Anne of Ingleside (32 page)

Rilla
was
a bit of a roly-poly but she hated to be called that.

‘I don’t want to hurt my feelingth,’ she explained stiffly.

Susan laughed. Rilla was beginning to say things that made the family laugh. She never could understand why they laughed, because she was always in earnest. Only Mummy never laughed; she hadn’t laughed even when she found out that Rilla thought Daddy was a murderer.

‘The social is to make money for poor little boys and girls who haven’t any kind father or mother,’ explained Susan… as if she was a baby who didn’t understand!

‘
I
’m next thing to a norphan,’ said Rilla. ‘I’ve only got one father and mother.’

Susan just laughed again.
Nobody
understood.

‘You know your mother
promised
the committee that cake, pet. I have not time to take it myself and it
must
go. So put on your blue gingham and toddle off.’

‘My doll hath been tooken ill,’ said Rilla desperately. ‘I mutht put her to bed and thtay with her. Maybe itth ammonia.’

‘Your doll will do very well till you get back. You can go and come in half an hour,’ was Susan’s heartless response.

There was no hope. Even God had failed her… there wasn’t a sign of rain. Rilla, too near tears to protest any further, went up and put on her new smocked organdy and her Sunday hat, trimmed with daisies. Perhaps if she looked
respectable
people wouldn’t think she was like old Tillie Pake.

‘I think my fathe itth clean if you will kindly look behind my earth,’ she told Susan with great stateliness.

She was afraid Susan might scold her for putting on her best dress and hat. But Susan merely inspected her ears, handed her a basket containing the cake, told her to mind her pretty manners and for goodness’ sake not to stop to talk to every cat she met.

Rilla made a rebellious ‘face’ at Gog and Magog and marched away. Susan looked after her tenderly.

‘Fancy our baby being old enough to carry a cake all alone to the church,’ she thought, half proudly, half sorrowfully, as she went back to work, blissfully unaware of the torture she was inflicting on a small mite she would have given her life for.

Rilla had not felt so mortified since the time she had fallen asleep in church and tumbled off the seat. Ordinarily she loved going down to the village: there were so many interesting things to see; but today Mrs Carter Flagg’s fascinating clothes-line, with all those lovely quilts on it, did not win a glance from Rilla, and the new cast-iron deer Mr Augustus Palmer had set up in his yard left her cold. She had never passed it before without wishing they could have one like it on the lawn at Ingleside. But what were cast-iron deer now? Hot sunshine poured along the street like a river and
everybody
was out. Two girls went by, whispering to each other. Was it about
her
? She imagined what they might be saying. A man driving along the road stared at her. He was really wondering if that could be the Blythe baby and, by George, what a little beauty she was! But Rilla felt that his eyes pierced the basket and saw the cake. And when Annie Drew drove by with her father, Rilla was sure she was laughing at her. Annie Drew was ten and a very big girl in Rilla’s eyes.

Then there was a whole crowd of boys and girls on Russell’s corner.
She had to walk past them
. It was dreadful to feel that their eyes were all looking at her and then at each other. She marched by, so proudly desperate that they all thought she was stuck-up and had to be brought down a peg or two.
They’d
show that kitten-faced thing! A regular hoity-toity like all those Ingleside girls! Just because they lived up at the big house!

Millie Flagg strutted along behind her, imitating her walk and scuffing up clouds of dust over them both.

‘Where’s the basket going with the child?’ shouted ‘Slicky’ Drew.

‘There’s a smudge on your nose, jam-face,’ jeered Bill Palmer.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ said Sarah Warren.

‘Snippet!’ sneered Beenie Bentley.

‘Keep on your side of the road or I’ll make you eat a June bug,’ big Sam Flagg stopped gnawing a raw carrot long enough to say.

‘Look at her blushing,’ giggled Mamie Taylor.

‘Bet you’re taking a cake to the Presbyterian Church,’ said Charlie Warren. ‘Half dough like all Susan Baker’s cakes.’

Pride would not let Rilla cry but there was a limit to what one could bear. After all, an Ingleside cake…

‘The next time any of you are thick I’ll tell my father not to give you any medithine,’ she said defiantly.

Then she stared in dismay. That couldn’t be Kenneth Ford coming around the corner of the Harbour road! It couldn’t be! It was!

It was not to be borne. Ken and Walter were pals and Rilla thought in her small heart that Ken was the nicest, handsomest boy in the whole world. He seldom took much notice of her… though once he had given her a chocolate duck. And one unforgettable day he had sat down beside her on a mossy stone in Rainbow Valley and told her the story of the Three Bears and the Little House in the Wood. But she was content to worship afar. And now this wonderful being had caught her
carrying a cake
!

