Anne of Windy Willows (4 page)

‘Would you mind lifting up the cat and letting me pat him?’ she asked shyly.

Dusty Miller was rubbing against my legs. I lifted him, and little Elizabeth put out a tiny hand and stroked his head delightedly.

‘I like kittens better than babies,’ she said, looking at me with an odd little air of defiance, as if she knew I would be shocked; but tell the truth she must.

‘I suppose you’ve never had much to do with babies, so you don’t know how sweet they are,’ I said, smiling. ‘Have you a kitten of your own?’

Elizabeth shook her head. ‘Oh, no! Grandmother doesn’t like cats. And the Woman hates them. The Woman is out tonight, so that is why I could come for the milk. I love coming for the milk, because Rebecca Dew is such an agree’ble person.’

‘Are you sorry she didn’t come tonight?’ I laughed.

Little Elizabeth shook her head. ‘No. You are very agree’ble too. I’ve been wanting to get ’quainted with you, but I was afraid it mightn’t happen before Tomorrow comes.’

We stood there and talked, while Elizabeth sipped her milk daintily and told me all about Tomorrow. The Woman had told her that Tomorrow never comes, but Elizabeth knows better. It
will
come some time. Some beautiful morning she will just wake up and find it is Tomorrow. Not Today, but Tomorrow. And then things will happen – wonderful things. She may even have a day to do exactly as she likes in, with nobody watching her, though I think Elizabeth feels
that
is too good to happen even in Tomorrow. Or she may find out what is at the end of the harbour road, that wandering, twisted road like a nice red snake that leads, so Elizabeth thinks, to the end of the world. Perhaps the Island of Happiness is there. Elizabeth feels sure there is an Island of Happiness somewhere, where all the ships that never come back are anchored, and she will find it when Tomorrow comes.

‘And when Tomorrow comes,’ said Elizabeth, ‘I will have a million dogs and forty-five cats. I told Grandmother that when she wouldn’t let me have a kitten, Miss Shirley, and she was angry and said, “I’m not ’customed to be spoken to like that, Miss Impert’nence.” I was sent to bed without supper, but I didn’t mean to be impert’nent. And I couldn’t sleep, Miss Shirley, because the Woman told me that she knew a child once that died in her sleep after being impert’nent.’

When Elizabeth had finished her milk there came a sharp tapping at some unseen window behind the spruces. I think we had been watched all the time. My elf-maiden ran, her golden head glimmering along the dark spruce aisle until she vanished.

‘She’s a fanciful little creature,’ said Rebecca Dew, when I told her of my adventure – really, it somehow had the quality of an adventure, Gilbert. ‘One day she said to me, “Are you scared of lions, Rebecca Dew?” “I never met any, so I can’t tell you,” sez I. “There will be any amount of lions in Tomorrow,” sez she, “but they will be nice, friendly lions.” “Child, you’ll turn into eyes if you look like that,” sez I. She was looking clean through me at something she saw in that Tomorrow of hers. “I’m thinking deep thoughts, Rebecca Dew,” she sez. The trouble with that child is she doesn’t laugh enough.’

I remembered Elizabeth had never laughed once during our talk. I feel that she hasn’t learned how. That great house is so still and lonely and laughterless. It looks dull and gloomy even now when the world is a riot of autumn colour. Little Elizabeth is doing too much listening to lost whispers.

I think one of my missions in Summerside will be to teach her how to laugh.

Your tenderest, most faithful friend,

A
NNE
S
HIRLEY

P.S. More of Aunt Chatty’s grandmother!

3

Windy Willows

Spook’s Lane

S’side

October 25

G
ILBERT
D
EAR
,

What do you think? I’ve been to supper at Maplehurst! Miss Ellen herself wrote the invitation. Rebecca Dew was really excited; she had never believed they would take any notice of me. And she was quite sure it was not out of friendliness.

‘They have some sinister motive, that I’m certain of,’ she exclaimed.

I really had some such feeling in my own mind.

‘Be sure you put on your best,’ ordered Rebecca Dew.

So I put on my pretty cream challie dress with the purple violets in it and did my hair the new way with the dip in the forehead. It’s very becoming.

The ladies of Maplehurst are positively delightful in their own way, Gilbert. I could love them if they’d let me. Maplehurst is a proud, exclusive house which draws its trees round it and won’t associate with common houses. It has a big white wooden woman off the bow of old Captain Abraham’s famous ship, the
Go and Ask Her
, in the orchard, and billows of southernwood about the front steps, which were brought out from the old country over a hundred years ago by the first emigrating Pringle. They have another ancestor who fought at the battle of Minden, and his sword is hanging on the parlour wall beside Captain Abraham’s portrait. Captain Abraham was their father, and they are evidently tremendously proud of him.

They have stately mirrors over the old black fluted mantels, a glass case with wax flowers in it, pictures full of the beauty of the ships of long ago, a hair-wreath containing the hair of every known Pringle, big conch shells, and a quilt on the spare-room bed quilted in infinitesimal fans.

