Anne of Ingleside (3 page)

‘Yes… and we’ve always… I mean… I never could say things like you, Anne… but we
have
kept our old “solemn vow and promise”, haven’t we?’

‘Always, and always will.’

Anne’s hand found its way into Diana’s. They sat for a long time in a silence too sweet for words. Long, still evening shadows fell over the grasses and the flowers and the green reaches of the meadows beyond. The sun went down, grey-pink shades of sky deepened and paled behind the pensive trees… the spring twilight took possession of Hester Gray’s garden where nobody ever walked now. Robins were sprinkling the evening air with flute-like whistles. A great star came out over the white cherry-trees.

‘The first star is always a miracle,’ said Anne dreamily.

‘I could sit here for ever,’ said Diana. ‘I hate the thought of leaving it.’

‘So do I, but after all we’ve only been pretending to be fifteen. We’ve got to remember our family cares. How those lilacs smell! Has it ever occurred to you, Diana, that there is something not quite… chaste… in the scent of lilac blossoms? Gilbert laughs at such a notion; he loves them, but to me they always seem to be remembering some secret,
too
-sweet thing.’

‘They’re too heavy for the house, I always think,’ said Diana. She picked up the plate which held the remainder of the chocolate cake… looked at it longingly… shook her head, and packed it in the basket with an expression of great nobility and self-denial on her face.

‘Wouldn’t it be fun, Diana, if now, as we went home, we were to meet our old selves running along Lover’s Lane?’

Diana gave a little shiver.

‘No-o-o, I don’t think that would be funny, Anne. I hadn’t noticed it was getting so dark. It’s all right to fancy things in daylight, but…’

They went quietly, silently, lovingly home together, with the sunset glory burning on the old hills behind them and their old unforgotten love burning in their hearts.

Anne ended a week that had been full of pleasant days by taking flowers to Matthew’s grave the next morning, and in the afternoon she took the train from Carmody home. For a time she thought of all the old beloved things behind her and then her thoughts ran ahead of her to the beloved things before her. Her heart sang all the way because she was going home to a joyous house, a house where everyone who crossed its threshold knew it was a
home,
a house that was filled all the time with laughter and silver mugs and snapshots and babies… precious things with curls and chubby knees… and rooms that would welcome her… where the chairs waited patiently and the dresses in her closet were expecting her… where little anniversaries were always being celebrated and little secrets were always being whispered.

‘It’s lovely to feel you like going home,’ thought Anne, fishing out of her purse a certain letter from a small son over which she had laughed gaily the night before, reading it proudly to the Green Gables folks, the first letter she had ever received from any of her children. It was quite a nice little letter for a seven-year-old who had been going to school only a year to write, even though Jim’s spelling was a bit uncertain and there was a big blob of ink in one corner.

‘Di cryed and cryed all night because Tommy Drew told her he was going to burn her doll at the steak. Susan tells us nice tails at night but she isn’t you, Mummy… she let me help her sow the beats last night…’

‘
How
could I have been happy for a whole week away from them all?’ thought the chatelaine of Ingleside self-reproachfully.

‘How nice to have someone meet you at the end of a journey!’ she cried, as she stepped off the train at Glen St Mary into Gilbert’s waiting arms. She could never be sure Gilbert would meet her, somebody was always dying or being born; but no home-coming ever seemed just right to Anne unless he did. And he had on such a nice new light-grey suit!
(How glad I am I put on this frilly eggshell blouse with my brown suit, even if Mrs Lynde thought I was crazy to wear it travelling. If I hadn’t I wouldn’t have looked so nice for Gilbert.)

Ingleside was all lighted up, with gay Japanese lanterns hanging on the veranda. Anne ran gaily along the walk bordered by daffodils.

‘Ingleside, I’m here,’ she called.

They were all around her… laughing, exclaiming, jesting, with Susan Baker smiling properly in the background. Every one of the children had a bouquet picked specially for her, even the two-year-old Shirley.

‘Oh, this
is
a nice welcome home! Everything about Ingleside looks so happy. It’s splendid to think my family are so glad to see me.’

‘If you ever go away from home again, Mummy,’ said Jem solemnly, ‘I’ll go and take appensitis.’

‘How do you go about taking it?’ asked Walter.

‘S… s… sh.’ Jem nudged Walter secretly and whispered, ‘There’s a pain somewhere, I know, but I just want to scare Mummy so she
won’t
go away.’

