Anne of Windy Poplars - L. M. Montgomery [74]
January 12
Little Elizabeth came over two nights ago to find out if I could tell her what peculiar kind of terrible animals Papal Bulls were, and to tell me tearfully that her teacher had asked her to sing at a concert the public school is getting up, but that Mrs Campbell put her foot down and said ‘No’ most decidedly. When Elizabeth attempted to plead Mrs Campbell said, ‘Have the goodness not to talk back to me, Elizabeth, if you please.’
Little Elizabeth wept a few bitter tears in the tower room that night, and said she felt it would make her Lizzie for ever. She could never be any of her other names again.
‘Last week I loved God. This week I don’t,’ she said defiantly.
All her class were taking part in the programme, and she felt ‘like a leopard’. I think the sweet thing meant she felt like a leper, and that was sufficiently dreadful. Darling Elizabeth must not feel like a leper.
So I manufactured an errand to the Evergreens next evening. The Woman – who might really have lived before the Flood, she looks so ancient – gazed at me coldly out of great grey, expressionless eyes, showed me grimly into the drawing-room, and went to tell Mrs Campbell that I had asked for her.
I don’t think there has been any sunshine in that drawing-room since the house was built. There was a piano, but I’m sure it could never have been played on. Stiff chairs, covered with silk brocade, stood against the wall. All the furniture stood against the wall, except a central marble-topped table, and none of it seemed to be acquainted with the rest.
Mrs Campbell came in. I had never seen her before. She has a fine, sculptured old face that might be a man’s, with black eyes and black bushy brows under frosty hair. She has not quite eschewed all vain adornment of the body, for she wore large black onyx earrings that reached to her shoulders. She was painfully polite to me and I was painfully polite to her. We sat and exchanged civilities about the weather for a few moments, both, as Tacitus remarked a few thousand years ago, ‘with countenances adjusted to the occasion’. I told her – truthfully – that I had come to see if she would lend me the Rev James Wallace Campbell’s Memoirs for a short time, because I understood there was a good deal about the early history of Prince County in them which I wished to make use of in school.
Mrs Campbell thawed quite markedly, and, summoning Elizabeth, told her to go up to her room and bring down the Memoirs. Elizabeth’s face showed signs of tears, and Mrs Campbell condescended to explain that it was because little Elizabeth’s teacher had sent another note begging that she be allowed to sing at the concert, and that she, Mrs Campbell, had written a very stinging reply which little Elizabeth would have to carry to her teacher the next morning.
‘I do not approve of children of Elizabeth’s age singing in public,’ said Mrs Campbell. ‘It tends to make them bold and forward.’
As if anything could make little Elizabeth bold and forward!
‘I think perhaps you are wise, Mrs Campbell,’ I remarked in my most patronizing tone. ‘In any event, Mabel Phillips is going to sing, and I am told that her voice is really so wonderful that she will make all the others seem as nothing. No doubt it is much better that Elizabeth should not appear in competition with her.’
Mrs Campbell’s face was a study. She may be a Campbell outside, but she is Pringle at the core. She said nothing, however, and I knew the psychological moment for stopping. I thanked her for the Memoirs and came away.
The next evening when little Elizabeth came to the garden gate for her milk her pale, flower-like face was literally a-star. She told me that Mrs Campbell had told her she might sing after all, if she was careful not to let herself get puffed up about it.
You see, Rebecca Dew had told me that the Phillips and the Campbell clans have always been rivals in the matter of good voices!
I gave Elizabeth