The Complete Anne of Green (125 page)

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:

I thought Tomgallon House was a sleepy old place where nothing ever happened. Well, perhaps things don’t happen now, but evidently they
did
. Little Elizabeth is always talking of Tomorrow. But the old Tomgallon house is Yesterday. I’m glad I don’t live in Yesterday… that Tomorrow is still a friend.

Of course, I think Miss Minerva has all the Tomgallon liking for the spotlight, and gets no end of satisfaction out of her tragedies. They are to her what husband and children are to other women. But, oh, Gilbert, no matter how old we get in years to come, don’t let’s ever see life as
all
tragedy, and revel in it. I think I hate a house a hundred and twenty years old, I hope when we get our house of dreams it will either be new, ghostless, and traditionless, or, if that can’t be, at least have been occupied by reasonably happy people. I shall never forget my night at Tomgallon House. And for once in my life I’ve met a person who could talk me down.

12

Little Elizabeth Grayson had been born expecting things to happen. That they seldom happened under the watchful eyes of Grandmother and the Woman never blighted her expectations in the least. Things were just bound to happen some time – if not today, then tomorrow.

When Miss Shirley came to live at Windy Willows Elizabeth felt that Tomorrow must be very close at hand, and her visit to Green Gables was like a foretaste of it. But now in the June of Miss Shirley’s third and last year in Summerside High little Elizabeth’s heart had descended into the nice buttoned boots Grandmother always got for her to wear. Many children at the school where she went envied little Elizabeth those beautiful buttoned kid boots But little Elizabeth cared nothing about buttoned boots when she could not tread the way to freedom in them. And now her adored Miss Shirley was going away from her for ever. At the end of June she would be leaving Summerside and going back to that beautiful Green Gables. Little Elizabeth simply could not bear the thought of it. It was of no use for Miss Shirley to promise that she would have her down at Green Gables in the summer before she was married. Little Elizabeth knew somehow that Grandmother would not let her go again. Little Elizabeth knew Grandmother had never really approved of her intimacy with Miss Shirley.

‘It will be the end of everything, Miss Shirley,’ she sobbed.

‘Let’s hope, darling, that it is only a new beginning,’ said Anne cheerfully. But she felt downcast herself. No word had ever come from little Elizabeth’s father. Either her letter had never reached him or he did not care. And, if he did not care, what was to become of Elizabeth? It was bad enough now in her childhood, but what would it be later on?

‘Those two old dames will boss her to death,’ Rebecca Dew had said. Anne felt that there was more truth than elegance in her remark.

Elizabeth knew that she was ‘bossed’. And she especially resented being bossed by the Woman. She did not like it in Grandmother, of course, but one conceded reluctantly that perhaps a grandmother had a certain right to boss you. But what right had the Woman? Elizabeth always wanted to ask her that right out. She
would
do it some time – when Tomorrow came. And, oh, how she would enjoy the look on the Woman’s face!

Grandmother would never let little Elizabeth go walking by herself, for fear, she said, that she might be kidnapped by gipsies. A child had been once, forty years before. It was very seldom gipsies came to the Island now, and little Elizabeth felt that it was only an excuse. But why should Grandmother care whether she was kidnapped or not? Elizabeth knew that Grandmother and the Woman didn’t love her at all. Why, they never even spoke of her by her name if they could help it. It was always ‘the child’. How Elizabeth hated to be called ‘the child’, just as they might have spoken of ‘the dog’ or ‘the cat’, if there had been one. But when Elizabeth had ventured a protest Grandmother’s face had grown dark and angry, and little Elizabeth had been punished for impertinence, while the Woman looked on, well content. Little Elizabeth often wondered just why the Woman hated her. Why should anyone hate you when you were so small? Could you be worth hating? Little Elizabeth did not know that the mother whose life she had cost had been that bitter old woman’s darling, and if she had known could not have understood what perverted shapes thwarted love can take.

Little Elizabeth hated the gloomy, splendid Evergreens, where everything seemed unacquainted with her, even though she had lived in it all her life. But after Miss Shirley had come to Windy Willows everything had changed magically. Little Elizabeth lived in a world of romance after Miss Shirley’s coming. There was beauty wherever you looked. Fortunately Grandmother and the Woman couldn’t prevent you from looking, though Elizabeth had no doubt they would if they could. The short walks along the red magic of the harbour road, which she was all too rarely permitted to share with Miss Shirley, were the highlights in her shadowy life. She loved everything she saw. The faraway lighthouse, painted in odd red-and-white rings, the far, dim blue shores, the little silvery-blue waves, the range lights that gleamed through the violet dusks, all gave her so much delight that it hurt. And the harbour with its smoky islands and glowing sunsets! Elizabeth always went up to a window in the mansard roof to watch them through the tree-tops, and the ships that sailed at the rising of the moon. Ships that came back, ships that never came back. Elizabeth longed to go in one of them on a voyage to the Island of Happiness. The ships that never came back stayed there, where it was always Tomorrow.

That mysterious red road ran on and on, and her feet itched to follow it. Where did it lead to? Sometimes Elizabeth thought she would burst if she didn’t find out. When Tomorrow really came she would fare forth on it, and perhaps find an island all her own, where she and Miss Shirley could live alone, and Grandmother and the Woman could never come. They both hated water, and would not put foot in a boat for anything. Little Elizabeth liked to picture herself standing on her island and mocking them as they stood vainly glowering on the mainland shore.