MISS CORNELIA BRYANT COMES TO CALL
That September was a month of golden mists and purple hazes at Four
Winds Harbor--a month of sun-steeped days and of nights that were
swimming in moonlight, or pulsating with stars. No storm marred it, no
rough wind blew. Anne and Gilbert put their nest in order, rambled on
the shores, sailed on the harbor, drove about Four Winds and the Glen,
or through the ferny, sequestered roads of the woods around the harbor
head; in short, had such a honeymoon as any lovers in the world might
have envied them.
“If life were to stop short just now it would still have been richly
worth while, just for the sake of these past four weeks, wouldn’t it?”
said Anne. “I don’t suppose we will ever have four such perfect weeks
again--but we’ve HAD them. Everything--wind, weather, folks, house of
dreams--has conspired to make our honeymoon delightful. There hasn’t
even been a rainy day since we came here.”
“And we haven’t quarrelled once,” teased Gilbert.
“Well, ‘that’s a pleasure all the greater for being deferred,’” quoted
Anne. “I’m so glad we decided to spend our honeymoon here. Our
memories of it will always belong here, in our house of dreams, instead
of being scattered about in strange places.”
There was a certain tang of romance and adventure in the atmosphere of
their new home which Anne had never found in Avonlea. There, although
she had lived in sight of the sea, it had not entered intimately into
her life. In Four Winds it surrounded her and called to her
constantly. From every window of her new home she saw some varying
aspect of it. Its haunting murmur was ever in her ears. Vessels
sailed up the harbor every day to the wharf at the Glen, or sailed out
again through the sunset, bound for ports that might be half way round
the globe. Fishing boats went white-winged down the channel in the
mornings, and returned laden in the evenings. Sailors and fisher-folk
travelled the red, winding harbor roads, light-hearted and content.
There was always a certain sense of things going to happen--of
adventures and farings-forth. The ways of Four Winds were less staid
and settled and grooved than those of Avonlea; winds of change blew
over them; the sea called ever to the dwellers on shore, and even those
who might not answer its call felt the thrill and unrest and mystery
and possibilities of it.
“I understand now why some men must go to sea,” said Anne. “That
desire which comes to us all at times--‘to sail beyond the bourne of
sunset’--must be very imperious when it is born in you. I don’t wonder
Captain Jim ran away because of it. I never see a ship sailing out of
the channel, or a gull soaring over the sand-bar, without wishing I
were on board the ship or had wings, not like a dove ‘to fly away and
be at rest,’ but like a gull, to sweep out into the very heart of a
storm.”
“You’ll stay right here with me, Anne-girl,” said Gilbert lazily. “I
won’t have you flying away from me into the hearts of storms.”
They were sitting on their red sand-stone doorstep in the late
afternoon. Great tranquillities were all about them in land and sea
and sky. Silvery gulls were soaring over them. The horizons were
laced with long trails of frail, pinkish clouds. The hushed air was
threaded with a murmurous refrain of minstrel winds and waves. Pale
asters were blowing in the sere and misty meadows between them and the
harbor.
“Doctors who have to be up all night waiting on sick folk don’t feel
very adventurous, I suppose,” Anne said indulgently. “If you had had a
good sleep last night, Gilbert, you’d be as ready as I am for a flight
of imagination.”
“I did good work last night, Anne,” said Gilbert quietly. “Under God,
I saved a life. This is the first time I could ever really claim that.
In other cases I may have helped; but, Anne, if I had not stayed at
Allonby’s last night and fought death hand to hand, that woman would
have died before morning. I tried an experiment that was certainly
never tried in Four Winds before. I doubt if it was ever tried
anywhere before outside of a hospital. It was a new thing in Kingsport
hospital last winter. I could never have dared try it here if I had
not been absolutely certain that there was no other chance. I risked
it--and it succeeded. As a result, a good wife and mother is saved for
long years of happiness and usefulness. As I drove home this morning,
while the sun was rising over the harbor, I thanked God that I had
chosen the profession I did. I had fought a good fight and won--think
of it, Anne, WON, against the Great Destroyer. It’s what I dreamed of
doing long ago when we talked together of what we wanted to do in life.
That dream of mine came true this morning.”
