One day Nan, to her astonishment, heard Susan saying that Thomasine Fair had come to live in the GLOOMY HOUSE . . . or, as Susan unromantically phrased it, the old MacAllister place.
“She will find it rather lonely, I should imagine,” Mother had said. “It’s so out-of-the-way.”
“She will not mind that,” said Susan. “She never goes anywhere, not even to church. Has not gone anywhere for years . . . though they say she walks in her garden at night. Well, well, to think what she has come to . . . her that was so handsome and such a terrible flirt. The hearts she broke in her day! And look at her now! Well, it is a warning and that you may tie to.”
Just to whom it was a warning Susan did not explain and nothing more was said, for nobody at Ingleside was very much interested in Thomasine Fair. But Nan, who had grown a little tired of all her old dream lives and was agog for something new, seized on Thomasine Fair in the GLOOMY HOUSE. Bit by bit, day after day, night after night . . . one could believe anything at night . . . she built up a legend about her until the whole thing flowered out unrecognisably and became a dearer dream to Nan than any she had hitherto known. Nothing before had ever seemed so entrancing, so real, as this vision of the Lady with the Mysterious Eyes. Great black velvet eyes . . . hollow eyes . . . haunted eyes . . . filled with remorse for the hearts she had broken. Wicked eyes . . . anyone who broke hearts and never went to church must be wicked. Wicked people were so interesting. The Lady was burying herself from the world as a penance for her crimes.
Could she be a princess? No, princesses were too scarce in P. E. Island. But she was tall, slim, remote, icily beautiful like a princess, with long jet-black hair in two thick braids over her shoulders, right to her feet. She would have a clear-cut ivory face, a beautiful Grecian nose, like the nose of Mother’s Artemis of the Silver Bow, and white lovely hands which she would wring as she walked in the garden at night, waiting for the one true lover she had disdained and learned too late to love . . . you perceive how the legend was growing? . . . while her long black velvet skirts trailed over the grass. She would wear a golden girdle and great pearl earrings in her ears and she must live her life of shadow and mystery until the lover came to set her free. Then she would repent of her old wickedness and heartlessness and hold out her beautiful hands to him and bend her proud head in submission at last. They would sit by the fountain . . . there was a fountain by this time . . . and pledge their vows anew and she would follow him, “over the hills and faraway, beyond their utmost purple rim,” just as the Sleeping Princess did in the poem Mother read to her one night from the old volume of Tennyson Father had given her long, long ago. But the lover of the Mysterious Eyed gave her jewels beyond all compare.
The GLOOMY HOUSE would be beautifully furnished, of course, and there would be secret rooms and staircases, and the Lady with the Mysterious Eyes would sleep on a bed made of mother-of-pearl under a canopy of purple velvet. She would be attended by a greyhound . . . a brace of them . . . a whole retinue of them . . . and she would always be listening . . . listening . . . listening . . . for the music of a very far-off harp. But she could not hear it as long as she was wicked until her lover came and forgave her . . . and there you were.
Of course is sounds very foolish. Dreams do sound so foolish when they are put into cold brutal words. Ten-year-old Nan never put hers into words . . . she only lived them. This dream of the wicked Lady with the Mysterious Eyes became as real to her as the life that went on around her. It took possession of her. For two years now it had been part of her . . . she had somehow come, in some strange way, to believe it. Not for worlds would she have told anyone, not even Mother, about it. It was her own peculiar treasure, her inalienable secret, without which she could no longer imagine life going on. She would rather steal off by herself to dream of the Lady with the Mysterious Eyes than play in Rainbow Valley.
Anne noticed this tendency and worried a little over it. Nan was getting too much that way. Gilbert wanted to send her up to Avonlea for a visit, but Nan, for the first time, pleaded passionately not to be sent. She didn’t want to leave home, she said piteously. To herself she said she would just die if she had to go so far away from the strange sad lovely Lady with the Mysterious Eyes. True, the Mysterious Eyed never went out anywhere. But she might go out some day and if she, Nan, were away she would miss seeing her. How wonderful it would be to get just a glimpse of her! Why, the very road along which she passed would be forever romantic. The day on which it happened would be different from all other days. She would make a ring around it in the calendar. Nan had got to the point when she greatly desired to see her just once. She knew quite well that much she had imagined about her was nothing but imagination. But she hadn’t the slightest doubt that Thomasine Fair was young and lovely and wicked and alluring . . . Nan was by this time absolutely certain she had heard Susan say so . . . and as long as she was that, Nan could go on imagining things about her forever.
Nan could hardly believe her ears when Susan said to her one morning:
“There is a parcel I want to send up to Thomasine Fair at the old MacAllister place. Your father brought it out from town last night. Will you run up with it this afternoon, pet?”
Just like that! Nan caught her breath. Would she? Did dreams really come true in such fashion? She would see the GLOOMY HOUSE . . . she would see her beautiful wicked Lady with the Mysterious Eyes. Actually see her . . . perhaps hear her speak . . . perhaps . . . oh, bliss! . . . touch her slender white hand. As for the greyhounds and the fountain and so forth, Nan knew she had only imagined them but surely the reality would be equally wonderful.
Nan watched the clock all the forenoon, seeing the time draw slowly . . . oh, so slowly . . . nearer and nearer. When a thundercloud rolled up ominously and rain began to fall she could hardly keep the tears back.
“I don’t see how God could let it rain today,” she whispered rebelliously.
But the shower was soon over and the sun shone again. Nan could eat hardly any dinner for excitement.
“Mummy, may I wear my yellow dress?”
“Why do you want to dress up like that to call on a neighbour, child?”
A neighbour! But of course Mother didn’t understand . . . couldn’t understand.
“Please, Mummy.”
“Very well,” said Anne. The yellow dress would be outgrown very soon. May as well let Nan get the good of it.
Nan’s legs were fairly trembling as she set off, the precious small parcel in her hand. She took a short-cut through Rainbow Valley, up the hill, to the side-road. The raindrops were still lying on the nasturtium leaves like great pearls; there was a delicious freshness in the air; the bees were buzzing in the white clover that edged the brook; slim blue dragonflies were glittering over the water . . . devil’s-darning-needles, Susan called them; in the hill pasture the daisies nodded to her . . . swayed to her . . . waved to her . . . laughed to her, with cool gold-and-silver laughter. Everything was so lovely and she was going to see the Wicked Lady with the Mysterious Eyes. What would the Lady say to her? And was it quite safe to go to see her? Suppose you stayed a few minutes with her and found that a hundred years had gone by, as in the story she and Walter had read last week?
Chapter 36
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 g
ooseberry 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!
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 157
