Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [131]
‘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