Chapter 15 Anne of Ingleside by Lucy Montgomery
"I felt I had to come up, dearie," said Miss Cornelia, "and explain about that telephone. It was all a mistake . . . I'm so sorry . . . Cousin Sarah isn't dead, after all." Anne, smothering a smile, offered Miss Cornelia a chair on the verandah, and Susan, looking up from the collar of Irish-crochet lace she was making for her niece Gladys, uttered a scrupulously polite, "Good-evening, Mrs. Marshall Elliott."
"The word came out from the hospital this morning that she had passed away in the night, and I felt I ought to inform you, since she was the doctor's patient. But it was another Sarah Chase and Cousin Sarah is living and likely to live, I'm thankful to say. It's real nice and cool here, Anne. I always say if there's a breeze to be had anywhere it's at Ingleside."
"Susan and I have been enjoying the charm of this starlit evening," said Anne, laying aside the dress of pink, smocked muslin she was making for Nan and clasping her hands over her knees. An excuse to be idle for a little while was not unwelcome. Neither she nor Susan had many idle moments nowadays.
There was going to be a moonrise and the prophecy of it was even lovelier than the moonrise itself would be. Tiger lilies were "burning bright" along the walk and whiffs of honeysuckle went and came on the wings of the dreaming wind.
"Look at that wave of poppies breaking against the garden wall, Miss Cornelia. Susan and I are very proud of our poppies this year, though we hadn't a single thing to do with them. Walter spilt a packet of seed there by accident in the spring and this is the result. Every year we have some delightful surprise like that."
"I'm partial to poppies," said Miss Cornelia, "though they don't last long."
"They have only a day to live," admitted Anne, "but how imperially, how gorgeous they live it! Isn't that better than being a stiff horrible zinnia that lasts practically for ever? We have no zinnias at Ingleside. They're the only flowers we are not friends with. Susan won't even speak to them."
"Anybody being murdered in the Hollow?" asked Miss Cornelia. Indeed, the sounds that came drifting up would seem to indicate that someone was being burned at the stake. But Anne and Susan were too accustomed to that to be disturbed.
"Persis and Kenneth have been here all day and they wound up by a banquet in the Hollow. As for Mrs. Chase, Gilbert went to town this morning, so he would know the truth about her. I am glad for everyone's sake she is doing so well . . . the other doctors did not agree with Gilbert's diagnosis and he was a little worried."
"Sarah warned us when she went to the hospital that we were not to bury her unless we were sure she was dead," said Miss Cornelia, fanning herself majestically and wondering how the doctor's wife always managed to look so cool. "You see, we were always a little afraid her husband was buried alive . . . he looked so life-like. But nobody thought of it until it was too late. He was a brother of this Richard Chase who bought the old Moorside farm and moved there from Lowbridge in the spring. He's a card. Said he came to the country to get some peace . . . he had to spend all his time in Lowbridge dodging widows" . . . "and old maids," Miss Cornelia might have added but did not, out of regard for Susan's feelings.
"I've met his daughter Stella . . . she comes to choir practice. We've taken quite a fancy to each other."
"Stella is a sweet girl . . . one of the few girls left that can blush. I've always loved her. Her mother and I used to be great cronies. Poor Lisette!"
"She died young?"
"Yes, when Stella was only eight. Richard brought Stella up himself. And him an infidel if he's anything! He says women are only important biologically . . . whatever that may mean. He's always shooting off some big talk like that."
"He doesn't seem to have made such a bad job of bringing her up," said Anne, who thought Stella Chase one of the most charming girls she had ever met.
"Oh, you couldn't spoil Stella. And I'm not denying Richard has got a good deal in his head-piece. But he's a crank about young men . . . he has never let poor Stella have a single beau in her life! All the young men who tried to go with her he simply terrified out of their senses with sarcasm. He is the most sarcastic creature you ever heard of. Stella can't manage him . . . her mother before her couldn't manage him. They didn't know how. He goes by contraries but neither of them ever seemed to catch on to that."
"I thought Stella seemed very devoted to her father."
"Oh, she is. She adores him. He is a most agreeable man when he gets his own way about everything. But he should have more sense about Stella's marrying. He must know he can't live forever . . . though to hear him talk you'd think he meant to. He isn't an old man, of course . . . he was very young when he was married. But strokes run in that family. And what is Stella to do after he's gone? Just shrivel up, I suppose."
Susan looked up from the intricate rose of her Irish crochet long enough to say decidedly:
"I do not hold with old folks spoiling young ones lives in that fashion."
"Perhaps if Stella really cared for anyone her father's objections might not weight much with her."
"That's where you're mistaken, Anne dearie. Stella would never marry anyone her father didn't like. And I can tell you another whose life is going to be spoiled, and that's Marshall's nephew, Alden Churchill. Mary is determined he shan't marry as long as she can keep him from it. She's even more contrary than Richard . . . if she was a weather-vane she'd point north when the wind was south. The property is hers till Alden marries and then it goes to him, you know. Every time he's gone about with a girl she has contrived to put a stop to it somehow."
"Indeed, is it all her doings, Mrs. Marshall Elliott?" queried Susan dryly. "Some folks think that Alden is very changeable. I have heard him called a flirt."
