Anne of Ingleside (10 page)

‘That she is not, Miss Blythe, and Susan Baker will never stand by and hear her so miscalled. Evil-minded, indeed! Did you ever hear, Miss Blythe, of the pot calling the kettle black?’

‘Susan… Susan,’ said Anne imploringly.

‘I beg your pardon, Mrs Doctor dear. I admit I have forgotten my place. But there are
some
things not to be endured.’

Whereupon a door was banged as doors were seldom banged at Ingleside.

‘You see, Annie?’ said Aunt Mary Maria significantly. ‘But I suppose as long as you are willing to overlook that sort of thing in a servant there is nothing anyone can do.’

Gilbert got up and went to the library where a tired man might count on some peace. And Aunt Mary Maria, who didn’t like Miss Cornelia, betook herself to bed. So that when Miss Cornelia came in she found Anne alone, drooping rather limply over the baby’s basket. Miss Cornelia did not, as usual, start in unloading a budget of gossip. Instead, when she had laid aside her wraps, she sat down beside Anne and took her hand.

‘Anne, dearie, what is the matter? I know there’s something. Is that jolly old soul of a Mary Maria just tormenting you to death?’

Anne tried to smile.

‘Oh, Miss Cornelia… I know I’m foolish to mind it so much… but this has been one of the days when it seems I just
cannot
go on enduring her. She… she’s simply poisoning our life here…’

‘Why don’t you just tell her to go?’

‘Oh, we can’t do that, Miss Cornelia. At least,
I
can’t, and Gilbert won’t. He says he could never look himself in the face again if he turned his own flesh and blood out of doors.’

‘Cat’s hindfoot!’ said Miss Cornelia eloquently. ‘She’s got plenty of money and a good home of her own. How would it be turning her out of doors to tell her she’d better go and live in it?’

‘I know… but Gilbert… I don’t think he quite realizes everything. He’s away so much… and really… everything is so little in itself… I’m ashamed…’

‘I know, dearie. Just those little things that are horribly big. Of course, a
man
wouldn’t understand. I know a woman in Charlottetown who knows her well. She says Mary Maria Blythe never had a friend in her life. She says her name should be Blight, not Blythe. What you need, dearie, is just enough backbone to say you won’t put up with it any longer.’

‘I feel as you do in dreams when you’re trying to run and can only drag your feet,’ said Anne drearily. ‘If it were only now and then… but it’s every day. Meal-times are perfect horrors now. Gilbert says he can’t carve roasts any more.’

‘He’d notice
that
,’ sniffed Miss Cornelia.

‘We can never have any real conversation at meals because she is sure to say something disagreeable every time anyone speaks. She corrects the children for their manners continually and always calls attention to their faults before company. We used to have such pleasant meals… and now! She resents laughter, and you know what we are for laughing. Somebody is always seeing a joke, or used to be. She can’t let anything pass. Today she said, “Gilbert, don’t sulk. Have you and Annie quarrelled?” Just because we were quiet. You know Gilbert is always a little depressed when he loses a patient he thinks ought to have lived. And then she lectured us on our folly, and warned us not to let the sun go down on our wrath. Oh, we laughed at it afterwards… but just at the time! She and Susan don’t get along. And we
can’t
keep Susan from muttering asides that are the reverse of polite. She more than muttered when Aunt Mary Maria told her she had never seen such a liar as Walter… because she heard him telling Di a long tale about meeting the man in the moon and what they said to each other. She said he should have his mouth scrubbed out with soap and water. She and Susan had a battle royal that time. And she is filling the children’s minds with all sorts of gruesome ideas. She told Nan about a child who was naughty and died in its sleep, and Nan is afraid to sleep now. She told Di that if she were always a good girl her parents would come to love her as well as they loved Nan, even if she did have red hair. Gilbert really was very angry when he heard that and spoke to her sharply. I couldn’t help hoping she’d take offence and go… even though I would hate to have anyone leave my home because she was offended. But she just let those big blue eyes of hers fill with tears and said she didn’t mean any harm. She’d always heard that twins were never loved equally, and she’d been thinking we favoured Nan and that poor Di felt it! She cried all night about it and Gilbert felt that he had been a brute… and
apologized
.’

‘He would!’ said Miss Cornelia.

