Anne of Ingleside (34 page)

‘Set here,’ said Thomasine kindly, pushing forward a rocker with a gay patched cushion. ‘I’ll move that callow lily out of your way. Wait till I get my lower plate in. I look funny with it out, don’t I? But it hurts me a mite. There, I’ll talk clearer now.’

A spotted cat, uttering all kinds of fancy meows, came forward to greet them. Oh, for the greyhounds of a vanished dream!

‘That cat’s a fine ratter,’ said Thomasine. ‘This place is overrun with rats. But it keeps the rain out, and I got sick of living round with relations. Couldn’t call my soul my own. Ordered round as if I was dirt. Jim’s wife was the worst. Complained because I was making faces at the moon one night. Well, what if I was? Did it hurt the moon? Sez I, “I ain’t going to be a pin-cushion any longer.” So I come here on my own, and here I’ll stay as long as I have the use of my legs. Now, what’ll you have? Can I make you an onion sandwich?’

‘No… no, thank you.’

‘They’re fine when you have a cold. I’ve been having one… notice how hoarse I am? But I just tie a piece of red flannel with turpentine and goose-grease on it round my throat when I go to bed. Nothing better.’

Red flannel and goose-grease! Not to speak of turpentine!

‘If you won’t have a sandwich… sure you won’t?… I’ll see what’s in the cookie box.’

The cookies, cut in the shape of roosters and ducks, were surprisingly good and fairly melted in your mouth. Mrs Fair beamed at Nan out of her round, faded eyes.

‘Now you’ll like me, won’t you? I like to have little girls like me.’

‘I’ll try,’ gasped Nan, who at that moment was hating poor Thomasine Fair as we can hate only those who destroy our illusions.

‘I’ve got some little grandchildren of my own out west, you know.’

Grandchildren!

‘I’ll show you their pictures. Pretty, ain’t they? That’s poor dear Poppa’s picture up there. Twenty years since he died.’

Poor dear Poppa’s picture was a large ‘crayon’ of a bearded man with a curly fringe of white hair surrounding a bald head.

Oh, lover disdained!

‘He was a good husband though he was bald at thirty,’ said Mrs Fair fondly. ‘My, but I had the pick of the beaux when I was a girl. I’m old now, but I had a fine time when I was young. The beaux on Sunday nights! Trying to sit each other out! And me holding up my head as haughty as any queen! Poppa was among them from the start, but at first I hadn’t nothing to say to him. I liked ’em a bit more dashing. There was Andrew Metcalf now… I was as near as no matter running away with him. But I knew ’twould be unlucky. Don’t you ever run away. It
is
unlucky and don’t let anyone ever tell you different.’

‘I… I… indeed I won’t.’

‘In the end I married Poppa. His patience gave out finally and he gave me twenty-four hours to take him or leave him. My pa wanted me to settle down. He got nervous when Jim Hewitt drowned himself because I wouldn’t have him. Poppa and I were real happy when we got used to each other. He said I suited him because I didn’t do too much thinking. Poppa held women weren’t made for thinking. He said it made ’em dried-up and unnatural. Baked beans disagreed with him turrible, and he had spells of lumbago, but my balmagilia balsam always straightened that out. There was a specialist in town said he could cure him permanent, but Poppa always said if you got into the hands of them specialists they’d never let you out again… never. I miss him to feed the pig. He was real fond of pork. I never eat a bit of bacon but I think of him. That picture opposite Poppa is Queen Victoria. Sometimes I say to her, “If they stripped all them lace and jewels off you, my dear, I doubt if you’d be any better looking than I am.” ’

Before she let Nan go she insisted on her taking a bag of peppermints, a pink glass slipper for holding flowers, and a glass of gooseberry jelly. ‘That’s for your ma. I’ve always had good luck with my gooseberry jelly. I’m coming down to Ingleside some day. I want to see them chiney dogs of yours. Tell Susan Baker I’m much obliged for that mess of turnip greens she sent me in the spring.’

Turnip greens!

‘I meant to thank her at Jacob Warren’s funeral, but she got away too quick. I like to take my time at funerals. There hasn’t been one for a month. I always think it’s a dull old time when there’s no funerals going. There’s always a fine lot of funerals over Low-bridge way. It don’t seem fair. Come again and see me, won’t you? You’ve got something about you… “loving favour is better than silver and gold”, the Good Book says, and I guess it’s right.’

