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 of the 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 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.
“Up to Myrom Pringle’s tonight. His wife made him mad and he up and throwed a glass of water in her face.”
“Myrom is home. His ship was burned and they took to the boats. Nearly starved. In the end they et up Jonas Selkirk, who had shot himself. They lived on him till the Mary G. picked them up. Myrom told me this himself. Seemed to think it a good joke.”
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? Suppose 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 to 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 Poplars that evening, both of them feeling happy. Anne had talked Duncan Bryce into letting Wilfred finish out his year in High School.
“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 any one 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 night 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 for keeps, thinking how lovely it was to wake up in the night and hear the first snowstorm of the winter around your tower and then snuggle down in your blankets and drift into dreamland again.
Monday morning she wrapped up the old diary carefully and sent it to Miss Sarah with a little note.
“DEAR MISS PRINGLE:
“I wonder if you would be interested in this old diary. Mr. Bryce gave it to me for Mrs. Stanton, who is writing a history of the county, but I don’t think it would be of any use to her and I thought you might like to have it.
“Yours sincerely,
“ANNE SHIRLEY.”
“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 every one’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 parlor.
“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 hairs on her dress in our parlor . . .”
Rebecca Dew dared not imagine the consequences. She called Anne from the tower room, Miss Sarah having asked if Miss Shirley were 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 any one . . . 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 any one. 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 . . . we 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 Poplars. 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 “discipline” or home work. 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 nosey Mrs. Stanton know that Captain Myrom Pringle had been a cannibal!
Chapter 8
(Extract from letter to Gilbert)
“I am in my tower and Rebecca Dew is caroling Could I but climb? in the kitchen. Which reminds me that the minister’s wife has asked me to sing in the choir! Of course the Pringles have told her to do it. I may do it on the Sundays I don’t spend at Green Gables. The Pringles have held out the right hand of fellowship with a vengeance . . . accepted me lock, stock and barrel. What a clan!
“I’ve been to three Pringle parties. I set nothing down in malice but I think all the Pringle girls are imitating my style of hair-dressing. Well, ‘imitation is the sincerest flattery.’ And, Gilbert, I’m really liking them . . . as I always knew I would if they would give me a chance. I’m even beginning to suspect that sooner or later I’ll find myself liking Jen. She can be charming when she wants to be and it is very evident she wants to be.
“Last night I bearded the lion in his den . . . in other words, I went boldly up the front steps of The Evergreens to the square porch with the four whitewashed iron urns in its corners, and rang the bell. When Miss Monkman came to the door I asked her if she would lend little Elizabeth to me for a walk. I expected a refusal, but after the Woman had gone in and conferred with Mrs. Campbell, she came back and said dourly that Elizabeth could go but, please, I wasn’t to keep her out late. I wonder if even Mrs. Campbell has got her orders from Miss Sarah.
“Elizabeth came dancing down the dark stairway, looking like a pixy in a red coat and little green cap, and almost speechless for joy.
“‘I feel all squirmy and excited, Miss Shirley,’ she whispered as soon as we got away. ‘I’m Betty . . . I’m always Betty when I feel like that.’
“We went as far down the Road that Leads to the End of the World as we dared and then back. Tonight the harbor, lying dark under a crimson sunset, seemed full of implications of ‘fairylands forlorn’ and mysterious isles in uncharted seas. I thrilled to it and so did the mite I held by the hand.
“‘If we ran hard, Miss Shirley, could we get into the sunset?’ she wanted to know. I remembered Paul and his fancies about the ‘sunset land.’
“‘We must wait for Tomorrow before we can do that,’ I said. ‘Look, Elizabeth, at that golden island of cloud just over the harbor mouth. Let’s pretend that’s your island of Happiness.’
“‘There is an island down there somewhere,’ said Elizabeth dreamily. ‘Its name is Flying Cloud. Isn’t that a lovely name . . . a name just out of Tomorrow? I can see it from the garret windows. It belongs to a gentleman from Boston and he has a summer home there. But I pretend it’s mine.’
“At the door I stooped and kissed Elizabeth’s cheek before she went in. I shall never forget her eyes. Gilbert, that child is just starved for love.
“Tonight, when she came over for her milk, I saw that she had been crying.
“‘They . . . they made me wash your kiss off, Miss Shirley,’ she sobbed. ‘I didn’t want ever to wash my face again. I vowed I wouldn’t. Because, you see, I didn’t want to wash your kiss off. I got away to school this morning without doing it, but tonight the Woman just took me and scrubbed it off.’
