The Third Year

11

"Do have some more of the peaches, my dear. You've eaten nothing
. . . positively nothing."

"Oh, Miss Tomgallon, I've enjoyed . . ."

"The Tomgallons always set a good table," said Miss Minerva
complacently. "My Aunt Sophia made the best sponge-cake I ever
tasted. I think the only person my father ever really hated to see
come to our house was his sister Mary, because she had such a poor
appetite. She just minced and tasted. He took it as a personal
insult. Father was a very unrelenting man. He never forgave my
brother Richard for marrying against his will. He ordered him out
of the house and he was never allowed to enter it again. Father
always repeated the Lord's Prayer at family worship every morning,
but after Richard flouted him he always left out the sentence,
'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against
us.' I can see him," said Miss Minerva dreamily, "kneeling there
leaving it out."

After supper they went to the smallest of the three drawing-rooms
. . . which was still rather big and grim . . . and spent the
evening before the huge fire . . . a pleasant, friendly enough fire.
Anne crocheted at a set of intricate doilies and Miss Minerva
knitted away at an afghan and kept up what was practically a
monologue composed in great part of colorful and gruesome Tomgallon
history.

"This is a house of tragical memories, my dear."

"Miss Tomgallon, didn't any pleasant thing ever happen in this
house?" asked Anne, achieving a complete sentence by a mere fluke.
Miss Minerva had had to stop talking long enough to blow her nose.

"Oh, I suppose so," said Miss Minerva, as if she hated to admit it.
" Yes, of course, we used to have gay times here when I was a girl.
They tell me you're writing a book about every one in Summerside,
my dear."

"I'm not . . . there isn't a word of truth . . ."

"Oh!" Miss Minerva was plainly a little disappointed. "Well, if
ever you do you are at liberty to use any of our stories you like,
perhaps with the names disguised. And now what do you say to a
game of parchesi?"

"I'm afraid it is time I was going. . . ."

"Oh, my dear, you can't go home tonight. It's pouring cats and
dogs . . . and listen to the wind. I don't keep a carriage now
. . . I have so little use for one . . . and you can't walk half
a mile in that deluge. You must be my guest for the night."

Anne was not sure she wanted to spend a night in Tomgallon House.
But neither did she want to walk to Windy Poplars in a March
tempest. So they had their game of parchesi . . . in which Miss
Minerva was so interested that she forgot to talk about horrors
. . . and then a "bedtime snack." They ate cinnamon toast and
drank cocoa out of old Tomgallon cups of marvelous thinness and
beauty.

Finally Miss Minerva took her up to a guest-room which Anne at
first was glad to see was not the one where Miss Minerva's sister
had died of a stroke.

"This is Aunt Annabella's room," said Miss Minerva, lighting the
candles in the silver candlesticks on a rather pretty green
dressing-table and turning out the gas. Matthew Tomgallon had
blown out the gas one night . . . whereupon exit Matthew Tomgallon.
" She was the handsomest of all the Tomgallons. That's her picture
above the mirror. Do you notice what a proud mouth she had? She
made that crazy quilt on the bed. I hope you'll be comfortable, my
dear. Mary has aired the bed and put two hot bricks in it. And
she has aired this night-dress for you . . ." pointing to an ample
flannel garment hanging over a chair and smelling strongly of moth
balls. "I hope it will fit you. It hasn't been worn since poor
Mother died in it. Oh, I nearly forgot to tell you . . ." Miss
Minerva turned back at the door . . . "this is the room Oscar
Tomgallon came back to life in--after being thought dead for two
days. They didn't want him to, you know--that was the tragedy. I
hope you'll sleep well, my dear."

Anne did not know if she could sleep at all or not. Suddenly there
seemed something strange and alien in the room . . . something a
little hostile. But is there not something strange about any room
that has been occupied through generations? Death has lurked in it
. . . love has been rosy red in it . . . births have been here . . .
all the passions . . . all the hopes. It is full of wraths.

