Anne of Ingleside Page 18

  'I can't exactly prevent her from associating with Jenny in school, Susan. I don't really know anything against the child, though I feel sure she draws a long bow in telling of her relatives and adventures. However, Di will probably soon get over this "crush" and we'll hear no more of Jenny Penny.'

  They continued to hear of her, however. Jenny told Di she liked her best of all the girls in the Glen school, and Di, feeling that a queen had stooped to her, responded adoringly. They became inseparable at recesses; they wrote notes to each other over the weekends: they gave and received 'chews' of gum: they traded buttons and cooperated in dust piles; and finally, Jenny asked Di to go home with her from school and stay all night with her.

  Mother said 'No' very decidedly, and Di wept copiously.

  'You've let me stay all night with Persis Ford,' she sobbed.

  'That was different,' said Anne, a little vaguely. She did not want to make a snob of Di, but all she had heard about the Penny family had made her realize that as friends for the Ingleside children they were quite out of the question and she had been considerably worried of late over the fascination Jenny so evidently possessed for Diana.

  'I don't see any difference,' wailed Di. 'Jenny is just as much of a lady as Persis, so there. She never chews bought gum. She has a cousin who knows all the rules of etiquette, and Jenny has learned them all from her. Jenny says we don't know what etiquette is. And she has had the most exciting adventures.'

  'Who says she has?' demanded Susan.

  'She told me herself. Her folks aren't rich, but they have got very rich and respectable relatives. Jenny has an uncle who is a judge, and a cousin of her mother's is captain of the biggest vessel in the world. Jenny christened the ship for him when it was launched. We haven't got an aunt who is a missionary to leopards either.'

  'Lepers, dear, not leopards.'

  'Jenny said leopards. I guess she ought to know, since it is her aunt. And there are so many things at her house I want to see... her room is papered with parrots... and their parlour is full of stuffed owls... and they have a hooked rug with a house on it in the hall... and window blinds just covered with roses... and a real house to play in... her uncle built it for them... and her Granny lives with them and is the oldest person in the world. Jenny says she lived before the flood. I may never have another chance to see a person who lived before the flood.'

  'The grandmother is close on a hundred, I am told,' said Susan, 'but if your Jenny said she lived before the flood she is fibbing. You would be likely to catch goodness knows what if you went to a place like that.'

  'They've had everything they could have long ago,' protested Di. 'Jenny says they've had mumps and measles and whooping cough and scarlet fever all in one year.'

  'I wouldn't put it past them having the smallpox,' muttered Susan. 'Talk of people being bewitched!'

  'Jenny has to have her tonsils out,' sobbed Di. 'But that isn't catching, is it? Jenny had a cousin who died when she had her tonsils out... she bled to death without gaining conscious. So it is likely Jenny will too, if it runs in the family. She is delicate... she fainted three times last week. But she is quite prepared. And that is partly why she is so anxious to have me spend a night with her... so that I'd have it to remember after she passed away. Please, Mother. I'll go without the new hat with ribbon streamers you promised if you'll let me.'

  But Mother was adamant and Di betook herself to a tearful pillow. Nan had no sympathy for her... Nan 'had no use' for Jenny Penny.

  'I don't know what has got into the child,' said Anne worriedly. 'She has never behaved like this before. As you say, that Penny girl seems to have bewitched her.'

  'You were quite right in refusing to let her go to a place so far beneath her, Mrs Doctor dear.'

  'Oh, Susan, I don't want her to feel that anyone is "beneath" her. But we must draw the line somewhere. It's not Jenny so much... I think she is harmless enough apart from her habit of exaggeration... but I'm told the boys are really dreadful. The Mowbray Narrows teacher is at her wits' end with them.'

  'Do they tryanize over you like that?' asked Jenny loftily when Di told her she was not allowed to go. 'I wouldn't let anyone use me like that. I have too much spirit. Why, I sleep out of doors all night whenever I take the notion. I s'pose you'd never dream of doing that?'

  Di looked wistfully at this mysterious girl who had 'often slept out all night'. How wonderful!

  'You don't blame me for not going, Jenny? You know I want to go?'

