Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [68]
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 that 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