Anne of Windy Willows (6 page)

‘That was – sad,’ said Anne idiotically. She knew she was expected to say something whenever Miss Valentine paused expectantly, but it seemed absolutely impossible to think of anything appropriate.

‘Cousin Ida Courtaloe is here. She was the prettiest thing I ever saw in my life – and the gayest. But fickle as a breeze, my dear, fickle as a breeze… Cousin Vernon Courtaloe is
here
. Him and Elsie Pringle – down
there
– were madly in love with each other at one time, and were to have been married; but first one thing and then another postponed it, and finally neither of them wanted it.’

When the Courtaloe plots were exhausted Miss Valentine’s reminiscences became a bit spicier. It did not make so much difference if you weren’t a Courtaloe.

‘Old Mrs Russell Pringle is here. I often wonder if she’s in heaven or not.’

‘But why?’ gasped a rather shocked Anne.

‘Well, she always hated her sister, Mary Ann, who had died a few months before. “If Mary Ann is in heaven I won’t stay there,” says she. And she was a woman who always kept her word, my dear. Pringle-like. She was born a Pringle, and married her cousin Russell… This is Mrs Dan Pringle – Janetta Bird. Seventy to a day when she died. Folks say she would have thought it wrong to die a day older than threescore and ten, because that is the Bible limit. People do say such funny things, don’t they? I’ve heard that dying was the only thing she ever dared do without asking her husband. Do you know, my dear, what he did once when she bought a hat he didn’t like?’

‘I can’t imagine.’

‘He
et it
,’ said Miss Valentine solemnly. ‘Of course it was only a small hat – lace and flowers, no feathers. Still, it must have been rather indigestible. I understand he had gnawing pains in his stomach for quite a time. Of course, I didn’t
see
him eat it, but I’ve always been assured the story was true. Do you suppose it was?’

‘I’d believe anything of a Pringle,’ said Anne bitterly.

Miss Valentine pressed her arm sympathetically. ‘I feel for you, indeed I do. It’s terrible the way they’re treating you. But Summerside isn’t
all
Pringle, Miss Shirley.’

‘Sometimes I think it is,’ said Anne, with a rueful smile.

‘No, it isn’t. And there are plenty of people would like to see you get the better of them. Don’t you give in to them, no matter what they do. It’s just the old Satan that’s got into them. But they hang together so, and Miss Sarah did want that nephew of theirs to get the school… This is where Stephen Pringle is buried. They couldn’t get his eyes closed. He was buried with them wide open.’

Anne shivered. She had a dreadful vision of the dead Pringle lying under the sod, still staring balefully upward at her out of eyes that had never been closed.

‘He was killed, you know,’ said Miss Valentine. ‘Fell from a ladder he was climbing. It was said’ – Miss Valentine lowered her voice creepily among the gathering shadows – ‘that his cousin, Black Joe Card – Stephen’s mother was a Card – fixed one of the steps so he
would
fall. He and Joe were courting the same girl. I never believed it myself. People say such terrible things, don’t they? But it certainly made Black Joe more interesting. I used to look at him in church and wonder if it was true. Perhaps it was, and that was why Stephen’s eyes couldn’t be closed… Helen Avery is
here
. She died twice – at least, they thought she died, but she revived when they were laying her out. Next time she died – four years later – her husband was away, but he telegraphed home, “Make sure she is dead before you go to any expense”… The Nathan Pringles are
here
. Nathan always believed his wife was trying to poison him, but he didn’t seem to mind. He said it made life kind of exciting. Once he kind of suspected she’d put arsenic in his porridge. He went out and fed it to the pig. The pig died three weeks afterwards. But he said maybe it was only a coincidence, and anyway he couldn’t be sure it was the same pig. In the end she died before him, and he said she’d always been a real good wife to him except for that one thing. I think it would be charitable to believe that he was mistaken about
it
.’

‘ “Sacred to the memory of
Miss Kinsey
”,’ read Anne in amazement. ‘What an extraordinary inscription! Had she no other name?’