  'Of course I don't blame you. Some girls wouldn't put up with it, of course, but I s'pose you just can't help it. We could have had fun. I'd planned we'd go fishing by moonlight in our back brook. We often do. I've caught trout that long. And we have the dearest little pigs and a new foal that's just sweet and a litter of puppies. Well, I guess I must ask Sadie Taylor. Her father and mother let her call her soul her own.'

  'My father and mother are very good to me,' protested Di loyally. 'And my father is the best doctor in P.E. Island. Everyone says so.'

  'Putting on airs because you have a father and mother and I have none,' said Jenny disdainfully. 'Why, my father has wings and always wears a golden crown. But I don't go about with my head in the air on that account, do I? Now, Di, I don't want to quarrel with you, but I hate to hear anyone bragging about their folks. It's not etiket. And I have made up my mind to be a lady. When that Persis Ford you're always talking of comes to Four Winds this summer I am not going to 'sociate with her. There's something queer about her ma, Aunt Lina says. She was married to a dead man and he come alive.'

  'Oh, it wasn't like that at all, Jenny, I know... Mother told me... Aunt Leslie...'

  'I don't want to hear about her. Whatever it is, it's something that'd better not be talked of, Di. There's the bell.'

  'Are you really going to ask Sadie?' choked Di, her eyes widening with hurt.

  'Well, not right at once. I'll wait and see. Maybe I'll give you one more chance. But if I do it will be the last.'

  A few days later Jenny Penny came to Di at recess.

  'I heard Jem saying your pa and ma went away yesterday and wouldn't be back till tomorrow night?'

  'Yes, they went up to Avonlea to see Aunt Marilla.'

  'Then it's your chance.'

  'My chance?'

  'To stay all night with me.'

  'Oh, Jenny... but I couldn't.'

  'Of course you can. Don't be a ninny. They'll never know.'

  'But Susan wouldn't let me...'

  'You don't have to ask her. Just come home with me from school. Nan can tell her where you've gone, so she won't be worried. And she won't tell on you when your pa and ma come back. She'll be scared they'd blame her.'

  Di stood in an agony of indecision. She knew perfectly well she should not go with Jenny, but the temptation was irresistible. Jenny turned the full battery of her extraordinary eyes full upon Di.

  'This is your last chance,' she said dramatically. 'I can't go on 'sociating with anyone who thinks herself too good to visit me. If you don't come we part for ever.'

  That settled it. Di, still in the thrall of Jenny Penny's fascination, couldn't face the thought of parting for ever. Nan went home alone that afternoon to tell Susan that Di had gone to stay all night with that Jenny Penny.

  Had Susan been her usual active self she would have gone straight to the Pennys' and brought Di home. But Susan had strained her ankle that morning, and while she could make shift to hobble around and get the children's meals she knew she could never walk a mile down the Base Line road. The Pennys had no telephone, and Jem and Walter flatly refused to go. They were invited to a mussel-bake at the lighthouse and nobody would eat Di at the Pennys'. Susan had to resign herself to the inevitable.

  Di and Jenny went home across the fields, which made it little more than a quarter of a mile. Di, in spite of her prodding conscience was happy. They went through so much beauty... little bays of bracken, elfin haunted, in the edges of deep-green woods, a rustling windy hollow where you w
aded knee-deep in buttercups, a winding lane under young maples, a brook that was a rainbow scarf of blossom, a sunny pasture field full of strawberries. Di, just wakening to a perception of the loveliness of the world, was enraptured and almost wished Jenny wouldn't talk so much. That was all right at school, but here Di wasn't sure she wanted to hear about the time Jenny poisoned herself... 'zackzidentally' of course... by taking the wrong kind of medicine. Jenny painted her dying agonies finely but was somewhat vague as to the reason she hadn't died after all. She had 'lost conscious' but the doctor had managed to pull her back from the brink of the grave.

  'Though I've never been the same since. Di Blythe, what are you staring at? I don't believe you've been listening at all.'

  'Oh, yes, I have,' said Di guiltily. 'I do think you've had the most wonderful life, Jenny. But look at the view.'

  'The view? What's a view?'

