Anne of Ingleside (35 page)

‘Don’t put too much credence in everything Delilah tells you,’ Anne warned Diana. ‘She may be prone to exaggerate a little. Remember Jenny Penny.’

‘Why, Mother, Delilah isn’t a single bit like Jenny Penny,’ said Di, indignantly. ‘Not one bit. She is
scrupulously
truthful. If you only saw her, Mother, you’d know she couldn’t tell a lie. They all pick on her at home because she is so
different
. And she has
such
an affectionate nature. She has been persecuted from her birth. Her stepmother
hates
her. It just breaks my heart to hear of her sufferings. Why, Mother, she doesn’t get enough to eat, truly she doesn’t. She never knows what it is not to be hungry. Mother, they send her to bed without any supper lots of times and she cries herself to sleep. Did
you
ever cry because you were hungry, Mother?’

‘Often,’ said Mother.

Diana stared at her mother, all the wind taken out of the sails of her rhetorical question.

‘I was often very hungry before I came to Green Gables. At the orphanage… and before. I’ve never cared to talk of those days.’

‘Well, you ought to be able to understand Delilah, then,’ said Di, rallying her confused wits. ‘When she is so hungry she just sits down and imagines things to eat. Just
think
of her imagining things to eat!’

‘You and Nan do enough of that yourselves,’ said Anne, but Di would not listen.

‘Her sufferings are not only physical, but
spiritual
. Why, she wants to be a missionary, Mother… to consecrate her life… and they
all laugh at her
.’

‘Very heartless of them,’ agreed Anne. But something in her voice made Di suspicious.

‘Mother,
why
will you be so sceptical?’ she demanded reproachfully.

‘For the second time,’ smiled Mother, ‘I must remind you of Jenny Penny. You believed in her too.’

‘I was only a
child
then and it was easy to fool me,’ said Diana in her stateliest manner. She felt that Mother was not her usual sympathetic and understanding self in regard to Delilah Green. After that Diana talked only to Susan about her, since Nan only hooted when Delilah’s name was mentioned. ‘Just jealousy,’ thought Diana sadly.

Not that Susan was so markedly sympathetic either. But Diana had to talk to somebody about Delilah, and Susan’s derision did not hurt like Mother’s. You wouldn’t expect Susan to understand fully. But Mother had been a girl… Mother had such a tender heart. How was it that the account of poor Delilah’s ill-treatment left her so cold?

‘Maybe she’s a little jealous, too, because I love Delilah so much,’ reflected Diana sagely. ‘They say mothers do get like that. Kind of
possessive
.’

‘It makes my blood boil to hear of the way her stepmother treats Delilah,’ Di told Susan. ‘She is a
martyr
, Susan. She never has anything but a little porridge for breakfast and supper… a very little bit of porridge. And she isn’t allowed sugar on the porridge. Susan, I’ve given up taking sugar on mine because it made me feel
guilty
.’

‘Oh, so that’s why. Well, sugar had gone up a cent, so maybe it is just as well.’

Diana vowed she wouldn’t tell Susan anything more about Delilah, but next evening she was so indignant she couldn’t help herself.

‘Susan, Delilah’s mother chased her last night with a red-hot tea-kettle. Think of it, Susan. Of course Delilah says she doesn’t do that very often… only when she is
greatly exasperated
. Mostly she just locks Delilah in a dark garret… a
haunted
garret. The ghosts that poor child has seen, Susan! It can’t be healthy for her. The last time they shut her in the garret she saw the
weirdest
little black creature sitting on the spinning-wheel,
humming
.’

‘What kind of a creature?’ asked Susan gravely. She was beginning to enjoy Delilah’s tribulations and Di’s italics, and she and Mrs Doctor laughed over them in secret.

‘I don’t know… it was just a
creature
. It almost drove her to suicide. I am really afraid she will be driven to it yet. You know, Susan, she had an uncle who committed suicide
twice
.’

‘Was not once enough?’ asked Susan heartlessly. Di went off in a huff, but next day she had to come back with another tale of woe.

‘Delilah has never had a doll, Susan. She did so hope she would get one in her stocking last Christmas. And what do you think she found instead, Susan? A
switch
! They whip her almost every day, you know. Think of that poor child being whipped, Susan.’

‘I was whipped several times when I was young and I am none the worse of it now,’ said Susan, who would have done goodness knows what if anyone had ever tried to whip an Ingleside child.

