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Anne's House of Dreams

by L. M. Montgomery · English · Gutenberg #544 · 458,560 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Anne's House of Dreams

Author: L. M. Montgomery


        
Release date: May 1, 1996 [eBook #544]
                Most recently updated: October 3, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/544

Credits: Charles Keller.  HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANNE'S HOUSE OF DREAMS ***
Anne’s House of Dreams


by

Lucy Maud Montgomery


“To Laura, in memory of the olden time.”




CONTENTS


Chapter

   1  IN THE GARRET OF GREEN GABLES
   2  THE HOUSE OF DREAMS
   3  THE LAND OF DREAMS AMONG
   4  THE FIRST BRIDE OF GREEN GABLES
   5  THE HOME COMING
   6  CAPTAIN JIM
   7  THE SCHOOLMASTER’S BRIDE
   8  MISS CORNELIA BRYANT COMES TO CALL
   9  AN EVENING AT FOUR WINDS POINT
  10  LESLIE MOORE
  11  THE STORY OF LESLIE MOORE
  12  LESLIE COMES OVER
  13  A GHOSTLY EVENING
  14  NOVEMBER DAYS
  15  CHRISTMAS AT FOUR WINDS
  16  NEW YEAR’S EVE AT THE LIGHT
  17  A FOUR WINDS WINTER
  18  SPRING DAYS
  19  DAWN AND DUSK
  20  LOST MARGARET
  21  BARRIERS SWEPT AWAY
  22  MISS CORNELIA ARRANGES MATTERS
  23  OWEN FORD COMES
  24  THE LIFE-BOOK OF CAPTAIN JIM
  25  THE WRITING OF THE BOOK
  26  OWEN FORD’S CONFESSION
  27  ON THE SAND BAR
  28  ODDS AND ENDS
  29  GILBERT AND ANNE DISAGREE
  30  LESLIE DECIDES
  31  THE TRUTH MAKES FREE
  32  MISS CORNELIA DISCUSSES THE AFFAIR
  33  LESLIE RETURNS
  34  THE SHIP O’DREAMS COMES TO HARBOR
  35  POLITICS AT FOUR WINDS
  36  BEAUTY FOR ASHES
  37  MISS CORNELIA MAKES A STARTLING ANNOUNCEMENT
  38  RED ROSES
  39  CAPTAIN JIM CROSSES THE BAR
  40  FAREWELL TO THE HOUSE OF DREAMS




CHAPTER 1

IN THE GARRET OF GREEN GABLES

“Thanks be, I’m done with geometry, learning or teaching it,” said Anne
Shirley, a trifle vindictively, as she thumped a somewhat battered
volume of Euclid into a big chest of books, banged the lid in triumph,
and sat down upon it, looking at Diana Wright across the Green Gables
garret, with gray eyes that were like a morning sky.

The garret was a shadowy, suggestive, delightful place, as all garrets
should be. Through the open window, by which Anne sat, blew the sweet,
scented, sun-warm air of the August afternoon; outside, poplar boughs
rustled and tossed in the wind; beyond them were the woods, where
Lover’s Lane wound its enchanted path, and the old apple orchard which
still bore its rosy harvests munificently.  And, over all, was a great
mountain range of snowy clouds in the blue southern sky.  Through the
other window was glimpsed a distant, white-capped, blue sea--the
beautiful St. Lawrence Gulf, on which floats, like a jewel, Abegweit,
whose softer, sweeter Indian name has long been forsaken for the more
prosaic one of Prince Edward Island.

Diana Wright, three years older than when we last saw her, had grown
somewhat matronly in the intervening time.  But her eyes were as black
and brilliant, her cheeks as rosy, and her dimples as enchanting, as in
the long-ago days when she and Anne Shirley had vowed eternal
friendship in the garden at Orchard Slope.  In her arms she held a
small, sleeping, black-curled creature, who for two happy years had
been known to the world of Avonlea as “Small Anne Cordelia.”  Avonlea
folks knew why Diana had called her Anne, of course, but Avonlea folks
were puzzled by the Cordelia.  There had never been a Cordelia in the
Wright or Barry connections.  Mrs. Harmon Andrews said she supposed
Diana had found the name in some trashy novel, and wondered that Fred
hadn’t more sense than to allow it.  But Diana and Anne smiled at each
other.  They knew how Small Anne Cordelia had come by her name.

“You always hated geometry,” said Diana with a retrospective smile.  “I
should think you’d be real glad to be through with teaching, anyhow.”

“Oh, I’ve always liked teaching, apart from geometry.  These past three
years in Summerside have been very pleasant ones. Mrs. Harmon Andrews
told me when I came home that I wouldn’t likely find married life as
much better than teaching as I expected.  Evidently Mrs. Harmon is of
Hamlet’s opinion that it may be better to bear the ills that we have
than fly to others that we know not of.”

Anne’s laugh, as blithe and irresistible as of yore, with an added note
of sweetness and maturity, rang through the garret.  Marilla in the
kitchen below, compounding blue plum preserve, heard it and smiled;
then sighed to think how seldom that dear laugh would echo through
Green Gables in the years to come.  Nothing in her life had ever given
Marilla so much happiness as the knowledge that Anne was going to marry
Gilbert Blythe; but every joy must bring with it its little shadow of
sorrow.  During the three Summerside years Anne had been home often for
vacations and weekends; but, after this, a bi-annual visit would be as
much as could be hoped for.

“You needn’t let what Mrs. Harmon says worry you,” said Diana, with the
calm assurance of the four-years matron.  “Married life has its ups and
downs, of course.  You mustn’t expect that everything will always go
smoothly.  But I can assure you, Anne, that it’s a happy life, when
you’re married to the right man.”

Anne smothered a smile.  Diana’s airs of vast experience always amused
her a little.

“I daresay I’ll be putting them on too, when I’ve been married four
years,” she thought.  “Surely my sense of humor will preserve me from
it, though.”

“Is it settled yet where you are going to live?” asked Diana, cuddling
Small Anne Cordelia with the inimitable gesture of motherhood which
always sent through Anne’s heart, filled with sweet, unuttered dreams
and hopes, a thrill that was half pure pleasure and half a strange,
ethereal pain.

“Yes. That was what I wanted to tell you when I ’phoned to you to come
down today.  By the way, I can’t realize that we really have telephones
in Avonlea now.  It sounds so preposterously up-to-date and modernish
for this darling, leisurely old place.”

“We can thank the A. V. I. S. for them,” said Diana.  “We should never
have got the line if they hadn’t taken the matter up and carried it
through.  There was enough cold water thrown to discourage any society.
But they stuck to it, nevertheless.  You did a splendid thing for
Avonlea when you founded that society, Anne.  What fun we did have at
our meetings!  Will you ever forget the blue hall and Judson Parker’s
scheme for painting medicine advertisements on his fence?”

“I don’t know that I’m wholly grateful to the A. V. I.  S. in the
matter of the telephone,” said Anne.  “Oh, I know it’s most
convenient--even more so than our old device of signalling to each
other by flashes of candlelight!  And, as Mrs. Rachel says, ‘Avonlea
must keep up with the procession, that’s what.’  But somehow I feel as
if I didn’t want Avonlea spoiled by what Mr. Harrison, when he wants to
be witty, calls ‘modern inconveniences.’  I should like to have it kept
always just as it was in the dear old years. That’s foolish--and
sentimental--and impossible.  So I shall immediately become wise and
practical and possible.  The telephone, as Mr. Harrison concedes, is ‘a
buster of a good thing’--even if you do know that probably half a dozen
interested people are listening along the line.”

“That’s the worst of it,” sighed Diana.  “It’s so annoying to hear the
receivers going down whenever you ring anyone up.  They say Mrs. Harmon
Andrews insisted that their ’phone should be put in their kitchen just
so that she could listen whenever it rang and keep an eye on the dinner
at the same time.  Today, when you called me, I distinctly heard that
queer clock of the Pyes’ striking.  So no doubt Josie or Gertie was
listening.”

“Oh, so that is why you said, ‘You’ve got a new clock at Green Gables,
haven’t you?’  I couldn’t imagine what you meant.  I heard a vicious
click as soon as you had spoken.  I suppose it was the Pye receiver
being hung up with profane energy.  Well, never mind the Pyes.  As Mrs.
Rachel says, ‘Pyes they always were and Pyes they always will be, world
without end, amen.’  I want to talk of pleasanter things.  It’s all
settled as to where my new home shall be.”

“Oh, Anne, where?  I do hope it’s near here.”

“No-o-o, that’s the drawback. Gilbert is going to settle at Four Winds
Harbor--sixty miles from here.”

“Sixty!  It might as well be six hundred,” sighed Diana.  “I never can
get further from home now than Charlottetown.”

“You’ll have to come to Four Winds. It’s the most beautiful harbor on
the Island.  There’s a little village called Glen St. Mary at its head,
and Dr. David Blythe has been practicing there for fifty years.  He is
Gilbert’s great-uncle, you know.  He is going to retire, and Gilbert is
to take over his practice.  Dr. Blythe is going to keep his house,
though, so we shall have to find a habitation for ourselves.  I don’t
know yet what it is, or where it will be in reality, but I have a
little house o’dreams all furnished in my imagination--a tiny,
delightful castle in Spain.”

“Where are you going for your wedding tour?” asked Diana.

“Nowhere.  Don’t look horrified, Diana dearest.  You suggest Mrs.
Harmon Andrews.  She, no doubt, will remark condescendingly that people
who can’t afford wedding ‘towers’ are real sensible not to take them;
and then she’ll remind me that Jane went to Europe for hers.  I want to
spend MY honeymoon at Four Winds in my own dear house of dreams.”

“And you’ve decided not to have any bridesmaid?”

“There isn’t any one to have.  You and Phil and Priscilla and Jane all
stole a march on me in the matter of marriage; and Stella is teaching
in Vancouver.  I have no other ‘kindred soul’ and I won’t have a
bridesmaid who isn’t.”

“But you are going to wear a veil, aren’t you?” asked Diana, anxiously.

“Yes, indeedy.  I shouldn’t feel like a bride without one.  I remember
telling Matthew, that evening when he brought me to Green Gables, that
I never expected to be a bride because I was so homely no one would
ever want to marry me--unless some foreign missionary did.  I had an
idea then that foreign missionaries couldn’t afford to be finicky in
the matter of looks if they wanted a girl to risk her life among
cannibals.  You should have seen the foreign missionary Priscilla
married.  He was as handsome and inscrutable as those daydreams we once
planned to marry ourselves, Diana; he was the best dressed man I ever
met, and he raved over Priscilla’s ‘ethereal, golden beauty.’  But of
course there are no cannibals in Japan.”

“Your wedding dress is a dream, anyhow,” sighed Diana rapturously.
“You’ll look like a perfect queen in it--you’re so tall and slender.
How DO you keep so slim, Anne?  I’m fatter than ever--I’ll soon have no
waist at all.”

“Stoutness and slimness seem to be matters of predestination,” said
Anne.  “At all events, Mrs. Harmon Andrews can’t say to you what she
said to me when I came home from Summerside, ‘Well, Anne, you’re just
about as skinny as ever.’  It sounds quite romantic to be ‘slender,’
but ‘skinny’ has a very different tang.”

“Mrs. Harmon has been talking about your trousseau.  She admits it’s as
nice as Jane’s, although she says Jane married a millionaire and you
are only marrying a ‘poor young doctor without a cent to his name.’”

Anne laughed.

“My dresses ARE nice.  I love pretty things.  I remember the first
pretty dress I ever had--the brown gloria Matthew gave me for our
school concert.  Before that everything I had was so ugly.  It seemed
to me that I stepped into a new world that night.”

“That was the night Gilbert recited ‘Bingen on the Rhine,’ and looked
at you when he said, ‘There’s another, NOT a sister.’  And you were so
furious because he put your pink tissue rose in his breast pocket!  You
didn’t much imagine then that you would ever marry him.”

“Oh, well, that’s another instance of predestination,” laughed Anne, as
they went down the garret stairs.




CHAPTER 2

THE HOUSE OF DREAMS

There was more excitement in the air of Green Gables than there had
ever been before in all its history.  Even Marilla was so excited that
she couldn’t help showing it--which was little short of being
phenomenal.

“There’s never been a wedding in this house,” she said, half
apologetically, to Mrs. Rachel Lynde.  “When I was a child I heard an
old minister say that a house was not a real home until it had been
consecrated by a birth, a wedding and a death.  We’ve had deaths
here--my father and mother died here as well as Matthew; and we’ve even
had a birth here.  Long ago, just after we moved into this house, we
had a married hired man for a little while, and his wife had a baby
here.  But there’s never been a wedding before.  It does seem so
strange to think of Anne being married.  In a way she just seems to me
the little girl Matthew brought home here fourteen years ago.  I can’t
realize that she’s grown up.  I shall never forget what I felt when I
saw Matthew bringing in a GIRL.  I wonder what became of the boy we
would have got if there hadn’t been a mistake.  I wonder what HIS fate
was.”

“Well, it was a fortunate mistake,” said Mrs. Rachel Lynde, “though,
mind you, there was a time I didn’t think so--that evening I came up to
see Anne and she treated us to such a scene.  Many things have changed
since then, that’s what.”

Mrs. Rachel sighed, and then brisked up again.  When weddings were in
order Mrs. Rachel was ready to let the dead past bury its dead.

“I’m going to give Anne two of my cotton warp spreads,” she resumed.
“A tobacco-stripe one and an apple-leaf one.  She tells me they’re
getting to be real fashionable again.  Well, fashion or no fashion, I
don’t believe there’s anything prettier for a spare-room bed than a
nice apple-leaf spread, that’s what.  I must see about getting them
bleached.  I’ve had them sewed up in cotton bags ever since Thomas
died, and no doubt they’re an awful color.  But there’s a month yet,
and dew-bleaching will work wonders.”

Only a month!  Marilla sighed and then said proudly:

“I’m giving Anne that half dozen braided rugs I have in the garret. I
never supposed she’d want them--they’re so old-fashioned, and nobody
seems to want anything but hooked mats now.  But she asked me for
them--said she’d rather have them than anything else for her floors.
They ARE pretty.  I made them of the nicest rags, and braided them in
stripes.  It was such company these last few winters.  And I’ll make
her enough blue plum preserve to stock her jam closet for a year.  It
seems real strange.  Those blue plum trees hadn’t even a blossom for
three years, and I thought they might as well be cut down.  And this
last spring they were white, and such a crop of plums I never remember
at Green Gables.”

“Well, thank goodness that Anne and Gilbert really are going to be
married after all.  It’s what I’ve always prayed for,” said Mrs.
Rachel, in the tone of one who is comfortably sure that her prayers
have availed much.  “It was a great relief to find out that she really
didn’t mean to take the Kingsport man.  He was rich, to be sure, and
Gilbert is poor--at least, to begin with; but then he’s an Island boy.”

“He’s Gilbert Blythe,” said Marilla contentedly.  Marilla would have
died the death before she would have put into words the thought that
was always in the background of her mind whenever she had looked at
Gilbert from his childhood up--the thought that, had it not been for
her own wilful pride long, long ago, he might have been HER son.
Marilla felt that, in some strange way, his marriage with Anne would
put right that old mistake.  Good had come out of the evil of the
ancient bitterness.

As for Anne herself, she was so happy that she almost felt frightened.
The gods, so says the old superstition, do not like to behold too happy
mortals.  It is certain, at least, that some human beings do not.  Two
of that ilk descended upon Anne one violet dusk and proceeded to do
what in them lay to prick the rainbow bubble of her satisfaction.  If
she thought she was getting any particular prize in young Dr. Blythe,
or if she imagined that he was still as infatuated with her as he might
have been in his salad days, it was surely their duty to put the matter
before her in another light.  Yet these two worthy ladies were not
enemies of Anne; on the contrary, they were really quite fond of her,
and would have defended her as their own young had anyone else attacked
her.  Human nature is not obliged to be consistent.

Mrs. Inglis--nee Jane Andrews, to quote from the Daily Enterprise--came
with her mother and Mrs. Jasper Bell.  But in Jane the milk of human
kindness had not been curdled by years of matrimonial bickerings.  Her
lines had fallen in pleasant places.  In spite of the fact--as Mrs.
Rachel Lynde would say--that she had married a millionaire, her
marriage had been happy.  Wealth had not spoiled her.  She was still
the placid, amiable, pink-cheeked Jane of the old quartette,
sympathising with her old chum’s happiness and as keenly interested in
all the dainty details of Anne’s trousseau as if it could rival her own
silken and bejewelled splendors.  Jane was not brilliant, and had
probably never made a remark worth listening to in her life; but she
never said anything that would hurt anyone’s feelings--which may be a
negative talent but is likewise a rare and enviable one.

“So Gilbert didn’t go back on you after all,” said Mrs. Harmon Andrews,
contriving to convey an expression of surprise in her tone.  “Well, the
Blythes generally keep their word when they’ve once passed it, no
matter what happens.  Let me see--you’re twenty-five, aren’t you, Anne?
When I was a girl twenty-five was the first corner.  But you look quite
young.  Red-headed people always do.”

“Red hair is very fashionable now,” said Anne, trying to smile, but
speaking rather coldly.  Life had developed in her a sense of humor
which helped her over many difficulties; but as yet nothing had availed
to steel her against a reference to her hair.

“So it is--so it is,” conceded Mrs. Harmon.  “There’s no telling what
queer freaks fashion will take.  Well, Anne, your things are very
pretty, and very suitable to your position in life, aren’t they, Jane?
I hope you’ll be very happy.  You have my best wishes, I’m sure.  A
long engagement doesn’t often turn out well.  But, of course, in your
case it couldn’t be helped.”

“Gilbert looks very young for a doctor.  I’m afraid people won’t have
much confidence in him,” said Mrs. Jasper Bell gloomily.  Then she shut
her mouth tightly, as if she had said what she considered it her duty
to say and held her conscience clear.  She belonged to the type which
always has a stringy black feather in its hat and straggling locks of
hair on its neck.