  'Why... why... something you're looking at. That...' waving her hand at the panorama of meadow and woodland and cloud-smitten hill before them, with that sapphire dent of sea between the hills.

  Jenny sniffed.

  'Just a lot of old trees and cows. I've seen it a hundred times. You're awfully funny by spells, Di Blythe. I don't want to hurt your feelings, but sometimes I think you're not all there, I really do. But I s'pose you can't help it. They say your ma is always raving like that. Well, there's our place.'

  Di gazed at the Penny house and lived through her first shock of disillusionment. Was this the 'mansion' Jenny had talked of? It was big enough certainly and had the five bay windows; but it was woefully in need of painting and much of the 'wooden lace' was missing. The veranda had sagged badly and the once lovely old fanlight over the front door was broken. The blinds were crooked, there were several brown-paper panes, and the 'beautiful birch grove' behind the house was represented by a few lean sinewy old trees. The barns were in a very tumbledown condition, the yard was full of old rusty machinery, and the garden was a perfect jungle of weeds. Di had never seen such a shabby-looking place in her life, and for the first time it occurred to her to wonder if all Jenny's tales were true. Could anyone have so many narrow escapes of her life, even in nine years, as she had claimed to have?

  Inside it was not much better. The parlour into which Jenny ushered her was musty and dusty. The ceiling was discoloured and covered with cracks. The famous marble mantelpiece was only painted... even Di could see that... and draped with a hideous Japanese scarf, held in place by a row of 'moustache' cups. The stringy lace curtains were a bad colour and full of holes. The blinds were of blue paper, much cracked and torn, with a huge basketful of roses depicted on them. As for the parlour being full of stuffed owls there was a small glass case in one corner containing three rather dishevelled birds, one with its eyes missing entirely. To Di, accustomed to the beauty and dignity of Ingleside, the room looked like something you had seen in a bad dream. The odd thing, however, was that Jenny seemed quite unconscious of any discrepancy between her descriptions and reality. Di wondered if she had just dreamed that Jenny had told her such and such.

  It was not so bad outside. The little playhouse Mr Penny had built in the spruce corner, looking like a real house in miniature, was a very interesting place and the little pigs and the new foal were 'just sweet'. As for the litter of mongrel puppies, they were as woolly and delightful as if they had belonged to the dog caste of Vere de Vere. One was especially adorable, with long brown ears and a white spot on its forehead, a wee pink tongue, and white paws. Di was bitterly disappointed to learn that they had all been promised.

  'Though I don't know as we could give you one even if they weren't,' said Jenny. 'Uncle's awful particular where he puts his dogs. We've heard you can't get a dog to stay at Ingleside at all. There must be something queer about you. Uncle says dogs know things people don't.'

  'I'm sure they can't know anything nasty about us,' cried Di.

  'Well, I hope not. Is your pa cruel to your ma?'

  'No, of course he isn't.'

  'Well, I heard that he beat her... beat her till she screamed. But of course I didn't believe that. Ain't it awful the lies people tell? Anyway, I've always liked you, Di, and I'll always stand up for you.'

  Di felt she ought to be very grateful for this, but somehow she was not. She was beginning to feel very much out of place, and the glamour with which Jenny had been invested in her eyes was suddenly and irrevocably gone. She did not feel the old thrill when Jenny told her about the time she had been almost drowned falling in a mill-pond. She did not believe it - Jenny just imagined those things. And likely the millionaire uncle and the thousand-dollar diamond ring and the missionary to the leopards had just been imagined too. Di felt as flat as a pricked balloon.

  But there was Gammy yet. Surely Gammy was real. When Di and Jenny returned to the house Aunt Lina, a full-breasted, red-cheeked lady in a none-too-fresh cotton print, told them Gammy wanted to see the visitor.

  'Gammy's bed-rid,' explained Jenny. 'We always takes everybody who comes in to see her. She gets mad if we don't.'

  'Mind you don't forget to ask her how her backache is,' cautioned Aunt Lina. 'She doesn't like it if folks don't remember her back.'

  'And Uncle John,' said Jenny. 'Don't forget to ask her how Uncle John is.'

