Anne of Ingleside (15 page)

‘Who,’ asked Anne of the moon, ‘has been made the biggest fool of in this affair? I know what Gilbert’s opinion will be. All the trouble I’ve gone to, to bring about a marriage between two people who were already engaged! I’m cured of matchmaking… absolutely cured. Never will I lift a finger to promote a marriage if nobody in the world ever gets married again. Well, there is one consolation… Jen Pringle’s letter today saying she is going to marry Lewis Stedman, whom she met at my party. The Bristol candlesticks were not sacrificed entirely in vain. Boys… boys!
Must
you make such unearthly noises down there?’

‘We’re owls… we
have
to hoot,’ Jem’s injured voice proclaimed from the dark shrubbery. He knew he was making a very good job of hooting. Jem could mimic the voice of any little wild thing out in the woods. Walter was not so good at it and he presently ceased being an owl and became a rather disillusioned little boy, creeping to Mother for comfort.

‘Mummy, I thought crickets
sang
… and Mr Carter Flagg said today they don’t… they just make that noise scraping their hind-legs.
Do
they,
Mummy
?’

‘Something like that… I’m not quite sure of the process. But
that
is their way of singing, you know.’

‘I don’t like it. I’ll never like to hear them singing again.’

‘Oh, yes, you will. You’ll forget about the hind-legs in time and just think of their fairy chorus all over the harvest meadows and the autumn hills. Isn’t it bed-time, small son?’

‘Mummy, will you tell me a bed-time story that will send a cold chill down my spine? And sit beside me afterwards till I go to sleep?’

‘What else are mothers for, darling?’

‘ “The time has come the Walrus said to talk of”… having a dog,’ said Gilbert.

They had not had a dog at Ingleside since old Rex had been poisoned, but boys should have a dog, and the doctor decided he would get them one. But he was so busy that fall that he kept putting it off; and finally one November day Jem arrived home from an afternoon spent with a school pal carrying a dog… a little ‘yaller’ dog with two black ears sticking cockily up.

‘Joe Reese gave it to me, Mother. His name is Gyp. Hasn’t he got the cutest tail? I can keep him, can’t I, Mother?’

‘What kind of a dog is he, darling?’ asked Anne dubiously.

‘I… I think he’s a lot of kinds,’ said Jem. ‘That makes him more int’resting, don’t you think, Mother? More exciting than if he was just one kind.
Please,
Mother.’

‘Oh, if your father says yes…’

Gilbert said ‘Yes’ and Jem entered into his heritage. Everybody at Ingleside welcomed Gyp into the family except the Shrimp, who expressed his opinion without circumlocution. Even Susan took a liking to him, and when she spun in the garret on rainy days Gyp, in his master’s absence at school, stayed with her, gloriously hunting imaginary rats in dark corners and uttering a yelp of terror whenever his eagerness brought him too close to the little spinning wheel. It was never used… the Morgans had left it there when they moved out… and sat in its dark corner like a little bent old woman. Nobody could understand Gyp’s fear of it: he did not mind the big wheel at all, but sat quite close to it while Susan sent it whirling around with her wheel-pin, and raced back and forward beside her as she paced the length of the garret, twirling the long thread of wool. Susan admitted that a dog could be real company and thought his trick of lying on his back, waving his forepaws in the air, when he wanted a bone, the cleverest ever. She was as angry as Jem when Bertie Shakespeare sneeringly remarked:

‘Call that a dog?’

‘We
do
call it a dog,’ said Susan with ominous calm. ‘Perhaps
you
would call it a hippopotamus.’ And Bertie had to go home that day without getting a piece of a wonderful concoction Susan called ‘apple crunch pie’ and made regularly for the two boys and their pals. She was not around when Mac Reese asked, ‘Did the tide bring that in?’ but Jem was able to stand up for his own dog, and when Nat Flagg said that Gypsy’s legs were too long for his size Jem retorted that a dog’s legs had to be long enough to reach the ground. Natty was not over bright and that floored him.

November was stingy of its sunshine that year: raw winds blew through the bare, silver-branched maple grove and the Hollow was almost constantly filled with mist… not a gracious, eerie thing like a fog but what Dad called ‘dank, dark, depressing, dripping, drizzly mist’. The Ingleside fry had to spend most of their play-time in the garret, but they made delightful friends of two partridges that came every evening to a certain huge old apple-tree and five gorgeous jays who came to the backyard, chuckling impishly as they ate the food the children put out for them. Only they were greedy and selfish and kept all the other birds away.

Winter set in with December and it snowed ceaselessly for three weeks. The fields beyond Ingleside were unbroken silver pastures, fence and gate-posts wore tall white caps, windows whitened with fairy patterns and Ingleside lights bloomed out through the dim, snowy twilights, welcoming all wanderers home. It seemed to Susan that there had never been so many winter babies as there were that year; and when she left ‘the doctor’s bite’ in the pantry for him night after night she darkly opined that it would be a miracle if he toughed it out till spring.

‘The ninth Drew baby! As if there weren’t enough Drews in the world already!’

‘I suppose Mrs Drew will think it just the wonder we think Rilla, Susan.’

‘You
will
have your joke, Mrs Doctor dear.’

But in the library or the big kitchen the children planned out their summer playhouse in the Hollow while storms howled outside, or fluffy white clouds were blown over frosty stars. For blow it high or blow it low there was always at Ingleside laughter and firelight and the odours of good cheer.

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 some time… 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!

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, couldn’t 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 Doctor dear, I feel quite sure he didn’t. The Reeses have their faults… terrible keen after 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 Elliot 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 Elliot 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.