Jenny sniffed.
“Just a lot of old trees and cows. I’ve seen it a hundred times. You’re awful funny by spells, Di Blythe. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but sometimes I think you’re not all there. I really do. But I s’pose you can’t help it. They say your ma is always raving like that. Well, there’s our place.”
Di gazed at the Penny house and lived through her first shock of disillusionment. Was this the “mansion” Jenny had talked of? It was big enough, certainly, and had the five bay-windows; but it was wofully in need of painting and much of the “wooden lace” was missing. The verandah had sagged badly and the once lovely old fanlight over the front door was broken. The blinds were crooked, there were several brown-paper panes and the “beautiful birch grove” behind the house was represented by a few lean sinewy old trees. The barns were in a very tumbledown condition, the yard was full of old rusty machinery and the garden was a perfect jungle of weeds. Di had never seen such a looking place in her life and for the first time it occurred to her to wonder if all Jenny’s tales were true. Could anyone have so many narrow escapes of her life, even in nine years, as she had claimed to have?
Inside it was not much better. The parlour into which Jenny ushered her was musty and dusty. The ceiling was discoloured and covered with cracks. The famous marble mantelpiece was only painted . . . even Di could see that . . . and draped with a hideous Japanese scarf, held in place by a row of “moustache” cups. The stringy lace curtains were a bad colour and full of holes. The blinds were of blue paper, much cracked and torn, with a huge basketful of roses depicted on them. As for the parlour being full of stuffed owls, there was a small glass case in one corner containing three rather dishevelled birds, one with its eyes missing entirely. To Di, accustomed to the beauty and dignity of Ingleside, the room looked like something you had seen in a bad dream. The odd thing, however, was that Jenny seemed quite unconscious of any discrepancy between her descriptions and reality. Di wondered if she had just dreamed that Jenny had told her such and such.
It was not so bad outside. The little playhouse Mr. Penny had built in the spruce corner, looking like a real house in miniature, was a very interesting place and the little pigs and the new foal were “just sweet.” As for the litter of mongrel puppies they were as woolly and delightful as if they had belonged to the dog caste of Vere de Vere. One was especially adorable, with long brown ears and a white spot on its forehead, a wee pink tongue and white paws. Di was bitterly disappointed to learn that they had all been promised.
‘Though I don’t know as we could give you one even if they weren’t,” said Jenny. “Uncle’s awful particular where he puts his dogs. We’ve heard you can’t get a dog to stay at Ingleside at all. There must be something queer about you. Uncle says dogs know things people don’t.”
“I’m sure they can’t know anything nasty about us!” cried Di.
“Well, I hope not. Is your pa cruel to your ma?”
“No, of course he isn’t!”
“Well, I heard that he beat her . . . beat her till she screamed. But of course I didn’t believe that. Ain’t it awful the lies people tell? Anyway, I’ve always liked you, Di, and I’ll always stand up for you.”
Di felt she ought to be very grateful for this, but somehow she was not. She was beginning to feel very much out of place and the glamour with which Jenny had been invested in her eyes was suddenly and irrevocably gone. She did not feel the old thrill when Jenny told her about the time she had been almost drowned falling in a millpond. She did not believe it . . . Jenny just imagined those things. And likely the millionaire uncle and the thousand-dollar diamond ring and the missionary to the leopards had just been imagined too. Di felt as flat as a pricked balloon.
But there was Gammy yet. Surely Gammy was real. When Di and Jenny returned to the house Aunt Lina, a full-breasted, red-cheeked lady in a none-too-fresh cotton print, told them Gammy wanted to see the visitor.
“Gammy’s bed-rid,” explained Jenny. “We always take everybody who comes in to see her. She gets mad if we don’t.”
“Mind you don’t forget to ask her how her backache is,” cautioned Aunt Lina. “She doesn’t like it if folks don’t remember her back.”
“And Uncle John,” said Jenny. “Don’t forget to ask her how Uncle John is.”
“Who is Uncle John?” asked Di.
“A son of hers who died fifty years ago,” explained Aunt Lina. “He was sick for years afore he died and Gammy kind of got accustomed to hearing folks ask how he was. She misses it.”
At the door of Gammy’s room Di suddenly hung back. All at once she was terribly frightened of this incredibly old woman.
“What’s the matter?” demanded Jenny. “Nobody’s going to bite you!”
