Anne of Windy Willows (5 page)

5

Anne, sitting at her tower window one late November evening, with her pen at her lips and dreams in her eyes, looked out on a twilight world, and suddenly thought she would like a walk to the old graveyard. She had never visited it yet, preferring the birch and maple grove or the harbour road for her evening rambles. But there is always a November space after the leaves have fallen when she felt that it was almost indecent to intrude on the woods, for their glory terrestrial had departed and their glory celestial of spirit and purity and whiteness had not yet come upon them. So Anne betook herself to the graveyard instead. She was feeling for the time so dispirited and hopeless that she thought a graveyard would be a comparatively cheerful place. Besides, it was full of Pringles, so Rebecca Dew said. They had been buried there for generations, keeping it up in preference to the new graveyard, until ‘no more of them could be squeezed in’. Anne felt that it would be positively encouraging to see how many Pringles were where they couldn’t annoy anybody any more.

In regard to the Pringles Anne felt that she was at the end of her tether. More and more the whole situation was coming to seem like a nightmare. The subtle campaign of insubordination and disrespect which Jen Pringle had organized had at last come to a head. One day a week previously she had asked the Seniors to write a composition on ‘The Most Important Happenings of the Week’. Jen Pringle had written a brilliant one – the little imp
was
clever – and had inserted in it a sly insult to her teacher, one so pointed that it was impossible to ignore it. Anne had sent her home, telling her that she would have to apologize before she would be allowed to come back. The fat was fairly in the fire. It was open warfare now between her and the Pringles. And poor Anne had no doubt on whose banner victory would perch. The school Board would back the Pringles up, and she would be given her choice between letting Jen come back or being asked to resign.

She felt very bitter. She had done her best, and she knew that she could have succeeded if she had even a fighting chance.

‘It’s not my fault,’ she thought miserably. ‘Who
could
succeed against such a phalanx and such tactics?’

But to go home to Green Gables defeated! To endure Mrs Lynde’s indignation and the Pyes’ exultation! Even the sympathy of friends would be an anguish. And with her Summerside failure bruited abroad she would never be able to get another school.

But at least they had not got the better of her in the matter of the play. Anne laughed a little wickedly and her eyes filled with mischievous delight over the memory.

She had organized a High School Dramatic Club, and directed it in a little play hurriedly got up to provide some funds for one of her pet schemes – buying some good engravings for the rooms. She had made herself ask Katherine Brooke to help her, because Katherine always seemed so left out of everything. She could not help regretting it many times, for Katherine was even more brusque and sarcastic than usual. She seldom let a practice pass without some corrosive remark, and she overworked her eyebrows. Worse still, it was Katherine who had insisted on having Jen Pringle take the part of Mary Queen of Scots.

‘There’s no one else in the school who can play it,’ she said impatiently, ‘no one who has the necessary personality.’

Anne was not so sure of this. She rather thought that Sophy Sinclair, who was tall, and had hazel eyes and rich chestnut hair, would make a far better Queen Mary than Jen. But Sophy was not even a member of the club, and had never taken part in a play.

‘We don’t want absolute greenhorns in this. I’m not going to be associated with anything that is not successful,’ Katherine had said disagreeably, and Anne had yielded. She could not deny that Jen was very good in the part. She had a natural flair for acting, and she apparently threw herself into it wholeheartedly. They practised four evenings a week, and on the surface things went along very smoothly. Jen seemed to be so interested in her part that she behaved herself as far as the play was concerned. Anne did not meddle with her, but left her to Katherine’s coaching. Once or twice, though, she surprised a certain look of sly triumph on Jen’s face that puzzled her. She could not guess just what it meant.

One afternoon, soon after the practices had begun, Anne found Sophy Sinclair in tears in a corner of the girls’ cloakroom. At first she had blinked her hazel eyes vigorously and denied it, then broken down.

‘I did so want to be in the play – to be Queen Mary,’ she sobbed. ‘I’ve never had a chance. Father wouldn’t let me join the club, because there are dues to pay and every cent counts so much. And, of course, I haven’t had any experience. I’ve always loved Queen Mary. Her very name just thrills me to my finger-tips. I don’t believe – I never will believe – she had anything to do with murdering Darnley. It would have been wonderful to fancy I was she for a little while.’

Afterwards Anne concluded that it was her guardian angel who prompted her reply.

