How strange the world was after dark! Was everyone in it asleep but her? The large white roses on the bush by the steps looked like small human faces in the night. The smell of the mint was like a friend. There was a glint of firefly in the orchard. After all, she would be able to brag that she had “slept out all night.”
But it was not to be. Two dark figures came through the gate and up the driveway. Gilbert went around by the back way to force open a kitchen window but Anne came up the steps and stood looking in amazement at the poor mite who sat there, with her armful of cat.
“Mummy . . . oh, Mummy!” She was safe in Mother’s arms.
“Di, darling! What does this mean?”
“Oh, Mummy, I was bad . . . but I’m so sorry . . . and you were right . . . and Gammy was so dreadful — but I thought you wouldn’t be back till tomorrow.”
“Daddy got a telephone from Lowbridge . . . they have to operate on Mrs. Parker tomorrow and Dr. Parker wanted him to be there. So we caught the evening train and walked up from the station. Now tell me . . .”
The whole story was sobbed out by the time Gilbert had got in and opened the front door. He thought he had effected a very silent entrance, but Susan had ears that could hear a bat squeak when the safety of Ingleside was concerned, and she came limping downstairs with a wrapper over her nightgown.
There were exclamations and explanations, but Anne cut them short.
“Nobody is blaming you, Susan dear. Di has been very naughty but she knows it and I think she has had her punishment. I’m sorry we’ve disturbed you . . . you must go straight back to bed and the doctor will see to your ankle.”
“I was not asleep, Mrs. Dr. dear. Do you think I could sleep, knowing where that blessed child was? And ankle or no ankle I am going to get you both a cup of tea.”
“Mummy,” said Di, from her own white pillow, “is Daddy ever cruel to you?”
“Cruel! To me? Why, Di . . .”
“The Pennys said he was . . . said he beat you . . .”
“Dear, you know what the Pennys are now, so you know better than to worry your small head over anything they said. There is always a bit of malicious gossip floating round in any place . . . people like that invent it. You must never bother about it.”
“Are you going to scold me in the morning, Mummy?”
“No. I think you’ve learned your lesson. Now go to sleep, precious.”
“Mummy is so sensible,” was Di’s last conscious thought. But Susan, as she stretched out peacefully in bed, with her ankle expertly and comfortably bandaged, was saying to herself:
“I must hunt up the fine-tooth comb in the morning . . . and when I see my fine Miss Jenny Penny I shall give her a ticking off she will not forget.”
Jenny Penny never got the promised ticking off, for she came no more to the Glen school. Instead, she went with the other Pennys to Mowbray Narrows school, whence rumours drifted back of her yarns, among them being one of how Di Blythe, who lived in the “big house” at Glen St. Mary but was always coming down to sleep with her, had fainted one night and had been carried home at midnight pick-a-back, by her, Jenny Penny, alone and unassisted. The Ingleside people had knelt and kissed her hands out of gratitude and the doctor himself had got out his fringed-top buggy and his famous dappled grey span and driven her home. “And if there is ever anything I can do for you, Miss Penny, for your kindness to my beloved child you have only to name it. My best heart’s blood would not be enough to repay you. I would go to Equatorial Africa to reward you for what you have done,” the doctor had vowed.
Chapter 30
“I know something you don’t know . . . something you don’t know . . . something you don’t know,” chanted Dovie Johnson, as she teetered back and forth on the very edge of the wharf.
It was Nan’s turn for the spotlight . . . Nan’s turn to add a tale to the do-you-remembers of after Ingleside years. Though Nan to the day of her death would blush to be reminded of it. She had been so silly.
Nan shuddered to see Dovie teetering . . . and yet it had a fascination. She was so sure Dovie would fall off sometime and then what? But Dovie never fell. Her luck always held.
