Anne of Ingleside (38 page)

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 of horror swept over Anne. 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 beautiful shoulders. She was looking after them as if something amused her hugely.

‘Had a nice evening?’ asked Gilbert, more absently than ever as he helped her on the train.

‘Oh, lovely,’ said Anne… who felt that she had, in Jane Welsh Carlyle’s splendid phrase, ‘spent the evening under a harrow’.

‘What made you do your hair that way?’ said Gilbert, still absently.

‘It’s the new fashion.’

‘Well, it doesn’t suit you. It may be all right for some hair, but not for yours.’

‘Oh, it is too bad my hair is red,’ said Anne icily.

Gilbert thought he was wise in dropping a dangerous subject. Anne, he reflected, had always been a bit sensitive about her hair. He was too tired to talk, anyway. He leaned his head back on the car seat and shut his eyes. For the first time Anne noticed little glints of grey in the hair above his ears. But she hardened her heart.

They walked silently home from the Glen Station by the short cut to Ingleside. The air was filled with the breath of spruce and spice fern. The moon was shining over dew-wet fields. They passed an old, deserted house with sad, broken windows that had once danced with light. ‘Just like my life,’ thought Anne. Everything seemed to have for her some dreary meaning now. The dim white moth that fluttered past them on the lawn was, she thought sadly, like a ghost of faded love. Then she caught her foot in a croquet hoop and nearly fell headlong into a clump of phlox. What on earth did the children mean by leaving it there? She would tell them what she thought about it tomorrow!

Gilbert only said ‘O-o-o-ps!’ and steadied her with a hand. Would he have been so casual about it if it had been Christine who had tripped while they were puzzling out the meaning of moonrises?

Gilbert rushed off to his study the moment they were inside the house, and Anne went silently up to their room, where the moonlight was lying on the floor, still and silver and cold. She went to the open window and looked out. It was evidently the Carter Flaggs’ dog’s night to howl and he was putting his heart into it. The lombardy leaves glistened like silver in the moonlight. The house about her seemed whispering tonight… whispering sinisterly, as if it were no longer her friend.

Anne felt sick and cold and empty. The gold of life had turned to withered leaves. Nothing had any meaning any longer. Everything seemed remote and unreal.

Far down the tide was keeping its world-old tryst with the shore. She could… now that Norman Douglas had cut down his spruce bush… see her little House of Dreams. How happy they had been there, when it was enough just to be together in their own home, with their visions, their caresses, their silences! All the colour of the morning in their lives… Gilbert looking at her with that smile in his eyes he kept for her alone, finding every day a new way of saying, ‘I love you,’ sharing laughter as they shared sorrow.

And now… Gilbert had grown tired of her. Men had always been like that… always would be. She had thought Gilbert was an exception, but now she knew the truth. And how was she going to adjust her life to it? ‘There are the children, of course,’ she thought dully. ‘I must go on living for them. And nobody must know…
nobody
. I will not be pitied.’

What was that? Somebody was coming up the stairs, three steps at a time, as Gilbert used to do long ago in the House of Dreams… as he had not done for a long time now. It couldn’t be Gilbert… it was!

He burst into the room… he flung a little packet on the table… he caught Anne by the waist and waltzed her round and round the room like a crazy schoolboy, coming to rest at last breathlessly in a silver pool of moonlight.

‘I was right, Anne… thank God I was right. Mrs Garrow is going to be all right… the specialist has said so.’

‘Mrs Garrow? Gilbert, have you gone crazy?’

‘Didn’t I tell you? Surely I told you… well, I suppose it’s been such a sore subject I just couldn’t talk of it. I’ve been worried to death about it for the past two weeks, couldn’t think of anything else, waking or sleeping. Mrs Garrow lives in Lowbridge and was Parker’s patient. He asked me in for a consultation… I diagnosed her case differently from him… we almost fought… I was sure I was right… I insisted there was a chance… we sent her to Montreal. Parker said she’d never come back alive, her husband was ready to shoot me on sight. When she was gone I went to bits… perhaps I
was
mistaken… perhaps I’d tortured her needlessly. I found the letter in my office when I went in… I was
right
… they’ve operated… she has an excellent chance of living. Anne-girl, I could jump over the moon! I’ve shed twenty years.’

