Anne of Windy Poplars - L. M. Montgomery [105]
‘I may think it over,’ said Rebecca, ‘with the air of one making a tremendous concession.
Next day Aunt Chatty brought Dusty Miller home in a covered basket. I caught a glance exchanged between her and Aunt Kate after Rebecca had carried Dusty Miller out to the kitchen and shut the door. I wonder! Was it all a deep-laid plot on the part of the widows, aided and abetted by Jane Edmonds?
Rebecca has never uttered a word of complaint about Dusty Miller since, and there is a veritable clang of victory in her voice when she shouts for him at bed-time. It sounds as if she wanted all Summerside to know that Dusty Miller is back where he belongs, and that she has once more got the better of the widows!
10
It was on a dark, windy March evening, when even the clouds scudding over the sky seemed in a hurry, that Anne skimmed up the triple flight of broad, shallow steps flanked by stone urns and stonier lions that led to the massive front door of Tomgallon House. Usually when she had passed it after dark it was sombre and grim, with a dim twinkle of light in one or two windows. But now it blazed forth brilliantly, even the wings on either side being lighted up, as if Miss Minerva were entertaining the whole town. Such an illumination in her honour rather overcame Anne. She almost wished she had put on her cream gauze.
Nevertheless, she looked very charming in her green voile, and perhaps Miss Minerva, meeting her in the hall, thought so, for her face and voice were very cordial. Miss Minerva herself was regal in black velvet, with a diamond comb in the heavy coils of her iron-grey hair and a massive cameo brooch surrounded by a braid of some departed Tomgallon’s hair. The whole costume was a little outmoded, but Miss Minerva wore it with such a grand air that it seemed as timeless as royalty’s.
‘Welcome to Tomgallon House, my dear!’ she said, giving Anne a bony hand, likewise well sprinkled with diamonds. ‘I am very glad to have you here as my guest.’
‘I am –’
‘Tomgallon House was always the resort of beauty and youth in the old days. We used to have a great many parties, and entertained all the visiting celebrities,’ said Miss Minerva, leading Anne to the big staircase over a carpet of faded red velvet. ‘But all is changed now. I entertain very little. I am the last of the Tomgallons. Perhaps it is as well. Our family, my dear, are under a curse.’
Miss Minerva infused such a gruesome tinge of mystery and horror into her tones that Anne almost shivered. The Curse of the Tomgallons! What a title for a story!
‘This is the stair down which my great-grandfather Tomgallon fell and broke his neck the night of his house-warming given to celebrate the completion of his new home. This house was consecrated by human blood. He fell there.’
Miss Minerva pointed a long white finger so dramatically at a tiger-skin rug in the hall that Anne could almost see the departed Tomgallon dying on it. She really did not know what to say, so said inanely, ‘Oh!’
Miss Minerva ushered her along a hall, hung with portraits and photographs of faded loveliness, with the famous stained-glass window at its end, into a large, high-ceilinged, very stately guest-room. The high walnut bed, with its huge headboard, was covered with so gorgeous a silken quilt that Anne felt it was a desecration to lay her coat and hat on it.
‘You have very beautiful hair, my dear,’ said Miss Minerva admiringly. ‘I always liked red hair. My Aunt Lydia had it. She was the only red-haired Tomgallon. One night when she was brushing it in the north room it caught fire from her candle, and she ran shrieking down the hall wrapped in flames. All part of the Curse, my dear, all part of the Curse.’
‘Was she –’
‘No, she wasn’t burned to death, but she lost all her beauty. She was very handsome and vain. She never went out of the house from that night to the day of her death, and she left directions that her coffin was to be shut, so that no one might see her scarred face. Won’t you sit down to remove your rubbers, my dear? This is a very comfortable chair. My sister