The Blythes Are Quoted (21 page)

Anne Blythe

ANNE
,
laughing:
- “I wrote that poem twenty years ago at Redmond ... and never could get an editor to accept it.”

SUSAN
,
over her knitting:
- “Which shows what poor judgment they had, Mrs. Dr. dear. But, speaking of apple blossoms, I am afraid we shall have a very poor crop this year. There are hardly any blossoms.”

WALTER
:- “But there are always new moons. I saw one last night in Rainbow Valley.”

SUSAN
:- “I admit I have seen hills that seemed to be praying. ‘Don’t be so fanciful, Susan,’ my mother used to say. But as for the Green Folk, if you mean fairies, the less truck you have with them the better, in my humble opinion, Mrs. Dr. dear, even if they existed, which they do not.”

WALTER
:- “How do you know, Susan?”

SUSAN
:- “Because I’ve never seen one.” walter:- “Have you ever seen a pyramid?”

SUSAN
,
admiringly:
- “There’s no getting ahead of you.”

DR. BLYTHE
:- “It should be ‘green’ house, not ‘grey,’ shouldn’t it?”

ANNE
:- “Yes, but grey sounded more romantic to me then.”

DR. BLYTHE
:- “I remember the June lilies at Green Gables ... but as far as being a slave of time goes we are all that in one way or another, Anne-girl.”

SUSAN
:- “But a good deal depends on who is your master.”

JEM
:- “Gold, whether tarnished or not, is a very necessary thing in this world, mother.”

SUSAN
:- “Good sound sense for you.”

DR. BLYTHE
:- “So long as you are not its slave, Jem. Perhaps that is why the editors wouldn’t take your poem, Anne. They saw too little gold to be sympathetic with your scorn of it.”

When Anthony Fingold left home on Saturday evening he intended merely to go down to the store at Glen St. Mary to get the bottle of liniment Clara wanted. Then he would come back and go to bed.

There would be nothing else to do, he sadly reflected. Get up in the morning ... work all day ... eat three meals ... and go to bed at half past nine. What a life!

Clara didn’t seem to mind it. None of his neighbours in the Upper Glen seemed to mind it. Apparently they never got tired of the old routine. They hadn’t enough imagination to realize what they were missing, probably.

When he remarked gloomily at the supper table ... it couldn’t be denied that Clara cooked excellent suppers, though it never entered Anthony’s head to tell her so ...

“There ain’t been anything exciting in this part of the Island this summer ... not even a funeral,”

Clara had calmly reminded him that the Barnard washing at Mowbray Narrows had been stolen three weeks ago and that there had been a robbery at Carter Flagg’s store at Glen St. Mary several weeks before ... and then she passed him the ginger cookies.

Did she think ginger cookies a substitute for impassioned longings and mad, wild, glamorous adventures?

Then she added insult to injury by remarking that Carter Flagg was offering bargains in pyjamas!

It was the one source of difference between him and Clara that she wanted him to wear pyjamas and he was determined he would never wear anything but nightshirts.

“Dr. Blythe wears pyjamas,” Clara would say mournfully.

Anthony thought there was nobody on earth worth mentioning in the same breath with Dr. Blythe. Even his wife was a rather intelligent woman. As for Susan Baker, maid-of-all-work at Ingleside, he had been at feud with her for years. He always suspected that she put Clara up to the pyjama idea. In which he did them both a grievous wrong.

As for the Mowbray Narrows washing, of course it would have to be at Mowbray Narrows! No such good fortune for the Upper Glen or the Fingolds. And what did the robbery at Carter Flagg’s store matter? Carter had lost only ten dollars and a roll of flannel. Why, it wasn’t worth mentioning. And yet people had talked about it for days. Susan Baker had been up one evening and she and Clara had talked of nothing else ... unless the whispered conversation on the doorstep when Susan took her departure had to do with pyjamas. Anthony strongly suspected it had. He had seen the doctor buying a pair in Carter Flagg’s store not long ago.

