“What’s all this fuss about?” demanded Aunt Mary Maria, suddenly appearing on the stairs, her head surrounded by a halo of crimpers and her body encased in a dragon-embroidered dressing-gown. “Can’t a body ever get a quiet night’s sleep in this house?”
“Little Jem has disappeared,” said Susan again, too much in the grip of terror to resent Miss Blythe’s tone. “His mother trusted me . . .”
Anne had gone to search the house for herself. Jem must be somewhere! He was not in his room . . . the bed was undisturbed. . . . He was not in the twins’ room . . . in hers. . . . He was . . . he was nowhere in the house. Anne, after a pilgrimage from garret to cellar, returned to the living-room in a condition that was suddenly akin to panic.
“I don’t want to make you nervous, Annie,” said Aunt Mary Marie, lowering her voice creepily, “but have you looked in the rainwater hogshead? Little Jack MacGregor was drowned in a rainwater hogshead in town last year.”
“I . . . I looked there,” said Susan, with another wring of her hands. “I . . . I took a stick . . . and poked . . .”
Anne’s heart, which had stood still at Aunt Mary Maria’s question, resumed operations. Susan gathered herself together and stopped wringing her hands. She had remembered too late that Mrs. Dr. dear should not be upset.
“Let us calm down and pull together,” she said in a trembling voice. “As you say, Mrs. Dr. dear, he must be somewhere about. He cannot have dissolved into thin air.”
“Have you looked in the coal-bin? And the clock?” asked Aunt Mary Maria.
Susan had looked in the coal-bin but nobody had thought of the clock. It was quite big enough for a small boy to hide in. Anne, not considering the absurdity of supposing that Jem would crouch there for four hours, rushed to it. But Jem was not in the clock.
“I had a feeling something was going to happen when I went to bed tonight,” said Aunt Mary Maria, pressing both hands to her temples. “When I read my nightly chapter in the Bible the words, ‘Ye know not what a day may bring forth,’ seemed to stand out from the page as it were. It was a sign. You’d better nerve yourself to bear the worst, Annie. He may have wandered into the marsh. It’s a pity we haven’t a few bloodhounds.”
With a dreadful effort Anne managed a laugh.
“I’m afraid there aren’t any on the Island, Aunty. If we had Gilbert’s old setter Rex, who got poisoned, he would soon find Jem. I feel sure we are all alarming ourselves for nothing . . .”
“Tommy Spencer in Carmody disappeared mysteriously forty years ago and was never found . . . or was he? Well, if he was, it was only his skeleton. This is no laughing matter, Annie. I don’t know how you can take it so calmly.”
The telephone rang. Anne and Susan looked at each other.
“I can’t . . . I can’t go to the phone, Susan,” said Anne in a whisper.
“I cannot either,” said Susan flatly. She was to hate herself all her days for showing such weakness before Mary Maria Blythe, but she could not help it. Two hours of terrified searching and distorted imaginations had made Susan a wreck.
Aunt Mary Maria stalked to the telephone and took down the receiver, her crimpers making a horned silhouette on the wall which, Susan reflected, in spite of her anguish, looked like the old Nick himself.
“Carter Flagg says they have searched everywhere but found no sign of him yet,” reported Aunt Mary Maria coolly. “But he says the dory is out in the middle of the pond with no one in it as far as they can ascertain. They are going to drag the pond.”
Susan caught Anne just in time.
“No . . . no . . . I’m not going to faint, Susan,” said Anne through white lips. “Help me to a chair . . . thanks. We must find Gilbert . . .”
“If James is drowned, Annie, you must remind yourself that he has been spared a lot of trouble in this wretched world,” said Aunt Mary Marie by way of administering further consolation.
“I’m going to get the lantern and search the grounds again,” said Anne, as soon as she could stand up. “Yes, I know you did, Susan . . . but let me . . . let me. I cannot sit still and wait.”
“You must put on a sweater then, Mrs. Dr. dear. There is a heavy dew and the air is damp. I will get your red one . . . it is hanging on a chair in the boys’ room. Wait you here till I bring it.”
Susan hurried upstairs. A few moments later something that could only be described as a shriek echoed through Ingleside. Anne and Aunt Mary Maria rushed upstairs, where they found Susan laughing and crying in the hall, nearer to hysterics than Susan Baker had ever been in her life or ever would be again.
