So Dad was about again and Mother was laughing again, and ... at last, it was the night before the birthday.
"If you go to bed early, Little Jem, tomorrow will come quicker,” assured Susan.
Jem tried it but it didn't seem to work. Walter fell asleep promptly, but Jem squirmed about. He was afraid to go sleep.
Suppose he didn't waken in time and everybody else had given their presents to Mother? He wanted to be the very first. Why hadn't he asked Susan to be sure and call him? She had gone out to make a visit somewhere but he would ask her when she came in. If he were sure of hearing her! Well, he'd just go down and lie on the living-room sofa and then he couldn't miss her.
Jem crept down and curled up on the chesterfield. He could see over the Glen. The moon was filling the hollows among the white, snowy dunes with magic. The great trees that were so mysterious at night held out their arms about Ingleside. He heard all the night sounds of a house ... a floor creaking ... someone turning in bed ... the crumble and fall of coals in the fireplace ... the scurrying of a little mouse in the china-closet. Was that an avalanche? No, only snow sliding off the roof. It was a little lonesome ... why didn't Susan come? ... if he only had Gyp now ... dear Gyppy. Had he forgotten Gyp? No, not forgotten exactly. But it didn't hurt so much now to think of him ... one DID think of other things a good deal of the time. Sleep well, dearest of dogs. Perhaps sometime he WOULD have another dog, after all. It would be nice if he had one right now ... or Shrimp.
But the Shrimp wasn't round. Selfish old cat! Thinking of nothing but his own affairs!
No sign of Susan yet, coming along the long road that wound endlessly on through that strange white moonlit distance that was his own familiar Glen in daytime. Well, he would just have to imagine things to pass the time. Some day he would go to Baffin Land and live with Eskimos. Some day he would sail to far seas and cook a shark for Christmas dinner like Captain Jim. He would go on an expedition to the Congo in search of gorillas. He would be a diver and wander through radiant crystal halls under the sea. He would get Uncle Davy to teach him how to milk into the cat's mouth the next time he went up to Avonlea. Uncle Davy did that so expertly. Perhaps he would be a pirate. Susan wanted him to be a minister. The minister could do the most good but wouldn't a pirate have the most fun? Suppose the little wooden soldier hopped off the mantelpiece and shot off his gun! Suppose the chairs began walking about the room! Suppose the tiger rug came alive! Suppose the "quack beas" which he and Walter "pretended" all over the house when they were very young, really were about! Jem was suddenly frightened. In daytime he did not often forget the difference between romance and reality, but it was different in this endless night. Tick-tack went the clock ... tick-tack ... and for every tick there was a quack bear sitting on a step of the stairs.
The stairs were just BLACK with quack bears. They would sit there till daylight ... GIBBERING.
Suppose God forgot to let the sun rise! The thought was so terrible that Jem buried his face in the afghan to shut it out, and there Susan found him sound asleep, when she came home in the fiery orange of a winter sunrise.
"Little Jem!”
Jem uncoiled himself and sat up, yawning. It had been a busy night for Silversmith Frost and the woods were fairyland. A far-off hill was touched with a crimson spear. All the white fields beyond the Glen were a lovely rose-colour. It was Mother's birthday morning.
"I was waiting for you, Susan ... to tell you to call me ... and you never came ...”
"I went down to see the John Warrens, because their aunt had died, and they asked me to stay and sit up with the corpse," explained Susan cheerfully. "I didn't suppose you'd be trying to catch pneumonia, too, the minute my back was turned. Scamper off to your bed and I'll call you when I hear your mother stirring.”
"Susan, how do you stab sharks?" Jem wanted to know before he went upstairs.
"I do not stab them," answered Susan.
Mother was up when he went into her room, brushing her long shining hair before the glass. Her eyes when she saw the necklace!
"Jem darling! For me!”
"NOW you won't have to wait till Dad's ship comes in," said Jem with a fine nonchalance. What was that gleaming greenly on Mother's hand? A ring ... Dad's present. All very well, but rings were common things ... even Sissy Flagg had one. But a pearl necklace!
"A necklace is such a nice birthdayish thing," said Mother.
Chapter 20
When Gilbert and Anne went to dinner with friends in Charlottetown one evening in late March Anne put on a new dress of ice-green encrusted with silver around neck and arms; and she wore Gilbert's emerald ring and Jem's necklace.
"Haven't I got a handsome wife, Jem?" asked Dad proudly.
Jem thought Mother was very handsome and her dress very lovely.
How pretty the pearls looked on her white throat! He always liked to see Mother dressed up, but he liked it still better when she took off a splendid dress. It had transformed her into an alien.
She was not really Mother in it.
After supper Jem went to the village to do an errand for Susan and it was while he was waiting in Mr. Flagg's store ... rather afraid that Sissy might come in as she sometimes did and be entirely too friendly ... that the blow fell ... the shattering blow of disillusionment which is so terrible to a child because so unexpected and so seemingly inescapable.
Two girls were standing before the glass show case where Mr. Carter Flagg kept necklaces and chain bracelets and hair barettes.
"Aren't those pearl strings pretty?" said Abbie Russell.
"You'd almost think they were real," said Leona Reese.
They passed on then, quite unwitting of what they had done to the small boy sitting on the nail-keg. Jem continued to sit there for some time longer. He was incapable of movement.
"What's the matter, sonny?" inquired Mr. Flagg. "You seem kind of low in your mind.”
Jem looked at Mr. Flagg with tragic eyes. His mouth was strangely dry.
"Please, Mr. Flagg ... are those ... those necklaces ... they ARE real pearls, aren't they?”
Mr. Flagg laughed.
"No, Jem. I'm afraid you can't get real pearls for fifty cents, you know. A real pearl necklace like that would cost hundreds of dollars. They're just pearl beads ... very good ones for the price, too. I got 'em at a bankrupt sale ... that's why I can sell 'em so cheap. Ordin'rily they run to a dollar. Only one left ... they went like hot cakes.”
Jem slid off the keg and went out, totally forgetting what Susan had sent him for. He walked blindly up the frozen road home.
Overhead was a hard dark wintry sky; there was what Susan called "a feel" of snow in the air, and a skim of ice over the puddles. The harbour lay black and sullen between its bare banks. Before Jem reached home a snow-squall was whitening over them. He wished it would snow ... and snow ... and snow ... till he was buried and everybody was buried fathoms deep. There was no justice anywhere in the world.
Jem was heartbroken. And let no one scoff at his heartbreak for scorn of its cause. His humiliation was utter and complete. He had given Mother what he and she had supposed was a pearl necklace ... and it was only an old imitation. What would she say ... what would she feel like ... when she knew? For of course she must be told. It never occurred to Jem to think for a moment that she need not be told. Mother must not be "fooled" any longer. She must know that her pearls weren't real. Poor Mother! She had been so proud of them ... had he not seen the pride shining in her eyes when she had kissed him and thanked him for them?
Jem slipped in by the side door and went straight to bed, where Walter was already sound asleep. But Jem could not sleep; he was awake when Mother came home and slipped in to see that Walter and he were warm.