Anne of Windy Poplars

  Anne's sense of humour had again come to her rescue. She could never refuse an opportunity for a good laugh even when it was on herself. And she suddenly felt very well acquainted with Franklin Westcott.

  He listened to the tale, taking quiet, enjoyable whiffs of his pipe. When Anne had finished he nodded comfortably.

  'I see I'm more in your debt even than I thought. She'd never have got up the courage to do it if it hadn't been for you. And Jarvis Morrow wouldn't have risked being made a fool of twice, not if I know the breed. Gosh, but I've had a narrow escape! I'm yours to command for life. You're a real brick to come here as you did, believing all the yarns gossip told you. You've been told a-plenty, haven't you, now?'

  Anne nodded. The bulldog had got his head on her lap and was snoring blissfully.

  'Everyone agreed that you were cranky, crabbed, and crusty,' she said candidly.

  'And I suppose they told you I was a tyrant, and made my poor wife's life miserable, and ruled my family with a rod of iron?'

  'Yes, but I really did take all that with a grain of salt, Mr Westcott. I felt that Dovie couldn't be as fond of you as she was if you were as dreadful as gossip painted you.'

  'Sensible gal! My wife was a happy woman, Miss Shirley. And when Mrs Captain MacComber tells you I bullied her to death tick her off for me. Excuse my common way. Mollie was pretty - prettier than Sibyl. Such a pink-and-white skin, such golden-brown hair, such dewy blue eyes! She was the prettiest woman in Summerside. Had to be. I couldn't have stood it if a man had walked into church with a handsomer wife than mine. I ruled my household as a man should, but not tyrannically. Oh, of course, I had a spell of temper now and then, but Mollie didn't mind them after she got used to them. A man has a right to have a row with his wife now and then, hasn't he? Women get tired of monotonous husbands. Besides, I always gave her a ring or a necklace or some such gaud after I calmed down. There wasn't a woman in Summerside had more nice jewellery. I must get it out and give it to Sibyl.'

  Anne was wicked. 'What about Milton's poems?'

  'Milton's poems?... Oh, that! It wasn't Milton's poems; it was Tennyson's. I reverence Milton, but I can't abide Alfred. He's too sickly sweet. Those last two lines of Enoch Arden made me so mad one night I did fire the book through the window. But I picked it up the next day for the sake of the bugle song. I'd forgive anybody anything for that. It didn't go into George Clarke's lily-pond. That was old Prouty's embroidery... You're not going? Stay and have a bite of supper with a lonely old fellow robbed of his only whelp.'

  'I'm really sorry I can't, Mr Westcott, but I have to attend a meeting of the staff tonight.'

  'Well, I'll be seeing you when Sibyl comes back. I'll have to fling a party for them no doubt. Good gosh, what a relief this has been to my mind! You've no idea how I'd have hated to have had to back down and say, "Take her." Now all I have to do is to pretend to be heartbroke and resigned and forgive her sadly for the sake of her poor mother. I'll do it beautifully. Jarvis must never suspect. Don't you give the show away.'

  'I won't,' promised Anne.

  Franklin Westcott saw her courteously to the door. The bulldog sat up on his haunches and cried after her.

  Franklin Westcott took his pipe out of his mouth at the door and tapped her on the shoulder with it.

  'Always remember,' he said solemnly, 'there's more than one way to skin a cat. It can be done so that the animal'll never know he's lost his hide. Give my love to Rebecca Dew. A nice old cat - if you stroke her the right way. Thank you... Thank you.'

  Anne betook herself home through the soft, calm evening. The fog had cleared, the wind had shifted, and there was a look of frost in the pale green sky.

  'People told me I didn't know Franklin Westcott,' reflected Anne. 'They were right: I didn't. And neither did they.'

  'How did he take it?' Rebecca Dew was keen to know. She had been on tenterhooks during Anne's absence.

  'Not so badly after all,' said Anne confidentially. 'I think he'll forgive Dovie in time.'

  'I never did see the beat of you, Miss Shirley, for talking people round,' said Rebecca Dew admiringly. 'You have certainly got a way with you.'

  '"Something attempted, something done has earned a night's repose,"' quoted Anne wearily as she climbed the three steps into her bed that night. 'But just wait till the next person asks my advice about eloping!'

  9

  Extract from a letter to Gilbert

  I am invited to have supper tomorrow night with a lady of Summerside. I know you won't believe me, Gilbert, when I tell you her name is Tomgallon - Miss Minerva Tomgallon. You'll say I've been reading Dickens too long and too late.

