Anne of Windy Poplars Page 8

  Above all she wanted to make him speak. She felt instinctively that nothing in the world would punish him so much as to be tricked into speaking when he was determined not to.

  Suppose she got up and deliberately smashed that huge, hideous, old-fashioned vase on the table in the corner, an ornate thing covered with wreaths of roses and leaves which was most difficult to dust, but which must be kept immaculately clean? Anne knew that the whole family hated it, but Cyrus Taylor would not hear of having it banished to the attic, because it had been his mother's. Anne thought she would do it fearlessly if she really believed that it would make Cyrus explode into vocal anger.

  Why didn't Lennox Carter talk? If he would she, Anne, could talk too, and perhaps Trix and Pringle would escape from the spell that bound them, and some kind of conversation would be possible. But he simply sat there and ate. Perhaps he thought it was really the best thing to do. Perhaps he was afraid of saying something that would still further enrage the evidently already enraged parent of his lady.

  'Will you please start the pickles, Miss Shirley?' said Mrs Taylor faintly.

  Something wicked stirred in Anne. She started the pickles - and something else. Without letting herself stop to think she bent forward, her great grey-green eyes glimmering limpidly, and said gently, 'Perhaps you would be surprised to hear, Dr Carter, that Mr Taylor went deaf very suddenly last week?'

  Anne sat back, having thrown her bomb. She could not tell precisely what she expected or hoped. If Dr Carter got the impression that his host was deaf instead of in a towering rage of silence it might loosen his tongue. She had not told a falsehood. She had not said Cyrus Taylor was deaf. As for Cyrus Taylor, if she had hoped to make him speak she had failed. He merely glared at her, still in silence.

  But Anne's remark had an effect on Trix and Pringle that she had never dreamed of. Trix was in a silent rage herself. She had, the moment before Anne had hurled her rhetorical question, seen Esme furtively wipe away a tear that had escaped from one of her despairing blue eyes. Everything was hopeless. Lennox Carter would never ask Esme to marry him now. It didn't matter any more what anyone said or did. Trix was suddenly possessed with a burning desire to get square with her brutal father. Anne's speech gave her a weird inspiration, and Pringle, a volcano of suppressed impishness, blinked his white eyelashes for a dazed moment and then promptly followed her lead. Never, as long as they might live, would Anne, Esme, or Mrs Cyrus forget the dreadful quarter of an hour that followed.

  'Such an affliction for poor Papa,' said Trix, addressing Dr Carter across the table. 'And him only sixty-eight.'

  Two little white dents appeared at the corners of Cyrus Taylor's nostrils when he heard his age advanced six years, but he remained silent.

  'It's such a treat to have a decent meal,' said Pringle, clearly and distinctly. 'What would you think, Dr Carter, of a man who makes his family live on fruit and eggs - nothing but fruit and eggs - just for a fad?'

  'Does your father -' began Dr Carter, bewildered.

  'What would you think of a husband who bit his wife when she put up curtains he didn't like - deliberately bit her?' demanded Trix.

  'Till the blood came,' added Pringle solemnly.

  'Do you mean to say your father -'

  'What would you think of a man who would cut up a silk dress of his wife's just because the way it was made didn't suit him?' said Trix.

  'What would you think,' said Pringle, 'of a man who refuses to let his wife have a dog?'

  'When she would so love to have one,' sighed Trix.

  'What would you think of a man,' continued Pringle, who was beginning to enjoy himself hugely, 'who would give his wife a pair of goloshes for a Christmas present - nothing but a pair of goloshes?'

  'Goloshes don't exactly warm the heart,' admitted Dr Carter. His eyes met Anne's, and he smiled. Anne reflected that she had never seen him smile before. It changed his face wonderfully for the better. What was Trix saying? Who would have thought she could be such a demon?

  'Have you ever wondered, Dr Carter, how awful it must be to live with a man who thinks nothing - nothing - of picking up the, roast if it isn't perfectly done and hurling it at the maid?'

  Dr Carter glanced apprehensively at Cyrus Taylor as if he feared that Cyrus might throw the skeletons of the chickens at somebody. Then he seemed to remember comfortingly that his host was deaf.

  'What would you think of a man who believed the earth was flat?' asked Pringle.

  Anne thought Cyrus would speak then. A tremor seemed to pass over his rubicund face, but no words came. Still, she was sure that his moustaches were a little less defiant.

  'What would you think of a man who let his aunt - his only aunt - go to the poorhouse?' asked Trix.

  'And pastured his cow in the graveyard,' said Pringle. 'Summerside hasn't got over that sight yet.'

  'What would you think of a man who would write down in his diary every day what he had for dinner?' asked Trix.

  'The great Pepys did that,' said Dr Carter, with another smile. His voice sounded as if he would like to laugh. Perhaps after all he was not pompous, thought Anne, only young and shy and over-serious. But she was feeling positively aghast. She had never meant things to go as far as this. She was finding out that it is much easier to start things than to finish them. Trix and Pringle were being diabolically clever. They had not said that their father did a single one of these things. Anne could fancy Pringle saying, his round eyes rounder still with pretended innocence, 'I asked those questions of Dr Carter just for information.'

  '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. Esme turned and looked squarely at Dr Carter, whom she had lost for ever. 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 defence of her father.

  'And he can crochet so beautifully. He made the loveliest centrepiece for the parlour table last winter, when he was laid up with lumbago.'

  Everyone has some limit of endurance, and Cyrus Taylor had reached his. He gave his chair such a furious backward push that it shot across the polished floor and struck the table on which the vase stood. The table went over and the vase broke into 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 for ever? 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 round 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. Everyone 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 the 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 everyone 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!'

  11

  Extract from a 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 hang-over from my old detestation of anything savouring 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 'shoes and ships and sealing-wax' - of almost everything but geometry. We avoid that subject. Jen knows I don't know too much about geometry, but my one 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 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 colour 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 Willows is ageing 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 'comparatively 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 coloured 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 haven'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: springtime, 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 daytime, but no bed-time or school time, Christmas-time - no only time, because that is too sad for fairyland - 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, nor 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. 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!

  12

  Windy Willows

  Spook's Lane

  May 30

  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 quick 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 where 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 backyard, the creeper hanging greenly down over the half-door to which little Elizabeth comes for milk, the fir-trees preening in new tassel tips round 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 Stephen Pringle's eyes were closed at last, and 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.