Anne of Windy Willows (24 page)

10

It was on a dark, windy March evening, when even the clouds scudding over the sky seemed in a hurry, that Anne skimmed up the triple flight of broad, shallow steps flanked by stone urns and stonier lions that led to the massive front door of Tomgallon House. Usually when she had passed it after dark it was sombre and grim, with a dim twinkle of light in one or two windows. But now it blazed forth brilliantly, even the wings on either side being lighted up, as if Miss Minerva were entertaining the whole town. Such an illumination in her honour rather overcame Anne. She almost wished she had put on her cream gauze.

Nevertheless, she looked very charming in her green voile, and perhaps Miss Minerva, meeting her in the hall, thought so, for her face and voice were very cordial. Miss Minerva herself was regal in black velvet, with a diamond comb in the heavy coils of her iron-grey hair and a massive cameo brooch surrounded by a braid of some departed Tomgallon’s hair. The whole costume was a little outmoded, but Miss Minerva wore it with such a grand air that it seemed as timeless as royalty’s.

‘Welcome to Tomgallon House, my dear!’ she said, giving Anne a bony hand, likewise well sprinkled with diamonds. ‘I am very glad to have you here as my guest.’

‘I am –’

‘Tomgallon House was always the resort of beauty and youth in the old days. We used to have a great many parties, and entertained all the visiting celebrities,’ said Miss Minerva, leading Anne to the big staircase over a carpet of faded red velvet. ‘But all is changed now. I entertain very little. I am the last of the Tomgallons. Perhaps it is as well. Our family, my dear, are
under a curse
.’

Miss Minerva infused such a gruesome tinge of mystery and horror into her tones that Anne almost shivered. The Curse of the Tomgallons! What a title for a story!

‘This is the stair down which my great-grandfather Tomgallon fell and broke his neck the night of his house-warming given to celebrate the completion of his new home. This house was consecrated by human blood. He fell
there
.’

Miss Minerva pointed a long white finger so dramatically at a tiger-skin rug in the hall that Anne could almost see the departed Tomgallon dying on it. She really did not know what to say, so said inanely, ‘Oh!’

Miss Minerva ushered her along a hall, hung with portraits and photographs of faded loveliness, with the famous stained-glass window at its end, into a large, high-ceilinged, very stately guest-room. The high walnut bed, with its huge headboard, was covered with so gorgeous a silken quilt that Anne felt it was a desecration to lay her coat and hat on it.

‘You have very beautiful hair, my dear,’ said Miss Minerva admiringly. ‘I always liked red hair. My Aunt Lydia had it. She was the only red-haired Tomgallon. One night when she was brushing it in the north room it caught fire from her candle, and she ran shrieking down the hall wrapped in flames. All part of the Curse, my dear, all part of the Curse.’

‘Was she –’

‘No, she wasn’t burned to death, but she lost all her beauty. She was very handsome and vain. She never went out of the house from that night to the day of her death, and she left directions that her coffin was to be shut, so that no one might see her scarred face. Won’t you sit down to remove your rubbers, my dear? This is a very comfortable chair. My sister died in it from a stroke. She was a widow, and came back home to live after her husband’s death. Her little girl was scalded in our kitchen with a pot of boiling water. Wasn’t that a tragic way for a child to die?’

‘Oh, how –’

‘But at least we knew
how
it died. My half-aunt Eliza – at least, she would have been my half-aunt if she had lived – just
disappeared
when she was six years old. Nobody ever knew what became of her.’

‘But surely –’

‘
Every
search was made, but nothing was ever discovered. It was said that her mother – my step-grandmother – had been very cruel to an orphan niece of my grandfather’s who was being brought up here. She locked it up in the closet at the head of the stairs one hot summer day for punishment, and when she went to let it out she found it –
dead
. Some people thought it was a judgement on her when her own child vanished. But I think it was just our Curse.’

‘Who put –’

‘What a high instep you have, my dear! My instep used to be admired, too. It was said a stream of water could run under it – the test of an aristocrat.’

Miss Minerva modestly poked a slipper from under her velvet skirt, and revealed what was undoubtedly a very handsome foot.