“Mrs. Dr. dear . . . he’s there! Little Jem is there . . . asleep on the window-seat behind the door. I never looked there . . . the door hid it . . . and when he wasn’t in his bed . . .”
Anne, weak with relief and joy, got herself into the room and dropped on her knees by the window-seat. In a little while she and Susan would be laughing over their own foolishness, but now there could be only tears of thankfulness. Little Jem was sound asleep on the window-seat, with an afghan pulled over him, his battered Teddy Bear in his little sunburned hands, and a forgiving Shrimp stretched across his legs. His red curls fell over the cushion. He seemed to be having a pleasant dream and Anne did not mean to waken him. But suddenly he opened his eyes that were like hazel stars and looked at her.
“Jem, darling, why aren’t you in your bed? We’ve . . . we’ve been a little alarmed . . . we couldn’t find you . . . and we never thought of looking here . . .”
“I wanted to lie here ‘cause I could see you and Daddy drive in at the gate when you got home. It was so lonesome I just had to go to bed.”
Mother was lifting him in her arms . . . carrying him to his own bed. It was so nice to be kissed . . . to feel her tucking the sheets about him with those caressing little pats that gave him such a sense of being loved. Who cared about seeing an old snake tattooed, anyhow? Mother was so nice . . . the nicest mother anybody ever had. Everybody in the Glen called Bertie Shakespeare’s mother “Mrs. Second Skimmings” because she was so mean, and he knew . . . for he’d seen it . . . that she slapped Bertie’s face for every little thing.
“Mummy,” he said sleepily, “of course I’ll bring you mayflowers next spring . . . every spring. You can depend on me.”
“Of course I can, darling,” said Mother.
“Well, since everyone is over their fit of the fidgets, I suppose we can draw a peaceful breath and go back to our beds,” said Aunt Mary Maria. But there was some shrewish relief in her tone.
“It was very silly of me not to remember the window-seat,” said Anne. “The joke is on us and the doctor will not let us forget it, you may be certain. Susan, please phone Mr. Flagg that we’ve found Jem.”
“And a nice laugh he will have on me,” said Susan happily. “Not that I care . . . he can laugh all he likes since Little Jem is safe.”
“I could do with a cup of tea,” sighed Aunt Mary Maria plaintively, gathering her dragons about her spare form.
“I will get it in a jiffy,” said Susan briskly. “We will all feel the sprightlier for one. Mrs. Dr. dear, when Carter Flagg heard Little Jem was safe he said, ‘Thank God.’ I shall never say a word against that man again, no matter what his prices are. And don’t you think we might have a chicken dinner tomorrow, Mrs. Dr. dear? Just by way of a little celebration, so to speak. And Little Jem shall have his favourite muffins for breakfast.”
There was another telephone call . . . this time from Gilbert to say that he was taking a badly burned baby from the Harbour Head to the hospital in town and not to look for him till morning.
Anne bent from her window for a thankful goodnight look at the world before going to bed. A cool wind was blowing in from the sea. A sort of moonlit rapture was running through the trees in the Hollow. Anne could even laugh . . . with a quiver behind the laughter . . . over their panic of an hour ago and Aunt Mary Maria’s absurd suggestions and ghoulish memories. Her child was safe . . . Gilbert was somewhere battling to save a
nother child’s life. . . . Dear God, help him and help the mother . . . help all mothers everywhere. We need so much help, with the little sensitive, loving hearts and minds that look to us for guidance and love and understanding.
The friendly enfolding night took possession of Ingleside, and everybody, even Susan . . . who rather felt that she would like to crawl into some nice quiet hole and pull it in after her . . . fell on sleep under its sheltering roof.
Chapter 7
“He’ll have plenty of company . . . he won’t be lonesome . . . our four . . . and my niece and nephew from Montreal are visiting us. What one doesn’t think of the others do.”
Big, sonsy, jolly Mrs. Dr. Parker smiled expansively at Walter . . . who returned the smile somewhat aloofly. He wasn’t altogether sure he liked Mrs. Parker in spite of her smiles and jollity. There was too much of her, somehow. Dr. Parker he did like. As for “our four” and the niece and nephew from Montreal, Walter had never seen any of them. Lowbridge, where the Parkers lived, was six miles from the Glen and Walter had never been there, though Dr. and Mrs. Parker and Dr. and Mrs. Blythe visited back and forth frequently. Dr. Parker and Dad were great friends, though Walter had a feeling now and again that Mother could have got along very well without Mrs. Parker. Even at six, Walter, as Anne realized, could see things that other children could not.