Everything Dovie did, or said she did . . . which were, perhaps, two very different things, although Nan, brought up at Ingleside where nobody ever told anything but the truth even as a joke, was too innocent and credulous to know that . . . had a fascination for Nan. Dovie, who was eleven and had lived in Charlottetown all her life knew so much more than Nan, who was only eight. Charlottetown, Dovie said, was the only place where people knew anything. What could you know, shut off in a one-horse place like Glen St. Mary?
Dovie was spending part of her vacation with her Aunt Ella in the Glen and she and Nan had struck up a very intimate friendship in spite of the difference in their ages. Perhaps because Nan looked up to Dovie, who seemed to her to be almost grown up, with the adoration we needs must give the highest when we see it . . . or think we see it. Dovie liked her humble and adoring little satellite.
“There’s no harm in Nan Blythe . . . she’s only a bit soft,” she told Aunt Ella.
The watchful folks at Ingleside could not see anything out of the way about Dovie . . . even if, as Anne reflected, her mother was a cousin of the Avonlea Pyes . . . and made no objection to Nan’s chumming with her, though Susan from the first mistrusted those gooseberry-green eyes with their pale golden lashes. But what would you? Dovie was “nice-mannered,” well-dressed, ladylike, and did not talk too much. Susan could not give any reason for her mistrust and held her peace. Dovie would be going home when school opened and in the meantime there was certainly no need of fine-tooth combs in this case.
So Nan and Dovie spent most of their spare time together at the wharf, where there was generally a ship or two with their folded wings, and Rainbow Valley hardly knew Nan that August. The other Ingleside children did not care greatly for Dovie and no love was lost. She had played a practical joke on Walter and Di had been furious and “said things.” Dovie was, it seemed, fond of playing practical jokes. Perhaps that was why none of the Glen girls ever tried to lure her from Nan.
“Oh, please tell me,” pleaded Nan.
But Dovie only winked a wicked eye and said that Nan was far too young to be told such a thing. This was just maddening.
“Please tell me, Dovie.”
“Can’t. It was told me as a secret by Aunt Kate and she’s dead. I’m the only person in the world that knows it now. I promised when I heard it that I’d never tell a soul. You’d tell somebody . . . you couldn’t help it.”
“I wouldn’t . . . I could so!” cried Nan.
“People say you folks at Ingleside tell each other everything. Susan’d pick it out of you in no time.”
“She wouldn’t. I know lots of things I’ve never told Susan. Secrets. I’ll tell mine to you if you’ll tell me yours.”
“Oh, I’m not int’rested in the secrets of a little girl like you,” said Dovie.
A nice insult that! Nan thought her little secrets were lovely . . . that one wild cherry trees she had found blooming in the spruce wood away back behind Mr. Taylor’s hay barn . . . her dream of a tiny white fairy lying on a lily pad in the marsh . . . her fancy of a boat coming up the harbour drawn by swans attached to silver chains . . . the romance she was beginning to weave about the beautiful lady at the old MacAllister place. They were all very wonderful and magical to Nan and she felt glad, when she thought it over, that she did not have to tell them to Dovie after all.
But what did Dovie know about her that she didn’t know? The query haunted Nan like a mosquito.
The next day Dovie again referred to her secret knowledge.
“I’ve been thinking it over, Nan . . . perhaps you ought to know it since it’s about you. Of course what Aunt Kate meant was that I mustn’t tell anyone but the person concerned. Look here. If you’ll give me that china stag of yours I’ll tell you what I know about you.”
“Oh, I couldn’t give you that, Do
vie. Susan gave it to me my last birthday. It would hurt her feelings dreadfully.”
“All right, then. If you’d rather have your old stag than know an important thing about yourself you can keep him. I don’t care. I’d rather keep it. I always like to know things other girls don’t. It makes you important. I’ll look at you next Sunday in church and I’ll think to myself, ‘if you just knew what I know about you, Nan Blythe.’ It’ll be fun.”
“Is what you know about me nice?” queried Nan.
“Oh, it’s very romantic . . . just like something you’d read in a story-book. But never mind, you ain’t interested and I know what I know.”