Anne wanted to do a hundred things first, hug everybody, run out in the twilight and gather some of her pansies… you found pansies everywhere at Ingleside… pick up the little well-worn doll lying on the rug, hear all the juicy titbits of gossip and news, everyone contributing something. How Nan had got the top off a tube of vaseline up her nose when the doctor was out on a case and Susan had all but gone distracted. ‘I assure you it was an anxious time, Mrs Doctor dear’… how Mrs Jud Palmer’s cow had eaten fifty-seven wire nails and had to have a vet from Charlottetown; how absent-minded Mrs Fenner Douglas had gone to church
bareheaded
; how Dad had dug all the dandelions out of the lawn… ‘between babies, Mrs Doctor dear… he’s had eight while you are away’; how Mr Tom Flagg had dyed his moustache… ‘and his wife only dead two years’; how Rose Maxwell of the Harbour Head had jilted Jim Hudson of the Upper Glen, and he had sent her a bill for all he had spent on her… what a splendid turn-out there had been at Mrs Amasa Warren’s funeral; how Carter Flagg’s cat had had a piece bitten right out of the root of its tail; how Shirley had been found in the stable standing right under one of the horses… ‘Mrs Doctor dear, never shall I be the same woman again’; how there was sadly too much reason to fear that the blue plum-trees were developing black knot; how Di had gone about the whole day singing, ‘Mummy’s coming home today, home today, home today’ to the tune of ‘Merrily We Roll Along’; how the Joe Reeses had a kitten that was cross-eyed because it had been born with its eyes open; how Jem had inadvertently sat on some fly-paper before he had put his little trousers on… and how the Shrimp had fallen into the soft-water puncheon in the barn. ‘He was nearly drowned, Mrs Doctor dear, but luckily the doctor heard his howls in the nick of time and pulled him out by his hindlegs.’ (What is the nick of time, Mummy?)

‘He seems to have recovered nicely from it,’ said Anne, stroking the glossy black and white curves of a contented pussy with huge jowls, purring on a chair in the firelight. It was never quite safe to sit down on a chair at Ingleside without first making sure there wasn’t a cat in it. Susan, who had not cared much for cats to begin with, vowed she had to learn to like them in self-defence. As for the Shrimp, Gilbert had called him that a year ago when Nan had brought the miserable, scrawny kitten home from the village where some boys had been tormenting it, and the name clung, though it was very inappropriate now.

‘But… Susan! What has become of Gog and Magog? Oh… they haven’t been broken, have they?’

‘No, no, Mrs Doctor dear,’ exclaimed Susan, turning a deep brick-red from shame and dashing out of the room. She returned shortly with the two china dogs which always presided at the hearth of Ingleside. ‘I do not see how I could have forgotten to put them back before you came. You see, Mrs Doctor dear, Mrs Charles Day from Charlottetown called here the day after you left… and you know how very precise and proper she is. Walter thought he ought to entertain her and he started in by pointing out the dogs to her. “This one is God and this is My God,” he said, poor innocent child. I was horrified, though I thought that die I would to see Mrs Day’s face. I explained as best I could, for I did not want her to think us a profane family, but I decided I would just put the dogs away in the china closet, out of sight, till you got back.’

‘Mummy, can’t we have supper soon?’ said Jem pathetically. ‘I’ve got a gnawful feeling in the pit of my stomach. And oh, Mummy, we’ve made everybody’s favourite dish.’

‘We, as the flea said to the elephant, have done that very thing,’ said Susan with a grin. ‘We thought that your return should be suitably celebrated, Mrs Doctor dear. And now where is Walter? It is his week to ring the gong for meals, bless his heart.’

Supper was a gala meal… and putting all the babies to bed afterwards was a delight. Susan even allowed her to put Shirley to bed, seeing what a very special occasion it was.

‘This is no common day, Mrs Doctor dear,’ she said solemnly.

‘Oh, Susan, there is no such thing as a common day.
Every
day has something about it no other day has. Haven’t you noticed?’

‘How true that is, Mrs Doctor dear. Even last Friday now, when it rained all day, and was so dull, my big pink geranium showed buds at last after refusing to bloom for three long years. And have you noticed the calceolarias, Mrs Doctor dear?’

‘Noticed them! I never saw such calceolarias in my life, Susan. How
do
you manage it?’
(There, I’ve made Susan happy and haven’t told a fib. I never did see such calceolarias… thank heaven!)

