“What would you think,” kept on Trix, “of a man who opens and reads his wife’s letters?”
“What would you think of a man who would go to a funeral . . . his father’s funeral . . . in overalls?” asked Pringle.
What would they think of next? Mrs. Cyrus was crying openly and Esme was quite calm with despair. Nothing mattered any more. She turned and looked squarely at Dr. Carter, whom she had lost forever. For once in her life she was stung into saying a really clever thing.
“What,” she asked quietly, “would you think of a man who spent a whole day hunting for the kittens of a poor cat who had been shot, because he couldn’t bear to think of them starving to death?”
A strange silence descended on the room. Trix and Pringle looked suddenly ashamed of themselves. And then Mrs. Cyrus piped up, feeling it her wifely duty to back up Esme’s unexpected defense of her father.
“And he can crochet so beautifully . . . he made the loveliest centerpiece for the parlor table last winter when he was laid up with lumbago.”
Every one has some limit of endurance and Cyrus Taylor had reached his. He gave his chair such a furious backward push that it shot instantly across the polished floor and struck the table on which the vase stood. The table went over and the vase broke in the traditional thousand pieces. Cyrus, his bushy white eyebrows fairly bristling with wrath, stood up and exploded at last.
“I don’t crochet, woman! Is one contemptible doily going to blast a man’s reputation forever? I was so bad with that blamed lumbago I didn’t know what I was doing. And I’m deaf, am I, Miss Shirley? I’m deaf?”
“She didn’t say you were, Papa,” cried Trix, who was never afraid of her father when his temper was vocal.
“Oh, no, she didn’t say it. None of you said anything! You didn’t say I was sixty-eight when I’m only sixty-two, did you? You didn’t say I wouldn’t let your mother have a dog! Good Lord, woman, you can have forty thousand dogs if you want to and you know it! When did I ever deny you anything you wanted . . . when?”
“Never, Poppa, never,” sobbed Mrs. Cyrus brokenly. “And I never wanted a dog. I never even thought of wanting a dog, Poppa.”
“When did I open your letters? When have I ever kept a diary? A diary! When did I ever wear overalls to anybody’s funeral? When did I pasture a cow in the graveyard? What aunt of mine is in the poorhouse? Did I ever throw a roast at anybody? Did I ever make you live on fruit and eggs?”
“Never, Poppa, never,” wept Mrs. Cyrus. “You’ve always been a good provider . . . the best.”
“Didn’t you tell me you wanted goloshes last Christmas?”
“Yes, oh, yes; of course I did, Poppa. And my feet have been so nice and warm all winter.”
“Well, then!” Cyrus threw a triumphant glance around the room. His eyes encountered Anne’s. Suddenly the unexpected happened. Cyrus chuckled. His cheeks actually dimpled. Those dimples worked a miracle with his whole expression. He brought his chair back to the table and sat down.
“I’ve got a very bad habit of sulking, Dr. Carter. Every one has some bad habit . . . that’s mine. The only one. Come, come, Momma, stop crying. I admit I deserved all I got except that crack of yours about crocheting. Esme, my girl, I won’t forget that you were the only one who stood up for me. Tell Maggie to come and clear up that mess . . . I know you’re all glad the darn thing is smashed . . . and bring on the pudding.”
Anne could never have believed that an evening which began so terribly could end up so pleasantly. Nobody could have been more genial or better company than Cyrus: and there was evidently no aftermath of reckoning, for when Trix came down a few evenings later it was to tell Anne that she had at last scraped up enough courage to tell her father about Johnny.
“Was he very dreadful, Trix?”
“He . . . he wasn’t dreadful at all,” admitted Trix sheepishly. “He just snorted and said it was about time Johnny came to the point after hanging around for two years and keeping every one else away. I think he felt he couldn’t go into another spell of sulks so soon after the last one. And you know, Anne, between sulks Papa really is an old duck.”
“I think he is a great deal better father to you than you deserve,” said Anne, quite in Rebecca Dew’s manner. “You were simply outrageous at that dinner, Trix.”
“Well, you know you started it,” said Trix. “And good old Pringle helped a bit. All’s well that ends well . . . and thank goodness I’ll never have to dust that vase again.”
