Anne of Ingleside Page 15

  Jem set his teeth. There was a good bit of determination in James Matthew Blythe and he was not going to be beaten by a dog... his dog, whom he had bought fairly and squarely with money hardly saved from his allowance. Bruno would just have to get over being homesick for Roddy... have to give up looking at you with the pathetic eyes of a lost creature... have to learn to love him.

  Jem had to stand up for Bruno, for the other boys in school, suspecting how he loved the dog, were always trying to 'pick on' him.

  'Your dog has fleas... Great Big Fleas,' taunted Perry Reese.

  Jem had to trounce him before Perry would take it back and say Bruno hadn't a single flea, not one.

  'My pup takes fits once a week,' boasted Bob Russell. 'I'll bet your old pup never had a fit in his life. If I had a dog like that I'd run him through the meat-grinder.'

  'We had a dog like that once,' said Mike Drew. 'But we drowned him.'

  'My dog's an awful dog,' said Sam Warren proudly. 'He kills the chickens and chews up all the clothes on washday. Bet your dog hasn't spunk enough for that.'

  Jem sorrowfully admitted to himself, if not to Sam, that Bruno hadn't. He almost wished it had. And it stung him when Watty Flagg shouted: 'Your dog's a good dog... he never barks on Sunday,' because Bruno didn't bark any day.

  But with it all he was such a dear, adorable little dog.

  'Bruno, why don't you love me?' almost sobbed Jem. 'There's nothing I wouldn't do for you... we could have such fun together.' But he would not admit defeat to anyone.

  Jem hurried home one evening from a mussel-bake at the Harbour Mouth because he knew a storm was coming. The sea moaned so. Things had a sinister, lonely look. There was a long rip and tear of thunder as Jem dashed into Ingleside.

  'Where's Bruno?' he shouted.

  It was the first time he had gone anywhere without Bruno. He had thought the long walk to the Harbour Mouth would be too much for a little dog. Jem would not admit to himself that such a long walk with a dog whose heart was not in it would be a little too much for him as well.

  It developed that nobody knew where Bruno was. He had not been seen since Jem left after supper. Jem hunted everywhere, but he was not to be found. The rain was coming down in floods, the world was drowned in lightning. Was Bruno out in that black night... lost? Bruno was afraid of thunderstorms. The only times he had ever seemed to come near Jem in spirit was when he crept close to him while the sky was riven asunder.

  Jem worried so that when the storm was spent Gilbert said, 'I ought to go up to the Head anyway to see how Roy Westcott is getting on. You can come, too, Jem, and we'll drive round by the old Crawford place on our way home. I've an idea Bruno has gone back there.'

  'Six miles? He'd never!' said Jem.

  But he had. When they got to the old deserted, lightless Crawford house a shivering, bedraggled little creature was huddled forlornly on the wet doorstep, looking at them with tired, unsatisfied eyes. He made no objection when Jem gathered him up in his arms and carried him out to the buggy through the knee-high, tangled grass.

  Jem was happy. How the moon was rushing through the sky as the clouds tore past her! How delicious were the smells of the rain-wet woods as they drove along! What a world it was!

  'I guess Bruno will be contented at Ingleside after this, Dad.'

  'Perhaps,' was all Dad said. He hated to throw cold water, but he suspected that a little dog's heart, losing its last hope, was finally broken.

  Bruno had never eaten very much, but after that night he ate less and less. Came a day when he would not eat at all. The vet was sent for but could find nothing wrong.

  'I knew one dog in my experience who died of grief and I think this is another,' he told the doctor aside.

  He left a 'tonic' which Bruno took obediently and then lay down again, his head on his paws, staring into vacancy. Jem stood looking at him for a long while, his hands in his pockets; then he went into the library to have a talk with Dad.

  Gilbert went to town the next day, made some inquiries, and brought Roddy Crawford out to Ingleside. When Roddy came up the veranda steps Bruno, hearing his footfall from the living-room, lifted his head and cocked his ears. The next moment his emaciated little body hurled itself across the rug towards the pale, brown-eyed lad.

  'Mrs Doctor dear,' said Susan in an awed tone that night, 'the dog was crying... he was. The tears actually rolled down his nose. I do not blame you if you do not believe it. Never would I have believed it if I had not seen it with my own eyes.'