  Dearest, aren't you glad your name is Blythe? I am sure I could never marry you if it were Tomgallon. Fancy, Anne Tomgallon! No, you can't fancy it.

  This is the ultimate honour Summerside has to bestow - an invitation to Tomgallon House. It has no other name. No nonsense about Elms or Chestnuts or Crofts for the Tomgallons.

  I understand they were the 'Royal Family' in old days. The Pringles are mushrooms compared to them. And now there is left of them all only Miss Minerva, the sole survivor of six generations of Tomgallons. She lives alone in a huge house on Queen Street, a house with great chimneys, green shutters, and the only stained-glass windows in a private house in town. It is big enough for four families, and is occupied only by Miss Minerva, a cook, and a maid. It is very well kept up, but somehow whenever I walk past it I feel that it is a place which life has forgotten.

  Miss Minerva goes out very little, excepting to the Anglican church, and I had never met her until a few weeks ago, when she came to a meeting of staff and trustees to make a formal gift of her father's valuable library to the school. She looks exactly as you would expect a Minerva Tomgallon to look - tall and thin, with a long, narrow white face, a long, thin nose, and a long, thin mouth. That doesn't sound very attractive; yet Miss Minerva is quite handsome in a stately aristocratic style, and is always dressed with great though somewhat old-fashioned elegance. She was quite a beauty when she was young, Rebecca Dew tells me, and her large black eyes are still full of fire and dark lustre. She suffers from no lack of words, and I don't think I ever heard anyone enjoy making a presentation speech more.

  Miss Minerva was especially nice to me, and yesterday I received a formal little note inviting me to have supper with her. When I told Rebecca Dew she opened her eyes as widely as if I had been invited to Buckingham Palace.

  'It's a great honour to be asked to Tomgallon House,' she said, in a rather awed tone. 'I never heard of Miss Minerva asking any of the Principals there before. To be sure, they were all men, so I suppose it would hardly have been proper. Well, I hope she won't talk you to death, Miss Shirley. The Tomgallons could all talk the hind-leg off a cat. And they liked to be in the front of things. Some folks think the reason Miss Minerva lives so retired is because now that she's old she can't take the lead as she used to do, and she won't play second fiddle to anyone. What are you going to wear, Miss Shirley? I'd like to see you wear your cream silk gauze with your black velvet bolero. It's so dressy.'

  'I'm afraid it would be rather too "dressy" for a quiet evening out,' I said.

  'Miss Minerva would like it, I think. The Tomgallons all liked their company to be nicely arrayed. They say Miss Minerva's grandfather once shut the door in the face of a woman who had been asked there to a ball, because she came in her second-best dress. He told her her best was none too good for the Tomgallons.'

  Nevertheless, I think I'll wear my green voile, and the ghosts of the Tomgallons must make the best of it.

  I'm going to confess something I did last week, Gilbert. I suppose you'll think I'm meddling again in other folks' business. But I had to do something. I'll not be in Summerside next year, and I can't bear the thought of leaving little Elizabeth to the mercy of those two unloving old women who are growing bitterer and narrower every year. What kind of a girlhood will she have with them in that gloomy old place?

  'I wo
nder,' she said to me wistfully, not long ago, 'what it would be like to have a grandmother you weren't afraid of?'

  This is what I did. I wrote to her father. He lives in Paris, and I didn't know his address, but Rebecca Dew had heard and remembered the name of the firm whose branch he runs there, so I took a chance and addressed him in care of it. I wrote as diplomatic a letter as I could, but I told him plainly that he ought to take Elizabeth. I told him how she longs for and dreams about him, and that Mrs Campbell was really too severe and strict with her. Perhaps nothing will come of it, but if I hadn't written I would be for ever haunted by the conviction that I ought to have done it.

  What made me think of it was Elizabeth telling me very seriously one day that she had 'written a letter to God', asking Him to bring her father back to her and make him love her. She said she had stopped on the way home from school, in the middle of a vacant lot, and read it, looking up at the sky. I knew she had done something odd, because Miss Prouty had seen the performance, and told me about it when she came to sew for the widows next day. She thought Elizabeth was getting queer, 'talking to the sky like that'.

  I asked Elizabeth about it, and she told me.

  'I thought God might pay more attention to a letter than a prayer,' she said. 'I've prayed so long. He must get so many prayers.'

