Chapter 36 Anne of Ingleside by Lucy Montgomery
Nan felt a queer tickly sensation in her spine as she turned into the lane. Did the dead maple bough move? No, she had escaped it . . . she was past. Aha, old witch, you didn't catch Me! She was walking up the lane of which the mud and the ruts had no power to blight her anticipation. Just a few steps more . . . the GLOOMY HOUSE was before her, amid and behind those dark dripping trees. She was going to see it at last! She shivered a little . . . and did not know that it was because of a secret unadmitted fear of losing her dream. Which is always, for youth or maturity or age, a catastrophe.
She pushed her way through a gap in a wild growth of young spruces that was choking up the end of the lane. Her eyes were shut; could she dare to open them? For a moment sheer terror possessed her and for two pins she would have turned and run. After all . . . the Lady was wicked. Who knew what she might do to you? She might even be a Witch. How was it that it had never occurred to her before that the Wicked Lady might be a Witch?
Then she resolutely opened her eyes and stared piteously.
Was this the GLOOMY HOUSE . . . the dark, stately, towered and turreted mansion of her dreams? This!
It was a big house, once white, now a muddy gray. Here and there, broken shutters, once green, were swinging loose. The front steps were broken. A forlorn glassed-in porch had most of its panes shattered. The scrolled trimming around the verandah was broken. Why, it was only a tired old house worn out with living!
Nan looked about desperately. There was no fountain . . . no garden . . . well, nothing you could really call a garden. The space in front of the house, surrounded by a ragged paling, was full of weeds and knee-high tangled grass. A lank pig rooted beyond the paling. Burdocks grew along the mid-walk. Straggly clumps of golden-glow were in the corners, but there was one splendid clump of militant tiger-lilies and, just by the worn steps, a gay bed of marigolds.
Nan went slowly up the walk to the marigold bed. The GLOOMY HOUSE was gone forever. But the Lady with the Mysterious Eyes remained. Surely she was real . . . she must be! What had Susan really said about her so long ago?
"Laws-a-mercy, ye nearly scared the liver out of me!" said a rather mumbly though friendly voice.
Nan looked at the figure that had suddenly risen up from beside the marigold bed. Who was it? It could not be . . . Nan refused to believe that this was Thomasine Fair. It would be just too terrible!
"Why," thought Nan, heartsick with disappointment, "she . . . she's old!"
Thomasine Fair, if Thomasine Fair it was . . . and she knew now it was Thomasine Fair . . . was certainly old. And fat! She looked like the feather-bed with the string tied round its middle to which angular Susan was always comparing stout ladies. She was barefooted, wore a green dress that had faded yellowish, and a man's old felt hat on her sparse, sandy-grey hair. Her face was round as an O, ruddy and wrinkled, with a snub nose. Her eyes were a faded blue, surrounded by great, jolly-looking crow's-feet.
Oh, my Lady . . . my charming, Wicked Lady with the Mysterious Eyes, where are you? What has become of you? You did exist!
"Well now, and what nice little girl are you?" asked Thomasine Fair.
Nan clutched after her manners.
"I'm . . . I'm Nan Blythe. I came up to bring you this."
Thomasine pounced on the parcel joyfully.
"Well, if I ain't glad to get my specks back!" she said. "I've missed 'em turrible for reading the almanack on Sundays. And you're one of the Blythe girls? What pretty hair you've got! I've always wanted to see some of you. I've heered your ma was bringing you up scientific. Do you like it?"
"Like . . . what?" Oh, wicked, charming Lady, you did not read the almanack on Sundays. Nor did you talk of "ma's."
"Why, bein' brought up scientific."
"I like the way I'm being brought up," said Nan, trying to smile and barely succeeding.
"Well, your ma is a real fine woman. She's holding her own. I declare the first time I saw her at Libby Taylor's funeral I thought she was a bride, she looked so happy. I always think when I see your ma come into a room that everyone perks up as if they expected something to happen. The new fashions set her, too. Most of us just ain't made to wear 'em. But come in and set a while . . . I'm glad to see someone . . . it gets kinder lonesome by spells. I can't afford a telephone. Flowers is company . . . did ye ever see finer merrygolds? And I've got a cat."
Nan wanted to flee to the uttermost parts of the earth, but she felt it would never do to hurt the old lady's feelings by refusing to go in. Thomasine, her petticoat showing below her skirt, led the way up the sagging steps into a room which was evidently kitchen and living-room combined. It was scrupulously clean and gay with thrifty house plants. The air was full of the pleasant fragrance of newly cooked bread.
"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? Says I, 'I ain't going to be a pincushion any longer.' So I come here on my own and here I'll stay as long as I have 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 cooky 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 beaus when I was a girl. I'm old now but I had a fine time when I was young. The beaus 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 won't . . . indeed I won't."
"In the end I married Poppa. His patience gin out at last and he give 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 unnatteral. 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 'lowed I'd 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 Lowbridge 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 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 poor, even though she read castor-oil in Susan's eye. Anne had noticed that Nan had been very quiet ever 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 pretending thereof. And she knew the dreadful bitterness of losing a dream.
"You musn'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 Islands 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.