By this time Nan was crazy with curiosity. Life wouldn’t be worth living if she couldn’t find out what Dovie’s mysterious knowledge was. She had a sudden inspiration.
“Dovie, I can’t give you my stag, but if you’ll tell me what you know about me I’ll give you my red parasol.”
Dovie’s gooseberry eyes gleamed. She had been eaten up by envy of that parasol.
“The new red parasol your mother brought you from town last week?” she bargained.
Nan nodded. Her breath came quickly. Was it . . . oh, was it possible that Dovie would really tell her?
“Will your mother let you?” demanded Dovie.
Nan nodded again, but a little uncertainly. She was none too sure of it. Dovie scented the uncertainty.
“You’ll have to have that parasol right here,” she said firmly, “before I can tell you. No parasol, no secret.”
“I’ll bring it tomorrow,” promised Nan hastily. She just had to know what Dovie knew about her, that was all there was to it.
“Well, I’ll think it over,” said Dovie doubtfully. “Don’t get your hopes up. I don’t expect I’ll tell you after all. You’re too young . . . I’ve told you so often enough.”
“I’m older than I was yesterday,” pleaded Nan. “Oh, come, Dovie, don’t be mean.”
“I guess I’ve got a right to my own knowledge,” said Dovie crushingly. “You’d tell Anne . . . that’s your mother . . .”
“Of course I know my own mother’s name,” said Nan, a trifle on her dignity. Secrets or no secrets, there were limits. “I told you I wouldn’t tell anybody at Ingleside.”
“Will you swear it?”
“Swear it?”
“Don’t be a poll-parrot. Of course I mean just promising solemnly.”
“I promise solemnly.”
“Solemner than that.”
Nan didn’t see how she could be any solemner. Her face would set if she was.
“‘Clasp your hands, look at the sky,
Cross your heart and hope to die,’”
said Dovie.
Nan went through the ritual.
“You’ll bring the parasol tomorrow and we’ll see,” said Dovie. “What did your mother do before she was married, Nan?”
“She taught school . . . and taught it well,” said Nan.
“Well, I was just wondering. Mother thinks it was a mistake for your Dad to marry her. Nobody knew anything about her family. And the girls he might have had, Mother says. I must be going now. O revor.”
Nan knew that meant “till tomorrow.” She was very proud of having a chum who could talk French. She continued to sit on the wharf long after Dovie had gone home. She liked to sit on the wharf and watch the fishing boats going out and coming in, and sometimes a ship drifting down the harbour, bound to fair lands far away. Like Jem, she often wished she could sail away in a ship . . . down the blue harbour, past the bar of shadowy dunes, past the lighthouse point where at night the revolving Four Winds Light became an outpost of mystery, out, out, to the blue mist that was the summer gulf, on, on, to enchanted islands in golden morning seas. Nan flew on the wings of her imagination all over the world as she squatted there on the old sagging wharf.
But this afternoon she was all keyed up over Dovie’s secret. Would Dovie really tell her? What would it be . . . what could it be? And what about those girls Father might have married? Nan liked to speculate about those girls. One of them might have been her mother. But that was horrible. Nobody could be her mother except Mother. The thing was simply unthinkable.
“I think Dovie Johnson is going to tell me a secret,” Nan confided to Mother that night when she was being kissed bye-bye. “Of course I won’t be able to tell even you, Mummy, because I’ve promised I wouldn’t. You won’t mind, will you, Mummy?”
“Not at all,” said Anne, much amused.
When Nan went down to the wharf the next day she took the parasol. It was her parasol, she told herself. It had been given to her, so she had a perfect right to do what she liked with it. Having quieted her conscience with this sophistry she slipped away when nobody could see her. It gave her a pang to think of giving up her dear, gay little parasol, but by this time the craze to find out what Dovie knew had become too strong to be resisted.
“Here’s the parasol, Dovie,” she said breathlessly. “And now tell me the secret.”
Dovie was really taken aback. She had never meant matters to go as far as this . . . she had never believed Nan Blythe’s mother would let her give away her red parasol. She pursed her lips.
