Anne of Ingleside (26 page)

‘
Please
tell me, Dovie.’

‘Can’t. It was told me as a secret by Aunt Kate and she’s dead. I’m the only person in the world that knows it now. I promised when I heard it that I’d never tell a soul. You’d tell somebody… you couldn’t help it.’

‘I wouldn’t… I could so,’ cried Nan.

‘People say you folks at Ingleside tell each other everything. Susan’d pick it out of you in no time.’

‘She wouldn’t. I know lots of things I’ve never told Susan. Secrets. I’ll tell mine to you if you’ll tell me yours.’

‘Oh, I’m not int’rested in the secrets of a little girl like you,’ said Dovie.

A nice insult that! Nan thought her little secrets were lovely… that one wild cherry-tree she had found blooming in the spruce wood away back behind Mr Taylor’s hay-barn… her dream of a tiny white fairy lying on a lily-pad in the marsh… her fancy of a boat coming up the harbour drawn by swans attached to silver chains… the romance she was beginning to weave about the beautiful lady at the old MacAllister place. They were all very wonderful and magical to Nan and she felt glad, when she thought it over, that she did not have to tell them to Dovie after all.

But what
did
Dovie know about
her
that
she
didn’t know? The query haunted Nan like a mosquito.

The next day Dovie again referred to her secret knowledge.

‘I’ve been thinking it over, Nan, perhaps you
ought
to know it since it’s about you. Of course, what Aunt Kate meant was that I mustn’t tell anyone but the person concerned. Look here. If you’ll give me that china stag of yours I’ll tell you now what I know about you.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t give you
that
, Dovie. Susan gave it to me my last birthday. It would hurt her feelings dreadfully.’

‘
All
right then. If you’d rather have your old stag than know an important thing about yourself you can keep him.
I
don’t care. I’d rather keep it. I always like to know things other girls don’t. It makes you
important
. I’ll look at you next Sunday in church and I’ll think to myself, “If
you
just knew what
I
know about you, Nan Blythe.” It’ll be fun.’

‘Is what you know about me
nice
?’ queried Nan.

‘Oh, it’s
very
romantic… just like something you’d read in a story book. But never mind.
You
ain’t interested and
I
know what I know.’

By this time Nan was crazy with curiosity. Life wouldn’t be worth living if she couldn’t find out what Dovie’s mysterious knowledge was. She had a sudden inspiration.

‘Dovie, I can’t give you my stag, but if you’ll tell me what you know about me I’ll give you my red parasol.’

Dovie’s gooseberry eyes gleamed. She had been eaten up by envy of that parasol.

‘The new red parasol your mother brought you from town last week?’ she bargained.

Nan nodded. Her breath came quickly. Was it… Oh, was it possible that Dovie would really tell her?

‘Will your mother let you?’ demanded Dovie.

Nan nodded again, but a little uncertainly. She was none too sure of it. Dovie scented the uncertainty.

‘You’ll have to have that parasol right here,’ she said firmly, ‘before I can tell you. No parasol, no secret.’

‘I’ll bring it tomorrow,’ promised Nan hastily. She just
had
to know what Dovie knew about her, that was all there was to it.

‘Well, I’ll think it over,’ said Dovie doubtfully. ‘Don’t get your hopes up. I don’t expect I’ll tell you after all. You’re too young… I’ve told you so often enough.’

‘I’m older than I was yesterday,’ pleaded Nan. ‘Oh, come, Dovie, don’t be mean.’

‘I guess I’ve got a right to my own knowledge,’ said Dovie crushingly. ‘You’d tell Anne… that’s your mother…’

‘Of course I know my own mother’s name,’ said Nan, a trifle on her dignity. Secrets or no secrets, there were limits. ‘I told you I wouldn’t tell
anybody
at Ingleside.’

‘Will you swear it?’

‘
Swear
it!’

‘Don’t be a poll parrot. Of course I mean just promising solemnly.’

‘I promise solemnly.’

‘Solemner than that.’

Nan didn’t see how she could be any solemner. Her face would set if she was.

said Dovie.

Nan went through the ritual.

‘You’ll bring the parasol tomorrow and we’ll see,’ said Dovie.

‘What did your mother do before she was married, Nan?’

‘She taught school… and taught it well,’ said Nan.

‘Well, I was just wondering. Mother thinks it was a mistake for your Dad to marry her. Nobody knew anything about her
family
. And the girls he might have had, Mother says. I must be going now. O revor.’