“Is she . . . did she really live before the flood, Jenny?”
“Of course not. Whoever said she did? She’ll be a hundred, though, if she lives till her next birthday. Come on!”
Di went, gingerly. In a small, badly cluttered bedroom Gammy lay in a huge bed. Her face, unbelievably wrinkled and shrunken, looked like an old monkey’s. She peered at Di with sunken, red-rimmed eyes and said testily:
“Stop staring. Who are you?”
“This is Diana Blythe, Gammy,” said Jenny . . . a rather subdued Jenny.
“Humph! A nice high-sounding name! They tell me you’ve got a proud sister.”
“Nan isn’t proud,” cried Di, with a flash of spirit. Had Jenny been running down Nan?
“A little saucy, ain’t you? I wasn’t brought up to speak like that to my betters. She is proud. Anyone who walks with her head in the air, like Young Jenny tells me she does, is proud. One of your hoity-toitys! Don’t contradict me.”
Gammy looked so angry that Di hastily enquired how her back was.
“Who says I’ve got a back? Such presumption! My back’s my own business. Come here . . . come close to my bed!”
Di went, wishing herself a thousand miles away. What was this dreadful old woman going to do to her?
Gammy hitched herself alertly to the edge of the bed and put a clawlike hand on Di’s hair.
“Sort of carroty but real slick. That’s a pretty dress. Turn it up and show me your petticoat.”
Di obeyed, thankful that she had on her white petticoat with its trimming of Susan’s crocheted lace. But what sort of a family was it where you were made to show your petticoat?
“I always judge a girl by her petticoats,” said Gammy. “Yours’ll pass. Now your drawers.”
Di dared not refuse. She lifted her petticoat.
“Humph! Lace on them too! That’s extravagance. And you’ve never asked after John!”
“How is he?” gasped Di.
“How is he, says she, bold as brass. He might be dead, for all you know. Tell me this. Is it true your mother has a gold thimble . . . a solid gold thimble?”
“Yes. Daddy gave it to her her last birthday.”
“Well, I’d never have believed it. Young Jenny told me she had, but you can’t never believe a word Young Jenny says. A solid gold thimble! I never heard the beat of that. Well, you’d better go out and get your suppers. Eating never goes out of fashion. Jenny, pull up your pants. One leg’s hanging below your dress. Let us have decency at least.”
“My pant — drawer leg isn’t hanging down,” said Jenny indignantly.
“Pants for Pennys and drawers for Blythes. That’s the distinction between you and always will be. Don’t contradict me.”
The whole Penny family were assembled around the supper table in the big kitchen. Di had not seen any of them before except Aunt Lina, but as she shot a glance around the board she understood why Mother and Susan had not wanted her to come here. The tablecloth was ragged and daubed with ancient gravy stains. The dishes were a nondescript assortment. As for the Pennys . . . Di had never sat at table with such company before and she wished herself safely back at Ingleside. But she must go through with it now.
Uncle Ben, as Jenny called him,
sat at the head of the table; he had a flaming red beard and a bald, grey-fringed head. His bachelor brother, Parker, lank and unshaven, had arranged himself at an angle convenient for spitting in the wood-box, which he did at frequent intervals. The boys, Curt, twelve, and George Andrew, thirteen, had pale-blue, fishy eyes with a bold stare and bare skin showing through the holes in their ragged shirts. Curt had his hand, which he had cut on a broken bottle, tied up with a blood-stained rag. Annabel Penny, eleven, and “Gert” Penny, ten, were two rather pretty girls with round brown eyes. “Tuppy,” aged two, had delightful curls and rosy cheeks, and the baby, with roguish black eyes, on Aunt Lina’s lap would have been adorable if it had been clean.
“Curt, why didn’t you clean your nails when you knew company was coming?” demanded Jenny. “Annabel, don’t speak with your mouth full. I’m the only one who ever tries to teach this family any manners,” she explained aside to Di.
“Shut up,” said Uncle Ben in a great booming voice.
“I won’t shut up . . . you can’t make me shut up!” cried Jenny.
“Don’t sass your uncle,” said Aunt Lina placidly. “Come now, girls, behave like ladies. Curt, pass the potatoes to Miss Blythe.”
“Oh, ho, Miss Blythe,” sniggered Curt.
But Diana had got at least one thrill. For the first time in her life she had been called Miss Blythe.