Anne’s surface pleasure in her pretty bridal things was temporarily
shadowed; but the deeps of happiness below could not thus be disturbed;
and the little stings of Mesdames Bell and Andrews were forgotten when
Gilbert came later, and they wandered down to the birches of the brook,
which had been saplings when Anne had come to Green Gables, but were
now tall, ivory columns in a fairy palace of twilight and stars.  In
their shadows Anne and Gilbert talked in lover-fashion of their new
home and their new life together.

“I’ve found a nest for us, Anne.”

“Oh, where?  Not right in the village, I hope.  I wouldn’t like that
altogether.”

“No.  There was no house to be had in the village.  This is a little
white house on the harbor shore, half way between Glen St. Mary and
Four Winds Point.  It’s a little out of the way, but when we get a
’phone in that won’t matter so much.  The situation is beautiful.  It
looks to the sunset and has the great blue harbor before it.  The
sand-dunes aren’t very far away--the sea winds blow over them and the
sea spray drenches them.”

“But the house itself, Gilbert,--OUR first home?  What is it like?”

“Not very large, but large enough for us.  There’s a splendid living
room with a fireplace in it downstairs, and a dining room that looks
out on the harbor, and a little room that will do for my office.  It is
about sixty years old--the oldest house in Four Winds.  But it has been
kept in pretty good repair, and was all done over about fifteen years
ago--shingled, plastered and re-floored.  It was well built to begin
with.  I understand that there was some romantic story connected with
its building, but the man I rented it from didn’t know it.”

“He said Captain Jim was the only one who could spin that old yarn now.”

“Who is Captain Jim?”

“The keeper of the lighthouse on Four Winds Point.  You’ll love that
Four Winds light, Anne.  It’s a revolving one, and it flashes like a
magnificent star through the twilights.  We can see it from our living
room windows and our front door.”

“Who owns the house?”

“Well, it’s the property of the Glen St. Mary Presbyterian Church now,
and I rented it from the trustees.  But it belonged until lately to a
very old lady, Miss Elizabeth Russell.  She died last spring, and as
she had no near relatives she left her property to the Glen St. Mary
Church.  Her furniture is still in the house, and I bought most of
it--for a mere song you might say, because it was all so old-fashioned
that the trustees despaired of selling it.  Glen St. Mary folks prefer
plush brocade and sideboards with mirrors and ornamentations, I fancy.
But Miss Russell’s furniture is very good and I feel sure you’ll like
it, Anne.”

“So far, good,” said Anne, nodding cautious approval.  “But, Gilbert,
people cannot live by furniture alone.  You haven’t yet mentioned one
very important thing.  Are there TREES about this house?”

“Heaps of them, oh, dryad!  There is a big grove of fir trees behind
it, two rows of Lombardy poplars down the lane, and a ring of white
birches around a very delightful garden.  Our front door opens right
into the garden, but there is another entrance--a little gate hung
between two firs.  The hinges are on one trunk and the catch on the
other.  Their boughs form an arch overhead.”

“Oh, I’m so glad!  I couldn’t live where there were no trees--something
vital in me would starve.  Well, after that, there’s no use asking you
if there’s a brook anywhere near.  THAT would be expecting too much.”

“But there IS a brook--and it actually cuts across one corner of the
garden.”

“Then,” said Anne, with a long sigh of supreme satisfaction, “this
house you have found IS my house of dreams and none other.”




CHAPTER 3

THE LAND OF DREAMS AMONG

“Have you made up your mind who you’re going to have to the wedding,
Anne?” asked Mrs. Rachel Lynde, as she hemstitched table napkins
industriously.  “It’s time your invitations were sent, even if they are
to be only informal ones.”

“I don’t mean to have very many,” said Anne.  “We just want those we
love best to see us married.  Gilbert’s people, and Mr. and Mrs. Allan,
and Mr. and Mrs. Harrison.”

“There was a time when you’d hardly have numbered Mr. Harrison among
your dearest friends,” said Marilla drily.

“Well, I wasn’t VERY strongly attracted to him at our first meeting,”
acknowledged Anne, with a laugh over the recollection.  “But Mr.
Harrison has improved on acquaintance, and Mrs. Harrison is really a
dear.  Then, of course, there are Miss Lavendar and Paul.”

“Have they decided to come to the Island this summer?  I thought they
were going to Europe.”

“They changed their minds when I wrote them I was going to be married.
I had a letter from Paul today.  He says he MUST come to my wedding, no
matter what happens to Europe.”

“That child always idolised you,” remarked Mrs. Rachel.

“That ‘child’ is a young man of nineteen now, Mrs. Lynde.”

“How time does fly!” was Mrs. Lynde’s brilliant and original response.

“Charlotta the Fourth may come with them.  She sent word by Paul that
she would come if her husband would let her.  I wonder if she still
wears those enormous blue bows, and whether her husband calls her
Charlotta or Leonora.  I should love to have Charlotta at my wedding.
Charlotta and I were at a wedding long syne.  They expect to be at Echo
Lodge next week.  Then there are Phil and the Reverend Jo----”

“It sounds awful to hear you speaking of a minister like that, Anne,”
said Mrs. Rachel severely.

“His wife calls him that.”

“She should have more respect for his holy office, then,” retorted Mrs.
Rachel.

“I’ve heard you criticise ministers pretty sharply yourself,” teased
Anne.

“Yes, but I do it reverently,” protested Mrs. Lynde.  “You never heard
me NICKNAME a minister.”

Anne smothered a smile.

“Well, there are Diana and Fred and little Fred and Small Anne
Cordelia--and Jane Andrews.  I wish I could have Miss Stacey and Aunt
Jamesina and Priscilla and Stella.  But Stella is in Vancouver, and
Pris is in Japan, and Miss Stacey is married in California, and Aunt
Jamesina has gone to India to explore her daughter’s mission field, in
spite of her horror of snakes.  It’s really dreadful--the way people
get scattered over the globe.”

“The Lord never intended it, that’s what,” said Mrs. Rachel
authoritatively.  “In my young days people grew up and married and
settled down where they were born, or pretty near it.  Thank goodness
you’ve stuck to the Island, Anne.  I was afraid Gilbert would insist on
rushing off to the ends of the earth when he got through college, and
dragging you with him.”

“If everybody stayed where he was born places would soon be filled up,
Mrs. Lynde.”

“Oh, I’m not going to argue with you, Anne.  _I_ am not a B.A.  What
time of the day is the ceremony to be?”

“We have decided on noon--high noon, as the society reporters say.
That will give us time to catch the evening train to Glen St. Mary.”

“And you’ll be married in the parlor?”

“No--not unless it rains.  We mean to be married in the orchard--with
the blue sky over us and the sunshine around us.  Do you know when and
where I’d like to be married, if I could?  It would be at dawn--a June
dawn, with a glorious sunrise, and roses blooming in the gardens; and I
would slip down and meet Gilbert and we would go together to the heart
of the beech woods,--and there, under the green arches that would be
like a splendid cathedral, we would be married.”

Marilla sniffed scornfully and Mrs. Lynde looked shocked.

“But that would be terrible queer, Anne.  Why, it wouldn’t really seem
legal.  And what would Mrs. Harmon Andrews say?”

“Ah, there’s the rub,” sighed Anne.  “There are so many things in life
we cannot do because of the fear of what Mrs. Harmon Andrews would say.
‘’Tis true, ’tis pity, and pity ’tis, ’tis true.’  What delightful
things we might do were it not for Mrs. Harmon Andrews!”

“By times, Anne, I don’t feel quite sure that I understand you
altogether,” complained Mrs. Lynde.

“Anne was always romantic, you know,” said Marilla apologetically.

“Well, married life will most likely cure her of that,” Mrs. Rachel
responded comfortingly.

Anne laughed and slipped away to Lover’s Lane, where Gilbert found her;
and neither of them seemed to entertain much fear, or hope, that their
married life would cure them of romance.

The Echo Lodge people came over the next week, and Green Gables buzzed
with the delight of them.  Miss Lavendar had changed so little that the
three years since her last Island visit might have been a watch in the
night; but Anne gasped with amazement over Paul.  Could this splendid
six feet of manhood be the little Paul of Avonlea schooldays?

“You really make me feel old, Paul,” said Anne.  “Why, I have to look
up to you!”

“You’ll never grow old, Teacher,” said Paul.  “You are one of the
fortunate mortals who have found and drunk from the Fountain of
Youth,--you and Mother Lavendar.  See here!  When you’re married I
WON’T call you Mrs. Blythe.  To me you’ll always be ‘Teacher’--the
teacher of the best lessons I ever learned.  I want to show you
something.”

The “something” was a pocketbook full of poems.  Paul had put some of
his beautiful fancies into verse, and magazine editors had not been as
unappreciative as they are sometimes supposed to be.  Anne read Paul’s
poems with real delight.  They were full of charm and promise.

“You’ll be famous yet, Paul.  I always dreamed of having one famous
pupil.  He was to be a college president--but a great poet would be
even better.  Some day I’ll be able to boast that I whipped the
distinguished Paul Irving.  But then I never did whip you, did I, Paul?
What an opportunity lost!  I think I kept you in at recess, however.”

“You may be famous yourself, Teacher.  I’ve seen a good deal of your
work these last three years.”

“No.  I know what I can do.  I can write pretty, fanciful little
sketches that children love and editors send welcome cheques for.  But
I can do nothing big.  My only chance for earthly immortality is a
corner in your Memoirs.”

Charlotta the Fourth had discarded the blue bows but her freckles were
not noticeably less.

“I never did think I’d come down to marrying a Yankee, Miss Shirley,
ma’am,” she said.  “But you never know what’s before you, and it isn’t
his fault.  He was born that way.”

“You’re a Yankee yourself, Charlotta, since you’ve married one.”

“Miss Shirley, ma’am, I’m NOT!  And I wouldn’t be if I was to marry a
dozen Yankees!  Tom’s kind of nice.  And besides, I thought I’d better
not be too hard to please, for I mightn’t get another chance.  Tom
don’t drink and he don’t growl because he has to work between meals,
and when all’s said and done I’m satisfied, Miss Shirley, ma’am.”

“Does he call you Leonora?” asked Anne.

“Goodness, no, Miss Shirley, ma’am.  I wouldn’t know who he meant if he
did.  Of course, when we got married he had to say, ‘I take thee,
Leonora,’ and I declare to you, Miss Shirley, ma’am, I’ve had the most
dreadful feeling ever since that it wasn’t me he was talking to and I
haven’t been rightly married at all.  And so you’re going to be married
yourself, Miss Shirley, ma’am?  I always thought I’d like to marry a
doctor.  It would be so handy when the children had measles and croup.
Tom is only a bricklayer, but he’s real good-tempered.  When I said to
him, says I, ‘Tom, can I go to Miss Shirley’s wedding?  I mean to go
anyhow, but I’d like to have your consent,’ he just says, ‘Suit
yourself, Charlotta, and you’ll suit me.’  That’s a real pleasant kind
of husband to have, Miss Shirley, ma’am.”

Philippa and her Reverend Jo arrived at Green Gables the day before the
wedding.  Anne and Phil had a rapturous meeting which presently
simmered down to a cosy, confidential chat over all that had been and
was about to be.

“Queen Anne, you’re as queenly as ever.  I’ve got fearfully thin since
the babies came.  I’m not half so good-looking; but I think Jo likes
it.  There’s not such a contrast between us, you see.  And oh, it’s
perfectly magnificent that you’re going to marry Gilbert.  Roy Gardner
wouldn’t have done at all, at all.  I can see that now, though I was
horribly disappointed at the time.  You know, Anne, you did treat Roy
very badly.”

“He has recovered, I understand,” smiled Anne.

“Oh, yes.  He is married and his wife is a sweet little thing and
they’re perfectly happy.  Everything works together for good.  Jo and
the Bible say that, and they are pretty good authorities.”

“Are Alec and Alonzo married yet?”

“Alec is, but Alonzo isn’t.  How those dear old days at Patty’s Place
come back when I’m talking to you, Anne!  What fun we had!”

“Have you been to Patty’s Place lately?”

“Oh, yes, I go often.  Miss Patty and Miss Maria still sit by the
fireplace and knit.  And that reminds me--we’ve brought you a wedding
gift from them, Anne.  Guess what it is.”

“I never could.  How did they know I was going to be married?”

“Oh, I told them.  I was there last week.  And they were so interested.
Two days ago Miss Patty wrote me a note asking me to call; and then she
asked if I would take her gift to you.  What would you wish most from
Patty’s Place, Anne?”

“You can’t mean that Miss Patty has sent me her china dogs?”

“Go up head.  They’re in my trunk this very moment.  And I’ve a letter
for you.  Wait a moment and I’ll get it.”

“Dear Miss Shirley,” Miss Patty had written, “Maria and I were very
much interested in hearing of your approaching nuptials.  We send you
our best wishes.  Maria and I have never married, but we have no
objection to other people doing so.  We are sending you the china dogs.
I intended to leave them to you in my will, because you seemed to have
sincere affection for them.  But Maria and I expect to live a good
while yet (D.V.), so I have decided to give you the dogs while you are
young.  You will not have forgotten that Gog looks to the right and
Magog to the left.”

“Just fancy those lovely old dogs sitting by the fireplace in my house
of dreams,” said Anne rapturously.  “I never expected anything so
delightful.”

That evening Green Gables hummed with preparations for the following
day; but in the twilight Anne slipped away.  She had a little
pilgrimage to make on this last day of her girlhood and she must make
it alone.  She went to Matthew’s grave, in the little poplar-shaded
Avonlea graveyard, and there kept a silent tryst with old memories and
immortal loves.

“How glad Matthew would be tomorrow if he were here,” she whispered.
“But I believe he does know and is glad of it--somewhere else.  I’ve
read somewhere that ‘our dead are never dead until we have forgotten
them.’ Matthew will never be dead to me, for I can never forget him.”

She left on his grave the flowers she had brought and walked slowly
down the long hill.  It was a gracious evening, full of delectable
lights and shadows.  In the west was a sky of mackerel clouds--crimson
and amber-tinted, with long strips of apple-green sky between.  Beyond
was the glimmering radiance of a sunset sea, and the ceaseless voice of
many waters came up from the tawny shore.  All around her, lying in the
fine, beautiful country silence, were the hills and fields and woods
she had known and loved so long.

“History repeats itself,” said Gilbert, joining her as she passed the
Blythe gate.  “Do you remember our first walk down this hill, Anne--our
first walk together anywhere, for that matter?”

“I was coming home in the twilight from Matthew’s grave--and you came
out of the gate; and I swallowed the pride of years and spoke to you.”

“And all heaven opened before me,” supplemented Gilbert.  “From that
moment I looked forward to tomorrow.  When I left you at your gate that
night and walked home I was the happiest boy in the world.  Anne had
forgiven me.”

“I think you had the most to forgive.  I was an ungrateful little
wretch--and after you had really saved my life that day on the pond,
too.  How I loathed that load of obligation at first!  I don’t deserve
the happiness that has come to me.”

Gilbert laughed and clasped tighter the girlish hand that wore his
ring.  Anne’s engagement ring was a circlet of pearls.  She had refused
to wear a diamond.

“I’ve never really liked diamonds since I found out they weren’t the
lovely purple I had dreamed.  They will always suggest my old
disappointment.”

“But pearls are for tears, the old legend says,” Gilbert had objected.

“I’m not afraid of that.  And tears can be happy as well as sad.  My
very happiest moments have been when I had tears in my eyes--when
Marilla told me I might stay at Green Gables--when Matthew gave me the
first pretty dress I ever had--when I heard that you were going to
recover from the fever.  So give me pearls for our troth ring, Gilbert,
and I’ll willingly accept the sorrow of life with its joy.”

But tonight our lovers thought only of joy and never of sorrow.  For
the morrow was their wedding day, and their house of dreams awaited
them on the misty, purple shore of Four Winds Harbor.




CHAPTER 4

THE FIRST BRIDE OF GREEN GABLES

Anne wakened on the morning of her wedding day to find the sunshine
winking in at the window of the little porch gable and a September
breeze frolicking with her curtains.

“I’m so glad the sun will shine on me,” she thought happily.

She recalled the first morning she had wakened in that little porch
room, when the sunshine had crept in on her through the blossom-drift
of the old Snow Queen.  That had not been a happy wakening, for it
brought with it the bitter disappointment of the preceding night.  But
since then the little room had been endeared and consecrated by years
of happy childhood dreams and maiden visions.  To it she had come back
joyfully after all her absences; at its window she had knelt through
that night of bitter agony when she believed Gilbert dying, and by it
she had sat in speechless happiness the night of her betrothal.  Many
vigils of joy and some of sorrow had been kept there; and today she
must leave it forever.  Henceforth it would be hers no more;
fifteen-year-old Dora was to inherit it when she had gone.  Nor did
Anne wish it otherwise; the little room was sacred to youth and
girlhood--to the past that was to close today before the chapter of
wifehood opened.

Green Gables was a busy and joyous house that forenoon.  Diana arrived
early, with little Fred and Small Anne Cordelia, to lend a hand.  Davy
and Dora, the Green Gables twins, whisked the babies off to the garden.

“Don’t let Small Anne Cordelia spoil her clothes,” warned Diana
anxiously.

“You needn’t be afraid to trust her with Dora,” said Marilla.  “That
child is more sensible and careful than most of the mothers I’ve known.
She’s really a wonder in some ways.  Not much like that other
harum-scarum I brought up.”

Marilla smiled across her chicken salad at Anne.  It might even be
suspected that she liked the harum-scarum best after all.

“Those twins are real nice children,” said Mrs. Rachel, when she was
sure they were out of earshot.  “Dora is so womanly and helpful, and
Davy is developing into a very smart boy.  He isn’t the holy terror for
mischief he used to be.”

“I never was so distracted in my life as I was the first six months he
was here,” acknowledged Marilla.  “After that I suppose I got used to
him.  He’s taken a great notion to farming lately, and wants me to let
him try running the farm next year.  I may, for Mr. Barry doesn’t think
he’ll want to rent it much longer, and some new arrangement will have
to be made.”

“Well, you certainly have a lovely day for your wedding, Anne,” said
Diana, as she slipped a voluminous apron over her silken array.  “You
couldn’t have had a finer one if you’d ordered it from Eaton’s.”