We sat in the parlour on mahogany Sheraton chairs. It was hung with silver-striped wallpaper. Heavy brocade curtains at the windows. Marble-topped tables, one bearing a beautiful model of a ship with crimson hull and snow-white sails – the
Go and Ask Her
. An enormous chandelier, all glass dingle-dangles, suspended from the ceiling. A round mirror with a clock in the centre – something Captain Abraham had brought home from ‘foreign parts’. It was wonderful. I’d like something like it in our house of dreams.

The very shadows were eloquent and traditional. Miss Ellen showed me millions – more or less – of Pringle photographs, many of them daguerreotypes in leather cases. A big tortoiseshell cat came in, jumped on my knee, and was at once whisked out to the kitchen by Miss Ellen. She apologized to me. But I expect she had previously apologized to the cat in the kitchen.

Miss Ellen did most of the talking. Miss Sarah, a tiny thing in a black silk dress and starched petticoat, with snow-white hair, and eyes as black as her dress, thin, veined hands folded on her lap amid fine lace ruffles, sad, lovely, gentle, looked almost too fragile to talk. And yet I got the impression, Gilbert, that every Pringle of the clan, including Miss Ellen herself, danced to her piping.

We had a delicious supper. The water was cold, the linen beautiful, the dishes and glassware thin. We were waited on by a maid quite as aloof and aristocratic as themselves. But Miss Sarah pretended to be a little deaf whenever I spoke to her, and I thought every mouthful would choke me. All my courage oozed out of me I felt just like a poor fly caught on a fly-paper. Gilbert, I can never, never conquer or win the Royal Family. I can see myself resigning at New Year’s. I haven’t a chance against a clan like that.

And yet I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for the old ladies as I looked round their house. It had once
lived
; people had been born there, died there, exulted there, known sleep, despair, fear, joy, love, hope, hate. And now it has nothing but the memories by which they live and their pride in them.

Aunt Chatty is much upset because when she unfolded clean sheets for my bed today she found a diamond-shaped crease in the centre. She is sure it foretells a death in the household. Aunt Kate is very much disgusted with such superstition. But I believe I rather like superstitious people. They lend colour to life. Wouldn’t it be a rather drab world if everybody was wise and sensible – and
good
? What would we find to talk about?

We had a
cat
astrophe here two nights ago. Dusty Miller stayed out all night, in spite of Rebecca Dew’s stentorian shouts of ‘Puss’ in the backyard. And when he turned up in the morning – oh, such a looking cat! One eye was closed completely, and there was a lump as big as an egg on his jaw. His fur was stiff with mud, and one paw was bitten through. But what a triumphant, unrepentant look he had in his one good eye! The widows were horrified, but Rebecca Dew said exultantly, ‘That Cat has never had a good fight in his life before. And I’ll bet the other cat looks far worse than he does!’

A fog is creeping up the harbour tonight, blotting out the red road that little Elizabeth wants to explore. Weeds and leaves are burning in all the town gardens, and the combination of smoke and fog is making Spook’s Lane an eerie, fascinating, enchanted place. It is growing late, and my bed says, ‘I have sleep for you.’ I’ve grown used to climbing a flight of steps into bed, and climbing down them. Oh, Gilbert, I’ve never told anyone this, but it’s too funny to keep any longer. The first morning I woke up in Windy Willows I forgot all about the steps, and made a blithe morning spring out of bed. I came down like a thousand of brick, as Rebecca Dew would say. Luckily I didn’t break any bones, but I was black and blue for a week.

Little Elizabeth and I are very good friends by now. She comes every evening for her milk, because the Woman is laid up with what Rebecca Dew calls ‘brown-kites’. I always find her at the wall gate, waiting for me, her big eyes full of twilight. We talk, with the gate, which has never been opened for years, between us. Elizabeth sips the glass of milk as slowly as possible in order to spin our conversation out. Always, when the last drop is drained, comes the tap-tap on the window.

I have found that one of the things that is going to happen in Tomorrow is that she will get a letter from her father. She has never got one. I wonder what the man can be thinking of.

‘You know, he couldn’t bear the sight of me, Miss Shirley,’ she told me, ‘but he mightn’t mind writing to me.’

‘Who told you he couldn’t bear the sight of you?’ I asked indignantly.

‘The Woman.’ (Always when Elizabeth says ‘the Woman’ I can see her like a great big forbidding W, all angles and corners.) ‘And it must be true, or he would come to see me sometimes.’

She was Beth that night; it is only when she is Beth that she will talk of her father. When she is Betty she makes faces at her grandmother and the Woman behind their backs; but when she turns into Elsie she is sorry for it, and thinks she ought to confess, but is scared to. Very rarely she is Elizabeth, and then she has the face of one who listens to fairy music and knows what roses and clovers talk about. She’s the quaintest thing, Gilbert, as sensitive as one of the leaves of the windy willows, and I love her. It infuriates me to know that those two terrible old women are depriving her of all the love and friendship she ought to have. I’m sure her grandmother doesn’t mean to be unkind. She simply doesn’t understand. But the Woman takes a delight in tormenting her. Little Elizabeth told me the Woman wouldn’t let her have a night-light.