Anthony had never done anything more adventurous in his life than climb a tree or throw a stone at a strange dog. But that was Fate’s fault, not his. Given anything of a chance he felt that he had it in him to be William Tell or Richard Coeur de Lion or any other of the world’s gallant adventurers. But he had been born a Fingold of the Upper Glen in Prince Edward Island, so he had no chance of being a hero. It was all very well for Dr. Blythe to say the graveyards were full of men who had been greater heroes than any mentioned in history, but everyone knew the doctor’s wife was romantic.

And had William Tell ever worn pyjamas? Not very likely. What
did
he wear? Why did books never tell you the things you really wanted to know? What a boon it would be if he could show Clara in a printed book that some great hero of history or romance had worn a nightshirt!

He
had
asked somebody once ... and the somebody ... he had forgotten who he was ... had said he didn’t think they wore anything in those days.

But that was indecent. He couldn’t tell anything like that to Clara.

Sometimes he thought it would have been a great thing even to have been a highwayman. Yes, with any luck he could have been a highwayman. Prowling all night as they did, they might not need either nightshirts or pyjamas.

Of course a great many of them got hanged ... but at least they had
lived
before death. And he could have been as bold and bad as he wanted to be, dancing corantos on moonlit heaths with scores of voluptuous, enticing ladies ... they might as well be princesses while they were about it ... and of course he would return their jewels or gold for the dance. Oh, what life might have been! The Methodist minister in Lowbridge had preached once on “Dreams of what we might have been.” Though he and Clara were rigid Presbyterians they happened to be visiting Methodist friends, so went with them.

Clara thought the sermon a very fine one. As if she ever had dreams! Unless it was of seeing him decked out in pyjamas! She was perfectly contented with her narrow existence. So was everybody he knew, or he thought so.

Well ... Anthony sighed ... it all came to this. He was only little, thin, pepper-and-salt Anthony Fingold, general handyman of the Glens, and the only excitement that ever came his way was stealing cream for the cat.

Clara found out about his stealing it but not until the cat had lapped it. She never scolded about it ... though he had a horrid conviction that she told Susan Baker all about it. What else would they be laughing about? He found himself hoping Susan would not tell Dr. or Mrs. Blythe. It was so paltry. And they might not think it was the proper thing for a church elder.

But he resented Clara’s calm acceptance of his crime. All she said was,

“That cat is as fat as butter now. And you could have all the cream you wanted for him if you had asked for it.”

“She won’t even quarrel with me,” thought Anthony in exasperation. “If she’d only get mad once in a while things wouldn’t be so tame. They say Tom Crossbee and his wife fight every day ... and that scratch he had on his face last Sunday was one she gave him. Even that would be something. But the only thing that riles Clara is that I won’t wear pyjamas. And even then she doesn’t say much except that they are more up-to-date. Well, I must endure my life as everyone else does ... ‘God pity us all, who vainly the dreams of our youth recall.’”

Anthony couldn’t remember where he had heard or learned those lines. But they certainly hit the mark. He sighed.

He met nobody but a tramp on his way to the store. The tramp had boots ... of a sort ... but no socks. His bare skin showed through the holes in his shirt. He was smoking and looked very contented and happy.

Anthony envied him. Why, this man could sleep out all night if he wanted to ... likely he did, with the whole sky for a roof. Nobody would pester him to wear pyjamas. How delightful it must be not to have any idea where you were going to sleep at night!

Dr. Blythe whirled by him in his new car. But he was so near to the Glen store that he did not offer him a ride. Anthony was just as well pleased. He liked Dr. Blythe ... but he always had a secret suspicion that the doctor was laughing at him. Besides, he had heard too much about his pyjamas.

Why did adventures come to everybody but him, Anthony Fingold? Old Sam Smallwood down at the Harbour Mouth was suspected of having been a pirate in his youth ... or of having been captured by pirates ... Anthony was not quite sure which. Old Sam always contrived to give the impression that it had been the former but the Smallwoods always liked to make themselves big. Jim Millar had narrowly escaped death in a train collision ... Ned MacAllister had been through a San Francisco earthquake ... even old Frank Carter had caught a hen thief single-handed and had been a witness in court.

Every man-jack of them had something to tell or talk about when tales were going round at night in Carter’s store ... several of them had been written up in Delia Bradley’s series of Island notables in the Charlottetown
Enterprise
. But he had never had his name in the paper except when he was married.