‘When I told Delilah about our Christmas-tree she wept, Susan. She never had a Christmas-tree. But she is bound she is going to have one this year. She has found an old umbrella with nothing but the ribs and she is going to set it in a pail and decorate it for a Christmas-tree. Isn’t that
pathetic
, Susan?’

‘Are there not plenty of young spruces handy? The back of the old Hunter place has practically gone spruce of late years,’ said Susan. ‘I do wish that girl was called anything but Delilah. Such a name for a Christian child!’

‘Why, it is in the Bible, Susan. Delilah is very proud of her Bible name. Today in school, Susan, I told Delilah we were going to have chicken for dinner tomorrow, and she said… what do you think she said, Susan?’

‘I am sure I could never guess,’ said Susan emphatically. ‘And you have no business to be talking in school.’

‘Oh, we don’t. Delilah says we must never break any of the rules. Her standards are very high. We write each other letters in our scribblers and exchange them. Well, Delilah said, “Could you bring me a bone, Diana?” It brought tears to my eyes. I’m going to take her a bone… with a lot of meat on it. Delilah
needs
good food. She has to work like a slave… a
slave
, Susan. She has to do all the housework… well, nearly all, anyway. And if it isn’t done right she is
savagely shaken
… or made to eat in the kitchen
with the servants
.’

‘The Greens have only one little French hired boy.’

‘Well, she has to eat with him. And he sits in his sock feet and eats in his shirt-sleeves. Delilah says she doesn’t mind those things now when she has me to love her. She has no one to love her but me, Susan.’

‘Awful!’ said Susan, with great gravity of countenance.

‘Delilah says if she had a million dollars she’d give it all to me, Susan. Of course, I wouldn’t take it, but it shows how good her heart is.’

‘It is as easy to give away a million as a hundred if you have not got either,’ was as far as Susan would go.

Diana was overjoyed. After all, Mother wasn’t jealous… Mother wasn’t possessive… Mother did understand.

Mother and Father were going up to Avonlea for the weekend and Mother had told her she could ask Delilah Green to spend Saturday and Saturday night at Ingleside.

‘I saw Delilah at the Sunday School picnic,’ Anne told Susan. ‘She is a pretty, lady-like little thing… though of course she
must
exaggerate. Perhaps her stepmother
is
a little hard on her… and I’ve heard her father is rather dour and strict. She probably has some grievances and likes to dramatize them by way of getting sympathy.’

Susan was a bit dubious.

‘But at least anyone living in Laura Green’s house will be clean,’ she reflected. Fine-tooth combs did not enter into this question.

Diana was full of plans for Delilah’s entertainment.

‘Can’t we have a roast chicken, Susan… with lots of stuffing? And
pie
. You don’t know how that poor child longs to taste pie. They never have pies… her stepmother is too mean.’

Susan was very nice about it. Jem and Nan had gone to Avonlea, and Walter was down at the House of Dreams with Kenneth Ford. There was nothing to cast a shadow on Delilah’s visit and it certainly seemed to go off very well. Delilah arrived Saturday morning very nicely dressed in pink muslin… at least the stepmother seemed to do her well in the matter of clothes. And she had, as Susan saw at a glance, irreproachable ears and nails.

‘This is
the
day of my life,’ she said solemnly to Diana. ‘My, what a grand house this is! And them’s the china dogs! Oh, they’re wonderful!’

Everything was wonderful. Delilah worked the poor word to death. She helped Diana set the table for dinner and picked the little glass basket full of pink sweet peas for a centre-piece.

‘Oh, you don’t know how I love to do something just because I
like
to do it,’ she told Diana. ‘Isn’t there anything else I can do,
please
?’

‘You can crack the nuts for the cake I’m going to make this afternoon,’ said Susan, who was herself falling under the spell of Delilah’s beauty and voice. After all, perhaps Laura Green was a Tartar. You couldn’t always go by what people seemed like in public. Delilah’s plate was heaped with chicken and stuffing and gravy and she got a second piece of pie without hinting for it.

‘I’ve often wondered what it would be like to have all you could eat for once. It is a wonderful sensation,’ she told Diana as they left the table.