Chapter 11
(Extract from letter to Gilbert two weeks later.)
“Esme Taylor’s engagement to Dr. Lennox Carter is announced. By all I can gather from various bits of local gossip I think he decided that fatal Friday night that he wanted to protect her, and save her from her father and her family . . . and perhaps from her friends! Her plight evidently appealed to his sense of chivalry. Trix persists in thinking I was the means of bringing it about and perhaps I did take a hand, but I don’t think I’ll ever try an experiment like that again. It’s too much like picking up a lightning flash by the tail.
“I really don’t know what got into me, Gilbert. It must have been a hangover from my old detestation of anything savoring of Pringleism. It does seem old now. I’ve almost forgotten it. But other folks are still wondering. I hear Miss Valentine Courtaloe says she isn’t at all surprised I have won the Pringles over, because I have ‘such a way with me’; and the minister’s wife thinks it is an answer to the prayer she put up. Well, who knows but that it was?
“Jen Pringle and I walked part of the way home from school yesterday and talked of ‘ships and shoes and sealing wax’ . . . of almost everything but geometry. We avoid that subject. Jen knows I don’t know too much about geometry, but my own wee bit of knowledge about Captain Myrom balances that. I lent Jen my Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. I hate to lend a book I love . . . it never seems quite the same when it comes back to me . . . but I love Foxe’s Martyrs only because dear Mrs. Allan gave it to me for a Sunday-school prize years ago. I don’t like reading about martyrs because they always make me feel petty and ashamed . . . ashamed to admit I hate to get out of bed on frosty mornings and shrink from a visit to the dentist!
“Well, I’m glad Esme and Trix are both happy. Since my own little romance is in flower I am all the more interested in other people’s. A nice interest, you know. Not curious or malicious but just glad there’s such a lot of happiness spread about.
“It’s still February and ‘on the convent roof the snows are sparkling to the moon’ . . . only it isn’t a convent . . . just the roof of Mr. Hamilton’s barn. But I’m beginning to think, ‘Only a few more weeks till spring . . . and a few more weeks then till summer . . . and holidays . . . and Green Gables . . . and golden sunlight on Avonlea meadows . . . and a gulf that will be silver at dawn and sapphire at noon and crimson at sunset . . . and you.’
“Little Elizabeth and I have no end of plans for spring. We are such good friends. I take her milk every evening and once in so long she is allowed to go for a walk with me. We have discovered that our birthdays are on the same day and Elizabeth flushed ‘divinest rosy red’ with the excitement of it. She is so sweet when she blushes. Ordinarily she is far too pale and doesn’t get any pinker because of the new milk. Only when we come back from our twilight trysts with evening winds does she have a lovely rose color in her little cheeks. Once she asked me gravely, ‘Will I have a lovely creamy skin like yours when I grow up, Miss Shirley, if I put buttermilk on my face every night?’ Buttermilk seems to be the preferred cosmetic in Spook’s Lane. I have discovered that Rebecca Dew uses it. She has bound me over to keep it secret from the widows because they would think it too frivolous for her age. The number of secrets I have to keep at Windy Poplars is aging me before my time. I wonder if I buttermilked my nose if it would banish those seven freckles. By the way, did it ever occur to you, sir, that I had a ‘lovely creamy skin’? If it did, you never told me so. And have you realized to the full that I am ‘comp
aratively beautiful’? Because I have discovered that I am.
“‘What is it like to be beautiful, Miss Shirley?’ asked Rebecca Dew gravely the other day . . . when I was wearing my new biscuit-colored voile.
“‘I’ve often wondered,’ said I.
“‘But you are beautiful,’ said Rebecca Dew.
“‘I never thought you could be sarcastic, Rebecca,’ I said reproachfully.
“‘I did not mean to be sarcastic, Miss Shirley. You are beautiful . . . comparatively.’
“‘Oh! Comparatively!’ said I.
“‘Look in the sideboard glass,’ said Rebecca Dew, pointing. ‘Compared to me, you are.’
“Well, I was!