‘If she had nobody ever knew it,’ said Miss Valentine. ‘She came from Nova Scotia and worked for the George Pringles for forty years. She gave her name as Miss Kinsey, and everybody called her that. She died suddenly, and then it was discovered that nobody knew her first name, and she had no relation that anybody could find. So they put that on her stone. The George Pringles buried her very nicely, and paid for the monument. She was a faithful, hard-working creature, but if you’d ever seen her you’d have thought she was
born
Miss Kinsey… The James Morleys are
here
. I was at their golden wedding. Such a to-do: gifts and speeches and flowers, and their children all home, and them smiling and bowing, and just hating each other as hard as they could.’

‘Hating each other?’

‘Bitterly, my dear. Everyone knew it. They had for years and years – almost all their married life, in fact. They quarrelled on the way home from church after the wedding. I often wonder how they manage to lie here so peaceably side by side.’

Again Anne shivered. How terrible – sitting opposite each other at table, lying down beside each other at night, going to church with their babies to be christened, and hating each other through it all! Yet they must have loved to begin with. Was it possible she and Gilbert could ever – Nonsense! The Pringles were getting on her nerves.

‘Handsome John MacTabb is buried here. He was always suspected of being the reason why Annetta Kennedy drowned herself. The MacTabbs were all handsome, but you could never believe a word they said. There used to be a stone here for his Uncle Samuel, who was reported drowned at sea fifty years ago. When he turned up alive the family took the stone down. The man they bought it from wouldn’t take it back, so Mrs Samuel used it for a baking board. Talk about a marble slab for mixing on! That old tombstone was just fine, she said. The MacTabb children were always bringing cookies to school with raised letters and figures on them – scraps of the epitaph. They gave them away real generous, but I never could bring myself to eat one. I’m peculiar that way… Mr Harley Pringle is
here
. He had to wheel Peter MacTabb down Main Street once, in a wheelbarrow, wearing a bonnet, for an election bet. All Summerside turned out to see it – except the Pringles, of course.
They
nearly died of shame… Milly Pringle is
here
. I was very fond of Milly, even if she was a Pringle. She was so pretty, and as light-footed as a fairy. Sometimes I think, my dear, on nights like this she must slip out of her grave and dance like she used to do. But I suppose a Christian shouldn’t be harbouring such thoughts… This is Herb Pringle’s grave. He was one of the jolly Pringles. He always made you laugh. He laughed right out in church once, when the mouse dropped out of the flowers on Meta Pringle’s hat when she bowed in prayer.
I
didn’t feel much like laughing. I didn’t know where the mouse had gone. I pulled my skirts tight about my ankles and held them there till church was out; but it spoiled the sermon for me. Herb sat behind me, and such a shout as he gave! People who couldn’t see the mouse thought he’d gone crazy. It seemed to me that laugh of his
couldn’t
die. If
he
was alive he’d stand up for you, Sarah or no Sarah…
This
, of course, is Captain Abraham Pringle’s monument.

It dominated the whole graveyard. Four receding platforms of stone formed a square pedestal, on which rose a huge pillar of marble topped with a ridiculous draped urn, beneath which a fat cherub was blowing a horn.

‘How ugly!’ said Anne candidly.

‘Oh, do you think so?’ Miss Valentine seemed rather shocked. ‘It was thought very handsome when it was erected. That is supposed to be Gabriel blowing his trumpet. I think it gives quite a touch of elegance to the graveyard. It cost nine hundred dollars. Captain Abraham was a very fine old man. It is a great pity he is dead. If he was living they wouldn’t be persecuting you the way they are. I don’t wonder Sarah and Ellen are proud of him, though I think they carry it a bit too far.’

At the graveyard gate Anne turned and looked back. A strange, peaceful hush lay over the windless land. Long fingers of moonlight were beginning to pierce the darkling firs, touching a gravestone here and there, and making strange shadows among them. But the graveyard wasn’t a sad place after all. Really, the people in it seemed alive after Miss Valentine’s tales.

‘I’ve heard you write,’ said Miss Valentine anxiously, as they went down the lane. ‘You won’t put the things I’ve told you in your stories, will you?’

‘You may be sure I won’t,’ promised Anne.

‘Do you think it is really wrong – or dangerous – to speak ill of the dead?’ whispered Miss Valentine a bit anxiously.

‘I don’t suppose it’s exactly either,’ said Anne. ‘Only rather unfair – like hitting those who can’t defend themselves. But you didn’t say anything very dreadful of anybody, Miss Courtaloe.’