‘I’ll write the part out for you, Sophy, and coach you in it. It will be good training for you. And, as we plan to give the play in other places if it goes well here, it will be just as well to have an understudy, in case Jen shouldn’t always be able to go. But we’ll say nothing about it to anyone.’

Sophy had the part memorized by the next day. She went home to Windy Willows with Anne every afternoon when school came out and rehearsed it in the tower. They had a lot of fun together, for Sophy was full of quiet vivacity. The play was to be put on the last Friday in November in the Town Hall; it was widely advertised, and the reserved seats were sold to the last one. Anne and Katherine spent two evenings decorating the hall, the band was hired, and a noted soprano was coming up from Charlottetown to sing between the acts. The dress rehearsal was a success. Jen was really excellent, and the whole cast played up to her. On Friday morning Jen was not in school, and in the afternoon her mother sent word that Jen was ill with a very sore throat; they were afraid it was tonsillitis. Everybody concerned was very sorry, but it was out of the question that she should take part in the play that night.

Katherine and Anne stared at each other, drawn together for once in their common dismay

‘We’ll have to put it off,’ said Katherine slowly. ‘And that means failure. Once we’re into December there’s so much going on. Well, I always thought it was foolish to try to get up a play this time of the year.’

‘We are not going to postpone it,’ said Anne, her eyes as green as Jen’s own. She was not going to say it to Katherine Brooke, but she knew as well as she had ever known anything in her life that Jen Pringle was in no more danger of tonsillitis than Anne herself was. It was a deliberate device, whether any of the other Pringles was a party to it or not, to ruin the play because she, Anne Shirley, had sponsored it.

‘Oh, if you feel that way about it…’ said Katherine, with a nasty shrug. ‘But what do you intend to do? Get someone to read the part? That would ruin it. Mary is the whole play.’

‘Sophy Sinclair can play the part as well as Jen. The costume will fit her, and, thanks be, you made it and have it, not Jen.’

The play was put on that night before a packed audience. A delighted Sophy played Mary –
was
Mary, as Jen Pringle could never have been,
looked
Mary in her velvet robes and ruff and jewels. Students of Summerside High, who had never seen Sophy in anything but her plain, dowdy dark serge dresses, shapeless coat, and shabby hats, stared at her in amazement. It was insisted on the spot that she should become a permanent member of the Dramatic Club – Anne herself paid the membership fee – and from then on she was one of the pupils who ‘counted’ in Summerside High. But nobody knew or dreamed – Sophy herself least of all – that she had taken the first step that night on a pathway that was to lead to the stars. Twenty years later Sophy Sinclair was to be one of the leading actresses in America. But probably no plaudits ever sounded so sweet in her ears as the wild applause amid which the curtain fell that night in Summerside Town Hall.

Mrs James Pringle took a tale home to her daughter Jen that would have turned that damsel’s eyes green, if they had not been already so. For once, as Rebecca Dew said feelingly, Jen had got her come-uppance. And the eventual result was the insult in the composition on ‘Important Happenings’.

Anne went down to the old graveyard along a deep-rutted lane between high, mossy stone dikes, tasselled with frosted ferns. Slim, pointed Lombardies, from which November winds had not yet stripped all the leaves, grew along it at intervals, coming out darkly against the amethyst of the far hills, but the old graveyard, with half its tombstones leaning at a drunken slant, was surrounded by a four-square row of tall, sombre fir-trees. Anne had not expected to find anyone there, and was a little taken aback when she met Miss Valentine Courtaloe, with her long, delicate nose, her thin, delicate mouth, her sloping, delicate shoulders, and her general air of invincible ladylikeness, just inside the gate. She knew Miss Valentine, of course, as did everyone in Summerside. She was ‘the’ local dressmaker, and what she didn’t know about people, living or dead, was not worth taking into account. Anne had wanted to wander about by herself, to read the odd old epitaphs and puzzle out the names of forgotten lovers under the lichens that were growing over them; but she could not escape when Miss Valentine slipped an arm through hers and proceeded to do the honours of the graveyard, where there were evidently as many Courtaloes buried as Pringles. Miss Valentine had not a drop of Pringle blood in her, and one of Anne’s favourite pupils was her nephew, so it was no great mental strain to be nice to her, except that one must be very careful never to hint that she ‘sewed for a living’. MissValentine was said to be very sensitive on that point.