But this was really rather a terrible old house, full of the ghosts
of dead hatreds and heart-breaks, crowded with dark deeds that had
never been dragged into light and were still festering in its
corners and hidy-holes. Too many women must have wept here. The
wind wailed very eerily in the spruces by the window. For a moment
Anne felt like running out, storm or no storm.

Then she took herself resolutely in hand and commanded common
sense. If tragic and dreadful things had happened here, many
shadowy years agone, amusing and lovely things must have happened,
too. Gay and pretty girls had danced here and talked over their
charming secrets; dimpled babies had been born here; there had been
weddings and balls and music and laughter. The sponge-cake lady
must have been a comfortable creature and the unforgiven Richard a
gallant lover.

"I'll think on these things and go to bed. What a quilt to sleep
under! I wonder if I'll be as crazy as it by morning. And this is
a spare room! I've never forgotten what a thrill it used to give
me to sleep in any one's spare room."

Anne uncoiled and brushed her hair under the very nose of Annabella
Tomgallon, who stared down at her with a face in which there were
pride and vanity, and something of the insolence of great beauty.
Anne felt a little creepy as she looked in the mirror. Who knew
what faces might look out of it at her? All the tragic and haunted
ladies who had ever looked into it, perhaps. She bravely opened
the closet door, half expecting any number of skeletons to tumble
out, and hung up her dress. She sat down calmly on a rigid chair,
which looked as if it would be insulted if anybody sat on it, and
took off her shoes. Then she put on the flannel nightgown, blew
out the candles and got into the bed, pleasantly warm from Mary's
bricks. For a little while the rain streaming on the panes and
the shriek of the wind around the old eaves prevented her from
sleeping. Then she forgot all the Tomgallon tragedies in dreamless
slumber until she found herself looking at dark fir boughs against
a red sunrise.

"I've enjoyed having you so much, my dear," said Miss Minerva when
Anne left after breakfast. "We've had a real cheerful visit,
haven't we? Though I've lived so long alone I've almost forgotten
how to talk. And I need not say what a delight it is to meet a
really charming and unspoiled young girl in this frivolous age. I
didn't tell you yesterday but it was my birthday, and it was very
pleasant to have a bit of youth in the house. There is nobody to
remember my birthday now . . ." Miss Minerva gave a faint sigh
. . . "and once there were so many."

"Well, I suppose you heard a pretty grim chronicle," said Aunt
Chatty that night.

"Did all those things Miss Minerva told me really happen, Aunt
Chatty?"

"Well, the queer thing is, they did," said Aunt Chatty. "It's a
curious thing, Miss Shirley, but a lot of awful things did happen
to the Tomgallons."

"I don't know that there were many more than happen in any large
family in the course of six generations," said Aunt Kate.

"Oh, I think there were. They really did seem under a curse. So
many of them died sudden or violent deaths. Of course there is a
streak of insanity in them . . . every one knows that. That was
curse enough . . . but I've heard an old story . . . I can't recall
the details . . . of the carpenter who built the house cursing it.
Something about the contract . . . old Paul Tomgallon held him to
it and it ruined him, it cost so much more than he had figured."

"Miss Minerva seems rather proud of the curse," said Anne.

"Poor old thing, it's all she has," said Rebecca Dew.

Anne smiled to think of the stately Miss Minerva being referred to
as a poor old thing. But she went to the tower room and wrote to
Gilbert:

"I thought Tomgallon House was a sleepy old place where nothing
ever happened. Well, perhaps things don't happen now but evidently
they did. Little Elizabeth is always talking of Tomorrow. But the
old Tomgallon house is Yesterday. I'm glad I don't live in
Yesterday . . . that Tomorrow is still a friend.

"Of course I think Miss Minerva has all the Tomgallon liking for
the spotlight and gets no end of satisfaction out of her tragedies.
They are to her what husband and children are to other women. But,
oh, Gilbert, no matter how old we get in years to come, don't let's
ever see life as all tragedy and revel in it. I think I'd hate a
house one hundred and twenty years old. I hope when we get our
house of dreams it will either be new, ghostless and traditionless,
or, if that can't be, at least have been occupied by reasonably
happy people. I shall never forget my night at Tomgallon House.
And for once in my life I've met a person who could talk me down."