  Roddy held Bruno against his heart and looked half defiantly, half pleadingly at Jem.

  'You bought him, I know... but he belongs to me. Jake told me a lie. Aunt Vinnie says she wouldn't mind a dog a bit... but I thought I mustn't ask for him back. Here's your dollar... I never spent a cent of it... I couldn't.'

  For just a moment Jem hesitated. Then he saw Bruno's eyes.

  'What a little pig I am!' he thought in disgust with himself. He took the dollar.

  Roddy suddenly smiled. The smile changed his sulky face completely, but all he could say was a gruff 'Thanks'.

  Roddy slept with Jem that night, a replete Bruno stretched between them. But before he went to bed Roddy knelt to say his prayers and Bruno squatted on his haunches beside him, laying his forepaws on the bed. If ever a dog prayed Bruno prayed then... a prayer of thanksgiving and renewed joy in life.

  When Roddy brought him food Bruno ate it eagerly, keeping an eye on Roddy all the time. He pranced friskily after Jem and Roddy when they went down to the Glen. 'Such a perked-up dog you never saw,' declared Susan.

  But the next evening, after Roddy and Bruno had gone back, Jem sat on the side doorstep in the owl light for a long time. He refused to go digging for pirate hoards in Rainbow Valley with Walter... Jem felt no longer splendidly bold and buccaneering. He wouldn't even look at the Shrimp, who was humped in the mint, lashing his tail like a fierce mountain lion crouching to spring. What business had cats to go on being happy at Ingleside when dogs broke their hearts!

  He was even grumpy with Rilla when she brought him her blue velvet elephant. Velvet elephant, when Bruno had gone! Nan got as short shrift when she came and suggested they should say what they thought of God in a whisper.

  'You don't s'pose I'm blaming God for this?' said Jem sternly. 'You haven't any sense of proportion, Nan Blythe.'

  Nan went away quite crushed, though she hadn't the least glimmering what Jem meant, and Jem scowled at the embers of the smouldering sunset. Dogs were barking all over the Glen. The Jenkins down the road were out calling theirs... all of them took turns at it... everyone, even the Jenkins tribe could have a dog... everyone but him. Life stretched before him like a desert where there would be no dogs.

  Anne came and sat down on a lower step, carefully not looking at him. Jem felt her sympathy.

  'Motherest,' he said in a choked voice, 'why wouldn't Bruno love me when I loved him so much? Am I... do you think I am the kind of boy dogs don't like?'

  'No, darling. Remember how Gyp loved you. It was just that Bruno had only so much love to give... and he had given it all. There are dogs like that... one-man dogs.'

  'Anyhow, Bruno and Roddy are happy,' said Jem with grim satisfaction, as he bent over and kissed the top of Mother's smooth, ripply head. 'But I'll never have another dog.'

  Anne thought this would pass; he had felt the same when Gyppy died. But it did not. The iron had bitten deeply into Jem's soul. Dogs were to come and go at Ingleside... dogs that belonged just to the family, and were nice dogs, whom Jem petted and played with as the others did. But there was to be no 'Jem's dog' until a certain 'Little Dog Monday' was to take possession of his heart and love him with a devotion passing Bruno's love, a devotion that was to make history in the Glen. But that was still many a long year away; and a very lonely boy climbed into Jem's bed that night.

  'I wish I was a girl,' he thought fiercely, 'so's I could cry and cry!'

  26

  Nan and Di were going to school.
They started the last week in August. 'Will we know everything by night, Mummy?' asked Di solemnly the first morning. Now, in early September, Anne and Susan had got used to it, and even took pleasure in seeing the two mites trip off every morning, so tiny and carefree and neat, thinking going to school quite an adventure. They always took an apple in their basket for teacher and they wore frocks of pink and blue ruffled gingham. Since they did not look in the least alike, they were never dressed alike. Diana, with her red hair, could not wear pink, but it suited Nan, who was much the prettier of the Ingleside twins. She had brown eyes, brown hair, and a lovely complexion, of which she was quite aware even at seven. A certain starriness had gone to the fashioning of her. She held her head proudly, with her little saucy chin a wee bit in evidence, and so was already thought rather 'stuck-up'.

  'She'll imitate all her mother's tricks and poses,' said Mrs Alice Davies. 'She has all her airs and graces already, if you ask me.'

