Anne of Windy Poplars - L. M. Montgomery [24]
At the graveyard gate Anne turned and looked back. A strange, peaceful hush lay over the windless land. Long fingers of moonlight were beginning to pierce the darkling firs, touching a gravestone here and there, and making strange shadows among them. But the graveyard wasn’t a sad place after all. Really, the people in it seemed alive after Miss Valentine’s tales.
‘I’ve heard you write,’ said Miss Valentine anxiously, as they went down the lane. ‘You won’t put the things I’ve told you in your stories, will you?’
‘You may be sure I won’t,’ promised Anne.
‘Do you think it is really wrong – or dangerous – to speak ill of the dead?’ whispered Miss Valentine a bit anxiously.
‘I don’t suppose it’s exactly either,’ said Anne. ‘Only rather unfair – like hitting those who can’t defend themselves. But you didn’t say anything very dreadful of anybody, Miss Courtaloe.’
‘I told you Nathan Pringle thought his wife was trying to poison him.’
‘But you gave her the benefit of the doubt.’ And Miss Valentine went her way reassured.
6
‘I wended my way to the graveyard this evening,’ wrote Anne to Gilbert, after she got home. ‘I think “wend your way” is a lovely phrase, and I work it in whenever I can. It sounds funny to say I enjoyed my stroll in the graveyard, but I really did. Miss Courtaloe’s stories were so funny, though some of them were gruesome enough underneath. Comedy and tragedy are so mixed up in life, Gilbert. The only thing that haunts me is that tale of the two who lived together fifty years and hated each other all that time. I can’t believe they really did. Somebody has said that “Hate is only love that has missed its way”. I feel sure that under the hatred they really loved each other – just as I really loved you all those years I thought I hated you – and I think death would show it to them. I’m glad I found out in life. And I have found out there are some decent Pringles – dead ones.
‘Last night when I went down late for a drink I found Aunt Kate buttermilking her face in the pantry. She asked me not to tell Chatty; she would think it so silly. I promised I wouldn’t.
‘Elizabeth still comes for the milk, though the Woman is pretty well over her bronchitis. I wonder they let her, especially since old Mrs Campbell is a Pringle. Last Saturday night Elizabeth – she was Betty that night, I think – ran in singing when she left me, and I distinctly heard the Woman say to her at the porch door, “It’s too near the Sabbath for you to be singing that song.” I am sure that Woman would prevent Elizabeth from singing on any day if she could!
‘Elizabeth had on a new dress that night, a dark wine colour – they do dress her nicely – and she said wistfully, “I thought I looked a little bit pretty when I put it on tonight, Miss Shirley, and I wished Father could see me. Of course, he will see me in Tomorrow, but it sometimes seems so slow in coming. I wish we could hurry time a bit, Miss Shirley.”
‘Now, dearest, I must work out some geometrical exercises. Geometry exercises have taken the place of what Rebecca calls my “literary efforts”. The spectre that haunts my daily path now is the dread of an exercise popping up in class that I can’t do. And what would the Pringles say then, oh, then! Oh, what would the Pringles say then!
‘Meanwhile, as you love me and the cat tribe, pray for a poor broken-hearted, ill-used Thomas cat. A mouse ran over Rebecca Dew’s foot in the pantry the other day, and she has fumed ever since. “That Cat does nothing but eat and sleep, and lets mice overrun everything. This is the last straw!’ So she chivvies him from pillar to post, routs him off his favourite cushion, and – I know, for I caught her at it – assists