She smiled very pleasantly at Nan ... she HAD a sweet smile. In it you saw the pretty Thomasine of long ago. Nan managed another smile herself. Her eyes were stinging. She MUST get away before she cried outright.
"Nice, well-behaved leetle creetur," mused old Thomasine Fair, looking out of her window after Nan. "Hasn't got her ma's gift of gab but maybe none the worse of that. Most of the kids today think they're smart when they're just being sassy. That little thing's visit has kind of made me feel young again.”
Thomasine sighed and went out to finish cutting her marigolds and hoeing up some of the burdocks.
"Thank goodness, I've kept limber," she reflected.
Nan went back to Ingleside the poorer by a lost dream. A dell full of daisies could not lure her ... singing water called to her in vain. She wanted to get home and shut herself away from human eyes. Two girls she met giggled after they passed her. Were they laughing at her? How everybody would laugh if they knew! Silly little Nan Blythe who had spun a romance of cobweb fancies about a pale queen of mystery and found instead poor Poppa's widow and peppermints.
Peppermints!
Nan would not cry. Big girls of ten must not cry. But she felt indescribably dreary. Something precious and beautiful was gone ... lost ... a secret store of joy which, so she believed, could never be hers again. She found Ingleside filled with the delicious smell of spice cookies but she did not go into the kitchen to coax some out of Susan. At supper her appetite was noticeably poor, even though she read castor-oil in Susan's eye. Anne had noticed that Nan had been very quiet ever since her return from the old MacAllister place ... Nan, who sang literally from daylight to dark and after. Had the long walk on a hot day been too much for the child?
"Why that anguished expression, daughter?" she asked casually, when she went into the twins' room at dusk with fresh towels and found Nan curled up on the window-seat, instead of being down stalking tigers in Equatorial jungles with the others in Rainbow Valley.
Nan hadn't meant to tell ANYBODY that she had been so silly. But somehow things told themselves to Mother.
"Oh, Mother, is EVERYTHING in life a disappointment?”
"Not everything, dear. Would you like to tell me what disappointed you today?”
"Oh, Mummy, Thomasine Fair is ... is GOOD! And her nose turns up!”
"But why," asked Anne in honest bewilderment, "should you care whether her nose turns up or down?”
It all came out then. Anne listened with her usual serious face, praying that she be not betrayed into a stifled shriek of laughter.
She remembered the child she had been at old Green Gables. She remembered the Haunted Wood and two small girls who had been terribly frightened by their own pretending thereof. And she knew the dreadful bitterness of losing a dream.
"You musn't take the vanishing of your fancies so much to heart, dear.”
"I can't help it," said Nan despairingly. "If I had my life to live over again I'd never imagine ANYTHING. And I never will again.”
"My foolish dear ... my DEAR foolish dear, don't say that. An imagination is a wonderful thing to have ... but like every gift we must possess it and not let it possess us. You take your imaginings a wee bit too seriously. Oh, it's delightful ... I know that rapture. But you must learn to keep on this side of the borderline between the real and the unreal. THEN the power to escape at will into a beautiful world of your own will help you amazingly through the hard places of life. I can always solve a problem more easily after I've had a voyage or two to the Islands of Enchantment.”
Nan felt her self-respect coming back to her with these words of comfort and wisdom. Mother did not think it so silly after all.
And no doubt there was somewhere in the world a Wicked Beautiful Lady with Mysterious Eyes, even if she did not live in the GLOOMY HOUSE ... which, now that Nan came to think of it, was not such a bad place after all, with its orange marigolds and its friendly spotted cat and its geraniums and poor dear Poppa's picture. It was really rather a jolly place and perhaps some day she would go and see Thomasine Fair again and get some more of those nice cookies. She did not hate Thomasine any longer.
"What a nice mother you are!" she sighed, in the shelter and sanctuary of those beloved arms.
A violet-grey dusk was coming over the hill. The summer night darkened about them ... a night of velvet and whispers. A star came out over the big apple tree. When Mrs. Marshall Elliott came and Mother had to go down Nan was happy again. Mother had said she was going to repaper their room with a lovely buttercup-yellow paper and get a new cedar chest for her and Di to keep things in.
Only it would not be a cedar chest. It would be an enchanted treasure chest which could not be opened unless certain mystic words were pronounced. One word the Witch of the Snow might whisper to you, the cold and lovely white Witch of the Snow. A wind might tell you another, as it passed you ... a sad grey wind that mourned. Sooner or later you would find all the words and open the chest, to find it filled with pearls and rubies and diamonds galore. Wasn't galore a nice word?
Oh, the old magic had not gone. The world was still full of it.
Chapter 37
"Can I be your dearest friend this year?" asked Delilah Green, during that afternoon recess.
Delilah had very round, dark-blue eyes, sleek sugar-brown curls, a small rosy mouth, and a thrilling voice with a little quaver in it.
Diana Blythe responded to the charm of that voice instantly.
It was known in the Glen school that Diana Blythe was rather at loose ends for a chum. For two years she and Pauline Reese had been cronies but Pauline's family had moved away and Diana felt very lonely. Pauline had been a good sort. To be sure, she was quite lacking in the mystic charm that the now almost forgotten Jenny Penny had possessed but she was practical, full of fun, SENSIBLE. That last was Susan's adjective and was the highest praise Susan could bestow. She had been entirely satisfied with Pauline as a friend for Diana.
Diana looked at Delilah doubtfully, then glanced across the playground at Laura Carr, who was also a new girl. Laura and she had spent the forenoon recess together and had found each other very agreeable. But Laura was rather plain, with freckles and unmanageable sandy hair. She had none of Delilah Green's beauty and not a spark of her allure.
Delilah understood Diana's look and a hurt expression crept over her face; her blue eyes seemed ready to brim with tears.
"If you love HER you can't love ME. Choose between us," said Delilah, holding out her hands dramatically. Her voice was more thrilling than ever ... it positively sent a creep along Diana's spine. She put her hands in Delilah's and they looked at each other solemnly, feeling dedicated and sealed. At least, Diana felt that way.
"You'll love me FOREVER, won't you?" asked Delilah passionately.
"Forever," vowed Diana with equal passion.
Delilah slipped her arms around Diana's waist and they walked down to the brook together. The rest of the Fourth class understood that an alliance had been concluded. Laura Carr gave a tiny sigh.
She had liked Diana Blythe very much. But she knew she could not compete with Delilah.
"I'm SO glad you're going to let me love you," Delilah was saying.
"I'm so very affectionate ... I just can't help loving people.
PLEASE be kind to me, Diana. I am a child of sorrow. I was put under a curse at birth. Nobody ... NOBODY loves me.”
Delilah somehow contrived to put ages of loneliness and loveliness into that "nobody." Diana tightened her clasp.
"You'll never have to say that after this, Delilah. I will always love you.”
"World without end?”
"World without end," answered Diana. They kissed each other, as in a rite. Two boys on the fence whooped derisively, but who cared?