Anne of Ingleside (37 page)

‘Oh, Mummy, you look beautiful!’ gasped Rilla in round-eyed admiration. Well, children and fools were supposed to tell the truth. Had not Rebecca Dew once told her that she was ‘comparatively beautiful’? As for Gilbert, he used to pay her compliments in the past, but when had he given utterance to one of late months? Anne could not recall a single one.

Gilbert passed through on his way to his dressing closet and said not a word about her new dress. Anne stood for a moment burning with resentment: then she petulantly tore off the dress and flung it on the bed. She would wear her old black… a thin affair that was considered extremely ‘smart’ in Four Winds circles, but which Gilbert had never liked. What should she wear on her neck? Jem’s beads, though treasured for years, had long since crumbled. She really hadn’t a decent necklace. Well… she got out the little box containing the pink enamel heart Gilbert had given her at Redmond. She seldom wore it now… after all, pink didn’t go well with her red hair… but she would put it on tonight. Would Gilbert notice it? There, she was ready. Why wasn’t Gilbert? What was keeping him? Oh, no doubt he was shaving
very
carefully! She tapped sharply on the door.

‘Gilbert, we’re going to miss the train if you don’t hurry.’

‘You sound school-teacherish,’ said Gilbert, coming out. ‘Anything wrong with your metatarsals?’

Oh, he could make a joke of it, could he? She would not let herself think how well he looked in his tails. After all, the modern fashions of men’s clothes were really ridiculous. Entirely lacking in glamour. How gorgeous it must have been in ‘the spacious days of Great Elizabeth’ when men could wear white satin doublets and cloaks of crimson velvet and lace ruffs. Yet they were not effeminate. They were the most wonderful and adventurous men the world had ever seen.

‘Well, come along if you’re in such a hurry,’ said Gilbert absently. He was always absent now when he spoke to her. She was just a part of the furniture… yes, just a piece of furniture!

Jem drove them to the station. Susan and Miss Cornelia… who had come up to ask Susan if they could depend on her as usual for scalloped potatoes for the church supper… looked after them admiringly.

‘Anne is holding her own,’ said Miss Cornelia.

‘She is,’ agreed Susan, ‘though I have sometimes thought these past few weeks that her liver needed stirring up a bit. But she keeps her looks. And the doctor has got the same nice flat stomach he always had.’

‘An ideal couple,’ said Miss Cornelia.

The ideal couple said nothing in particular very beautifully all the way to town. Of course Gilbert was too profoundly stirred over the prospect of seeing his old love to talk to his wife! Anne sneezed. She began to be afraid she was taking a cold in the head. How ghastly it would be to sniffle all through dinner under the eyes of Mrs Andrew Dawson,
née
Christine Stuart! A spot on her lip stung… probably a horrible cold sore was coming on it. Did Juliet ever sneeze? Fancy Portia with chilblains! Or Argive Helen hiccupping! Or Cleopatra with corns!

When Anne came downstairs in the Barrett Fowler residence she stumbled over the bear’s head on the rug in the hall, staggered through the drawing-room door, across the wilderness of overstuffed furniture and gilt fandangoes Mrs Barrett Fowler called her drawing-room, and fell on the chesterfield, fortunately landing right side up. She looked about in dismay for Christine, then thankfully realized that Christine had not yet put in an appearance. How awful it would have been had she been sitting there amusedly watching Gilbert Blythe’s wife make such a drunken entrance! Gilbert hadn’t even asked if she were hurt. He was already deep in conversation with Dr Fowler and some unknown Dr Murray, who hailed from New Brunswick and was the author of a notable monograph on tropical diseases which was making a stir in medical circles. But Anne noticed that when Christine came downstairs, heralded by a sniff of heliotrope, the monograph was promptly forgotten. Gilbert stood up with a very evident light of interest in his eyes.

Christine stood for an impressive moment in the doorway. No falling over bears’ heads for her. Christine, Anne remembered, had of old that habit of pausing in the doorway to show herself off. And no doubt she regarded this as an excellent chance to show Gilbert what he had lost.

She wore a gown of purple velvet with long, flowing sleeves, lined with gold, and a fish-tail train lined with gold lace. A gold bandeau encircled the still dark wings of her hair. A long, thin gold chain, starred with diamonds, hung from her neck. Anne instantly felt frumpy, provincial, unfinished, dowdy, and six months behind the fashion. She wished she had not put on that silly enamel heart.

