Anne of the Island
and says, says she, ‘Sarah Skinner, I envy you. I’d rather live in a
little hut on the side of the road with a man I was fond of than in my
big house with the one I’ve got.’ Jane Ann’s man ain’t such a bad sort,
nuther, though he’s so contrary that he wears his fur coat when the
thermometer’s at ninety. The only way to git him to do anything is to
coax him to do the opposite. But there ain’t any love to smooth things
down and it’s a poor way of living. Jog along, black mare. There’s
Janet’s place in the hollow—‘Wayside,’ she calls it. Quite
pictureaskew, ain’t it? I guess you’ll be glad to git out of this, with
all them mail bags jamming round you.”
“Yes, but I have enjoyed my drive with you very much,” said Anne
sincerely.
“Git away now!” said Mrs. Skinner, highly flattered. “Wait till I tell
Thomas that. He always feels dretful tickled when I git a compliment.
Jog along, black mare. Well, here we are. I hope you’ll git on well in
the school, miss. There’s a short cut to it through the ma’sh back of
Janet’s. If you take that way be awful keerful. If you once got stuck
in that black mud you’d be sucked right down and never seen or heard
tell of again till the day of judgment, like Adam Palmer’s cow. Jog
along, black mare.”
Chapter XXXI
Anne to Philippa
“Anne Shirley to Philippa Gordon, greeting.
“Well-beloved, it’s high time I was writing you. Here am I, installed
once more as a country ‘schoolma’am’ at Valley Road, boarding at
‘Wayside,’ the home of Miss Janet Sweet. Janet is a dear soul and very
nicelooking; tall, but not over-tall; stoutish, yet with a certain
restraint of outline suggestive of a thrifty soul who is not going to
be overlavish even in the matter of avoirdupois. She has a knot of
soft, crimpy, brown hair with a thread of gray in it, a sunny face with
rosy cheeks, and big, kind eyes as blue as forget-me-nots. Moreover,
she is one of those delightful, old-fashioned cooks who don’t care a
bit if they ruin your digestion as long as they can give you feasts of
fat things.
“I like her; and she likes me—principally, it seems, because she had a
sister named Anne who died young.
“‘I’m real glad to see you,’ she said briskly, when I landed in her
yard. ‘My, you don’t look a mite like I expected. I was sure you’d be
dark—my sister Anne was dark. And here you’re redheaded!’
“For a few minutes I thought I wasn’t going to like Janet as much as I
had expected at first sight. Then I reminded myself that I really must
be more sensible than to be prejudiced against any one simply because
she called my hair red. Probably the word ‘auburn’ was not in Janet’s
vocabulary at all.
“‘Wayside’ is a dear sort of little spot. The house is small and white,
set down in a delightful little hollow that drops away from the road.
Between road and house is an orchard and flower-garden all mixed up
together. The front door walk is bordered with quahog
clam-shells—‘cow-hawks,’ Janet calls them; there is Virginia Creeper
over the porch and moss on the roof. My room is a neat little spot ‘off
the parlor’—just big enough for the bed and me. Over the head of my bed
there is a picture of Robby Burns standing at Highland Mary’s grave,
shadowed by an enormous weeping willow tree. Robby’s face is so
lugubrious that it is no wonder I have bad dreams. Why, the first night
I was here I dreamed I _couldn’t laugh_.
“The parlor is tiny and neat. Its one window is so shaded by a huge
willow that the room has a grotto-like effect of emerald gloom. There
are wonderful tidies on the chairs, and gay mats on the floor, and
books and cards carefully arranged on a round table, and vases of dried
grass on the mantel-piece. Between the vases is a cheerful decoration
of preserved coffin plates—five in all, pertaining respectively to
Janet’s father and mother, a brother, her sister Anne, and a hired man
who died here once! If I go suddenly insane some of these days ‘know
all men by these presents’ that those coffin-plates have caused it.
“But it’s all delightful and I said so. Janet loved me for it, just as
she detested poor Esther because Esther had said so much shade was
unhygienic and had objected to sleeping on a feather bed. Now, I glory
in feather-beds, and the more unhygienic and feathery they are the more
I glory. Janet says it is such a comfort to see me eat; she had been so
afraid I would be like Miss Haythorne, who wouldn’t eat anything but
fruit and hot water for breakfast and tried to make Janet give up
frying things. Esther is really a dear girl, but she is rather given to
fads. The trouble is that she hasn’t enough imagination and HAS a
tendency to indigestion.
“Janet told me I could have the use of the parlor when any young men
called! I don’t think there are many to call. I haven’t seen a young
man in Valley Road yet, except the next-door hired boy—Sam Toliver, a
very tall, lank, tow-haired youth. He came over one evening recently
and sat for an hour on the garden fence, near the front porch where
Janet and I were doing fancy-work. The only remarks he volunteered in
all that time were, ‘Hev a peppermint, miss! Dew now-fine thing for
car_arrh_, peppermints,’ and, ‘Powerful lot o’ jump-grasses round here
ternight. Yep.’
“But there is a love affair going on here. It seems to be my fortune to
be mixed up, more or less actively, with elderly love affairs. Mr. and
Mrs. Irving always say that I brought about their marriage. Mrs.
Stephen Clark of Carmody persists in being most grateful to me for a
suggestion which somebody else would probably have made if I hadn’t. I
do really think, though, that Ludovic Speed would never have got any
further along than placid courtship if I had not helped him and
Theodora Dix out.
“In the present affair I am only a passive spectator. I’ve tried once
to help things along and made an awful mess of it. So I shall not
meddle again. I’ll tell you all about it when we meet.”
