Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [14]
‘Disappeared?’ Anne stared stupidly. ‘What do you mean? He can’t have disappeared!’
‘He has,’ gasped Susan, wringing her hands. ‘He was on the side steps when I went to the Glen. I was back before dark… and he was not there. At first… I wasn’t scared, but I could not find him anywhere. I have searched every room in the house… he said he was going to run away…’
‘Nonsense! He wouldn’t do that, Susan. You have worked yourself up unnecessarily. He must be somewhere about… he has fallen asleep… he must be somewhere around.’
‘I’ve looked everywhere… everywhere. I’ve combed the grounds and the outhouses. Look at my dress. I remembered he always said it would be such fun to sleep in the hay-loft. So I went there, and fell through that hole in the corner into one of the mangers in the stable… and lit on a nest of eggs. It is a mercy I did not break a leg… if anything can be a mercy when Little Jem is lost.’
Anne still refused to feel perturbed.
‘Do you think he could have gone to the Harbour Mouth with the boys after all, Susan? He has never disobeyed a command before, but…’
‘No, he did not, Mrs Doctor dear… the blessed lamb did not disobey. I rushed down to Drews’ after I had searched everywhere and Bertie Shakespeare had just got home. He said Jem had not gone with them. The pit seemed to drop out of my stomach. You had trusted him to me and… I phoned Paxtons’ and they said you had been there and gone they did not know where.’
‘We drove to Lowbridge to call on the Parkers…’
‘I phoned everywhere I thought you could be. Then I went back to the village… the men have started out to search…’
‘Oh, Susan, was that necessary?’
‘Mrs Doctor dear, I had looked everywhere… everywhere that child could be. Oh, what I have gone through this night!… and he said he was going to jump into the pond…’
In spite of herself a queer little shiver ran over Anne. Of course, Jem wouldn’t jump into the pond… that was nonsense… but there was an old dory on it which Carter Flagg used for trouting, and Jem might, in his defiant mood of the earlier evening, have tried to row about the pond in it; he had often wanted to, he might even have fallen into the pond trying to untie the dory. All at once her fear took terrible shape.
‘And I haven’t the slightest idea where Gilbert has gone,’ she thought wildly.
‘What’s all this fuss about?’ demanded Aunt Mary Maria, suddenly appearing on the stairs, her head surrounded by a halo of crimpers and her body encased in a dragon-embroidered dressing-gown. ‘Can’t a body ever get a quiet night’s sleep in this house?’
‘Little Jem has disappeared,’ said Susan again, too much in the grip of terror to resent Miss Blythe’s tone. ‘His mother trusted me…’
Anne had gone to search the house for herself. Jem must be somewhere! He was not in his room… the bed was undisturbed… he was not in the twins’ room… in hers… he was… he was nowhere in the house. Anne, after a pilgrimage from garret to cellar, returned to the living-room in a condition that was suddenly akin to panic.
‘I don’t want to make you nervous, Annie,’ said Aunt Mary Maria, lowering her voice creepily, ‘but have you looked in the rain-water hogshead? Little Jack MacGregor was drowned in a rain-water hogshead in town last year.’
‘I… I looked there,’ said Susan, with another wring of her hands. ‘I… I took a stick… and poked…’
Anne’s heart, which had stood still at Aunt Mary Maria’s question, resumed operations. Susan gathered herself together and stopped wringing her hands. She had remembered too late that Mrs Doctor dear should not be upset.
‘Let us calm down and pull together,’ she said in a trembling voice. ‘As you say, Mrs Doctor dear, he must be somewhere about. He cannot have dissolved into thin air.’
‘Have you looked in the coal-bin? And the clock?’ asked Aunt Mary Maria.
Susan had looked in the coal-bin, but nobody had thought of the clock. It was quite big enough for a small boy to hide in. Anne, not considering the absurdity of supposing that Jem would crouch there for four hours, rushed to it. But Jem was not in the clock.