“I like cats as IS cats. I don’t like cats as is women,” was Alec’s cryptic reply.
Janet came home in the twilight.
“Mrs. Douglas is dead,” she said wearily. “She died soon after I got there. She
just spoke to me once—‘I suppose you’ll marry John now?’ she said. It cut me to
the heart, Anne. To think John’s own mother thought I wouldn’t marry him
because of her! I couldn’t say a word either—there were other women there. I
was thankful John had gone out.”
Janet began to cry drearily. But Anne brewed her a hot drink of ginger tea to
her comforting. To be sure, Anne discovered later on that she had used white
pepper instead of ginger; but Janet never knew the difference.
The evening after the funeral Janet and Anne were sitting on the front porch
steps at sunset. The wind had fallen asleep in the pinelands and lurid sheets of
heat-lightning flickered across the northern skies. Janet wore her ugly black
dress and looked her very worst, her eyes and nose red from crying. They talked
little, for Janet seemed faintly to resent Anne’s efforts to cheer her up. She
plainly preferred to be miserable.
Suddenly the gate-latch clicked and John Douglas strode into the garden. He
walked towards them straight over the geranium bed. Janet stood up. So did
Anne. Anne was a tall girl and wore a white dress; but John Douglas did not see
her.
“Janet,” he said, “will you marry me?”
The words burst out as if they had been wanting to be said for twenty years
and MUST be uttered now, before anything else.
Janet’s face was so red from crying that it couldn’t turn any redder, so it
turned a most unbecoming purple.
“Why didn’t you ask me before?” she said slowly.
“I couldn’t. She made me promise not to—mother made me promise not to.
Nineteen years ago she took a terrible spell. We thought she couldn’t live
through it. She implored me to promise not to ask you to marry me while she
was alive. I didn’t want to promise such a thing, even though we all thought she
couldn’t live very long—the doctor only gave her six months. But she begged it
on her knees, sick and suffering. I had to promise.”
“What had your mother against me?” cried Janet.
“Nothing—nothing. She just didn’t want another woman—ANY woman—
there while she was living. She said if I didn’t promise she’d die right there and
I’d have killed her. So I promised. And she’s held me to that promise ever since,