Chapter 22 Anne of Ingleside by Lucy Montgomery
"You've let yourself in for it, Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan, who had overheard most of he conversation as she polished her silver in the pantry.
"Haven't I? But, Susan, I really do want to write that 'obituary.' I liked Anthony Mitchell . . . what little I've seen of him . . . and I feel sure that he'd turn over in his grave if his obituary was like the run of the mill in the Daily Enterprise. Anthony had an inconvenient sense of humour."
"Anthony Mitchell was a real nice fellow when he was young, Mrs. Dr. dear. Though a bit dreamy they said. He didn't hustle enough to suit Bessy Plummer, but he made a decent living and paid his debts. Of course he married the last girl he should have. But although Bessy Plummer looks like a comic valentine now she was pretty as a picture then. Some of us, Mrs. Dr. dear," concluded Susan with a sigh, "haven't even that much to remember."
"Mummy," said Walter, "the snack-dragons are coming up thick all around the back porch. And a pair of robins are beginning to build a nest on the pantry window-sill. You'll let them, won't you, Mummy? You won't open the window and scare them away?"
Anne had met Anthony Mitchell once or twice, though the little grey house between the spruce woods and the sea, with the great big willow tree over it like a huge umbrella, where he lived, was in the Lower Glen and the doctor from Mowbray Narrows attended most of the people there. But Gilbert had bought hay from him now and then and once when he had brought a load Anne had taken him all over her garden and they had found out that they talked the same language. She had liked him . . . his lean, lined, friendly face, his brave, shrewd, yellowish-hazel eyes that had never faltered or been hoodwinked . . . save once, perhaps, when Bessy Plummer's shallow and fleeting beauty had tricked him into a foolish marriage. Yet he never seemed unhappy or unsatisfied. As long as he could plough and garden and reap he was as contented as a sunny old pasture. His black hair was but lightly frosted with silver and a ripe, serene spirit revealed itself in his rare but sweet smiles. His old fields had given him bread and delight, joy of conquest and comfort in sorrow. Anne was satisfied because he was buried near them. He might have "gone gladly" but he had lived gladly, too. The Mowbray Narrows doctor had said that when he told Anthony Mitchell he could hold out to him no hope of recovery Anthony had smiled and replied, "Well, life is a trifle monotonous at times now I'm getting old. Death will be something of a change. I'm real curious about it, doctor." Even Mrs. Anthony, among all her rambling absurdities, had dropped a few things that revealed the real Anthony. Anne wrote "The Old Man's Grave" a few evenings later by her room window and read it over with a sense of satisfaction.
"Make it where the winds may sweep
Through the pine boughs soft and deep,
And the murmur of the sea
Come across the orient lea,
And the falling raindrops sing
Gently to his slumbering.
"Make it where the meadows wide
Greenly lie on every side,
Harvest fields he reaped and trod,
Westering slopes of clover sod,
Orchard lands where bloom and blow
Trees he planted long ago.
"Make it where the starshine dim
May be always close to him,
And the sunrise glory spread
Lavishly around his bed,
And the dewy grasses creep
Tenderly above his sleep.
"Since these things to him were dear
Through full many a well-spent year,
It is surely meet their grace
Should be on his resting place,
And the murmur of the sea
Be his dirge eternally."
"I think Anthony Mitchell would have liked that," said Anne, flinging her window open to lean out to the spring. Already there were crooked little rows of young lettuce in the children's garden; the sunset was soft and pink behind the maple grove; the Hollow rang with the faint, sweet laughter of children.
"Spring is so lovely I hate to go to sleep and miss any of it," said Anne.
Mrs. Anthony Mitchell came up to get her "obitchery" one afternoon the next week. Anne read it to her with a secret bit of pride; but Mrs. Anthony's face did not express unmixed satisfaction.
"My, I call that real sprightly. You do put things so well. But . . . but . . . you didn't say a word about him being in heaven. Weren't you sure he is there?"
"So sure that it wasn't necessary to mention it, Mrs. Mitchell."
"Well, some people might doubt. He . . . he didn't go to church as often as he might . . . though he was a member in good standing. And it doesn't tell his age . . . nor mention the flowers. Why, you just couldn't count the wreaths on the coffin. Flowers are poetical enough, I should think!"
"I'm sorry . . ."
"Oh, I don't blame you . . . not a mite do I blame you. You've done your best and it sounds beautiful. What do I owe you?"
"Why . . . why . . . nothing, Mrs. Mitchell. I couldn't think of such a thing."
"Well, I thought likely you'd say that, so I brung you up a bottle of my dandelion wine. It sweetens the stomach if you're ever bothered with gas. I'd have brung a bottle of my yarb tea, too, only I was afraid the doctor mightn't approve. But if you'd like some and think you can smuggle it in unbeknownst to him you've only to say the word."
"No, no, thank you," said Anne rather flatly. She had not yet quite recovered from "sprightly."
"Just as you like. You'd be welcome to it. I'll not be needing any more medicine myself this spring. When my second cousin, Malachi Plummer, died in the winter I asked his widow to give me the three bottles of medicine there was left over . . . they got it by the dozen. She was going to throw them out but I was always one that could never bear to waste anything. I couldn't take more than one bottle myself but I made our hired man take the other two. 'If it doesn't do you any good it won't do you any harm,' I told him. I won't say I'm not rather relieved you didn't want any cash for the obitchery for I'm rather short of ready money just now. A funeral is so expensive though D. B. Martin is about the cheapest undertaker in these parts. I haven't even got my black paid for yet. I won't feel I'm really in mourning till it is. Luckily I hadn't to get a new bunnit. This was the bunnit I had made for Mother's funeral ten years ago. It's kind of fortunate black becomes me, ain't it? If you'd see Malachi Plummer's widow now, with her sailer face! Well, I must be stepping. And I'm much obliged to you, Mrs. Blythe, even if . . . but I feel sure you did your best and it's lovely poetry."
"Won't you stay and have supper with us?" asked Anne. "Susan and I are all alone . . . the doctor is away and the children are having their first picnic supper in the Hollow."
"I don't mind," said Mrs. Anthony, slipping willingly back into her chair. "I'll be glad to set a spell longer. Somehow it takes so long to get rested when you get old. And," she added, with a smile of dreamy beatitude on her pink face, "didn't I smell fried parsnips?"
Anne almost grudged the fried parsnips when the Daily Enterprise came out the next week. There, in the obituary column, was "The Old Man's Grave" . . . with five verses instead of the original four! And the fifth verse was:
"A wonderful husband, companion and aid,
One who was better the Lord never made,
A wonderful husband, tender and true,
One in a million, dear Anthony, was you."
"! ! !" said Ingleside.
"I hope you didn't mind me tacking on another verse," said Mrs. Mitchell to Anne at the next Institute meeting. "I just wanted to praise Anthony a little more . . . and my nephew, Johnny Plummer, writ it. He just sot down and scribbled it off quick as a wink. He's like you . . . he doesn't look clever but he can poetize. He got it through his mother . . . she was a Wickford. The Plummers haven't a speck of poetry in them . . . not a speck."
"What a pity you didn't think of getting him to write Mr. Mitchell's 'obitchery' in the first place," said Anne coldly.
"Yes, isn't it? But I didn't know he could write poetry and I'd set my heart on it for Anthony's send-off. Then his mother showed me a poem he'd writ on a squirrel drowned in a pail of maple syrup . . . a really touching thing. But yours was real nice, too, Mrs. Blythe. I think the two combined together made something out of the common, don't you?"
"I do," said Anne.