“Indeed, there’s too much money going out of this Island to that same
Eaton’s,” said Mrs. Lynde indignantly.  She had strong views on the
subject of octopus-like department stores, and never lost an
opportunity of airing them.  “And as for those catalogues of theirs,
they’re the Avonlea girls’ Bible now, that’s what.  They pore over them
on Sundays instead of studying the Holy Scriptures.”

“Well, they’re splendid to amuse children with,” said Diana.  “Fred and
Small Anne look at the pictures by the hour.”

“_I_ amused ten children without the aid of Eaton’s catalogue,” said
Mrs. Rachel severely.

“Come, you two, don’t quarrel over Eaton’s catalogue,” said Anne gaily.
“This is my day of days, you know.  I’m so happy I want every one else
to be happy, too.”

“I’m sure I hope your happiness will last, child,” sighed Mrs. Rachel.
She did hope it truly, and believed it, but she was afraid it was in
the nature of a challenge to Providence to flaunt your happiness too
openly.  Anne, for her own good, must be toned down a trifle.

But it was a happy and beautiful bride who came down the old,
homespun-carpeted stairs that September noon--the first bride of Green
Gables, slender and shining-eyed, in the mist of her maiden veil, with
her arms full of roses.  Gilbert, waiting for her in the hall below,
looked up at her with adoring eyes.  She was his at last, this evasive,
long-sought Anne, won after years of patient waiting.  It was to him
she was coming in the sweet surrender of the bride.  Was he worthy of
her?  Could he make her as happy as he hoped?  If he failed her--if he
could not measure up to her standard of manhood--then, as she held out
her hand, their eyes met and all doubt was swept away in a glad
certainty.  They belonged to each other; and, no matter what life might
hold for them, it could never alter that.  Their happiness was in each
other’s keeping and both were unafraid.

They were married in the sunshine of the old orchard, circled by the
loving and kindly faces of long-familiar friends.  Mr. Allan married
them, and the Reverend Jo made what Mrs. Rachel Lynde afterwards
pronounced to be the “most beautiful wedding prayer” she had ever
heard.  Birds do not often sing in September, but one sang sweetly from
some hidden bough while Gilbert and Anne repeated their deathless vows.
Anne heard it and thrilled to it; Gilbert heard it, and wondered only
that all the birds in the world had not burst into jubilant song; Paul
heard it and later wrote a lyric about it which was one of the most
admired in his first volume of verse; Charlotta the Fourth heard it and
was blissfully sure it meant good luck for her adored Miss Shirley.
The bird sang until the ceremony was ended and then it wound up with
one mad little, glad little trill.  Never had the old gray-green house
among its enfolding orchards known a blither, merrier afternoon.  All
the old jests and quips that must have done duty at weddings since Eden
were served up, and seemed as new and brilliant and mirth-provoking as
if they had never been uttered before.  Laughter and joy had their way;
and when Anne and Gilbert left to catch the Carmody train, with Paul as
driver, the twins were ready with rice and old shoes, in the throwing
of which Charlotta the Fourth and Mr. Harrison bore a valiant part.
Marilla stood at the gate and watched the carriage out of sight down
the long lane with its banks of goldenrod.  Anne turned at its end to
wave her last good-bye.  She was gone--Green Gables was her home no
more; Marilla’s face looked very gray and old as she turned to the
house which Anne had filled for fourteen years, and even in her
absence, with light and life.

But Diana and her small fry, the Echo Lodge people and the Allans, had
stayed to help the two old ladies over the loneliness of the first
evening; and they contrived to have a quietly pleasant little supper
time, sitting long around the table and chatting over all the details
of the day.  While they were sitting there Anne and Gilbert were
alighting from the train at Glen St. Mary.




CHAPTER 5

THE HOME COMING

Dr. David Blythe had sent his horse and buggy to meet them, and the
urchin who had brought it slipped away with a sympathetic grin, leaving
them to the delight of driving alone to their new home through the
radiant evening.

Anne never forgot the loveliness of the view that broke upon them when
they had driven over the hill behind the village.  Her new home could
not yet be seen; but before her lay Four Winds Harbor like a great,
shining mirror of rose and silver.  Far down, she saw its entrance
between the bar of sand dunes on one side and a steep, high, grim, red
sandstone cliff on the other.  Beyond the bar the sea, calm and
austere, dreamed in the afterlight.  The little fishing village,
nestled in the cove where the sand-dunes met the harbor shore, looked
like a great opal in the haze.  The sky over them was like a jewelled
cup from which the dusk was pouring; the air was crisp with the
compelling tang of the sea, and the whole landscape was infused with
the subtleties of a sea evening.  A few dim sails drifted along the
darkening, fir-clad harbor shores.  A bell was ringing from the tower
of a little white church on the far side; mellowly and dreamily sweet,
the chime floated across the water blent with the moan of the sea.  The
great revolving light on the cliff at the channel flashed warm and
golden against the clear northern sky, a trembling, quivering star of
good hope.  Far out along the horizon was the crinkled gray ribbon of a
passing steamer’s smoke.

“Oh, beautiful, beautiful,” murmured Anne.  “I shall love Four Winds,
Gilbert.  Where is our house?”

“We can’t see it yet--the belt of birch running up from that little
cove hides it.  It’s about two miles from Glen St. Mary, and there’s
another mile between it and the light-house.  We won’t have many
neighbors, Anne.  There’s only one house near us and I don’t know who
lives in it.  Shall you be lonely when I’m away?”

“Not with that light and that loveliness for company.  Who lives in
that house, Gilbert?”

“I don’t know.  It doesn’t look--exactly--as if the occupants would be
kindred spirits, Anne, does it?”

The house was a large, substantial affair, painted such a vivid green
that the landscape seemed quite faded by contrast.  There was an
orchard behind it, and a nicely kept lawn before it, but, somehow,
there was a certain bareness about it.  Perhaps its neatness was
responsible for this; the whole establishment, house, barns, orchard,
garden, lawn and lane, was so starkly neat.

“It doesn’t seem probable that anyone with that taste in paint could be
VERY kindred,” acknowledged Anne, “unless it were an accident--like our
blue hall.  I feel certain there are no children there, at least.  It’s
even neater than the old Copp place on the Tory road, and I never
expected to see anything neater than that.”

They had not met anybody on the moist, red road that wound along the
harbor shore.  But just before they came to the belt of birch which hid
their home, Anne saw a girl who was driving a flock of snow-white geese
along the crest of a velvety green hill on the right.  Great, scattered
firs grew along it.  Between their trunks one saw glimpses of yellow
harvest fields, gleams of golden sand-hills, and bits of blue sea.  The
girl was tall and wore a dress of pale blue print.  She walked with a
certain springiness of step and erectness of bearing.  She and her
geese came out of the gate at the foot of the hill as Anne and Gilbert
passed.  She stood with her hand on the fastening of the gate, and
looked steadily at them, with an expression that hardly attained to
interest, but did not descend to curiosity.  It seemed to Anne, for a
fleeting moment, that there was even a veiled hint of hostility in it.
But it was the girl’s beauty which made Anne give a little gasp--a
beauty so marked that it must have attracted attention anywhere.  She
was hatless, but heavy braids of burnished hair, the hue of ripe wheat,
were twisted about her head like a coronet; her eyes were blue and
star-like; her figure, in its plain print gown, was magnificent; and
her lips were as crimson as the bunch of blood-red poppies she wore at
her belt.

“Gilbert, who is the girl we have just passed?” asked Anne, in a low
voice.

“I didn’t notice any girl,” said Gilbert, who had eyes only for his
bride.

“She was standing by that gate--no, don’t look back.  She is still
watching us.  I never saw such a beautiful face.”

“I don’t remember seeing any very handsome girls while I was here.
There are some pretty girls up at the Glen, but I hardly think they
could be called beautiful.”

“This girl is.  You can’t have seen her, or you would remember her.
Nobody could forget her.  I never saw such a face except in pictures.
And her hair!  It made me think of Browning’s ‘cord of gold’ and
‘gorgeous snake’!”

“Probably she’s some visitor in Four Winds--likely some one from that
big summer hotel over the harbor.”

“She wore a white apron and she was driving geese.”

“She might do that for amusement.  Look, Anne--there’s our house.”

Anne looked and forgot for a time the girl with the splendid, resentful
eyes.  The first glimpse of her new home was a delight to eye and
spirit--it looked so like a big, creamy seashell stranded on the harbor
shore.  The rows of tall Lombardy poplars down its lane stood out in
stately, purple silhouette against the sky.  Behind it, sheltering its
garden from the too keen breath of sea winds, was a cloudy fir wood, in
which the winds might make all kinds of weird and haunting music.  Like
all woods, it seemed to be holding and enfolding secrets in its
recesses,--secrets whose charm is only to be won by entering in and
patiently seeking.  Outwardly, dark green arms keep them inviolate from
curious or indifferent eyes.

The night winds were beginning their wild dances beyond the bar and the
fishing hamlet across the harbor was gemmed with lights as Anne and
Gilbert drove up the poplar lane.  The door of the little house opened,
and a warm glow of firelight flickered out into the dusk.  Gilbert
lifted Anne from the buggy and led her into the garden, through the
little gate between the ruddy-tipped firs, up the trim, red path to the
sandstone step.

“Welcome home,” he whispered, and hand in hand they stepped over the
threshold of their house of dreams.




CHAPTER 6

CAPTAIN JIM

“Old Doctor Dave” and “Mrs. Doctor Dave” had come down to the little
house to greet the bride and groom.  Doctor Dave was a big, jolly,
white-whiskered old fellow, and Mrs. Doctor was a trim rosy-cheeked,
silver-haired little lady who took Anne at once to her heart, literally
and figuratively.

“I’m so glad to see you, dear.  You must be real tired.  We’ve got a
bite of supper ready, and Captain Jim brought up some trout for you.
Captain Jim--where are you?  Oh, he’s slipped out to see to the horse,
I suppose.  Come upstairs and take your things off.”

Anne looked about her with bright, appreciative eyes as she followed
Mrs. Doctor Dave upstairs.  She liked the appearance of her new home
very much.  It seemed to have the atmosphere of Green Gables and the
flavor of her old traditions.

“I think I would have found Miss Elizabeth Russell a ‘kindred spirit,’”
she murmured when she was alone in her room.  There were two windows in
it; the dormer one looked out on the lower harbor and the sand-bar and
the Four Winds light.

    “A magic casement opening on the foam
    Of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn,”

quoted Anne softly.  The gable window gave a view of a little
harvest-hued valley through which a brook ran.  Half a mile up the
brook was the only house in sight--an old, rambling, gray one
surrounded by huge willows through which its windows peered, like shy,
seeking eyes, into the dusk.  Anne wondered who lived there; they would
be her nearest neighbors and she hoped they would be nice.  She
suddenly found herself thinking of the beautiful girl with the white
geese.

“Gilbert thought she didn’t belong here,” mused Anne, “but I feel sure
she does.  There was something about her that made her part of the sea
and the sky and the harbor.  Four Winds is in her blood.”

When Anne went downstairs Gilbert was standing before the fireplace
talking to a stranger.  Both turned as Anne entered.

“Anne, this is Captain Boyd.  Captain Boyd, my wife.”

It was the first time Gilbert had said “my wife” to anybody but Anne,
and he narrowly escaped bursting with the pride of it.  The old captain
held out a sinewy hand to Anne; they smiled at each other and were
friends from that moment.  Kindred spirit flashed recognition to
kindred spirit.

“I’m right down pleased to meet you, Mistress Blythe; and I hope you’ll
be as happy as the first bride was who came here.  I can’t wish you no
better than THAT.  But your husband doesn’t introduce me jest exactly
right.  ‘Captain Jim’ is my week-a-day name and you might as well begin
as you’re sartain to end up--calling me that.  You sartainly are a nice
little bride, Mistress Blythe.  Looking at you sorter makes me feel
that I’ve jest been married myself.”

Amid the laughter that followed Mrs. Doctor Dave urged Captain Jim to
stay and have supper with them.

“Thank you kindly.  ’Twill be a real treat, Mistress Doctor.  I mostly
has to eat my meals alone, with the reflection of my ugly old phiz in a
looking-glass opposite for company.  ’Tisn’t often I have a chance to
sit down with two such sweet, purty ladies.”

Captain Jim’s compliments may look very bald on paper, but he paid them
with such a gracious, gentle deference of tone and look that the woman
upon whom they were bestowed felt that she was being offered a queen’s
tribute in a kingly fashion.

Captain Jim was a high-souled, simple-minded old man, with eternal
youth in his eyes and heart.  He had a tall, rather ungainly figure,
somewhat stooped, yet suggestive of great strength and endurance; a
clean-shaven face deeply lined and bronzed; a thick mane of iron-gray
hair falling quite to his shoulders, and a pair of remarkably blue,
deep-set eyes, which sometimes twinkled and sometimes dreamed, and
sometimes looked out seaward with a wistful quest in them, as of one
seeking something precious and lost.  Anne was to learn one day what it
was for which Captain Jim looked.

It could not be denied that Captain Jim was a homely man.  His spare
jaws, rugged mouth, and square brow were not fashioned on the lines of
beauty; and he had passed through many hardships and sorrows which had
marked his body as well as his soul; but though at first sight Anne
thought him plain she never thought anything more about it--the spirit
shining through that rugged tenement beautified it so wholly.

They gathered gaily around the supper table.  The hearth fire banished
the chill of the September evening, but the window of the dining room
was open and sea breezes entered at their own sweet will.  The view was
magnificent, taking in the harbor and the sweep of low, purple hills
beyond.  The table was heaped with Mrs. Doctor’s delicacies but the
piece de resistance was undoubtedly the big platter of sea trout.

“Thought they’d be sorter tasty after travelling,” said Captain Jim.
“They’re fresh as trout can be, Mistress Blythe.  Two hours ago they
were swimming in the Glen Pond.”

“Who is attending to the light tonight, Captain Jim?” asked Doctor Dave.

“Nephew Alec.  He understands it as well as I do.  Well, now, I’m real
glad you asked me to stay to supper.  I’m proper hungry--didn’t have
much of a dinner today.”

“I believe you half starve yourself most of the time down at that
light,” said Mrs. Doctor Dave severely.  “You won’t take the trouble to
get up a decent meal.”

“Oh, I do, Mistress Doctor, I do,” protested Captain Jim.  “Why, I live
like a king gen’rally.  Last night I was up to the Glen and took home
two pounds of steak.  I meant to have a spanking good dinner today.”

“And what happened to the steak?” asked Mrs. Doctor Dave.  “Did you
lose it on the way home?”

“No.”  Captain Jim looked sheepish.  “Just at bedtime a poor, ornery
sort of dog came along and asked for a night’s lodging.  Guess he
belonged to some of the fishermen ’long shore.  I couldn’t turn the
poor cur out--he had a sore foot.  So I shut him in the porch, with an
old bag to lie on, and went to bed.  But somehow I couldn’t sleep.
Come to think it over, I sorter remembered that the dog looked hungry.”

“And you got up and gave him that steak--ALL that steak,” said Mrs.
Doctor Dave, with a kind of triumphant reproof.

“Well, there wasn’t anything else TO give him,” said Captain Jim
deprecatingly.  “Nothing a dog’d care for, that is.  I reckon he WAS
hungry, for he made about two bites of it.  I had a fine sleep the rest
of the night but my dinner had to be sorter scanty--potatoes and point,
as you might say.  The dog, he lit out for home this morning.  I reckon
HE weren’t a vegetarian.”

“The idea of starving yourself for a worthless dog!” sniffed Mrs.
Doctor.

“You don’t know but he may be worth a lot to somebody,” protested
Captain Jim.  “He didn’t LOOK of much account, but you can’t go by
looks in jedging a dog.  Like meself, he might be a real beauty inside.
The First Mate didn’t approve of him, I’ll allow.  His language was
right down forcible. But the First Mate is prejudiced.  No use in
taking a cat’s opinion of a dog.  ‘Tennyrate, I lost my dinner, so this
nice spread in this dee-lightful company is real pleasant. It’s a great
thing to have good neighbors.”

“Who lives in the house among the willows up the brook?” asked Anne.

“Mrs. Dick Moore,” said Captain Jim--“and her husband,” he added, as if
by way of an afterthought.

Anne smiled, and deduced a mental picture of Mrs. Dick Moore from
Captain Jim’s way of putting it; evidently a second Mrs. Rachel Lynde.

“You haven’t many neighbors, Mistress Blythe,” Captain Jim went on.
“This side of the harbor is mighty thinly settled.  Most of the land
belongs to Mr. Howard up yander past the Glen, and he rents it out for
pasture.  The other side of the harbor, now, is thick with
folks--’specially MacAllisters.  There’s a whole colony of MacAllisters
you can’t throw a stone but you hit one.  I was talking to old Leon
Blacquiere the other day.  He’s been working on the harbor all summer.
‘Dey’re nearly all MacAllisters over thar,’ he told me.  ‘Dare’s Neil
MacAllister and Sandy MacAllister and William MacAllister and Alec
MacAllister and Angus MacAllister--and I believe dare’s de Devil
MacAllister.’”

“There are nearly as many Elliotts and Crawfords,” said Doctor Dave,
after the laughter had subsided.  “You know, Gilbert, we folk on this
side of Four Winds have an old saying--‘From the conceit of the
Elliotts, the pride of the MacAllisters, and the vainglory of the
Crawfords, good Lord deliver us.’”

“There’s a plenty of fine people among them, though,” said Captain Jim.
“I sailed with William Crawford for many a year, and for courage and
endurance and truth that man hadn’t an equal.  They’ve got brains over
on that side of Four Winds.  Mebbe that’s why this side is sorter
inclined to pick on ’em.  Strange, ain’t it, how folks seem to resent
anyone being born a mite cleverer than they be.”

Doctor Dave, who had a forty years’ feud with the over-harbor people,
laughed and subsided.

“Who lives in that brilliant emerald house about half a mile up the
road?” asked Gilbert.

Captain Jim smiled delightedly.

“Miss Cornelia Bryant.  She’ll likely be over to see you soon, seeing
you’re Presbyterians.  If you were Methodists she wouldn’t come at all.
Cornelia has a holy horror of Methodists.”