Chapter XXXII
Tea with Mrs. Douglas
On the first Thursday night of Anne’s sojourn in Valley Road Janet
asked her to go to prayer-meeting. Janet blossomed out like a rose to
attend that prayer-meeting. She wore a pale-blue, pansy-sprinkled
muslin dress with more ruffles than one would ever have supposed
economical Janet could be guilty of, and a white leghorn hat with pink
roses and three ostrich feathers on it. Anne felt quite amazed. Later
on, she found out Janet’s motive in so arraying herself—a motive as old
as Eden.
Valley Road prayer-meetings seemed to be essentially feminine. There
were thirty-two women present, two half-grown boys, and one solitary
man, beside the minister. Anne found herself studying this man. He was
not handsome or young or graceful; he had remarkably long legs—so long
that he had to keep them coiled up under his chair to dispose of
them—and he was stoop-shouldered. His hands were big, his hair wanted
barbering, and his moustache was unkempt. But Anne thought she liked
his face; it was kind and honest and tender; there was something else
in it, too—just what, Anne found it hard to define. She finally
concluded that this man had suffered and been strong, and it had been
made manifest in his face. There was a sort of patient, humorous
endurance in his expression which indicated that he would go to the
stake if need be, but would keep on looking pleasant until he really
had to begin squirming.
When prayer-meeting was over this man came up to Janet and said,
“May I see you home, Janet?”
Janet took his arm—“as primly and shyly as if she were no more than
sixteen, having her first escort home,” Anne told the girls at Patty’s
Place later on.
“Miss Shirley, permit me to introduce Mr. Douglas,” she said stiffly.
Mr. Douglas nodded and said, “I was looking at you in prayer-meeting,
miss, and thinking what a nice little girl you were.”
Such a speech from ninety-nine people out of a hundred would have
annoyed Anne bitterly; but the way in which Mr. Douglas said it made
her feel that she had received a very real and pleasing compliment. She
smiled appreciatively at him and dropped obligingly behind on the
moonlit road.
So Janet had a beau! Anne was delighted. Janet would make a paragon of
a wife—cheery, economical, tolerant, and a very queen of cooks. It
would be a flagrant waste on Nature’s part to keep her a permanent old
maid.
“John Douglas asked me to take you up to see his mother,” said Janet
the next day. “She’s bed-rid a lot of the time and never goes out of
the house. But she’s powerful fond of company and always wants to see
my boarders. Can you go up this evening?”
Anne assented; but later in the day Mr. Douglas called on his mother’s
behalf to invite them up to tea on Saturday evening.
“Oh, why didn’t you put on your pretty pansy dress?” asked Anne, when
they left home. It was a hot day, and poor Janet, between her
excitement and her heavy black cashmere dress, looked as if she were
being broiled alive.
“Old Mrs. Douglas would think it terrible frivolous and unsuitable, I’m
afraid. John likes that dress, though,” she added wistfully.
The old Douglas homestead was half a mile from “Wayside” cresting a
windy hill. The house itself was large and comfortable, old enough to
be dignified, and girdled with maple groves and orchards. There were
big, trim barns behind it, and everything bespoke prosperity. Whatever
the patient endurance in Mr. Douglas’ face had meant it hadn’t, so Anne
reflected, meant debts and duns.
John Douglas met them at the door and took them into the sitting-room,
where his mother was enthroned in an armchair.
Anne had expected old Mrs. Douglas to be tall and thin, because Mr.
Douglas was. Instead, she was a tiny scrap of a woman, with soft pink
cheeks, mild blue eyes, and a mouth like a baby’s. Dressed in a
beautiful, fashionably-made black silk dress, with a fluffy white shawl
over her shoulders, and her snowy hair surmounted by a dainty lace cap,
she might have posed as a grandmother doll.
“How do you do, Janet dear?” she said sweetly. “I am so glad to see you
again, dear.” She put up her pretty old face to be kissed. “And this is
our new teacher. I’m delighted to meet you. My son has been singing
your praises until I’m half jealous, and I’m sure Janet ought to be
wholly so.”
Poor Janet blushed, Anne said something polite and conventional, and
then everybody sat down and made talk. It was hard work, even for Anne,
for nobody seemed at ease except old Mrs. Douglas, who certainly did
not find any difficulty in talking. She made Janet sit by her and
stroked her hand occasionally. Janet sat and smiled, looking horribly
uncomfortable in her hideous dress, and John Douglas sat without
smiling.
At the tea table Mrs. Douglas gracefully asked Janet to pour the tea.
Janet turned redder than ever but did it. Anne wrote a description of
that meal to Stella.
“We had cold tongue and chicken and strawberry preserves, lemon pie and
tarts and chocolate cake and raisin cookies and pound cake and fruit
cake—and a few other things, including more pie—caramel pie, I think it
was. After I had eaten twice as much as was good for me, Mrs. Douglas
sighed and said she feared she had nothing to tempt my appetite.
“‘I’m afraid dear Janet’s cooking has spoiled you for any other,’ she
said sweetly. ‘Of course nobody in Valley Road aspires to rival _her_.
_Won’t_ you have another piece of pie, Miss Shirley? You haven’t eaten
_anything_.’
“Stella, I had eaten a helping of tongue and one of chicken, three
biscuits, a generous allowance of preserves, a piece of pie, a tart,
and a square of chocolate cake!”
After tea Mrs. Douglas smiled benevolently and told John to take “dear
Janet” out into the garden and get her some roses. “Miss Shirley will
keep me company while you are out—won’t you?” she said plaintively. She