Anne of the Island
Janet began to cry drearily. But Anne brewed her a hot drink of ginger
tea to her comforting. To be sure, Anne discovered later on that she
had used white pepper instead of ginger; but Janet never knew the
difference.
The evening after the funeral Janet and Anne were sitting on the front
porch steps at sunset. The wind had fallen asleep in the pinelands and
lurid sheets of heat-lightning flickered across the northern skies.
Janet wore her ugly black dress and looked her very worst, her eyes and
nose red from crying. They talked little, for Janet seemed faintly to
resent Anne’s efforts to cheer her up. She plainly preferred to be
miserable.
Suddenly the gate-latch clicked and John Douglas strode into the
garden. He walked towards them straight over the geranium bed. Janet
stood up. So did Anne. Anne was a tall girl and wore a white dress; but
John Douglas did not see her.
“Janet,” he said, “will you marry me?”
The words burst out as if they had been wanting to be said for twenty
years and _must_ be uttered now, before anything else.
Janet’s face was so red from crying that it couldn’t turn any redder,
so it turned a most unbecoming purple.
“Why didn’t you ask me before?” she said slowly.
“I couldn’t. She made me promise not to—mother made me promise not to.
Nineteen years ago she took a terrible spell. We thought she couldn’t
live through it. She implored me to promise not to ask you to marry me
while she was alive. I didn’t want to promise such a thing, even though
we all thought she couldn’t live very long—the doctor only gave her six
months. But she begged it on her knees, sick and suffering. I had to
promise.”
“What had your mother against me?” cried Janet.
“Nothing—nothing. She just didn’t want another woman—_any_ woman—there
while she was living. She said if I didn’t promise she’d die right
there and I’d have killed her. So I promised. And she’s held me to that
promise ever since, though I’ve gone on my knees to her in my turn to
beg her to let me off.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?” asked Janet chokingly. “If I’d only
_known!_ Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“She made me promise I wouldn’t tell a soul,” said John hoarsely. “She
swore me to it on the Bible; Janet, I’d never have done it if I’d
dreamed it was to be for so long. Janet, you’ll never know what I’ve
suffered these nineteen years. I know I’ve made you suffer, too, but
you’ll marry me for all, won’t you, Janet? Oh, Janet, won’t you? I’ve
come as soon as I could to ask you.”
At this moment the stupefied Anne came to her senses and realized that
she had no business to be there. She slipped away and did not see Janet
until the next morning, when the latter told her the rest of the story.
“That cruel, relentless, deceitful old woman!” cried Anne.
“Hush—she’s dead,” said Janet solemnly. “If she wasn’t—but she _is_. So
we mustn’t speak evil of her. But I’m happy at last, Anne. And I
wouldn’t have minded waiting so long a bit if I’d only known why.”
“When are you to be married?”
“Next month. Of course it will be very quiet. I suppose people will
talk terrible. They’ll say I made enough haste to snap John up as soon
as his poor mother was out of the way. John wanted to let them know the
truth but I said, ‘No, John; after all she was your mother, and we’ll
keep the secret between us, and not cast any shadow on her memory. I
don’t mind what people say, now that I know the truth myself. It don’t
matter a mite. Let it all be buried with the dead’ says I to him. So I
coaxed him round to agree with me.”
“You’re much more forgiving than I could ever be,” Anne said, rather
crossly.
“You’ll feel differently about a good many things when you get to be my
age,” said Janet tolerantly. “That’s one of the things we learn as we
grow older—how to forgive. It comes easier at forty than it did at
twenty.”
Chapter XXXV
The Last Redmond Year Opens
“Here we are, all back again, nicely sunburned and rejoicing as a
strong man to run a race,” said Phil, sitting down on a suitcase with a
sigh of pleasure. “Isn’t it jolly to see this dear old Patty’s Place
again—and Aunty—and the cats? Rusty has lost another piece of ear,
hasn’t he?”
“Rusty would be the nicest cat in the world if he had no ears at all,”
declared Anne loyally from her trunk, while Rusty writhed about her lap
in a frenzy of welcome.
“Aren’t you glad to see us back, Aunty?” demanded Phil.
“Yes. But I wish you’d tidy things up,” said Aunt Jamesina plaintively,
looking at the wilderness of trunks and suitcases by which the four
laughing, chattering girls were surrounded. “You can talk just as well
later on. Work first and then play used to be my motto when I was a
girl.”
“Oh, we’ve just reversed that in this generation, Aunty. _Our_ motto is
play your play and then dig in. You can do your work so much better if
you’ve had a good bout of play first.”
“If you are going to marry a minister,” said Aunt Jamesina, picking up
Joseph and her knitting and resigning herself to the inevitable with
the charming grace that made her the queen of housemothers, “you will
have to give up such expressions as ‘dig in.’”
“Why?” moaned Phil. “Oh, why must a minister’s wife be supposed to
utter only prunes and prisms? I shan’t. Everybody on Patterson Street
uses slang—that is to say, metaphorical language—and if I didn’t they
would think me insufferably proud and stuck up.”
“Have you broken the news to your family?” asked Priscilla, feeding the
Sarah-cat bits from her lunchbasket.
Phil nodded.
“How did they take it?”
“Oh, mother rampaged. But I stood rockfirm—even I, Philippa Gordon, who
never before could hold fast to anything. Father was calmer. Father’s
own daddy was a minister, so you see he has a soft spot in his heart
for the cloth. I had Jo up to Mount Holly, after mother grew calm, and
they both loved him. But mother gave him some frightful hints in every
conversation regarding what she had hoped for me. Oh, my vacation
pathway hasn’t been exactly strewn with roses, girls dear. But—I’ve won
out and I’ve got Jo. Nothing else matters.”