  The twins were dissimilar in more than looks. Di, in spite of her physical resemblance to her mother, was very much her father's child, so far as disposition and qualities went. She had the beginnings of his practical bent, his plain common sense, his twinkling sense of humour. Nan had inherited in full her mother's gift of imagination and was already making life interesting for herself in her own way. For example, she had had no end of excitement this summer making bargains with God, the gist of the matter being, 'If you'll do such-and-such a thing I'll do such-and-such a thing.'

  All the Ingleside children had been started in life with the old classic, 'Now I lay me'... then promoted to 'Our Father'... then encouraged to make their own small petitions also in whatever language they chose. What gave Nan the idea that God might be induced to grant her petitions by promises of good behaviour or displays of fortitude would be hard to say. Perhaps a certain rather young and pretty Sunday School teacher was indirectly responsible for it by her frequent admonitions that if they were not good girls God would not do this or that for them. It was easy to turn this idea inside out and come to the conclusion that if you were this or that, did this or that, you had a right to expect that God would do the things you wanted. Nan's first 'bargain' in the spring had been so successful that it outweighed some failures and she had gone on all summer. Nobody knew of it, not even Di. Nan hugged her secret and took to praying at sundry times and in divers places, instead of only at night. Di did not approve of this and said so.

  'Don't mix God up with everything,' she told Nan severely. 'You make Him too common.'

  Anne, overhearing this, said, 'God is in everything, dear. He is the friend who is always near us to give strength and courage. And Nan is quite right in praying to Him when and where she wants to.' Though, if Anne had known the truth about her small daughter's devotions, she would have been rather horrified.

  Nan had said one night in May, 'If You'll make my tooth grow in before Amy Taylor's party next week, dear God, I'll take every dose of castor oil Susan gives me without a bit of fuss.'

  The very next day the tooth, whose absence had made such an unsightly and too prolonged gap in Nan's pretty mouth, had appeared and by the day of the party was fully through. What more certain sign could you want than that?

  Nan kept her side of the compact faithfully, and Susan was amazed and delighted whenever she administered castor oil after that. Nan took it without a grimace or protest, though she sometimes wished she had set a time-limit... say three months.

  God did not always respond. But when she asked Him to send her a special button for her button-string... collecting buttons had broken out everywhere among the Glen small girls like the measles... assuring Him that if He did she would never make a fuss when Susan set the chipped plate for her, the button came the very next day, Susan having found one on an old dress in the attic. A beautiful red button set with tiny diamonds, or what Nan believed to be diamonds. She was the envy of all because of that elegant button, and when Di refused the chipped plate that night Nan said virtuously, 'Give it to me, Susan. I'll always take it after this,' Susan thought she was angelically unselfish and said so. Whereupon Nan both looked and felt smug. She got a fine day for the Sunday School picnic, when everyone predicted rain the night before, by promising to brush her teeth every morning without being told. Her lost ring was restored on the condition that she kept her finger-nails scrupulously clean; and when Walter handed over his picture of a flying angel which Nan had long coveted she ate the fat with the lean uncomplainingly at dinner thereafter. When, however, she asked God to make her battered and patched Teddy Bear young again, promising to keep her bureau drawer tidy, something struck a snag. Teddy did not grow young, though Nan looked for the miracle anxiously every morning and wished God would hurry. Finally, she resigned herself to Teddy's age. After all, he was a nice old bear and it would be awfully hard to keep that bureau drawer tidy. When Dad brought her home a new Teddy Bear she didn't really like it, and, though with sundry misgivings of her small conscience, decided she need not take any special pains with the bureau drawer. Her faith returned when, having prayed that the missing eye of her china cat would be restored, the eye was in its place next morning, though somewhat askew, giving the cat a rather cross-eyed aspect. Susan had found it when sweeping and stuck it in with glue, but Nan did not know this and cheerfully carried out her promise of walking fourteen times around the barn on all fours.

  What good walking fourteen times around the barn on all fours could do God or anybody else Nan did not stop to consider. But she hated doing it... the boys were always wanting her and Di to pretend they were some kind of animals in Rainbow Valley... and perhaps there was some vague thought in her budding mind that penance might be pleasing to the mysterious Being who gave or withheld at pleasure. At any rate, she thought out several weird stunts that summer, causing Susan to wonder frequently where on earth children got the notions they did.

