'Anyhow, I'll try to clean it up,' thought Nan forlornly. But her heart was like lead. The flame of high self-sacrifice which had lured her on had gone out.
'What are you wanting to see Cass for?' asked Mrs Six-toed curiously, as she wiped the baby's dirty face with a still dirtier apron. 'If it's about that Sunday School concert she can't go and that's flat. She hasn't a decent rag. How can I get her any? I ask you.'
'No, it's not about the concert,' said Nan drearily. She might as well tell Mrs Thomas the whole story. She would have to know it anyhow. 'I came to tell her... to tell her that... that she is me and I'm her!'
Perhaps Mrs Six-toed might be forgiven for not thinking this very lucid.
'You must be cracked,' she said. 'Whatever on earth do you mean?'
Nan lifted her head. The worst was now over.
'I mean that Cassie and I were born the same night and... and... the nurse changed us because she had a spite at Mother, and... and... Cassie ought to be living at Ingleside... and having advantages.'
The last phrase was one she had heard her Sunday School teacher use, but Nan thought it made a dignified ending to a very lame speech.
Mrs Six-toed stared at her.
'Am I crazy or are you? What you've been saying doesn't make any sense. Whoever told you such a rigmarole?'
'Dovie Johnson.'
Mrs Six-toed threw back her tousled head and laughed. She might be dirty and draggled, but she had an attractive laugh. 'I might have knowed it. I've been washing for her aunt all summer and that kid is a pill. My, doesn't she think it smart to fool people! Well, littie Miss What's-your-name, you'd better not be believing all Dovie's yarns or she'll lead you a merry dance.'
'Do you mean it isn't true?' gasped Nan.
'Not very likely. Good glory, you must be pretty green to fall for anything like that. Cass must be a good year older than you. Who on earth are you, anyhow?'
'I'm Nan Blythe.' Oh, beautiful thought! She was Nan Blythe!
'Nan Blythe! One of the Ingleside twins! Why, I remember the night you were born. I happened to call at Ingleside on an errand. I wasn't married to Six-toed then... more's the pity I ever was... and Cass's mother was living and healthy, with Cass beginning to walk. You look like your Dad's mother... she was there that night, too, proud as Punch over her twin granddaughters. And to think you'd no more sense than to believe a crazy yarn like that.'
'I'm in the habit of believing people,' said Nan, rising with a slight stateliness of manner, but too deliriously happy to want to snub Mrs Six-toed very sharply.
'Well, it's a habit you'd better get out of in this kind of a world,' said Mrs Six-toed cynically, 'and quit running round with kids who like to fool people. Sit down, child. You can't go home till this shower's over. It's pouring rain and dark as a stack of black cats. Why, she's gone... the child's gone.'
Nan was already blotted out in the downpour. Nothing but the wild exultation born of Mrs Six-toed's assurances could have carried her home through that storm. The wind buffeted her, the rain streamed upon her, the appalling thunderclaps made her think the world had burst open. Only the incessant icy-blue glare of the lightning showed her the road. Again and again she slipped and fell. But at last she reeled, dripping, and mud-plastered, into the hall at Ingleside.
Mother ran and caught her in her arms.
'Darling, what a fright you have given us! Oh, where have you been?'
'I only hope Jem and Walter won't catch their deaths out in that rain searching for you,' said Susan, the sharpness of strain in her voice.
Nan had almost had the breath battered out of her. She could only gasp as she felt Mother's arm enfolding her:
'Oh, Mother, I'm me... really me. I'm not Cassie Thomas and I'll never be anybody but me again.'
'The poor pet is delirious,' said Susan. 'She must have et something that disagreed with her.'
Anne bathed Nan and put her to bed before she would let her talk.
Then she heard the whole story.
'Oh, Mummy, am I really your child?'
'Of course, darling. How could you think anything else?'
'I didn't ever think Dovie would tell me a story... not Dovie. Mummy, can you believe anybody? Jen Penny told Di awful stories...'
'They are only two girls out of all the little girls you know, dear. None of your other playmates has ever told you what wasn't true. There are people in the world like that, grown-ups as well as children. When you are a little older you will be better able to "tell the gold from the tinsel".'
'Mummy, I wish Walter and Jem and Di needn't know what a silly I was.'
'They needn't. Di went to Lowbridge with Daddy, and the boys need only know you went too far down the Harbour Road and were caught in the storm. You were foolish to believe Dovie, but you were a very fine, brave little girl to go and offer what you thought her rightful place to poor little Cassie Thomas. Mother is proud of you.'