‘Lo, Roly-poly! Heat’s something fierce, isn’t it? Hope I’ll get a slice of that cake tonight.’

So he knew it was a cake! Everybody knew it!

Rilla was through the village and thought the worst was over when the worst happened. She looked down a side-road and saw her Sunday School teacher, Miss Emmy Parker, coming along it. Miss Emmy Parker was still quite a distance away, but Rilla knew her by her dress… that frilled organdy dress of pale green with clusters of little white flowers all over it… the ‘cherry blossom dress’, Rilla secretly called it. Miss Emmy had it on in Sunday School last Sunday and Rilla had thought it the sweetest dress she had ever seen. But then Miss Emmy always wore such pretty dresses, sometimes lacy and frilly, sometimes with the whisper of silk about them.

Rilla worshipped Miss Emmy. She was so pretty and dainty, with her white, white skin and her brown, brown eyes and her sad, sweet smile… sad, another small girl had whispered to Rilla one day, because the man she was going to marry had died. She was so glad she was in Miss Emmy’s class. She would have hated to be in Miss Florrie Flagg’s class… Florrie Flagg was
ugly
and Rilla couldn’t bear an ugly teacher.

When Rilla met Miss Emmy away from Sunday School and Miss Emmy smiled and spoke to her it was one of the high moments of life for Rilla. Only to be nodded to on the street by Miss Emmy gave a strange, sudden lift of the heart, and when Miss Emmy had invited all her class to a soap-bubble party, where they made the bubbles red with strawberry juice, Rilla had all but died of sheer bliss.

But to meet Miss Emmy, carrying a cake, was just not to be endured and Rilla was not going to endure it. Besides, Miss Emmy was going to get up a dialogue for the next Sunday School concert, and Rilla was cherishing secret hopes of being asked to take the fairy’s part in it… a fairy in scarlet with a little peaked green hat. But there would be no use in hoping for that if Miss Emmy saw her
carrying a cake
.

Miss Emmy was not going to see her! Rilla was standing on the little bridge crossing the brook, which was quite deep and creek-like there. She snatched the cake out of the basket and hurled it into the brook where the alders met over a dark pool. The cake hurtled through the branches and sank with a plop and a gurgle. Rilla felt a wild spasm of relief and freedom and
escape
, as she turned to meet Miss Emmy, who, she now saw, was carrying a big, bulgy, brown paper parcel.

Miss Emmy smiled down at her, from beneath a little green hat with a tiny orange feather in it.

‘Oh, you’re beautiful, teacher… beautiful,’ gasped Rilla adoringly. Miss Emmy smiled again. Even when your heart is broken… and Miss Emmy truly believed hers was… it is not unpleasant to be given such a sincere compliment.

‘It’s the new hat, I expect, dear. Fine feathers, you know. I suppose’… glancing at the empty basket… ‘you’ve been taking your cake up for the social. What a pity you’re not going instead of coming. I’m taking mine… such a big, gooey chocolate cake.’

Rilla gazed up piteously, unable to utter a word. Miss Emmy was
carrying a cake
. Therefore, it could not be a disgraceful thing to carry a cake. And she… oh, what had she done? She had thrown Susan’s lovely gold-and-silver cake into the brook… and she had lost the chance of walking up to the church with Miss Emmy,
both
carrying cakes!

After Miss Emmy had gone on Rilla went home with her dreadful secret. She buried herself in Rainbow Valley until supper-time, when again nobody noticed that she was very quiet. She was terribly afraid Susan would ask to whom she had given the cake, but there were no awkward questions. After supper the others went to play in Rainbow Valley, but Rilla sat alone on the steps until the sun went down and the sky was all a windy gold behind Ingleside and the lights sprang up in the village below. Always Rilla liked to watch them blooming out, here and there, all over the Glen, but tonight she was interested in nothing. She had never been so unhappy in her life. She just didn’t see how she could live. The evening deepened to purple and she was still more unhappy. A most delectable odour of maple sugar buns drifted out to her… Susan had waited for the evening coolness to do the family baking… but maple sugar buns, like all else, were just vanity. Miserably she climbed the stairs and went to bed under the new, pink-flowered spread she had once been so proud of. But she could not sleep. She was haunted by the ghost of the cake she had drowned. Mother had promised the committee the cake… what would they think of Mother for not sending it? And it would have been the prettiest cake there! The wind had such a lonely sound tonight. It was reproaching her. It was saying, ‘Silly… silly… silly,’ over and over again.