‘I’m glad I happened to be here this evening,’ said Miss Valentine. ‘I can tell you all about everybody buried here. I always say you have to know the ins and outs of the corpses to find a graveyard real enjoyable. I like a walk here better than in the new. It’s only the
old
families that are buried here, but every Tom, Dick, and Harry is being buried in the new. The Courtaloes are buried in this corner. My, we’ve had a terrible lot of funerals in our family.’

‘I suppose every old family has,’ said Anne, because Miss Valentine evidently expected her to say something.

‘Don’t tell me
any
family has ever had as many as ours,’ said Miss Valentine jealously. ‘We’re
very
consumptive. Most of us died of a cough. This is Aunt Cora’s grave. She was a great beauty. A minister we had in Summerside then told her that just to see her made a poem of his day. That was a pretty speech, wasn’t it? Though I never felt it was just the thing for a minister to say. Aunt Cora married a Yankee and lived all her life in Boston, but when she come back to the Island for a visit and saw this old graveyard she turned and said to her husband, “You can bury me here, Thomas.” So he did – not immediately, of course, but three years later, when she died… This is my Aunt Bessie’s grave. She was a saint if ever there was one. But there’s no doubt her sister, Aunt Cecilia, was the more interesting to talk to. The last time I ever saw her she said to me, “Sit down, my dear, sit down. I’m going to die tonight at ten minutes past eleven, but that’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a real good gossip for the last.” The strange thing, Miss Shirley, is that she did die that night at ten minutes past eleven. Can you tell me how she knew it?’

Anne couldn’t.

‘My great-great-grandfather Courtaloe is buried
here
. He came out in 1760, and he made spinning-wheels for a living. I’ve heard he made fourteen hundred in the course of his life. When he died the minister preached from the text, “Their works do follow them,” and old Myrom Pringle said in that case the road to heaven behind my great-great-grandfather would be choked with spinning-wheels. Do you think such a remark was in good taste, Miss Shirley?’

Had anyone but a Pringle said it Anne might not have remarked so decidedly, ‘I certainly do not,’ looking at a gravestone adorned with a skull and crossbones, as if she questioned the good taste of that also.

‘Here is Uncle Jack’s grave. He was sort of absent-minded, so he married the wrong woman; but he never let her guess it. He was very gentlemanly… The man in this grave was my Cousin Dora’s first husband’s brother’s first wife’s first husband. I don’t know how he came to be buried in
our
plot, I’m sure.’

Miss Valentine stooped to pull some weeds away from her absent-minded uncle’s grave, and Anne utilized the blank space in recovering from her dizziness over such a genealogical tangle.

‘My Cousin Dora is buried
here
. She had three husbands, but they all died very rapidly. Poor Dora didn’t seem to have any luck picking a healthy man. Her last one was Benjamin Banning –
not
buried here; buried in Lowvale beside
his
first wife – and he wasn’t reconciled to dying. Dora told him he was going to a better world. “Mebbe, mebbe,” says poor Ben, “but I’m sorter used to the imperfections of this one.” He took sixty-one different kinds of medicine, but in spite of that he lingered for a good while. All Uncle David Courtaloe’s family are
here
. There’s a cabbage-rose planted at the foot of every grave, and, my, don’t they bloom! I come here every summer and gather them for my rose jar. It would be a pity to let them go to waste, don’t you think?’

‘I – I suppose so.’

‘My poor young sister Harriet lies
here
,’ sighed Miss Valentine. ‘She had magnificent hair – about the colour of yours. Not so red, perhaps. It reached to her knees. She was engaged when she died. They tell me you’re engaged. I never much wanted to be married, but I think it would have been nice to be engaged. Oh, I’ve had some chances of course. Perhaps I was too fastidious. But a Courtaloe couldn’t marry
everybody
, could she?’

It did not seem likely she could.

‘Frank Digby – over in that corner under the sumachs – wanted me. I
did
feel a little regretful over refusing him; but a Digby, my dear! He married Georgina Troop. She always went to church a little late to show off her clothes. My, she was fond of clothes! She was buried in such a pretty blue dress. I made it for her to wear to a wedding, but in the end she wore it to her own funeral. She had three darling little children. They used to sit in front of me at church, and I always gave them candy. Do you think it wrong to give children candy in church, Miss Shirley? Not peppermints. That would be all right. There’s something
religious
about pepper-mints, don’t you think? But the poor things don’t like them.
This
is my cousin, Noble Courtaloe’s grave. We were always a little afraid he was buried alive: he looked so lifelike. But nobody thought of it till it was too late.’