Anne of Ingleside

Chapter 39

A bitter east wind was snarling around Ingleside like a shrewish old woman. It was one of those chill, drizzly, late August days that take the heart out of you, one of those days when everything goes wrong ... what in old Avonlea days had been called "a Jonah day." The new pup Gilbert had brought home for the boys had gnawed the enamel off the dining table leg ... Susan had found that the moths had been having a Roman holiday in the blanket closet ... Nan's new kitten had ruined the choicest fern ... Jem and Bertie Shakespeare had been making the most abominable racket in the garret all the afternoon with tin pails for drums ... Anne herself had broken a painted glass lampshade. But somehow it had done her good just to hear it smash! Rilla had had earache and Shirley had a mysterious rash on his neck, which worried Anne but at which Gilbert only glanced casually and said in an absent-minded voice that he didn't think it meant anything. Of course it didn't mean anything to HIM! Shirley was only his own son! And it didn't matter to him either that he had invited the Trents to dinner one evening last week and forgotten to tell Anne until they arrived.

She and Susan had had an extra busy day and had planned a pick-up supper. And Mrs. Trent with the reputation of being Charlottetown's smartest hostess! WHERE were Walter's stockings with the black tops and the blue toes? "Do you think, Walter, that you could JUST FOR ONCE put a thing where it belongs? Nan, I DON'T know where the Seven Seas are. For mercy's sake, stop asking questions! I don't wonder they poisoned Socrates. They OUGHT to have.”

Walter and Nan stared. Never had they heard their mother speak in such a tone before. Walter's look annoyed Anne still more.

"Diana, is it necessary to be forever reminding you not to twist your legs around the piano stool? Shirley, if you haven't got that new magazine all sticky with jam! And perhaps SOMEBODY would be kind enough to tell me where the prisms of the hanging lamp have gone!”

Nobody could tell her ... Susan having unhooked them and taken them out to wash them ... and Anne whisked herself upstairs to escape from the grieved eyes of her children. In her own room she paced up and down feverishly. WHAT was the matter with her? Was she turning into one of those peevish creatures who had no patience with anybody? Everything annoyed her these days. A little mannerism of Gilbert's she had never minded before got on her nerves. She was sick-and-tired of never-ending, monotonous duties ... sick-and-tired of catering to her family's whims. Once everything she did for her house and household gave her delight.

Now she did not seem to care what she did. She felt all the time like a creature in a nightmare, trying to overtake someone with fettered feet.

The worst of it all was that Gilbert never noticed that there was any change in her. He was busy night and day and seemed to care for nothing but his work. The only thing he had said at dinner that day had been "Pass the mustard, please.”

"I can talk to the chairs and table, of course," thought Anne bitterly. "We're just getting to be a sort of HABIT with each other ... nothing else. He never noticed that I had on a new dress last night. And it's so long since he called me 'Anne-girl' that I've forgotten when. Well, I suppose all marriages come to this in the end. Probably most women go through this. He just takes me for granted. His work is the only thing that means anything to him now. WHERE is my handkerchief?”

Anne got her handkerchief and sat down in her chair to torture herself luxuriantly. Gilbert didn't love her any more. When he kissed her he kissed her absently ... just "habit." All the glamour was gone. Old jokes they had laughed together over came up in recollection, charged with tragedy now. How could she ever have thought them funny? Monty Turner who kissed his wife systematically once a week ... made a memorandum to remind him. ("Would any wife want such kisses?") Curtis Ames who met his wife in a new bonnet and didn't know her. Mrs. Clancy Dare who had said, "I don't care an awful lot about my husband but I'd miss him if he wasn't round.” ("I suppose Gilbert would miss me if I weren't around! Has it come to that with us?") Nat Elliott who told his wife after ten years of marriage, "if you must know I'm just tired of being married." ("And we've been married fifteen years!") Well, perhaps all men were like that. Probably Miss Cornelia would say that they were. After a time they were hard to hold. ("If my husband has to be 'held' I don't want to hold him.") But there was Mrs. Theodore Clow who had said proudly at a Ladies' Aid, "We've been married twenty years and my husband loves me as much as he did on our wedding day." But perhaps she was deceiving herself or only "keeping face." And she looked every day of her age and more. ("I wonder if I am beginning to look old.") For the first time her years felt like a weight. She went to the mirror and looked at herself critically. There WERE some tiny crow's-feet around her eyes but they were only visible in a strong light. Her chin lines were yet unblurred. She had always been pale. Her hair was thick and wavy without a grey thread. But did anybody REALLY like red hair? Her nose was still definitely good.

Anne patted it as a friend, recalling certain moments of life when her nose was all that carried her through. But Gilbert just took her nose for granted now. It might be crooked or pug, for all it mattered to him. Likely he had forgotten that she HAD a nose.

Like Mrs. Dare, he might miss it if it wasn't there.

"Well, I must go and see to Rilla and Shirley," thought Anne drearily. "At least, THEY need me still, poor darlings. What made me so snappish with them? Oh, I suppose they're all saying behind my back, 'How cranky poor Mother is getting!'“

It continued to rain and the wind continued to wail. The fantasia of tin pans in the garret had stopped but the ceaseless chirping of a solitary cricket in the living-room nearly drove her mad. The noon mail brought her two letters. One was from Marilla ... but Anne sighed as she folded it up. Marilla's handwriting was getting so frail and shaky. The other letter was from Mrs. Barrett Fowler of Charlottetown whom Anne knew very slightly. And Mrs. Barrett Fowler wanted Dr. and Mrs. Blythe to dine with her next Tuesday night at seven o'clock "to meet your old friend, Mrs. Andrew Dawson of Winnipeg, nee Christine Stuart.”

Anne dropped the letter. A flood of old memories poured over her ... some of them decidedly unpleasant. Christine Stuart of Redmond ... the girl to whom people had once said Gilbert was engaged ... the girl of whom she had once been so bitterly jealous ... yes, she admitted it now, twenty years after ... she HAD been jealous ... she had hated Christine Stuart. She had not thought of Christine for years but she remembered her distinctly.

A tall, ivory-white girl with great dark-blue eyes and blue-black masses of hair. And a certain air of distinction. But with a long nose ... yes, definitely a long nose. Handsome ... oh, you couldn't deny that Christine had been very handsome. She remembered hearing many years ago that Christine had "married well" and gone West.

Gilbert came in for a hurried bite of supper ... there was an epidemic of measles in the Upper Glen ... and Anne silently handed him Mrs. Fowler's letter.

"Christine Stuart! Of course we'll go. I'd like to see her for old sake's sake," he said, with the first appearance of admiration he had shown for weeks. "Poor girl, she has had her own troubles.

She lost her husband four years ago, you know.”

Anne didn't know. And how came Gilbert to know? Why had he never told her? And had he forgotten that next Tuesday was the anniversary of their own wedding day? A day on which they had never accepted any invitation but went off on a little bat of their own. Well, SHE wouldn't remind him. He could see his Christine if he wanted to. What had a girl at Redmond once said to her darkly, "There was a good deal more between Gilbert and Christine than you ever knew, Anne." She had merely laughed at it at the time ...

Claire Hallett was a spiteful thing. But perhaps there HAD been something in it. Anne suddenly remembered, with a little chill of the spirit, that not long after her marriage she had found a small photograph of Christine in an old pocketbook of Gilbert's. Gilbert had seemed quite indifferent and said he'd wondered where that old snap had got to. But ... was it one of those unimportant things that are significant of things tremendously important? Was it possible ... had Gilbert ever loved Christine? Was she, Anne, only a second choice? The consolation prize?

"Surely I'm not ... jealous," thought Anne, trying to laugh. It was all very ridiculous. What more natural than that Gilbert should like the idea of meeting an old Redmond friend? What more natural than that a busy man, married for fifteen years, should forget times and seasons and days and months? Anne wrote to Mrs.

Fowler, accepting her invitation ... and then put in the three days before Tuesday hoping desperately that somebody in the Upper Glen would start having a baby Tuesday afternoon about half past five.

Chapter 40

The hoped for baby arrived too soon. Gilbert was sent for at nine Monday night. Anne wept herself to sleep and wakened at three. It used to be delicious to wake in the night ... to lie and look out of her window at the night's enfolding loveliness ... to hear Gilbert's regular breathing beside her ... to think of the children across the hall and the beautiful new day that was coming.

But now! Anne was still awake when the dawn, clear and green as fluor-spar, was in the eastern sky and Gilbert came home at last.

"Twins," he said hollowly as he flung himself into bed and was asleep in a minute. Twins, indeed! The dawn of the fifteenth anniversary of your wedding day and all your husband could say to you was "Twins." He didn't even remember it WAS an anniversary.

Gilbert apparently didn't remember it any better when he came down at eleven. For the first time he did not mention it; for the first time he had no gift for her. Very well, HE shouldn't get his gift either. She had had ready for weeks ... a silver-handled pocket- knife with the date on one side and his initials on the other. Of course he must buy it from her with a cent, lest it cut their love.

But since he had forgotten she would forget too, with a vengeance.

Gilbert seemed in a sort of daze all day. He hardly spoke to anyone and moped about the library. Was he lost in glamourous anticipation of seeing his Christine again? Probably he had been hankering after her all these years in the back of his mind. Anne knew quite well this idea was absolutely unreasonable but when was jealousy ever reasonable? It was no use trying to be philosophical.

Philosophy had no effect on her mood.

They were going to town on the five-o'clock train. "Can we come in and watch you dreth, Mummy?" asked Rilla.

"Oh, if you want to," said Anne ... then pulled herself up sharply. Why, her voice was getting querulous. "Come along, darling," she added repentantly.

Rilla had no greater delight than watching Mummy dress. But even Rilla thought Mummy was not getting much fun out of it that night.

Anne took some thought as to what dress she should wear. Not that it mattered, she told herself bitterly, what she put on. Gilbert never noticed now. The mirror was no longer her friend ... she looked pale and tired ... and UNWANTED. But she must not look too countrified and passe before Christine. ("I won't have her sorry for me.") Was it to be her new apple-green net over a slip with rosebuds in it? Or her cream silk gauze with its Eton jacket of Cluny lace? She tried both of them on and decided on the net.

She experimented with several hair-do's and concluded that the new drooping pompadour was very becoming.

"Oh, Mummy, you look beautiful!" gasped Rilla in round-eyed admiration.

Well, children and fools were supposed to tell the truth. Had not Rebecca Dew once told her that she was "comparatively beautiful"?

As for Gilbert, he used to pay her compliments in the past but when had he given utterance to one of late months? Anne could not recall a single one.

Gilbert passed through on his way to his dressing closet and said not a word about her new dress. Anne stood for a moment burning with resentment; then she petulantly tore off the dress and flung it on the bed. She would wear her old black ... a thin affair that was considered extremely "smart" in Four Winds circles but which Gilbert had never liked. What should she wear on her neck?

Jem's beads, though treasured for years, had long since crumbled.

She really hadn't a decent necklace. Well ... she got out the little box containing the pink enamel heart Gilbert had given her at Redmond. She seldom wore it now ... after all, pink didn't go well with her red hair ... but she would put it on tonight.

Would Gilbert notice it? There, she was ready. Why wasn't Gilbert? What was keeping him? Oh, no doubt he was shaving VERY carefully! She tapped sharply on the door.

"Gilbert, we're going to miss the train if you don't hurry.”

"You sound school-teacherish," said Gilbert, coming out. "Anything wrong with your metatarsals?”

Oh, he could make a joke of it, could he? She would not let herself think how well he looked in his tails. After all, the modern fashions of men's clothes were really ridiculous. Entirely lacking in glamour. How gorgeous it must have been in "the spacious days of Great Elizabeth" when men could wear white satin doublets and cloaks of crimson velvet and lace ruffs! Yet they were not effeminate. They were the most wonderful and adventurous men the world had ever seen.