“But I hadn’t finished with Elizabeth. One stormy evening when the wind was howling along Spook’s Lane, we couldn’t go for a walk, so we came up to my room and drew a map of fairyland. Elizabeth sat on my blue doughnut cushion to make her higher, and looked like a serious little gnome as she bent over the map. (By the way, no phonetic spelling for me! ‘Gnome’ is far eerier and fairy-er than ‘nome.’)
“Our map isn’t completed yet . . . every day we think of something more to go in it. Last night we located the house of the Witch of the Snow and drew a triple hill, covered completely with wild cherry trees in bloom, behind it. (By the way, I want some wild cherry trees near our house of dreams, Gilbert.) Of course we have a Tomorrow on the map . . . located east of Today and west of Yesterday . . . and we have no end of ‘times’ in fairyland. Spring-time, long time, short time, new-moon time, good-night time, next time . . . but no last time, because that is too sad a time for fairyland; old time, young time . . . because if there is an old time there ought to be a young time, too; mountain time . . . because that has such a fascinating sound; night-time and day-time . . . but no bed-time or school-time; Christmas-time; no only time, because that also is too sad . . . but lost time, because it is so nice to find it; some time, good time, fast time, slow time, half-past kissing-time, going-home time, and time immemorial . . . which is one of the most beautiful phrases in the world. And we have cunning little red arrows everywhere, pointing to the different ‘times.’ I know Rebecca Dew thinks I’m quite childish. But, oh, Gilbert, don’t let’s ever grow too old and wise . . . no, not too old and silly for fairyland.
“Rebecca Dew, I feel sure, is not quite certain that I am an influence for good in Elizabeth’s life. She thinks I encourage her in being ‘fanciful.’ One evening when I was away Rebecca Dew took the milk to her and found her already at the gate, looking at the sky so intently that she never heard Rebecca’s (anything but) fairy footfalls.
“‘I was listening, Rebecca,’ she explained.
“‘You do too much listening,’ said Rebecca disapprovingly.
“Elizabeth smiled, remotely, austerely. (Rebecca Dew didn’t use those words but I know exactly how Elizabeth smiled.)
“‘You would be surprised, Rebecca, if you knew what I hear sometimes,’ she said, in a way that made Rebecca Dew’s flesh creep on her bones . . . or so she avers.
“But Elizabeth is always touched with faery and what can be done about it?
“Your Very Anne-est ANNE.
“P.S.1. Never, never, never shall I forget Cyrus Taylor’s face when his wife accused him of crocheting. But I shall always like him because he hunted for those kittens. And I like Esme for standing up for her father under the supposed wreck of all her hopes.
“P.S.2. I have put in a new pen. And I love you because you aren’t pompous like Dr. Carter . . . and I love you because you haven’t got sticky-out ears like Johnny. And . . . the very best reason of all . . . I love you for just being Gilbert!”
Chapter 12
“Windy Poplars,
“Spook’s Lane,
“May 30th.
“DEAREST-AND-THEN-MORE-DEAR:
“It’s spring!
“Perhaps you, up to your eyes in a welter of exams in Kingsport, don’t know it. But I am aware of it from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes. Summerside is aware of it. Even the most unlovely streets are transfigured by arms of bloom reaching over old board fences and a ribbon of dandelions in the grass that borders the sidewalks. Even the china lady on my shelf is aware of it and I know if I could only wake up suddenly enough some night I’d catch her dancing a pas seul in her pink, gilt-heeled shoes.
“Everything is calling ‘spring’ to me . . . the little laughing brooks, the blue hazes on the Storm King, the maples in the grove when I go to read your letters, the white cherry trees along Spook’s Lane, the sleek and saucy robins hopping defiance to Dusty Miller in the back yard, the creeper hanging greenly down over the half-door to which little Elizabeth comes for milk, the fir trees preening in new tassel tips around the old graveyard . . . even the old graveyard itself, where all sorts of flowers planted at the heads of the graves are budding into leaf and bloom, as if to say, ‘Even here life is triumphant over death.’ I had a really lovely prowl about the graveyard the other night. (I’m sure Rebecca Dew thinks my taste in walks frightfully morbid. ‘I can’t think why you have such a hankering after that unchancy place,’ she says.) I roamed over it in the scented green cat’s light and wondered if Nathan Pringle’s wife really had tried to poison him. Her grave looked so innocent with its new grass and its June lilies that I concluded she had been entirely maligned.
