The Complete Anne of Green (124 page)

If Rebecca Dew could have turned pale she would have done so.

Not here? Found a home for him? Good grief! Isn’t this his home?’

‘We have given him to Mrs Edmonds. She has been very lonely since her daughter married, and thought a nice cat would be company.’

Rebecca Dew came in and shut the door. She looked very wild.

‘This
is
the last straw!’ she said. And, indeed, it seemed to be. I’ve never seen Rebecca Dew’s eyes emit such sparkles of rage. ‘I’ll be leaving at the end of the month, Mrs MacComber, and sooner if you can be suited.’

‘But, Rebecca,’ said Aunt Kate in bewilderment, ‘I don’t understand. You’ve always disliked Dusty Miller. Only last week you said –’

‘That’s right,’ said Rebecca bitterly. ‘Cast things up to me! Don’t have any regard for my feelings! That poor dear Cat! I’ve waited on him and pampered him and got up nights to let him in. And now he’s been spirited away behind my back without so much as a by-your-leave. And to Jane Edmonds, who wouldn’t buy a bit of liver for the poor creature if he was dying for it! The only company I had in the kitchen!’

‘But, Rebecca, you’ve always –’

‘Oh, keep on, keep on! Don’t let
me
get a word in edgewise, Mrs MacComber. I’ve raised that cat from a kitten. I’ve looked after his health and his morals. And what for? That Jane Edmonds should have a well-trained cat for company. Well, I hope she’ll stand out in the frost at nights, as I’ve done, calling that cat for
hours
rather than leave him out to freeze; but I doubt it. I seriously doubt it. Well, Mrs MacComber, all I hope is that your conscience won’t trouble you the next time it’s ten below zero.
I
won’t sleep a wink when it happens, but, of course,
that
doesn’t matter an old shoe to anyone.’

‘Rebecca, if you would only –’

‘Mrs MacComber, I am not a worm, neither am I a doormat. Well, this has been a lesson for me – a valuable lesson! Never again will I allow my affections to twine themselves around an animal of any kind or description. And if you’d done it open and above-board… But behind my back – taking advantage of me like that! I never heard of anything so dirt mean. But who am I that I should expect
my
feelings to be considered?’

‘Rebecca,’ said Aunt Kate desperately, ‘if you want Dusty Miller back we can get him back.’

‘Why didn’t you say so before, then?’ demanded Rebecca Dew. ‘And I doubt it. Jane Edmonds has got her claws in him. Is it likely she’ll give him up?’

‘I think she will,’ said Aunt Kate, who had apparently reverted to jelly. ‘And if he comes back you won’t leave us, will you, Rebecca?’

‘I may think it over,’ said Rebecca, ‘with the air of one making a tremendous concession.

Next day Aunt Chatty brought Dusty Miller home in a covered basket. I caught a glance exchanged between her and Aunt Kate after Rebecca had carried Dusty Miller out to the kitchen and shut the door. I wonder! Was it all a deep-laid plot on the part of the widows, aided and abetted by Jane Edmonds?

Rebecca has never uttered a word of complaint about Dusty Miller since, and there is a veritable clang of victory in her voice when she shouts for him at bed-time. It sounds as if she wanted all Summerside to know that Dusty Miller is back where he belongs, and that she has once more got the better of the widows!

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.’