‘I told you Nathan Pringle thought his wife was trying to poison him.’

‘But you gave her the benefit of the doubt.’ And Miss Valentine went her way reassured.

6

‘I wended my way to the graveyard this evening,’ wrote Anne to Gilbert, after she got home. ‘I think “wend your way” is a lovely phrase, and I work it in whenever I can. It sounds funny to say I enjoyed my stroll in the graveyard, but I really did. Miss Courtaloe’s stories were so funny, though some of them were gruesome enough underneath. Comedy and tragedy are so mixed up in life, Gilbert. The only thing that haunts me is that tale of the two who lived together fifty years and hated each other all that time. I can’t believe they really did. Somebody has said that “Hate is only love that has missed its way”. I feel sure that under the hatred they really loved each other – just as I really loved you all those years I thought I hated you – and I think death would show it to them. I’m glad
I
found out in life. And I have found out there
are
some decent Pringles – dead ones.

‘Last night when I went down late for a drink I found Aunt Kate buttermilking her face in the pantry. She asked me not to tell Chatty; she would think it so silly. I promised I wouldn’t.

‘Elizabeth still comes for the milk, though the Woman is pretty well over her bronchitis. I wonder they let her, especially since old Mrs Campbell is a Pringle. Last Saturday night Elizabeth – she was Betty that night, I think – ran in singing when she left me, and I distinctly heard the Woman say to her at the porch door, “It’s too near the Sabbath for you to be singing
that
song.” I am sure that Woman would prevent Elizabeth from singing on any day if she could!

‘Elizabeth had on a new dress that night, a dark wine colour – they
do
dress her nicely – and she said wistfully, “I thought I looked a little bit pretty when I put it on tonight, Miss Shirley, and I wished Father could see me. Of course, he will see me in Tomorrow, but it sometimes seems so slow in coming. I wish we could hurry time a bit, Miss Shirley.”

‘Now, dearest, I must work out some geometrical exercises. Geometry exercises have taken the place of what Rebecca calls my “literary efforts”. The spectre that haunts my daily path now is the dread of an exercise popping up in class that I can’t do. And what would the Pringles say then, oh, then! Oh, what would the Pringles say then!

‘Meanwhile, as you love me and the cat tribe, pray for a poor broken-hearted, ill-used Thomas cat. A mouse ran over Rebecca Dew’s foot in the pantry the other day, and she has fumed ever since. “That Cat does nothing but eat and sleep, and lets mice overrun everything. This
is
the last straw!’ So she chivvies him from pillar to post, routs him off his favourite cushion, and – I know, for I caught her at it – assists him none too gently with her foot when she lets him out.’

7

One Friday evening, at the end of a mild, sunny December day, Anne went out to Lowvale to attend a turkey supper. Wilfred Bryce’s home was in Lowvale, where he lived with an uncle and aunt, and he had asked her shyly if she would go out with him after school to the turkey supper in the church and spend Saturday at his home. Anne agreed, hoping that she might be able to influence the uncle to let Wilfred keep on going to High. Wilfred was afraid that he would not be able to go back after New Year’s Day. He was a clever, ambitious boy, and Anne felt a special interest in him.

It could not be said that she enjoyed her visit overmuch, except in the pleasure it gave Wilfred. His uncle and aunt were a rather odd and uncouth pair. Saturday morning was windy and dark, with showers of snow, and at first Anne wondered how she was going to put in the day. She felt tired and sleepy after the late hours of the turkey supper, Wilfred had to help thrash, and there was not even a book in sight. Then she thought of the battered old seaman’s chest she had seen in the back hall upstairs, and recalled Mrs Stanton’s request. Mrs Stanton was writing a history of Prince County, and had asked Anne if she knew of, or could find, any old diaries or documents that might be helpful.

‘The Pringles, of course, have lots that I could use,’ she told Anne, ‘but I can’t ask
them
. You know the Pringles and the Stantons have never been friends.’

‘
I
can’t ask them either, unfortunately,’ said Anne.

‘Oh, I’m not expecting you to. All I want is for you to keep your eyes open when you are visiting round in other people’s homes, and if you find or hear of any old diaries or maps, or anything like that, try to get the loan of them for me. You’ve no idea what interesting things I’ve found in old diaries – little bits of real life that make the old pioneers live again. I want to get things like that for my book as well as statistics and genealogical tables.’

