Chapter 20 Anne of Ingleside by Lucy Montgomery
When Gilbert and Anne went to dinner with friends in Charlottetown one evening in late March Anne put on a new dress of ice-green encrusted with silver around neck and arms; and she wore Gilbert's emerald ring and Jem's necklace.
"Haven't I got a handsome wife, Jem?" asked Dad proudly.
Jem thought Mother was very handsome and her dress very lovely. How pretty the pearls looked on her white throat! He always liked to see Mother dressed up, but he liked it still better when she took off a splendid dress. It had transformed her into an alien. She was not really Mother in it.
After supper Jem went to the village to do an errand for Susan and it was while he was waiting in Mr. Flagg's store . . . rather afraid that Sissy might come in as she sometimes did and be entirely too friendly . . . that the blow fell . . . the shattering blow of disillusionment which is so terrible to a child because so unexpected and so seemingly inescapable.
Two girls were standing before the glass show case where Mr. Carter Flagg kept necklaces and chain bracelets and hair barettes.
"Aren't those pearl strings pretty?" said Abbie Russell.
"You'd almost think they were real," said Leona Reese.
They passed on then, quite unwitting of what they had done to the small boy sitting on the nail-keg. Jem continued to sit there for some time longer. He was incapable of movement.
"What's the matter, sonny?" inquired Mr. Flagg. "You seem kind of low in your mind."
Jem looked at Mr. Flagg with tragic eyes. His mouth was strangely dry.
"Please, Mr. Flagg . . . are those . . . those necklaces . . . they are real pearls, aren't they?"
Mr. Flagg laughed.
"No, Jem. I'm afraid you can't get real pearls for fifty cents, you know. A real pearl necklace like that would cost hundreds of dollars. They're just pearl beads . . . very good ones for the price, too. I got 'em at a bankrupt sale . . . that's why I can sell 'em so cheap. Ordin'rily they run to a dollar. Only one left . . . they went like hot cakes."
Jem slid off the keg and went out, totally forgetting what Susan had sent him for. He walked blindly up the frozen road home. Overhead was a hard dark wintry sky; there was what Susan called "a feel" of snow in the air, and a skim of ice over the puddles. The harbour lay black and sullen between its bare banks. Before Jem reached home a snow-squall was whitening over them. He wished it would snow . . . and snow . . . and snow . . . till he was buried and everybody was buried fathoms deep. There was no justice anywhere in the world.
Jem was heartbroken. And let no one scoff at his heartbreak for scorn of its cause. His humiliation was utter and complete. He had given Mother what he and she had supposed was a pearl necklace . . . and it was only an old imitation. What would she say . . . what would she feel like . . . when she knew? For of course she must be told. It never occurred to Jem to think for a moment that she need not be told. Mother must not be "fooled" any longer. She must know that her pearls weren't real. Poor Mother! She had been so proud of them . . . had he not seen the pride shining in her eyes when she had kissed him and thanked him for them?
Jem slipped in by the side door and went straight to bed, where Walter was already sound asleep. But Jem could not sleep; he was awake when Mother came home and slipped in to see that Walter and he were warm.
"Jem, dear, are you awake at this hour? You're not sick?"
"No, but I'm very unhappy here, Mother dearwums," said Jem, putting his hand on his stomach, fondly believing it to be his heart.
"What is the matter, dear?"
"I . . . I . . . there is something I must tell you, Mother. You'll be awfully disappointed, Mother . . . but I didn't mean to deceive you, Mother . . . truly I didn't."
"I'm sure you didn't, dear. What is it? Don't be afraid."
"Oh, Mother dearwums, those pearls aren't real pearls . . . I thought they were . . . I did think they were . . . did . . ."
Jem's eyes were full of tears. He couldn't go on.
If Anne wanted to smile there was no sign of it on her face. Shirley had bumped his head that day, Nan had sprained her ankle, Di had lost her voice with a cold. Anne had kissed and bandaged and soothed; but this was different . . . this needed all the secret wisdom of mothers.
"Jem, I never thought you supposed they were real pearls. I knew they weren't . . . at least in one sense of real. In another, they are the most real things I've ever had given me. Because there was love and work and self-sacrifice in them . . . and that makes them more precious to me than all the gems that divers have fished up from the sea for queens to wear. Darling, I wouldn't exchange my pretty beads for the necklace I read of last night which some millionaire gave his bride and which cost half a million. So that shows you what your gift is worth to me, dearest of dear little sons. Do you feel better now?"
Jem was so happy he was ashamed of it. He was afraid it was babyish to be so happy. "Oh, life is bearable again," he said cautiously.
The tears had vanished from his sparkling eyes. All was well. Mother's arms were about him . . . Mother did like her necklace . . . nothing else mattered. Some day he would give her one that would cost no mere half but a whole million. Meanwhile, he was tired . . . his bed was very warm and cosy . . . Mother's hands smelled like roses . . . and he didn't hate Leona Reese any more.
"Mother dearwums, you do look so sweet in that dress," he said sleepily. "Sweet and pure . . . pure as Epps' cocoa."
Anne smiled as she hugged him and thought of a ridiculous thing she had read in a medical journal that day, signed Dr. V. Z. Tomachowsky. "You must never kiss your little son lest you set up a Jocasta complex." She had laughed over it at the time and been a little angry as well. Now she only felt pity for the writer of it. Poor, poor man! For of course V. Z. Tomachowsky was a man. No woman would ever write anything so silly and wicked.