Chapter XXIV

Enter Jonas

“PROSPECT POINT,

“August 20th.

“Dear Anne—spelled—with—an—E,” wrote Phil, “I must prop my eyelids open

long enough to write you. I’ve neglected you shamefully this summer,

honey, but all my other correspondents have been neglected, too. I have

a huge pile of letters to answer, so I must gird up the loins of my

mind and hoe in. Excuse my mixed metaphors. I’m fearfully sleepy. Last

night Cousin Emily and I were calling at a neighbor’s. There were

several other callers there, and as soon as those unfortunate creatures

left, our hostess and her three daughters picked them all to pieces. I

knew they would begin on Cousin Emily and me as soon as the door shut

behind us. When we came home Mrs. Lilly informed us that the aforesaid

neighbor’s hired boy was supposed to be down with scarlet fever. You

can always trust Mrs. Lilly to tell you cheerful things like that. I

have a horror of scarlet fever. I couldn’t sleep when I went to bed for

thinking of it. I tossed and tumbled about, dreaming fearful dreams

when I did snooze for a minute; and at three I wakened up with a high

fever, a sore throat, and a raging headache. I knew I had scarlet

fever; I got up in a panic and hunted up Cousin Emily’s ‘doctor book’

to read up the symptoms. Anne, I had them all. So I went back to bed,

and knowing the worst, slept like a top the rest of the night. Though

why a top should sleep sounder than anything else I never could

understand. But this morning I was quite well, so it couldn’t have been

the fever. I suppose if I did catch it last night it couldn’t have

developed so soon. I can remember that in daytime, but at three o’clock

at night I never can be logical.

“I suppose you wonder what I’m doing at Prospect Point. Well, I always

like to spend a month of summer at the shore, and father insists that I

come to his second-cousin Emily’s ‘select boardinghouse’ at Prospect

Point. So a fortnight ago I came as usual. And as usual old ‘Uncle Mark

Miller’ brought me from the station with his ancient buggy and what he

calls his ‘generous purpose’ horse. He is a nice old man and gave me a

handful of pink peppermints. Peppermints always seem to me such a

religious sort of candy—I suppose because when I was a little girl

Grandmother Gordon always gave them to me in church. Once I asked,

referring to the smell of peppermints, ‘Is that the odor of sanctity?’

I didn’t like to eat Uncle Mark’s peppermints because he just fished

them loose out of his pocket, and had to pick some rusty nails and

other things from among them before he gave them to me. But I wouldn’t

hurt his dear old feelings for anything, so I carefully sowed them

along the road at intervals. When the last one was gone, Uncle Mark

said, a little rebukingly, ‘Ye shouldn’t a’et all them candies to onct,

Miss Phil. You’ll likely have the stummick-ache.’

“Cousin Emily has only five boarders besides myself—four old ladies and

one young man. My right-hand neighbor is Mrs. Lilly. She is one of

those people who seem to take a gruesome pleasure in detailing all

their many aches and pains and sicknesses. You cannot mention any

ailment but she says, shaking her head, ‘Ah, I know too well what that

is’—and then you get all the details. Jonas declares he once spoke of

locomotor ataxia in hearing and she said she knew too well what that

was. She suffered from it for ten years and was finally cured by a

traveling doctor.

“Who is Jonas? Just wait, Anne Shirley. You’ll hear all about Jonas in

the proper time and place. He is not to be mixed up with estimable old

ladies.

“My left-hand neighbor at the table is Mrs. Phinney. She always speaks

with a wailing, dolorous voice—you are nervously expecting her to burst

into tears every moment. She gives you the impression that life to her

is indeed a vale of tears, and that a smile, never to speak of a laugh,

is a frivolity truly reprehensible. She has a worse opinion of me than

Aunt Jamesina, and she doesn’t love me hard to atone for it, as Aunty

J. does, either.

“Miss Maria Grimsby sits cati-corner from me. The first day I came I

remarked to Miss Maria that it looked a little like rain—and Miss Maria

laughed. I said the road from the station was very pretty—and Miss

Maria laughed. I said there seemed to be a few mosquitoes left yet—and

Miss Maria laughed. I said that Prospect Point was as beautiful as

ever—and Miss Maria laughed. If I were to say to Miss Maria, ‘My father

has hanged himself, my mother has taken poison, my brother is in the

penitentiary, and I am in the last stages of consumption,’ Miss Maria

would laugh. She can’t help it—she was born so; but is very sad and

awful.