  'Who is Uncle John?' asked Di.

  'A son of hers who died fifty years ago,' explained Aunt Lina. 'He was sick for years afore he died and Gammy kind of got accustomed to hearing folks ask how he was. She misses it.'

  At the door of Gammy's room Di suddenly hung back. All at once she was terribly frightened of this incredibly old woman.

  'What's the matter?' demanded Jenny. 'Nobody's going to bite you.'

  'Is she... she did really live before the flood, Jenny?'

  'Of course not. Whoever said she did? She'll be a hundred, though, if she lives till her next birthday. Come on.'

  Di went, gingerly. In a small, badly cluttered bedroom Gammy lay in a huge bed. Her face, unbelievably wrinkled and shrunken, looked like an old monkey's. She peered at Di with sunken, red-rimmed eyes and said testily:

  'Stop staring. Who are you?'

  'This is Diana Blythe, Gammy,' said Jenny... a rather subdued Jenny.

  'Humph! A nice high-sounding name! They tell me you've got a proud sister.'

  'Nan isn't proud,' cried Di, with a flash of spirit. Had Jenny been running down Nan?

  'A little saucy, ain't you? I wasn't brought up to speak like that to my betters. She is proud. Anyone who walks with her head in the air like young Jenny tells me she does, is proud. One of your hoity-toitys! Don't contradict me.'

  Gammy looked so angry that Di hastily inquired how her back was.

  'Who says I've got a back. Such presumption! My back's my own business. Come here... come close to my bed.'

  Di went, wishing herself a thousand miles away. What was this dreadful old woman going to do to her?

  Gammy hitched herself alertly to the edge of the bed and put a claw-like hand on Di's hair.

  'Sort of carroty but real slick. That's a pretty dress. Turn it up and show me your petticoat.'

  Di obeyed, thankful that she had on her white petticoat with its trimming of Susan's crocheted lace. But what sort of a family was it where you were made to show your petticoat?

  'I always judge a girl by her petticoats,' said Gammy. 'Yours'll pass. Now your drawers.'

  Di dared not refuse. She lifted her petticoat.

  'Humph! Lace on them too! That's extravagance. And you've never asked after John!'

  'How is he?' gasped Di.

  ' "How is he," says she, bold as brass. He might be dead for all you know. Tell me this. Is it true your mother has a gold thimble... a solid gold thimble?'

  'Yes. Daddy gave it to her her last birthday.'

  'Well, I'd never have believed it. Young Jenny told me she had, but you can't ever believe a word young Jenny says. A solid gold thimble! I never heard the beat of that. Well, you'd better go out and get your suppers. Eating never g
oes out of fashion. Jenny, pull up your pants. One leg's hanging below your dress. Let us have decency at least.'

  'My pant... drawer leg isn't hanging down,' said Jenny indignantly.

  'Pants for Pennys and drawers for Blythes. That's the distinction between you and always will be. Don't contradict me.'

  The whole Penny family were assembled around the supper table in the big kitchen. Di had not seen any of them before except Aunt Lina, but as she shot a glance around the board she understood why Mother and Susan had not wanted her to come here. The tablecloth was ragged and daubed with ancient gravy stains. The dishes were a nondescript assortment. Flies swarmed over everything. As for the Pennys... Di had never sat at table with such company before and she wished herself safely back at Ingleside. But she must go through with it now.

  Uncle Ben, as Jenny called him, sat at the head of the table; he had a flaming red beard and a bald, grey-fringed head. His bachelor brother, Parker, lank and unshaven, had arranged himself at an angle convenient for spitting in the wood-box, which he did at frequent intervals. The boys, Curt, twelve, and George Andrew, thirteen, had pale-blue, fishy eyes, with a bold stare and bare skin showing through the holes in their ragged shirts. Curt had his hand, which he had cut on a broken bottle, tied up with a blood-stained rag. Annabel Penny, eleven, and 'Gert' Penny, ten, were two rather pretty girls with round brown eyes. 'Tuppy', aged two, had delightful curls and rosy cheeks, and the baby, with roguish black eyes, on Aunt Lina's lap, would have been adorable if it had been clean.