Anne of Windy Poplars - L. M. Montgomery [109]
But this was really rather a terrible old house, full of the ghosts of dead hatreds and heart-breaks, crowded with dark deeds that had never been dragged into light and were still festering in its corners and hidy-holes. Too many women must have wept here. The wind wailed very eerily in the spruces by the window. For a moment Anne felt like running out, storm or no storm.
Then she took herself resolutely in hand and commanded common sense. If tragic and dreadful things had happened here, many shadowy years agone, amusing and lovely things must have happened too. Gay and pretty girls had danced here and talked over their charming secrets; dimpled babies had been born here; there had been weddings and balls and music and laughter. The sponge-cake lady must have been a comfortable creature, and the unforgiven Richard a gallant lover.
‘I’ll think on these things and go to bed. What a quilt to sleep under! I wonder if I’ll be as crazy as it by morning. And this is a spare room! I’ve never forgotten what a thrill it used to give me to sleep in anyone’s spare room.’
Anne uncoiled and brushed her hair under the very nose of Annabella Tomgallon, who stared down at her with a face in which there were pride and vanity and something of the insolence of great beauty. Anne felt a little creepy as she looked in the mirror. Who knew what faces might look out of it at her? All the tragic and haunted ladies who had ever looked into it, perhaps. She bravely opened the closet door, half expecting any number of skeletons to tumble out, and hung up her dress. She sat down calmly on a rigid chair, which looked as if it would be insulted if anybody sat on it, and took off her shoes. Then she put on the flannel nightgown, blew out the candles, and got into the bed, pleasantly warm from Mary’s bricks. For a little while the rain streamed on the panes and the shriek of the wind round the old eaves prevented her from sleeping. Then she forgot all the Tomgallon tragedies in dreamless slumber, until she found herself looking at dark fir boughs against a red sunrise.
‘I’ve enjoyed having you so much, my dear,’ said Miss Minerva, when Anne left after breakfast. ‘We’ve had a real cheerful visit, haven’t we? Though I’ve lived so long alone I’ve almost forgotten how to talk. And I need not say what a delight it is to meet a really charming and unspoiled young girl in this frivolous age. I didn’t tell you yesterday, but it was my birthday, and it was very pleasant to have a bit of youth in the house. There is nobody to remember my birthday now’ – Miss Minerva gave a faint sigh – ‘and once there were so many.’
‘Well, I suppose you heard a pretty grim chronicle,’ said Aunt Chatty that night.
‘Did all those things Miss Minerva told me really happen, Aunt Chatty?’
‘Well, the queer thing is, they did,’ said Aunt Chatty. ‘It’s a curious thing, Miss Shirley, but a lot of awful things did happen to the Tomgallons.’
‘I don’t know that there were many more than happens in any large family in the course of six generations,’ said Aunt Kate.
‘Oh, I think there were. They really did seem under a curse. So many of them died sudden or violent deaths. Of course, there is a streak of insanity in them – everyone knows that. That was curse enough. But I’ve heard an old story – I can’t recall the details – of the carpenter who built the house cursing it. Something about the contract… Old Paul Tomgallon held him to it, and it ruined him: it cost so much more than he had figured.’
‘Miss Minerva seems rather proud of the curse,’ said Anne.
‘Poor old thing, it’s all she has,’ said Rebecca Dew.
Anne smiled to think of the stately Miss Minerva being referred to as a ‘poor old thing’. But she went to the tower room and wrote to Gilbert:
I thought Tomgallon House was a sleepy old place where nothing ever happened. Well, perhaps things don’t happen now, but evidently they did. Little Elizabeth is always talking of Tomorrow. But the old Tomgallon house is Yesterday. I’m glad I don’t live in Yesterday…