Anne of Windy Poplars Page 14

  Of course, Rebecca Dew knew all about the Armstrongs.

  'James Armstrong has never got over his wife's death five years ago,' she said. 'He wasn't so bad before that; agreeable enough, though a bit of a hermit. Kind of built that way. He was just wrapped up in his bit of a wife - she was twenty years younger than he was. Her death was an awful shock to him, I've heard. Just seemed to change his nature completely. He got sour and cranky. Wouldn't even get a housekeeper. Looked after his house and child himself. He kept bachelor's hall for years before he was married, so he ain't a bad hand at it.'

  'But it's no life for the child,' said Aunt Chatty. 'His father never takes him to church or anywhere he'd see people.'

  'He worships the boy, I've heard,' said Aunt Kate.

  ' "Thou shalt have none other gods before me,"' quoted Rebecca Dew suddenly.

  3

  It was almost three weeks before Lewis found time to develop his pictures. He brought them up to Windy Willows the first Sunday night he came to supper. Both the house and the Little Fellow came out splendidly. The Little Fellow smiled up from the picture 'as real as life', said Rebecca Dew.

  'Why, he looks like you, Lewis!' exclaimed Anne.

  'He does that,' agreed Rebecca Dew, squinting at it judicially. 'The minute I saw it his face reminded me of somebody, but I couldn't think who.'

  'Why, the eyes... the forehead... the whole expression, are yours, Lewis!' said Anne.

  'It's hard to believe I was ever such a good-looking little chap,' shrugged Lewis. 'I've got a picture of myself somewhere taken when I was about seven. I must hunt it out and compare it. You'd laugh to see it, Miss Shirley. I'm the most sober-eyed kid with long curls and a lace collar, looking as stiff as a ramrod. I suppose I had my head clamped in one of those three-clawed contraptions they used to use. If this picture really resembles me it must be only a coincidence. The Little Fellow can't be any relation of mine. I haven't any relative on the Island - now.'

  'Where were you born?' asked Aunt Kate.

  'N.B. Father and Mother died when I was ten, and I came over here to live with a cousin of mother's - I called her Aunt Ida. She died too, you know, three years ago.'

  'Jim Armstrong came from New Brunswick,' said Rebecca Dew. 'He ain't a real Islander; wouldn't be such a crank if he was. We have our peculiarities, but we're civilized.'

  'I'm not sure that I want to discover a relation in the amiable Mr Armstrong,' grinned Lewis, attacking Aunt Chatty's cinnamon toast. 'However, I think when I get the photograph finished and mounted I'll take it out to Glencove Road myself, and investigate a little. He may be a distant cousin or something. I really know nothing about my mother's people, if she had any living. I've always been under the impression that she hadn't. Father hadn't, I know.'

  'If you take the picture out in person won't the Little Fellow be a bit disappointed over losing his thrill of getting something through the post-office?' said Anne.

  'I'll make it up to him. I'll send him something else by mail.'

  The next Saturday afternoon Lewis came driving along Spook's Lane in an antiquated buggy behind a still more antiquated mare.

  'I'm going out to Glencove to take little Teddy Armstrong his picture, Miss Shirley. If my dashing turn-out doesn't give you heart-failure I'd like to have you come too. I don't think any of the wheels will fall off.'

  'Where on earth did you pick up that relic, Lewis?' demanded Rebecca Dew.

  'Don't poke fun at my gallant steed, Miss Dew. Have some respect for age. Mr Bender lent me both mare and buggy on condition I'd do an errand for him along the Dawlish road. I hadn't time to walk out to Glencove today and back.'

  'Time!' said Rebecca Dew. 'I could walk there and back myself faster than that animal.'

  'And carry a bag of potatoes back for Mr Bender? You wonderful woman!'

  Rebecca Dew's red cheeks grew even redder. 'It ain't nice to make fun of your elders,' she said rebukingly. Then, by way of coals of fire, 'Could you do with a few doughnuts afore you start out?'

