Christmas came and went undarkened this year by any shadow of Aunt Mary Maria. There were rabbit trails in the snow to follow and great crusted fields over which you raced with your shadows and glistening hills for coasting and new skates to be tried out on the pond in the chill, rosy world of winter sunset. And always a yellow dog with black ears to run with you or meet you with ecstatic yelps of welcome when you came home, to sleep at the foot of your bed when you slept and lie at your feet while you learned your spellings, to sit close to you at meals and give you occasional reminding nudges with his little paw.
“Mother dearwums, I don’t know how I lived before Gyp came. He can talk, Mother . . . he can really . . . with his eyes, you know.”
Then . . . tragedy! One day Gyp seemed a little dull. He would not eat though Susan tempted him with the spare-rib bone he loved; the next day the Lowbridge vet was sent for and shook his head. It was hard to say . . . the dog might have found something poisonous in the woods . . . he might recover and he might not. The little dog lay very quietly, taking no notice of anyone except Jem; almost to the last he tried to wag his tail when Jem touched him.
“Mother dearwums, would it be wrong to pray for Gyp?”
“Of course not, dear. We can pray always for anything we love. But I am afraid . . . Gyppy is a very sick little dog.”
“Mother, you don’t think Gyppy is going to die!”
Gyp died the next morning. It was the first time death had entered into Jem’s world. No one of us ever forgets the experience of watching something we love die, even if it is “only a little dog.” Nobody at weeping Ingleside used that expression, not even Susan, who wiped a very red nose and muttered:
“I never took up with a dog before . . . and I never will again. It hurts too much.”
Susan was not acquainted with Kipling’s poem on the folly of giving your heart to a dog to tear; but if she had been she would, in spite of her contempt for poetry, have thought that for once a poet had uttered sense.
Night was hard for poor Jem. Mother and Father had to be away. Walter had cried himself to sleep and he was alone . . . with not even a dog to talk to. The dear brown eyes that had always been lifted to him so trustingly were glazed in death.
“Dear God,” prayed Jem, “please look after my little dog who died today. You’ll know him by the two black ears. Don’t let him be lonesome for me . . .”
Jem buried his face in the bedspread to smother a sob. When he put out the light the dark night would be looking through the window at him and there would be no Gyp. The cold winter morning would come and there would be no Gyp. Day would follow day for years and years and there would be no Gyp. He just couldn’t bear it.
Then a tender arm was slipped around him and he was held close in a warm embrace. Oh, there was love left yet in the world, even if Gyppy had gone.
“Mother, will it always be like this?”
“Not always.” Anne did not tell him he would soon forget . . . that before long Gyppy would only be a dear memory. “Not always, little Jem. This will heal sometime . . . as your burned hand healed though it hurt so much at first.”
“Dad said he would get me another dog. I don’t have to have it, do I? I don’t want another dog, Mother . . . not ever.”
“I know, darling.”
Mother knew everything. Nobody had a mother like his. He wanted to do something for her . . . and all at once it came to him what he would do. He would get her one of those pearl necklaces in Mr. Flagg’s store. He had heard her say once that she really would like to have a pearl necklace and Dad had said, “When our ship comes in I’ll get you one, Anne-girl.”
Ways and means must be considered: He had an allowance but it was all needed for necessary things and pearl necklaces were not among the items budgeted for. Besides, he wanted to earn the money for it himself. It would be really his gift then. Mother’s birthday was in March . . . only six weeks away. And the necklace would cost fifty cents!
Chapter 19
It was not easy to earn money in the Glen but Jem went at it determinedly. He made tops out of old reels for the boys in school for two cents apiece. He sold three treasured milk teeth for three cents. He sold his slice of apple crunch pie every Saturday afternoon to Bertie Shakespeare Drew. Every night he put what he had earned into the little brass pig Nan had given him for Christmas. Such a nice shiny brass pig with a slit in his back wherein to drop coins. When you had put in fifty coppers the pig would open neatly of his own accord if you twisted his tail and yield you back your wealth. Finally to make up the last eight cents he sold his string of birds’ eggs to Mac Reese. It was the finest string in the Glen and it hurt a little to let it go. But the birthday was drawing nearer and the money must be come by. Jem dropped the eight cents into the pig as soon as Mac had paid him and gloated over it.