"Well, come along if you're in such a hurry," said Gilbert absently. He was always absent now when he spoke to her. She was just a part of the furniture ... yes, just a piece of furniture!

Jem drove them to the station. Susan and Miss Cornelia ... who had come up to ask Susan if they could depend on her as usual for scalloped potatoes for the church supper ... looked after them admiringly.

"Anne is holding her own," said Miss Cornelia.

"She is," agreed Susan, "though I have sometimes thought these past few weeks that her liver needed stirring up a bit. But she keeps her looks. And the doctor has got the same nice flat stomach he always had.”

"An ideal couple," said Miss Cornelia.

The ideal couple said nothing in particular very beautifully all the way to town. Of course Gilbert was too profoundly stirred over the prospect of seeing his old love to talk to his wife! Anne sneezed. She began to be afraid she was taking a cold in the head.

How ghastly it would be to sniffle all through dinner under the eyes of Mrs. Andrew Dawson, nee Christine Stuart! A spot on her lip stung ... probably a horrible cold-sore was coming on it.

Did Juliet ever sneeze? Fancy Portia with chilblains! Or Argive Helen hiccoughing! Or Cleopatra with corns!

When Anne came downstairs in the Barrett Fowler residence she stumbled over the bear's head on the rug in the hall, staggered through the drawing-room door and across the wilderness of overstuffed furniture and gilt fandangoes Mrs. Barrett Fowler called her drawing-room, and fell on the chesterfield, fortunately landing right side up. She looked about in dismay for Christine, then thankfully realized that Christine had not yet put in an appearance. How awful it would have been had she been sitting there amusedly watching Gilbert Blythe's wife make such a drunken entrance! Gilbert hadn't even asked if she were hurt. He was already deep in conversation with Dr. Fowler and some unknown Dr.

Murray, who hailed from New Brunswick and was the author of a notable monograph on tropical diseases which was making a stir in medical circles. But Anne noticed that when Christine came downstairs, heralded by a sniff of heliotrope, the monograph was promptly forgotten. Gilbert stood up with a very evident light of interest in his eyes.

Christine stood for an impressive moment in the doorway. No falling over bears' heads for her. Christine, Anne remembered, had of old that habit of pausing in the doorway to show herself off.

And no doubt she regarded this as an excellent chance to show Gilbert what he had lost.

She wore a gown of purple velvet with long flowing sleeves, lined with gold, and a fish-tail train lined with gold lace. A gold bandeau encircled the still dark wings of her hair. A long, thin gold chain, starred with diamonds, hung from her neck. Anne instantly felt frumpy, provincial, unfinished, dowdy, and six months behind the fashion. She wished she had not put on that silly enamel heart.

There was no question that Christine was as handsome as ever. A bit too sleek and well-preserved, perhaps ... yes, considerably stouter. Her nose had assuredly not grown any shorter and her chin was definitely middle-aged. Standing in the doorway like that, you saw that her feet were ... substantial. And wasn't her air of distinction getting a little shopworn? But her cheeks were still like smooth ivory and her great dark-blue eyes still looked out brilliantly from under that intriguing parallel crease that had been considered so fascinating at Redmond. Yes, Mrs. Andrew Dawson was a very handsome woman ... and did not at all convey the impression that her heart had been wholly buried in the said Andrew Dawson's grave.

Christine took possession of the whole room the moment she entered it. Anne felt as if she were not in the picture at all. But she sat up erectly. Christine should not see any middle-aged sag. She would go into battle with all flags flying. Her grey eyes turned exceedingly green and a faint flush coloured her oval cheek.

("Remember you have a nose!") Dr. Murray, who had not noticed her particularly before, thought in some surprise that Blythe had a very uncommon-looking wife. That posturing Mrs. Dawson looked positively commonplace beside her.

"Why, Gilbert Blythe, you're as handsome as ever," Christine was saying archly ... Christine ARCH! ... "It's so nice to find you haven't changed.”

("She talks with the same old drawl. How I always hated that velvet voice of hers!") "When I look at you," said Gilbert, "time ceases to have any meaning at all. Where did you learn the secret of immortal youth?”