The storm was over. The moon was looking down on a cool, happy world.
'Oh, I'm so glad I'm me!' was Nan's last thought as she fell asleep.
Gilbert and Anne came in later to look on the little sleeping faces that were so sweetly close to each other. Diana slept with the corners of her firm little mouth tucked in, but Nan had gone to sleep smiling. Gilbert had heard the story and was so angry that it was well for Dovie Johnson that she was a good thirty miles away from him. But Anne was feeling conscience-stricken.
'I should have found out what was troubling her, but I've been too much taken up with other things this week... things that really mattered nothing compared to a child's unhappiness. Think of what the poor darling has suffered.'
She stooped repentantly, gloatingly, over them. They were still hers... wholly hers, to mother and love and protect. They still came to her with every love and grief of their little hearts. For a few years longer they would be hers... and then? Anne shivered. Motherhood was very sweet... but very terrible.
'I wonder what life holds for them,' she whispered.
'At least, let's hope and trust they'll each get as good a husband as their mother got,' said Gilbert teasingly.
34
'So the Ladies' Aid is going to have their quilting at Ingleside?' said the Doctor. 'Bring out all your lordly dishes, Susan, and provide several brooms to sweep up the fragments of reputations afterwards.'
Susan smiled wanly, as tolerant of a man's lack of all understanding of vital things, but she did not feel like smiling... at least, until everything concerning the Aid supper had been settled.
'Hot chicken-pie,' she went about murmuring, 'mashed potatoes and creamed peas for the main course. And it will be such a good chance to use your new lace tablecloth, Mrs Doctor dear. Such a thing has never been seen in the Glen and I am confident it will make a sensation. I am looking forward to Annabel Clow's face when she sees it. And will you be using your blue and silver basket for the flowers?'
'Yes, full of pansies and yellow-green ferns from the maple grove. And I want you to put those three magnificent pink geraniums of yours somewhere around... in the living-room if we quilt there, or on the balustrade of the veranda if it's warm enough to work out there. I'm glad we have so many flowers left. The garden has never been so beautiful as it has been this summer, Susan. But then I say that every autumn, don't I?'
There were many things to be settled. Who should sit by whom? It was essential that Mrs Simon Millison should not be asked to sit beside Mrs William McCreery, for they never spoke to each other because of some obscure old feud dating back to school days. Then there was the question of whom to invite, for it was the hostess's privilege to ask a few guests apart from the members of the Aid.
'I'm going to have Mrs Best and Mrs Campbell,' said Anne.
Susan looked doubtful.
'They are newcomers, Mrs Doctor dear'... much as she might have said, 'They are crocodiles.'
'The Doctor and I were newcomers once, Susan.'
'But the Doctor's uncle was here for years before that.
Nobody knows anything about these Bests and Campbells. But it is your house, Mrs Doctor dear, and who am I to object to anyone you wish to have? I remember one quilting at Mrs Carter Flagg's many years ago when Mrs Flagg invited a strange woman. She came in wincey, Mrs Doctor dear... said she didn't think a Ladies' Aid worth dressing up for! At least there will be no fear of that with Mrs Campbell. She is very dressy... though I could never see myself wearing hydrangea blue to church.'
Anne could not either, but she dared not smile.
'I thought that dress was lovely with Mrs Campbell's silver hair, Susan. And by the way, she wants your recipe for spiced gooseberry relish, Susan. She says she had some of it at the Harvest Home supper and it was delicious.'
'Oh, well, Mrs Doctor dear, it is not everyone who can make spiced gooseberry'... and no more disapproval was expressed of hydrangea blue dresses. Mrs Campbell might henceforth appear out in the costume of a Fiji Islander if she chose and Susan would find excuses for it.
The young months had grown old, but autumn was still remembering summer and the quilting day was more like June than October. Every member of the Ladies' Aid who could possibly come came, looking forward pleasurably to a good dish of gossip and an Ingleside supper, besides seeing some sweet new thing in fashions, since the Doctor's wife had recently been to town.
Susan, unbowed by the culinary cares that were heaped upon her, stalked about, showing the ladies to the guest-room, serene in the knowledge that not one of them possessed an apron trimmed with crochet lace five inches deep made from Number One Hundred thread. Susan had captured first prize at the Charlottetown Exhibition the week before with that lace. She and Rebecca Dew had trysted there and made a day of it, and Susan had come home that night the proudest woman in Prince Edward Island.