“Twist his tail and see if he will really open up,” said Mac, who didn’t believe he would. But Jem refused; he was not going to open it until he was ready to go for the necklace.
The Missionary Auxiliary met at Ingleside the next afternoon and never forgot it. Right in the middle of Mrs. Norman Taylor’s prayer . . . and Mrs. Norman Taylor was credited with being very proud of her prayers . . . a frantic small boy burst into the living-room.
“My brass pig’s gone, Mother. .. my brass pig’s gone!”
Anne hustled him out but Mrs. Norman always considered that her prayer was spoiled and, as she had especially wanted to impress a visiting minister’s wife, it was long years before she forgave Jem or would have his father as a doctor again. After the ladies had gone home Ingleside was ransacked from top to bottom for the pig, without result. Jem, between the scolding he had got for his behaviour and his anguish over his loss, could remember just when he had seen it last or where. Mac Reese, telephoned to, responded that the last he had seen of the pig it was standing on Jem’s bureau.
“You don’t suppose, Susan, that Mac Reese . . .”
“No, Mrs. Dr. dear, I feel quite sure he didn’t. The Reeses have their faults . . . terrible keen after the money they are, but it has to be honestly come by. Where can that blessed pig be?”
“Maybe the rats et it?” said Di. Jem scoffed at the idea but it worried him. Of course rats couldn’t eat a brass pig with fifty coppers inside of him. But could they?
“No, no, dear. Your pig will turn up,” assured Mother.
It hadn’t turned up when Jem went to school the next day. News of his loss had reached school before him and many things were said to him, not exactly comforting. But at recess Sissy Flagg sidled up to him ingratiatingly. Sissy Flagg liked Jem and Jem did not like her, in spite of — or perhaps because of — her thick yellow curls and huge brown eyes. Even at eight one may have problems concerning the opposite sex.
“I can tell you who’s got your pig.”
“Who?”
“You’ve got to pick me for Clap-in and Clap-out and I’ll tell you.”
It was a bitter pill but Jem swallowed it. Anything to find that pig! He sat in an agony of blushes beside the triumphant Sissy while they clapped in and clapped out, and when the bell rang he demanded his reward.
“Alice Palmer says Willy Drew told her Bob Russell told him Fred Elliott said he knew where your pig was. Go and ask Fred.”
“Cheat!” cried Jem, glaring at her. “Cheat!”
Sissy laughed arrogantly. She didn’t care. Jem Blythe had had to sit with her for once anyhow.
Jem went to Fred Elliott, who at first declared he knew nothing about the old pig and didn’t want to. Jem was in despair. Fred Elliott was three years older than he was and a noted bully. Suddenly he had an inspiration. He pointed a grimy forefinger sternly at big, red-faced Fred Elliott.
“You are a transubstantiationalist,” he said distinctly.
“Here, you, don’t you call me names, young Blythe.”
“That is more than a name,” said Jem. “That is a hoodoo word. If I say it again and point my finger at you . . . so . . . you may have bad
luck for a week. Maybe your toes will drop off. I’ll count ten and if you haven’t told me before I get to ten I’ll hoodoo you.”
Fred didn’t believe it. But the skating race came off that night and he wasn’t taking chances. Besides, toes were toes. At six he surrendered.
“All right . . . all right. Don’t bust your jaws saying that a second time. Mac knows where your pig is . . . he said he did.”
Mac was not in school, but when Anne heard Jem’s story she telephoned his mother. Mrs. Reese came up a little later, flushed and apologetic.
“Mac didn’t take the pig, Mrs. Blythe. He just wanted to see if it would open, so when Jem was out of the room he twisted the tail. It fell apart in two pieces and he couldn’t get it together again. So he put the two halves of the pig and the money in one of Jem’s Sunday boots in the closet. He hadn’t ought to have touched it . . . and his father has whaled the stuffing out of him . . . but he didn’t steal it, Mrs. Blythe.”
“What was that word you said to Fred Elliott, Little Jem dear?” asked Susan, when the dismembered pig had been found and the money counted.
