“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 me. 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 jewelry. I must get it out and give it to Sibyl.”
Anne went 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 to back down and say, ‘Take her.’ Now all I have to do is to pretend to be heartbroken 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 puss, if you stroke her the right way. And 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!”
Chapter IX
(Extract from 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 honor 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 window 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 luster. She suffers from no lack of words, and I don’t think I ever heard any one 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 honor 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 any one. What are you going to wear, Miss Shirley? I’d like to see you wear your cream silk gauze with your black velvet bows. 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 wonder,’ 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