“Was that the only one of your dreams that has come true?” asked Anne,
who knew perfectly well what the substance of his answer would be, but
wanted to hear it again.
“YOU know, Anne-girl,” said Gilbert, smiling into her eyes. At that
moment there were certainly two perfectly happy people sitting on the
doorstep of a little white house on the Four Winds Harbor shore.
Presently Gilbert said, with a change of tone, “Do I or do I not see a
full-rigged ship sailing up our lane?”
Anne looked and sprang up.
“That must be either Miss Cornelia Bryant or Mrs. Moore coming to
call,” she said.
“I’m going into the office, and if it is Miss Cornelia I warn you that
I’ll eavesdrop,” said Gilbert. “From all I’ve heard regarding Miss
Cornelia I conclude that her conversation will not be dull, to say the
least.”
“It may be Mrs. Moore.”
“I don’t think Mrs. Moore is built on those lines. I saw her working
in her garden the other day, and, though I was too far away to see
clearly, I thought she was rather slender. She doesn’t seem very
socially inclined when she has never called on you yet, although she’s
your nearest neighbor.”
“She can’t be like Mrs. Lynde, after all, or curiosity would have
brought her,” said Anne. “This caller is, I think, Miss Cornelia.”
Miss Cornelia it was; moreover, Miss Cornelia had not come to make any
brief and fashionable wedding call. She had her work under her arm in
a substantial parcel, and when Anne asked her to stay she promptly took
off her capacious sun-hat, which had been held on her head, despite
irreverent September breezes, by a tight elastic band under her hard
little knob of fair hair. No hat pins for Miss Cornelia, an it please
ye! Elastic bands had been good enough for her mother and they were
good enough for HER. She had a fresh, round, pink-and-white face, and
jolly brown eyes. She did not look in the least like the traditional
old maid, and there was something in her expression which won Anne
instantly. With her old instinctive quickness to discern kindred
spirits she knew she was going to like Miss Cornelia, in spite of
uncertain oddities of opinion, and certain oddities of attire.
Nobody but Miss Cornelia would have come to make a call arrayed in a
striped blue-and-white apron and a wrapper of chocolate print, with a
design of huge, pink roses scattered over it. And nobody but Miss
Cornelia could have looked dignified and suitably garbed in it. Had
Miss Cornelia been entering a palace to call on a prince’s bride, she
would have been just as dignified and just as wholly mistress of the
situation. She would have trailed her rose-spattered flounce over the
marble floors just as unconcernedly, and she would have proceeded just
as calmly to disabuse the mind of the princess of any idea that the
possession of a mere man, be he prince or peasant, was anything to brag
of.
“I’ve brought my work, Mrs. Blythe, dearie,” she remarked, unrolling
some dainty material. “I’m in a hurry to get this done, and there
isn’t any time to lose.”
Anne looked in some surprise at the white garment spread over Miss
Cornelia’s ample lap. It was certainly a baby’s dress, and it was most
beautifully made, with tiny frills and tucks. Miss Cornelia adjusted
her glasses and fell to embroidering with exquisite stitches.
“This is for Mrs. Fred Proctor up at the Glen,” she announced. “She’s
expecting her eighth baby any day now, and not a stitch has she ready
for it. The other seven have wore out all she made for the first, and
she’s never had time or strength or spirit to make any more. That
woman is a martyr, Mrs. Blythe, believe ME. When she married Fred
Proctor _I_ knew how it would turn out. He was one of your wicked,
fascinating men. After he got married he left off being fascinating
and just kept on being wicked. He drinks and he neglects his family.
Isn’t that like a man? I don’t know how Mrs. Proctor would ever keep
her children decently clothed if her neighbors didn’t help her out.”
As Anne was afterwards to learn, Miss Cornelia was the only neighbor
who troubled herself much about the decency of the young Proctors.
“When I heard this eighth baby was coming I decided to make some things
for it,” Miss Cornelia went on. “This is the last and I want to finish
it today.”
“It’s certainly very pretty,” said Anne. “I’ll get my sewing and we’ll
have a little thimble party of two. You are a beautiful sewer, Miss
Bryant.”