He had never sown any wild oats ... that was the trouble. So there was no harvest ... no enjoyment to look forward to ... nothing but years of monotony ... and then die in bed. In bed! Anthony groaned in spirit over such a colourless death. The only comfort was that it would be in a nightshirt. Fancy dying in pyjamas! He must put that idea up to Clara the next time she wanted him to get pyjamas. He had an idea that it would shock her a bit, in spite of her modern whims.

He had never even been drunk! Of course now it wouldn’t do for an elder in the church to get drunk. But when he was young! Abner MacAllister was an elder now, too, but
he
had been drunk many a time in his youth, before he got converted.
Durn it, had you to miss everything just for the sake of being an elder in middle life or old age?

It wasn’t worth it!

He remembered that he had heard that Jimmy Flagg wore pyjamas ... and Jimmy was an elder. But then everyone knew what his wife was. Perhaps even the minister wore them. The idea came to Anthony with a shock. It had never occurred to him before. He felt that he could never enjoy Mr. Meredith’s sermons as much again. He could forgive him all his absent-minded doings ... even his marrying again, which Anthony did not approve of ... but a minister who slept in pyjamas! He
must
find out. It would be easy enough. Susan Baker would know. She could see the washing line from Ingleside. But could he bring himself to ask her? No, never.

He would go down to the Glen some Monday and see for himself. Now that the question had entered his mind it must be answered.

They would never have elected him elder, he reflected, as he trotted along the village street, if they had known what a desperate fellow he was in reality. They never dreamed of the wild adventures and glorious deeds he was constantly having and performing in imagination.

When he raked and burned leaves on Sara Allenby’s lawn he was fighting Indians on old frontiers; while he painted George Robinson’s barn he was discovering a gold mine on the Rand; while he helped Marshall Elliott haul in his hay he was rescuing a beauteous maiden from drowning at great risk to himself; while he was putting up the storm windows at Ingleside he was blazing trails through primeval forests, treading where no other foot had trod; when he unloaded Augustus Palmer’s coal he was being taken captive by a cannibal king on some savage island; while he helped Trench
Moore cut ice he was stalking tigers in equatorial jungles; while he chopped wood and puttered about the garden he was in splendid peril exploring Polar seas; when he sat in church by the side of his impeccable Clara, in her honey-coloured Sunday crimps, he was robbing temples in Burma of emeralds as large as pigeon eggs ... or should it be rubies?

But his dreams, though they satisfied some dramatic urge in him, left him always with a mournful conviction that he had missed the best in life. Dreams would never make Caroline Wilkes look at him admiringly. And that was, and always had been, the master dream of Anthony Fingold’s life ... the one he could never have spoken about to anyone ... to make Caroline Wilkes ...
nee
Caroline Mallard ... look at him admiringly. All poor Clara’s years of devotion were as nothing compared to that never-seen, never-to-be-seen admiration in Caroline’s eyes.

Anthony heard a bit of news at the store which made him decide to return to the Upper Glen by the lower road. It was much longer than the upper road and much less interesting, there being no house along it, except Westlea ... the summer home the Wilkes family had built for themselves.

But Carter Flagg said the Wilkes were already at Westlea, coming early on account of the old lady’s health. When Anthony anxiously enquired what was the matter with her Flagg said carelessly he had heard it was some kind of attacks ... a heart condition, so Susan Baker had been heard to say ... and this year, said Carter Flagg, she must be worse than common for they had brought a nurse with them and it was rumoured Dr. Blythe had been there more than once. He added that old lady Wilkes had always thought there was no one like Dr. Blythe, though she had been to specialists all over the world.

Anthony thought that, if he went home by the lower road, he might get a glimpse of Caroline if she happened to be about the grounds.

It was, he reflected sadly, a long time since he had seen her. She had not been in any of the churches around there for years. For the last two summers she had never been seen outside of Westlea ... that is, since it had been built.

Caroline Wilkes was ... and always had been ... the deeply cherished romantic passion of Anthony Fingold’s life. When she had been little Caroline Mallard, going to Lowbridge school, he had worshipped her from afar. The Fingolds lived in Lowbridge then, and all the little boys of the school had worshipped Caroline Mallard.