‘It is the result of constant care and attention, Mrs Doctor dear, but there is something I think I ought to speak of. I think Walter
suspects something
. No doubt some of the Glen children have said things to him. So many children nowadays know so much more than is fitting. Walter said to me the other day, very thoughtful-like, “Susan,” he said, “are babies
very
expensive?” I was a bit dumbfounded, Mrs Doctor dear, but I kept my head. “Some folks think they are luxuries,” I said, “but at Ingleside we think they are necessities.” And I reproached myself with having complained aloud about the shameful price of things in all the Glen stores. I am afraid it worried the child. But if he says anything to you, Mrs Doctor dear, you will be prepared.’

‘I’m sure you handled the situation beautifully, Susan,’ said Anne gravely. ‘And I think it is time they all knew what we are hoping for.’

But the best of all was when Gilbert came to her, as she stood at her window, watching a fog creeping in from the sea, over the moonlit dunes and the harbour, right into the long narrow valley upon which Ingleside looked down and in which nestled the village of Glen St Mary.

‘To come back at the end of a hard day and find you! Are you happy, Annest of Annes?’

‘Happy!’ Anne bent to sniff a vaseful of apple-blossoms Jem had set on her dressing-table. She felt surrounded and encompassed by love. ‘Gilbert, dear, it’s been lovely to be Anne of Green Gables again for a week, but it’s a hundred times lovelier to come back and be Anne of Ingleside.’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Dr Blythe, in a tone Jem understood.

Jem knew there was no hope of Dad’s changing his mind or that Mother would try to change it for him. It was plain to be seen that on this point Mother and Dad were as one. Jem’s hazel eyes darkened with anger and disappointment as he looked at his cruel parents,
glared
at them, all the more glaringly that they were so maddening indifferent to his glares and went on eating their suppers as if nothing at all were wrong and out of joint. Of course, Aunt Mary Maria noticed his glares… nothing ever escaped Aunt Mary Maria’s mournful, pale-blue eyes… but she only seemed amused at them.

Bertie Shakespeare Drew had been up playing with Jem all the afternoon, Walter having gone down to the old House of Dreams to play with Kenneth and Persis Ford; and Bertie Shakespeare had told Jem that all the Glen boys were going down to the Harbour Mouth that evening to see Captain Bill Taylor tattoo a snake on his cousin Joe Drew’s arm. He, Bertie Shakespeare, was going and wouldn’t Jem come too? It would be such fun. Jem was at once crazy to go; and now he had been told that it was utterly out of the question.

‘For one reason among many,’ said Dad, ‘it’s much too far for you to go down to the Harbour Mouth with those boys. They won’t get back till late, and your bed-time is supposed to be at eight, son.’

‘
I
was sent to bed at seven every night of my life when I was a child,’ said Aunt Mary Maria.

‘You must wait till you are older, Jem, before you go so far away in the evenings,’ said Mother.

‘You said that last week,’ cried Jem indignantly, ‘and I
am
older now. You’d think I was a baby! Bertie’s going, and I’m just as old as him.’

‘There’s measles around,’ said Aunt Mary Maria darkly. ‘You might catch measles, James.’

Jem hated to be called James. And she always did it.

‘I
want
to catch measles –’ he muttered rebelliously. Then, catching Dad’s eye instead, subsided. Dad would never let anyone ‘talk back’ to Aunt Mary Maria. Jem hated Aunt Mary Maria. Aunt Diana and Aunt Marilla were such ducks of aunts, but an aunt like Aunt Mary Maria was something wholly new in Jem’s experience.

‘All right,’ he said defiantly, looking at Mother, so that nobody could suppose he was talking to Aunt Mary Maria, ‘if you don’t
want
to love me you don’t
have
to. But will you like it if I just go away ’n’ shoot tigers in Africa?’

‘There are no tigers in Africa, dear,’ said Mother gently.

‘Lions, then!’ shouted Jem. They were determined to put him in the wrong, were they? They were bound to laugh at him, were they? He’d show them! ‘You can’t say there’s no lions in Africa. There’s
millions
of lions in Africa. Africa’s just
full
of lions!’

Mother and Father only smiled again, much to Aunt Mary Maria’s disapproval. Impertinence in children should never be condoned.

‘Meanwhile,’ said Susan, torn between her love for, and sympathy with, Little Jem and her conviction that Dr and Mrs Doctor were perfectly right in refusing to let him go away down to the Harbour Mouth with that village gang to that disreputable, drunken old Captain Bill Taylor’s place, ‘here is your gingerbread and whipped cream, Jem, dear.’