‘It certainly –’

‘Would you like to see over the house, my dear, before we have supper? It used to be the pride of Summerside. I suppose everything is very old-fashioned now, but perhaps there are a few things of interest. That sword hanging by the head of the stairs belonged to my great-great-grandfather, who was an officer in the British Army, and received a grant of land in Prince Edward Island for his services. He never lived in this house, but my great-great-grandmother did for a few weeks. She did not long survive her son’s tragic death. She had a very bad heart after it, and when her youngest son, my great-uncle James, shot himself in the cellar the shock killed her. Uncle James did that because a girl he wished to marry threw him over. She was very beautiful – too beautiful to be quite good, I am afraid, my dear. It is a great temptation. I am afraid she was responsible for many a broken heart besides my poor great-uncle’s.’

Miss Minerva marched Anne ruthlessly over the whole huge house, full of great square rooms: ball-room, conservatory, billiard-room, three drawing-rooms, breakfast-room, no end of bedrooms, and an enormous attic. They were all splendid and dismal.

‘Those were my Uncle Ronald and my Uncle Reuben,’ said Miss Minerva, indicating two worthies who seemed to be scowling at each other from the opposite sides of a fireplace. ‘They were twins, and they hated each other bitterly from birth. The house rang with their quarrels. It darkened their mother’s whole life. And during their final quarrel in this very room, while a thunderstorm was going on, Reuben was killed by a flash of lightning. Ronald never got over it. He was a
haunted man
from that day. His wife,’ Miss Minerva added reminiscently, ‘swallowed her wedding-ring.’

‘What an ex –’

‘Ronald thought it was very careless, and wouldn’t have anything done. A prompt emetic might have… But it was never heard of again. It spoiled her life. She always felt so
un
married without a wedding-ring.’

‘What a beautiful –’

‘Oh, yes, that was my Aunt Emilia. Not my aunt really, of course. Just the wife of Uncle Alexander. She was noted for her spiritual look, but she poisoned her husband with a stew of mushrooms – toadstools really. We always pretended it was an accident, because a murder is such a messy thing to have in a family; but we all knew the truth. Of course, she married him against her will. She was a gay young thing, and he was far too old for her. December and May, my dear. Still, that did not really justify toadstools. She went into a decline soon afterwards. They are buried together in Charlottetown. All the Tomgallons bury in Charlottetown… This was my Aunt Louise. She drank laudanum. The doctor pumped it out and saved her, but we all felt we could never trust her again. It was really rather a relief when she died respectably of pneumonia. Of course, some of us didn’t blame her much. You see, my dear, her husband had spanked her.’

‘Spanked –’

‘Exactly. There are really some things no gentleman should do, my dear, and one of them is spank his wife. Knock her down, possibly; but spank her, never! I would like,’ said Miss Minerva very majestically, ‘to see the man who would dare to spank
me
.’

Anne felt she would like to see him also. She realized that there are limits to the imagination after all. By no stretch of hers could she imagine a husband spanking Miss Minerva Tomgallon.

‘This is the room my poor brother Arthur and his bride quarrelled in the night he brought her home after the wedding. She just walked out and never came back. Nobody ever knew what it was all about. She was so beautiful and stately we always called her “the Queen”. Some people said she only married him because she couldn’t hurt his feelings by saying no, and repented when it was too late. It ruined my poor brother’s life. He became a travelling salesman. No Tomgallon,’ said Miss Minerva tragically, ‘had ever been a travelling salesman… This is the ball-room. Of course, it is never used now. But there have been any number of balls here. The Tomgallon balls were famous. People came from all over the Island to them. That chandelier cost my father five hundred dollars. My great-aunt Patience dropped dead while dancing here one night – right there in that corner. She had fretted a great deal over a man who had disappointed her. I cannot imagine any girl breaking her heart over a man. Men,’ said Miss Minerva, staring at a photograph of her father, a person with bristling side-whiskers and a hawk-like nose, ‘have always seemed to me such
trivial
creatures. We have an old legend that in Grandfather’s time, when he and Grandmother were away from home, the family had a dance here one Saturday night, and kept it up too late, and’ – Miss Minerva lowered her voice to a tone that made Anne’s flesh creep on her bones – ‘
Satan entered
. There’s a queer mark on the floor in that bay window, very much like a burnt footstep. But, of course, I don’t really believe
that
story.’

Miss Minerva sighed as if she were very sorry she couldn’t believe it.

