Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [44]
Again luck befriended a worried matchmaker. Stella came to see the Ingleside delphiniums one evening, and afterwards they sat on the veranda and talked. Stella Chase was a pale, slender thing, rather shy but intensely sweet. She had a soft cloud of pale gold hair and wood-brown eyes. Anne thought it was her eyelashes did the trick, for she was not really pretty. They were unbelievably long, and when she lifted them and dropped them it did things to masculine hearts. She had a certain distinction of manner which made her seem a little older than her twenty-four years and a nose that might be decidedly aquiline in later life.
‘I’ve been hearing things about you, Stella,’ said Anne, shaking a finger at her. ‘And… I… don’t… know if… I… liked… them. Will you forgive me for saying that I wonder if Alden Churchill is just the right beau for you?’
Stella turned a startled face.
‘Why… I thought you liked Alden, Mrs Blythe.’
‘I do like him. But… well, you see, he has the reputation of being very, very fickle. I’m told no girl can hold him long. A good many have tried, and failed. I’d hate to see you left like that if his fancy veered.’
‘I think you are mistaken about Alden, Mrs Blythe,’ said Stella slowly.
‘I hope so, Stella. If you were a different type now, bouncing and jolly, like Eileen Swift…’
‘Oh, well… I must be going home,’ said Stella vaguely. ‘Father will be lonely.’
When she had gone Anne laughed again.
‘I rather think Stella has gone away secretly vowing that she will show meddlesome friends that she can hold Alden and that no Eileen Swift shall ever get her claws on him. That little toss of her head and that sudden flush on her cheeks told me that. So much for the young folks. I’m afraid the older ones will be tougher nuts to crack.’
18
Anne’s luck held. The Women’s Missionary Auxiliary asked her if she would call on Mrs George Churchill for her yearly contribution to the society. Mrs Churchill seldom went to church and was not a member of the Auxiliary, but she ‘believed in missions’ and always gave a generous sum if anyone called and asked for it. People enjoyed doing this so little that the members had to take their turn at it, and this year the turn was Anne’s.
She walked down one evening, taking a daisied trail across lots which led over the sweet, cool loveliness of a hill-top to the road where the Churchill farm lay, a mile from the Glen. It was rather a dull road, with grey snake fences, running up steep little slopes… yet it had home-lights… a brook… the smell of hayfields that ran down to the sea… gardens. Anne stopped to look at every garden she passed. Her interest in gardens was perennial. Gilbert was wont to say that Anne had to buy a book if the word ‘garden’ were in the title.
A lazy boat idled down the harbour and far out a vessel was becalmed. Anne always watched an outward-bound ship with a little quickening of her pulses. She understood Captain Franklin Drew when she heard him say once, as he went on board his vessel at the wharf, ‘God, how sorry I am for the folks we leave on shore!’
The big Churchill house, with the grim iron lacework around its flat mansard roof, looked down on the harbour and the dunes. Mrs Churchill greeted her politely, if none too effusively, and ushered her into a gloomy and splendid parlour, the dark, brown-papered walls of which were hung with innumerable crayons of departed Churchills and Elliotts. Mrs Churchill sat down on a green plush sofa, folded her long thin hands, and gazed steadily at her caller.
Mary Churchill was tall and gaunt and austere. She had a prominent chin, deep-set blue eyes like Alden’s, and a wide, compressed mouth. She never wasted words and she never gossiped. So Anne found it rather difficult to work up to her objective naturally, but she managed it through the medium of the new minister in the Anglican church across the harbour, whom Mrs Churchill did not like.