“She’s quite a character,” chuckled Doctor Dave.  “A most inveterate
man-hater!”

“Sour grapes?” queried Gilbert, laughing.

“No, ’tisn’t sour grapes,” answered Captain Jim seriously.  “Cornelia
could have had her pick when she was young.  Even yet she’s only to say
the word to see the old widowers jump.  She jest seems to have been
born with a sort of chronic spite agin men and Methodists.  She’s got
the bitterest tongue and the kindest heart in Four Winds.  Wherever
there’s any trouble, that woman is there, doing everything to help in
the tenderest way.  She never says a harsh word about another woman,
and if she likes to card us poor scalawags of men down I reckon our
tough old hides can stand it.”

“She always speaks well of you, Captain Jim,” said Mrs. Doctor.

“Yes, I’m afraid so.  I don’t half like it.  It makes me feel as if
there must be something sorter unnateral about me.”




CHAPTER 7

THE SCHOOLMASTER’S BRIDE

“Who was the first bride who came to this house, Captain Jim?” Anne
asked, as they sat around the fireplace after supper.

“Was she a part of the story I’ve heard was connected with this house?”
asked Gilbert.  “Somebody told me you could tell it, Captain Jim.”

“Well, yes, I know it.  I reckon I’m the only person living in Four
Winds now that can remember the schoolmaster’s bride as she was when
she come to the Island.  She’s been dead this thirty year, but she was
one of them women you never forget.”

“Tell us the story,” pleaded Anne.  “I want to find out all about the
women who have lived in this house before me.”

“Well, there’s jest been three--Elizabeth Russell, and Mrs. Ned
Russell, and the schoolmaster’s bride.  Elizabeth Russell was a nice,
clever little critter, and Mrs. Ned was a nice woman, too.  But they
weren’t ever like the schoolmaster’s bride.

“The schoolmaster’s name was John Selwyn.  He came out from the Old
Country to teach school at the Glen when I was a boy of sixteen.  He
wasn’t much like the usual run of derelicts who used to come out to
P.E.I. to teach school in them days.  Most of them were clever, drunken
critters who taught the children the three R’s when they were sober,
and lambasted them when they wasn’t.  But John Selwyn was a fine,
handsome young fellow.  He boarded at my father’s, and he and me were
cronies, though he was ten years older’n me.  We read and walked and
talked a heap together.  He knew about all the poetry that was ever
written, I reckon, and he used to quote it to me along shore in the
evenings.  Dad thought it an awful waste of time, but he sorter endured
it, hoping it’d put me off the notion of going to sea.  Well, nothing
could do THAT--mother come of a race of sea-going folk and it was born
in me.  But I loved to hear John read and recite.  It’s almost sixty
years ago, but I could repeat yards of poetry I learned from him.
Nearly sixty years!”

Captain Jim was silent for a space, gazing into the glowing fire in a
quest of the bygones.  Then, with a sigh, he resumed his story.

“I remember one spring evening I met him on the sand-hills.  He looked
sorter uplifted--jest like you did, Dr. Blythe, when you brought
Mistress Blythe in tonight.  I thought of him the minute I seen you.
And he told me that he had a sweetheart back home and that she was
coming out to him.  I wasn’t more’n half pleased, ornery young lump of
selfishness that I was; I thought he wouldn’t be as much my friend
after she came.  But I’d enough decency not to let him see it.  He told
me all about her.  Her name was Persis Leigh, and she would have come
out with him if it hadn’t been for her old uncle.  He was sick, and
he’d looked after her when her parents died and she wouldn’t leave him.
And now he was dead and she was coming out to marry John Selwyn.
’Twasn’t no easy journey for a woman in them days.  There weren’t no
steamers, you must ricollect.

“‘When do you expect her?’ says I.

“‘She sails on the Royal William, the 20th of June,’ says he, ‘and so
she should be here by mid-July.  I must set Carpenter Johnson to
building me a home for her.  Her letter come today.  I know before I
opened it that it had good news for me.  I saw her a few nights ago.’

“I didn’t understand him, and then he explained--though I didn’t
understand THAT much better.  He said he had a gift--or a curse.  Them
was his words, Mistress Blythe--a gift or a curse.  He didn’t know
which it was.  He said a great-great-grandmother of his had had it, and
they burned her for a witch on account of it.  He said queer
spells--trances, I think was the name he give ’em--come over him now
and again.  Are there such things, Doctor?”

“There are people who are certainly subject to trances,” answered
Gilbert.  “The matter is more in the line of psychical research than
medical.  What were the trances of this John Selwyn like?”

“Like dreams,” said the old Doctor skeptically.

“He said he could see things in them,” said Captain Jim slowly.

“Mind you, I’m telling you jest what HE said--things that were
happening--things that were GOING to happen.  He said they were
sometimes a comfort to him and sometimes a horror.  Four nights before
this he’d been in one--went into it while he was sitting looking at the
fire.  And he saw an old room he knew well in England, and Persis Leigh
in it, holding out her hands to him and looking glad and happy.  So he
knew he was going to hear good news of her.”

“A dream--a dream,” scoffed the old Doctor.

“Likely--likely,” conceded Captain Jim.  “That’s what _I_ said to him
at the time.  It was a vast more comfortable to think so.  I didn’t
like the idea of him seeing things like that--it was real uncanny.

“‘No,’ says he, ‘I didn’t dream it.  But we won’t talk of this again.
You won’t be so much my friend if you think much about it.’

“I told him nothing could make me any less his friend.  But he jest
shook his head and says, says he:

“‘Lad, I know.  I’ve lost friends before because of this.  I don’t
blame them.  There are times when I feel hardly friendly to myself
because of it.  Such a power has a bit of divinity in it--whether of a
good or an evil divinity who shall say?  And we mortals all shrink from
too close contact with God or devil.’

“Them was his words.  I remember them as if ’twas yesterday, though I
didn’t know jest what he meant.  What do you s’pose he DID mean,
doctor?”

“I doubt if he knew what he meant himself,” said Doctor Dave testily.

“I think I understand,” whispered Anne.  She was listening in her old
attitude of clasped lips and shining eyes.  Captain Jim treated himself
to an admiring smile before he went on with his story.

“Well, purty soon all the Glen and Four Winds people knew the
schoolmaster’s bride was coming, and they were all glad because they
thought so much of him.  And everybody took an interest in his new
house--THIS house.  He picked this site for it, because you could see
the harbor and hear the sea from it.  He made the garden out there for
his bride, but he didn’t plant the Lombardies.  Mrs. Ned Russell
planted THEM.  But there’s a double row of rose-bushes in the garden
that the little girls who went to the Glen school set out there for the
schoolmaster’s bride.  He said they were pink for her cheeks and white
for her brow and red for her lips.  He’d quoted poetry so much that he
sorter got into the habit of talking it, too, I reckon.

“Almost everybody sent him some little present to help out the
furnishing of the house.  When the Russells came into it they were
well-to-do and furnished it real handsome, as you can see; but the
first furniture that went into it was plain enough.  This little house
was rich in love, though.  The women sent in quilts and tablecloths and
towels, and one man made a chest for her, and another a table and so
on.  Even blind old Aunt Margaret Boyd wove a little basket for her out
of the sweet-scented sand-hill grass.  The schoolmaster’s wife used it
for years to keep her handkerchiefs in.

“Well, at last everything was ready--even to the logs in the big
fireplace ready for lighting.  ’Twasn’t exactly THIS fireplace, though
’twas in the same place.  Miss Elizabeth had this put in when she made
the house over fifteen years ago.  It was a big, old-fashioned
fireplace where you could have roasted an ox.  Many’s the time I’ve sat
here and spun yarns, same’s I’m doing tonight.”

Again there was a silence, while Captain Jim kept a passing tryst with
visitants Anne and Gilbert could not see--the folks who had sat with
him around that fireplace in the vanished years, with mirth and bridal
joy shining in eyes long since closed forever under churchyard sod or
heaving leagues of sea.  Here on olden nights children had tossed
laughter lightly to and fro.  Here on winter evenings friends had
gathered.  Dance and music and jest had been here.  Here youths and
maidens had dreamed.  For Captain Jim the little house was tenanted
with shapes entreating remembrance.

“It was the first of July when the house was finished.  The
schoolmaster began to count the days then.  We used to see him walking
along the shore, and we’d say to each other, ‘She’ll soon be with him
now.’

“She was expected the middle of July, but she didn’t come then.  Nobody
felt anxious.  Vessels were often delayed for days and mebbe weeks.
The Royal William was a week overdue--and then two--and then three.
And at last we began to be frightened, and it got worse and worse.
Fin’lly I couldn’t bear to look into John Selwyn’s eyes.  D’ye know,
Mistress Blythe”--Captain Jim lowered his voice--“I used to think that
they looked just like what his old great-great-grandmother’s must have
been when they were burning her to death.  He never said much but he
taught school like a man in a dream and then hurried to the shore.
Many a night he walked there from dark to dawn.  People said he was
losing his mind.  Everybody had given up hope--the Royal William was
eight weeks overdue.  It was the middle of September and the
schoolmaster’s bride hadn’t come--never would come, we thought.

“There was a big storm then that lasted three days, and on the evening
after it died away I went to the shore.  I found the schoolmaster
there, leaning with his arms folded against a big rock, gazing out to
sea.

“I spoke to him but he didn’t answer.  His eyes seemed to be looking at
something I couldn’t see.  His face was set, like a dead man’s.

“‘John--John,’ I called out--jest like that--jest like a frightened
child, ‘wake up--wake up.’

“That strange, awful look seemed to sorter fade out of his eyes.

“He turned his head and looked at me.  I’ve never forgot his
face--never will forget it till I ships for my last voyage.

“‘All is well, lad,’ he says.  ‘I’ve seen the Royal William coming
around East Point.  She will be here by dawn.  Tomorrow night I shall
sit with my bride by my own hearth-fire.’

“Do you think he did see it?” demanded Captain Jim abruptly.

“God knows,” said Gilbert softly.  “Great love and great pain might
compass we know not what marvels.”

“I am sure he did see it,” said Anne earnestly.

“Fol-de-rol,” said Doctor Dave, but he spoke with less conviction than
usual.

“Because, you know,” said Captain Jim solemnly, “the Royal William came
into Four Winds Harbor at daylight the next morning.

“Every soul in the Glen and along the shore was at the old wharf to
meet her.  The schoolmaster had been watching there all night.  How we
cheered as she sailed up the channel.”

Captain Jim’s eyes were shining.  They were looking at the Four Winds
Harbor of sixty years agone, with a battered old ship sailing through
the sunrise splendor.

“And Persis Leigh was on board?” asked Anne.

“Yes--her and the captain’s wife.  They’d had an awful passage--storm
after storm--and their provisions give out, too.  But there they were
at last.  When Persis Leigh stepped onto the old wharf John Selwyn took
her in his arms--and folks stopped cheering and begun to cry.  I cried
myself, though ’twas years, mind you, afore I’d admit it.  Ain’t it
funny how ashamed boys are of tears?”

“Was Persis Leigh beautiful?” asked Anne.

“Well, I don’t know that you’d call her beautiful
exactly--I--don’t--know,” said Captain Jim slowly.  “Somehow, you never
got so far along as to wonder if she was handsome or not.  It jest
didn’t matter.  There was something so sweet and winsome about her that
you had to love her, that was all.  But she was pleasant to look
at--big, clear, hazel eyes and heaps of glossy brown hair, and an
English skin.  John and her were married at our house that night at
early candle-lighting; everybody from far and near was there to see it
and we all brought them down here afterwards.  Mistress Selwyn lighted
the fire, and we went away and left them sitting here, jest as John had
seen in that vision of his.  A strange thing--a strange thing!  But
I’ve seen a turrible lot of strange things in my time.”

Captain Jim shook his head sagely.

“It’s a dear story,” said Anne, feeling that for once she had got
enough romance to satisfy her.  “How long did they live here?”

“Fifteen years.  I ran off to sea soon after they were married, like
the young scalawag I was.  But every time I come back from a voyage I’d
head for here, even before I went home, and tell Mistress Selwyn all
about it.  Fifteen happy years!  They had a sort of talent for
happiness, them two.  Some folks are like that, if you’ve noticed.
They COULDN’T be unhappy for long, no matter what happened.  They
quarrelled once or twice, for they was both high-sperrited.  But
Mistress Selwyn says to me once, says she, laughing in that pretty way
of hers, ‘I felt dreadful when John and I quarrelled, but underneath it
all I was very happy because I had such a nice husband to quarrel with
and make it up with.’  Then they moved to Charlottetown, and Ned
Russell bought this house and brought his bride here.  They were a gay
young pair, as I remember them.  Miss Elizabeth Russell was Alec’s
sister.  She came to live with them a year or so later, and she was a
creature of mirth, too.  The walls of this house must be sorter SOAKED
with laughing and good times.  You’re the third bride I’ve seen come
here, Mistress Blythe--and the handsomest.”

Captain Jim contrived to give his sunflower compliment the delicacy of
a violet, and Anne wore it proudly.  She was looking her best that
night, with the bridal rose on her cheeks and the love-light in her
eyes; even gruff old Doctor Dave gave her an approving glance, and told
his wife, as they drove home together, that that red-headed wife of the
boy’s was something of a beauty.

“I must be getting back to the light,” announced Captain Jim.  “I’ve
enj’yed this evening something tremenjus.”

“You must come often to see us,” said Anne.

“I wonder if you’d give that invitation if you knew how likely I’ll be
to accept it,” Captain Jim remarked whimsically.

“Which is another way of saying you wonder if I mean it,” smiled Anne.
“I do, ‘cross my heart,’ as we used to say at school.”

“Then I’ll come.  You’re likely to be pestered with me at any hour.
And I’ll be proud to have you drop down and visit me now and then, too.
Gin’rally I haven’t anyone to talk to but the First Mate, bless his
sociable heart.  He’s a mighty good listener, and has forgot more’n any
MacAllister of them all ever knew, but he isn’t much of a
conversationalist.  You’re young and I’m old, but our souls are about
the same age, I reckon.  We both belong to the race that knows Joseph,
as Cornelia Bryant would say.”

“The race that knows Joseph?” puzzled Anne.

“Yes.  Cornelia divides all the folks in the world into two kinds--the
race that knows Joseph and the race that don’t.  If a person sorter
sees eye to eye with you, and has pretty much the same ideas about
things, and the same taste in jokes--why, then he belongs to the race
that knows Joseph.”

“Oh, I understand,” exclaimed Anne, light breaking in upon her.

“It’s what I used to call--and still call in quotation marks ‘kindred
spirits.’”

“Jest so--jest so,” agreed Captain Jim.  “We’re it, whatever IT is.
When you come in tonight, Mistress Blythe, I says to myself, says I,
‘Yes, she’s of the race that knows Joseph.’  And mighty glad I was, for
if it wasn’t so we couldn’t have had any real satisfaction in each
other’s company.  The race that knows Joseph is the salt of the airth,
I reckon.”

The moon had just risen when Anne and Gilbert went to the door with
their guests.  Four Winds Harbor was beginning to be a thing of dream
and glamour and enchantment--a spellbound haven where no tempest might
ever ravin.  The Lombardies down the lane, tall and sombre as the
priestly forms of some mystic band, were tipped with silver.

“Always liked Lombardies,” said Captain Jim, waving a long arm at them.
“They’re the trees of princesses.  They’re out of fashion now.  Folks
complain that they die at the top and get ragged-looking.  So they
do--so they do, if you don’t risk your neck every spring climbing up a
light ladder to trim them out.  I always did it for Miss Elizabeth, so
her Lombardies never got out-at-elbows.  She was especially fond of
them.  She liked their dignity and stand-offishness.  THEY don’t hobnob
with every Tom, Dick and Harry.  If it’s maples for company, Mistress
Blythe, it’s Lombardies for society.”

“What a beautiful night,” said Mrs. Doctor Dave, as she climbed into
the Doctor’s buggy.

“Most nights are beautiful,” said Captain Jim.  “But I ’low that
moonlight over Four Winds makes me sorter wonder what’s left for
heaven.  The moon’s a great friend of mine, Mistress Blythe.  I’ve
loved her ever since I can remember.  When I was a little chap of eight
I fell asleep in the garden one evening and wasn’t missed.  I woke up
along in the night and I was most scared to death.  What shadows and
queer noises there was!  I dursn’t move.  Jest crouched there quaking,
poor small mite.  Seemed ’s if there weren’t anyone in the world but
meself and it was mighty big.  Then all at once I saw the moon looking
down at me through the apple boughs, jest like an old friend.  I was
comforted right off.  Got up and walked to the house as brave as a
lion, looking at her.  Many’s the night I’ve watched her from the deck
of my vessel, on seas far away from here.  Why don’t you folks tell me
to take in the slack of my jaw and go home?”

The laughter of the goodnights died away.  Anne and Gilbert walked hand
in hand around their garden.  The brook that ran across the corner
dimpled pellucidly in the shadows of the birches.  The poppies along
its banks were like shallow cups of moonlight.  Flowers that had been
planted by the hands of the schoolmaster’s bride flung their sweetness
on the shadowy air, like the beauty and blessing of sacred yesterdays.
Anne paused in the gloom to gather a spray.

“I love to smell flowers in the dark,” she said.  “You get hold of
their soul then.  Oh, Gilbert, this little house is all I’ve dreamed
it.  And I’m so glad that we are not the first who have kept bridal
tryst here!”




CHAPTER 8

MISS CORNELIA BRYANT COMES TO CALL

That September was a month of golden mists and purple hazes at Four
Winds Harbor--a month of sun-steeped days and of nights that were
swimming in moonlight, or pulsating with stars.  No storm marred it, no
rough wind blew.  Anne and Gilbert put their nest in order, rambled on
the shores, sailed on the harbor, drove about Four Winds and the Glen,
or through the ferny, sequestered roads of the woods around the harbor
head; in short, had such a honeymoon as any lovers in the world might
have envied them.

“If life were to stop short just now it would still have been richly
worth while, just for the sake of these past four weeks, wouldn’t it?”
said Anne.  “I don’t suppose we will ever have four such perfect weeks
again--but we’ve HAD them.  Everything--wind, weather, folks, house of
dreams--has conspired to make our honeymoon delightful.  There hasn’t
even been a rainy day since we came here.”