  The white mare, however, developed surprising powers of locomotion when they were once more out in the open. Anne giggled to herself as they jogged along the road. What would Mrs Gardner or even Aunt Jamesina say if they could see her now? Well, she didn't care. It was a wonderful day for a drive through a land that was keeping its old, lovely ritual of autumn, and Lewis was a good companion. Lewis would attain his ambitions. Nobody else of her acquaintance, she reflected, would dream of asking her to go driving in the Bender buggy behind the Bender mare. But it never occurred to Lewis that there was anything odd about it. What difference how you travelled as long as you got there? The calm rims of the upland hills were as blue, the roads as red, the maples as gorgeous, no matter what vehicle you rode in. Lewis was a philosopher, and cared as little what people might say as he did when some of the High School pupils called him 'Sissy' because he did housework for his board. Let them call! Some day the laugh would be on the other side. His pockets might be empty, but his head wasn't. Meanwhile the afternoon was an idyll, and they were going to see the Little Fellow again. They told Mr Bender's brother-in-law about their errand when he put the bag of potatoes in the back of the buggy.

  'Do you mean to say you've got a photo of little Teddy Armstrong?' exclaimed Mr Merrill.

  'That I have, and a good one.' Lewis unwrapped it and held it proudly out. 'I don't believe a professional photographer could have taken a better.'

  Mr Merrill slapped his leg resoundingly. 'Well, if that don't beat all! Why, little Teddy Armstrong is dead -'

  'Dead!' exclaimed Anne in horror. 'Oh, Mr Merrill, no! Don't tell me - that dear little boy -'

  'Sorry, miss, but it's a fact. And his father is just about wild, and all the worse that he hasn't got any kind of a picture of him at all. And now you've got a good one. Well, well!'

  'It - it seems impossible!' said Anne, her eyes full of tears. She was seeing the slender little figure waving his farewell from the dike.

  'Sorry to say it's only too true. He died nearly three weeks ago. Pneumonia. Suffered awful, but was just as brave and patient as anyone could be, they say. I dunno what'll become of Jim Armstrong now. They say he's like a crazy man - just moping and muttering to himself all the time. "If I only had a picture of my Little Fellow!" he keeps saying.'

  'I'm sorry for that man,' said Mrs Merrill suddenly. She was standing by her husband, a gaunt, spare-built grey woman in wind-whipped calico and check apron, and had not hitherto spoken. 'He's well-to-do, and I've always felt he looked down on us because we were poor. But we have our boy. And it don't never matter how poor you are as long as you've got something to love.'

  Anne looked at Mrs Merrill with a new respect. Mrs Merrill was not beautiful, but as her sunken grey eyes met Anne's something of spirit kinship was acknowledged between them. Anne had never seen Mrs Merrill before, and never saw her again, but she always remembered her as a woman who had attained to the ultimate secret of life: you were never poor as long as you had something to love.

  The golden day was spoiled for Anne. Somehow the Little Fellow had won her heart in their brief meeting. She and Lewis drove in silence down the Glencove road and up the grassy lane. Carlo was lying on the stone before the blue door. He got up and came over to them as they descended from the buggy, licking Anne's hand and looking up at her with big, wistful eyes, as if asking for news of his little playmate. The door was open, and in the dim room beyond they saw a man with his head bowed on the table.

  At Anne's knock he started up and came to the door. She was shocked at the change in him. He was hollow-cheeked, haggard, and unshaven, and his deep-set eyes flashed with a fitful fire.

  She expected a repulse at first, but he seemed to recognize her, for he said listlessly, 'So you're back? The Little Fellow said you talked to him and kissed him. He liked you. I was sorry I'd been so churlish to you. What is it you want?'

  'We want to show you something,' said Anne gently.

  'Will you come in and si
t down?' he said drearily.

  Without a word Lewis took the Little Fellow's picture from its wrappings and held it out to him. He snatched it up, gave it one amazed, hungry look, then dropped in his chair and burst into tears. Anne had never before seen a man weep as he did. She and Lewis stood aside in mute sympathy until he had regained his self-control.

  'Oh, you don't know what this means to me,' he said brokenly at last. 'I hadn't any picture of him. And I'm not like other folks: I can't recall a face. I can't see faces as most folks can in their minds. It's been awful since the Little Fellow died. I couldn't even remember what he looked like. And now you've brought me this - after I was so rude to you. Sit down! Sit down! I wish I could express my thanks in some way. I guess you've saved my reason - maybe my life. Oh, miss, isn't it like him? You'd think he was going to speak. My dear Little Fellow! How am I going to live without him? I've nothing to live for now. First his mother, now him.'

  'He was a dear little lad,' said Anne tenderly.