Anne asked Mrs Bryce if they had any such old records. Mrs Bryce shook her head.

‘Not as I knows on. In course’ – brightening up – ‘there’s old Uncle Andy’s chist up there. There might be something in it. He used to sail with old Captain Abraham Pringle. I’ll go out and ask Duncan if ye kin root in it.’

Duncan sent word back that she could ‘root’ in it all she liked, and if she found any ‘dockymints’ she could have them. He’d been meaning to burn the ‘hull’ contents anyway, and take the chest for a tool-box. Anne accordingly rooted, but all she found was an old yellowed diary, or ‘log’, which Andy Bryce seemed to have kept all through his years at sea. Anne beguiled the stormy forenoon away by reading it with interest and amusement. Andy was learned in sea-lore, and had gone on many voyages with Captain Abraham Pringle, whom he evidently admired immensely. The diary was full of ill-spelled, ungrammatical tributes to the Captain’s courage and resourcefulness, especially in one wild enterprise of beating round the Horn. But his admiration had not, it seemed, extended to Abraham’s brother Myrom, who was also a captain, but of a different ship.

Anne shivered over this last entry, which seemed all the more horrifying for Andy’s unimpassioned statement of the grim facts. Then she fell into a reverie. There was nothing in the book that could be of any use to Mrs Stanton, but wouldn’t Miss Sarah and Miss Ellen be interested in it, since it contained so much about their adored old father? Supposing she sent it to them? Duncan Bryce had said she could do as she liked with it.

No, she wouldn’t. Why should she try to please them or cater for their absurd pride, which was great enough now without any more food? They had set themselves to drive her out of the school, and they were succeeding. They and their clan had beaten her.

Wilfred took her back to Windy Willows that evening, both of them feeling happy. Anne had talked Duncan Bryce into letting Wilfred finish out his year in High.

‘Then I’ll manage Queen’s for a year, and after that teach and educate myself,’ said Wilfred. ‘How can I ever repay you, Miss Shirley? Uncle wouldn’t have listened to anyone else, but he likes you. He said to me out in the barn, “Red-haired women could always do what they liked with me.” But I don’t think it was your hair, Miss Shirley, although it is so beautiful. It was just –
you
.’

At two o’clock that morning Anne woke up and decided that she would send Andy Bryce’s diary to Maplehurst. After all, she had a bit of liking for the old ladies. And they had so little to make life warm, only their pride in their father. At three she woke again and decided she wouldn’t. Miss Sarah pretending to be deaf, indeed! At four she was in the swithers again. Finally she determined she would send it to them. She wouldn’t be petty. Anne had a horror of being petty, like the Pyes.

Having settled this, Anne went to sleep again, thinking how lovely it was to wake up in the night and hear the first snowstorm of the winter round your tower, and then snuggle down in your blankets and drift into dreamland again.

On Monday morning she wrapped the old diary up carefully and sent it to Miss Sarah, with a little note:

‘That’s a horribly stiff note,’ thought Anne. ‘But I can’t write naturally to them. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they sent it haughtily back to me.’

In the fine blue of the early winter evening Rebecca Dew got the shock of her life. The Maplehurst carriage drove along Spook’s Lane, over the powdery snow, and stopped at the front gate. Miss Ellen got out of it, and then, to everyone’s amazement, Miss Sarah, who had not left Maplehurst for ten years.

‘They’re coming to the front door!’ gasped Rebecca Dew, panic-stricken.

‘Where else would a Pringle come to?’ asked Aunt Kate.

‘Of course. Of course. But it sticks,’ said Rebecca tragically. ‘It
does
stick, you know it does. And it hasn’t been opened since we house-cleaned last spring. This
is
the last straw!’

The front door did stick, but Rebecca Dew wrenched it open with desperate violence, and showed the Maplehurst ladies into the parlour.

‘Thank heaven, we’ve had a fire in it today,’ she thought. ‘And all I hope is That Cat hasn’t haired up the sofa. If Sarah Pringle got cat’s hairs on her dress in our parlour…’

Rebecca Dew dared not imagine the consequences. She called Anne from the tower room, Miss Sarah having asked if Miss Shirley was in, and then betook herself to the kitchen, half mad with curiosity as to what on earth was bringing the old Pringle girls to see Miss Shirley.

