Anne of Windy Poplars - L. M. Montgomery [16]
And yet I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for the old ladies as I looked round their house. It had once lived; people had been born there, died there, exulted there, known sleep, despair, fear, joy, love, hope, hate. And now it has nothing but the memories by which they live and their pride in them.
Aunt Chatty is much upset because when she unfolded clean sheets for my bed today she found a diamond-shaped crease in the centre. She is sure it foretells a death in the household. Aunt Kate is very much disgusted with such superstition. But I believe I rather like superstitious people. They lend colour to life. Wouldn’t it be a rather drab world if everybody was wise and sensible – and good? What would we find to talk about?
We had a catastrophe here two nights ago. Dusty Miller stayed out all night, in spite of Rebecca Dew’s stentorian shouts of ‘Puss’ in the backyard. And when he turned up in the morning – oh, such a looking cat! One eye was closed completely, and there was a lump as big as an egg on his jaw. His fur was stiff with mud, and one paw was bitten through. But what a triumphant, unrepentant look he had in his one good eye! The widows were horrified, but Rebecca Dew said exultantly, ‘That Cat has never had a good fight in his life before. And I’ll bet the other cat looks far worse than he does!’
A fog is creeping up the harbour tonight, blotting out the red road that little Elizabeth wants to explore. Weeds and leaves are burning in all the town gardens, and the combination of smoke and fog is making Spook’s Lane an eerie, fascinating, enchanted place. It is growing late, and my bed says, ‘I have sleep for you.’ I’ve grown used to climbing a flight of steps into bed, and climbing down them. Oh, Gilbert, I’ve never told anyone this, but it’s too funny to keep any longer. The first morning I woke up in Windy Willows I forgot all about the steps, and made a blithe morning spring out of bed. I came down like a thousand of brick, as Rebecca Dew would say. Luckily I didn’t break any bones, but I was black and blue for a week.
Little Elizabeth and I are very good friends by now. She comes every evening for her milk, because the Woman is laid up with what Rebecca Dew calls ‘brown-kites’. I always find her at the wall gate, waiting for me, her big eyes full of twilight. We talk, with the gate, which has never been opened for years, between us. Elizabeth sips the glass of milk as slowly as possible in order to spin our conversation out. Always, when the last drop is drained, comes the tap-tap on the window.
I have found that one of the things that is going to happen in Tomorrow is that she will get a letter from her father. She has never got one. I wonder what the man can be thinking of.
‘You know, he couldn’t bear the sight of me, Miss Shirley,’ she told me, ‘but he mightn’t mind writing to me.’
‘Who told you he couldn’t bear the sight of you?’ I asked indignantly.
‘The Woman.’ (Always when Elizabeth says ‘the Woman’ I can see her like a great big forbidding W, all angles and corners.) ‘And it must be true, or he would come to see me sometimes.’
She was Beth that night; it is only when she is Beth that she will talk of her father. When she is Betty she makes faces at her grandmother and the Woman behind their backs; but when she turns into Elsie she is sorry for it, and thinks she ought to confess, but is scared to. Very rarely she is Elizabeth, and then she has the face of one who listens to fairy music and knows what roses and clovers talk about. She’s the quaintest thing, Gilbert, as sensitive as one of the leaves of the windy willows, and I love her. It infuriates me to know that those two terrible old women are depriving her of all the love and friendship she ought to have. I’m sure her grandmother