“I kept a straight face.
“‘You couldn’t go through life without washing your face occasionally, darling. But never mind about the kiss. I’ll kiss you every night when you come for the milk and then it won’t matter if it is washed off the next morning.’
“‘You are the only person who loves me in the world,’ said Elizabeth. ‘When you talk to me I smell violets.’
“Was anybody ever paid a prettier compliment? But I couldn’t quite let the first sentence pass.
“‘Your grandmother loves you, Elizabeth.’
“‘She doesn’t . . . she hates me.’
“‘You’re just a wee bit foolish, darling. Your grandmother and Miss Monkman are both old people and old people are easily disturbed and worried. Of course you annoy them sometimes. And . . . of course . . . when they were young, children were brought up much more strictly than they are now. They cling to the old way.’
“But I felt I was not convincing Elizabeth. After all, they don’t love her and she knows it. She looked carefully back at the house to see if the door was shut. Then she said deliberately:
“‘Grandmother and the Woman are just two old tyrants and when Tomorrow comes I’m going to escape them forever.’
“I think she expected I’d die of horror. . . . I really suspect Elizabeth said it just to make a sensation. I merely laughed and kissed her. I hope Martha Monkman saw it from the kitchen window.
“I can see over Summerside from the left window in the tower. Just now it is a huddle of friendly white roofs . . . friendly at last since the Pringles are my friends. Here and there a light is gleaming in gable and dormer. Here and there is a suggestion of gray-ghost smoke. Thick stars are low over it all. It is ‘a dreaming town.’ Isn’t that a lovely phrase? You remember . . . ‘Galahad through dreaming towns did go’?
“I feel so happy, Gilbert. I won’t have to go home to Green Gables at Christmas, defeated and discredited. Life is good . . . good!
“So is Miss Sarah’s pound cake. Rebecca Dew made one and ‘sweated’ it according to directions . . . which simply means that she wrapped it in several thicknesses of brown paper and several more towels and left it for three days. I can recommend it.
“(Are there, or are there not, two ‘c’s’ in recommend’? In spite of the fact that I am a B.A. I can never be certain. Fancy if the Pringles had discovered that before I found Andy’s diary!)”
Chapter 9
Trix Taylor was curled up in the tower one night in February, while little flurries of snow hissed against the windows and that absurdly tiny stove purred like a red-hot black cat. Trix was pouring out her woes to Anne. Anne was beginning to find herself the recipient of confidences on all sides. She was known to be engaged, so that none of the Summerside girls feared her as a possible rival, and there was something about her that made you feel it was safe to tell her secrets.
Trix had come up to ask Anne to dinner the next evening. She was a jolly, plump little creature, with twinkling brown eyes and rosy cheeks, and did not look as if life weighed too heavily on her twenty years. But it appeared that she had troubles of her own.
“Dr. Lennox Carter is coming to dinner tomorrow night. That is why we want you especially. He is the new Head of the Modern Languages Department at Redmond and dreadfully clever, so we want somebody with brains to talk to him. You know I haven’t any to boast of, nor Pringle either. As for Esme . . . well, you know, Anne, Esme is the sweetest thing and she’s really clever, but she’s so shy and timid she can’t even make use of what brains she has when Dr. Carter is around. She’s so terribly in love with him. It’s pitiful. I’m very fond of Johnny . . . but before I’d dissolve into such a liquid state for him!”
“Are Esme and Dr. Carter engaged?”
“Not yet” . . . significantly. “But, oh, Anne, she’s hoping he means to ask her this time. Would he come over to the Island to visit his cousin right in the middle of the term if he didn’t intend to? I hope he will for Esme’s sake, because she’ll just die if he doesn’t. But between you and me and the bed-post I’m not terribly struck on him for a brother-in-law. He’s awfully fastidious, Esme says, and she’s desperately afraid he won’t approve of us. If he doesn’t, she thinks he’ll never ask her to marry him. So you can’t imagine how she’s hoping everything will go well at the dinner tomorrow night. I don’t see why it shouldn’t . . . Mamma is the most wonderful cook . . . and we have a good maid and I’ve bribed Pringle with half my week’s allowance to behave himself. Of course he doesn’t like Dr. Carter either . . . says he’s got swelled head . . . but he’s fond of Esme. If only Papa won’t have a sulky fit on!”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 87
