Anne of Ingleside (24 page)

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 waded 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 goes 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
.

‘Curt, why didn’t you clean your nails when you knew company was coming,’ demanded Jenny. ‘Annabel, don’t speak with your mouth full. I’m the only one who ever tries to teach this family any manners,’ she explained aside to Di.

‘Shut up,’ said Uncle Ben in a great booming voice.

‘I won’t shut up… you can’t make me shut up,’ cried Jenny.

‘Don’t sass your uncle,’ said Aunt Lina placidly. ‘Come now, girls, behave like ladies. Curt, pass the potatoes to Miss Blythe.’

‘Oh, ho,
Miss
Blythe,’ sniggered Curt.

But Diana had got at least one thrill. For the first time in her life she had been called Miss Blythe.

For a wonder the food was good and abundant. Di, who was hungry, would have enjoyed the meal… though she hated drinking out of a chipped cup… if she had only been sure it was clean… and if everybody hadn’t quarrelled so. Private fights were going on all the time… between George Andrew and Curt… between Curt and Annabel… between Gert and Jen… even between Uncle Ben and Aunt Lina.
They
had a terrible fight and hurled the bitterest accusations at each other. Aunt Lina cast up to Ben all the fine men she might have married, and Uncle Ben said he only wished she had married anybody but him.

‘Wouldn’t it be dreadful if my father and mother fought like that?’ thought Di. ‘Oh, if I were only back home.’

‘Don’t suck your thumb, Tuppy.’

She said that before she thought. They had had
such
a time breaking Rilla of sucking her thumb.

Instantly Curt was red with rage.

‘Let him alone,’ he shouted. ‘He can suck his thumb if he likes.
We
ain’t bossed to death like you Ingleside kids are. Who do you think you are?’

‘Curt, Curt! Miss Blythe will think you haven’t any manners,’ said Aunt Lina. She was quite calm and smiling again and put two teaspoons of sugar in Uncle Ben’s tea. ‘Don’t mind him, dear. Have another piece of pie.’

Di did not want another piece of pie. She only wanted to go home… and she did not see how it could be brought about.