Walter had dropped one of his shoes! Down the stairs it clattered, bumping from step to step, shot across the hall and brought up against the front door with what seemed to Walter a deafening crash.
Walter huddled in despair against the rail. Everybody must have heard that noise... they would come rushing out... he wouldn't be let go home... a sob of despair choked in his throat.
It seemed hours before he dared believe that nobody had wakened up, before he dare resume his careful passage down the stairs. But it was accomplished at last; he found his shoe and cautiously turned the handle of the front door... doors were never locked at the Parker place. Mrs Parker said they hadn't anything worth stealing except children, and nobody wanted them.
Walter was out, the door closed behind him. He slipped on his shoes and stole down the street: the house was on the edge of the village and he was soon on the open road. A moment of panic overwhelmed him. The fear of being caught and prevented was past, and all his old fears of darkness and solitude returned. He had never been out alone in the night before. He was afraid of the world. It was such a huge world and he was so terribly small in it. Even the cold raw wind that was coming up from the east seemed blowing in his face as if to push him back.
Mother was going to die! Walter took a gulp and set his face towards home. On and on he went, fighting fear gallantly. It was moonlight, but the moonlight let you see things... and nothing looked familiar. Once when he had been out with Dad he had thought he had never seen anything so pretty as a moonlit road crossed by tree shadows. But now the shadows were so black and sharp they might fly up at you. The fields had put on a strangeness. The trees were no longer friendly. They seemed to be watching him, crowding in before and behind him. Two blazing eyes looked out at him from the ditch and a black cat of unbelievable size ran across the road. Was it a cat? Or...? The night was cold: he shivered in his thin blouse, but he would not mind the cold if he could only stop being afraid of everything... of the shadows and the furtive sounds and the nameless things that might be prowling in the strips of woodland he passed through. He wondered what it would be like not to be afraid of anything... like Jem.
'I'll... I'll just pretend I'm not afraid,' he said aloud... and then shuddered with terror over the lost sound of his own voice in the great night.
But he went on, one had to go on when Mother was going to die. Once he fell and bruised and skinned his knee badly on a stone. Once he heard a buggy coming along behind him and hid behind a tree till it passed, terrified lest Dr Parker had discovered he had gone and was coming after him. Once he stopped in sheer terror of something black and furry sitting on the side of the road. He could not pass it... he could not... but he did. It was a big black dog... was it a dog?... but he was past it. He dared not run lest it chase him... he stole a desperate glance over his shoulder... it had got up and was loping away in the opposite direction. Walter put his little brown hand up to his face and found it wet with sweat.
A star fell in the sky before him, scattering sparks of flame. Walter remembered hearing old Aunt Kitty say that when a star fell someone died. Was it Mother? He had just been feeling that his legs would not carry him another step, but at the thought he marched on again. He was so cold now that he had almost ceased to feel afraid. Would he never get home? It must be hours and hours since he had left Lowbridge.
It was three hours. He had stolen out of the Parker house at eleven and it was now two. When Walter found himself on the road that dipped down into the Glen he gave a sob of relief. But as he stumbled through the village the sleeping houses seemed remote and far away. They had forgotten him. A cow suddenly bawled at him over a fence and Walter remembered that Mr Alec Reese kept a savage bull. He broke into a run of sheer panic that carried him up the hill to the gate of Ingleside. He was home... oh, he was home!
Then he stopped short, trembling, overcome by a dreadful feeling of desolation. He had been expecting to see the warm, friendly lights of home. And there was not a light at Ingleside!
There really was a light if he could have seen it, in a back bedroom where the nurse slept with the baby's basket beside her bed. But to all intents and purposes it was as dark as a deserted house and it broke Walter's spirit. He had never seen, never imagined, Ingleside dark at night.
It meant that Mother was dead!
Walter stumbled up the drive, across the grim black shadow of the house on the lawn, to the front door. It was locked. He gave a feeble knock... he could not reach to the knocker... but there was no response, nor did he expect any. He listened... there was not a sound of living in the house. He knew Mother was dead and everybody had gone away.