‘The Woman said I was big enough to sleep without a light. But I feel so small, Miss Shirley, because the night is so big and awful. And there is a stuffed crow in my room, and I am afraid of it. The Woman told me it would pick my eyes out if I cried. Of course, Miss Shirley, I don’t believe that, but still I’m scared. Things
whisper
so to each other at night. But in Tomorrow I’ll never be scared of anything – not even of being kidnapped.’

‘But there is no danger of your being kidnapped, Elizabeth.’

‘The Woman said there was if I went anywhere alone or talked to strange persons. But you are not a strange person, are you, Miss Shirley?’

‘No, darling. We’ve always known each other in Tomorrow,’ I said.

4

Windy Willows

Spook’s Lane

S’side

November 10

D
EAREST
,

It used to be that the person I hated most in the world was the person who spoiled my pen-nib. But I can’t hate Rebecca Dew in spite of her habit of using my pen to copy recipes when I’m in school. She’s been doing it again, and as a result you won’t get a long or a loving letter this time (belovedest).

The last cricket song has been sung. The evenings are so chilly now that I have a small, chubby, oblong wood-stove in my room. Rebecca Dew put it up – I forgive her the pen for it; there’s nothing that woman can’t do – and she always has a fire lit for me in it when I come home from school. It is the tiniest of stoves; I could pick it up in my hands. It looks just like a pert little black dog on its four bandy iron legs. But when you fill it with hardwood sticks it blooms rosy red and throws a wonderful heat, and you can’t think how cosy it is. I’m sitting before it now, with my feet on its tiny hearth, scribbling to you on my knee.

Everyone else in S’side – more or less – is at the Hardy Pringles’ dance.
I
was not invited. And Rebecca Dew is so cross about it that I’d hate to be Dusty Miller. But when I think of Hardy’s daughter Myra, beautiful and brainless, trying to prove in an examination paper that the
angels
at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal I forgive the entire Pringle clan. And last week she included ‘gallows-tree’ quite seriously in a list of trees! But, to be just, all the howlers don’t originate with the Pringles. Blake Fenton defined an alligator recently as ‘a large kind of insect’. Such are the highlights of a teacher’s life!

It feels like snow tonight. I like an evening when it feels like snow. The wind is blowing ‘in turret and tree’ and making my cosy room seem even cosier. The last golden leaf will be blown from the willows tonight.

I think I’ve been invited to supper everywhere by now – I mean, to the homes of all my pupils, both in town and country. And oh, Gilbert darling, I am so sick of pumpkin preserves! Never, never let us have pumpkin preserves in our house of dreams!

Almost everywhere I’ve gone for the last month I’ve had P.P. for supper. The first time I had it I loved it – it was so golden that I felt I was eating preserved sunshine – and I incautiously raved about it. It got bruited abroad that I was very fond of P.P., and people had it on purpose for me. Last night I was going to Mr Hamilton’s and Rebecca Dew assured me that I wouldn’t have to eat P.P. there because none of the Hamiltons liked it. But when we sat down to supper there on the sideboard was the inevitable cut-glass bowl full of P.P.

‘I hadn’t any pumpkin preserves of my own,’ said Mrs Hamilton, ladling me out a generous dishful, ‘but I heard you was terrible partial to it; so when I was to my cousin’s in Lowvale last Sunday I sez to her, “I’m having Miss Shirley to supper this week, and she’s terrible partial to pumpkin preserves. I wish you’d lend me a jar for her.” So she did, and here it is, and you can take home what’s left.’

You should have seen Rebecca Dew’s face when I arrived home from the Hamiltons’ bearing a glass jar two-thirds full of P.P.! Nobody likes it here, so we buried it darkly at dead of night in the garden.

‘You won’t put this in a story, will you?’ she asked anxiously. Ever since Rebecca Dew discovered that I do an occasional bit of fiction for the magazines she has lived in the fear – or hope, I don’t know which – that I’ll put everything that happens at Windy Willows into a story. She wants me to ‘write up the Pringles and blister them’. But alas! it’s the Pringles that are doing the blistering, and between them and my work in school I have scant time for writing fiction.

There are only withered leaves and frosted stems in the garden now. Rebecca Dew has done the standard roses up in straw and potato bags, and in the twilight they look exactly like a group of hump-backed old men leaning on staffs.

I got a postcard from Davy today with ten kisses crossed on it, and a letter from Priscilla written on some paper that ‘a friend of hers in Japan’ sent her – silky thin paper with dim cherry-blossoms on it like ghosts. I’m beginning to have my suspicions about that friend of hers. But your big fat letter was the purple gift the day gave me. I read it four times over to get every bit of its savour, like a dog polishing off a plate!
That
certainly isn’t a romantic simile, but it’s the one that just popped into my head. Still, letters, even the nicest, aren’t
satisfactory
. I want to see
you
. I’m glad it’s only five weeks to Christmas holidays.