“And we haven’t quarrelled once,” teased Gilbert.

“Well, ‘that’s a pleasure all the greater for being deferred,’” quoted
Anne.  “I’m so glad we decided to spend our honeymoon here.  Our
memories of it will always belong here, in our house of dreams, instead
of being scattered about in strange places.”

There was a certain tang of romance and adventure in the atmosphere of
their new home which Anne had never found in Avonlea.  There, although
she had lived in sight of the sea, it had not entered intimately into
her life.  In Four Winds it surrounded her and called to her
constantly.  From every window of her new home she saw some varying
aspect of it.  Its haunting murmur was ever in her ears.  Vessels
sailed up the harbor every day to the wharf at the Glen, or sailed out
again through the sunset, bound for ports that might be half way round
the globe.  Fishing boats went white-winged down the channel in the
mornings, and returned laden in the evenings.  Sailors and fisher-folk
travelled the red, winding harbor roads, light-hearted and content.
There was always a certain sense of things going to happen--of
adventures and farings-forth.  The ways of Four Winds were less staid
and settled and grooved than those of Avonlea; winds of change blew
over them; the sea called ever to the dwellers on shore, and even those
who might not answer its call felt the thrill and unrest and mystery
and possibilities of it.

“I understand now why some men must go to sea,” said Anne.  “That
desire which comes to us all at times--‘to sail beyond the bourne of
sunset’--must be very imperious when it is born in you.  I don’t wonder
Captain Jim ran away because of it.  I never see a ship sailing out of
the channel, or a gull soaring over the sand-bar, without wishing I
were on board the ship or had wings, not like a dove ‘to fly away and
be at rest,’ but like a gull, to sweep out into the very heart of a
storm.”

“You’ll stay right here with me, Anne-girl,” said Gilbert lazily.  “I
won’t have you flying away from me into the hearts of storms.”

They were sitting on their red sand-stone doorstep in the late
afternoon.  Great tranquillities were all about them in land and sea
and sky.  Silvery gulls were soaring over them.  The horizons were
laced with long trails of frail, pinkish clouds.  The hushed air was
threaded with a murmurous refrain of minstrel winds and waves.  Pale
asters were blowing in the sere and misty meadows between them and the
harbor.

“Doctors who have to be up all night waiting on sick folk don’t feel
very adventurous, I suppose,” Anne said indulgently.  “If you had had a
good sleep last night, Gilbert, you’d be as ready as I am for a flight
of imagination.”

“I did good work last night, Anne,” said Gilbert quietly.  “Under God,
I saved a life.  This is the first time I could ever really claim that.
In other cases I may have helped; but, Anne, if I had not stayed at
Allonby’s last night and fought death hand to hand, that woman would
have died before morning.  I tried an experiment that was certainly
never tried in Four Winds before.  I doubt if it was ever tried
anywhere before outside of a hospital.  It was a new thing in Kingsport
hospital last winter.  I could never have dared try it here if I had
not been absolutely certain that there was no other chance.  I risked
it--and it succeeded.  As a result, a good wife and mother is saved for
long years of happiness and usefulness.  As I drove home this morning,
while the sun was rising over the harbor, I thanked God that I had
chosen the profession I did.  I had fought a good fight and won--think
of it, Anne, WON, against the Great Destroyer.  It’s what I dreamed of
doing long ago when we talked together of what we wanted to do in life.
That dream of mine came true this morning.”

“Was that the only one of your dreams that has come true?” asked Anne,
who knew perfectly well what the substance of his answer would be, but
wanted to hear it again.

“YOU know, Anne-girl,” said Gilbert, smiling into her eyes.  At that
moment there were certainly two perfectly happy people sitting on the
doorstep of a little white house on the Four Winds Harbor shore.

Presently Gilbert said, with a change of tone, “Do I or do I not see a
full-rigged ship sailing up our lane?”

Anne looked and sprang up.

“That must be either Miss Cornelia Bryant or Mrs. Moore coming to
call,” she said.

“I’m going into the office, and if it is Miss Cornelia I warn you that
I’ll eavesdrop,” said Gilbert.  “From all I’ve heard regarding Miss
Cornelia I conclude that her conversation will not be dull, to say the
least.”

“It may be Mrs. Moore.”

“I don’t think Mrs. Moore is built on those lines.  I saw her working
in her garden the other day, and, though I was too far away to see
clearly, I thought she was rather slender.  She doesn’t seem very
socially inclined when she has never called on you yet, although she’s
your nearest neighbor.”

“She can’t be like Mrs. Lynde, after all, or curiosity would have
brought her,” said Anne.  “This caller is, I think, Miss Cornelia.”

Miss Cornelia it was; moreover, Miss Cornelia had not come to make any
brief and fashionable wedding call.  She had her work under her arm in
a substantial parcel, and when Anne asked her to stay she promptly took
off her capacious sun-hat, which had been held on her head, despite
irreverent September breezes, by a tight elastic band under her hard
little knob of fair hair.  No hat pins for Miss Cornelia, an it please
ye!  Elastic bands had been good enough for her mother and they were
good enough for HER.  She had a fresh, round, pink-and-white face, and
jolly brown eyes.  She did not look in the least like the traditional
old maid, and there was something in her expression which won Anne
instantly.  With her old instinctive quickness to discern kindred
spirits she knew she was going to like Miss Cornelia, in spite of
uncertain oddities of opinion, and certain oddities of attire.

Nobody but Miss Cornelia would have come to make a call arrayed in a
striped blue-and-white apron and a wrapper of chocolate print, with a
design of huge, pink roses scattered over it.  And nobody but Miss
Cornelia could have looked dignified and suitably garbed in it.  Had
Miss Cornelia been entering a palace to call on a prince’s bride, she
would have been just as dignified and just as wholly mistress of the
situation.  She would have trailed her rose-spattered flounce over the
marble floors just as unconcernedly, and she would have proceeded just
as calmly to disabuse the mind of the princess of any idea that the
possession of a mere man, be he prince or peasant, was anything to brag
of.

“I’ve brought my work, Mrs. Blythe, dearie,” she remarked, unrolling
some dainty material.  “I’m in a hurry to get this done, and there
isn’t any time to lose.”

Anne looked in some surprise at the white garment spread over Miss
Cornelia’s ample lap.  It was certainly a baby’s dress, and it was most
beautifully made, with tiny frills and tucks.  Miss Cornelia adjusted
her glasses and fell to embroidering with exquisite stitches.

“This is for Mrs. Fred Proctor up at the Glen,” she announced.  “She’s
expecting her eighth baby any day now, and not a stitch has she ready
for it.  The other seven have wore out all she made for the first, and
she’s never had time or strength or spirit to make any more.  That
woman is a martyr, Mrs. Blythe, believe ME.  When she married Fred
Proctor _I_ knew how it would turn out.  He was one of your wicked,
fascinating men.  After he got married he left off being fascinating
and just kept on being wicked.  He drinks and he neglects his family.
Isn’t that like a man?  I don’t know how Mrs. Proctor would ever keep
her children decently clothed if her neighbors didn’t help her out.”

As Anne was afterwards to learn, Miss Cornelia was the only neighbor
who troubled herself much about the decency of the young Proctors.

“When I heard this eighth baby was coming I decided to make some things
for it,” Miss Cornelia went on.  “This is the last and I want to finish
it today.”

“It’s certainly very pretty,” said Anne.  “I’ll get my sewing and we’ll
have a little thimble party of two.  You are a beautiful sewer, Miss
Bryant.”

“Yes, I’m the best sewer in these parts,” said Miss Cornelia in a
matter-of-fact tone.  “I ought to be!  Lord, I’ve done more of it than
if I’d had a hundred children of my own, believe ME!  I s’pose I’m a
fool, to be putting hand embroidery on this dress for an eighth baby.
But, Lord, Mrs. Blythe, dearie, it isn’t to blame for being the eighth,
and I kind of wished it to have one real pretty dress, just as if it
WAS wanted.  Nobody’s wanting the poor mite--so I put some extra fuss
on its little things just on that account.”

“Any baby might be proud of that dress,” said Anne, feeling still more
strongly that she was going to like Miss Cornelia.

“I s’pose you’ve been thinking I was never coming to call on you,”
resumed Miss Cornelia.  “But this is harvest month, you know, and I’ve
been busy--and a lot of extra hands hanging round, eating more’n they
work, just like the men.  I’d have come yesterday, but I went to Mrs.
Roderick MacAllister’s funeral.  At first I thought my head was aching
so badly I couldn’t enjoy myself if I did go.  But she was a hundred
years old, and I’d always promised myself that I’d go to her funeral.”

“Was it a successful function?” asked Anne, noticing that the office
door was ajar.

“What’s that?  Oh, yes, it was a tremendous funeral.  She had a very
large connection.  There was over one hundred and twenty carriages in
the procession.  There was one or two funny things happened.  I thought
that die I would to see old Joe Bradshaw, who is an infidel and never
darkens the door of a church, singing ‘Safe in the Arms of Jesus’ with
great gusto and fervor.  He glories in singing--that’s why he never
misses a funeral.  Poor Mrs. Bradshaw didn’t look much like
singing--all wore out slaving.  Old Joe starts out once in a while to
buy her a present and brings home some new kind of farm machinery.
Isn’t that like a man?  But what else would you expect of a man who
never goes to church, even a Methodist one?  I was real thankful to see
you and the young Doctor in the Presbyterian church your first Sunday.
No doctor for me who isn’t a Presbyterian.”

“We were in the Methodist church last Sunday evening,” said Anne
wickedly.

“Oh, I s’pose Dr. Blythe has to go to the Methodist church once in a
while or he wouldn’t get the Methodist practice.”

“We liked the sermon very much,” declared Anne boldly.  “And I thought
the Methodist minister’s prayer was one of the most beautiful I ever
heard.”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt he can pray.  I never heard anyone make more
beautiful prayers than old Simon Bentley, who was always drunk, or
hoping to be, and the drunker he was the better he prayed.”

“The Methodist minister is very fine looking,” said Anne, for the
benefit of the office door.

“Yes, he’s quite ornamental,” agreed Miss Cornelia.  “Oh, and VERY
ladylike.  And he thinks that every girl who looks at him falls in love
with him--as if a Methodist minister, wandering about like any Jew, was
such a prize!  If you and the young doctor take MY advice, you won’t
have much to do with the Methodists.  My motto is--if you ARE a
Presbyterian, BE a Presbyterian.”

“Don’t you think that Methodists go to heaven as well as
Presbyterians?” asked Anne smilelessly.

“That isn’t for US to decide.  It’s in higher hands than ours,” said
Miss Cornelia solemnly.  “But I ain’t going to associate with them on
earth whatever I may have to do in heaven.  THIS Methodist minister
isn’t married.  The last one they had was, and his wife was the
silliest, flightiest little thing I ever saw.  I told her husband once
that he should have waited till she was grown up before he married her.
He said he wanted to have the training of her.  Wasn’t that like a man?”

“It’s rather hard to decide just when people ARE grown up,” laughed
Anne.

“That’s a true word, dearie.  Some are grown up when they’re born, and
others ain’t grown up when they’re eighty, believe ME. That same Mrs.
Roderick I was speaking of never grew up.  She was as foolish when she
was a hundred as when she was ten.”

“Perhaps that was why she lived so long,” suggested Anne.

“Maybe ’twas.  _I_’d rather live fifty sensible years than a hundred
foolish ones.”

“But just think what a dull world it would be if everyone was
sensible,” pleaded Anne.

Miss Cornelia disdained any skirmish of flippant epigram.

“Mrs. Roderick was a Milgrave, and the Milgraves never had much sense.
Her nephew, Ebenezer Milgrave, used to be insane for years.  He
believed he was dead and used to rage at his wife because she wouldn’t
bury him.  _I_’d a-done it.”

Miss Cornelia looked so grimly determined that Anne could almost see
her with a spade in her hand.

“Don’t you know ANY good husbands, Miss Bryant?”

“Oh, yes, lots of them--over yonder,” said Miss Cornelia, waving her
hand through the open window towards the little graveyard of the church
across the harbor.

“But living--going about in the flesh?” persisted Anne.

“Oh, there’s a few, just to show that with God all things are
possible,” acknowledged Miss Cornelia reluctantly.  “I don’t deny that
an odd man here and there, if he’s caught young and trained up proper,
and if his mother has spanked him well beforehand, may turn out a
decent being.  YOUR husband, now, isn’t so bad, as men go, from all I
hear.  I s’pose”--Miss Cornelia looked sharply at Anne over her
glasses--“you think there’s nobody like him in the world.”

“There isn’t,” said Anne promptly.

“Ah, well, I heard another bride say that once,” sighed Miss Cornelia.
“Jennie Dean thought when she married that there wasn’t anybody like
HER husband in the world.  And she was right--there wasn’t!  And a good
thing, too, believe ME!  He led her an awful life--and he was courting
his second wife while Jennie was dying.

“Wasn’t that like a man?  However, I hope YOUR confidence will be
better justified, dearie.  The young doctor is taking real well.  I was
afraid at first he mightn’t, for folks hereabouts have always thought
old Doctor Dave the only doctor in the world.  Doctor Dave hadn’t much
tact, to be sure--he was always talking of ropes in houses where
someone had hanged himself.  But folks forgot their hurt feelings when
they had a pain in their stomachs.  If he’d been a minister instead of
a doctor they’d never have forgiven him.  Soul-ache doesn’t worry folks
near as much as stomach-ache.  Seeing as we’re both Presbyterians and
no Methodists around, will you tell me your candid opinion of OUR
minister?”

“Why--really--I--well,” hesitated Anne.

Miss Cornelia nodded.

“Exactly.  I agree with you, dearie.  We made a mistake when we called
HIM.  His face just looks like one of those long, narrow stones in the
graveyard, doesn’t it?  ‘Sacred to the memory’ ought to be written on
his forehead.  I shall never forget the first sermon he preached after
he came.  It was on the subject of everyone doing what they were best
fitted for--a very good subject, of course; but such illustrations as
he used!  He said, ‘If you had a cow and an apple tree, and if you tied
the apple tree in your stable and planted the cow in your orchard, with
her legs up, how much milk would you get from the apple tree, or how
many apples from the cow?’  Did you ever hear the like in your born
days, dearie?  I was so thankful there were no Methodists there that
day--they’d never have been done hooting over it.  But what I dislike
most in him is his habit of agreeing with everybody, no matter what is
said.  If you said to him, ‘You’re a scoundrel,’ he’d say, with that
smooth smile of his, ‘Yes, that’s so.’  A minister should have more
backbone.  The long and the short of it is, I consider him a reverend
jackass.  But, of course, this is just between you and me.  When there
are Methodists in hearing I praise him to the skies.  Some folks think
his wife dresses too gay, but _I_ say when she has to live with a face
like that she needs something to cheer her up.  You’ll never hear ME
condemning a woman for her dress.  I’m only too thankful when her
husband isn’t too mean and miserly to allow it.  Not that I bother much
with dress myself.  Women just dress to please the men, and I’d never
stoop to THAT.  I have had a real placid, comfortable life, dearie, and
it’s just because I never cared a cent what the men thought.”

“Why do you hate the men so, Miss Bryant?”

“Lord, dearie, I don’t hate them.  They aren’t worth it.  I just sort
of despise them.  I think I’ll like YOUR husband if he keeps on as he
has begun.  But apart from him about the only men in the world I’ve
much use for are the old doctor and Captain Jim.”

“Captain Jim is certainly splendid,” agreed Anne cordially.

“Captain Jim is a good man, but he’s kind of vexing in one way.  You
CAN’T make him mad.  I’ve tried for twenty years and he just keeps on
being placid.  It does sort of rile me.  And I s’pose the woman he
should have married got a man who went into tantrums twice a day.”

“Who was she?”

“Oh, I don’t know, dearie.  I never remember of Captain Jim making up
to anybody.  He was edging on old as far as my memory goes.  He’s
seventy-six, you know.  I never heard any reason for his staying a
bachelor, but there must be one, believe ME.  He sailed all his life
till five years ago, and there’s no corner of the earth he hasn’t poked
his nose into.  He and Elizabeth Russell were great cronies, all their
lives, but they never had any notion of sweet-hearting.  Elizabeth
never married, though she had plenty of chances.  She was a great
beauty when she was young.  The year the Prince of Wales came to the
Island she was visiting her uncle in Charlottetown and he was a
Government official, and so she got invited to the great ball.  She was
the prettiest girl there, and the Prince danced with her, and all the
other women he didn’t dance with were furious about it, because their
social standing was higher than hers and they said he shouldn’t have
passed them over.  Elizabeth was always very proud of that dance.  Mean
folks said that was why she never married--she couldn’t put up with an
ordinary man after dancing with a prince.  But that wasn’t so.  She
told me the reason once--it was because she had such a temper that she
was afraid she couldn’t live peaceably with any man.  She HAD an awful
temper--she used to have to go upstairs and bite pieces out of her
bureau to keep it down by times.  But I told her that wasn’t any reason
for not marrying if she wanted to.  There’s no reason why we should let
the men have a monopoly of temper, is there, Mrs. Blythe, dearie?”

“I’ve a bit of temper myself,” sighed Anne.

“It’s well you have, dearie.  You won’t be half so likely to be trodden
on, believe ME!  My, how that golden glow of yours is blooming!  Your
garden looks fine.  Poor Elizabeth always took such care of it.”

“I love it,” said Anne.  “I’m glad it’s so full of old-fashioned
flowers.  Speaking of gardening, we want to get a man to dig up that
little lot beyond the fir grove and set it out with strawberry plants
for us.  Gilbert is so busy he will never get time for it this fall.
Do you know anyone we can get?”

“Well, Henry Hammond up at the Glen goes out doing jobs like that.
He’ll do, maybe.  He’s always a heap more interested in his wages than
in his work, just like a man, and he’s so slow in the uptake that he
stands still for five minutes before it dawns on him that he’s stopped.
His father threw a stump at him when he was small.