For a wonder the food was good and abundant. Di, who was hungry, would have enjoyed the meal . . . though she hated drinking out of a chipped cup . . . if she had only been sure it was clean . . . and if everybody hadn’t quarrelled so. Private fights were going on all the time . . . between George Andrew and Curt . . . between Curt and Annabel . . . between Gert and Jen . . . even between Uncle Ben and Aunt Lina. They had a terrible fight and hurled the bitterest accusations at each other. Aunt Lina cast up to Uncle Ben all the fine men she might have married and Uncle Ben said he only wished she had married anybody but him.
“Wouldn’t it be dreadful if my father and mother fought like that?” thought Di. “Oh, if I were only back home! Don’t suck your thumb, Tuppy.”
She said that before she thought. They had had such a time breaking Rilla of sucking her thumb.
Instantly Curt was red with rage.
“Let him alone!” he shouted. “He can suck his thumb if he likes! We ain’t bossed to death like you Ingleside kids are. Who do you think you are?”
“Curt, Curt! Miss Blythe will think you haven’t any manners,” said Aunt Lina. She was quite calm and smiling again and put two teaspoons of sugar in Uncle Ben’s tea. “Don’t mind him, dear. Have another piece of pie.”
Di did not want another piece of pie. She only wanted to go home . . . and she did not see how it could be brought about.
“Well,” boomed Uncle Ben, as he drained the last of his tea noisily from the saucer, “that’s so much over. Get up in the morning . . . work all day . . . eat three meals and go to bed. What a life!”
“Pa loves his little joke,” smiled Aunt Lina.
“Talking of jokes . . . I saw the Methodist minister in Flagg’s store today. He tried to contradict me when I said there was no God. ‘You talk on Sunday,’ I told him. ‘It’s my turn now. Prove to me there’s a God,’ I told him. ‘It’s you that’s doing the talking,’ says he. They all laughed like ninnies. Thought he was smart.”
No God! The bottom seemed falling out of Di’s world. She wanted to cry.
Chapter 29
It was worse after supper. Before that she and Jenny had been alone at least. Now there was a mob. George Andrew grabbed her hand and galloped her through a mud-puddle before she could escape him. Di had never been treated like this in her life. Jem and Walter teased her, as did Ken Ford, but she did not know anything about boys like these.
Curt offered her a chew of gum, fresh from his mouth, and was mad when she refused it.
“I’ll put a live mouse on you!” he yelled. “Smartycat! Stuckupitty! Got a sissy for a brother!”
“Walter isn’t a sissy!” said Di. She was half sick from fright but she would not hear Walter called names.
“He is — he writes po’try. Do you know what I’d do if I’d a brother that writ po’try? I’d drown him . . . like they do kittens.”
“Talking of kittens, there’s a lot of wild ones in the barn,” said Jen. “Let’s go and hunt them out.”
Di simply would not go hunting kittens with those boys, and said so.
“We’ve got plenty of kittens at home. We’ve got eleven,” she said proudly.
“I don’t believe it!” cried Jen. “You haven’t! Nobody ever had eleven kittens. It wouldn’t be right to have eleven kittens.”
“One cat has five and the other six. And I’m not going to the barn anyhow. I fell down off the loft in Amy Taylor’s barn last winter. I’d have been killed if I hadn’t lit on a pile of chaff.”
“Well, I’d have fell off our loft once if Curt hadn’t caught me,” said Jen sulkily. Nobody had any right to be falling off lofts but her. Di Blythe having adventures! The impudence of her!
“You should say ‘I’d have fallen,’” said Di; and from that moment everything was over between her and Jenny.
But the night had to be got through somehow. They did not go to bed till late because none of the Pennys ever went to bed early. The big bedroom where Jenny took her at half-past ten had two beds in it. Annabel and Gert were getting ready for theirs. Di looked at the others. The pillows were very frowsy. The quilt needed washing very badly. The paper . . . the famous “parrot” paper . . . had been leaked on and even the parrots did not look very parroty. On the stand by the bed were a granite pitcher and a tin wash-basin half full of dirty water. She could never wash her face in that. Well, for once she must go to bed without washing her face. At least the nightgown Aunt Lina had left for her was clean.
When Di got up from saying her prayers Jenny laughed.
