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Anne was cutting a vaseful of June lilies for her room and another of Susan’s peonies for Gilbert’s desk in the library ... the milky-white peonies with the blood-red flecks at their hearts, like a god’s kiss. The air was coming alive after the unusually hot June day and one could hardly tell whether the harbour were silver or gold.
“There’s going to be a wonderful sunset tonight, Susan,” she said, looking in at the kitchen window as she passed it.
“I cannot admire the sunset until I have got my dishes washed, Mrs. Dr. dear,” protested Susan.
“It will be gone by that time, Susan. Look at that enormous white cloud towering up over the Hollow, with its rosy-pink top. Wouldn’t you like to fly up and light on it?”
Susan had a vision of herself flying up over the glen, dishcloth in hand, to that cloud. It did not appeal to her. But allowances must be made for Mrs. Dr. just now.
“There’s a new, vicious kind of bug eating the rose-bushes,” went on Anne. “I must spray them tomorrow. I’d like to do it tonight ... this is just the kind of evening I love to work in the garden. Things are growing tonight. I hope there’ll be gardens in heaven, Susan ... gardens we can work in, I mean, and help things to grow.”
“But not bugs surely,” protested Susan.
“No-o-o, I suppose not. But a completed garden wouldn’t really be any fun, Susan. You have to work in a garden yourself or you miss its meaning. I want to weed and dig and transplant and change and plan and prune. And I want the flowers I love in heaven ... I’d rather my own pansies than the asphodel, Susan.”
“Why cannot you put in the evening as you want to?” broke in Susan, who thought Mrs. Dr. was really going a little wild.
“Because the doctor wants me to go for a drive with him. He is going to see poor old Mrs. John Paxton. She is dying ... he can’t do her any good ... he has done everything he can ... but she does like to have him drop in.”
“Oh, well, Mrs. Dr. dear, we all know that nobody can die or be born without him hereabouts and it is a nice evening for a drive. I think I will take a walk down to the village myself and replenish our pantry after I put the twins and Shirley to bed and manure Mrs. Aaron Ward. She isn’t blooming as she ought to. Miss Blythe has just gone upstairs, sighing at every step, saying one of her headaches is coming on, so there will be a little peace and quiet for the evening at least.”
“See that Jem goes to bed in good time, will you, Susan?” said Anne as she went away through the evening that was like a cup of fragrance that has spilled over. “He’s really much tireder than he thinks he is. And he never wants to go to bed. Walter is not coming home tonight, Leslie asked if he might stay there.”
Jem was sitting on the steps of the side door, one bare foot hooked over his knee, scowling viciously at things in general and at an enormous moon behind the Glen church spire in particular. Jem didn’t like such big moons.
“Take care your face doesn’t freeze like that,” Aunt Mary Maria had said as she passed him on her way into the house.
Jem scowled more blackly than ever. He didn’t care if his face did freeze like that. He hoped it would. “Go ‘way and don’t come tagging after me all the time,” he told Nan, who had crept out to him after Father and Mother had driven away.
“Cross-patch!” said Nan. But before she trotted off she laid down on the step beside him the red candy lion she had brought out to him.
Jem ignored it. He felt more abused than ever. He wasn’t being used right. Everybody picked on him. Hadn’t Nan that very morning said, “You weren’t born at Ingleside like the rest of us.” Di had et his chocolate rabbit that forenoon though she knew it was his rabbit. Even Walter had deserted him, going away to dig wells in the sand with Ken and Persis Ford. Great fun that! And he wanted so much to go with Bertie to see the tattooing. Jem was sure he had never wanted anything so much in his life before. He wanted to see the wonderful, full-rigged ship that Bertie said was always on Captain Bill’s mantelpiece. It was a mean shame, that’s what it was.
Susan brought him out a big slice of cake covered with maple frosting and nuts, but, “No, thank you,” said Jem stonily. Why hadn’t she saved some of the gingerbread and cream for him? S’pose the rest of them had et it all. Pigs! He plunged into a deeper gulf of gloom. The gang would be on their way to the Harbour Mouth by now. He just couldn’t bear the thought. He’d got to do something to get square with folks. S’posin’ he sliced Di’s sawdust giraffe open on the living-room rug? That would make old Susan mad ... Susan with her nuts, when she knew he hated nuts in frosting. S’posin’ he went and drew a moustache on that picture of the cherub on the calendar in her room? He had always hated that fat, pink, smiling cherub because it looked just like Sissy Flagg who had told round school that Jem Blythe was her beau. Hers! Sissy Flagg! But Susan thought that cherub lovely.
S’posin’ he scalped Nan’s doll? S’posin’ he whacked the nose off Gog or Magog ... or both of them? Maybe that would make Mother see he wasn’t a baby any longer. Just wait till next spring! He had brought her mayflowers for years and years and years ... ever since he was four ... but he wouldn’t do it next spring. No, sir!
S’posin’ he et a lot of the little green apples on the early tree and got nice and sick? Maybe that would scare them. S’posin’ he never washed behind his ears again? S’posin’ he made faces at everybody in church next Sunday? S’posin’ he put a caterpillar on Aunt Mary Maria ... a big, striped, woolly caterpillar? S’posin’ he ran away to the harbour and hid in Captain David Reese’s ship and sailed out of the harbour in the morning on his way to South America? Would they be sorry then? S’posin’ he never came back? S’posin’ he went hunting jaggers in Brazil? Would they be sorry then? No, he bet they wouldn’t. Nobody loved him. There was a hole in his pants pocket. Nobody had mended it. Well, he didn’t care. He’d just show that hole to everybody in the Glen and let people see how neglected he was. His wrongs surged up and overwhelmed him.
Tick-tack ... tick-tack ... tick-tack ... went the old grandfather clock in the hall that had been brought to Ingleside after Grandfather Blythe’s death ... a deliberate old clock dating from the days when there was such a thing as time. Generally Jem loved it ... now he hated it. It seemed to be laughing at him. “Ha, ha, bedtime is coming. The other fellows can go to the Harbour Mouth but you go to bed. Ha, ha ... ha, ha ... ha, ha!”
Why did he have to go to bed every night? Yes, why?
Susan came out on her way to the Glen and looked tenderly at the small, rebellious figure.
“You needn’t go to bed till I get back, Little Jem,” she said indulgently.
“I ain’t going to bed tonight!” said Jem fiercely. “I’m going to run away, that’s what I’m going to do, old Susan Baker. I’m going to go and jump into the pond, old Susan Baker.”
Susan did not enjoy being called old, even by Little Jem. She stalked away in a grim silence. He did need a bit of disciplining. The Shrimp, who had followed her out, feeling a yearning for companionship, squatted down on his black haunches before Jem, but got only a glare for his pains. “Clear out! Sitting there on your bottom, staring like Aunt Mary Maria! Scat! Oh, you won’t, won’t you! Then take that!”
Jem shied Shirley’s little tin wheelbarrow that was lying handily near, and the Shrimp fled with a plaintive yowl to the sanctuary of the sweetbriar hedge. Look at that! Even the family cat hated him! What was the use of going on living?
He picked up the candy lion. Nan had eaten the tail and most of the hindquarters but it was still quite a lion. Might as well eat it. It might be the last lion he’d ever eat. By the time Jem had finished the lion and licked his fingers he had made up his mind what he was going to do. It was the only thing a fellow could do when a fellow wasn’t allowed to do anything.