  That night I wrote to her father.

  Before I close I must tell you about Dusty Miller. Some time ago Aunt Kate told me that she felt she must find another home for him, because Rebecca Dew kept complaining about him so that she felt she really could not endure it any longer. One evening last week when I came home from school there was no Dusty Miller. Aunt Chatty said they had given him to Mrs Edmonds, who lives on the other side of Summerside from Windy Willows. I felt sorry, for Dusty Miller and I have been excellent friends. 'But at least,' I thought, 'Rebecca Dew will be a happy woman.'

  Rebecca was away for the day, having gone to the country to help a relative hook rugs. When she returned at dusk nothing was said, but at bed-time, when she was calling Dusty Miller from the back porch, Aunt Kate said quietly, 'You needn't call Dusty Miller, Rebecca. He is not here. We have found a home for him elsewhere. You will not be bothered with him any more.'

  If Rebecca Dew could have turned pale she would have done so.

  Not here? Found a home for him? Good grief! Isn't this his home?'

  'We have given him to Mrs Edmonds. She has been very lonely since her daughter married, and thought a nice cat would be company.'

  Rebecca Dew came in and shut the door. She looked very wild.

  'This is the last straw!' she said. And, indeed, it seemed to be. I've never seen Rebecca Dew's eyes emit such sparkles of rage. 'I'll be leaving at the end of the month, Mrs MacComber, and sooner if you can be suited.'

  'But, Rebecca,' said Aunt Kate in bewilderment, 'I don't understand. You've always disliked Dusty Miller. Only last week you said -'

  'That's right,' said Rebecca bitterly. 'Cast things up to me! Don't have any regard for my feelings! That poor dear Cat! I've waited on him and pampered him and got up nights to let him in. And now he's been spirited away behind my back without so much as a by-your-leave. And to Jane Edmonds, who wouldn't buy a bit of liver for the poor creature if he was dying for it! The only company I had in the kitchen!'

  'But, Rebecca, you've always -'

  'Oh, keep on, keep on! Don't let me get a word in edgewise, Mrs MacComber. I've raised that cat from a kitten. I've looked after his health and his morals. And what for? That Jane Edmonds should have a well-trained cat for company. Well, I hope she'll stand out in the frost at nights, as I've done, calling that cat for hours rather than leave him out to freeze; but I doubt it. I seriously doubt it. Well, Mrs MacComber, all I hope is that your conscience won't trouble you the next time it's ten below zero. I won't sleep a wink when it happens, but, of course, that doesn't matter an old shoe to anyone.'

  'Rebecca, if you would only -'

  'Mrs MacComber, I am not a worm, neither am I a doormat. Well, this has been a lesson for me - a valuable lesson! Never again will I allow my affections to twine themselves around an animal of any kind or description. And if you'd done it open and above-board... But behind my back - taking advantage of me like that! I never heard of anything so dirt mean. But who am I that I should expect my feelings to be considered?'

  'Rebecca,' said Aunt Kate desperately, 'if you want Dusty Miller back we can get him back.'

  'Why didn't you say so before, then?' demanded Rebecca Dew. 'And I doubt it. Jane Edmonds has got her claws in him. Is it likely she'll give him up?'

  'I think she will,' said Aunt Kate, who had apparently reverted to jelly. 'And if he comes back you won't leave us, will you, Rebecca?'

  'I may think it over,' said Rebecca, 'with the air of one making a tremendous concession.

  Next day Aunt Chatty brought Dusty Miller home in a covered basket. I caught a glance exchanged between her and Aunt Kate after Rebecca had carried Dusty Miller out to the kitchen and shut the door. I wonder! Was it all a deep-laid plot on the part of the widows, aided and abetted by Jane Edmonds?

  Rebecca has never uttered a word of complaint about Dusty Miller since, and there is a veritable clang of victory in her voice when she shouts for him at bed-time. It sounds as if she wanted all Summerside to know that Dusty Miller is back where he belongs, and that she has once more got the better of the widows!

  10

  It was on a dark, windy March evening, when even the clouds scudding over the sky seemed in a hurry, that Anne skimmed up the triple flight of broad, shallow steps flanked by stone urns and stonier lions that led to the massive front door of Tomgallon House. Usually when she had passed it after dark it was sombre and grim, with a dim twinkle of light in one or two windows. But now it blazed forth brilliantly, even the wings on either side being lighted up, as if Miss Minerva were entertaining the whole town. Such an illumination in her honour rather overcame Anne. She almost wished she had put on her cream gauze.