“Transubstantiationalist,” said Jem proudly. “Walter found it in the dictionary last week . . . you know he likes great big full words, Susan . . . and . . . and we both learned how to pronounce it. We said it over to each other twenty-one times in bed before we went to sleep so that we’d remember it.”
Now that the necklace was bought and stowed away in the third box from the top in the middle drawer of Susan’s bureau . . . Susan having been privy to the plan all along . . . Jem thought the birthday would never come. He gloated over his unconscious mother. Little she knew what was hidden in Susan’s bureau drawer . . . little she knew what her birthday would bring her . . . little she knew when she sang the twins to sleep with,
“I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea,
And oh, it was all laden with pretty things for me,”
what the ship would bring her.
Gilbert had an attack of influenza in early March which almost ran to pneumonia. There were a few anxious days at Ingleside. Anne went about as usual, smoothing out tangles, administering consolation, bending over moonlit beds to see if dear little bodies were warm; but the children missed her laughter.
“What will the world do if Father dies?” whispered Walter, white-lipped.
“He isn’t going to die, darling. He is out of danger now.”
Anne wondered herself what their small world of Four Winds and the Glens and the Harbour Head would do if . . . if . . . anything had happened to Gilbert. They were all coming to depend on him so. The Upper Glen people especially seemed really to believe that he could raise the dead and only refrained because it would be crossing the purposes of the Almighy. He had done it once, they averred . . . old Uncle Archibald MacGregor had solemnly assured Susan that Samuel Hewett was dead as a doornail when Dr. Blythe brought him to. However that might be, when living people saw Gilbert’s lean brown face and friendly hazel eyes by their bedside and heard his cheery, “Why, there’s nothing the matter with you,” . . . well, they believed it until it came true. As for namesakes, he had more than he could count. The whole Four Winds district was peppered with young Gilberts. There was even a tiny Gilbertine.
So Dad was about again and Mother was laughing again, and . . . at last, it was the night before the birthday.
“If you go to bed early, Little Jem, tomorrow will come quicker,” assured Susan.
Jem tried it but it didn’t seem to work. Walter fell asleep promptly, but Jem squirmed about. He was afraid to go sleep. Suppose he didn’t waken in time and everybody else had given their presents to Mother? He wanted to be the very first. Why hadn’t he asked Susan to be sure and call him? She had gone out to make a visit somewhere but he would ask her when she came in. If he were sure of hearing her! Well, he’d just go down and lie on the living-room sofa and then he couldn’t miss her.
Jem crept down and curled up on the chesterfield. He could see over the Glen. The moon was filling the hollows among the white, snowy dunes with magic. The great trees that were so mysterious at night held out their arms about Ingleside. He heard all the night sounds of a house . . . a floor creaking . . . someone turning in bed . . . the crumble and fall of coals in the fireplace . . . the scurrying of a little mouse in the china-closet. Was that an avalanche? No, only snow sliding off the roof. It was a little lonesome . . . why didn’t Susan come? . . . if he only had Gyp now . . . dear Gyppy. Had he forgotten Gyp? No, not forgotten exactly. But it didn’t hurt so much now to think of him . . . one did think of other things a good deal of the time. Sleep well, dearest of dogs. Perhaps sometime he would have another dog, after all. It would be nice if he had one right now . . . or Shrimp. But the Shrimp wasn’t round. Selfish old cat! Thinking of nothing but his own affairs!
No sign of Susan yet, coming along the long road that wound endlessly on through that strange white moonlit distance that was his own familiar Glen in daytime. Well, he would just have to imagine things to pass the time. Some day he would go to Baffin Land and live with Eskimos. Some day he would sail to far seas and cook a shark for Christmas dinner like Captain Jim. He would go on an expedition to the Congo in search of gorillas. He would be a diver and wander through radiant crystal halls under the sea. He would get Uncle Davy to teach him how to milk into the cat’s mouth the next time he went up to Avonlea. Uncle Davy did that so expertly. Perhaps he would be a pirate. Susan wanted him to be a minister. The minister could do the most good but wouldn’t a pirate have the most fun? Suppose the little wooden soldier hopped off the mantelpiece and shot off his gun! Suppose the chairs began walking about the room! Suppose the tiger rug came alive! Suppose the “quack beas” which he and Walter “pretended” all over the house when they were very young, really were about! Jem was suddenly frightened. In daytime he did not often forget the difference between romance and reality, but it was different in this endless night. Tick-tack went the clock . . . tick-tack . . . and for every tick there was a quack bear sitting on a step of the stairs. The stairs were just black with quack bears. They would sit there till daylight . . . gibbering.