“Yes, I’m the best sewer in these parts,” said Miss Cornelia in a
matter-of-fact tone. “I ought to be! Lord, I’ve done more of it than
if I’d had a hundred children of my own, believe ME! I s’pose I’m a
fool, to be putting hand embroidery on this dress for an eighth baby.
But, Lord, Mrs. Blythe, dearie, it isn’t to blame for being the eighth,
and I kind of wished it to have one real pretty dress, just as if it
WAS wanted. Nobody’s wanting the poor mite--so I put some extra fuss
on its little things just on that account.”
“Any baby might be proud of that dress,” said Anne, feeling still more
strongly that she was going to like Miss Cornelia.
“I s’pose you’ve been thinking I was never coming to call on you,”
resumed Miss Cornelia. “But this is harvest month, you know, and I’ve
been busy--and a lot of extra hands hanging round, eating more’n they
work, just like the men. I’d have come yesterday, but I went to Mrs.
Roderick MacAllister’s funeral. At first I thought my head was aching
so badly I couldn’t enjoy myself if I did go. But she was a hundred
years old, and I’d always promised myself that I’d go to her funeral.”
“Was it a successful function?” asked Anne, noticing that the office
door was ajar.
“What’s that? Oh, yes, it was a tremendous funeral. She had a very
large connection. There was over one hundred and twenty carriages in
the procession. There was one or two funny things happened. I thought
that die I would to see old Joe Bradshaw, who is an infidel and never
darkens the door of a church, singing ‘Safe in the Arms of Jesus’ with
great gusto and fervor. He glories in singing--that’s why he never
misses a funeral. Poor Mrs. Bradshaw didn’t look much like
singing--all wore out slaving. Old Joe starts out once in a while to
buy her a present and brings home some new kind of farm machinery.
Isn’t that like a man? But what else would you expect of a man who
never goes to church, even a Methodist one? I was real thankful to see
you and the young Doctor in the Presbyterian church your first Sunday.
No doctor for me who isn’t a Presbyterian.”
“We were in the Methodist church last Sunday evening,” said Anne
wickedly.
“Oh, I s’pose Dr. Blythe has to go to the Methodist church once in a
while or he wouldn’t get the Methodist practice.”
“We liked the sermon very much,” declared Anne boldly. “And I thought
the Methodist minister’s prayer was one of the most beautiful I ever
heard.”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt he can pray. I never heard anyone make more
beautiful prayers than old Simon Bentley, who was always drunk, or
hoping to be, and the drunker he was the better he prayed.”
“The Methodist minister is very fine looking,” said Anne, for the
benefit of the office door.
“Yes, he’s quite ornamental,” agreed Miss Cornelia. “Oh, and VERY
ladylike. And he thinks that every girl who looks at him falls in love
with him--as if a Methodist minister, wandering about like any Jew, was
such a prize! If you and the young doctor take MY advice, you won’t
have much to do with the Methodists. My motto is--if you ARE a
Presbyterian, BE a Presbyterian.”
“Don’t you think that Methodists go to heaven as well as
Presbyterians?” asked Anne smilelessly.
“That isn’t for US to decide. It’s in higher hands than ours,” said
Miss Cornelia solemnly. “But I ain’t going to associate with them on
earth whatever I may have to do in heaven. THIS Methodist minister
isn’t married. The last one they had was, and his wife was the
silliest, flightiest little thing I ever saw. I told her husband once
that he should have waited till she was grown up before he married her.
He said he wanted to have the training of her. Wasn’t that like a man?”
“It’s rather hard to decide just when people ARE grown up,” laughed
Anne.
“That’s a true word, dearie. Some are grown up when they’re born, and
others ain’t grown up when they’re eighty, believe ME. That same Mrs.
Roderick I was speaking of never grew up. She was as foolish when she
was a hundred as when she was ten.”
“Perhaps that was why she lived so long,” suggested Anne.
“Maybe ’twas. _I_’d rather live fifty sensible years than a hundred
foolish ones.”
“But just think what a dull world it would be if everyone was
sensible,” pleaded Anne.
Miss Cornelia disdained any skirmish of flippant epigram.
“Mrs. Roderick was a Milgrave, and the Milgraves never had much sense.
