Anne of Ingleside (16 page)

‘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 Ann 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 Elliot, 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 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,

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 Almighty. 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 to 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 in… or the Shrimp. But 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 the 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 Jem. 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 bears’, 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 the 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 day-light…
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 the night 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.

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 handsome 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 showcase where Mr Carter Elagg 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. Ordinarily they run up 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.

Jem was heart-broken. And let no one scoff at his heartbreak for scorn of its cause. His humiliation was utter and complete. He had given Mother what he and she had supposed was a pearl necklace… and it was only an old imitation. What would she say, what would she feel like, when she knew? For, of course, she must be told. It never occurred to Jem to think for a moment that she need not be told. Mother must not be ‘fooled’ any longer. She must know that her pearls weren’t real. Poor Mother! She had been so proud of them… had he not seen the pride shining in her eyes when she had kissed him and thanked him for them?

Jem slipped in by the side door and went straight to bed, where Walter was already sound asleep. But Jem could not sleep; he was awake when Mother came home and slipped in to see that Walter and he were warm.

‘Jem, dear, are you awake at this hour? You’re not sick?’

‘No, but I’m very unhappy
here
, Mother dearwums,’ said Jem, putting his hand on his stomach, fondly believing it to be his heart.

‘What is the matter, dear?’

‘I… I… there is something I must tell you, Mother… you’ll be awful disappointed, Mother… but I didn’t mean to deceive you, Mother, truly I didn’t.’

‘I’m sure you didn’t, dear. What is it? Don’t be afraid.’

‘Oh, Mother dearwums, those pearls aren’t real pearls… I thought they were… I
did
think they were I
did
…’

Jem’s eyes were full of tears. He couldn’t go on.

If Anne wanted to smile there was no sign of it on her face. Shirley had bumped his head that day, Nan had sprained her ankle, Di had lost her voice with a cold. Anne had kissed and bandaged and soothed; but
this
was different… this needed all the secret wisdom of mothers.

‘Jem, I never thought you supposed they were real pearls. I knew they weren’t… at least in one sense of real. In another, they are the most real things I’ve ever had given me. Because there was love and work and self-sacrifice in them… and
that
makes them more precious to me than all the gems that divers have fished up from the sea for queens to wear. Darling, I wouldn’t exchange my pretty beads for the necklace I read of last night which some millionaire gave his bride and which cost half a million. So
that
shows you what your gift is worth to me, dearest of dear little sons. Do you feel better now?’

Jem was so happy he was ashamed of it. He was afraid it was babyish to be so happy. ‘Oh, life is
bearable
again,’ he said cautiously.

The years had vanished from his sparkling eyes. All was well. Mother’s arms were about him… Mother
did
like her necklace… nothing else mattered. Some day he would give her one that would cost no mere half, but a whole million. Meanwhile, he was tired… his bed was very warm and cosy… Mother’s hands smelled like roses… and he didn’t hate Leona Reese any more.

‘Mother dearwums, you do look so sweet in that dress,’ he said sleepily. ‘Sweet and pure… pure as Epps cocoa.’

Anne smiled as she hugged him, and thought of a ridiculous thing she had read in a medical journal that day, signed Dr V. Z. Tomachowsky. ‘You must never kiss your little son lest you set up a Jocasta complex.’ She had laughed over it at the time and been a little angry as well. Now she only felt pity for the writer of it. Poor, poor man! For of course V. Z. Tomachowsky was a man. No woman would ever write anything so silly and wicked.

April came tiptoeing in beautifully that year with sunshine and soft winds for a few days; and then a driving north-east snowstorm dropped a white blanket over the world again. ‘Snow in April is abominable,’ said Anne. ‘Like a slap in the face when you expected a kiss.’ Ingleside was fringed with icicles and for two long weeks the days were raw and the nights hard-bitten. Then the snow grudgingly disappeared, and when the news went round that the first robin had been seen in the Hollow Ingleside plucked up heart and ventured to believe that the miracle of spring was really going to happen again.