Christine laughed.

("Isn't her laughter a little tinny?") "You could always pay a pretty compliment, Gilbert. You know" ... with an arch glance around the circle ... "Dr. Blythe was an old flame of mine in those days he is pretending to think were of yesterday. And Anne Shirley! You haven't changed as much as I've been told ... though I don't think I'd have known you if we'd just happened to meet on the street. Your hair is a LITTLE darker than it used to be, isn't it? Isn't it DIVINE to meet again like this?

I was so afraid your lumbago wouldn't let you come.”

"MY lumbago!”

"Why, yes; aren't you subject to it? I thought you were ...”

"I must have got things twisted," said Mrs. Fowler apologetically.

"Somebody told me you were down with a very severe attack of lumbago...”

"That is Mrs. Dr. Parker of Lowbridge. I have never had lumbago in my life," said Anne in a flat voice.

"How very nice that you haven't got it," said Christine, with something faintly insolent in her tone. "It's SUCH a wretched thing. I have an aunt who is a perfect martyr to it.”

Her air seemed to relegate Anne to the generation of aunts. Anne managed a smile with her lips, not her eyes. If she could only think of something clever to say! She knew that at three o'clock that night she would probably think of a brilliant retort she might have made but that did not help her now.

"They tell me you have seven children," said Christine, speaking to Anne but looking at Gilbert.

"Only six living," said Anne, wincing. Even yet she could never think of little white Joyce without pain.

"WHAT a family!" said Christine.

Instantly it seemed a disgraceful and absurd thing to have a large family.

"You, I think, have none," said Anne.

"I never cared for children, you know." Christine shrugged her remarkably fine shoulders but her voice was a little hard. "I'm afraid I'm not the maternal type. I really never thought that it was woman's sole mission to bring children into an already overcrowded world.”

They went in to dinner then. Gilbert took Christine, Dr. Murray took Mrs. Fowler, and Dr. Fowler, a rotund little man, who could not talk to anybody except another doctor, took Anne.

Anne felt that the room was rather stifling. There was a mysterious sickly scent in it. Probably Mrs. Fowler had been burning incense. The menu was good and Anne went through the motions of eating without any appetite and smiled until she felt she was beginning to look like a Cheshire cat. She could not keep her eyes off Christine, who was smiling at Gilbert continuously.

Her teeth were beautiful ... almost too beautiful. They looked like a toothpaste advertisement. Christine made very effective play with her hands as she talked. She had lovely hands ... rather large, though.

She was talking to Gilbert about rhythmic speeds for living. What on earth did she mean? Did she know, herself? Then they switched to the Passion Play.

"Have you ever been to Oberammergau?" Christine asked Anne.

When she knew perfectly well Anne hadn't! Why did the simplest question sound insolent when Christine asked it?

"Of course a family ties you down terribly," said Christine. "Oh, whom do you think I saw last month when I was in Halifax? That little friend of yours ... the one who married the ugly minister ... what WAS his name?”

"Jonas Blake," said Anne. "Philippa Gordon married him. And I never thought he was ugly.”

"DIDN'T you? Of course tastes differ. Well, anyway I met them.

POOR Philippa!”

Christine's use of "poor" was very effective.

"Why poor?" asked Anne. "I think she and Jonas have been very happy.”

"Happy! My dear, if you could see the place they live in! A wretched little fishing village where it was an excitement if the pigs broke into the garden! I was told that the Jonas-man had had a good church in Kingsport and had given it up because he thought it his 'duty' to go to the fishermen who 'needed' him. I have no use for such fanatics. 'How CAN you live in such an isolated, out- of-the-way place as this?' I asked Philippa. Do you know what she said?”

Christine threw out her beringed hands expressively.

"Perhaps what I would say of Glen St. Mary," said Anne. "That it was the only place in the world to live in.”

"Fancy you being contented there," smiled Christine. ("That terrible mouthful of teeth!") "Do you really never feel that you want a broader life? You used to be quite ambitious, if I remember aright. Didn't you write some rather clever little things when you were at Redmond? A bit fantastic and whimsical, of course, but still ...”