‘What is keeping you awake, pet?’ said Susan, coming in with a maple sugar bun.

‘Oh, Thuthan, I’m… I’m jutht tired of being
me
.’

Susan looked troubled. Come to think of it, the child had looked tired at supper.

‘And of course the doctor’s away. Doctors’ families die and shoemakers’ wives go barefoot,’ she thought. Then, aloud:

‘I am going to see if you have a temperature, my pet.’

‘No, no, Thuthan. It’th jutht… I’ve done thome-thing dreadful, Thuthan… Thatan made me do it… no, no, he didn’t, Thuthan… I did it mythelf. I… threw the cake into the creek.’

‘Land of hope and glory!’ said Susan blankly. ‘Whatever made you do that?’

‘Do what?’ It was Mother, home from town. Susan retreated gladly, thankful that Mrs Doctor had the situation in hand. Rilla sobbed out the whole story.

‘Darling, I don’t understand.
Why
did you think it was such a dreadful thing to take a cake to the church?’

‘I thought it wath jutht like old Tillie Pake, Mummy. And I’ve dithgrathed you… oh, Mummy, if you’ll forgive me I’ll never be tho naughty again… and I’ll tell the committee you
did
thend a cake…’

‘Never mind the committee, darling. They would have more than enough cakes… they always do. It’s not likely anyone would notice we didn’t send one. We just won’t talk of this to anybody. But always after this, Bertha Marilla Blythe, remember the fact that neither Susan nor Mother would ever ask you to do anything disgraceful.’

Life was sweet again. Daddy came to the door to say ‘Goodnight, Kittenkin,’ and Susan slipped in to say they were going to have a chicken-pie for dinner tomorrow.

‘With lotth of gravy, Thuthan?’

‘Lashings of it.’

‘And may I have a
brown
egg for breakfath, Thuthan. I don’t detherve it…’

‘You shall have two brown eggs if you want them. And now you
must
eat your bun and go to sleep, little pet.’

Rilla ate her bun, but before she went to sleep she slipped out of bed and knelt down. Very earnestly she said:

‘Dear God, pleathe make me a good and obedient child alwayth, no matter what I’m told to do. And bleth dear Mith Emmy and all the poor orphanth.’

The Ingleside children played together and walked together and had all kinds of adventures together; and each of them, in addition to this, had his and her own inner life of dream and fancy. Especially Nan, who from the very first had fashioned secret drama for herself out of everything she heard or saw or read, and sojourned in realms of wonder and romance quite unsuspected in her household circle. At first she wove patterns of pixy dances and elves in haunted valleys and dryads in birch-trees. She and the great willow at the gate had secrets only they knew, and the old empty Bailey house at the upper end of Rainbow Valley was the ruin of a haunted tower. For weeks she might be a king’s daughter imprisoned in a lonely castle by the sea… for months she was a nurse in a leper colony in India or some land ‘far, far away’. ‘Far, far away’ were still words of magic to Nan… like faint music over a windy hill.

As she grew older she built up her dramas about the real people she saw in her little life. Especially the people in church. Nan liked to look at the people in church because every one was so nicely dressed. It was almost miraculous. They looked so different from what they did on week-days.

The quiet, respectable occupants of the various family pews would have been amazed and perhaps a little horrified if they had known the romances the demure, brown-eyed maiden in the Ingleside pew was concocting about them. Black-browed, kind-hearted Annetta Millison would have been thunderstruck to know that Nan Blythe pictured her as a kidnapper of children, boiling them alive to make potions that would keep her young for ever. Nan pictured this so vividly that she was half frightened to death when she met Annetta Millison once, in a twilight lane astir with the golden whisper of buttercups. She was positively unable to reply to Annetta’s friendly greeting, and Annetta reflected that Nan Blythe was really getting to be a proud and saucy little puss and needed a bit of training in good manners. Pale Mrs Rod Palmer never dreamed that she had poisoned someone and was dying of remorse. Elder Gordon MacAllister of the solemn face, had no notion that a curse had been put on him at birth by a witch, the result being that he could never smile. Dark-moustached Fraser Palmer, of a blameless life, little knew that when Nan Blythe looked at him she was thinking, ‘I believe that man has committed a dark and desperate deed. He looks as if he had some dreadful secret on his conscience.’ And Archibald Fyfe had no suspicion that when Nan Blythe saw him coming she was busy making up a rhyme as a reply to any remark he might make because he was never to be spoken to except in rhyme. He never did speak to her, being exceedingly afraid of children, but Nan got no end of fun out of desperately and quickly inventing a rhyme.