  'That he was. Little Teddy - Theodore, his mother named him. Her "gift of God" she said he was. Such a cruel death for him, too. He was so bright and full of life - and to be crushed out like that! And he was so patient, and never complained. Once he smiled up in my face and said, "Dad, I think you've been mistaken in one thing - just one. I guess there is a heaven, isn't there? Isn't there, Dad?" I said to him, yes, there was. God forgive me for ever trying to teach him anything else. He smiled again, contented-like, and said, "Well, Dad, I'm going there, and Mother and God are there, so I'll be pretty well off. But I'm worried about you, Dad. You'll be so awful lonesome without me. But just do the best you can, and be polite to folks, and come to us by and by." He made me promise I'd try, but when he was gone I couldn't stand the blankness of it. I'd have gone mad if you hadn't brought me this. It won't be so hard now...'

  He talked about his Little Fellow for some time, as if he found relief and pleasure in it. His reserve and gruffness seemed to have fallen from him like a garment. Finally Lewis produced the small, faded photograph of himself and showed it to him.

  'Have you ever seen anybody who looked like that, Mr Armstrong?' asked Anne.

  Mr Armstrong peered at it in perplexity. 'It's awful like the Little Fellow,' he said at last. 'Whose might it be?'

  'Mine,' said Lewis, 'when I was seven years old. It was because of the strange resemblance to Teddy that Miss Shirley made me bring it to show you. I thought it possible that you and I or the Little Fellow might be distant relations. My name is Lewis Allen, and my father was George Allen. I was born in New Brunswick.'

  James Armstrong shook his head. Then he said, 'What was your mother's name?'

  'Mary Gardiner.'

  James Armstrong looked at him for a moment in silence. 'She was my half-sister,' he said at last. 'I hardly knew her - never saw her but once. I was brought up in an uncle's family after my father's death. My mother married again and moved away. She came to see me once, and brought her little daughter. She died soon after, and I never saw my half-sister again. When I came over to the Island to live I lost all trace of here. You are my nephew, and the Little Fellow 's cousin.'

  This was surprising news to a lad who had fancied himself alone in the world. Lewis and Anne spent the whole evening with Mr Armstrong, and found him to be a well-read and intelligent man. Somehow they both took a liking to him. His former inhospitable reception was quite forgotten, and they saw only the real worth of the character and temperament below the unpromising shell that had hitherto concealed it.

  'Of course, the Little Fellow couldn't have loved his father so much if it hadn't been so,' said Anne, as she and Lewis drove back to Windy Willows through the sunset.

  When Lewis Allen went the next week-end to see his uncle the latter said to him, 'Lad, come and live with me. You are my nephew, and I can do well for you - what I'd have done for my Little Fellow if he'd lived. You're alone in the world, and so am I. I need you. I'll grow hard and bitter again if I live here alone. I want you to help me keep my promise to the Little Fellow. His place is empty. Come you and fill it.'

  'Thank you, Uncle. I'll try,' said Lewis, holding out his hand.

  'And bring that teacher of yours here once in a while. I like that girl. The Little Fellow liked her. "Dad," he said to me, "I didn't think I'd ever like anybody but you to kiss me, but I liked it when she did. There was something in her eyes, Dad."'

  4

  'The old porch thermometer says it's zero and the new side-door one says it's ten above,' remarked Anne one frosty December night, 'so I don't know whether to take my muff or not.'

  'Better go by the old thermometer,' said Rebecca Dew cautiously. 'It's probably more used to our climate. Where are you going this cold night, anyway?'

  'I'm going round to Temple Street to ask Katherine Brooke to spend the Christmas holidays with me at Green Gables.'

  'You'll spoil your holidays, then,' said Rebecca Dew solemnly. 'She'd go about snubbing the angels, that one - that is, if she ever condescended to enter heaven. And the worst of it is, she's proud of her bad manners. Thinks it shows her strength of mind, no doubt!'

  'My brain agrees with every word you say, but my heart simply won't,' said Anne. 'I feel, in spite of everything, that Katherine Brooke is only a shy, unhappy girl under her disagreeable rind. I can never make any headway with her in Summerside, but if I can get her to Green Gables I believe it will thaw her out.'

  'You won't get her. She won't go,' predicted Rebecca Dew. 'Probably she'll take it as an insult to be asked; think you're offering her charity. We asked her here once to Christmas dinner, the year afore you came - you remember, Mrs MacComber, the year we had two turkeys give us, and didn't know how we was to get 'em et - and all she said was, "No, thank you. If there's anything I hate it's the word 'Christmas'."'

  'But that is so dreadful - hating Christmas! Something has to be done, Rebecca Dew. I'm going to ask her, and I've a queer feeling in my thumbs that tells me she will come.'

  'Somehow,' said Rebecca Dew reluctantly, 'when you say a thing is going to happen a body believes it will. You haven't got second sight, have you? Captain MacComber's mother had it. Useter give me the creeps.'

  'I don't think I have anything that need give you creeps. It's only just... I've had a feeling for some time that Katherine Brooke is almost crazy with loneliness under her bitter outside, and that my invitation will come pat to the psychological moment, Rebecca Dew.'

  'I am not a B.A.,' said Rebecca, with awful humility, 'and I do not deny your right to use words I cannot always understand. Neither do I deny that you can wind people round your little finger. Look how you managed the Pringles. But I do say I pity you if you take that iceberg and nutmeg-grater combined home with you for Christmas.'

  Anne was by no means as confident as she pretended to be during her walk to Temple Street. Katherine Brooke had really been unbearable of late. Again and again Anne, rebuffed, had said, as grimly as Poe's raven, 'Nevermore!' Only yesterday Katherine had been positively insulting at a staff meeting. But in an unguarded moment Anne had seen something looking out of the older girl's eyes, a passionate, half-frantic something like a caged creature mad with discontent. Anne had spent the first half of the night trying to decide whether to invite Katherine Brooke to Green Gables or not. Finally she fell asleep with her mind irrevocably made up.

  Katherine's landlady showed Anne into the parlour, and shrugged a fat shoulder when she asked for Miss Brooke.

  'I'll tell her you're here, but I dunno if she'll come down. She's sulking. I told her at dinner tonight that Mrs Rawlins says it's scandalous the way she dresses for a teacher in Summerside High, and she took it high-and-mighty as usual.'

  'I don't think you should have told Miss Brooke that,' said Anne reproachfully.

  'But I thought she ought to know,' said Mrs Dennis somewhat waspishly.

  'Did you also think she ought to know that the Inspector said she was one of the best teachers in the Maritimes?' asked Anne. 'Or didn't you
know it?'

  'Oh, I heard it. But she's stuck up enough now without making her any worse. Proud's no name for it - though what she's got to be proud of I dunno. Of course, she was mad anyhow tonight, because I'd said she couldn't have a dog. She's took a notion into her head she'd like to have a dog. Said she'd pay for his rations and see he was no bother. But what'd I do with him when she was in school? I put my foot down. "I'm boarding no dogs," sez I.'

  'Oh, Mrs Dennis, won't you let her have a dog? He wouldn't bother you - much. You could keep him in the basement while she was in school. And a dog really is such a protection at night. I wish you would - please!'

  There was always something about Anne Shirley's eyes when she said 'please' that people found hard to resist. Mrs Dennis, in spite of fat shoulders and a meddlesome tongue, was not unkind at heart. Katherine Brooke simply got under her skin at times with her ungracious ways.

  'I dunno why you should worry as to her having a dog or not. I didn't know you were such friends. She hasn't any friends. I never had such an unsociable boarder.'

  'I think that is why she wants a dog, Mrs Dennis. None of us can live without some kind of companionship.'

  'Well, it's the first human thing I've noticed about her,' said Mrs Dennis. 'I dunno's I have any awful objection to a dog, but she sort of vexed me with her sarcastic way of asking. "I s'pose you wouldn't consent if I asked you if I might have a dog, Mrs Dennis?" she sez, haughty-like. Set her up with it! "You're s'posing right," sez I, as haughty as herself. I don't like eating my words any more than most people, but you can tell her she can have a dog if she'll guarantee he won't misbehave in the parlour.'

  Anne did not think the parlour could be much the worse if the dog did misbehave. She eyed the dingy lace curtains and the hideous purple roses on the carpet with a shiver.

  'I'm sorry for anyone who has to spend Christmas in a boarding-house like this,' she thought. 'I don't wonder Katherine hates the word. I'd like to give this place a good airing. It smells of a thousand meals. Why does Katherine go on boarding here when she has a good salary?'

  'She says you can come up,' was the message Mrs Dennis brought back, rather dubiously, for Miss Brooke had run true to form.