Susan's face was perfectly controlled, but her thoughts were her own, sometimes spiced with a trifle of mild malice.
Celia Reese is here, looking for something to laugh at as usual. Well, she will not find it at our supper table and that you may tie to. Myra Murray in red velvet... a little too sumptuous for a quilting in my opinion, but I am not denying she looks well in it. At least it is not wincey. Agatha Drew... and her glasses tied on with a string as usual... Sarah Taylor... it may be her last quilting... she has got a terrible heart, the doctor says, but the spirit of her! Mrs Donald Reese... thank the Good Lord she didn't bring Mary Anna with her, but no doubt we will hear plenty. Jane Burr from the Upper Glen. She isn't a member of the Aid. Well, I shall count the spoons after supper and that you may tie to. That family were all light-fingered. Candace Crawford... she doesn't often trouble an Aid meeting, but a quilting is a good place to show off her pretty hands and her diamond ring. Emma Pollock, with her petticoat showing below her dress of course. A pretty woman, but flimsy minded like all that tribe. Tillie MacAllister, don't you go and upset the jelly on the tablecloth like you did at Mrs Palmer's quilting. Martha Crothers, you will have a decent meal for once. It is too bad your husband could not have come too... I hear he has to live on nuts or something like that. Mrs Elder Baxter... I hear the elder has scared Harold Reese away from Mina at last. Harold always had a wishbone in place of a backbone, and faint heart never won fair lady, as the Good Book says. Well, we have enough for two quilts and some over to thread needles.
The quilts were set up on the broad veranda and everyone was busy with fingers and tongues. Anne and Susan were deep in preparations for supper in the kitchen, and Walter, who had been kept home from school that morning because of a slight sore throat, was squatted on the veranda steps, screened from view of the quilters by a curtain of vines. He always liked to listen to older people talking. They said such surprising, mysterious things... things you could think over afterwards and weave into the very stuff of drama, things that reflected the colours and shadows, the comedies and tragedies, the jests and the sorrows, of every Four Winds clan.
Of all the women present Walter liked Mrs Myra Murray best, with her easy, infectious laugh and the jolly little wrinkles round her eyes. She could tell the simplest story and make it seem dramatic and vital; she gladdened life wherever she went; and she did look so pretty in her cherry-red velvet, with the smooth ripples in her black hair, and the little red drops in her ears. Mrs Tom Chubb, who was thin as a needle, he liked least... perhaps because he had once heard her calling him 'a sickly child'. He thought Mrs Allan Milgrave looked just like a sleek grey hen, and that Mrs Grant Clow was like nothing so much as a barrel on legs. Young Mrs David Ransome, with her taffy-coloured hair, was very handsome... 'too handsome for a farm', Susan had said when Dave married her. The young bride, Mrs Morton MacDougall, looked like a sleepy white poppy. Edith Bailey, the Glen dressmaker, with her misty silvery curls and humorous black eyes, didn't look as if she could be 'an old maid'. He liked Mrs Meade, the oldest woman there, who had gentle, tolerant eyes and listened far more than she talked, and he did not like Celia Reese, with her sly, amused look, as if she were laughing at everybody.
The quilters had not really started talking yet... they were discussing the weather and deciding whether to quilt in fans or diamonds, so Walter was thinking of the beauty of the ripened day, the big lawn with its magnificent trees, and the world that looked as if some great kind Being had put golden arms about it. The tinted leaves were drifting slowly down, but the knightly hollyhocks were still gay against the brick wall and the poplars wove sorcery of aspen along the path to the barn. Walter was so absorbed in the loveliness around him that the quilting conversation was in full swing before he was recalled to consciousness of it by Mrs Simon Millison's pronouncement.
'That clan were noted for their sensational funerals. Will any of you who were there ever forget what happened at Peter Kirk's funeral?'
Walter pricked up his ears. This sounded interesting. But much to his disappointment, Mrs Simon did not go on to tell what had happened. Everybody must have been at the funeral or heard the story.
(But why are they all looking so uncomfortable about it?)
'There is no doubt that everything Clara Wilson said about Peter was true, but he is in his grave, poor man, so let us leave him there,' said Mrs Tom Chubb self-righteously... as if somebody had proposed exhuming him.