‘Oh, I shouldn’t be talking like this, Miss Cornelia. When I “count my mercies” I feel it’s very petty of me to mind these things, even if they do rub a little bloom off life. And she isn’t always hateful… she is quite nice by spells…’

‘Do you tell me so?’ said Miss Cornelia sarcastically.

‘Yes… and kind. She heard me say I wanted an afternoon tea-set, and she sent to Toronto and got me one… by mail order! And, oh, Miss Cornelia, it’s so ugly!’

Anne gave a laugh that ended in a sob. Then she laughed again.

‘Now we won’t talk of her any more… it doesn’t seem so bad now that I’ve blurted this all out, like a baby. Look at wee Rilla, Miss Cornelia. Aren’t her lashes darling when she is asleep? Now let’s have a good gab-fest.’

Anne was herself again by the time Miss Cornelia had gone. Nevertheless, she sat thoughtfully before her fire for some time. She had not told Miss Cornelia all of it. She had never told Gilbert any of it. There were so many little things…

‘So little I can’t complain of them,’ thought Anne. ‘And yet… it’s the little things that fret the holes in life… like moths… and ruin it.’

Aunt Mary Maria with her trick of acting hostess… Aunt Mary Maria inviting guests and never saying a word about it till they came.
She makes me feel as if I didn’t belong in my own home
… Aunt Mary Maria moving the furniture around when Anne was out… ‘I hope you didn’t mind, Annie. I thought we need the table so much more here than in the library.’… Aunt Mary Maria’s insatiable childish curiosity about everything… her point-blank questions about intimate matters…
always coming into my room without knocking… always smelling smoke… always plumping up the cushions I’ve crushed… always implying that I gossip too much with Susan… always picking at the children… we have to be at them all the time to make them behave and then we can’t manage it always
.

‘Ugly old Aunt Maywia,’ Shirley had said distinctly one dreadful day. Gilbert had been going to spank him for it, but Susan had risen up in outraged majesty and forbade it.

‘We’re cowed,’ thought Anne. ‘This household is beginning to revolve around the question, “Will Aunt Mary Maria like it?” We won’t admit it, but it’s true. Anything rather than have her wiping tears nobly away. It just can’t go on.’

Then Anne remembered what Miss Cornelia had said… that Mary Maria Blythe had never had a friend. How terrible! Out of her own richness of friendships Anne felt a sudden rush of compassion for this woman who had never had a friend… who had nothing before her but a lonely, restless old age, with no one coming to her for shelter or healing, for hope and help, for warmth and love. Surely they could have patience with her. These annoyances were only superficial after all. They could not poison the deep springs of life.

‘I’ve just had a terrible spasm of being sorry for myself, that’s all,’ said Anne, picking Rilla out of her basket and thrilling to the little round satin cheek against hers. ‘It’s over now and I’m wholeheartedly ashamed of it.’

‘We never seem to have old-fashioned winters nowadays, do we, Mummy?’ said Walter gloomily.

For the November snow had gone long ago, and all through December Glen St Mary had been a black and sombre land, rimmed in by a grey gulf dotted with curling crests of ice-white foam. There had been only a few sunny days, when the harbour sparkled in the golden arms of the hills: the rest had been dour and hard-bitten. In vain had the Ingleside folk hoped for snow for Christmas: but preparations went steadily on and as the last week drew to a close Ingleside was full of mystery and secrets and whispers and delicious smells. Now, on the very day before Christmas everything was ready. The fir-tree Walter and Jem had brought up from the Hollow was in the corner of the living-room, the doors and windows were hung with big green wreaths tied with huge bows of red ribbon. The banisters were twined with creeping spruce, and Susan’s pantry was crammed to overflowing. Then, late in the afternoon, when everyone had resigned themselves to a dingy ‘green’ Christmas somebody looked out of a window and saw white flakes as big as feathers falling thickly.

‘Snow! Snow!! Snow!!!’ shouted Jem. ‘A white Christmas after all, Mummy.’

The Ingleside children went to bed happy. It was so nice to snuggle down warm and cosy and listen to the storm howling outside through the grey, snowy night. Anne and Susan went to work to deck the Christmas-tree… ‘acting like two children themselves,’ thought Aunt Mary Maria scornfully. She did not approve of candles on a tree… ‘suppose the house caught fire from them’… she did not approve of coloured balls… ‘suppose the twins ate them’. But nobody paid any attention to her. They had learned that that was the only condition on which life with Aunt Mary Maria was livable.