Walter was not sure, either, that he really wanted to go to Lowbridge. Some visits were splendid. A trip to Avonlea now . . . ah, there was fun for you! And a night spent with Kenneth Ford at the old House of Dreams was more fun still . . . though that couldn’t really be called visiting, for the House of Dreams always seemed like a second home to the small fry of Ingleside. But to go to Lowbridge for two whole weeks, among strangers, was a very different matter. However, it seemed to be a settled thing. For some reason, which Walter felt but could not understand, Dad and Mummy were pleased over the arrangement. Did they want to get rid of all their children, Walter wondered, rather sadly and uneasily. Jem was away, having been taken to Avonlea two days ago, and he had heard Susan making mysterious remarks about “sending the twins to Mrs. Marshall Elliott when the time came.” What time? Aunt Mary Maria seemed very gloomy over something and had been known to say that she “wished it was all well over.” What was it she wished over? Walter had no idea. But there was something strange in the air at Ingleside.
“I’ll take him over tomorrow,” said Gilbert.
“The youngsters will be looking forward to it,” said Mrs. Parker.
“It’s very kind of you, I’m sure,” said Anne.
“It’s all for the best, no doubt,” Susan told the Shrimp darkly in the kitchen.
“It is very obliging of Mrs. Parker to take Walter off our hands, Annie,” said Aunt Mary Maria, when the Parkers had gone. “She told me she had taken quite a fancy to him. People do take such odd fancies, don’t they? Well, perhaps now for at least two weeks I’ll be able to go into the bathroom without tramping on a dead fish.”
“A dead fish, Aunty! You don’t mean . . .”
“I mean exactly what I say, Annie. I always do. A dead fish! Did you ever step on a dead fish with your bare feet?”
“No-o . . . but how . . .”
“Walter caught a trout last night and put it in the bathtub to keep it alive, Mrs. Dr. dear,” said Susan airily. “If it had stayed there it would have been all right, but somehow it got out and died in the night. Of course, if people will go about on bare feet . . .”
“I make it a rule never to quarrel with anyone,” said Aunt Mary Maria, getting up and leaving the room.
“I am determined she shall not vex me, Mrs. Dr. dear,” said Susan.
“Oh, Susan, she is getting on my nerves a bit . . . but of course I won’t mind so much when all this is over . . . and it must be nasty to tramp on a dead fish . . .”
“Isn’t a dead fish better than a live one, Mummy? A dead fish wouldn’t squirm,” said Di.
Since the truth must be told at all costs it must be admitted that the mistress and maid of Ingleside both giggled.
So that was that. But Anne wondered to Gilbert that night if Walter would be quite happy at Lowbridge.
“He’s so very sensitive and imaginative,” she said wistfully.
“Too much so,” said Gilbert, who was tired after having had, to quote Susan, three babies that day. “Why, Anne, I believe that child is afraid to go upstairs in the dark. It will do him worlds of good to give and take with the Parker fry for a few days. He’ll come home a different child.”
Anne said nothing more. No doubt Gilbert was quite right. Walter was lonesome without Jem; and in view of what had happened when Shirley was born it would be just as well for Susan to have as little on her hands as possible beyond running the house and enduring Aunt Mary Maria . . . whose two weeks had already stretched to four.
Walter was lying awake in his bed trying to escape from the haunting thought that he was to go away next day by giving free rein to fancy. Walter had a very vivid imagination. It was to him a great white charger, like the one in the picture on the wall, on which he could gallop backward or forward in time and space. The Night was coming down . . . Night, like a tall, dark, bat-winged angel who lived in Mr. Andrew Taylor’s woods on the south hill. Sometimes Walter welcomed her . . . sometimes he pictured her so vividly that he grew afraid of her. Walter dramatized and personified everything in his small world . . . the Wind who told him stories at night . . . the Frost that nipped the flowers in the garden . . . the Dew that fell so silverly and silently . . . the Moon which he felt sure he could catch if he could only go to the top of that faraway purple hill . . . the Mist that came in from the sea . . . the great Sea itself that was always changing and never changed . . . the dark, mysterious Tide. They were all entities to Walter. Ingleside and the Hollow and the maple grove and the Marsh and the harbour shore were full of elves and kelpies and dryads and mermaids and goblins. The black plaster-of-Paris cat on the library mantelpiece was a fairy witch. It came alive at night and prowled about the house, grown to enormous size. Walter ducked his head under the bedclothes and shivered. He was always scaring himself with his own fancies.