“To you,” said Aunt Jamesina darkly.
“Nor to Jo, either,” retorted Phil. “You keep on pitying him. Why,
pray? I think he’s to be envied. He’s getting brains, beauty, and a
heart of gold in _me_.”
“It’s well we know how to take your speeches,” said Aunt Jamesina
patiently. “I hope you don’t talk like that before strangers. What
would they think?”
“Oh, I don’t want to know what they think. I don’t want to see myself
as others see me. I’m sure it would be horribly uncomfortable most of
the time. I don’t believe Burns was really sincere in that prayer,
either.”
“Oh, I daresay we all pray for some things that we really don’t want,
if we were only honest enough to look into our hearts,” owned Aunt
Jamesina candidly. “I’ve a notion that such prayers don’t rise very
far. _I_ used to pray that I might be enabled to forgive a certain
person, but I know now I really didn’t want to forgive her. When I
finally got that I _did_ want to I forgave her without having to pray
about it.”
“I can’t picture you as being unforgiving for long,” said Stella.
“Oh, I used to be. But holding spite doesn’t seem worth while when you
get along in years.”
“That reminds me,” said Anne, and told the tale of John and Janet.
“And now tell us about that romantic scene you hinted so darkly at in
one of your letters,” demanded Phil.
Anne acted out Samuel’s proposal with great spirit. The girls shrieked
with laughter and Aunt Jamesina smiled.
“It isn’t in good taste to make fun of your beaux,” she said severely;
“but,” she added calmly, “I always did it myself.”
“Tell us about your beaux, Aunty,” entreated Phil. “You must have had
any number of them.”
“They’re not in the past tense,” retorted Aunt Jamesina. “I’ve got them
yet. There are three old widowers at home who have been casting sheep’s
eyes at me for some time. You children needn’t think you own all the
romance in the world.”
“Widowers and sheep’s eyes don’t sound very romantic, Aunty.”
“Well, no; but young folks aren’t always romantic either. Some of my
beaux certainly weren’t. I used to laugh at them scandalous, poor boys.
There was Jim Elwood—he was always in a sort of day-dream—never seemed
to sense what was going on. He didn’t wake up to the fact that I’d said
‘no’ till a year after I’d said it. When he did get married his wife
fell out of the sleigh one night when they were driving home from
church and he never missed her. Then there was Dan Winston. He knew too
much. He knew everything in this world and most of what is in the next.
He could give you an answer to any question, even if you asked him when
the Judgment Day was to be. Milton Edwards was real nice and I liked
him but I didn’t marry him. For one thing, he took a week to get a joke
through his head, and for another he never asked me. Horatio Reeve was
the most interesting beau I ever had. But when he told a story he
dressed it up so that you couldn’t see it for frills. I never could
decide whether he was lying or just letting his imagination run loose.”
“And what about the others, Aunty?”
“Go away and unpack,” said Aunt Jamesina, waving Joseph at them by
mistake for a needle. “The others were too nice to make fun of. I shall
respect their memory. There’s a box of flowers in your room, Anne. They
came about an hour ago.”
After the first week the girls of Patty’s Place settled down to a
steady grind of study; for this was their last year at Redmond and
graduation honors must be fought for persistently. Anne devoted herself
to English, Priscilla pored over classics, and Philippa pounded away at
Mathematics. Sometimes they grew tired, sometimes they felt
discouraged, sometimes nothing seemed worth the struggle for it. In one
such mood Stella wandered up to the blue room one rainy November
evening. Anne sat on the floor in a little circle of light cast by the
lamp beside her, amid a surrounding snow of crumpled manuscript.
“What in the world are you doing?”
“Just looking over some old Story Club yarns. I wanted something to
cheer _and_ inebriate. I’d studied until the world seemed azure. So I
came up here and dug these out of my trunk. They are so drenched in
tears and tragedy that they are excruciatingly funny.”
“I’m blue and discouraged myself,” said Stella, throwing herself on the
couch. “Nothing seems worthwhile. My very thoughts are old. I’ve
thought them all before. What is the use of living after all, Anne?”
“Honey, it’s just brain fag that makes us feel that way, and the
weather. A pouring rainy night like this, coming after a hard day’s
grind, would squelch any one but a Mark Tapley. You know it _is_
worthwhile to live.”
“Oh, I suppose so. But I can’t prove it to myself just now.”
“Just think of all the great and noble souls who have lived and worked
in the world,” said Anne dreamily. “Isn’t it worthwhile to come after
them and inherit what they won and taught? Isn’t it worthwhile to think
we can share their inspiration? And then, all the great souls that will
come in the future? Isn’t it worthwhile to work a little and prepare
the way for them—make just one step in their path easier?”
“Oh, my mind agrees with you, Anne. But my soul remains doleful and
uninspired. I’m always grubby and dingy on rainy nights.”
“Some nights I like the rain—I like to lie in bed and hear it pattering
on the roof and drifting through the pines.”
“I like it when it stays on the roof,” said Stella. “It doesn’t always.
I spent a gruesome night in an old country farmhouse last summer. The
roof leaked and the rain came pattering down on my bed. There was no
poetry in _that_. I had to get up in the ‘mirk midnight’ and chivy
round to pull the bedstead out of the drip—and it was one of those