He was by now too chilled and exhausted to cry; but he crept around the barn and climbed the ladder to the hay-mow. He was past being frightened: he only wanted to get somewhere out of that wind and lie down till morning. Perhaps somebody would come back then after they had buried Mother.
A sleek little tiger kitten someone had given the doctor purred up to him, smelling nicely of clover hay. Walter clutched it gladly, it was warm and alive. But it heard the little mice scampering over the floor and would not stay. The moon looked at him through the cobwebby window, but there was no comfort in that far, cold, unsympathetic moon. A light burning in a house down in the Glen was more like a friend. As long as that light shone he could bear up.
He could not sleep. His knee hurt too much and he was cold... with such a funny feeling in his stomach. Perhaps he was dying, too. He hoped he was, since everyone else was dead or gone away. Did nights ever end? Other nights had always ended, but maybe this one wouldn't. He remembered a dreadful story he had heard to the effect that Captain Jack Flagg at the Harbour Mouth had said he wouldn't let the sun come up some morning when he got real mad. Suppose Captain Jack had got real mad at last.
Then the Glen light went out... and he couldn't bear it. But as the little cry of despair left his lips he realized that it was day.
10
Walter climbed down the ladder and went out. Ingleside lay in the strange, timeless light of first dawn. The sky over the birches in the Hollow was showing a faint, silvery-pink radiance. Perhaps he could get in at the side door. Susan sometimes left it open for Dad.
The side door was unlocked. With a sob of thankfulness Walter slipped into the hall. It was still dark in the house and he began stealing softly upstairs. He would go to bed, his own bed, and if nobody ever came back he could die there and go to heaven and find Mother. Only... Walter remembered what Opal had said... heaven was millions of miles away. In the fresh wave of desolation that swept over him Walter forgot to step carefully and set his foot down heavily on the tail of the Shrimp, who was sleeping at the curve of the stairs. The Shrimp's yowl of anguish resounded through the house.
Susan, just dropping off to sleep, was dragged back from slumber by the horrible sound. Susan had gone to bed at twelve, somewhat exhausted after her strenuous afternoon and evening, to which Mary Maria Blythe had contributed by taking 'a stitch in her side' just when the tension was greatest. She had to have a hot-water bottle and a rub with liniment, and finished up with a wet cloth over her eyes because 'one of her headaches' had come on.
Susan had wakened at three with a very strange feeling that somebody wanted her very badly. She had risen and tiptoed down the hall to the door of Mrs Doctor's room. All was silence there... she could hear Anne's soft, regular breathing. Susan made the rounds of the house and returned to her bed, convinced that that strange feeling was only the hangover of a nightmare. But for the rest of her life Susan believed she had what she had always scoffed at and what Abby Flagg, who 'went in' for spiritualism, called 'a physic experience'.
'Walter was calling me and I heard him,' she averred.
Susan got up and went out again, thinking that Ingleside was really possessed that night. She was attired only in a flannel nightdress which had shrunk in repeated washings till it was well above her bony ankles: but she seemed the most beautiful thing in the world to the white-
faced, trembling creature whose frantic grey eyes stared up at her from the landing.
'Walter Blythe!'
In two steps Susan had him in her arms... her strong, tender arms.
'Susan... is Mother dead?' said Walter.
In a very brief time everything had changed. Walter was in bed, warm, fed, comforted. Susan had whisked on a fire, got him a hot cup of milk, a slice of golden-brown toast, and a big plateful of his favourite 'monkey face' cookies, and then tucked him away with a hot-water bottle at his feet. She had kissed and anointed his little bruised knee. It was such a nice feeling to know that someone was looking after you... that someone wanted you... that you were important to someone.
'And you're sure, Susan, that Mother isn't dead?'
'Your mother is sound asleep and well and happy, my lamb.'
'And wasn't she sick at all? Opal said...'
'Well, lamb, she didn't feel very well for a while yesterday, but that's all over, and she was never in any danger of dying this time. You just wait till you've had a sleep and you'll see her... and something else. If I had hold of those young Satans at Lowbridge! I just can't believe that you walked all the way home from Lowbridge. Six miles! On such a night!'
'I suffered awful agony of mind, Susan,' said Walter gravely. But it was all over; he was safe and happy; he was... home... he was...
