Anne of Windy Willows by Lucy Maud Montgomery

grace. Mrs Cyrus, blushing beet-red, murmured almost inaudibly, ‘For what we are about to receive the Lord make us truly thankful.’ The meal started badly, for nervous Esme dropped her fork on the floor. Everybody except Cyrus jumped, because their nerves were likewise keyed up to the highest pitch. Cyrus glared at Esme out of his bulging blue eyes in a kind of enraged stillness. Then he glared at everybody and froze them into dumbness. He glared at poor Mrs Cyrus when she took a helping of horseradish sauce with a glare that reminded her of her weak stomach. She couldn’t eat any of it after that, and she was so fond of it. She couldn’t believe it would hurt her. But, for that matter, she couldn’t eat anything, nor could Esme. They only pretended. The meal proceeded in a ghastly silence, broken by spasmodic speeches about the weather from Trix and Anne. Trix implored Anne with her eyes to talk, but Anne found herself for once in her life with absolutely nothing to say. She felt desperately that she
must
talk, but only the most idiotic things came into her head, things that it would be impossible to utter aloud. Was everyone bewitched? It was curious the effect one sulky, stubborn man had on you. Anne couldn’t have believed it possible. And there was no doubt that he was really quite happy in the knowledge that he had made everybody at his table horribly uncomfortable. What on earth was going on in his mind? Would he jump if anyone stuck a pin in him? Anne wanted to slap him, rap his knuckles, stand him in a corner – treat him like the spoiled child he really was, in spite of his spiky grey hair and truculent moustaches.
    Above all she wanted to make him
speak
. She felt instinctively that nothing in the world would punish him so much as to be tricked into speaking when he was determined not to.
    Suppose she got up and deliberately smashed that huge, hideous, old-fashioned vase on the table in the corner, an ornate thing covered with wreaths of roses and leaves which was most difficult to dust, but which must be kept immaculately clean? Anne knew that the whole family hated it, but Cyrus Taylor would not hear of having it banished to the attic, because it had been his mother’s. Anne thought she would do it fearlessly if she really believed that it would make Cyrus explode into vocal anger.
    Why didn’t Lennox Carter talk? If he would she, Anne, could talk too, and perhaps Trix and Pringle would escape from the spell that bound them, and some kind of conversation would be possible. But he simply
sat
there and ate. Perhaps he thought it was really the best thing to do. Perhaps he was afraid of saying something that would still further enrage the evidently already enraged parent of his lady.
    ‘Will you please start the pickles, Miss Shirley?’ said Mrs Taylor faintly.
    Something wicked stirred in Anne. She started the pickles – and something else. Without letting herself stop to think she bent forward, her great grey-green eyes glimmering limpidly, and said gently, ‘Perhaps you would be surprised to hear, Dr Carter, that Mr Taylor went deaf very suddenly last week?’
    Anne sat back, having thrown her bomb. She could not tell precisely what she expected or hoped. If Dr Carter got the impression that his host was deaf instead of in a towering rage of silence it might loosen his tongue. She had
not
told a falsehood. She had
not
said Cyrus Taylor
was
deaf. As for Cyrus Taylor, if she had hoped to make him speak she had failed. He merely glared at her, still in silence.
    But Anne’s remark had an effect on Trix and Pringle that she had never dreamed of. Trix was in a silent rage herself. She had, the moment before Anne had hurled her rhetorical question, seen Esme furtively wipe away a tear that had escaped from one of her despairing blue eyes. Everything was hopeless. Lennox Carter would never ask Esme to marry him now. It didn’t matter any more what anyone said or did. Trix was suddenly possessed with a