"Alden is handsome and the girls chase him," retorted Miss Cornelia. "I don't blame him for stringing them along a bit and dropping them when he's taught them a lesson. But there's been one or two nice girls he really liked and Mary just blocked it every time. She told me so herself . . . told me she went to the Bible . . . she's always 'going to the Bible' . . . and turned up a verse and every time it was a warning against Alden getting married. I've no patience with her and her odd ways. Why can't she go to church and be a decent creature like the rest of us around Four Winds? But no, she must set up a religion for herself, consisting of 'going to the Bible.' Last fall, when that valuable horse took sick . . . worth four hundred if a dollar . . . instead of sending for the Lowbridge vet she 'went to the Bible' and turned up a verse . . . 'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.' So send for the vet she would not and the horse died. Fancy applying that verse in such a way, Anne dearie. I call it irreverent. I told her so flat but all the answer I got was a dirty look. And she won't have the phone put in. 'Do you think I'm going to talk into a box on the wall?' she says when anyone broaches it."
Miss Cornelia paused, rather out of breath. Her sister-in-law's vagaries always made her impatient.
"Alden isn't at all like his mother," said Anne.
"Alden's like his father . . . a finer man never stepped . . . as men go. Why he ever married Mary was something the Elliotts could never fathom. Though they were more than glad to get her married off so well . . . she always had a screw loose and such a bean-pole of a girl. Of course she had lots of money . . . her Aunt Mary left her everything . . . but that wasn't the reason, George Churchill was really in love with her. I don't know how Alden stands his mother's whims; but he's been a good son."
"Do you know what has just occurred to me, Miss Cornelia?" said Anne with an impish smile. "Wouldn't it be a nice thing if Alden and Stella should fall in love with each other?"
"There isn't much chance of that and they wouldn't get anywhere if they did. Mary would tear up the turf and Richard would show a plain farmer the door in a minute, even if he is a farmer himself now. But Stella isn't the kind of a girl Alden fancies . . . he likes the high-coloured laughing ones. And Stella wouldn't care for his type. I did hear the new minister at Lowbridge was making sheep's eyes at her."
"Isn't he rather anemic and short-sighted?" asked Anne.
"And his eyes bulge," said Susan. "They must be dreadful when he tries to look sentimental."
"At least he's a Presbyterian," said Miss Cornelia, as if that atoned for much. "Well, I must be going. I find if I'm out in the dew much my neuralgia troubles me."
"I'll walk down to the gate with you."
"You always looked like a queen in that dress, Anne dearie," said Miss Cornelia, admiringly and irrelevantly.
Anne met Owen and Leslie Ford at the gate and brought them back to the verandah. Susan had vanished to get lemonade for the doctor, who had just arrived home, and the children came swarming up from the Hollow sleepy and happy.
"You were making dreadful noise as I drove in," said Gilbert. "The whole countryside must have heard you."
Persis Ford, shaking back her thick honey-tinted curls, stuck out her tongue at him. Persis was a great favourite with "Uncle Gil."
"We were just imitating howling dervishes, so of course we had to howl," explained Kenneth.
"Look at the state your blouse is in," said Leslie rather severely.
"I fell in Di's mud-pie," said Kenneth, with decided satisfaction in his tone. He loathed those starched, spotless blouses Mother made him wear when he came up to the Glen.
"Mother dearwums," said Jem, "can I have those old ostrich feathers in the garret to sew in the back of my pants for a tail? We're going to have a circus tomorrow and I'm to be the ostrich. And we're going to get an elephant."
"Do you know that it costs six hundred dollars a year to feed an elephant?" said Gilbert solemnly.
"An imaginary elephant doesn't cost anything," explained Jem patiently.
Anne laughed. "We never need to be economical in our imaginations, thank heaven."
Walter said nothing. He was a little tired and quite content to sit down beside Mother on the steps and lean his black head against her shoulder. Leslie Ford, looking at him, thought that he had the face of a genius . . . the remote, detached look of a soul from another star. Earth was not his habitat.
Everybody was very happy in this golden hour of a golden day. A bell in a church across the harbour rang faintly and sweetly. The moon was making patterns on the water. The dunes shimmered in hazy silver. There was a tang of mint in the air and some unseen roses were unbearably sweet. And Anne, looking dreamily over the lawn with eyes that, in spite of six children, were still very young, thought there was nothing in the world so slim and elfin as a very young lombardy poplar by moonlight.
Then she began to think about Stella Chase and Alden Churchill, until Gilbert offered her a penny for her thoughts.
"I'm thinking seriously of trying my hand at matchmaking," retorted Anne.
Gilbert looked at the others in mock despair.
"I was afraid it would break out again some day. I've done my best, but you can't reform a born matchmaker. She has a positive passion for it. The number of matches she has made is incredible. I couldn't sleep o' nights if I had such responsibilities on my conscience."
"But they're all happy," protested Anne. "I'm really an adept. Think of all the matches I've made . . . or been accused of making . . . Theodora Dix and Ludovic Speed . . . Stephen Clark and Prissie Gardner . . . Janet Sweet and John Douglas . . . Professor Carter and Esme Taylor . . . Nora and Jim . . . and Dovie and Jarvis . . ."
"Oh, I admit it. This wife of mine, Owen, has never lost her sense of expectation. Thistles may, for her, bear figs at any time. I suppose she'll keep on trying to marry people off until she grows up."
"I think she had something to do with another match yet," said Owen, smiling at his wife.
"Not I," said Anne promptly. "Blame Gilbert for that. I did my best to persuade him not to have that operation performed on George Moore. Talk about sleeping o' nights . . . there are nights when I wake up in a cold perspiration dreaming that I succeeded."
"Well, they say it is only happy women who match-make, so that is one up for me," said Gilbert complacently. "What new victims have you in mind now, Anne?"
Anne only grinned at him. Matchmaking is something requiring subtlety and discretion and there are things you do not tell even to your husband.