Anne had either to laugh or cry… so she began to laugh. It was lovely to be able to laugh again, lovely to feel like laughing. Everything was suddenly all right.

‘I suppose that is why you forgot this was our anniversary?’ she taunted him.

Gilbert released her long enough to pounce on the little packet he had dropped on the table.

‘I didn’t forget it. Two weeks ago I sent to Toronto for this. And it didn’t come till tonight. I felt so small this morning when I hadn’t a thing to give you that I didn’t mention the day… thought you’d forgotten it too… hoped you had. When I went into the office there was my present, along with Parker’s letter. See how you like it.’

It was a little diamond pendant. Even in the moonlight it sparkled like a living thing.

‘Gilbert… and I…’

‘Try it on. I wish it had come this morning… then you’d have had something to wear to the dinner besides that old enamel heart. Though it
did
look rather nice snuggling in that pretty white hollow in your throat, darling. Why didn’t you leave on that green dress, Anne? I liked it… it reminded me of that dress with the rosebuds on it you used to wear at Redmond.’

(So he had noticed the dress! So he still remembered the old Redmond one he had admired so much!)

Anne felt like a released bird… she was flying again. Gilbert’s arms were around her… his eyes were looking into hers in the moonlight. ‘You
do
love me, Gilbert? I’m not just a habit with you? You haven’t
said
you loved me for so long.’

‘My dear, dear love! I didn’t think you needed words to know that. I couldn’t live without you. Always you give me strength. There’s a verse some where in the Bible that is meant for you… “She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.” ’

Life which had seemed so grey and foolish a few moments before was golden and rose and splendidly rainbowed again. The diamond pendant slipped to the floor, unheeded for the moment. It was beautiful… but there were so many things lovelier… confidence and peace and delightful work… laughter and kindliness… that old,
safe
feeling of a sure love. ‘Oh, if we could keep this moment for ever, Gilbert!’

‘We’re going to have some moments. It’s time we had a second honeymoon. Anne, there’s going to be a big medical congress in London next February. We’re going to it… and after it we’ll see a bit of the Old World. There’s a holiday coming to us. We’ll be nothing but lovers again… it will be just like being married over again. You haven’t been like yourself for a long time.’
(So he had noticed.)
‘You’re tired and overworked… you need a change.’
(You, too, dearest. I’ve been so horribly blind.)
‘I’m not going to have it cast up to me that doctors’ wives never get a pill. We’ll come back rested and fresh, with our sense of humour completely restored. Well, try your pendant on and let’s get to bed. I’m half dead for sleep… haven’t had a decent night’s sleep for weeks what with twins and worry over Mrs Garrow.’

‘What on earth were you and Christine talking about so long in the garden tonight?’ asked Anne, peacocking before the mirror with her diamonds.

Gilbert yawned.

‘Oh, I don’t know, Christine just gabbled on. But here is one fact she presented me with. A flea can jump two hundred times its own length. Did you know that, Anne?’

(They were talking of fleas when I was writhing with jealousy. What an idiot I’ve been!)

‘How on earth did you come to be talking of fleas?’

‘I can’t remember… perhaps it was Dobermann pinschers suggested it.’

‘Dobermann pinschers!
What
are Dobermann pinschers?’

‘A new kind of dog. Christine seems to be a dog connoisseur. I was so obsessed with Mrs Garrow that I didn’t pay much attention to what she was saying. Now and then I caught a word about complexes and repressions… that new psychology that’s coming up… and art… and gout and politics and frogs.’

‘Frogs!’

‘Some experiments a Winnipeg research man is making. Christine was never very entertaining, but she’s a worse bore than ever. And malicious! She never used to be malicious.’

‘What did she say that was so malicious?’ asked Anne innocently.