There was no question that Christine was as handsome as ever. A bit too sleek and well-preserved, perhaps… yes, considerably stouter. Her nose had assuredly not grown any shorter and her chin was definitely middle-aged. Standing in the doorway like that, you saw that her feet were… substantial. And wasn’t her air of distinction getting a little shop-worn? But her cheeks were still like smooth ivory and her great dark-blue eyes still looked out brilliantly from under that intriguing parallel crease that had been considered so fascinating at Redmond. Yes, Mrs Andrew Dawson was a very handsome woman… and did not at all convey the impression that her heart had been wholly buried in the said Andrew Dawson’s grave.

Christine took possession of the whole room the moment she entered it. Anne felt as if she were not in the picture at all.

But she sat up erectly. Christine should not see any middle-aged sag. She would go into battle with all flags flying. Her grey eyes turned exceedingly green and a faint flush coloured her oval cheek.
Remember you have a nose!
Dr Murray, who had not noticed her particularly before, thought in some surprise that Blythe had a very uncommon-looking wife. That posturing Mrs Dawson looked positively commonplace beside her.

‘Why, Gilbert Blythe, you’re as handsome as ever,’ Christine was saying archly… Christine
arch!
… ‘It’s so nice to find you haven’t changed.’

(She talks with the same old drawl. How I always hated that velvet voice of hers!)

‘When I look at you,’ said Gilbert, ‘time ceases to have any meaning at all. Where did you learn the secret of immortal youth?’

Christine laughed.

(Isn’t her laughter a little tinny?)

‘You could always pay a pretty compliment, Gilbert. You know’… with an arch glance around the circle… ‘Dr Blythe was an old flame of mine in those days he is pretending to think were of yesterday. And Anne Shirley! You haven’t changed as much as I’ve been told… though I don’t think I’d have known you if we’d just happened to meet on the street. Your hair is a
little
darker than it used to be, isn’t it? Isn’t it
divine
to meet again like this? I was so afraid your lumbago wouldn’t let you come.’

‘
My
lumbago!’

‘Why, yes, aren’t you subject to it? I thought you were…’

‘I must have got things twisted,’ said Mrs Fowler apologetically. ‘Somebody told me you were down with a very severe attack of lumbago…’

‘That is Mrs Dr Parker of Lowbridge. I have never had lumbago in my life,’ said Anne in a flat voice.

‘How very nice that you haven’t got it,’ said Christine, with something faintly insolent in her tone. ‘It’s
such
a wretched thing. I have an aunt who is a perfect martyr to it.’

Her air seemed to relegate Anne to the generation of aunts. Anne managed a smile with her lips, not her eyes. If she could only think of something clever to say! She knew that at three o’clock that night she would probably think of a brilliant retort she might have made, but that did not help now.

‘They tell me you have seven children,’ said Christine, speaking to Anne but looking at Gilbert.

‘Only six living,’ said Anne, wincing. Even yet she could never think of little white Joyce without pain.

‘
What
a family!’ said Christine.

Instantly it seemed a disgraceful and absurd thing to have a large family.

‘You, I think, have none,’ said Anne.

‘I never cared for children, you know.’ Christine shrugged her remarkably fine shoulders, but her voice was a little hard. ‘I’m afraid I’m not the maternal type. I really never thought that it was woman’s sole mission to bring children into an already overcrowded world.’

They went in to dinner then. Gilbert took Christine, Dr Murray took Mrs Fowler, and Dr Fowler, a rotund little man, who could not talk to anybody except another doctor, took Anne.

Anne felt that the room was rather stifling. There was a mysterious sickly scent in it. Probably Mrs Fowler had been burning incense. The menu was good and Anne went through the motions of eating without any appetite and smiled until she felt she was beginning to look like a Cheshire cat. She could not keep her eyes off Christine, who was smiling at Gilbert continuously. Her teeth were beautiful… almost too beautiful. They looked like a toothpaste advertisement. Christine made very effective play with her hands as she talked. She had lovely hands… rather large, though.

She was talking to Gilbert about rhythmic speeds for living. What on earth did she mean? Did she know herself?

Then they switched to the Passion Play.

‘Have you ever been to Ober-Ammergau?’ Christine asked Anne.

