Anne Of Ingleside √ (Project K.)

CHAPTER 36

Nan felt a queer tickly sensation in her spine as she turned into the lane. Did the dead maple bough move? No, she had escaped it . . . she was past. Aha, old witch, you didn't catch Me! She was walking up the lane of which the mud and the ruts had no power to blight her anticipation. Just a few steps more . . . the GLOOMY HOUSE was before her, amid and behind those dark dripping trees. She was going to see it at last! She shivered a little . . . and did not know that it was because of a secret unadmitted fear of losing her dream. Which is always, for youth or maturity or age, a catastrophe.

She pushed her way through a gap in a wild growth of young spruces that was choking up the end of the lane. Her eyes were shut; could she dare to open them? For a moment sheer terror possessed her and for two pins she would have turned and run. After all . . . the Lady was wicked. Who knew what she might do to you? She might even be a Witch. How was it that it had never occurred to her before that the Wicked Lady might be a Witch?

Then she resolutely opened her eyes and stared piteously.

Was this the GLOOMY HOUSE . . . the dark, stately, towered and turreted mansion of her dreams? This!

It was a big house, once white, now a muddy gray. Here and there, broken shutters, once green, were swinging loose. The front steps were broken. A forlorn glassed-in porch had most of its panes shattered. The scrolled trimming around the verandah was broken. Why, it was only a tired old house worn out with living!

Nan looked about desperately. There was no fountain . . . no garden . . . well, nothing you could really call a garden. The space in front of the house, surrounded by a ragged paling, was full of weeds and knee-high tangled grass. A lank pig rooted beyond the paling. Burdocks grew along the mid-walk. Straggly clumps of golden-glow were in the corners, but there was one splendid clump of militant tiger-lilies and, just by the worn steps, a gay bed of marigolds.

Nan went slowly up the walk to the marigold bed. The GLOOMY HOUSE was gone forever. But the Lady with the Mysterious Eyes remained. Surely she was real . . . she must be! What had Susan really said about her so long ago?

"Laws-a-mercy, ye nearly scared the liver out of me!" said a rather mumbly though friendly voice.

Nan looked at the figure that had suddenly risen up from beside the marigold bed. Who was it? It could not be . . . Nan refused to believe that this was Thomasine Fair. It would be just too terrible!

"Why," thought Nan, heartsick with disappointment, "she . . . she's old!"

Thomasine Fair, if Thomasine Fair it was . . . and she knew now it was Thomasine Fair . . . was certainly old. And fat! She looked like the feather-bed with the string tied round its middle to which angular Susan was always comparing stout ladies. She was barefooted, wore a green dress that had faded yellowish, and a man's old felt hat on her sparse, sandy-grey hair. Her face was round as an O, ruddy and wrinkled, with a snub nose. Her eyes were a faded blue, surrounded by great, jolly-looking crow's-feet.

Oh, my Lady . . . my charming, Wicked Lady with the Mysterious Eyes, where are you? What has become of you? You did exist!

"Well now, and what nice little girl are you?" asked Thomasine Fair.

Nan clutched after her manners.

"I'm . . . I'm Nan Blythe. I came up to bring you this."

Thomasine pounced on the parcel joyfully.

"Well, if I ain't glad to get my specks back!" she said. "I've missed 'em turrible for reading the almanack on Sundays. And you're one of the Blythe girls? What pretty hair you've got! I've always wanted to see some of you. I've heered your ma was bringing you up scientific. Do you like it?"