  Nevertheless, she looked very charming in her green voile, and perhaps Miss Minerva, meeting her in the hall, thought so, for her face and voice were very cordial. Miss Minerva herself was regal in black velvet, with a diamond comb in the heavy coils of her iron-grey hair and a massive cameo brooch surrounded by a braid of some departed Tomgallon's hair. The whole costume was a little outmoded, but Miss Minerva wore it with such a grand air that it seemed as timeless as royalty's.

  'Welcome to Tomgallon House, my dear!' she said, giving Anne a bony hand, likewise well sprinkled with diamonds. 'I am very glad to have you here as my guest.'

  'I am -'

  'Tomgallon House was always the resort of beauty and youth in the old days. We used to have a great many parties, and entertained all the visiting celebrities,' said Miss Minerva, leading Anne to the big staircase over a carpet of faded red velvet. 'But all is changed now. I entertain very little. I am the last of the Tomgallons. Perhaps it is as well. Our family, my dear, are under a curse.'

  Miss Minerva infused such a gruesome tinge of mystery and horror into her tones that Anne almost shivered. The Curse of the Tomgallons! What a title for a story!

  'This is the stair down which my great-grandfather Tomgallon fell and broke his neck the night of his house-warming given to celebrate the completion of his new home. This house was consecrated by human blood. He fell there.'

  Miss Minerva pointed a long white finger so dramatically at a tiger-skin rug in the hall that Anne could almost see the departed Tomgallon dying on it. She really did not know what to say, so said inanely, 'Oh!'

  Miss Minerva ushered her along a hall, hung with portraits and photographs of faded loveliness, with the famous stained-glass window at its end, into a large, high-ceilinged, very stately guest-room. The high walnut bed, with its huge headboard, was covered with so gorgeous a silken quilt that Anne felt it was a desecration to lay her coat and hat on it.

  'You have very beautiful hair, my dear,' said Miss Minerva admiringly. 'I always l
iked red hair. My Aunt Lydia had it. She was the only red-haired Tomgallon. One night when she was brushing it in the north room it caught fire from her candle, and she ran shrieking down the hall wrapped in flames. All part of the Curse, my dear, all part of the Curse.'

  'Was she -'

  'No, she wasn't burned to death, but she lost all her beauty. She was very handsome and vain. She never went out of the house from that night to the day of her death, and she left directions that her coffin was to be shut, so that no one might see her scarred face. Won't you sit down to remove your rubbers, my dear? This is a very comfortable chair. My sister died in it from a stroke. She was a widow, and came back home to live after her husband's death. Her little girl was scalded in our kitchen with a pot of boiling water. Wasn't that a tragic way for a child to die?'

  'Oh, how -'

  'But at least we knew how it died. My half-aunt Eliza - at least, she would have been my half-aunt if she had lived - just disappeared when she was six years old. Nobody ever knew what became of her.'

  'But surely -'

  'Every search was made, but nothing was ever discovered. It was said that her mother - my step-grandmother - had been very cruel to an orphan niece of my grandfather's who was being brought up here. She locked it up in the closet at the head of the stairs one hot summer day for punishment, and when she went to let it out she found it - dead. Some people thought it was a judgement on her when her own child vanished. But I think it was just our Curse.'

  'Who put -'

  'What a high instep you have, my dear! My instep used to be admired, too. It was said a stream of water could run under it - the test of an aristocrat.'

  Miss Minerva modestly poked a slipper from under her velvet skirt, and revealed what was undoubtedly a very handsome foot.

  'It certainly -'

  'Would you like to see over the house, my dear, before we have supper? It used to be the pride of Summerside. I suppose everything is very old-fashioned now, but perhaps there are a few things of interest. That sword hanging by the head of the stairs belonged to my great-great-grandfather, who was an officer in the British Army, and received a grant of land in Prince Edward Island for his services. He never lived in this house, but my great-great-grandmother did for a few weeks. She did not long survive her son's tragic death. She had a very bad heart after it, and when her youngest son, my great-uncle James, shot himself in the cellar the shock killed her. Uncle James did that because a girl he wished to marry threw him over. She was very beautiful - too beautiful to be quite good, I am afraid, my dear. It is a great temptation. I am afraid she was responsible for many a broken heart besides my poor great-uncle's.'