They had a gay afternoon. Susan had given Diana a box of candy and Diana shared it with Delilah. Delilah admired one of Di’s rings and Di gave it to her. They cleaned out the pansy bed and dug up a few stray dandelions that had invaded the lawn. They helped Susan polish the silver and assisted her to get supper. Delilah was so efficient and tidy that Susan capitulated completely. Only two things marred the afternoon… Delilah contrived to spatter her dress with ink and she lost her pearl bead necklace. But Susan took the ink out nicely… some of the colour coming out too… with salts of lemon, and Delilah said it didn’t matter about the necklace.

Nothing
mattered except that she was at Ingleside with her dearest Diana.

‘Aren’t we going to sleep in the spare-room bed?’ asked Diana when bed-time came. ‘We always put company in the spare room, Susan.’

‘Your Aunt Diana is coming with your father and mother tomorrow night,’ said Susan. ‘The spare room has been made up for her. You can have the Shrimp on your own bed and you couldn’t have him in the spare room.’

‘My, but your sheets smell nice!’ said Delilah as they snuggled down.

‘Susan always boils them with orris root,’ said Diana.

Delilah sighed.

‘I wonder if you know what a lucky girl you are, Diana. If
I
had a home like you… but it’s my lot in life. I just have to bear it.’

Susan, on her nightly round of the house before retiring, came in and told them to stop chattering and go to sleep. She gave them two maple sugar buns apiece.

‘I can never forget your kindness, Miss Baker,’ said Delilah, her voice quivering with emotion. Susan went to her bed reflecting that a nicer-mannered, more appealing little girl she had never seen. Certainly she had misjudged Delilah Green. Though at that moment it occurred to Susan that, for a child who never got enough to eat, the bones of the said Delilah Green were very well covered!

Delilah went home the next afternoon, and Mother and Father and Aunt Diana came at night. On Monday the bolt fell from the proverbial blue. Diana, returning to school at noon hour, caught her own name as she entered the school porch. Inside the schoolroom Delilah Green was the centre of a group of curious little girls.

‘I was so disappointed in Ingleside. After the way Di has bragged about her house I expected a
mansion
. Of course it’s big enough, but some of the furniture is shabby. The chairs want to be recovered the
worst
way.’

‘Did you see the china dogs?’ asked Bessy Palmer.

‘They’re nothing wonderful. They haven’t even got hair. I told Diana right on the spot I was disappointed.’

Diana was standing ‘rooted to the ground’… or at least to the porch floor. She did not think about eavesdropping… she was simply too dumbfounded to move.

‘I’m sorry for Diana,’ went on Delilah. ‘The way her parents neglect their family is something scandalous. Her mother is an awful gadabout. The way she goes off and leaves them young ones is terrible with only that old Susan to look after them… and she’s half cracked! She’ll land them all in the poorhouse yet. The waste that goes on in her kitchen you wouldn’t believe. The doctor’s wife is too gay and lazy to cook even when she is home, so Susan has it all her own way. She was going to give us our meals
in the kitchen
but I just up and said to her, “Am I company or am I not?” Susan said if I gave her any sass she’d shut me up in the back closet. I said, “You don’t dare to” and she didn’t. “You can overcrow the Ingleside children, Susan Baker, but you can’t overcrow
me
,” I said to her. Oh, I tell you I stood up to Susan. I wouldn’t let her give Rilla soothing syrup. “Don’t you know it’s poison to children?” I said. She took it out on me at meals though. The mean little helpings she gives you! There was chicken but I only got the Pope’s nose and nobody even asked me to take the second piece of pie. But Susan would have let me sleep in the spare room though, and Di wouldn’t hear to it… just out of pure meanness. She’s so jealous. But still I’m sorry for her. She told me Nan pinches her
something scandalous
. Her arms are black and blue. We slept in her room and a mangy old tom cat was lying on the foot of the bed all night. It wasn’t
haygeenic
and I told Di so. And my pearl necklace
disappeared
. Of course I’m not saying Susan took it. I believe she’s
honest
… but it’s funny. And Shirley threw an inkbottle at me. It ruined my dress but I don’t care. Ma’ll have to get me a new one. Well, anyhow, I dug all the dandelions out of their lawn for them and polished up the silver. You should have seen it. It don’t know
when
it has been cleaned before. I tell you Susan takes it easy when the doctor’s wife’s away. I let her see I saw through her. “Why don’t you ever wash the potato pot, Susan?” I asked her. You should of seen her face. Look at my new ring, girls. A boy I know at Lowbridge give it to me.’