“Nice gentle missile, wasn’t it?  So like a man!  Course, the boy never
got over it.  But he’s the only one I can recommend at all.  He painted
my house for me last spring.  It looks real nice now, don’t you think?”

Anne was saved by the clock striking five.

“Lord, is it that late?” exclaimed Miss Cornelia.  “How time does slip
by when you’re enjoying yourself!  Well, I must betake myself home.”

“No, indeed!  You are going to stay and have tea with us,” said Anne
eagerly.

“Are you asking me because you think you ought to, or because you
really want to?” demanded Miss Cornelia.

“Because I really want to.”

“Then I’ll stay.  YOU belong to the race that knows Joseph.”

“I know we are going to be friends,” said Anne, with the smile that
only they of the household of faith ever saw.

“Yes, we are, dearie.  Thank goodness, we can choose our friends.  We
have to take our relatives as they are, and be thankful if there are no
penitentiary birds among them.  Not that I’ve many--none nearer than
second cousins.  I’m a kind of lonely soul, Mrs. Blythe.”

There was a wistful note in Miss Cornelia’s voice.

“I wish you would call me Anne,” exclaimed Anne impulsively.  “It would
seem more HOMEY.  Everyone in Four Winds, except my husband, calls me
Mrs. Blythe, and it makes me feel like a stranger.  Do you know that
your name is very near being the one I yearned after when I was a
child.  I hated ‘Anne’ and I called myself ‘Cordelia’ in imagination.”

“I like Anne.  It was my mother’s name.  Old-fashioned names are the
best and sweetest in my opinion.  If you’re going to get tea you might
send the young doctor to talk to me.  He’s been lying on the sofa in
that office ever since I came, laughing fit to kill over what I’ve been
saying.”

“How did you know?” cried Anne, too aghast at this instance of Miss
Cornelia’s uncanny prescience to make a polite denial.

“I saw him sitting beside you when I came up the lane, and I know men’s
tricks,” retorted Miss Cornelia.  “There, I’ve finished my little
dress, dearie, and the eighth baby can come as soon as it pleases.”




CHAPTER 9

AN EVENING AT FOUR WINDS POINT

It was late September when Anne and Gilbert were able to pay Four Winds
light their promised visit.  They had often planned to go, but
something always occurred to prevent them.  Captain Jim had “dropped
in” several times at the little house.

“I don’t stand on ceremony, Mistress Blythe,” he told Anne.  “It’s a
real pleasure to me to come here, and I’m not going to deny myself jest
because you haven’t got down to see me.  There oughtn’t to be no
bargaining like that among the race that knows Joseph.  I’ll come when
I can, and you come when you can, and so long’s we have our pleasant
little chat it don’t matter a mite what roof’s over us.”

Captain Jim took a great fancy to Gog and Magog, who were presiding
over the destinies of the hearth in the little house with as much
dignity and aplomb as they had done at Patty’s Place.

“Aren’t they the cutest little cusses?” he would say delightedly; and
he bade them greeting and farewell as gravely and invariably as he did
his host and hostess.  Captain Jim was not going to offend household
deities by any lack of reverence and ceremony.

“You’ve made this little house just about perfect,” he told Anne.  “It
never was so nice before.  Mistress Selwyn had your taste and she did
wonders; but folks in those days didn’t have the pretty little curtains
and pictures and nicknacks you have.  As for Elizabeth, she lived in
the past.  You’ve kinder brought the future into it, so to speak.  I’d
be real happy even if we couldn’t talk at all, when I come here--jest
to sit and look at you and your pictures and your flowers would be
enough of a treat.  It’s beautiful--beautiful.”

Captain Jim was a passionate worshipper of beauty.  Every lovely thing
heard or seen gave him a deep, subtle, inner joy that irradiated his
life.  He was quite keenly aware of his own lack of outward comeliness
and lamented it.

“Folks say I’m good,” he remarked whimsically upon one occasion, “but I
sometimes wish the Lord had made me only half as good and put the rest
of it into looks.  But there, I reckon He knew what He was about, as a
good Captain should.  Some of us have to be homely, or the purty
ones--like Mistress Blythe here--wouldn’t show up so well.”

One evening Anne and Gilbert finally walked down to the Four Winds
light.  The day had begun sombrely in gray cloud and mist, but it had
ended in a pomp of scarlet and gold.  Over the western hills beyond the
harbor were amber deeps and crystalline shallows, with the fire of
sunset below.  The north was a mackerel sky of little, fiery golden
clouds.  The red light flamed on the white sails of a vessel gliding
down the channel, bound to a southern port in a land of palms.  Beyond
her, it smote upon and incarnadined the shining, white, grassless faces
of the sand dunes.  To the right, it fell on the old house among the
willows up the brook, and gave it for a fleeting space casements more
splendid than those of an old cathedral.  They glowed out of its quiet
and grayness like the throbbing, blood-red thoughts of a vivid soul
imprisoned in a dull husk of environment.

“That old house up the brook always seems so lonely,” said Anne.  “I
never see visitors there.  Of course, its lane opens on the upper
road--but I don’t think there’s much coming and going.  It seems odd
we’ve never met the Moores yet, when they live within fifteen minutes’
walk of us.  I may have seen them in church, of course, but if so I
didn’t know them.  I’m sorry they are so unsociable, when they are our
only near neighbors.”

“Evidently they don’t belong to the race that knows Joseph,” laughed
Gilbert.  “Have you ever found out who that girl was whom you thought
so beautiful?”

“No.  Somehow I have never remembered to ask about her.  But I’ve never
seen her anywhere, so I suppose she must have been a stranger.  Oh, the
sun has just vanished--and there’s the light.”

As the dusk deepened, the great beacon cut swathes of light through it,
sweeping in a circle over the fields and the harbor, the sandbar and
the gulf.

“I feel as if it might catch me and whisk me leagues out to sea,” said
Anne, as one drenched them with radiance; and she felt rather relieved
when they got so near the Point that they were inside the range of
those dazzling, recurrent flashes.

As they turned into the little lane that led across the fields to the
Point they met a man coming out of it--a man of such extraordinary
appearance that for a moment they both frankly stared.  He was a
decidedly fine-looking person-tall, broad-shouldered, well-featured,
with a Roman nose and frank gray eyes; he was dressed in a prosperous
farmer’s Sunday best; in so far he might have been any inhabitant of
Four Winds or the Glen.  But, flowing over his breast nearly to his
knees, was a river of crinkly brown beard; and adown his back, beneath
his commonplace felt hat, was a corresponding cascade of thick, wavy,
brown hair.

“Anne,” murmured Gilbert, when they were out of earshot, “you didn’t
put what Uncle Dave calls ‘a little of the Scott Act’ in that lemonade
you gave me just before we left home, did you?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Anne, stifling her laughter, lest the retreating
enigma should hear here.  “Who in the world can he be?”

“I don’t know; but if Captain Jim keeps apparitions like that down at
this Point I’m going to carry cold iron in my pocket when I come here.
He wasn’t a sailor, or one might pardon his eccentricity of appearance;
he must belong to the over-harbor clans.  Uncle Dave says they have
several freaks over there.”

“Uncle Dave is a little prejudiced, I think.  You know all the
over-harbor people who come to the Glen Church seem very nice.  Oh,
Gilbert, isn’t this beautiful?”

The Four Winds light was built on a spur of red sand-stone cliff
jutting out into the gulf.  On one side, across the channel, stretched
the silvery sand shore of the bar; on the other, extended a long,
curving beach of red cliffs, rising steeply from the pebbled coves.  It
was a shore that knew the magic and mystery of storm and star.  There
is a great solitude about such a shore.  The woods are never
solitary--they are full of whispering, beckoning, friendly life.  But
the sea is a mighty soul, forever moaning of some great, unshareable
sorrow, which shuts it up into itself for all eternity.  We can never
pierce its infinite mystery--we may only wander, awed and spellbound,
on the outer fringe of it.  The woods call to us with a hundred voices,
but the sea has one only--a mighty voice that drowns our souls in its
majestic music.  The woods are human, but the sea is of the company of
the archangels.

Anne and Gilbert found Uncle Jim sitting on a bench outside the
lighthouse, putting the finishing touches to a wonderful, full-rigged,
toy schooner.  He rose and welcomed them to his abode with the gentle,
unconscious courtesy that became him so well.

“This has been a purty nice day all through, Mistress Blythe, and now,
right at the last, it’s brought its best.  Would you like to sit down
here outside a bit, while the light lasts?  I’ve just finished this bit
of a plaything for my little grand nephew, Joe, up at the Glen.  After
I promised to make it for him I was kinder sorry, for his mother was
vexed.  She’s afraid he’ll be wanting to go to sea later on and she
doesn’t want the notion encouraged in him.  But what could I do,
Mistress Blythe?  I’d PROMISED him, and I think it’s sorter real
dastardly to break a promise you make to a child.  Come, sit down.  It
won’t take long to stay an hour.”

The wind was off shore, and only broke the sea’s surface into long,
silvery ripples, and sent sheeny shadows flying out across it, from
every point and headland, like transparent wings.  The dusk was hanging
a curtain of violet gloom over the sand dunes and the headlands where
gulls were huddling.  The sky was faintly filmed over with scarfs of
silken vapor.  Cloud fleets rode at anchor along the horizons.  An
evening star was watching over the bar.

“Isn’t that a view worth looking at?” said Captain Jim, with a loving,
proprietary pride.  “Nice and far from the market-place, ain’t it?  No
buying and selling and getting gain.  You don’t have to pay
anything--all that sea and sky free--‘without money and without price.’
There’s going to be a moonrise purty soon, too--I’m never tired of
finding out what a moonrise can be over them rocks and sea and harbor.
There’s a surprise in it every time.”

They had their moonrise, and watched its marvel and magic in a silence
that asked nothing of the world or each other.  Then they went up into
the tower, and Captain Jim showed and explained the mechanism of the
great light.  Finally they found themselves in the dining room, where a
fire of driftwood was weaving flames of wavering, elusive, sea-born
hues in the open fireplace.

“I put this fireplace in myself,” remarked Captain Jim.  “The
Government don’t give lighthouse keepers such luxuries.  Look at the
colors that wood makes.  If you’d like some driftwood for your fire,
Mistress Blythe, I’ll bring you up a load some day.  Sit down.  I’m
going to make you a cup of tea.”

Captain Jim placed a chair for Anne, having first removed therefrom a
huge, orange-colored cat and a newspaper.

“Get down, Matey.  The sofa is your place.  I must put this paper away
safe till I can find time to finish the story in it.  It’s called A Mad
Love.  ’Tisn’t my favorite brand of fiction, but I’m reading it jest to
see how long she can spin it out.  It’s at the sixty-second chapter
now, and the wedding ain’t any nearer than when it begun, far’s I can
see.  When little Joe comes I have to read him pirate yarns.  Ain’t it
strange how innocent little creatures like children like the
blood-thirstiest stories?”

“Like my lad Davy at home,” said Anne.  “He wants tales that reek with
gore.”

Captain Jim’s tea proved to be nectar.  He was pleased as a child with
Anne’s compliments, but he affected a fine indifference.

“The secret is I don’t skimp the cream,” he remarked airily.  Captain
Jim had never heard of Oliver Wendell Holmes, but he evidently agreed
with that writer’s dictum that “big heart never liked little cream pot.”

“We met an odd-looking personage coming out of your lane,” said Gilbert
as they sipped.  “Who was he?”

Captain Jim grinned.

“That’s Marshall Elliott--a mighty fine man with jest one streak of
foolishness in him.  I s’pose you wondered what his object was in
turning himself into a sort of dime museum freak.”

“Is he a modern Nazarite or a Hebrew prophet left over from olden
times?” asked Anne.

“Neither of them.  It’s politics that’s at the bottom of his freak.
All those Elliotts and Crawfords and MacAllisters are dyed-in-the-wool
politicians.  They’re born Grit or Tory, as the case may be, and they
live Grit or Tory, and they die Grit or Tory; and what they’re going to
do in heaven, where there’s probably no politics, is more than I can
fathom.  This Marshall Elliott was born a Grit.  I’m a Grit myself in
moderation, but there’s no moderation about Marshall.  Fifteen years
ago there was a specially bitter general election.  Marshall fought for
his party tooth and nail.  He was dead sure the Liberals would win--so
sure that he got up at a public meeting and vowed that he wouldn’t
shave his face or cut his hair until the Grits were in power.  Well,
they didn’t go in--and they’ve never got in yet--and you saw the result
today for yourselves.  Marshall stuck to his word.”

“What does his wife think of it?” asked Anne.

“He’s a bachelor.  But if he had a wife I reckon she couldn’t make him
break that vow.  That family of Elliotts has always been more stubborn
than natteral.  Marshall’s brother Alexander had a dog he set great
store by, and when it died the man actilly wanted to have it buried in
the graveyard, ‘along with the other Christians,’ he said.  Course, he
wasn’t allowed to; so he buried it just outside the graveyard fence,
and never darkened the church door again.  But Sundays he’d drive his
family to church and sit by that dog’s grave and read his Bible all the
time service was going on.  They say when he was dying he asked his
wife to bury him beside the dog; she was a meek little soul but she
fired up at THAT.  She said SHE wasn’t going to be buried beside no
dog, and if he’d rather have his last resting place beside the dog than
beside her, jest to say so.  Alexander Elliott was a stubborn mule, but
he was fond of his wife, so he give in and said, ‘Well, durn it, bury
me where you please.  But when Gabriel’s trump blows I expect my dog to
rise with the rest of us, for he had as much soul as any durned Elliott
or Crawford or MacAllister that ever strutted.’  Them was HIS parting
words.  As for Marshall, we’re all used to him, but he must strike
strangers as right down peculiar-looking.  I’ve known him ever since he
was ten--he’s about fifty now--and I like him.  Him and me was out
cod-fishing today.  That’s about all I’m good for now--catching trout
and cod occasional.  But ’tweren’t always so--not by no manner of
means.  I used to do other things, as you’d admit if you saw my
life-book.”

Anne was just going to ask what his life-book was when the First Mate
created a diversion by springing upon Captain Jim’s knee.  He was a
gorgeous beastie, with a face as round as a full moon, vivid green
eyes, and immense, white, double paws.  Captain Jim stroked his velvet
back gently.

“I never fancied cats much till I found the First Mate,” he remarked,
to the accompaniment of the Mate’s tremendous purrs.  “I saved his
life, and when you’ve saved a creature’s life you’re bound to love it.
It’s next thing to giving life.  There’s some turrible thoughtless
people in the world, Mistress Blythe.  Some of them city folks who have
summer homes over the harbor are so thoughtless that they’re cruel.
It’s the worst kind of cruelty--the thoughtless kind.  You can’t cope
with it.  They keep cats there in the summer, and feed and pet ’em, and
doll ’em up with ribbons and collars.  And then in the fall they go off
and leave ’em to starve or freeze.  It makes my blood boil, Mistress
Blythe.  One day last winter I found a poor old mother cat dead on the
shore, lying against the skin-and-bone bodies of her three little
kittens.  She’d died trying to shelter ’em.  She had her poor stiff
paws around ’em.  Master, I cried.  Then I swore.  Then I carried them
poor little kittens home and fed ’em up and found good homes for ’em.
I knew the woman who left the cat and when she come back this summer I
jest went over the harbor and told her my opinion of her.  It was rank
meddling, but I do love meddling in a good cause.”

“How did she take it?” asked Gilbert.

“Cried and said she ‘didn’t think.’  I says to her, says I, ‘Do you
s’pose that’ll be held for a good excuse in the day of Jedgment, when
you’ll have to account for that poor old mother’s life?  The Lord’ll
ask you what He give you your brains for if it wasn’t to think, I
reckon.’  I don’t fancy she’ll leave cats to starve another time.”

“Was the First Mate one of the forsaken?” asked Anne, making advances
to him which were responded to graciously, if condescendingly.

“Yes.  I found HIM one bitter cold day in winter, caught in the
branches of a tree by his durn-fool ribbon collar.  He was almost
starving.  If you could have seen his eyes, Mistress Blythe!  He was
nothing but a kitten, and he’d got his living somehow since he’d been
left until he got hung up.  When I loosed him he gave my hand a pitiful
swipe with his little red tongue.  He wasn’t the able seaman you see
now.  He was meek as Moses.  That was nine years ago.  His life has
been long in the land for a cat.  He’s a good old pal, the First Mate
is.”

“I should have expected you to have a dog,” said Gilbert.

Captain Jim shook his head.

“I had a dog once.  I thought so much of him that when he died I
couldn’t bear the thought of getting another in his place.  He was a
FRIEND--you understand, Mistress Blythe?  Matey’s only a pal.  I’m fond
of Matey--all the fonder on account of the spice of devilment that’s in
him--like there is in all cats.  But I LOVED my dog.  I always had a
sneaking sympathy for Alexander Elliott about HIS dog.  There isn’t any
devil in a good dog.  That’s why they’re more lovable than cats, I
reckon.  But I’m darned if they’re as interesting.  Here I am, talking
too much.  Why don’t you check me?  When I do get a chance to talk to
anyone I run on turrible.  If you’ve done your tea I’ve a few little
things you might like to look at--picked ’em up in the queer corners I
used to be poking my nose into.”

Captain Jim’s “few little things” turned out to be a most interesting
collection of curios, hideous, quaint and beautiful.  And almost every
one had some striking story attached to it.

Anne never forgot the delight with which she listened to those old
tales that moonlit evening by that enchanted driftwood fire, while the
silver sea called to them through the open window and sobbed against
the rocks below them.

Captain Jim never said a boastful word, but it was impossible to help
seeing what a hero the man had been--brave, true, resourceful,
unselfish.  He sat there in his little room and made those things live
again for his hearers.  By a lift of the eyebrow, a twist of the lip, a
gesture, a word, he painted a whole scene or character so that they saw
it as it was.

Some of Captain Jim’s adventures had such a marvellous edge that Anne
and Gilbert secretly wondered if he were not drawing a rather long bow
at their credulous expense.  But in this, as they found later, they did
him injustice.  His tales were all literally true.  Captain Jim had the
gift of the born storyteller, whereby “unhappy, far-off things” can be
brought vividly before the hearer in all their pristine poignancy.

