Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [123]
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 around.’ (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 crows-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, née 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