Suppose God forgot to let the sun rise! The thought was so terrible that Jem buried his face in the afghan to shut it out, and there Susan found him sound asleep, when she came home in the fiery orange of a winter sunrise.
“Little Jem!”
Jem uncoiled himself and sat up, yawning. It had been a busy night for Silversmith Frost and the woods were fairyland. A far-off hill was touched with a crimson spear. All the white fields beyond the Glen were a lovely rose-colour. It was Mother’s birthday morning.
“I was waiting for you, Susan . . . to tell you to call me . . . and you never came . . .”
“I went down to see the John Warrens, because their aunt had died, and they asked me to stay and sit up with the corpse,” explained Susan cheerfully. “I didn’t suppose you’d be trying to catch pneumonia, too, the minute my back was turned. Scamper off to your bed and I’ll call you when I hear your mother stirring.”
“Susan, how do you stab sharks?” Jem wanted to know before he went upstairs.
“I do not stab them,” answered Susan.
Mother was up when he went into her room, brushing her long shining hair before the glass. Her eyes when she saw the necklace!
“Jem darling! For me!”
“Now you won’t have to wait till Dad’s ship comes in,” said Jem with a fine nonchalance. What was that gleaming greenly on Mother’s hand? A ring . . . Dad’s present. All very well, but rings were common things . . . even Sissy Flagg had one. But a pearl necklace!
“A necklace is such a nice birthdayish thing,” said Mother.
Chapter 20
When Gilbert and Anne went to dinner with friends in Charlottetown one evening in late March Anne put on a new dress of ice-green encrusted with silver around neck and arms; and she wore Gilbert’s emerald ring and Jem’s necklace.
“Haven’t I got a h
andsome wife, Jem?” asked Dad proudly.
Jem thought Mother was very handsome and her dress very lovely. How pretty the pearls looked on her white throat! He always liked to see Mother dressed up, but he liked it still better when she took off a splendid dress. It had transformed her into an alien. She was not really Mother in it.
After supper Jem went to the village to do an errand for Susan and it was while he was waiting in Mr. Flagg’s store . . . rather afraid that Sissy might come in as she sometimes did and be entirely too friendly . . . that the blow fell . . . the shattering blow of disillusionment which is so terrible to a child because so unexpected and so seemingly inescapable.
Two girls were standing before the glass show case where Mr. Carter Flagg kept necklaces and chain bracelets and hair barettes.
“Aren’t those pearl strings pretty?” said Abbie Russell.
“You’d almost think they were real,” said Leona Reese.
They passed on then, quite unwitting of what they had done to the small boy sitting on the nail-keg. Jem continued to sit there for some time longer. He was incapable of movement.
“What’s the matter, sonny?” inquired Mr. Flagg. “You seem kind of low in your mind.”
Jem looked at Mr. Flagg with tragic eyes. His mouth was strangely dry.
“Please, Mr. Flagg . . . are those . . . those necklaces . . . they are real pearls, aren’t they?”
Mr. Flagg laughed.
“No, Jem. I’m afraid you can’t get real pearls for fifty cents, you know. A real pearl necklace like that would cost hundreds of dollars. They’re just pearl beads . . . very good ones for the price, too. I got ’em at a bankrupt sale . . . that’s why I can sell ’em so cheap. Ordin’rily they run to a dollar. Only one left . . . they went like hot cakes.”
Jem slid off the keg and went out, totally forgetting what Susan had sent him for. He walked blindly up the frozen road home. Overhead was a hard dark wintry sky; there was what Susan called “a feel” of snow in the air, and a skim of ice over the puddles. The harbour lay black and sullen between its bare banks. Before Jem reached home a snow-squall was whitening over them. He wished it would snow . . . and snow . . . and snow . . . till he was buried and everybody was buried fathoms deep. There was no justice anywhere in the world.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 143