been of adventure! And as for his personal qualities, I’m sure human eulogy couldn’t go further. I wonder if they told him he was all those best things while he was alive.”
“Here’s another,” said Priscilla. “Listen —
‘To the memory of Alexander Ross, who died on the 22nd of September, 1840, aged 43 years. This is raised as a tribute of affection by one whom he served so faithfully for 27 years that he was regarded as a friend, deserving the fullest confidence and attachment.’”
“A very good epitaph,” commented Anne thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t wish a better. We are all servants of some sort, and if the fact that we are faithful can be truthfully inscribed on our tombstones nothing more need be added. Here’s a sorrowful little gray stone, Prissy—’to the memory of a favorite child.’ And here is another ‘erected to the memory of one who is buried elsewhere.’ I wonder where that unknown grave is. Really, Pris, the graveyards of today will never be as interesting as this. You were right — I shall come here often. I love it already. I see we’re not alone here — there’s a girl down at the end of this avenue.”
“Yes, and I believe it’s the very girl we saw at Redmond this morning. I’ve been watching her for five minutes. She has started to come up the avenue exactly half a dozen times, and half a dozen times has she turned and gone back. Either she’s dreadfully shy or she has got something on her conscience. Let’s go and meet her. It’s easier to get acquainted in a graveyard than at Redmond, I believe.”
They walked down the long grassy arcade towards the stranger, who w
as sitting on a gray slab under an enormous willow. She was certainly very pretty, with a vivid, irregular, bewitching type of prettiness. There was a gloss as of brown nuts on her satin-smooth hair and a soft, ripe glow on her round cheeks. Her eyes were big and brown and velvety, under oddly-pointed black brows, and her crooked mouth was rose-red. She wore a smart brown suit, with two very modish little shoes peeping from beneath it; and her hat of dull pink straw, wreathed with golden-brown poppies, had the indefinable, unmistakable air which pertains to the “creation” of an artist in millinery. Priscilla had a sudden stinging consciousness that her own hat had been trimmed by her village store milliner, and Anne wondered uncomfortably if the blouse she had made herself, and which Mrs. Lynde had fitted, looked VERY countrified and home-made besides the stranger’s smart attire. For a moment both girls felt like turning back.
But they had already stopped and turned towards the gray slab. It was too late to retreat, for the brown-eyed girl had evidently concluded that they were coming to speak to her. Instantly she sprang up and came forward with outstretched hand and a gay, friendly smile in which there seemed not a shadow of either shyness or burdened conscience.
“Oh, I want to know who you two girls are,” she exclaimed eagerly. “I’ve been DYING to know. I saw you at Redmond this morning. Say, wasn’t it AWFUL there? For the time I wished I had stayed home and got married.”
Anne and Priscilla both broke into unconstrained laughter at this unexpected conclusion. The brown-eyed girl laughed, too.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 60