He made her life a misery to her. He tortured and humiliated her ... he LIKED to do it. Oh, he went to church regularly ... and made long prayers ... and paid his debts. But he was a tyrant and a bully ... his very dog ran when he heard him coming.
"I told Amy she would repent marrying him. I helped her make her wedding dress ... I'd rather have made her shroud. She was wild about him then, poor thing, but she hadn't been his wife a week before she knew what he was. His mother had been a slave and he expected his wife to be one. 'There will be no arguments in MY household,' he told her. She hadn't the spirit to argue ... her heart was broken. Oh, I know what she went through, my poor pretty darling. He crossed her in everything. She couldn't have a flower-garden ... she couldn't even have a kitten ... I gave her one and he drowned it. She had to account to him for every cent she spent. Did ever any of you see her in a decent stitch of clothes? He would fault her for wearing her best hat if it looked like rain. Rain couldn't hurt any hat SHE had, poor soul. Her that loved pretty clothes! He was always sneering at her people.
He never laughed in his life ... did any of you ever hear him really laugh? He smiled ... oh yes, he always smiled, calmly and sweetly when he was doing the most maddening things. He smiled when he told her after her little baby was born dead that she might as well have died, too, if she couldn't have anything but dead brats. She died after ten years of it ... and I was glad she had escaped him. I told him then I'd never enter his house again till I came to his funeral. Some of you heard me. I've kept my word and now I've come and told the truth about him. It IS the truth ... YOU know it" ... she pointed fiercely at Stephen Macdonald ... "YOU know it" ... the long finger darted at Camilla Blake ... "YOU know it" ... Olivia Kirk did not move a muscle ... "YOU know it" ... the poor minister himself felt as if that finger stabbed completely through him. "I cried at Peter Kirk's wedding but I told him I'd laugh at his funeral. And I am going to do it.”
She swished furiously about and bent over the casket. Wrongs that had festered for years had been avenged. She had wreaked her hatred at last. Her whole body vibrated with triumph and satisfaction as she looked down at the cold quiet face of a dead man. Everybody listened for the burst of vindictive laughter. It did not come. Clara Wilson's angry face suddenly changed ... twisted ... crumpled up like a child's. Clara was ... crying.
She turned, with the tears streaming down her ravaged cheeks, to leave the room. But Olivia Kirk rose before her and laid a hand on her arm. For a moment the two women looked at each other. The room was engulfed in a silence that seemed like a personal presence.
"Thank you, Clara Wilson," said Olivia Kirk. Her face was as inscrutable as ever but there was an undertone in her calm, even voice that made Anne shudder. She felt as if a pit had suddenly opened before her eyes. Clara Wilson might hate Peter Kirk, alive and dead, but Anne felt that her hatred was a pale thing compared to Olivia Kirk's.
Clara went out, weeping, passing an infuriated Jed with a spoiled funeral on his hands. The minister, who had intended to announce for a last hymn, "Asleep in Jesus," thought better of it and simply pronounced a tremulous benediction. Jed did not make the usual announcement that friends and relatives might now take a parting look at "the remains." The only decent thing to do, he felt, was to shut down the cover of the casket at once and bury Peter Kirk out of sight as soon as possible.
Anne drew a long breath as she went down the verandah steps. How lovely the cold fresh air was after that stifling, perfumed room where two women's bitterness had been as their torment.
The afternoon had grown colder and greyer. Little groups here and there on the lawn were discussing the affair with muted voices.
Clara Wilson could still be seen crossing a sere pasture field on her way home.
"Well, didn't that beat all?" said Nelson dazedly.
"Shocking ... shocking!" said Elder Baxter.
"Why didn't some of us stop her?" demanded Henry Reese.
"Because you all wanted to hear what she had to say," retorted Camilla.
"It wasn't ... decorous," said Uncle Sandy MacDougall. He had got hold of a word that pleased him and rolled it under his tongue.
"Not decorous. A funeral should be decorous whatever else it may be ... decorous.”
"Gosh, ain't life funny?" said Augustus Palmer.
"I mind when Peter and Amy began keeping company," mused old James Porter. "I was courting my woman that same winter. Clara was a fine-looking bit of goods then. And what a cherry pie she could make!”
"She was always a bitter-tongued girl," said Boyce Warren. "I suspected there'd be dynamite of some kind when I saw her coming but I didn't dream it would take that form. And Olivia! Would you have thought it? Weemen ARE a queer lot.”
"It will make quite a story for the rest of our lives," said Camilla. "After all, I suppose if things like this never happened history would be dull stuff.”
A demoralized Jed had got his pall-bearers rounded up and the casket carried out. As the hearse drove down the lane, followed by the slow-moving procession of buggies, a dog was heard howling heartbrokenly in the barn. Perhaps, after all, one living creature mourned Peter Kirk.
Stephen Macdonald joined Anne as she waited for Gilbert. He was a tall Upper Glen man with the head of an old Roman emperor. Anne had always liked him.
"Smells like snow," he said. "It always seems to me that November is a HOMESICK time. Does it ever strike you that way, Mrs.
Blythe?”
"Yes. The year is looking back sadly to her lost spring.”
"Spring ... spring! Mrs. Blythe, I'm getting old. I find myself imagining that the seasons are changing. Winter isn't what it was ... I don't recognize summer ... and spring ... there are NO springs now. At least, that's how we feel when folks we used to know don't come back to share them with us. Poor Clara Wilson now ... what did you think of it all?”
"Oh, it was heartbreaking. Such hatred ...”
"Ye-e-e-s. You see, she was in love with Peter herself long ago ... terribly in love. Clara was the handsomest girl in Mowbray Narrows then ... little dark curls all round her cream-white face ... but Amy was a laughing, lilting thing. Peter dropped Clara and took up with Amy. It's strange the way we're made, Mrs.
Blythe.”
There was an eerie stir in the wind-torn firs behind Kirkwynd; far away a snow-squall whitened over a hill where a row of lombardies stabbed the grey sky. Everybody was hurrying to get away before it reached Mowbray Narrows.
"Have I any right to be so happy when other women are so miserable?” Anne wondered to herself as they drove home, remembering Olivia Kirk's eyes as she thanked Clara Wilson.
Anne got up from her window. It was nearly twelve years ago now.
Clara Wilson was dead and Olivia Kirk had gone to the coast where she had married again. She had been much younger than Peter.
"Time is kinder than we think," thought Anne. "It's a dreadful mistake to cherish bitterness for years ... hugging it to our hearts like a treasure. But I think the story of what happened at Peter Kirk's funeral is one which Walter must never know. It was certainly no story for children.”
Chapter 34
Rilla sat on the verandah steps at Ingleside with one knee crossed over the other ... such adorable little fat brown knees! ... very busy being unhappy. And if anyone asks why a petted little puss should be unhappy that inquirer must have forgotten her own childhood when things that were the merest trifles to grownups were dark and dreadful tragedies to her. Rilla was lost in deeps of despair because Susan had told her she was going to bake one of her silver-and-gold cakes for the Orphanage social that evening and she, Rilla, must carry it to the church in the afternoon.