Nan knew that meant ‘till tomorrow’. She was very proud of having a chum who could talk French. She continued to sit on the wharf long after Dovie had gone home. She liked to sit on the wharf and watch the fishing-boats going out and coming in, and sometimes a ship drifting down the harbour bound to fair lands far away… ‘far, far away’; Nan repeated the words to herself with a relish. They savoured of magic. Like Jem, she often wished she could sail away in a ship… down the blue harbour, past the bar of shadowy dunes, past the lighthouse point where at night the revolving Four Winds Light became an outpost of mystery, out, out to the blue mist that was the summer gulf, on, on to enchanted islands in golden morning seas. Nan flew on the wings of her imagination all over the world as she squatted there on the old sagging wharf.

But this afternoon she was all keyed up over Dovie’s secret. Would Dovie really tell her? What would it be… what
could
it be? And what about those girls Father might have married? Nan liked to speculate about those girls. One of them might have been her mother. But that was horrible. Nobody could be her mother except Mother. The thing was simply unthinkable.

‘I
think
Dovie Johnson is going to tell me a secret,’ Nan confided to Mother that night when she was being kissed bye-bye. ‘Of course I won’t be able to tell even you, Mummy, because I’ve promised I wouldn’t. You won’t mind, will you, Mummy?’

‘Not at all,’ said Anne, much amused.

When Nan went down to the wharf the next day she took the parasol. It was her parasol, she told herself. It had been given to her, so she had a perfect right to do what she liked with it. Having quieted her conscience with this sophistry, she slipped away when nobody could see her. It gave her a pang to think of giving her her dear, gay little parasol, but by this time the craze to find out what Dovie knew had become too strong to be resisted.

‘Here’s the parasol, Dovie,’ she said breathlessly. ‘And now tell me the secret.’

Dovie was really taken aback. She had never meant matters to go as far as this… she had never believed Nan Blythe’s mother would
let
her give away her red parasol. She pursed her lips.

‘I don’t know as that shade of red will suit my complexion after all. It’s rather
gaudy
. I guess I won’t tell.’

Nan had a spirit of her own and Dovie had not yet quite charmed it into blind submission. Nothing roused it more quickly than injustice.

‘A bargain is a bargain, Dovie Johnson. You
said
the parasol for the secret. Here is the parasol and you’ve
got
to keep your promise.’

‘Oh, very well,’ said Dovie in a bored way.

Everything grew very still. The gusts of wind had died away. The water stopped glug-glugging round the piles of the wharf. Nan shivered with delicious ecstasy. She was going to find out at last what Dovie knew.

‘You know the Jimmy Thomases down at the Harbour Mouth,’ said Dovie. ‘Six-toed Jimmy Thomas?’

Nan nodded. Of course she knew the Thomases… at least, knew of them. Six-toed Jimmy sometimes called at Ingleside selling fish. Susan said you never could be sure of getting good ones from him. Nan did not like the look of him. He had a bald head, with a fluff of curly white hair on either side of it, and a red, hooked nose. But what could the Thomases possibly have to do with the matter?

‘And you know Cassie Thomas?’ went on Dovie.

Nan had seen Cassie Thomas once when Six-toed Jimmy had brought her round with him in his fish-wagon. Cassie was just about her own age, with a mop of red curls and bold, greenish-grey eyes. She had stuck her tongue out at Nan.

‘Well…’ Dovie drew a long breath… ‘this is the
truth
about you.
You
are Cassie Thomas and
she
is Nan Blythe.’

Nan stared at Dovie. She hadn’t the faintest glimmer of Dovie’s meaning. What she had said made no sense.

‘I… I… what do you mean?’

‘It’s plain enough, I should think,’ said Dovie with a pitying smile. Since she had been
forced
to tell this she was going to make it worth the telling. ‘You and her were born the same night. It was when the Thomases lived in the Glen. The nurse took her down to Thomases and put her in your cradle and took you back to her ma. She didn’t dare take Di too, or she would have. She hated your ma and she took that way of getting even. And that is why you are really Cassie Thomas and you ought to be living down there at the Harbour Mouth and poor Cass ought to be up at Ingleside instead of being banged about by that old stepmother of hers. I feel so sorry for her many’s the time.’

Nan believed every word of this preposterous yarn. She had never been lied to in her life, and not for the moment did she doubt the truth of Dovie’s tale. It never occurred to her that anyone, much less her beloved Dovie, would or could make up such a story. She gazed at Dovie with anguished, disillusioned eyes.