“I don’t know as that shade of red will suit my complexion, after all. It’s rather gaudy. I guess I won’t tell.” Nan had a spirit of her own and Dovie had not yet quite charmed it into blind submission. Nothing roused it more quickly than injustice.
“A bargain is a bargain, Dovie Johnson! You said the parasol for the secret. Here is the parasol and you’ve got to keep your promise.”
“Oh, very well,” said Dovie in a bored way.
Everything grew very still. The gusts of wind had died away. The water stopped glug-glugging round the piles of the wharf. Nan shivered with delicious ecstasy. She was going to find out at last what Dovie knew.
“You know the Jimmy Thomases down at the Harbour Mouth,” said Dovie. “Six-toed Jimmy Thomas?”
Nan nodded. Of course she knew the Thomases . . . at least, knew of them. Six-toed Jimmy sometimes called at Ingleside selling fish. Susan said you never could be sure of getting good ones from him. Nan did not like the look of him. He had a bald head, with a fluff of curly white hair on either side of it, and a red, hooked nose. But what could the Thomases possibly have to do with the matter?
“And you know Cassie Thomas?” went on Dovie.
Nan had seen Cassie Thomas once when Six-toed Jimmy had brought her round with him in his fishwagon. Cassie was just about her own age, with a mop of red curls and bold, greenish-grey eyes. She had stuck her tongue out at Nan.
“Well. . . . “Dovie drew a long breath . . . “this is the truth about you. You are Cassie Thomas and she is Nan Blythe.”
Nan stared at Dovie. She hadn’t the faintest glimmer of Dovie’s meaning. What she had said made no sense.
“I . . . I . . . what do you mean?”
“It’s plain enough, I should think,” said Dovie with a pitying smile. Since she had been forced to tell this she was going to make it worth the telling. “You and her were born the same night. It was when the Thomases lived in the Glen. The nurse took Di’s twin down to Thomas’s and put her in the cradle and took you back to Di’s mother. She didn’t dare take Di, too, or she would have. She hated your mother and she took that way of getting even. And that is why you are really Cassie Thomas and you ought to be living down there at the Harbour Mouth and poor Cass ought to be up at Ingleside instead of being banged about by that old stepmother of hers. I feel so sorry for her many’s the time.”
Nan believed every word of this preposterous yarn. She had never been lied to in her life and not for one moment did she doubt the truth of Dovie’s tale. It never occurred to her that anyone, much less her beloved Dovie, would or could make up such a story. She gazed at Dovie with anguished, disillusioned eyes.
“How . . . how did your Aunt Kate find it out?” she gasped through dry lips.
“The nurse told her on her death-bed,” sa
id Dovie solemnly. “I s’pose her conscience troubled her. Aunt Kate never told anyone but me. When I came to the Glen and saw Cassie Thomas . . . Nan Blythe, I mean . . . I took a good look at her. She’s got red hair and eyes the same colour as your mother’s. You’ve got brown eyes and brown hair. That’s why you don’t look like Di . . . twins always look exactly alike. And Cass has just the same kind of ears as your father . . . lying so nice and flat against her head. I don’t s’pose anything can be done about it now. But I’ve often thought it wasn’t fair, you having such an easy time and being kept like a doll and poor Cass — Nan — in rags, and not even getting enough to eat, many’s the time. And old Six-toed beating her when he comes home drunk! . . . Why, what are you looking at me like that for?”
Nan’s pain was greater than she could bear. All was horribly clear to her now. Folks had always thought it funny she and Di didn’t look one bit alike. This was why.
“I hate you for telling me this, Dovie Johnson!”
Dovie shrugged her fat shoulders.
“I didn’t tell you you’d like it, did I? You made me tell. Where are you going?”
For Nan, white and dizzy, had risen to her feet.
“Home . . . to tell Mother,” she said miserably.
“You mustn’t . . . you dassn’t! Remember you swore you wouldn’t tell!” cried Dovie.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 151