She smiled very pleasantly at Nan… she
had
a sweet smile. In it you saw the pretty Thomasine of long ago. Nan managed another smile herself. Her eyes were stinging. She
must
get away before she cried outright.

‘Nice, well-behaved leetle creetur,’ mused old Thomasine Fair, looking out of her window after Nan. ‘Hasn’t got her ma’s gift of the gab, but maybe none the worse of that. Most of the kids today think they’re smart when they’re just being sassy. That little thing’s visit has kind of made me feel young again.’

Thomasine sighed and went out to finish cutting her marigolds and hoeing up some of the burdocks.

‘Thank goodness I’ve kept limber,’ she reflected.

Nan went back to Ingleside the poorer by a lost dream. A dell full of daisies could not lure her… singing water called to her in vain. She wanted to get home and shut herself away from human eyes. Two girls she met giggled after they passed her. Were they laughing at her? How everybody would laugh if they knew! Silly little Nan Blythe who had spun a romance of cobweb fancies about a pale queen of mystery and found instead poor Poppa’s widow and peppermints.

Peppermints!

Nan would not cry. Big girls of ten must not cry. But she felt indescribably dreary. Something precious and beautiful was gone… lost… a secret store of joy which, so she believed, could never be hers again. She found Ingleside filled with the delicious smell of spice cookies, but she did not go into the kitchen to coax some out of Susan. At supper her appetite was noticeably to seek, even though she read castor oil in Susan’s eye. Anne had noticed that Nan had been very quiet since her return from the old MacAllister place… Nan, who sang literally from daylight to dark and after. Had the long walk on a hot day been too much for the child?

‘Why that anguished expression, daughter?’ she asked casually, when she went into the twins’ room at dusk with fresh towels and found Nan curled up on the window seat, instead of being down stalking tigers in equatorial jungles with the others in Rainbow Valley.

Nan hadn’t meant to tell
anybody
that she had been so silly. But somehow things told themselves to Mother.

‘Oh, Mother, is
everything
in life a disappointment?’

‘Not everything, dear. Would you like to tell me what disappointed you today?’

‘Oh, Mummy, Thomasine Fair is… is
good
! And her nose turns up!’

‘But why,’ asked Anne in honest bewilderment, ‘should you care whether her nose turns up or down?’

It all came out then. Anne listened with her usual serious face, praying that she be not betrayed into a stifled shriek of laughter. She remembered the child she had been at old Green Gables. She remembered the Haunted Wood and two small girls who had been terribly frightened by their own pretendings thereof. And she knew the dreadful bitterness of losing a dream.

‘You mustn’t take the vanishing of your fancies so much to heart, dear.’

‘I can’t help it,’ said Nan despairingly. ‘If I had my life to live over again I’d never imagine
anything
. And I never will again.’

‘My foolish dear… my
dear
foolish dear, don’t say that. An imagination is a wonderful thing to have… but like every gift, we must possess it and not let it possess us. You take your imaginings a wee bit too seriously. Oh, it’s delightful… I know that rapture. But you must learn to keep on this side of the borderline between the real and the unreal.
Then
the power to escape at will into a beautiful world of your own will help you amazingly through the hard places of life. I can always solve a problem more easily after I’ve had a voyage or two to the Island of Enchantment.’

Nan felt her self-respect coming back to her with these words of comfort and wisdom. Mother did not think it so silly after all. And no doubt there was somewhere in the world a Wicked, Beautiful Lady with Mysterious Eyes, even if she did not live in the GLOOMY HOUSE… which, now that Nan came to think of it, was not such a bad place after all, with its orange marigolds and its friendly spotted cat and its geraniums and poor dear Poppa’s picture. It was really rather a jolly place and perhaps some day she would go and see Thomasine Fair again and get some more of those nice cookies. She did not hate Thomasine any longer.

‘What a nice mother you are!’ she sighed, in the shelter and sanctuary of those beloved arms.

A violet-grey dusk was coming over the hill. The summer night darkened about them… a night of velvet and whispers. A star came out over the big apple-tree. When Mrs Marshall Elliott came and Mother had to go down, Nan was happy again. Mother had said she was going to repaper their room with a lovely buttercup yellow paper and get a new cedar chest for her and Di to keep things in. Only it would not be a cedar chest. It would be an enchanted treasure chest which could not be opened unless certain mystic words were pronounced. One word the Witch of the Snow might whisper to you, the cold and lovely white Witch of the Snow. A wind might tell you another as it passed you… a sad, grey wind that mourned. Sooner or later you would find all the words and open the chest, to find it filled with pearls and rubies and diamonds galore. Wasn’t galore a nice word?