‘How… how did your Aunt Kate find it out?’ she gasped through dry lips.

‘The nurse told her on her death-bed,’ said Dovie solemnly. ‘I s’pose her conscience troubled her. Aunt Kate never told anyone but me. When I came to the Glen and saw Cassie Thomas… Nan Blythe, I mean… I took a good look at her. She’s got red hair and eyes the same colour as your mother’s. You’ve got brown eyes and brown hair. That’s why you don’t look like Di… twins
always
look exactly alike. And Cass has just the same kind of ears as your father… lying so nice and flat against her head. I don’t s’pose anything can be done about it now. But I’ve often thought it wasn’t fair, you having such an easy time and being kept like a doll and poor Cass… Nan… in rags, and not even getting enough to eat, many’s the time. And old Six-toed beating her when he comes home drunk! Why, what are you looking at me like that for?’

Nan’s pain was greater than she could bear. All was horribly clear to her now. Folks had always thought it funny she and Di didn’t look one bit alike.
This
was why.

‘I
hate
you for telling me this, Dovie Johnson!’

Dovie shrugged her fat shoulders.

‘I didn’t tell you you’d like it, did I? You
made
me tell. Where are you going?’

For Nan, white and dizzy, had risen to her feet.

‘Home… to tell Mother,’ she said miserably.

‘You mustn’t… you dassn’t. Remember you swore you wouldn’t tell,’ cried Dovie.

Nan stared at her. It was true she had promised not to tell. And Mother always said you mustn’t break a promise.

‘I guess I’ll be getting home myself,’ said Dovie, not altogether liking the look of Nan.

She snatched up the parasol and ran off, her plump bare legs twinkling along the old wharf. Behind her she left a broken-hearted child, sitting amid the ruins of her small universe. Dovie didn’t care. Soft was no name for Nan. It really wasn’t much fun to fool her. Of course, she would tell her mother as soon as she got home and find out she had been hoaxed.

‘Just as well I’m going home Sunday,’ reflected Dovie.

Nan sat on the wharf for what seemed hours… blind, crushed, despairing. She wasn’t Mother’s child! She was Six-toed Jimmy’s child… Six-toed Jimmy, of whom she had always had a secret dread simply because of his six toes. She had no business to be living at Ingleside, loved by Mother and Dad. ‘Oh!’ Nan gave a piteous little moan. Mother and Dad wouldn’t love her any more if they knew. All their love would go to Cassie Thomas.

Nan put her hand to her head. ‘It makes me dizzy,’ she said.

‘What is the reason you are not eating anything, pet?’ asked Susan at the supper table.

‘Were you out in the sun too long, dear?’ asked Mother anxiously. ‘Does your head ache?’

‘Ye-e-s,’ said Nan. But it wasn’t her head that ached. Was she telling a lie to Mother? And if so, how many more would she have to tell? For Nan knew she would never be able to eat again… never so long as this horrible knowledge was hers. And she knew she could never tell Mother. Not so much because of the promise… hadn’t Susan said once that a bad promise was better broken than kept?… but because it would hurt Mother. Somehow, Nan knew beyond any doubt that it would hurt Mother horribly. And Mother mustn’t… shouldn’t… be hurt. Nor Dad.

And yet… there was Cassie Thomas. She
wouldn’t
call her Nan Blythe. It made Nan feel awful beyond description to think of Cassie Thomas as being Nan Blythe. She felt as if it blotted
her
out altogether. If she wasn’t Nan Blythe she wasn’t anybody. She would
not
be Cassie Thomas.

But Cassie Thomas haunted her. For a week Nan was beset by her, a wretched week during which Anne and Susan were really worried over the child, who wouldn’t eat and wouldn’t play and, as Susan said, ‘just moped around’. Was it because Dovie Johnson had gone home? Nan said it wasn’t. Nan said it wasn’t
anything
. She just felt tired. Dad looked her over and prescribed a dose which Nan took meekly. It was not so bad as castor oil, but even castor oil meant nothing now. Nothing meant anything except Cassie Thomas… and the awful question which had emerged from her confusion of mind and taken possession of her.

Shouldn’t Cassie Thomas have her rights?

Was it fair that she, Nan Blythe… Nan clung to her identity frantically… should have all the things Cassie Thomas was denied and which were hers by rights? No, it wasn’t fair. Nan was despairingly sure it wasn’t fair. Somewhere in Nan there was a very strong sense of justice and fair play. And it became increasingly borne in upon her that it was only fair that Cassie Thomas should be told.