Anne and Gilbert laughed and shivered over his tales, and once Anne
found herself crying.  Captain Jim surveyed her tears with pleasure
shining from his face.

“I like to see folks cry that way,” he remarked.  “It’s a compliment.
But I can’t do justice to the things I’ve seen or helped to do.  I’ve
’em all jotted down in my life-book, but I haven’t got the knack of
writing them out properly.  If I could hit on jest the right words and
string ’em together proper on paper I could make a great book.  It
would beat A Mad Love holler, and I believe Joe’d like it as well as
the pirate yarns.  Yes, I’ve had some adventures in my time; and, do
you know, Mistress Blythe, I still lust after ’em.  Yes, old and
useless as I be, there’s an awful longing sweeps over me at times to
sail out--out--out there--forever and ever.”

“Like Ulysses, you would

    ‘Sail beyond the sunset and the baths
     Of all the western stars until you die,’”

said Anne dreamily.

“Ulysses?  I’ve read of him.  Yes, that’s just how I feel--jest how all
us old sailors feel, I reckon.  I’ll die on land after all, I s’pose.
Well, what is to be will be.  There was old William Ford at the Glen
who never went on the water in his life, ’cause he was afraid of being
drowned.  A fortune-teller had predicted he would be.  And one day he
fainted and fell with his face in the barn trough and was drowned.
Must you go?  Well, come soon and come often.  The doctor is to do the
talking next time.  He knows a heap of things I want to find out.  I’m
sorter lonesome here by times.  It’s been worse since Elizabeth Russell
died.  Her and me was such cronies.”

Captain Jim spoke with the pathos of the aged, who see their old
friends slipping from them one by one--friends whose place can never be
quite filled by those of a younger generation, even of the race that
knows Joseph.  Anne and Gilbert promised to come soon and often.

“He’s a rare old fellow, isn’t he?” said Gilbert, as they walked home.

“Somehow, I can’t reconcile his simple, kindly personality with the
wild, adventurous life he has lived,” mused Anne.

“You wouldn’t find it so hard if you had seen him the other day down at
the fishing village.  One of the men of Peter Gautier’s boat made a
nasty remark about some girl along the shore.  Captain Jim fairly
scorched the wretched fellow with the lightning of his eyes.  He seemed
a man transformed.  He didn’t say much--but the way he said it!  You’d
have thought it would strip the flesh from the fellow’s bones.  I
understand that Captain Jim will never allow a word against any woman
to be said in his presence.”

“I wonder why he never married,” said Anne.  “He should have sons with
their ships at sea now, and grandchildren climbing over him to hear his
stories--he’s that kind of a man.  Instead, he has nothing but a
magnificent cat.”

But Anne was mistaken.  Captain Jim had more than that.  He had a
memory.




CHAPTER 10

LESLIE MOORE

“I’m going for a walk to the outside shore tonight,” Anne told Gog and
Magog one October evening.  There was no one else to tell, for Gilbert
had gone over the harbor.  Anne had her little domain in the speckless
order one would expect of anyone brought up by Marilla Cuthbert, and
felt that she could gad shoreward with a clear conscience.  Many and
delightful had been her shore rambles, sometimes with Gilbert,
sometimes with Captain Jim, sometimes alone with her own thoughts and
new, poignantly-sweet dreams that were beginning to span life with
their rainbows.  She loved the gentle, misty harbor shore and the
silvery, wind-haunted sand shore, but best of all she loved the rock
shore, with its cliffs and caves and piles of surf-worn boulders, and
its coves where the pebbles glittered under the pools; and it was to
this shore she hied herself tonight.

There had been an autumn storm of wind and rain, lasting for three
days.  Thunderous had been the crash of billows on the rocks, wild the
white spray and spume that blew over the bar, troubled and misty and
tempest-torn the erstwhile blue peace of Four Winds Harbor.  Now it was
over, and the shore lay clean-washed after the storm; not a wind
stirred, but there was still a fine surf on, dashing on sand and rock
in a splendid white turmoil--the only restless thing in the great,
pervading stillness and peace.

“Oh, this is a moment worth living through weeks of storm and stress
for,” Anne exclaimed, delightedly sending her far gaze across the
tossing waters from the top of the cliff where she stood.  Presently
she scrambled down the steep path to the little cove below, where she
seemed shut in with rocks and sea and sky.

“I’m going to dance and sing,” she said.  “There’s no one here to see
me--the seagulls won’t carry tales of the matter.  I may be as crazy as
I like.”

She caught up her skirt and pirouetted along the hard strip of sand
just out of reach of the waves that almost lapped her feet with their
spent foam.  Whirling round and round, laughing like a child, she
reached the little headland that ran out to the east of the cove; then
she stopped suddenly, blushing crimson; she was not alone; there had
been a witness to her dance and laughter.

The girl of the golden hair and sea-blue eyes was sitting on a boulder
of the headland, half-hidden by a jutting rock.  She was looking
straight at Anne with a strange expression--part wonder, part sympathy,
part--could it be?--envy.  She was bare-headed, and her splendid hair,
more than ever like Browning’s “gorgeous snake,” was bound about her
head with a crimson ribbon.  She wore a dress of some dark material,
very plainly made; but swathed about her waist, outlining its fine
curves, was a vivid girdle of red silk.  Her hands, clasped over her
knee, were brown and somewhat work-hardened; but the skin of her throat
and cheeks was as white as cream.  A flying gleam of sunset broke
through a low-lying western cloud and fell across her hair.  For a
moment she seemed the spirit of the sea personified--all its mystery,
all its passion, all its elusive charm.

“You--you must think me crazy,” stammered Anne, trying to recover her
self-possession.  To be seen by this stately girl in such an abandon of
childishness--she, Mrs. Dr. Blythe, with all the dignity of the matron
to keep up--it was too bad!

“No,” said the girl, “I don’t.”

She said nothing more; her voice was expressionless; her manner
slightly repellent; but there was something in her eyes--eager yet shy,
defiant yet pleading--which turned Anne from her purpose of walking
away.  Instead, she sat down on the boulder beside the girl.

“Let’s introduce ourselves,” she said, with the smile that had never
yet failed to win confidence and friendliness.  “I am Mrs. Blythe--and
I live in that little white house up the harbor shore.”

“Yes, I know,” said the girl.  “I am Leslie Moore--Mrs. Dick Moore,”
she added stiffly.

Anne was silent for a moment from sheer amazement.  It had not occurred
to her that this girl was married--there seemed nothing of the wife
about her.  And that she should be the neighbor whom Anne had pictured
as a commonplace Four Winds housewife!  Anne could not quickly adjust
her mental focus to this astonishing change.

“Then--then you live in that gray house up the brook,” she stammered.

“Yes.  I should have gone over to call on you long ago,” said the
other.  She did not offer any explanation or excuse for not having gone.

“I wish you WOULD come,” said Anne, recovering herself somewhat.
“We’re such near neighbors we ought to be friends.  That is the sole
fault of Four Winds--there aren’t quite enough neighbors.  Otherwise it
is perfection.”

“You like it?”

“LIKE it!  I love it.  It is the most beautiful place I ever saw.”

“I’ve never seen many places,” said Leslie Moore, slowly, “but I’ve
always thought it was very lovely here.  I--I love it, too.”

She spoke, as she looked, shyly, yet eagerly.  Anne had an odd
impression that this strange girl--the word “girl” would persist--could
say a good deal if she chose.

“I often come to the shore,” she added.

“So do I,” said Anne.  “It’s a wonder we haven’t met here before.”

“Probably you come earlier in the evening than I do.  It is generally
late--almost dark--when I come.  And I love to come just after a
storm--like this.  I don’t like the sea so well when it’s calm and
quiet.  I like the struggle--and the crash--and the noise.”

“I love it in all its moods,” declared Anne.  “The sea at Four Winds is
to me what Lover’s Lane was at home.  Tonight it seemed so free--so
untamed--something broke loose in me, too, out of sympathy.  That was
why I danced along the shore in that wild way.  I didn’t suppose
anybody was looking, of course.  If Miss Cornelia Bryant had seen me
she would have forboded a gloomy prospect for poor young Dr. Blythe.”

“You know Miss Cornelia?” said Leslie, laughing.  She had an exquisite
laugh; it bubbled up suddenly and unexpectedly with something of the
delicious quality of a baby’s.  Anne laughed, too.

“Oh, yes.  She has been down to my house of dreams several times.”

“Your house of dreams?”

“Oh, that’s a dear, foolish little name Gilbert and I have for our
home.  We just call it that between ourselves.  It slipped out before I
thought.”

“So Miss Russell’s little white house is YOUR house of dreams,” said
Leslie wonderingly.  “_I_ had a house of dreams once--but it was a
palace,” she added, with a laugh, the sweetness of which was marred by
a little note of derision.

“Oh, I once dreamed of a palace, too,” said Anne.  “I suppose all girls
do.  And then we settle down contentedly in eight-room houses that seem
to fulfill all the desires of our hearts--because our prince is there.
YOU should have had your palace really, though--you are so beautiful.
You MUST let me say it--it has to be said--I’m nearly bursting with
admiration.  You are the loveliest thing I ever saw, Mrs. Moore.”

“If we are to be friends you must call me Leslie,” said the other with
an odd passion.

“Of course I will.  And MY friends call me Anne.”

“I suppose I am beautiful,” Leslie went on, looking stormily out to
sea.  “I hate my beauty.  I wish I had always been as brown and plain
as the brownest and plainest girl at the fishing village over there.
Well, what do you think of Miss Cornelia?”

The abrupt change of subject shut the door on any further confidences.

“Miss Cornelia is a darling, isn’t she?” said Anne.  “Gilbert and I
were invited to her house to a state tea last week.  You’ve heard of
groaning tables.”

“I seem to recall seeing the expression in the newspaper reports of
weddings,” said Leslie, smiling.

“Well, Miss Cornelia’s groaned--at least, it creaked--positively.  You
couldn’t have believed she would have cooked so much for two ordinary
people.  She had every kind of pie you could name, I think--except
lemon pie.  She said she had taken the prize for lemon pies at the
Charlottetown Exhibition ten years ago and had never made any since for
fear of losing her reputation for them.”

“Were you able to eat enough pie to please her?”

“_I_ wasn’t.  Gilbert won her heart by eating--I won’t tell you how
much.  She said she never knew a man who didn’t like pie better than
his Bible.  Do you know, I love Miss Cornelia.”

“So do I,” said Leslie.  “She is the best friend I have in the world.”

Anne wondered secretly why, if this were so, Miss Cornelia had never
mentioned Mrs. Dick Moore to her.  Miss Cornelia had certainly talked
freely about every other individual in or near Four Winds.

“Isn’t that beautiful?” said Leslie, after a brief silence, pointing to
the exquisite effect of a shaft of light falling through a cleft in the
rock behind them, across a dark green pool at its base.  “If I had come
here--and seen nothing but just that--I would go home satisfied.”

“The effects of light and shadow all along these shores are wonderful,”
agreed Anne.  “My little sewing room looks out on the harbor, and I sit
at its window and feast my eyes.  The colors and shadows are never the
same two minutes together.”

“And you are never lonely?” asked Leslie abruptly.  “Never--when you
are alone?”

“No.  I don’t think I’ve ever been really lonely in my life,” answered
Anne.  “Even when I’m alone I have real good company--dreams and
imaginations and pretendings.  I LIKE to be alone now and then, just to
think over things and TASTE them.  But I love friendship--and nice,
jolly little times with people.  Oh, WON’T you come to see me--often?
Please do.  I believe,” Anne added, laughing, “that you’d like me if
you knew me.”

“I wonder if YOU would like ME,” said Leslie seriously.  She was not
fishing for a compliment.  She looked out across the waves that were
beginning to be garlanded with blossoms of moonlit foam, and her eyes
filled with shadows.

“I’m sure I would,” said Anne.  “And please don’t think I’m utterly
irresponsible because you saw me dancing on the shore at sunset.  No
doubt I shall be dignified after a time.  You see, I haven’t been
married very long.  I feel like a girl, and sometimes like a child,
yet.”

“I have been married twelve years,” said Leslie.

Here was another unbelievable thing.

“Why, you can’t be as old as I am!” exclaimed Anne.  “You must have
been a child when you were married.”

“I was sixteen,” said Leslie, rising, and picking up the cap and jacket
lying beside her.  “I am twenty-eight now.  Well, I must go back.”

“So must I.  Gilbert will probably be home.  But I’m so glad we both
came to the shore tonight and met each other.”

Leslie said nothing, and Anne was a little chilled.  She had offered
friendship frankly but it had not been accepted very graciously, if it
had not been absolutely repelled.  In silence they climbed the cliffs
and walked across a pasture-field of which the feathery, bleached, wild
grasses were like a carpet of creamy velvet in the moonlight.  When
they reached the shore lane Leslie turned.

“I go this way, Mrs. Blythe.  You will come over and see me some time,
won’t you?”

Anne felt as if the invitation had been thrown at her.  She got the
impression that Leslie Moore gave it reluctantly.

“I will come if you really want me to,” she said a little coldly.

“Oh, I do--I do,” exclaimed Leslie, with an eagerness which seemed to
burst forth and beat down some restraint that had been imposed on it.

“Then I’ll come.  Good-night--Leslie.”

“Good-night, Mrs. Blythe.”

Anne walked home in a brown study and poured out her tale to Gilbert.

“So Mrs. Dick Moore isn’t one of the race that knows Joseph?” said
Gilbert teasingly.

“No--o--o, not exactly.  And yet--I think she WAS one of them once, but
has gone or got into exile,” said Anne musingly.  “She is certainly
very different from the other women about here.  You can’t talk about
eggs and butter to HER.  To think I’ve been imagining her a second Mrs.
Rachel Lynde!  Have you ever seen Dick Moore, Gilbert?”

“No.  I’ve seen several men working about the fields of the farm, but I
don’t know which was Moore.”

“She never mentioned him.  I KNOW she isn’t happy.”

“From what you tell me I suppose she was married before she was old
enough to know her own mind or heart, and found out too late that she
had made a mistake.  It’s a common tragedy enough, Anne.

“A fine woman would have made the best of it.  Mrs. Moore has evidently
let it make her bitter and resentful.”

“Don’t let us judge her till we know,” pleaded Anne.  “I don’t believe
her case is so ordinary.  You will understand her fascination when you
meet her, Gilbert.  It is a thing quite apart from her beauty.  I feel
that she possesses a rich nature, into which a friend might enter as
into a kingdom; but for some reason she bars every one out and shuts
all her possibilities up in herself, so that they cannot develop and
blossom.  There, I’ve been struggling to define her to myself ever
since I left her, and that is the nearest I can get to it.  I’m going
to ask Miss Cornelia about her.”




CHAPTER 11

THE STORY OF LESLIE MOORE

“Yes, the eighth baby arrived a fortnight ago,” said Miss Cornelia,
from a rocker before the fire of the little house one chilly October
afternoon.  “It’s a girl.  Fred was ranting mad--said he wanted a
boy--when the truth is he didn’t want it at all.  If it had been a boy
he’d have ranted because it wasn’t a girl.  They had four girls and
three boys before, so I can’t see that it made much difference what
this one was, but of course he’d have to be cantankerous, just like a
man.  The baby is real pretty, dressed up in its nice little clothes.
It has black eyes and the dearest, tiny hands.”

“I must go and see it.  I just love babies,” said Anne, smiling to
herself over a thought too dear and sacred to be put into words.

“I don’t say but what they’re nice,” admitted Miss Cornelia.  “But some
folks seem to have more than they really need, believe ME.  My poor
cousin Flora up at the Glen had eleven, and such a slave as she is!
Her husband suicided three years ago.  Just like a man!”

“What made him do that?” asked Anne, rather shocked.

“Couldn’t get his way over something, so he jumped into the well.  A
good riddance!  He was a born tyrant.  But of course it spoiled the
well.  Flora could never abide the thought of using it again, poor
thing!  So she had another dug and a frightful expense it was, and the
water as hard as nails.  If he HAD to drown himself there was plenty of
water in the harbor, wasn’t there?  I’ve no patience with a man like
that.  We’ve only had two suicides in Four Winds in my recollection.
The other was Frank West--Leslie Moore’s father.  By the way, has
Leslie ever been over to call on you yet?”

“No, but I met her on the shore a few nights ago and we scraped an
acquaintance,” said Anne, pricking up her ears.

Miss Cornelia nodded.

“I’m glad, dearie.  I was hoping you’d foregather with her.  What do
you think of her?”

“I thought her very beautiful.”

“Oh, of course.  There was never anybody about Four Winds could touch
her for looks.  Did you ever see her hair?  It reaches to her feet when
she lets it down.  But I meant how did you like her?”

“I think I could like her very much if she’d let me,” said Anne slowly.

“But she wouldn’t let you--she pushed you off and kept you at arm’s
length.  Poor Leslie!  You wouldn’t be much surprised if you knew what
her life has been.  It’s been a tragedy--a tragedy!” repeated Miss
Cornelia emphatically.

“I wish you would tell me all about her--that is, if you can do so
without betraying any confidence.”

“Lord, dearie, everybody in Four Winds knows poor Leslie’s story.  It’s
no secret--the OUTSIDE, that is.  Nobody knows the INSIDE but Leslie
herself, and she doesn’t take folks into her confidence.  I’m about the
best friend she has on earth, I reckon, and she’s never uttered a word
of complaint to me.  Have you ever seen Dick Moore?”

“No.”