Perhaps Aunt Mary Maria was right when she said he was “far too nervous and high-strung,” though Susan would never forgive her for it. Perhaps Aunt Kitty MacGregor of the Upper Glen, who was reported to have “the second sight,” was right when, having once taken a deep look into Walter’s long-lashed, smoky grey eyes, she said he “did be having an old soul in a young body.” It might be that the old soul knew too much for the young brain to understand always.
Walter was told in the morning that Dad would take him to Lowbridge after dinner. He said nothing, but during dinner a choky sensation came over him and he dropped his eyes quickly to hide a sudden mist of tears. Not quickly enough, however.
“You’re not going to cry, Walter?” said Aunt Mary Maria, as if a six-year-old mite would be disgraced forever if he cried. “If there’s anything I do despise it’s a cry-baby. And you haven’t eaten your meat.”
“All but the fat,” said Walter, blinking valiantly but not yet daring to look up. “I don’t like fat.”
“When I was a child,” said Aunt Mary Maria, “I was not allowed to have likes and dislikes. Well, Mrs. Dr. Parker will probably cure you of some of your notions. She was a Winter, I think . . . or was she a Clark? . . . no, she must have been a Campbell. But the Winters and the Campbells are all tarred with the same brush and they don’t put up with any nonsense.”
“Oh, please, Aunt Mary Maria, don’t frighten Walter about his visit to Lowbridge,” said Anne, a little spark kindling far down in her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Annie,” said Aunt Mary Maria with great humility. “I should of course have remembered that I have no right to try to teach your children anything.”
“Drat her hide,” muttered Susan as she went out for the dessert . . . Walter’s favourite Queen pudding.
Anne felt miserably guilty. Gilbert had shot her a
slightly reproachful glance as if to imply she might have been more patient with a poor lonely old lady.
Gilbert himself was feeling a bit seedy. The truth, as everyone knew, was that he had been terribly overworked all summer; and perhaps Aunt Mary Maria was more of a strain than he would admit. Anne made up her mind that in the fall, if all was well, she would pack him off willy-nilly for a month’s snipe-shooting in Nova Scotia.
“How is your tea?” she asked Aunt Mary Maria repentantly.
Aunt Mary Maria pursed her lips.
“Too weak. But it doesn’t matter. Who cares whether a poor old woman gets her tea to her liking or not? Some folks, however, think I’m real good company.”
Whatever the connexion between Aunt Mary Maria’s two sentences was, Anne felt she was beyond ferreting it out just then. She had turned very pale.
“I think I’ll go upstairs and lie down,” she said, a trifle faintly, as she rose from the table. “And I think, Gilbert . . . perhaps you’d better not stay long in Lowbridge . . . and suppose you give Miss Carson a ring.”
She kissed Walter good-bye rather casually and hurriedly . . . very much as if she were not thinking about him at all. Walter would not cry. Aunt Mary Maria kissed him on the forehead . . . Walter hated to be moistly kissed on the forehead . . . and said:
“Mind your table manners at Lowbridge, Walter. Mind you ain’t greedy. If you are, a Big Black Man will come along with a big black bag to pop naughty children into.”
It was perhaps as well that Gilbert had gone out to harness Grey Tom and did not hear this. He and Anne had always made a point of never frightening their children with such ideas or allowing anyone else to do it. Susan did hear it as she cleared the table and Aunt Mary Maria never knew what a narrow escape she had of having the gravy boat and its contents flung at her head.
Chapter 8
Generally Walter enjoyed a drive with Dad. He loved beauty, and the roads around Glen St. Mary were beautiful. The road to Lowbridge was a double ribbon of dancing buttercups, with here and there the ferny green rim of an inviting grove. But today Dad didn’t seem to want to talk much and he drove Grey Tom as Walter never remembered seeing him driven before. When they reached Lowbridge he said a few hurried words aside to Mrs. Parker and rushed out without bidding Walter good-bye. Walter had again hard work to keep from crying. It was only too plain that nobody loved him. Mother and Father used to, but they didn’t any longer.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 135