"I wrote them for the people who still believe in fairyland. There is a surprising lot of them, you know, and they like to get news from that country.”

"And you've quite given it up?”

"Not altogether ... but I'm writing living epistles now," said Anne, thinking of Jem and Co.

Christine stared, not recognizing the quotation. What did Anne Shirley mean? But then, of course, she had been noted at Redmond for her mysterious speeches. She had kept her looks astonishingly but probably she was one of those women who got married and stopped thinking. Poor Gilbert! She had hooked him before he came to Redmond. He had never had the least chance to escape her.

"Does anybody ever eat philopenas now?" asked Dr. Murray, who had just cracked a twin almond. Christine turned to Gilbert.

"Do you remember that philopena WE ate once?" she asked.

("Did a significant look pass between them?") "Do you suppose I could forget it?" asked Gilbert.

They plunged into a spate of "do-you-remembers," while Anne stared at the picture of fish and oranges hanging over the sideboard. She had never thought that Gilbert and Christine had had so many memories in common. "Do you remember our picnic up the Arm? ... Do you remember the night we went to the negro church? ... Do you remember the night we went to the masquerade? ... you were a Spanish lady in a black velvet dress with a lace mantilla and fan.”

Gilbert apparently remembered them all in detail. But he had forgotten his wedding anniversary!

When they went back to the drawing-room Christine glanced out of the window at an eastern sky that was showing pale silver behind the dark poplars.

"Gilbert, let us take a stroll in the garden. I want to learn again the meaning of moonrise in September.”

("Does moonrise mean anything in September that it doesn't mean in any other month? And what does she mean by 'again.' Did she ever learn it before ... with him?") Out they went. Anne felt that she had been very neatly and sweetly brushed aside. She sat down on a chair that commanded a view of the garden ... though she would not admit even to herself that she selected it for that reason. She could see Christine and Gilbert walking down the path. What were they saying to each other? Christine seemed to be doing most of the talking. Perhaps Gilbert was too dumb with emotion to speak. Was he smiling out there in the moonrise over memories in which she had no share? She recalled nights she and Gilbert had walked in moonlit gardens of Avonlea. Had HE forgotten?

Christine was looking up at the sky. Of course she knew she was showing off that fine, full white throat of hers when she lifted her face like that. Did ever a moon take so long in rising?

Other guests were dropping in when they finally came back. There was talk, laughter, music. Christine sang ... very well. She had always been "musical." She sang AT Gilbert ... "the dear dead days beyond recall." Gilbert leaned back in an easy-chair and was uncommonly silent. Was he looking back wistfully to those dear dead days? Was he picturing what his life would have been if he had married Christine? ("I've always known what Gilbert was thinking of before. My head is beginning to ache. If we don't get away soon I'll be throwing up my head and howling. Thank heaven our train leaves early.") When Anne came downstairs Christine was standing in the porch with Gilbert. She reached up and picked a leaf from his shoulder; the gesture was like a caress.

"Are you really well, Gilbert? You look frightfully tired. I KNOW you're overdoing it.”

A wave or horror swept over Annie. Gilbert DID look tired ... frightfully tired ... and she hadn't seen it until Christine pointed it out! Never would she forget the humiliation of that moment. ("I've been taking Gilbert too much for granted and blaming him for doing the same thing.") Christine turned to her.

"It's been so nice to meet you again, Anne. Quite like old times.”

"Quite," said Anne.

"But I've just been telling Gilbert he looked a little tired. You ought to take better care of him, Anne. There was a time, you know, when I really had quite a fancy for this husband of yours.

I believe he really was the nicest beau I ever had. But you must forgive me since I didn't take him from you.”

Anne froze up again.

"Perhaps he is pitying himself that you didn't," she said, with a certain "queenishness" not unknown to Christine in Redmond days, as she stepped into Dr. Fowler's carriage for the drive to the station.

"You dear funny thing!" said Christine, with a shrug of her beautiful shoulders. She was looking after them as if something amused her hugely.