  'Why do you suppose, Mrs Doctor dear, that Nan must go twice around the living-room every day without walking on the floor?'

  'Without walking on the floor! How does she manage it, Susan?'

  'By jumping from one piece of furniture to the other, including the fender. She slipped on that yesterday, and pitched head-first into the coal-scuttle. Mrs Doctor dear, do you suppose she needs a dose of worm medicine?'

  That year was always referred to in the Ingleside chronicles as the one in which Dad almost had pneumonia and Mother had it. One night, Anne, who already had a nasty cold, went with Gilbert to a party in Charlottetown... wearing a new and very becoming dress and Jem's string of pearls. She looked so well in it that all the children who had come in to see her before she left thought it was wonderful to have a mother you could be proud of.

  'Such a nice swishy petticoat,' sighed Nan. 'When I grow up will I have tafty petticoats like that, Mummy?'

  'I doubt if girls will be wearing petticoats at all by that time,' said Dad. 'I'll backwater, Anne, and admit that dress is a stunner even if I didn't approve of the sequins. Now, don't try to vamp me, woman. I've paid you all the compliments I'm going to tonight. Remember what we read in the Medical Journal today, "Life is nothing more than delicately balanced organic chemistry," and let it make you humble and modest. Sequins, indeed! Taffeta petticoat, forsooth. We're nothing but a "fortuitous concatenation of atoms". The great Dr Von Bemburg says so.'

  'Don't quote that horrible Von Bemburg to me. He must have had a bad case of chronic indigestion. He may be a concatenation of atoms, but I am not.'

  In a few days thereafter Anne was a very sick 'concatenation of atoms' and Gilbert a very anxious one. Susan went about looking harassed and tried, the trained nurse came and went with an anxious face, and a nameless shadow suddenly swooped and spread and darkened at Ingleside. The children were not told of the seriousness of their mother's illness, and even Jem did not realize it fully. But they all felt the chill and the fear and went softly and unhappily. For once there was no laughter in the maple grove and no games in Rainbow Valley. But the worst of all was tha
t they were not allowed to see Mother. No Mother meeting them with smiles when they came home... no Mother slipping in to kiss them good night, no Mother to soothe and sympathize and understand, no Mother to laugh over jokes with... nobody ever laughed like Mother. It was far worse than when she was away, because then you knew she was coming back, and now you knew... just nothing. Nobody would tell you anything, they just put you off.

  Nan came home from school very pale over something Amy Taylor had told her.

  'Susan, is Mother... Mother isn't... she isn't going to die, Susan?'

  'Of course not,' said Susan, too sharply and quickly. Her hands trembled as she poured out Nan's glass of milk. 'Who has been talking to you?'

  'Amy. She said... oh, Susan, she said she thought Mother would make a sweet-looking corpse!'

  'Never you mind what she said, my pet. The Taylors have all waggling tongues. Your blessed mother is sick enough, but she is going to pull through and that you may tie to. Do you not know that your father is at the helm?'

  'God wouldn't let Mother die, would He, Susan?' asked a white-lipped Walter, looking at her with the grave intentness that made it very hard for Susan to utter her comforting lies. Susan was a badly frightened woman. The nurse had shaken her head that afternoon. The doctor had refused to come down to supper.

  'I suppose the Almighty knows what He's about,' muttered Susan as she washed the supper dishes... and broke three of them... but for the first time in her honest, simple life she doubted it.

  Nan wandered unhappily around. Dad was sitting by the library table with his head in his hands. The nurse went in and Nan heard her say she thought the crisis would come that night.

  'What is a crisis?' she asked Di.

  'I think it is what a butterfly hatches out of,' said Di cautiously. 'Let's ask Jem.'

  Jem knew, and told them before he went upstairs to shut himself in his room. Walter had disappeared... he was lying face downward under the White Lady in Rainbow Valley... and Susan had taken Shirley and Rilla off to bed.

  Nan went out alone and sat down on the steps. Behind her in the house was a terrible, unaccustomed quiet. Before her the Glen was brimming with evening sunshine, but the long red road was misty with dust and the bent grasses in the harbour fields were burned white in the drought. It had not rained for weeks and the flowers drooped in the garden... the flowers Mother had loved.