Anne Of Ingleside √ (Project K.)

CHAPTER 21

April came tiptoeing in beautifully that year with sunshine and soft winds for a few days; and then a driving northeast snowstorm dropped a white blanket over the world again. "Snow in April is abominable," said Anne. "Like a slap in the face when you expected a kiss." Ingleside was fringed with icicles and for two long weeks the days were raw and the nights hard-bitten. Then the snow grudgingly disappeared and when the news went round that the first robin had been seen in the Hollow Ingleside plucked up heart and ventured to believe that the miracle of spring was really going to happen again.

"Oh, Mummy, it smells like spring today," cried Nan, delightedly snuffing the fresh moist air. "Mummy, isn't spring an exciting time!"

Spring was trying out her paces that day . . . like an adorable baby just learning to walk. The winter pattern of trees and fields was beginning to be overlaid with hints of green and Jem had again brought in the first mayflowers. But an enormously fat lady, sinking puffingly into one of the Ingleside easy-chairs, sighed and said sadly that the springs weren't so nice as they were when she was young.

"Don't you think perhaps the change is in us . . . not in the springs, Mrs. Mitchell?" smiled Anne.

"Mebbe so. I know I am changed, all too well. I don't suppose to look at me now you'd think I was once the prettiest girl in these parts."

Anne reflected that she certainly wouldn't. The thin, stringy, mouse-coloured hair under Mrs. Mitchell's crape bonnet and long sweeping "widow's veil" was streaked with grey; her blue, expressionless eyes were faded and hollow; and to call her double chin chinned erred on the side of charity. But Mrs. Anthony Mitchell was feeling quite contented with herself just then for nobody in Four Winds had finer weeds. Her voluminous black dress was crape to the knees. One wore mourning in those days with a vengeance.

Anne was spared the necessity of saying anything, for Mrs. Mitchell gave her no chance.

"My soft water system went dry this week . . . there's a leak in it . . . so I kem down to the village this morning to get Raymond Russell to come and fix it. And thinks I to myself, 'Now that I'm here I'll just run up to Ingleside and ask Mrs. Dr. Blythe to write an obitchery for Anthony."

"An obituary?" said Anne blankly.

"Yes . . . them things they put in the papers about dead people, you know," explained Mrs. Anthony. "I want Anthony should have a real good one . . . something out of the common. You write things, don't you?"

"Occasionally I do write a little story," admitted Anne. "But a busy mother hasn't much time for that. I had wonderful dreams once but now I'm afraid I'll never be in Who's Who, Mrs. Mitchell. And I never wrote an obituary in my life."

"Oh, they can't be hard to write. Old Uncle Charlie Bates over our way writes most of them for the Lower Glen, but he ain't a bit poetical and I've set my heart on a piece of poetry for Anthony. My, but he was always so fond of poetry. I was up to hear you give that talk on bandages to the Glen Institute last week and thinks I to myself, 'Anyone who can talk as glib as that can likely write a real poetical obitchery.' You will do it for me, won't you, Mrs. Blythe? Anthony would have liked it. He always admired you. He said once that when you come into a room you made all the other women look 'common and undistinguished.' He sometimes talked real poetical but he meant well. I've been reading a lot of obitcheries . . . I have a big scrapbook full of them . . . but it didn't seem to me he'd have liked any of them. He used to laugh at them so much. And it's time it was done. He's been dead two months. He died lingering but painless. Coming on spring's an inconvenient time for anyone to die, Mrs. Blythe, but I've made the best of it. I s'pose Uncle Charlie will be hopping mad if I get anyone else to write Anthony's obitchery but I don't care. Uncle Charlie has a wonderful flow of language but him and Anthony never hit it off any too well and the long and short of it is I'm not going to have him write Anthony's obitchery. I've been Anthony's wife . . . his faithful and loving wife for thirty-five years . . . thirty-five years, Mrs. Blythe," . . . as if she were afraid Anne might think of only thirty-four . . . "and I'm going to have an obitchery he'd like if it takes a leg. That was what my daughter Seraphine said to me--she's married at Lowbridge, you know . . . nice name, Seraphine, isn't it? . . . I got it off a gravestone. Anthony didn't like it . . . he wanted to call her Judith after his mother. But I said it was too solemn a name and he give in real kindly. He weren't no hand for arguing . . . though he always called her Seraph . . . where was I?"