Her nephew, Ebenezer Milgrave, used to be insane for years. He
believed he was dead and used to rage at his wife because she wouldn’t
bury him. _I_’d a-done it.”
Miss Cornelia looked so grimly determined that Anne could almost see
her with a spade in her hand.
“Don’t you know ANY good husbands, Miss Bryant?”
“Oh, yes, lots of them--over yonder,” said Miss Cornelia, waving her
hand through the open window towards the little graveyard of the church
across the harbor.
“But living--going about in the flesh?” persisted Anne.
“Oh, there’s a few, just to show that with God all things are
possible,” acknowledged Miss Cornelia reluctantly. “I don’t deny that
an odd man here and there, if he’s caught young and trained up proper,
and if his mother has spanked him well beforehand, may turn out a
decent being. YOUR husband, now, isn’t so bad, as men go, from all I
hear. I s’pose”--Miss Cornelia looked sharply at Anne over her
glasses--“you think there’s nobody like him in the world.”
“There isn’t,” said Anne promptly.
“Ah, well, I heard another bride say that once,” sighed Miss Cornelia.
“Jennie Dean thought when she married that there wasn’t anybody like
HER husband in the world. And she was right--there wasn’t! And a good
thing, too, believe ME! He led her an awful life--and he was courting
his second wife while Jennie was dying.
“Wasn’t that like a man? However, I hope YOUR confidence will be
better justified, dearie. The young doctor is taking real well. I was
afraid at first he mightn’t, for folks hereabouts have always thought
old Doctor Dave the only doctor in the world. Doctor Dave hadn’t much
tact, to be sure--he was always talking of ropes in houses where
someone had hanged himself. But folks forgot their hurt feelings when
they had a pain in their stomachs. If he’d been a minister instead of
a doctor they’d never have forgiven him. Soul-ache doesn’t worry folks
near as much as stomach-ache. Seeing as we’re both Presbyterians and
no Methodists around, will you tell me your candid opinion of OUR
minister?”
“Why--really--I--well,” hesitated Anne.
Miss Cornelia nodded.
“Exactly. I agree with you, dearie. We made a mistake when we called
HIM. His face just looks like one of those long, narrow stones in the
graveyard, doesn’t it? ‘Sacred to the memory’ ought to be written on
his forehead. I shall never forget the first sermon he preached after
he came. It was on the subject of everyone doing what they were best
fitted for--a very good subject, of course; but such illustrations as
he used! He said, ‘If you had a cow and an apple tree, and if you tied
the apple tree in your stable and planted the cow in your orchard, with
her legs up, how much milk would you get from the apple tree, or how
many apples from the cow?’ Did you ever hear the like in your born
days, dearie? I was so thankful there were no Methodists there that
day--they’d never have been done hooting over it. But what I dislike
most in him is his habit of agreeing with everybody, no matter what is
said. If you said to him, ‘You’re a scoundrel,’ he’d say, with that
smooth smile of his, ‘Yes, that’s so.’ A minister should have more
backbone. The long and the short of it is, I consider him a reverend
jackass. But, of course, this is just between you and me. When there
are Methodists in hearing I praise him to the skies. Some folks think
his wife dresses too gay, but _I_ say when she has to live with a face
like that she needs something to cheer her up. You’ll never hear ME
condemning a woman for her dress. I’m only too thankful when her
husband isn’t too mean and miserly to allow it. Not that I bother much
with dress myself. Women just dress to please the men, and I’d never
stoop to THAT. I have had a real placid, comfortable life, dearie, and
it’s just because I never cared a cent what the men thought.”
“Why do you hate the men so, Miss Bryant?”
“Lord, dearie, I don’t hate them. They aren’t worth it. I just sort
of despise them. I think I’ll like YOUR husband if he keeps on as he
has begun. But apart from him about the only men in the world I’ve
much use for are the old doctor and Captain Jim.”
“Captain Jim is certainly splendid,” agreed Anne cordially.
“Captain Jim is a good man, but he’s kind of vexing in one way. You
CAN’T make him mad. I’ve tried for twenty years and he just keeps on
being placid. It does sort of rile me. And I s’pose the woman he
should have married got a man who went into tantrums twice a day.”
“Who was she?”
