“I … I suppose so.”
“My poor young sister Harriet lies here,” sighed Miss Valentine. “She had magnificent hair … about the color of yours … not so red perhaps. It reached to her knees. She was engaged when she died. They tell me you’re engaged. I never much wanted to be married but I think it would have been nice to be engaged. Oh, I’ve had some chances of course … perhaps I was too fastidious … but a Courtaloe couldn’t marry everybody, could she?”
It did not seem likely she could.
“Frank Digby … over in that corner under the sumacs … wanted me. I did feel a little regretful over refusing him … but a Digby, my dear! He married Georgina Troop. She always went to church a little late to show off her clothes. My, she was fond of clothes. She was buried in such a pretty blue dress … I made it for her to wear to a wedding but in the end she wore it to her own funeral. She had three darling little children. They used to sit in front of me at church and I always gave them candy. Do you think it wrong to give children candy in church, Miss Shirley? Not peppermints … that would be all right … there’s something religious about peppermints, don’t you think? But the poor things don’t like them.”
When the Courtaloe’s plots were exhausted Miss Valentine’s reminiscences became a bit spicier. It did not make so much difference if you weren’t a Courtaloe.
“Old Mrs. Russell Pringle is here. I often wonder if she’s in heaven or not.”
“But why?” gasped a rather shocked Anne.
“Well, she always hated her sister, Mary Ann, who had died a few months before. ‘If Mary Ann is in heaven I won’t stay there,’ says she. And she was a woman who always kept her word, my dear … Pringle-like. She was born a Pringle and married her cousin Russell. This is Mrs. Dan Pringle … Janetta Bird. Seventy to a day when she died. Folks say she would have thought it wrong to die a day older than threescore and ten because that is the Bible limit. People do say such funny things, don’t they? I’ve heard that dying was the only thing she ever dared do without asking her husband. Do you know, my dear, what he did once when she bought a hat he didn’t like?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“He et it,” said Miss Valentine solemnly. “Of course it was only a small hat … lace and flowers … no feathers. Still, it must have been rather indigestible. I understand he had gnawing pains in his stomach for quite a time. Of course I didn’t see him eat it, but I’ve always been assured the story was true. Do you suppose it was?”
“I’d believe anything of a Pringle,” said Anne bitterly.
Miss Valentine pressed her arm sympathetically.
“I feel for you … indeed I do. It’s terrible the way they’re treating you. But Summerside isn’t all Pringle, Miss Shirley.”
“Sometimes I think it is,” said Anne with a rueful smile.
“No, it isn’t. And there are plenty of people would like to see you get the better of them. Don’t you give in to them no matter what they do. It’s just the old Satan that’s got into them. But they hang together so and Miss Sarah did want that cousin of theirs to get the school.
“The Nathan Pringles are here. Nathan always believed his wife was trying to poison him but he didn’t seem to mind. He said it made life kind of exciting. Once he kind of suspected she’d put arsenic in his porridge. He went out and fed it to a pig. The pig died three weeks afterwards. But he said maybe it was only a coincidence and anyway he couldn’t be sure it was the same pig. In the end she died before him and he said she’d always been a real good wife to him except for that one thing. I think it would be charitable to believe that he was mistaken about it.”
“‘Sacred to the memory of Miss Kinsey,’” read Anne in amazement. “What an extraordinary inscription! Had she no other name?”
“If she had, nobody ever knew it,” said Miss Valentine. “She came from Nova Scotia and worked for the George Pringles for forty years. She gave her name as Miss Kinsey and everybody called her that. She died suddenly and then it was discovered that nobody knew her first name and she had no relations that anybody could find. So they put that on her stone … the George Pringles buried her very nicely and paid for the monument. She was a faithful, hardworking creature but if you’d ever seen her you’d have thought she was born Miss Kinsey. The James Morleys are here. I was at their golden wedding. Such a to-do … gifts and speeches and flowers … and their children all home and them smiling and bowing and just hating each other as hard as they could.”
“Hating each other?”
“Bitterly, my dear. Every one knew it. They had for years and years … almost all their married life in fact. They quarreled on the way home from church after the wedding. I often wonder how they manage to lie here so peaceably side by side.”
Again Anne shivered. How terrible … sitting opposite each other at table … lying down beside each other at night … going to church with their babies to be christened … and hating each other through it all! Yet they must have loved to begin with. Was it possible she and Gilbert could ever … nonsense! The Pringles were getting on her nerves.
“Handsome John MacTabb is buried here. He was always suspected of being the reason why Annetta Kennedy drowned herself. The MacTabbs were all handsome but you could never believe a word they said. There used to be a stone here for his Uncle Samuel, who was reported drowned at sea fifty years ago. When he turned up alive the family took the stone down. The man they bought it from wouldn’t take it back so Mrs. Samuel used it for a baking-board. Talk about a marble slab for mixing on! That old tombstone was just fine, she said. The MacTabb children were always bringing cookies to school with raised letters and figures on them … scraps of the epitaph. They gave them away real generous, but I never could bring myself to eat one. I’m peculiar that way. Mr. Harley Pringle is here. He had to wheel Peter MacTabb down Main Street once, in a wheelbarrow, wearing a bonnet, for an election bet. All Summerside turned out to see it … except the Pringles, of course. They nearly died of shame. Milly Pringle is here. I was very fond of Milly, even if she was a Pringle. She was so pretty and as light-footed as a fairy. Sometimes I think, my dear, on nights like this she must slip out of her grave and dance like she used to do. But I suppose a Christian shouldn’t be harboring such thoughts. This is Herb Pringle’s grave. He was one of the jolly Pringles. He always made you laugh. He laughed right out in church once … when the mouse dropped out of the flowers on Meta Pringle’s hat when she bowed in prayer. I didn’t feel much like laughing. I didn’t know where the mouse had gone. I pulled my skirts tight about my ankles and held them there till church was out, but it spoiled the sermon for me. Herb sat behind me and such a shout as he gave. People who couldn’t see the mouse thought he’d gone crazy. It seemed to me that laugh of his couldn’t die. If he was alive he’d stand up for you, Sarah or no Sarah. This, of course, is Captain Abraham Pringle’s monument.”
It dominated the whole graveyard. Four receding platforms of stone formed a square pedestal on which rose a huge pillar of marble topped with a ridiculous draped urn beneath which a fat cherub was blowing a horn.
“How ugly!” said Anne candidly.
“Oh, do you think so?” Miss Valentine seemed rather shocked. “It was thought very handsome when it was erected. That is supposed to be Gabriel blowing his trumpet. I think it gives quite a touch of elegance to the graveyard.