11

The dining-room was in keeping with the rest of the house. There was another ornate chandelier, an equally ornate gilt-framed mirror over the mantelpiece, and a table beautifully set with silver and crystal and old Crown Derby. The supper, served by a rather grim and ancient maid, was bountiful and exceedingly good, and Anne’s healthy young appetite did full justice to it. Miss Minerva kept silence for a time, and Anne dared say nothing for fear of starting another avalanche of tragedies. Once a large, sleek black cat came into the room and sat down by Miss Minerva with a hoarse meow. Miss Minerva poured a saucer of cream and set it down before him. She seemed so much more human after this that Anne lost a good deal of her awe of the last of the Tomgallons.

‘Do have some more of the peaches, my dear. You’ve eaten nothing – positively nothing.’

‘Oh, Miss Tomgallon, I’ve enjoyed –’

‘The Tomgallons always set a good table,’ said Miss Minerva complacently. ‘My Aunt Sophia made the best sponge-cake I ever tasted. I think the only person my father ever really hated to see come to our house was his sister Mary, because she had such a poor appetite. She just minced and tasted. He took it as a personal insult. Father was a very unrelenting man. He never forgave my brother Richard for marrying against his will. He ordered him out of the house, and he was never allowed to enter it again. Father always repeated the Lord’s Prayer at family worship every morning, but after Richard flouted him he always left out the sentence, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” I can see him,’ said Miss Minerva dreamily, ‘kneeling there leaving it out.’

After supper they went to the smallest of the three drawing-rooms – which was still rather big and grim – and spent the evening before the huge fire, a pleasant, friendly fire enough. Anne crocheted at a set of intricate doilies, and Miss Minerva knitted away at an afghan and kept up what was practically a monologue composed in great part of colourful Tomgallon history. This one had told her husband a lie, and he had never believed her again, my dear. That one had all her mourning made in expectation of her husband’s death, and he had disappointed her by getting well. Oscar Tomgallon had died and come back to life. ‘They didn’t want him to, my dear.
That
was the tragedy.’ Claude Tomgallon had shot his son by accident. Edgar Tomgallon had taken the wrong medicine in the dark, and died in consequence. David Tomgallon had promised his jealous, dying wife that he would never marry again, and then
had
married again, and was supposed to be haunted by the ghost of the jealous Number One. ‘His eyes, my dear – always staring past you at something behind you. People hated to be in the same room with him. Nobody else ever saw her, so perhaps it was only his conscience. Do you believe in ghosts, my dear?’

‘I –’

‘Of course, we have a real ghost, you know, in the north wing. A very beautiful young girl – my great-aunt Ethel, who died in the bloom of life. She longed terribly to live – she was going to be married. This is a house of tragical memories, my dear.’

‘Miss Tomgallon, didn’t
any
pleasant things ever happen in this house?’ asked Anne, achieving a complete sentence by a mere fluke – Miss Minerva had had to stop talking long enough to blow her nose.

‘Oh, I suppose so,’ said Miss Minerva, as if she hated to admit it. ‘Yes, of course, we used to have gay times here when I was a girl. They tell me you’re writing a book about everyone in Summerside, my dear.’

‘I’m not. There isn’t a word of truth –’

‘Oh!’ Miss Minerva was plainly a little disappointed. ‘Well, if you ever do you are at liberty to use any of our stories you like, perhaps with the names disguised. And now what do you say to a game of parchesi?’

‘I’m afraid it is time I was going.’

‘Oh, my dear, you can’t go home tonight. It’s pouring cats and dogs. And listen to the wind. I don’t keep a carriage now – I have so little use for one – and you can’t walk half a mile in that deluge. You must be my guest for the night.’

Anne was not sure she wanted to spend a night in Tomgallon House. But neither did she want to walk to Windy Willows in a March tempest. So they had their game of parchesi – in which Miss Minerva was so interested that she forgot to talk about horrors – and then a ‘bed-time snack’. They ate cinnamon toast and drank cocoa out of old Tomgallon cups of marvellous thinness and beauty.

Finally Miss Minerva took her up to a guest-room which Anne at first was glad to see was not the one where Miss Minerva’s sister had died of a stroke.