'Mary Anna is always saying such clever things,' said Mrs Reese. 'Do you know what she said the other day when we were starting to Margaret Hollister's funeral? "Ma," she said, "will there be any ice-cream at the funeral?" '
A few women exchanged furtive amused smiles. The most of them ignored Mrs Donald. It was really the only thing to do when she began dragging Mary Anna into the conversation as she invariably did, in season and out of season. If you gave her the least encouragement she was maddening. 'Do you know what Mary Anna said?' was a standing catchword in the Glen.
'Talking of funerals,' said Celia Reese, 'there was a queer one in Mowbray Narrows when I was a girl. Stanton Lane had gone out west and word came back that he had died. His folks wired to have the body sent home, so it was, but Wallace MacAllister, the undertaker, advised them against opening the casket. The funeral had just got off to a good start when in walked Stanton Lane himself, hale and hearty. It was never found out who the corpse really was.'
'What did they do with him?' queried Agatha Drew.
'Oh, they buried him. Wallace said it couldn't be put off. But you couldn't rightly call it a funeral, with everyone so happy over Stanton's return. Mr Dawson changed the last hymn from "Take Comfort, Christians", to "Sometimes a Light Surprises", but most people thought he'd better have left well enough alone.'
'Do you know what Mary Anna said to me the other day? She said, "Ma, do the ministers know everything?" '
'Mr Dawson always lost his head in a crisis,' said Jane Burr. 'The Upper Glen was part of his charge then and I remember one Sunday he dismissed the congregation and then remembered that the collection hadn't been taken up. So what does he do but grab a collection plate and run round the yard with it. To be sure,' added Jane, 'people gave that day who never gave before o
r after. They didn't like to refuse the minister. But it was hardly dignified of him.'
'What I had against Mr Dawson,' said Miss Cornelia, 'was the unmerciful length of his prayers at a funeral. It actually came to such a pass that people said they envied the corpse. He surpassed himself at Letty Grant's funeral. I saw her mother was on the point of fainting, so I gave him a nudge and told him he'd prayed long enough.'
'He buried my poor Jarvis,' said Mrs George Carr, tears dropping down. She always cried when she spoke of her husband, although he had been dead for twenty years.
'His brother was a minister, too,' said Christine Marsh. 'He was in the Glen when I was a girl. We had a concert in the hall one night and as he was one of the speakers he was sitting on the platform. He was as nervous as his brother and he kept fidgeting his chair farther and farther back and all at once he went, chair and all, clean over the edge on the bank of flowers and house-plants we had arranged around the base. All that could be seen of him was his feet sticking up above the platform. Somehow, it always spoiled his preaching for me after that. His feet were so big.'
'The Lane funeral might have been a disappointment,' said Emma Pollock, 'but at least it was better than not having any funeral at all. You remember the Cromwell mix-up?'
There was a chorus of reminiscent laughter. 'Let us hear the story,' said Mrs Campbell. 'Remember, Mrs Pollock, I'm a stranger here, and all the family sagas are quite unknown to me.'
Emma didn't know what 'sagas' meant, but she loved to tell a story.
'Abner Cromwell lived over near Lowbridge on one of the biggest farms in that district and he was an M.P.P. in those days. He was one of the biggest frogs in the Tory puddle and acquainted with everybody of any importance on the Island. He was married to Julia Flagg, whose mother was a Reese and her grandmother was a Clow, so they were connected with almost every family in Four Winds as well. One day a notice came out in the Daily Enterprise... Mr Abner Cromwell had died suddenly at Lowbridge and his funeral would be held at two o'clock the next afternoon. Somehow the Abner Cromwells missed seeing the notice... and of course there were no rural telephones in those days. The next morning Abner left for Kingsport to attend a Liberal convention. At two o'clock people began arriving for the funeral, coming early to get a good seat, thinking there'd be such a crowd on account of Abner being such a prominent man. And a crowd there was, believe you me. For miles around the roads were just a string of buggies, and people kept pouring in till about three. Mrs Abner was just about crazy trying to make them believe her husband wasn't dead. Some wouldn't believe her at first... she said to me in tears that they seemed to think she'd made away with the corpse... and when they were convinced they acted as if they thought Abner ought to be dead. And they tramped all over the lawn flower-beds she was so proud of. Any number of distant relations arrived too, expecting supper and beds for the night, and she hadn't much cooked... Julie was never very forehanded, that has to be admitted. When Abner arrived home two days afterwards he found her in bed with nervous prostration, and she was months getting over it. She didn't eat a thing for six weeks... well, hardly anything. I heard she said if there really had been a funeral she couldn't have been more upset. But I never believed she really did say it.'
Anne of Ingleside Page 21