“The fifth old lady is Mrs. Grant. She is a sweet old thing; but she

never says anything but good of anybody and so she is a very

uninteresting conversationalist.

“And now for Jonas, Anne.

“That first day I came I saw a young man sitting opposite me at the

table, smiling at me as if he had known me from my cradle. I knew, for

Uncle Mark had told me, that his name was Jonas Blake, that he was a

Theological Student from St. Columbia, and that he had taken charge of

the Point Prospect Mission Church for the summer.

“He is a very ugly young man—really, the ugliest young man I’ve ever

seen. He has a big, loose-jointed figure with absurdly long legs. His

hair is tow-color and lank, his eyes are green, and his mouth is big,

and his ears—but I never think about his ears if I can help it.

“He has a lovely voice—if you shut your eyes he is adorable—and he

certainly has a beautiful soul and disposition.

“We were good chums right way. Of course he is a graduate of Redmond,

and that is a link between us. We fished and boated together; and we

walked on the sands by moonlight. He didn’t look so homely by moonlight

and oh, he was nice. Niceness fairly exhaled from him. The old

ladies—except Mrs. Grant—don’t approve of Jonas, because he laughs and

jokes—and because he evidently likes the society of frivolous me better

than theirs.

“Somehow, Anne, I don’t want him to think me frivolous. This is

ridiculous. Why should I care what a tow-haired person called Jonas,

whom I never saw before thinks of me?

“Last Sunday Jonas preached in the village church. I went, of course,

but I couldn’t realize that Jonas was going to preach. The fact that he

was a minister—or going to be one—persisted in seeming a huge joke to

me.

“Well, Jonas preached. And, by the time he had preached ten minutes, I

felt so small and insignificant that I thought I must be invisible to

the naked eye. Jonas never said a word about women and he never looked

at me. But I realized then and there what a pitiful, frivolous,

small-souled little butterfly I was, and how horribly different I must

be from Jonas’ ideal woman. _She_ would be grand and strong and noble.

He was so earnest and tender and true. He was everything a minister

ought to be. I wondered how I could ever have thought him ugly—but he

really is!—with those inspired eyes and that intellectual brow which

the roughly-falling hair hid on week days.

“It was a splendid sermon and I could have listened to it forever, and

it made me feel utterly wretched. Oh, I wish I was like _you_, Anne.

“He caught up with me on the road home, and grinned as cheerfully as

usual. But his grin could never deceive me again. I had seen the _real_

Jonas. I wondered if he could ever see the _real Phil_—whom _nobody_,

not even you, Anne, has ever seen yet.

“‘Jonas,’ I said—I forgot to call him Mr. Blake. Wasn’t it dreadful?

But there are times when things like that don’t matter—‘Jonas, you were

born to be a minister. You _couldn’t_ be anything else.’

“‘No, I couldn’t,’ he said soberly. ‘I tried to be something else for a

long time—I didn’t want to be a minister. But I came to see at last

that it was the work given me to do—and God helping me, I shall try to

do it.’

“His voice was low and reverent. I thought that he would do his work

and do it well and nobly; and happy the woman fitted by nature and

training to help him do it. _She_ would be no feather, blown about by

every fickle wind of fancy. _She_ would always know what hat to put on.

Probably she would have only one. Ministers never have much money. But

she wouldn’t mind having one hat or none at all, because she would have

Jonas.

“Anne Shirley, don’t you dare to say or hint or think that I’ve fallen

in love with Mr. Blake. Could _I_ care for a lank, poor, ugly

theologue—named Jonas? As Uncle Mark says, ‘It’s impossible, and what’s

more it’s improbable.’

“Good night,

PHIL.”

“P.S. It is impossible—but I am horribly afraid it’s true. I’m happy

and wretched and scared. _He_ can _never_ care for me, I know. Do you

think I could ever develop into a passable minister’s wife, Anne? And

_would_ they expect me to lead in prayer? P G.”