‘Didn’t you notice? Oh, I suppose you wouldn’t catch on… you’re so free from that sort of thing yourself. Well, it doesn’t matter. That laugh of hers got on my nerves a bit. And she’s got fat. Thank goodness you haven’t got fat, Anne-girl.’

‘Oh, I don’t think she is so very fat,’ said Anne charitably. ‘And she certainly is a very handsome woman.’

‘So-so. But her face has got hard… she’s the same age as you, but she looks ten years older.’

‘And you talking to her about immortal youth!’

Gilbert grinned guiltily.

‘One has to say something civil. Civilization can’t exist without a little hypocrisy. Oh, well, Christine isn’t a bad old scout, even if she doesn’t belong to the race of Joseph. It’s not her fault that the pinch of salt was left out of her. What’s this?’

‘My anniversary remembrance for you. And I want a cent for it… I’m not taking any risks. Such tortures as I’ve endured this evening! I was eaten up with jealousy of Christine.’

Gilbert looked genuinely astonished. It had never occurred to him that Anne could be jealous of anybody.

‘Why, Anne-girl, I never thought you had it in you.’

‘Oh, but I have! Why, years ago I was madly jealous of your correspondence with Ruby Gillis.’

‘
Did
I ever correspond with Ruby Gillis? I’d forgotten. Poor Ruby! But what about Roy Gardner? The pot mustn’t call the kettle black.’

‘Roy Gardner? Philippa wrote me not long ago that she’d seen him and he’d got positively corpulent. Gilbert, Dr Murray may be a very eminent man in his profession, but he looks just like a lath. Dr Fowler looked like a doughnut. You looked so handsome… and
finished
… beside them.’

‘Oh, thanks… thanks. That’s something like a wife should say. By way of returning the compliment, I thought you looked unusually well tonight, Annie, in spite of that dress. You had a little colour and your eyes were gorgeous. Ah-h-h, that’s good! There’s another verse in the Bible… queer how those old verses you learn in Sunday School come back to you through life!… “I will lay me down in peace and sleep.” In peace… and sleep… goo’-night.’

Gilbert was asleep almost before he finished the word. Dearest, tired Gilbert! Babies might come and babies might go, but none should disturb his rest that night. The telephone might ring its head off.

Anne was not sleepy. She was too happy to sleep just yet. She moved softly about the room, putting things away, braiding her hair, looking like a beloved woman. Finally she slipped on a
négligé
and went across the hall to the boys’ room. Walter and Jem in their bed and Shirley in his cot were all sound asleep. The Shrimp, who had outlived generations of pert kittens and become a family habit, was curled up at Shirley’s feet. Jem had fallen asleep while reading
The Life Book of Captain Jim
… it was open on the spread. Why, how
long
Jem looked lying under the bed-clothes! He would soon be grown up. What a sturdy, reliable little chap he was! Walter was smiling in his sleep as someone who knew a charming secret. The moon was shining on his pillow through the bars of the leaded window… casting the shadow of a clearly defined cross on the wall above his head. In long after-years Anne was to remember that and wonder if it was an omen of Courcelette… of a cross-marked grave ‘somewhere in France’. But tonight it was only a shadow… nothing more. The rash had quite gone from Shirley’s neck. Gilbert had been right. He was always right.

Nan and Diana and Rilla were in the next room… Diana, with darling little damp red curls all over her head and one little sunburned hand under her cheek, and Nan with long fans of lashes brushing hers. The eyes behind those blue-veined lids were hazel, like her father’s. And Rilla was sleeping on her stomach. Anne turned her right side up, but her buttoned eyes never opened.

They were all growing so fast. In just a few short years they would be all young men and women… youth tiptoe… expectant… astir with its sweet, wild dreams… little ships sailing out of safe harbour to unknown parts. The boys would go away to their life work, and the girls… ah, the mist-veiled forms of beautiful brides might be seen coming down the old stairs at Ingleside. But they would be still hers for a few years yet… hers to love and guide… to sing the songs that so many mothers had sung. Hers… and Gilbert’s.