'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.
> 39
'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.'
'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 j
ust 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.'
Anne of Ingleside Page 26