“My, but you’re old-fashioned. You looked so funny and holy saying your prayers. I didn’t know anybody said prayers now. Prayers ain’t any good. What do you say them for?”
“I’ve got to save my soul,” said Di, quoting Susan.
“I haven’t any soul,” mocked Jenny.
“Perhaps not, but I have,” said Di, drawing herself up.
Jenny looked at her. But the spell of Jenny’s eyes was broken. Never again would Di succumb to its magic.
“You’re not the girl I thought you were, Diana Blythe,” said Jennie sadly, as one much deceived.
Before Di could reply George Andrew and Curt rushed into the room. George Andrew wore a mask . . . a hideous thing with an enormous nose. Di screamed.
“Stop squealing like a pig under a gate!” ordered George Andrew. “You’ve got to kiss us good-night.”
“If you don’t we’ll lock you up in that closet . . . and it’s full of rats,” said Curt.
George Andrew advanced towards Di, who shrieked again and retreated before him. The mask paralyzed her with terror. She knew quite well it was only George Andrew behind it and she was not afraid of him; but she would die if that awful mask came near her . . . she knew she would. Just as it seemed that the dreadful nose was touching her face she tripped over a stool and fell backward on the floor, striking her head on the sharp edge of Annabel’s bed as she fell. For a moment she was dazed and lay with her eyes shut.
“She’s gone dead . . . she’s gone dead!” sniffled Curt, beginning to cry.
“Oh, won’t you get a licking if you’ve killed her, George Andrew!” said Annabel.
“Maybe she’s only pretending,” said Curt. “Put a worm on her. I’ve some in this can. If she’s only foxing that will bring her to.”
Di heard this but was too frightened to open her eyes. (Perhaps they would go away and leave her alone if they thought her dead. But if they put a worm on her . . .)
“Prick her with a pin. If she bleeds she ain’t dead,” said Curt.
(She could stand a pin but not a worm.)
“
She ain’t dead . . . she can’t be dead,” whispered Jenny. “You’ve just scared her into a fit. But if she comes to she’ll be screeching all over the place and Uncle Ben’ll come in and lambast the daylights out of us. I wish I’d never asked her here, the fraid-cat!”
“Do you s’pose we could carry her home before she comes to?” suggested George Andrew.
(Oh, if they only would!)
“We couldn’t . . . not that far,” said Jenny.
“It’s only a quarter of a mile ‘cross lots. We’ll each take an arm or leg . . . you and Curt and me and Annabel.”
Nobody but the Pennys could have conceived such an idea or carried it out if they had. But they were used to doing anything they took it into their heads to do and a “lambasting” from the head of the household was something to be avoided if possible. Dad didn’t bother about them up to a certain point but beyond that . . . good-night!
“If she comes to while we’re carrying her we’ll just cut and run,” said George Andrew.
There wasn’t the least danger of Di coming to. She trembled with thankfulness when she felt herself being hoisted up between the four of them. They crept downstairs and out of the house, across the yard and over the long clover field . . . past the woods . . . down the hill. Twice they had to lay her down while they rested. They were quite sure now she was dead and all they wanted was to get her home without being seen. If Jenny Penny never prayed in her life before she was praying now . . . that nobody in the village would be up. If they could get Di Blythe home they would all swear she had got so homesick at bedtime that she had insisted on going home. What happened after that would be no concern of theirs.
Di ventured to open her eyes once as they plotted this. The sleeping world around looked very strange to her. The fir trees were dark and alien. The stars were laughing at her. (“I don’t like such a big sky. But if I can just hold on a little spell longer I’ll be home. If they find out that I’m not dead they’ll just leave me here and I’ll never get home in the dark alone.”)
When the Pennys dropped Di on the verandah of Ingleside they ran like mad. Di did not dare come back to life too soon, but at last she ventured to open her eyes. Yes, she was home. It seemed almost too good to be true. She had been a very, very naughty girl but she was quite sure she would never be naughty again. She sat up and the Shrimp came stealthily up the steps and rubbed against her, purring. She hugged him to her. How nice and warm and friendly he was! She did not think she would be able to get in . . . she knew Susan would have all the doors locked when Dad was away and she dared not wake Susan up at this hour. But she did not mind. The June night was cold enough but she would get into the hammock and cuddle down with the Shrimp, knowing that, near to her, behind those locked doors, were Susan and the boys and Nan . . . and home.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 150