‘This is Aunt Annabella’s room,’ said Miss Minerva, lighting the candles in the silver candlesticks on a rather pretty green dressing-table and turning out the gas – Matthew Tomgallon had blown out the gas one night, whereupon exit Matthew Tomgallon. ‘She was the handsomest of all the Tomgallons. That’s her picture above the mirror. Do you notice what a proud mouth she had? She made that crazy quilt on the bed. I hope you’ll be comfortable, my dear. Mary has aired the bed and put two hot bricks in it. And she has aired this nightdress for you,’ pointing to an ample flannel garment hanging over a chair and smelling strongly of moth-balls. ‘I hope it will fit you. It hasn’t been worn since poor Mother died in it. Oh, I nearly forgot to tell you’ – Miss Minerva turned back at the door – ‘Aunt Annabella hanged herself in that closet. She had been… melancholy… for quite a time, and finally she was not invited to a wedding she thought she should have been, and it preyed on her mind. Aunt Annabella always liked to be in the limelight. I hope you’ll sleep well, my dear.’

Anne did not know if she could sleep at all. Suddenly there seemed something strange and alien in the room, something a little hostile. But is there not something strange about any room that has been occupied through generations? Death has lurked in it; love has been rosy-red in it; births have been here; all the passions, all the hopes. It is full of wraiths.

But this was really rather a terrible old house, full of the ghosts of dead hatreds and heart-breaks, crowded with dark deeds that had never been dragged into light and were still festering in its corners and hidy-holes. Too many women must have wept here. The wind wailed very eerily in the spruces by the window. For a moment Anne felt like running out, storm or no storm.

Then she took herself resolutely in hand and commanded common sense. If tragic and dreadful things had happened here, many shadowy years agone, amusing and lovely things must have happened too. Gay and pretty girls had danced here and talked over their charming secrets; dimpled babies had been born here; there had been weddings and balls and music and laughter. The sponge-cake lady must have been a comfortable creature, and the unforgiven Richard a gallant lover.

‘I’ll think on these things and go to bed. What a quilt to sleep under! I wonder if I’ll be as crazy as it by morning. And this is a spare room! I’ve never forgotten what a thrill it used to give me to sleep in anyone’s spare room.’

Anne uncoiled and brushed her hair under the very nose of Annabella Tomgallon, who stared down at her with a face in which there were pride and vanity and something of the insolence of great beauty. Anne felt a little creepy as she looked in the mirror. Who knew what faces might look out of it at her? All the tragic and haunted ladies who had ever looked into it, perhaps. She bravely opened the closet door, half expecting any number of skeletons to tumble out, and hung up her dress. She sat down calmly on a rigid chair, which looked as if it would be insulted if anybody sat on it, and took off her shoes. Then she put on the flannel nightgown, blew out the candles, and got into the bed, pleasantly warm from Mary’s bricks. For a little while the rain streamed on the panes and the shriek of the wind round the old eaves prevented her from sleeping. Then she forgot all the Tomgallon tragedies in dreamless slumber, until she found herself looking at dark fir boughs against a red sunrise.

‘I’ve enjoyed having you so much, my dear,’ said Miss Minerva, when Anne left after breakfast. ‘We’ve had a real cheerful visit, haven’t we? Though I’ve lived so long alone I’ve almost forgotten how to talk. And I need not say what a delight it is to meet a really charming and unspoiled young girl in this frivolous age. I didn’t tell you yesterday, but it was my birthday, and it was very pleasant to have a bit of youth in the house. There is nobody to remember my birthday now’ – Miss Minerva gave a faint sigh – ‘and once there were so many.’

‘Well, I suppose you heard a pretty grim chronicle,’ said Aunt Chatty that night.

‘Did all those things Miss Minerva told me really happen, Aunt Chatty?’

‘Well, the queer thing is, they did,’ said Aunt Chatty. ‘It’s a curious thing, Miss Shirley, but a lot of awful things did happen to the Tomgallons.’

‘I don’t know that there were many more than happens in any large family in the course of six generations,’ said Aunt Kate.

‘Oh, I think there were. They really did seem under a curse. So many of them died sudden or violent deaths. Of course, there is a streak of insanity in them – everyone knows that. That was curse enough. But I’ve heard an old story – I can’t recall the details – of the carpenter who built the house cursing it. Something about the contract… Old Paul Tomgallon held him to it, and it ruined him: it cost so much more than he had figured.’

‘Miss Minerva seems rather proud of the curse,’ said Anne.

‘Poor old thing, it’s all she has,’ said Rebecca Dew.

Anne smiled to think of the stately Miss Minerva being referred to as a ‘poor old thing’. But she went to the tower room and wrote to Gilbert: