Chapter 32 Anne of Ingleside by Lucy Montgomery
"So the Ladies' Aid is going to have their quilting at Ingleside," said the doctor. "Bring out all your lordly dishes, Susan, and provide several brooms to sweep up the fragments of reputations afterwards."
Susan smiled wanly, as a woman tolerant of a man's lack of all understanding of vital things, but she did not feel like smiling . . . at least, until everything concerning the Aid supper had been settled.
"Hot chicken pie," she went about murmuring, "mashed potatoes and creamed peas for the main course. And it will be such a good chance to use your new lace tablecloth, Mrs. Dr. dear. Such a thing has never been seen in the Glen and I am confident it will make a sensation. I am looking forward to Annabel Clow's face when she sees it. And will you be using your blue and silver basket for the flowers?"
"Yes, full of pansies and yellow-green ferns from the maple grove. And I want you to put those three magnificent pink geraniums of yours somewhere around . . . in the living-room if we quilt there or on the balustrade of the verandah if it's warm enough to work out there. I'm glad we have so many flowers left. The garden has never been so beautiful as it has been this summer, Susan. But then I say that every autumn, don't I?"
There were many things to be settled. Who should sit by whom . . . it would never do, for instance, to have Mrs. Simon Millison sit beside Mrs. William McCreery, for they never spoke to each other because of some obscure old feud dating back to schooldays. Then there was the question of whom to invite . . . for it was the hostess' privilege to ask a few guests apart from the members of the Aid.
"I'm going to have Mrs. Best and Mrs. Campbell," said Anne.
Susan looked doubtful.
"They are newcomers, Mrs. Dr. dear," . . . much as she might have said, "They are crocodiles."
"The doctor and I were newcomers once, Susan."
"But the doctor's uncle was here for years before that. Nobody knows anything about these Bests and Campbells. But it is your house, Mrs. Dr. dear, and whom am I to object to anyone you wish to have? I remember one quilting at Mrs. Carter Flagg's many years ago when Mrs. Flagg invited a strange woman. She came in wincey, Mrs. Dr. dear . . . said she didn't think a Ladies' Aid worth dressing up for! At least there will be no fear of that with Mrs. Campbell. She is very dressy . . . though I could never see myself wearing hydrangea blue to church."
Anne could not either, but she dared not smile.
"I thought that dress was lovely with Mrs. Campbell's silver hair, Susan. And by the way, she wants your recipe for spiced gooseberry relish. She says she had some of it at the Harvest Home supper and it was delicious."
"Oh, well, Mrs. Dr. dear, it is not everyone who can make spiced gooseberry . . ." and no more disapproval was expressed of hydrangea blue dresses. Mrs. Campbell might henceforth appear in the costume of a Fiji Islander if she chose and Susan would find excuses for it.
The young months had grown old but autumn was still remembering summer and the quilting day was more like June than October. Every member of the Ladies' Aid who could possibly come came, looking forward pleasurably to a good dish of gossip and an Ingleside supper, besides, possibly, seeing some sweet new thing in fashions since the doctor's wife had recently been to town.
Susan, unbowed by the culinary cares that were heaped upon her, stalked about, showing the ladies to the guest-room, serene in the knowledge that not one of them possessed an apron trimmed with crochet lace five inches deep made from Number One Hundred thread. Susan had captured first prize at the Charlottetown Exhibition the week before with that lace. She and Rebecca Dew had trysted there and made a day of it, and Susan had come home that night the proudest woman in Prince Edward Island.
Susan's face was perfectly controlled but her thoughts were her own, sometimes spiced with a trifle of mild malice.
"Celia Reese is here, looking for something to laugh at as usual. Well, she will not find it at our supper table and that you may tie to. Myra Murray in red velvet . . . a little too sumptuous for a quilting in my opinion but I am not denying she looks well in it. At least it is not wincey. Agatha Drew . . . and her glasses tied on with a string as usual. Sarah Taylor . . . it may be her last quilting . . . she has got a terrible heart, the doctor says, but the spirit of her! Mrs. Donald Reese . . . thank the Good Lord she didn't bring Mary Anna with her but no doubt we will hear plenty. Jane Burr from the Upper Glen. She isn't a member of the Aid. Well, I shall count the spoons after supper and that you may tie to. That family were all light-fingered. Candace Crawford . . . she doesn't often trouble an Aid meeting but a quilting is a good place to show off her pretty hands and her diamond ring. Emma Pollock with her petticoat showing below her dress, of course . . . a pretty woman but flimsy-minded like all that tribe. Tillie MacAllister, don't you go and upset the jelly on the tablecloth like you did at Mrs. Palmer's quilting. Martha Crothers, you will have a decent meal for once. It is too bad your husband could not have come too . . . I hear he has to live on nuts or something like that. Mrs. Elder Baxter . . . I hear the elder has scared Harold Reese away from Mina at last. Harold always had a wishbone in place of a backbone and faint heart never won fair lady as the Good Book says. Well, we have enough for two quilts and some over to thread needles."
The quilts were set up on the broad verandah and everyone was busy with fingers and tongues. Anne and Susan were deep in preparations for supper in the kitchen, and Walter, who had been kept home from school that day because of a slight sore throat, was squatted on the verandah steps, screened from view of the quilters by a curtain of vines. He always liked to listen to older people talking. They said such surprising, mysterious things . . . things you could think over afterwards and weave into the very stuff of drama, things that reflected the colours and shadows, the comedies and tragedies, the jests and the sorrows, of every Four Winds clan.
Of all the women present Walter liked Mrs. Myra Murray best, with her easy infectious laugh and the jolly little wrinkles round her eyes. She could tell the simplest story and make it seem dramatic and vital; she gladdened life wherever she went; and she did look so pretty in her cherry-red velvet, with the smooth ripples in her black hair, and the little red drops in her ears. Mrs. Tom Chubb, who was thin as a needle, he liked least . . . perhaps because he had once heard her calling him "a sickly child." He thought Mrs. Allan Milgrave looked just like a sleek grey hen and that Mrs. Grant Clow was like nothing so much as a barrel on legs. Young Mrs. David Ransome, with her taffy-coloured hair, was very handsome, "too handsome for a farm," Susan had said when Dave married her. The young bride, Mrs. Morton MacDougall, looked like a sleepy white poppy. Edith Bailey, the Glen dressmaker, with her misty silvery curls and humorous black eyes, didn't look as if she should be "an old maid." He liked Mrs. Meade, the oldest woman there, who had gentle, tolerant eyes and listened far more than she talked, and he did not like Celia Reese, with her sly amused look as if she were laughing at everybody.
The quilters had not really started talking yet . . . they were discussing the weather and deciding whether to quilt in fans or diamonds, so Walter was thinking of the beauty of the ripened day, the big lawn with its magnificent trees, and the world that looked as if some great kind Being had put golden arms about it. The tinted leaves were drifting slowly down but the knightly hollyhocks were still gay against the brick wall and the poplars wove sorcery of aspen along the path to the barn. Walter was so absorbed in the loveliness around him that the quilting conversation was in full swing before he was recalled to consciousness of it by Mrs. Simon Millison's pronouncement.
"That clan were noted for their sensational funerals. Will any of you who were there ever forget what happened at Peter Kirk's funeral?"
Walter pricked up his ears. This sounded interesting. But much to his disappointment Mrs. Simon did not go on to tell what had happened. Everybody must either have been at the funeral or heard the story.
("But why are they all looking so uncomfortable about it?")
"There is no doubt that everything Clara Wilson said about Peter was true, but he is in his grave, poor man, so let us leave him there," said Mrs. Tom Chubb self-righteously . . . as if somebody had proposed exhuming him.
"Mary Anna is always saying such clever things," said Mrs. Donald Reese. "Do you know what she said the other day when we were starting to Margaret Hollister's funeral? 'Ma,' she said, 'will there be any ice-cream at the funeral?'"
A few women exchanged furtive amused smiles. Most of them ignored Mrs. Donald. It was really the only thing to do when she began dragging Mary Anna into the conversation as she invariably did, in season and out of season. If you gave her the least encouragement she was maddening. "Do you know what Mary Anna said?" was a standing catchword in the Glen.
"Talking of funerals," said Celia Reese, "there was a queer one in Mowbray Narrows when I was a girl. Stanton Lane had gone out West and word came back that he had died. His folks wired to have the body sent home, so it was, but Wallace MacAllister, the undertaker, advised them against opening the casket. The funeral had just got off to a good start when in walked Stanton Lane himself, hale and hearty. It was never found out who the corpse really was."
"What did they do with him?" queried Agatha Drew.
"Oh, they buried him. Wallace said it couldn't be put off. But you couldn't rightly call it a funeral with everyone so happy over Stanton's return. Mr. Dawson changed the last hymn from 'Take Comfort, Christians,' to 'Sometimes a Light Surprises,' but most people thought he'd better have left well enough alone."
"Do you know what Mary Anna said to me the other day? She said, 'Ma, do the ministers know everything?'"
"Mr. Dawson always lost his head in a crisis," said Jane Burr. "The Upper Glen was part of his charge then and I remember one Sunday he dismissed the congregation and then remembered that the collection hadn't been taken up. So what does he do but grab a collection plate and run round the yard with it. To be sure," added Jane, "people gave that day who never gave before or after. They didn't like to refuse the minister. But it was hardly dignified of him."
"What I had against Mr. Dawson," said Miss Cornelia, "was the unmerciful length of his prayers at a funeral. It actually came to such a pass that people said they envied the corpse. He surpassed himself at Letty Grant's funeral. I saw her mother was on the point of fainting so I gave him a good poke in the back with my umbrella and told him he'd prayed long enough."
"He buried my poor Jarvis," said Mrs. George Carr, tears dropping down. She always cried when she spoke of her husband although he had been dead for twenty years.
"His brother was a minister, too," said Christine Marsh. "He was in the Glen when I was a girl. We had a concert in the hall one night and as he was one of the speakers he was sitting on the platform. He was as nervous as his brother and he kept fidgeting his chair further and further back and all at once he went, chair and all, clean over the edge on the bank of flowers and house-plants we had arranged around the base. All that could be seen of him was his feet sticking up above the platform. Somehow, it always spoiled his preaching for me after that. His feet were so big."
"The Lane funeral might have been a disappointment," said Emma Pollock, "but at least it was better than not having any funeral at all. You remember the Cromwell mix-up?"
There was a chorus of reminiscent laughter. "Let us hear the story," said Mrs. Campbell. "Remember, Mrs. Pollock, I'm a stranger here and all the family sagas are quite unknown to me."
Emma didn't know what "sagas" meant but she loved to tell a story.
"Abner Cromwell lived over near Lowbridge on one of the biggest farms in that district and he was an M.P.P. in those days. He was one of the biggest frogs in the Tory puddle and acquainted with everybody of any importance on the Island. He was married to Julie Flagg, whose mother was a Reese and her grandmother was a Clow so they were connected with almost every family in Four Winds as well. One day a notice came out in the Daily Enterprise . . . Mr. Abner Cromwell had died suddenly at Lowbridge and his funeral would be held at two o'clock the next afternoon. Somehow the Abner Cromwells missed seeing the notice . . . and of course there were no rural telephones in those days. The next morning Abner left for Halifax to attend a Liberal convention. At two o'clock people began arriving for the funeral, coming early to get a good seat, thinking there'd be such a crowd on account of Abner being such a prominent man. And a crowd there was, believe you me. For miles around the roads were just a string of buggies and people kept pouring in till about three. Mrs. Abner was just about crazy trying to make them believe her husband wasn't dead. Some wouldn't believe her at first. She said to me in tears that they seemed to think she'd made away with the corpse. And when they were convinced they acted as if they thought Abner ought to be dead. And they tramped all over the lawn flower-beds she was so proud of. Any number of distant relations arrived, too, expecting supper and beds for the night and she hadn't much cooked . . . Julie was never very forehanded, that has to be admitted. When Abner arrived home two days afterwards he found her in bed with nervous prostration and she was months getting over it. She didn't eat a thing for six weeks . . . well, hardly anything. I heard she said if there really had been a funeral she couldn't have been more upset. But I never believed she really did say it."
"You can't be sure," said Mrs. William MacCreery. "People do say such awful things. When they're upset the truth pops out. Julie's sister Clarice actually went and sang in the choir as usual the first Sunday after her husband was buried."
"Not even a husband's funeral could damp Clarice down long," said Agatha Drew. "There was nothing solid about her. Always dancing and singing."
"I used to dance and sing . . . on the shore, where nobody heard me," said Myra Murray.
"Ah, but you've grown wiser since then," said Agatha.
"No-o-o, foolisher," said Myra Murray slowly. "Too foolish now to dance along the shore."
"At first," said Emma, not to be cheated out of a complete story, "they thought the notice had been put in for a joke . . . because Abner had lost his election a few days before . . . but it turned out it was for an Amasa Cromwell, living away in the back woods the other side of Lowbridge . . . no relation at all. He had really died. But it was a long time before people forgave Abner the disappointment, if they ever did."
"Well, it was a little inconvenient driving all that distance, right in planting time, too, and finding you had your journey for your pains," said Mrs. Tom Chubb defensively.
"And people like funerals as a rule," said Mrs. Donald Reese with spirit. "We're all like children, I guess. I took Mary Anna to her uncle Gordon's funeral and she enjoyed it so. 'Ma, couldn't we dig him up and have the fun of burying him over again?' she said."
They did laugh at this . . . everybody except Mrs. Elder Baxter, who primmed up her long thin face and jabbed the quilt mercilessly. Nothing was sacred nowadays. Everyone laughed at everything. But she, an elder's wife, was not going to countenance any laughter connected with a funeral.
"Speaking of Abner, do you remember the obituary his brother John wrote for his wife?" asked Mrs. Allan Milgrave. "It started out with, 'God, for reasons best known to Himself, has been pleased to take my beautiful bride and leave my cousin William's ugly wife alive.' Shall I ever forget the fuss it made!"
"How did such a thing ever come to be printed at all?" asked Mrs. Best.
"Why, he was managing editor of the Enterprise then. He worshipped his wife . . . Bertha Morris, she was . . . and he hated Mrs. William Cromwell because she hadn't wanted him to marry Bertha. She thought Bertha too flighty."
"But she was pretty," said Elizabeth Kirk.
"The prettiest thing I ever saw in my life," agreed Mrs. Milgrave. "Good looks ran in the Morrises. But fickle . . . fickle as a breeze. Nobody ever knew how she came to stay in one mind long enough to marry John. They say her mother kept her up to the notch. Bertha was in love with Fred Reese but he was notorious for flirting. 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,' Mrs. Morris told her."
"I've heard that proverb all my life," said Myra Murray, "and I wonder if it's true. Perhaps the birds in the bush could sing and the one in the hand couldn't."
Nobody knew just what to say but Mrs. Tom Chubb said it anyhow.
"You're always so whimsical, Myra."
"Do you know what Mary Anna said to me the other day?" said Mrs. Donald. "She said, 'Ma, what will I do if nobody ever asks me to marry him?'"
"Us old maids could answer that, couldn't we?" asked Celia Reese, giving Edith Bailey a nudge with her elbow. Celia disliked Edith because Edith was still rather pretty and not entirely out of the running.
"Gertrude Cromwell was ugly," said Mrs. Grant Clow. "She had a figure like a slat. But a great housekeeper. She washed every curtain she owned every month and if Bertha washed hers once a year it was as much as ever. And her window-shades were always crooked. Gertrude said it just gave her the shivers to drive past John Cromwell's house. And yet John Cromwell worshipped Bertha and William just put up with Gertrude. Men are strange. They say William overslept on his wedding morning and dressed in such a tearing hurry he got to the church with old shoes and odd socks on."
"Well, that was better than Oliver Random," giggled Mrs. George Carr. "He forgot to have a wedding suit made and his old Sunday suit was simply impossible. It had been patched. So he borrowed his brother's best suit. It only fitted him here and there."
"And at least William and Gertrude did get married," said Mrs. Simon. "Her sister Caroline didn't. She and Ronny Drew quarrelled over what minister they'd have marry them and never got married at all. Ronny was so mad he went and married Edna Stone before he'd time to cool off. Caroline went to the wedding. She held her head high but her face was like death."
"But she held her tongue at least," said Sarah Taylor. "Philippa Abbey didn't. When Jim Mowbray jilted her she went to his wedding and said the bitterest things out loud all through the ceremony. They were all Anglicans, of course," concluded Sarah Taylor, as if that accounted for any vagaries.
"Did she really go to the reception afterwards wearing all the jewelry Jim had given her while they were engaged?" asked Celia Reese.
"No, she didn't! I don't know how such stories get around, I'm sure. You'd think some people never did anything but repeat gossip. I daresay Jim Mowbray lived to wish he'd stuck to Philippa. His wife kept him down good and solid . . . though he always had a riotous time in her absence."
"The only time I ever saw Jim Mowbray was the night the junebugs nearly stampeded the congregation at the anniversary service in Lowbridge," said Christine Crawford. "And what the junebugs left undone Jim Mowbray contributed. It was a hot night and they had all the windows open. The junebugs just poured in and blundered about in hundreds. They picked up eighty-seven dead bugs on the choir platform the next morning. Some of the women got hysterical when the bugs flew too near their faces. Just across the aisles from me the new minister's wife was sitting . . . Mrs. Peter Loring. She had on a big lace hat with willow plumes. . . ."
"She was always considered far too dressy and extravagant for a minister's wife," interpolated Mrs. Elder Baxter.
"'Watch me flick that bug off Mrs. Preacher's hat,' I heard Jim Mowbray whisper . . . he was sitting right behind her. He leaned forward and aimed a blow at the bug . . . missed it, but side-swiped the hat and sent it skittering down the aisle clean to the communion railing. Jim almost had a conniption. When the minister saw his wife's hat come sailing through the air he lost his place in his sermon, couldn't find it again and gave up in despair. The choir sang the last hymn, dabbing at junebugs all the time. Jim went down and brought the hat back to Mrs. Loring. He expected a calling down, for she was said to be high-spirited. But she just stuck it on her pretty yellow head again and laughed at him. 'If you hadn't done that,' she said, 'Peter would have gone on for another twenty minutes and we'd all have been stark staring mad.' Of course, it was nice of her not to be angry but people thought it wasn't just the thing for her to say of her husband."
"But you must remember how she was born," said Martha Crothers.
"Why, how?"
"She was Bessy Talbot from up west. Her father's house caught fire one night and in all the fuss and upheaval Bessy was born . . . out in the garden . . . under the stars."
"How romantic!" said Myra Murray.
"Romantic! I call it barely respectable."
"But think of being born under the stars!" said Myra dreamily. "Why, she ought to have been a child of the stars . . . sparkling . . . beautiful . . . brave . . . true . . . with a twinkle in her eyes."
"She was all that," said Martha, "whether the stars were accountable for it or not. And a hard time she had in Lowbridge where they thought a minister's wife should be all prunes and prisms. Why, one of the elders caught her dancing around her baby's cradle one day and he told her she ought not to rejoice over her son until she found out if he was elected or not."
"Talking of babies, do you know what Mary Anna said the other day, 'Ma,' she said, 'do queens have babies?'"
"That must have been Alexander Wilson," said Mrs. Allan. "A born crab if ever there was one. He wouldn't allow his family to speak a word at meal-times, I've heard. As for laughing . . . there never was any done in his house."
"Think of a house without laughter!" said Myra.
"Why, it's . . . sacrilegious."
"Alexander used to take spells when he wouldn't speak to his wife for three days at a time," continued Mrs. Allan. "It was such a relief to her," she added.
"Alexander Wilson was a good honest business man at least," said Mrs. Grant Clow stiffly. The said Alexander was her fourth cousin and the Wilsons were clannish. "He left forty thousand dollars when he died."
"Such a pity he had to leave it," said Celia Reese.
"His brother Jeffry didn't leave a cent," said Mrs. Clow. "He was the ne'er-do-well of that family, I must admit. Goodness knows he did enough laughing. Spent everything he earned . . . hail-fellow-well-met with everyone . . . and died penniless. What did he get out of life with all his flinging about and laughing?"
"Not much perhaps," said Myra, "but think of all he put into it. He was always giving . . . cheer, sympathy, friendliness, even money. He was rich in friends at least and Alexander never had a friend in his life."
"Jeff's friends didn't bury him," retorted Mrs. Allan. "Alexander had to do that . . . and put up a real fine tombstone for him, too. It cost a hundred dollars."
"But when Jeff asked him for a loan of one hundred to pay for an operation that might have saved his life, didn't Alexander refuse it?" asked Celia Drew.
"Come, come, we're getting too uncharitable," protested Mrs. Carr. "After all, we don't live in a world of forget-me-nots and daisies and everyone has some faults."
"Lem Anderson is marrying Dorothy Clark today," said Mrs. Millison, thinking it was high time the conversation took a more cheerful line. "And it isn't a year since he swore he would blow out his brains if Jane Elliott wouldn't marry him."
"Young men do say such odd things," said Mrs. Chubb. "They've kept it very close . . . it never leaked out till three weeks ago that they were engaged. I was talking to his mother last week and she never hinted at a wedding so soon. I am not sure that I care much for a woman who can be such a Spinx."
"I am surprised at Dorothy Clark taking him," said Agatha Drew. "I thought last spring that she and Frank Clow were going to make a match of it."
"I heard Dorothy say that Frank was the best match but she really couldn't abide the thought of seeing that nose sticking out over the sheet every morning when she woke up."
Mrs. Elder Baxter gave a spinsterish shudder and refused to join in the laughter.
"You shouldn't say such things before a young girl like Edith," said Celia, winking around the quilt.
"Is Ada Clark engaged yet?" asked Emma Pollock.
"No, not exactly," said Mrs. Milison. "Just hopeful. But she'll land him yet. Those girls all have a knack of picking husbands. Her sister Pauline married the best farm over the harbour."
"Pauline is pretty but she is full of silly notions as ever," said Mrs. Milgrave. "Sometimes I think she'll never learn any sense."
"Oh, yes, she will," said Myra Murray. "Some day she will have children of her own and she will learn wisdom from them . . . as you and I did."
"Where are Lem and Dorothy going to live?" asked Mrs. Meade.
"Oh, Lem has bought a farm at the Upper Glen. The old Carey place, you know, where poor Mrs. Roger Carey murdered her husband."
"Murdered her husband!"
"Oh, I'm not saying he didn't deserve it, but everybody thought she went a little too far. Yes--weed-killer in his teacup . . . or was it his soup? Everybody knew it but nothing was ever done about it. The spool, please, Celia."
"But do you mean to say, Mrs. Millison, that she was never tried . . . or punished?" gasped Mrs. Campbell.
"Well, nobody wanted to get a neighbour into a scrape like that. The Careys were well connected in the Upper Glen. Besides, she was driven to desperation. Of course nobody approves of murder as a habit but if ever a man deserved to be murdered Roger Carey did. She went to the States and married again. She's been dead for years. Her second outlived her. It all happened when I was a girl. They used to say Roger Carey's ghost walked."
"Surely nobody believes in ghosts in this enlightened age," said Mrs. Baxter.
"Why aren't we to believe in ghosts?" demanded Tillie MacAllister. "Ghosts are interesting. I know a man who was haunted by a ghost that always laughed at him . . . sneering like. It used to make him so mad. The scissors, please, Mrs. MacDougall."
The little bride had to be asked for the scissors twice and handed them over blushing deeply. She was not yet used to being called Mrs. MacDougall.
"The old Truax house over harbour was haunted for years . . . raps and knocks all over the place . . . a most mysterious thing," said Christine Crawford.
"All the Truaxes had bad stomachs," said Mrs. Baxter.
"Of course if you don't believe in ghosts they can't happen," said Mrs. MacAllister sulkily. "But my sister worked in a house in Nova Scotia that was haunted by chuckles of laughter."
"What a jolly ghost!" said Myra. "I shouldn't mind that."
"Likely it was owls," said the determinedly sceptical Mrs. Baxter.
"My mother seen angels around her deathbed," said Agatha Drew with an air of plaintive triumph.
"Angels ain't ghosts," said Mrs. Baxter.
"Speaking of mothers, how is your Uncle Parker, Tillie?" asked Mrs. Chubb.
"Very poorly by spells. We don't know what is going to come of it. It's holding us all up . . . about our winter clothes, I mean. But I said to my sister the other day when we were talking it over, 'We'd better get black dresses anyhow,' I said, 'and then it's no matter what happens.'"
"Do you know what Mary Anna said the other day? She said, 'Ma, I'm going to stop asking God to make my hair curly. I've asked Him every night for a week and He hasn't done a thing.'"
"I've been asking Him something for twenty years," bitterly said Mrs. Bruce Duncan, who had not spoken before or lifted her dark eyes from the quilt. She was noted for her beautiful quilting . . . perhaps because she was never diverted by gossip from setting each stitch precisely where it should be.
A brief hush fell over the circle. They could all guess what she had asked for . . . but it was not a thing to be discussed at a quilting. Mrs. Duncan did not speak again.
"Is it true that May Flagg and Billy Carter have broken up and that he is going with one of the over-harbour MacDougalls?" asked Martha Crothers after a decent interval.
"Yes. Nobody knows what happened though."
"It's sad . . . what little things break off matches sometimes," said Candace Crawford. "Take Dick Pratt and Lilian MacAllister . . . he was just starting to propose to her at a picnic when his nose began to bleed. He had to go to the brook . . . and he met a strange girl there who lent him her handkerchief. He fell in love and they were married in two weeks' time."