‘Finished!’ cried Anne, as she fastened the great silver star to the top of the proud little fir. ‘And oh, Susan, doesn’t it look pretty? Isn’t it nice we can all be children again at Christmas without being ashamed of it? I’m so glad the snow came… but I hope the storm won’t outlast the night.’

‘It’s going to storm all day tomorrow,’ said Aunt Mary Maria positively. ‘I can tell by my poor back.’

Anne went through the hall, opened the big front door and peered out. The world was lost in a white passion of snowstorm. The window-panes were grey with drifted snow. The Scotch pine was an enormous sheeted ghost.

‘It doesn’t look very promising,’ Anne admitted ruefully.

‘God manages the weather yet, Mrs Doctor dear, and not Miss Mary Maria Blythe,’ said Susan over her shoulder.

‘I hope there won’t be a sick call tonight at least,’ said Anne as she turned away. Susan took one parting look into the gloom before she locked out the stormy night.

‘Don’t
you
go and have a baby tonight,’ she warned darkly in the direction of the Upper Glen, where Mrs George Drew was expecting her fourth.

In spite of Aunt Mary Maria’s back, the storm spent itself in the night and morning filled the secret hollows of snow among the hills with the red wine of winter sunrise. All the small fry were up early, looking starry and expectant.

‘
Did
Santa get through the storm, Mummy?’

‘No. He was sick and didn’t dare try,’ said Aunt Mary Maria, who was in a good humour… for her… and felt joky.

‘Santa Claus got here all right,’ said Susan before their eyes had time to blue, ‘and after you’ve had your breakfast you’ll see what he did to your tree.’

After breakfast Dad mysteriously disappeared, but nobody missed him because they were so taken up with the tree… the lovely tree, all gold and silver bubbles and lighted candles in the still dark room, with parcels in all colours and tied with the loveliest ribbon, piled about it. Then Santa appeared, a gorgeous Santa, all crimson and white fur, with a long white beard and
such
a jolly big stomach… Susan had stuffed three cushions into the red velveteen cassock Anne had made for Gilbert. Shirley screamed with terror at first, but refused to be taken out for all that. Santa distributed all the gifts with a funny little speech for every one in a voice that sounded oddly familiar even through the mask; and then, just at the end, his beard caught fire from a candle, and Aunt Mary Maria had some slight satisfaction out of the incident though not enough to prevent her from sighing mournfully.

‘Ah me, Christmas isn’t what it was when I was a child.’ She looked with disapproval at the present Little Elizabeth had sent Anne from Paris… a beautiful little bronze reproduction of Artemis of the Silver Bow.

‘What shameless hussy is that?’ she inquired sternly.

‘The goddess Diana,’ said Anne, exchanging a grin with Gilbert.

‘Oh, a heathen! Well, that’s different, I suppose. But if I were you, Annie, I wouldn’t leave it where the children can see it. Sometimes I am beginning to think there is no such thing as modesty left in the world. My grandmother,’ concluded Aunt Mary Maria, with the delightful inconsequence that characterized so many of her remarks, ‘never wore less than three petticoats, winter and summer.’

Aunt Mary Maria had knitted ‘wristers’ for all the children out of a dreadful shade of magenta yarn, also a sweater for Anne, Gilbert received a bilious necktie; and Susan got a red flannel petticoat. Even Susan considered red flannel petticoats out of date, but she thanked Aunt Mary Maria gallantly.

‘Some poor home missionary may be the better of it,’ she thought. ‘Three petticoats, indeed! I flatter myself I am a decent woman, and I like that Silver Bow person. She may not have much in the way of clothes on, but if I had a figure like that I do not know that I would want to hide it. But now to see about the turkey stuffing… not that it will amount to much with no onion in it.’

Ingleside was full of happiness that day, just plain, old-fashioned happiness, in spite of Aunt Mary Maria, who certainly did not like to see people too happy.

‘White meat only, please. (James, eat your soup quietly.) Ah, you are not the carver your father was, Gilbert.
He
could give everyone the bit she liked best. (Twins, older people would like a chance now and then to get a word in edgewise.
I
was brought up by the rule that children should be seen and not heard.) No, thank you, Gilbert, no salad for me. I don’t eat raw food. Yes, Annie, I’ll take a
little
pudding. Mince pies are entirely too indigestible.’

‘Susan’s mince pies are poems, just as her apple pies are lyrics,’ said the doctor. ‘Give
me
a piece of both, Anne-girl.’