He was asleep.
It was nearly midday before he woke, to see sunshine billowing in through his own windows, and limped in to see Mother. He had begun to think he had been very foolish and maybe Mother would not be pleased with him for running away from Lowbridge. But Mother only put an arm around him and drew him close to her. She had heard the whole story from Susan and had thought of a few things she intended to say to Jen Parker.
'Oh, Mummy, you're not going to die... and you still love me, don't you?'
'Darling, I've no notion of dying, and I love you so much it hurts. To think that you walked all the way from Lowbridge in the night!'
'And on an empty stomach,' shuddered Susan. 'The wonder is he's alive to tell it. The days of miracles are not yet over and that you may tie to.'
'A spunky little lad,' laughed Dad, who had come in with Shirley on his shoulder. He patted Walter's head and Walter caught his hand and hugged it. There was no one like Dad in the world. But nobody must ever know how scared he had really been.
'I needn't ever go away from home again, need I, Mummy?'
'Not till you want to,' promised Mother.
'I'll never...' began Walter... and then stopped. After all, he wouldn't mind seeing Alice again.
'Look you here, lamb,' said Susan, ushering in a rosy young lady in a white apron and cap who carried a basket.
Walter looked. A baby! A plump, roly-poly baby, with silky damp curls all over her head and such tiny, cunning hands.
'Is she not a beauty?' said Susan proudly. 'Look at her eyelashes... never did I see such long eyelashes on a baby. And her pretty little ears. I always look at their ears first.'
Walter hesitated.
'She's sweet, Susan... oh, look at her darling little curly toes! But... isn't she rather small?'
Susan laughed.
'Eight pounds isn't small, lamb. And she has begun to take notice already. That child wasn't an hour old when she raised her head and looked at the doctor. I have never seen the like of it in all my life.'
'She's going to have red hair,' said the doctor in a tone of satisfaction. 'Lovely red-gold hair like her mother's.'
'And hazel eyes like her father's,' said the doctor's wife jubilantly.
'I don't see why one of us can't have yellow hair,' said Walter dreamily, thinking of Alice.
'Yellow hair! Like the Drews!' said Susan in measureless contempt.
'She looks so cunning when she is asleep,' crooned the nurse. 'I never saw a baby that crinkled its eyes like that when it went to sleep.'
'She is a miracle. All our babies were sweet, Gilbert, but she is the sweetest of them all.'
'Lord love you,' said Aunt Mary Maria with a sniff, 'there's been a few babies in the world before, you know, Annie.'
'Our baby has never been in the world before, Aunt Mary Maria,' said Walter proudly. 'Susan, may I kiss her... just once... please?'
'That you may,' said Susan, glaring after Aunt Mary Maria's retreating back. 'And now I'm going down to make a cherry pie for dinner. Mary Maria Blythe made one yesterday afternoon... I wish you could see it, Mrs Doctor dear. It looks like something the cat dragged in. I shall eat as much of it myself as I can rather than waste it, but such a pie shall never be set before the doctor as long as I have my health and strength and that you may tie to.'
'It isn't everybody that has your knack with pastry, you know,' said Anne.
'Mummy,' said Walter, as the door closed behind a gratified Susan, 'I think we are a very nice family, don't you?'
A very nice family, Anne reflected happily as she lay in her bed, with the baby beside her. Soon she would be about with them again, light-footed as of yore, loving them, teaching them, comforting them. They would be coming to her with their little joys and sorrows, their budding hopes, their new fears, their little problems that seemed so big to them, and their little heart-breaks that seemed so bitter. She would hold all the threads of the Ingleside life in her hands again to weave into a tapestry of beauty. And Aunt Mary Maria should have no cause to say, as Anne had heard her say two days ago, 'You look dreadful tired, Gilbert. Does anybody ever look after you?'
Downstairs Aunt Mary Maria was shaking her head despondently.
'All new-born infants' legs are crooked, I know, but, Susan, that child's legs are much too crooked. Of course, we must not say so to poor Annie. Be sure you don't mention it to Annie, Susan.'
Susan, for once, was beyond speech.