"Did you hear what happened to Big Jim MacAllister last Saturday night in Milt Cooper's store at the Harbour Head?" asked Mrs. Simon, thinking it time somebody introduced a more cheerful topic than ghosts and jiltings. "He had got into the habit of setting on the stove all summer. But Saturday night was cold and Milt had lit a fire. So when poor Big Jim sat down . . . well, he scorched his . . ."
Mrs. Simon would not say what he had scorched but she patted a portion of her anatomy silently.
"His bottom," said Walter gravely, poking his head through the creeper screen. He honestly thought that Mrs. Simon could not remember the right word.
An appalled silence descended on the quilters. Had Walter Blythe been there all the time? Everyone was raking her recollection of the tales told to recall if any of them had been too terribly unfit for the ears of youth. Mrs. Dr. Blythe was said to be so fussy about what her children heard. Before their paralyzed tongues recovered Anne had come out and asked them to come to supper.
"Just ten minutes more, Mrs. Blythe. We'll have both quilts finished then," said Elizabeth Kirk.
The quilts were finished, taken out, shaken, held up and admired.
"I wonder who'll sleep under them," said Myra Murray.
"Perhaps a new mother will hold her first baby under one of them," said Anne.
"Or little children cuddle under them on a cold prairie night," said Miss Cornelia unexpectedly.
"Or some poor old rheumatic body be cosier for them," said Mrs. Meade.
"I hope nobody dies under them," said Mrs. Baxter sadly.
"Do you know what Mary Anna said before I came?" said Mrs. Donald as they filed into the dining-room. "She said, 'Ma, don't forget you must eat everything on your plate.'"
Whereupon they all sat down and ate and drank to the glory of God, for they had done a good afternoon's work and there was very little malice in most of them, after all.
After supper they went home. Jane Burr walked as far as the village with Mrs. Simon Millison.
"I must remember all the fixings to tell ma," said Jane wistfully, not knowing that Susan was counting the spoons. "She never gets out since she's bed-rid but she loves to hear about things. That table will be a real treat to her."
"It was just like a picture you'd seen in a magazine," agreed Mrs. Simon with a sigh. "I can cook as good a supper as anyone, if I do say it, but I can't fix up a table with a single prestige of style. As for that young Walter, I could spank his bottom with a relish. Such a turn as he gave me!"
"And I suppose Ingleside is strewn with dead characters?" the doctor was saying.
"I wasn't quilting," said Anne, "so I didn't hear what was said."
"You never do, dearie," said Miss Cornelia, who had lingered to help Susan bind the quilts. "When you are at the quilt they never let themselves go. They think you don't approve of gossip."
"It all depends on the kind," said Anne.
"Well, nobody really said anything too terrible today. Most of the people they talked about were dead . . . or ought to be," said Miss Cornelia, recalling the story of Abner Cromwell's abortive funeral with a grin. "Only Mrs. Millison had to drag in that gruesome old murder story again about Madge Carey and her husband. I remember it all. There wasn't a vestige of proof that Madge did it . . . except that a cat died after eating some of the soup. The animal had been sick for a week. If you ask me, Roger Carey died of appendicitis . . . though of course nobody knew they had appendixes then."
"And indeed I think it is a great pity they ever found out," said Susan. "The spoons are all intact, Mrs. Dr. dear, and nothing happened to the tablecloth."
"Well, I must be getting home," said Miss Cornelia. "I'll send you up some spare-ribs next week when Marshall kills the pig."
Walter was again sitting on the steps with eyes full of dreams. Dusk had fallen. Where, he wondered, had it fallen from? Did some great spirit with bat-like wings pour it all over the world from a purple jar? The moon was rising and three wind-twisted old spruces looked like three lean, hump-backed old witches hobbling up a hill against it. Was that a little faun with furry ears crouching in the shadows? Suppose he opened the door in the brick wall now, wouldn't he step, not into the well-known garden but into some strange land of faery, where princesses were waking from enchanted sleeps, where perhaps he might find and follow Echo as he so often longed to do? One dared not speak. Something would vanish if one did.
"Darling," said Mother coming out, "you mustn't sit here any longer. It is getting cold. Remember your throat."
The spoken word had broken the spell. Some magic light had gone. The lawn was still a beautiful place but it was no longer fairyland. Walter got up.
"Mother, will you tell me what happened at Peter Kirk's funeral?"
Anne thought for a moment . . . then shivered.
"Not now, dear. Perhaps . . . sometime. . . ."