Oh, the old magic had not gone. The world was still full of it.

‘Can I be your dearest friend this year?’ asked Delilah Green, during the afternoon recess.

Delilah had very round, dark blue eyes, sleek sugar-brown curls, a small rosy mouth, and a thrilling voice with a little quaver in it. Diana Blythe responded to the charm of that voice instantly.

It was known in the Glen school that Diana Blythe was rather at loose ends for a chum. For two years she and Pauline Reese had been cronies, but Pauline’s family had moved away and Diana felt very lonely. Pauline had been a good sort. To be sure, she was quite lacking in the mystic charm that the now almost forgotten Jenny Penny had possessed. She was practical, full of fun,
sensible
. That last was Susan’s adjective and was the highest praise Susan could bestow. She had been entirely satisfied with Pauline as a friend for Diana.

Diana looked at Delilah doubtfully, then glanced across the playground at Laura Carr, who was also a new girl. Laura and she had spent the forenoon recess together and had found each other very agreeable. But Laura was rather plain, with freckles and unmanageable sandy hair. She had none of Delilah Green’s beauty and not a spark of her allure.

Delilah understood Diana’s look, and a hurt expression crept over her face; her blue eyes seemed ready to brim with tears.

‘If you love
her
you can’t love
me
. Choose between us,’ said Delilah, holding out her hands dramatically. Her voice was more thrilling than ever… it positively sent a creep along Diana’s spine. She put her hands in Delilah’s and they looked at each other solemnly, feeling dedicated and sealed. At least, Diana felt that way.

‘You’ll love me
for ever
, won’t you?’ asked Delilah passionately.

‘For ever,’ vowed Diana with equal passion.

Delilah slipped her arm around Diana’s waist and they walked down to the brook together. The rest of the Fourth Class understood that an alliance had been concluded. Laura Carr gave a tiny sigh. She had liked Diana Blythe very much. But she knew she could not compete with Delilah.

‘I’m
so
glad you’re going to let me love you?’ Delilah was saying. ‘I’m so very affectionate… I just can’t help loving people.
Please
be kind to me, Diana. I am a child of sorrow. I was put under a curse at birth. Nobody…
nobody
loves me.’

Delilah somehow contrived to put ages of loneliness and loveliness into that ‘nobody’. Diana tightened her clasp.

‘You’ll never have to say that after this, Delilah.
I
will always love you.’

‘World without end?’

‘World without end,’ answered Diana. They kissed each other, as in a rite. Two boys on the fence whooped derisively, but who cared?

‘You’ll like me ever so much better than Laura Carr,’ said Delilah. ‘Now that we’re dear friends I can tell you what I wouldn’t have
dreamed
of telling you if you had picked her.
She is deceitful
. Dreadfully deceitful. Pretends to be your friend to your face, and behind your back she makes fun of you and says the
meanest
things. A girl I know went to school with her at Mowbray’s Narrows and she told me. You’ve had a narrow escape.
I
’m so different from that… I am as true as gold, Diana.’

‘I’m sure you are. But what did you mean by saying you were a child of sorrow, Delilah?’

Delilah’s eyes seemed to expand until they were absolutely enormous.

‘I have a
stepmother
,’ she whispered.

‘A stepmother?’

‘When your mother dies and your father marries again
she
is a stepmother,’ said Delilah, with still more thrills in her voice. ‘Now you know it all, Diana. If you knew the way I am treated! But I never complain. I suffer in silence.’

If Delilah really suffered in silence it might be wondered where Diana got all the information she showered on the Ingleside folks during the next few weeks. She was in the throes of a wild passion of adoration and sympathy for and with sorrow-laden, persecuted Delilah, and she had to talk about her to anyone who would listen.

‘I suppose this new infatuation will run its course in due time,’ said Anne. ‘Who is this Delilah, Susan? I don’t want the children to be little snobs… but after our experience with Jenny Penny…’

‘The Greens are very respectable, Mrs Doctor dear. They are well known at Lowbridge. They moved into the old Hunter place this summer. Mrs Green is the second wife and has two children of her own. I do not know much about her, but she seems to have a slow, kind, easy way with her. I can hardly believe she uses Delilah as Di says.’