11
By the end of August Anne was herself again, looking forward to a happy autumn. Small Bertha Marilla grew in beauty day by day and was a centre of worship to adoring brothers and sisters.
'I thought a baby would be something that yelled all the time,' said Jem, rapturously letting the tiny fingers cling around his. 'Bertie Shakespeare Drew told me so.'
'I am not doubting that the Drew babies yell all the time, Jem, dear,' said Susan. 'Yell at the thought of having to be Drews, I presume. But Bertha Marilla is an Ingleside baby, Jem, dear.'
'I wish I had been born at Ingleside, Susan,' said Jem wistfully. He always felt sorry he hadn't been. Di cast it up to him at times.
'Don't you find life here rather dull?' an old Queens' classmate from Charlottetown had asked Anne rather patronizingly one day.
Dull! Anne almost laughed in her caller's face. Ingleside dull! With a delicious baby bringing new wonders every day... with visits from Diana and Little Elizabeth and Rebecca Dew to be planned for... with Mrs Sam Ellison of the Upper Glen on Gilbert's hands with a disease only three people in the world had ever been known to have before... with Walter starting to school... with Nan drinking a whole bottle of perfume from Mother's dressing-table... they thought it would kill her, but she was never a whit the worse; with a strange black cat having the unheard-of number of ten kittens in the back porch... with Shirley locking himself in the bathroom and forgetting how to unlock it... with the Shrimp getting rolled up in a sheet of fly-paper... with Aunt Mary Maria setting the curtains of her room on fire in the dead of night while prowling with a candle and rousing the household with appalling screams. Life dull!
For Aunt Mary Maria was still at Ingleside. Occasionally she would say pathetically, 'Whenever you are tired of me just let me know... I'm used to looking after myself.' There was only one thing to say to that, and of course Dr Gilbert always said it. Though he did not say it quite as heartily as at first. Even Gilbert's 'clannishness' was beginning to wear a little thin; he was realizing rather helplessly... 'manlike', as Miss Cornelia sniffed... that Aunt Mary Maria was by way of becoming a problem in his household. He had ventured one day to give a slight hint as to how houses suff
ered if left too long without inhabitants; and Aunt Mary Maria agreed with him, calmly remarking that she was thinking of selling her Charlottetown house.
'Not a bad idea,' encouraged Gilbert. 'And I know a very nice little cottage in town for sale... a friend of mine is going to California... it's very like that one you admired so much where Mrs Sarah Newman lives...'
'But lives alone,' sighed Aunt Mary Maria.
'She likes it,' said Anne hopefully.
'There's something wrong with anyone who likes living alone, Annie,' said Aunt Mary Maria.
Susan repressed a groan with difficulty.
Diana came for a week in September. Then Little Elizabeth came... Little Elizabeth no longer... tall, slender, beautiful Elizabeth now. But still with the golden hair and wistful smile. Her father was returning to his office in Paris and Elizabeth was going with him to keep his house. She and Anne took long walks around the storied shores of the old harbour, coming home beneath silent, watchful autumn stars. They relived the old Windy Willows life and retraced their steps in the map of fairyland which Elizabeth still had and meant to keep for ever.
'Hanging on the wall of my room wherever I go,' she said.
One day a wind blew through the Ingleside garden, the first wind of autumn. That night the rose of the sunset was a trifle austere. All at once the summer had grown old. The turn of the season had come.
'It's early for fall,' said Aunt Mary Maria in a tone that implied that the fall had insulted her.
But the fall was beautiful, too. There was the joy of winds blowing in from a darkly blue gulf and the splendour of harvest moons. There were lyric asters in the Hollow and children laughing in an apple-laden orchard, clear serene evenings on the high hill pastures of the Upper Glen and silvery mackerel skies with dark birds flying across them; and, as the days shortened, little grey mists stealing over the dunes and up the harbour.
With the falling leaves Rebecca Dew came to Ingleside to make a visit promised for years. She came for a week but was prevailed upon to stay two, none being so urgent as Susan. Susan and Rebecca Dew seemed to discover at first sight that they were kindred spirits... perhaps because they both loved Anne, perhaps because they both hated Aunt Mary Maria.