“Oh, I don’t know, dearie. I never remember of Captain Jim making up
to anybody. He was edging on old as far as my memory goes. He’s
seventy-six, you know. I never heard any reason for his staying a
bachelor, but there must be one, believe ME. He sailed all his life
till five years ago, and there’s no corner of the earth he hasn’t poked
his nose into. He and Elizabeth Russell were great cronies, all their
lives, but they never had any notion of sweet-hearting. Elizabeth
never married, though she had plenty of chances. She was a great
beauty when she was young. The year the Prince of Wales came to the
Island she was visiting her uncle in Charlottetown and he was a
Government official, and so she got invited to the great ball. She was
the prettiest girl there, and the Prince danced with her, and all the
other women he didn’t dance with were furious about it, because their
social standing was higher than hers and they said he shouldn’t have
passed them over. Elizabeth was always very proud of that dance. Mean
folks said that was why she never married--she couldn’t put up with an
ordinary man after dancing with a prince. But that wasn’t so. She
told me the reason once--it was because she had such a temper that she
was afraid she couldn’t live peaceably with any man. She HAD an awful
temper--she used to have to go upstairs and bite pieces out of her
bureau to keep it down by times. But I told her that wasn’t any reason
for not marrying if she wanted to. There’s no reason why we should let
the men have a monopoly of temper, is there, Mrs. Blythe, dearie?”
“I’ve a bit of temper myself,” sighed Anne.
“It’s well you have, dearie. You won’t be half so likely to be trodden
on, believe ME! My, how that golden glow of yours is blooming! Your
garden looks fine. Poor Elizabeth always took such care of it.”
“I love it,” said Anne. “I’m glad it’s so full of old-fashioned
flowers. Speaking of gardening, we want to get a man to dig up that
little lot beyond the fir grove and set it out with strawberry plants
for us. Gilbert is so busy he will never get time for it this fall.
Do you know anyone we can get?”
“Well, Henry Hammond up at the Glen goes out doing jobs like that.
He’ll do, maybe. He’s always a heap more interested in his wages than
in his work, just like a man, and he’s so slow in the uptake that he
stands still for five minutes before it dawns on him that he’s stopped.
His father threw a stump at him when he was small.
“Nice gentle missile, wasn’t it? So like a man! Course, the boy never
got over it. But he’s the only one I can recommend at all. He painted
my house for me last spring. It looks real nice now, don’t you think?”
Anne was saved by the clock striking five.
“Lord, is it that late?” exclaimed Miss Cornelia. “How time does slip
by when you’re enjoying yourself! Well, I must betake myself home.”
“No, indeed! You are going to stay and have tea with us,” said Anne
eagerly.
“Are you asking me because you think you ought to, or because you
really want to?” demanded Miss Cornelia.
“Because I really want to.”
“Then I’ll stay. YOU belong to the race that knows Joseph.”
“I know we are going to be friends,” said Anne, with the smile that
only they of the household of faith ever saw.
“Yes, we are, dearie. Thank goodness, we can choose our friends. We
have to take our relatives as they are, and be thankful if there are no
penitentiary birds among them. Not that I’ve many--none nearer than
second cousins. I’m a kind of lonely soul, Mrs. Blythe.”
There was a wistful note in Miss Cornelia’s voice.
“I wish you would call me Anne,” exclaimed Anne impulsively. “It would
seem more HOMEY. Everyone in Four Winds, except my husband, calls me
Mrs. Blythe, and it makes me feel like a stranger. Do you know that
your name is very near being the one I yearned after when I was a
child. I hated ‘Anne’ and I called myself ‘Cordelia’ in imagination.”
“I like Anne. It was my mother’s name. Old-fashioned names are the
best and sweetest in my opinion. If you’re going to get tea you might
send the young doctor to talk to me. He’s been lying on the sofa in
that office ever since I came, laughing fit to kill over what I’ve been
saying.”
“How did you know?” cried Anne, too aghast at this instance of Miss
Cornelia’s uncanny prescience to make a polite denial.
“I saw him sitting beside you when I came up the lane, and I know men’s
tricks,” retorted Miss Cornelia. “There, I’ve finished my little
dress, dearie, and the eighth baby can come as soon as it pleases.”