Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [113]
Just like that! Nan caught her breath. Would she? Did dreams really come true in such fashion? She would see the GLOOMY HOUSE… she would see her beautiful, wicked lady with the Mysterious Eyes. Actually see her… perhaps hear her speak… perhaps… oh, bliss!… touch her slender white hand. As for the greyhounds and the fountain and so forth, Nan knew she had only imagined them, but surely the reality would be equally wonderful.
Nan watched the clock all the forenoon, seeing the time draw slowly, oh, so slowly, nearer and nearer. When a thundercloud rolled up ominously and rain began to fall she could hardly keep the tears back.
‘I don’t see how God could let it rain today,’ she whispered rebelliously.
But the shower was soon over and the sun shone again. Nan could eat hardly any dinner for excitement.
‘Mummy, may I wear my yellow dress?’
‘Why do you want to dress up like that to call on a neighbour, child?’
A neighbour! But of course Mother didn’t understand… couldn’t understand.
‘Please, Mummy.’
‘Very well,’ said Anne. The yellow dress would be outgrown very soon. May as well let Nan get the good of it.
Nan’s legs were fairly trembling as she set off, the precious small parcel in her hand. She took a short cut through Rainbow Valley, up the hill, to the side-road. The raindrops were still lying on the nasturtium leaves like great pearls; there was a delicious freshness in the air; the bees were buzzing in the white clover that edged the brook: slim blue dragonflies were glittering over the water… devil’s darning needles, Susan called them; in the hill pasture the daisies nodded to her… swayed to her… waved to her… laughed to her, with the cool gold-and-silver laughter. Everything was so lovely and she was going to see the WICKED LADY WITH THE MYSTERIOUS EYES. What would the Lady say to her? And was it quite safe to go to see her? Suppose you stayed a few minutes with her and found that a hundred years had gone by, as in the story she and Walter had read last week?
38
Nan felt a queer tickly sensation in her spine as she turned into the lane. Did the dead maple bough move? No, she had escaped it… she was past. Aha, old witch, you didn’t catch me! She was walking up the lane of which the mud and the ruts had no power to blight her anticipation. Just a few steps more… the GLOOMY HOUSE was before her, amid and behind those dark dripping trees. She was going to see it at last. She shivered a little… and did not know that it was because of a secret unadmitted fear of losing her dream. Which is always, for youth or maturity or age, a catastrophe.
She pushed her way through a gap in the wild growth of young spruces that was choking up the end of the lane: her eyes were shut; could she dare to open them? For a moment sheer terror possessed her and for two pins she would have turned and run. After all… the Lady was wicked. Who knew what she might do to you? She might even be a witch. How was it that it had never occurred to her before that the wicked lady might be a witch?
Then she resolutely opened her eyes and stared piteously.
Was this the GLOOMY HOUSE… the dark, stately, towered and turreted mansion of her dream. This!
It was a big house, once white, now a muddy grey. Here and there, broken shutters, once green, were swinging loose. The front steps were broken. A forlorn glassed-in porch had most of its panes shattered. The scrolled trimming around the veranda was broken. Why, it was only a tired old house worn out with living.
Nan looked about desperately. There was no fountain… no garden… well, nothing you could really call a garden. The space in front of the house, surrounded by a ragged paling, was full of weeds and twitch grass. A lank pig rooted beyond the paling. Burdocks grew along the mid-walk. Straggly clumps of golden glow were in the corners, but there was one splendid clump