“Just another month and I’ll be home for vacation! I keep thinking of the old orchard at Green Gables with its trees now in full snow . . . the old bridge over the Lake of Shining Waters . . . the murmur of the sea in your ears . . . a summer afternoon in Lover’s Lane . . . and you!
“I have just the right kind of pen tonight, Gilbert, and so . . .
(Two pages omitted.)
“I was around at the Gibsons’ this evening for a call. Marilla asked me some time ago to look them up because she once knew them when they lived in White Sands. Accordingly I looked them up and have been looking them up weekly ever since because Pauline seems to enjoy my visits and I’m so sorry for her. She is simply a slave to her mother . . . who is a terrible old woman.
“Mrs. Adoniram Gibson is eighty and spends her days in a wheel-chair. They moved to Summerside fifteen years ago. Pauline, who is forty-five, is the youngest of the family, all her brothers and sisters being married and all of them determined not to have Mrs. Adoniram in their homes. She keeps the house and waits on her mother hand and foot. She is a little pale, fawn-eyed thing with golden-brown hair that is still glossy and pretty. They are quite comfortably off and if it were not for her mother Pauline could have a very pleasant easy life. She just loves church work and would be perfectly happy attending Ladies’ Aids and Missionary Societies, planning for church suppers and Welcome socials, not to speak of exulting proudly in being the possessor of the finest wandering-jew in town. But she can hardly ever get away from the house, even to go to church on Sundays. I can’t see any way of escape for her, for old Mrs. Gibson will probably live to be a hundred. And, while she may not have the use of her legs, there is certainly nothing the matter with her tongue. It always fills me with helpless rage to sit there and hear her making poor Pauline the target for her sarcasm. And yet Pauline has told me that her mother ‘thinks quite highly’ of me and is much nicer to her when I am around. If this be so I shiver to think what she must be when I am not around.
“Pauline dares not do anything without asking her mother. She can’t even buy her own clothes . . . not so much as a pair of stockings. Everything has to be sent up for Mrs. Gibson’s approval; everything has to be worn until it has been turned twice. Pauline has worn the same hat for four years.
“Mrs. Gibson can’t bear any noise in the house or a breath of fresh air. It is said she never smiled in her life. . . . I’ve never caught her at it, anyway, and when I look at her I find myself wondering what would happen to her face if she did smile. Pauline can’t even have a room to herself. She has to sleep in the same room with her mother and be up almost every hour of the nig
ht rubbing Mrs. Gibson’s back or giving her a pill or getting a hot-water bottle for her . . . hot, not lukewarm! . . . or changing her pillows or seeing what that mysterious noise is in the back yard. Mrs. Gibson does her sleeping in the afternoons and spends her nights devising tasks for Pauline.
“Yet nothing has ever made Pauline bitter. She is sweet and unselfish and patient and I am glad she has a dog to love. The only thing she has ever had her own way about is keeping that dog . . . and then only because there was a burglary somewhere in town and Mrs. Gibson thought it would be a protection. Pauline never dares to let her mother see how much she loves the dog. Mrs. Gibson hates him and complains of his bringing bones in but she never actually says he must go, for her own selfish reason.
“But at last I have a chance to give Pauline something and I’m going to do it. I’m going to give her a day, though it will mean giving up my next week-end at Green Gables.
“Tonight when I went in I could see that Pauline had been crying. Mrs. Gibson did not long leave me in doubt why.
“‘Pauline wants to go and leave me, Miss Shirley,’ she said. ‘Nice, grateful daughter I’ve got, haven’t I?’
“‘Only for a day, Ma,’ said Pauline, swallowing a sob and trying to smile.
“‘Only for a day,’ says she! ‘Well, you know what my days are like, Miss Shirley . . . every one knows what my days are like. But you don’t know . . . yet . . . Miss Shirley, and I hope you never will, how long a day can be when you are suffering.’
“I knew Mrs. Gibson didn’t suffer at all now, so I didn’t try to be sympathetic.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 89