When she knew perfectly well Anne hadn’t! Why did the simplest question sound insolent when Christine asked it?

‘Of course a family ties you down terribly,’ said Christine. ‘Oh, whom do you think I saw last month when I was in Kingsport? That little friend of yours… the one who married the ugly minister… what
was
her name?’

‘Jonas Blake,’ said Anne. ‘Philippa Gordon married him. And I never thought he was ugly.’

‘
Didn’t
you? Of course, tastes differ. Well, anyway, I met them.
Poor
Philippa!’

Christine’s use of ‘poor’ was very effective.

‘Why poor?’ asked Anne. ‘I think she and Jonas have been very happy.’

‘Happy! My dear, if you could see the place they live in! A wretched little fishing village where it was an excitement if the pigs broke into the garden! I was told that the Jonas-man had had a good church in Kingsport, and had given it up because he thought it his “duty” to go to the fishermen who “needed” him. I have no use for such fanatics. “How can you live in such an isolated, out-of-the-way place as this?” I asked Philippa. Do you know what she said?’

Christine threw out her beringed hands expressively.

‘Perhaps what I would say of Glen St Mary,’ said Anne. ‘That it was the only place in the world to live in.’

‘Fancy you being contented there,’ smiled Christine.
(That terrible mouthful of teeth!)
‘Do you really never feel that you want a broader life? You used to be quite ambitious, if I remember aright. Didn’t you write some rather clever little things when you were at Redmond? A bit fantastic and whimsical, of course, but still…’

‘I wrote them for the people who still believe in fairyland. There is a surprising lot of them, you know, and they like to get news from that country.’

‘And you’ve quite given it up?’

‘Not altogether… but I’m writing living epistles now,’ said Anne, thinking of Jem and Co.

Christine stared, not recognizing the quotation. What did Anne Shirley mean? But then, of course, she had been noted at Redmond for her mysterious speeches. She had kept her looks astonishingly, but probably she was one of those women who got married and stopped thinking. Poor Gilbert! She had hooked him before he came to Redmond. He had never had the least chance to escape her.

‘Does anybody ever eat philopenas now?’ asked Dr Murray, who had just cracked a twin almond. Christine turned to Gilbert.

‘Do you remember that philopena
we
ate once?’ she asked.

(Did a significant look pass between them?)

‘Do you suppose I could forget it?’ asked Gilbert.

They plunged into a spate of ‘do-you-remembers’, while Anne stared at the picture of fish and oranges hanging over the sideboard. She had never thought Gilbert and Christine had had so many memories in common. Do you remember our picnic up the Arm?… do you remember the night we went to the negro church?… do you remember the night we went to the masquerade?… you were a Spanish lady in a black velvet dress, with a lace mantilla and fan.

Gilbert apparently remembered them all in detail. But he had forgotten his wedding anniversary!

When they went back to the drawing-room Christine glanced out of the window at an eastern sky that was showing pale silver behind the dark poplars.

‘Gilbert, let us take a stroll in the garden, I want to learn again the meaning of moonrise in September.’

(Does moonrise mean anything in September that it doesn’t mean in any other month? And what does she mean by ‘again’. Did she ever learn it before… with him?)

Out they went. Anne felt that she had been very neatly and sweetly brushed aside. She sat down on a chair that commanded a view of the garden… though she would not admit even to herself that she selected it for that reason. She could see Christine and Gilbert walking down the path. What were they saying to each other? Christine seemed to be doing most of the talking. Perhaps Gilbert was too dumb with emotion to speak. Was he smiling out there in the moonrise over memories in which she had no share? She recalled nights she and Gilbert had walked in moonlit gardens of Avonlea? Had
he
forgotten?

Christine was looking up at the sky. Of course she knew she was showing off that fine, full white throat of hers when she lifted her face like that. Did ever a moon take so long in rising?

Other guests were dropping in when they finally came back. There was talk, laughter, music. Christine sang… very well. She had always been ‘musical’ – She sang
at
Gilbert… ‘the dear, dead days beyond recall’. Gilbert leaned back in an easy-chair and was uncommonly silent. Was he looking back wistfully to those dear, dead days? Was he picturing what his life would have been if he had married Christine?
(I’ve always known what Gilbert was thinking of before. If we
don’t get away soon I’ll be throwing up my head and howling. Thank heaven our train leaves early.)