‘If there’s any more persecution in the wind…’ said Rebecca Dew darkly.

Anne herself descended with considerable trepidation. Had they come to return the diary with icy scorn?

It was little, wrinkled, inflexible Miss Sarah who rose and spoke without preamble when Anne entered the room.

‘We have come to capitulate,’ she said bitterly. ‘We can do nothing else. Of course, you knew that when you found that scandalous entry about poor Uncle Myrom. It wasn’t true. It
couldn’t
be true. Uncle Myrom was just taking a rise out of Andy Bryce – Andy was
so
credulous. But everybody outside of our family will be glad to believe it. You knew it would make us all a laughing-stock – and worse. Oh, you are very clever! We admit
that
. Jen will apologize and behave herself in future. I, Sarah Pringle, assure you of that. If you will only promise not to tell Mrs Stanton – not to tell anyone – we will do anything,
anything
.’

Miss Sarah wrung her fine lace handkerchief in her little blue-veined hands. She was literally trembling.

Anne stared in amazement and horror. The poor old darlings! They thought she had been threatening them!

‘Oh, you’ve misunderstood me dreadfully!’ she exclaimed, taking Miss Sarah’s poor piteous hands. ‘I – I never dreamed you would think I was trying to – Oh, it was just because I thought you would like to have all those interesting details about your splendid father. I never dreamed of showing or telling that other little item to anyone. I didn’t think it was of the least importance. And I never will.’

There was a moment’s silence. Then Miss Sarah freed her hands gently, put her handkerchief to her eyes and sat down, with a faint blush on her fine, wrinkled face.

‘We – we
have
misunderstood you, my dear. And we’ve – we’ve been abominable to you. Will you forgive us?’

Half an hour later – a half-hour which nearly was the death of Rebecca Dew – the Misses Pringle went away. It had been a half-hour of friendly chat and discussion about the non-combustible items of Andy’s diary. At the front door Miss Sarah – who had not had the least trouble with her hearing during the interview – turned back for a moment and took a bit of paper, covered with very fine, sharp writing, from her reticule.

‘I had almost forgotten. I promised Mrs MacLean our recipe for pound cake some time ago. Perhaps you won’t mind handing it to her. And tell her the sweating process is very important – quite indispensable, indeed. Ellen, your bonnet is slightly over one ear. You had better adjust it before we leave. We – we were somewhat agitated while dressing.’

Anne told the widows and Rebecca Dew that she had given Andy Bryce’s old diary to the ladies of Maplehurst, and that they had come to thank her for it. With this explanation they had to be contented, although Rebecca Dew always felt that there was more behind it than that – much more. Gratitude for an old, faded, tobacco-stained diary would never have brought Sarah Pringle to the front door of Windy Willows. Miss Shirley was deep, very deep!

‘I’m going to open that front door once a day after this,’ vowed Rebecca. ‘Just to keep it in practice. I all but went over flat when it
did
give way. Well, we’ve got the recipe for the pound cake, anyway. Thirty-six eggs! If you’d dispose of That Cat and let me keep hens we might be able to afford it once a year.’

Whereupon Rebecca Dew marched to the kitchen and got square with Fate by giving That Cat milk when she knew he wanted liver.

The Shirley-Pringle feud was over. Nobody outside of the Pringles ever knew why, but Summerside people understood that Miss Shirley, single-handed, had, in some mysterious way, routed the whole clan, who ate out of her hand from then on. Jen came back to school the next day and apologized meekly to Anne before the whole room. She was a model pupil thereafter, and every Pringle student followed her lead. As for the adult Pringles, their antagonism vanished like mist before the sun. There were no more complaints regarding ‘dis
ci
pline’ or homework. No more of the fine, subtle snubs characteristic of the ilk. They fairly fell over one another trying to be nice to Anne. No dance or skating party was complete without her. For although the fatal diary had been committed to the flames by Miss Sarah herself memory was memory, and Miss Shirley had a tale to tell if she chose to tell it. It would never do to have that nosy Mrs Stanton know that Captain Myrom Pringle had been a cannibal!