Anne of Windy Poplars - L. M. Montgomery [68]
‘Katherine, you say you like frankness. I’m going to be frank. If you are as friendless as you say it is your own fault. I’ve wanted to be friends with you. But you’ve been all prickles and stings.’
‘Oh, I know, I know! How I hated you when you first came! Flaunting your circlet of pearls –’
‘Katherine, I didn’t “flaunt” it!’
‘Oh, I suppose not. That’s just my natural hatefulness. But it seemed to flaunt itself. Not that I envied you your beau. I’ve never wanted to be married; I saw enough of that with Father and Mother. But I hated your being over me when you were younger than me. I was glad when the Pringles made trouble for you. You seemed to have everything I hadn’t – charm, friendship, youth. Youth! I never had anything but starved youth. You know nothing about it. You don’t know. You haven’t the least idea what it is like not to be wanted by anyone – anyone!’
‘Oh, haven’t I?’ cried Anne. In a few poignant sentences she sketched her childhood before coming to Green Gables.
‘I wish I’d known that,’ said Katherine. ‘It would have made a difference. To me you seemed one of the favourites of fortune. I’ve been eating my heart out with envy of you. You got the position I wanted. Oh, I know you’re better qualified than I am, but there it was. You’re pretty – at least, you make people believe you’re pretty. My earliest recollection is of someone saying, “What an ugly child!” You come into a room delightfully. Oh, I remember how you came into school that first morning. But I think the real reason I’ve hated you so is that you always seemed to have some secret delight, as if every day of life was an adventure. In spite of my hatred there were times when I acknowledged to myself that you might just have come from some far-off star.’
‘Really, Katherine, you take my breath away with all these compliments. But you don’t hate me any longer, do you? We can be friends now.’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never had a friend of any kind, much less one of anything like my own age. I don’t belong anywhere; never have belonged. I don’t think I know how to be a friend. No, I don’t hate you any longer. I don’t know how I feel about you… Oh, I suppose it’s your noted charm beginning to work on me. I only know that I feel I’d like to tell you what my life has been like. I could never have told you if you hadn’t told me about your life before you came to Green Gables. I want you to understand what has made me like I am. I don’t know why I should want you to understand, but I do.’
‘Tell me, Katherine dear. I do want to understand you.’
‘You do know what it is like not to be wanted, I admit, but not what it is like to know that your father and mother don’t want you. Mine didn’t. They hated me from the moment I was born – and before – and they hated each other. Yes, they did. They quarrelled continually – just mean, nagging, petty quarrels. My childhood was a nightmare. They died when I was seven, and I went to live with Uncle Henry’s family. They didn’t want me either. They all looked down on me because I was “living on their charity”. I remember all the snubs I got – every one. I can’t remember a single kind word. I had to wear my cousins’ cast-off clothes. I remember one hat in particular; it made me look like a mushroom. And they made fun of me whenever I put it on. One day I tore it off and threw it on the fire. I had to wear the most awful old tam to church all the rest of the winter. I never even had a dog, and I wanted one so. I had some brains. I longed for a B.A. course, but naturally I might just as well have yearned for the moon. However, Uncle Henry agreed to put me through Queen’s if I would pay him back when I got a school. He paid my board in a miserable third-rate boarding-house, where I had a room over the kitchen that was ice-cold in winter and boiling hot in summer and full of stale cooking smells in all seasons. And the clothes I had to wear