“Well, I may as well begin at the beginning and tell you everything
straight through, so you’ll understand it.  As I said, Leslie’s father
was Frank West.  He was clever and shiftless--just like a man.  Oh, he
had heaps of brains--and much good they did him!  He started to go to
college, and he went for two years, and then his health broke down.
The Wests were all inclined to be consumptive.  So Frank came home and
started farming.  He married Rose Elliott from over harbor.  Rose was
reckoned the beauty of Four Winds--Leslie takes her looks from her
mother, but she has ten times the spirit and go that Rose had, and a
far better figure.  Now you know, Anne, I always take the ground that
us women ought to stand by each other.  We’ve got enough to endure at
the hands of the men, the Lord knows, so I hold we hadn’t ought to
clapper-claw one another, and it isn’t often you’ll find me running
down another woman.  But I never had much use for Rose Elliott.  She
was spoiled to begin with, believe ME, and she was nothing but a lazy,
selfish, whining creature.  Frank was no hand to work, so they were
poor as Job’s turkey.  Poor!  They lived on potatoes and point, believe
ME.  They had two children--Leslie and Kenneth.  Leslie had her
mother’s looks and her father’s brains, and something she didn’t get
from either of them.  She took after her Grandmother West--a splendid
old lady.  She was the brightest, friendliest, merriest thing when she
was a child, Anne.  Everybody liked her.  She was her father’s favorite
and she was awful fond of him.  They were ‘chums,’ as she used to say.
She couldn’t see any of his faults--and he WAS a taking sort of man in
some ways.

“Well, when Leslie was twelve years old, the first dreadful thing
happened.  She worshipped little Kenneth--he was four years younger
than her, and he WAS a dear little chap.  And he was killed one
day--fell off a big load of hay just as it was going into the barn, and
the wheel went right over his little body and crushed the life out of
it.  And mind you, Anne, Leslie saw it.  She was looking down from the
loft.  She gave one screech--the hired man said he never heard such a
sound in all his life--he said it would ring in his ears till Gabriel’s
trump drove it out.  But she never screeched or cried again about it.
She jumped from the loft onto the load and from the load to the floor,
and caught up the little bleeding, warm, dead body, Anne--they had to
tear it from her before she would let it go.  They sent for me--I can’t
talk of it.”

Miss Cornelia wiped the tears from her kindly brown eyes and sewed in
bitter silence for a few minutes.

“Well,” she resumed, “it was all over--they buried little Kenneth in
that graveyard over the harbor, and after a while Leslie went back to
her school and her studies.  She never mentioned Kenneth’s name--I’ve
never heard it cross her lips from that day to this.  I reckon that old
hurt still aches and burns at times; but she was only a child and time
is real kind to children, Anne, dearie.  After a while she began to
laugh again--she had the prettiest laugh.  You don’t often hear it now.”

“I heard it once the other night,” said Anne.  “It IS a beautiful
laugh.”

“Frank West began to go down after Kenneth’s death.  He wasn’t strong
and it was a shock to him, because he was real fond of the child,
though, as I’ve said, Leslie was his favorite.  He got mopy and
melancholy, and couldn’t or wouldn’t work.  And one day, when Leslie
was fourteen years of age, he hanged himself--and in the parlor, too,
mind you, Anne, right in the middle of the parlor from the lamp hook in
the ceiling.  Wasn’t that like a man?  It was the anniversary of his
wedding day, too.  Nice, tasty time to pick for it, wasn’t it?  And, of
course, that poor Leslie had to be the one to find him.  She went into
the parlor that morning, singing, with some fresh flowers for the
vases, and there she saw her father hanging from the ceiling, his face
as black as a coal.  It was something awful, believe ME!”

“Oh, how horrible!” said Anne, shuddering.  “The poor, poor child!”

“Leslie didn’t cry at her father’s funeral any more than she had cried
at Kenneth’s.  Rose whooped and howled for two, however, and Leslie had
all she could do trying to calm and comfort her mother.  I was
disgusted with Rose and so was everyone else, but Leslie never got out
of patience.  She loved her mother.  Leslie is clannish--her own could
never do wrong in her eyes.  Well, they buried Frank West beside
Kenneth, and Rose put up a great big monument to him.  It was bigger
than his character, believe ME!  Anyhow, it was bigger than Rose could
afford, for the farm was mortgaged for more than its value.  But not
long after Leslie’s old grandmother West died and she left Leslie a
little money--enough to give her a year at Queen’s Academy.  Leslie had
made up her mind to pass for a teacher if she could, and then earn
enough to put herself through Redmond College.  That had been her
father’s pet scheme--he wanted her to have what he had lost.  Leslie
was full of ambition and her head was chock full of brains.  She went
to Queen’s, and she took two years’ work in one year and got her First;
and when she came home she got the Glen school.  She was so happy and
hopeful and full of life and eagerness.  When I think of what she was
then and what she is now, I say--drat the men!”

Miss Cornelia snipped her thread off as viciously as if, Nero-like, she
was severing the neck of mankind by the stroke.

“Dick Moore came into her life that summer.  His father, Abner Moore,
kept store at the Glen, but Dick had a sea-going streak in him from his
mother; he used to sail in summer and clerk in his father’s store in
winter.  He was a big, handsome fellow, with a little ugly soul.  He
was always wanting something till he got it, and then he stopped
wanting it--just like a man.  Oh, he didn’t growl at the weather when
it was fine, and he was mostly real pleasant and agreeable when
everything went right.  But he drank a good deal, and there were some
nasty stories told of him and a girl down at the fishing village.  He
wasn’t fit for Leslie to wipe her feet on, that’s the long and short of
it.  And he was a Methodist!  But he was clean mad about her--because
of her good looks in the first place, and because she wouldn’t have
anything to say to him in the second.  He vowed he’d have her--and he
got her!”

“How did he bring it about?”

“Oh, it was an iniquitous thing!  I’ll never forgive Rose West.  You
see, dearie, Abner Moore held the mortgage on the West farm, and the
interest was overdue some years, and Dick just went and told Mrs. West
that if Leslie wouldn’t marry him he’d get his father to foreclose the
mortgage.  Rose carried on terrible--fainted and wept, and pleaded with
Leslie not to let her be turned out of her home.  She said it would
break her heart to leave the home she’d come to as a bride.  I wouldn’t
have blamed her for feeling dreadful bad over it--but you wouldn’t have
thought she’d be so selfish as to sacrifice her own flesh and blood
because of it, would you?  Well, she was.

“And Leslie gave in--she loved her mother so much she would have done
anything to save her pain.  She married Dick Moore.  None of us knew
why at the time.  It wasn’t till long afterward that I found out how
her mother had worried her into it.  I was sure there was something
wrong, though, because I knew how she had snubbed him time and again,
and it wasn’t like Leslie to turn face--about like that.  Besides, I
knew that Dick Moore wasn’t the kind of man Leslie could ever fancy, in
spite of his good looks and dashing ways.  Of course, there was no
wedding, but Rose asked me to go and see them married.  I went, but I
was sorry I did.  I’d seen Leslie’s face at her brother’s funeral and
at her father’s funeral--and now it seemed to me I was seeing it at her
own funeral.  But Rose was smiling as a basket of chips, believe ME!

“Leslie and Dick settled down on the West place--Rose couldn’t bear to
part with her dear daughter!--and lived there for the winter.  In the
spring Rose took pneumonia and died--a year too late!  Leslie was
heart-broken enough over it.  Isn’t it terrible the way some unworthy
folks are loved, while others that deserve it far more, you’d think,
never get much affection?  As for Dick, he’d had enough of quiet
married life--just like a man.  He was for up and off.  He went over to
Nova Scotia to visit his relations--his father had come from Nova
Scotia--and he wrote back to Leslie that his cousin, George Moore, was
going on a voyage to Havana and he was going too.  The name of the
vessel was the Four Sisters and they were to be gone about nine weeks.

“It must have been a relief to Leslie.  But she never said anything.
From the day of her marriage she was just what she is now--cold and
proud, and keeping everyone but me at a distance.  I won’t BE kept at a
distance, believe ME!  I’ve just stuck to Leslie as close as I knew how
in spite of everything.”

“She told me you were the best friend she had,” said Anne.

“Did she?” exclaimed Miss Cornelia delightedly.  “Well, I’m real
thankful to hear it.  Sometimes I’ve wondered if she really did want me
around at all--she never let me think so.  You must have thawed her out
more than you think, or she wouldn’t have said that much itself to you.
Oh, that poor, heart-broken girl!  I never see Dick Moore but I want to
run a knife clean through him.”

Miss Cornelia wiped her eyes again and having relieved her feelings by
her blood-thirsty wish, took up her tale.

“Well, Leslie was left over there alone.  Dick had put in the crop
before he went, and old Abner looked after it.  The summer went by and
the Four Sisters didn’t come back.  The Nova Scotia Moores
investigated, and found she had got to Havana and discharged her cargo
and took on another and left for home; and that was all they ever found
out about her.  By degrees people began to talk of Dick Moore as one
that was dead.  Almost everyone believed that he was, though no one
felt certain, for men have turned up here at the harbor after they’d
been gone for years.  Leslie never thought he was dead--and she was
right.  A thousand pities too!  The next summer Captain Jim was in
Havana--that was before he gave up the sea, of course.  He thought he’d
poke round a bit--Captain Jim was always meddlesome, just like a
man--and he went to inquiring round among the sailors’ boarding houses
and places like that, to see if he could find out anything about the
crew of the Four Sisters.  He’d better have let sleeping dogs lie, in
my opinion!  Well, he went to one out-of-the-way place, and there he
found a man he knew at first sight it was Dick Moore, though he had a
big beard.  Captain Jim got it shaved off and then there was no
doubt--Dick Moore it was--his body at least.  His mind wasn’t there--as
for his soul, in my opinion he never had one!”

“What had happened to him?”

“Nobody knows the rights of it.  All the folks who kept the boarding
house could tell was that about a year before they had found him lying
on their doorstep one morning in an awful condition--his head battered
to a jelly almost.  They supposed he’d got hurt in some drunken row,
and likely that’s the truth of it.  They took him in, never thinking he
could live.  But he did--and he was just like a child when he got well.
He hadn’t memory or intellect or reason.  They tried to find out who he
was but they never could.  He couldn’t even tell them his name--he
could only say a few simple words.  He had a letter on him beginning
‘Dear Dick’ and signed ‘Leslie,’ but there was no address on it and the
envelope was gone.  They let him stay on--he learned to do a few odd
jobs about the place--and there Captain Jim found him.  He brought him
home--I’ve always said it was a bad day’s work, though I s’pose there
was nothing else he could do.  He thought maybe when Dick got home and
saw his old surroundings and familiar faces his memory would wake up.
But it hadn’t any effect.  There he’s been at the house up the brook
ever since.  He’s just like a child, no more nor less.  Takes fractious
spells occasionally, but mostly he’s just vacant and good humored and
harmless.  He’s apt to run away if he isn’t watched.  That’s the burden
Leslie has had to carry for eleven years--and all alone.  Old Abner
Moore died soon after Dick was brought home and it was found he was
almost bankrupt.  When things were settled up there was nothing for
Leslie and Dick but the old West farm.  Leslie rented it to John Ward,
and the rent is all she has to live on.  Sometimes in summer she takes
a boarder to help out.  But most visitors prefer the other side of the
harbor where the hotels and summer cottages are.  Leslie’s house is too
far from the bathing shore.  She’s taken care of Dick and she’s never
been away from him for eleven years--she’s tied to that imbecile for
life.  And after all the dreams and hopes she once had!  You can
imagine what it has been like for her, Anne, dearie--with her beauty
and spirit and pride and cleverness.  It’s just been a living death.”

“Poor, poor girl!” said Anne again.  Her own happiness seemed to
reproach her.  What right had she to be so happy when another human
soul must be so miserable?

“Will you tell me just what Leslie said and how she acted the night you
met her on the shore?” asked Miss Cornelia.

She listened intently and nodded her satisfaction.

“YOU thought she was stiff and cold, Anne, dearie, but I can tell you
she thawed out wonderful for her.  She must have taken to you real
strong.  I’m so glad.  You may be able to help her a good deal.  I was
thankful when I heard that a young couple was coming to this house, for
I hoped it would mean some friends for Leslie; especially if you
belonged to the race that knows Joseph.  You WILL be her friend, won’t
you, Anne, dearie?”

“Indeed I will, if she’ll let me,” said Anne, with all her own sweet,
impulsive earnestness.

“No, you must be her friend, whether she’ll let you or not,” said Miss
Cornelia resolutely.  “Don’t you mind if she’s stiff by times--don’t
notice it.  Remember what her life has been--and is--and must always
be, I suppose, for creatures like Dick Moore live forever, I
understand.  You should see how fat he’s got since he came home.  He
used to be lean enough.  Just MAKE her be friends--you can do
it--you’re one of those who have the knack.  Only you mustn’t be
sensitive.  And don’t mind if she doesn’t seem to want you to go over
there much.  She knows that some women don’t like to be where Dick
is--they complain he gives them the creeps.  Just get her to come over
here as often as she can.  She can’t get away so very much--she can’t
leave Dick long, for the Lord knows what he’d do--burn the house down
most likely.  At nights, after he’s in bed and asleep, is about the
only time she’s free.  He always goes to bed early and sleeps like the
dead till next morning.  That is how you came to meet her at the shore
likely.  She wanders there considerable.”

“I will do everything I can for her,” said Anne.  Her interest in
Leslie Moore, which had been vivid ever since she had seen her driving
her geese down the hill, was intensified a thousand fold by Miss
Cornelia’s narration.  The girl’s beauty and sorrow and loneliness drew
her with an irresistible fascination.  She had never known anyone like
her; her friends had hitherto been wholesome, normal, merry girls like
herself, with only the average trials of human care and bereavement to
shadow their girlish dreams.  Leslie Moore stood apart, a tragic,
appealing figure of thwarted womanhood.  Anne resolved that she would
win entrance into the kingdom of that lonely soul and find there the
comradeship it could so richly give, were it not for the cruel fetters
that held it in a prison not of its own making.

“And mind you this, Anne, dearie,” said Miss Cornelia, who had not yet
wholly relieved her mind, “You mustn’t think Leslie is an infidel
because she hardly ever goes to church--or even that she’s a Methodist.
She can’t take Dick to church, of course--not that he ever troubled
church much in his best days.  But you just remember that she’s a real
strong Presbyterian at heart, Anne, dearie.”




CHAPTER 12

LESLIE COMES OVER

Leslie came over to the house of dreams one frosty October night, when
moonlit mists were hanging over the harbor and curling like silver
ribbons along the seaward glens.  She looked as if she repented coming
when Gilbert answered her knock; but Anne flew past him, pounced on
her, and drew her in.

“I’m so glad you picked tonight for a call,” she said gaily.  “I made
up a lot of extra good fudge this afternoon and we want someone to help
us eat it--before the fire--while we tell stories.  Perhaps Captain Jim
will drop in, too.  This is his night.”

“No.  Captain Jim is over home,” said Leslie.  “He--he made me come
here,” she added, half defiantly.

“I’ll say a thank-you to him for that when I see him,” said Anne,
pulling easy chairs before the fire.

“Oh, I don’t mean that I didn’t want to come,” protested Leslie,
flushing a little.  “I--I’ve been thinking of coming--but it isn’t
always easy for me to get away.”

“Of course it must be hard for you to leave Mr. Moore,” said Anne, in a
matter-of-fact tone.  She had decided that it would be best to mention
Dick Moore occasionally as an accepted fact, and not give undue
morbidness to the subject by avoiding it.  She was right, for Leslie’s
air of constraint suddenly vanished.  Evidently she had been wondering
how much Anne knew of the conditions of her life and was relieved that
no explanations were needed.  She allowed her cap and jacket to be
taken, and sat down with a girlish snuggle in the big armchair by
Magog.  She was dressed prettily and carefully, with the customary
touch of color in the scarlet geranium at her white throat.  Her
beautiful hair gleamed like molten gold in the warm firelight.  Her
sea-blue eyes were full of soft laughter and allurement. For the
moment, under the influence of the little house of dreams, she was a
girl again--a girl forgetful of the past and its bitterness.  The
atmosphere of the many loves that had sanctified the little house was
all about her; the companionship of two healthy, happy, young folks of
her own generation encircled her; she felt and yielded to the magic of
her surroundings--Miss Cornelia and Captain Jim would scarcely have
recognized her; Anne found it hard to believe that this was the cold,
unresponsive woman she had met on the shore--this animated girl who
talked and listened with the eagerness of a starved soul.  And how
hungrily Leslie’s eyes looked at the bookcases between the windows!

“Our library isn’t very extensive,” said Anne, “but every book in it is
a FRIEND.  We’ve picked our books up through the years, here and there,
never buying one until we had first read it and knew that it belonged
to the race of Joseph.”

Leslie laughed--beautiful laughter that seemed akin to all the mirth
that had echoed through the little house in the vanished years.

“I have a few books of father’s--not many,” she said.  “I’ve read them
until I know them almost by heart.  I don’t get many books.  There’s a
circulating library at the Glen store--but I don’t think the committee
who pick the books for Mr. Parker know what books are of Joseph’s
race--or perhaps they don’t care.  It was so seldom I got one I really
liked that I gave up getting any.”

“I hope you’ll look on our bookshelves as your own,” said Anne.

“You are entirely and wholeheartedly welcome to the loan of any book on
them.”

“You are setting a feast of fat things before me,” said Leslie,
joyously.  Then, as the clock struck ten, she rose, half unwillingly.

“I must go.  I didn’t realize it was so late.  Captain Jim is always
saying it doesn’t take long to stay an hour.  But I’ve stayed two--and
oh, but I’ve enjoyed them,” she added frankly.

“Come often,” said Anne and Gilbert.  They had risen and stood together
in the firelight’s glow.  Leslie looked at them--youthful, hopeful,
happy, typifying all she had missed and must forever miss.  The light
went out of her face and eyes; the girl vanished; it was the sorrowful,
cheated woman who answered the invitation almost coldly and got herself
away with a pitiful haste.

Anne watched her until she was lost in the shadows of the chill and
misty night.  Then she turned slowly back to the glow of her own
radiant hearthstone.

“Isn’t she lovely, Gilbert?  Her hair fascinates me.  Miss Cornelia
says it reaches to her feet.  Ruby Gillis had beautiful hair--but
Leslie’s is ALIVE--every thread of it is living gold.”

“She is very beautiful,” agreed Gilbert, so heartily that Anne almost
wished he were a LITTLE less enthusiastic.

“Gilbert, would you like my hair better if it were like Leslie’s?” she
asked wistfully.

“I wouldn’t have your hair any color but just what it is for the
world,” said Gilbert, with one or two convincing accompaniments.

You wouldn’t be ANNE if you had golden hair--or hair of any color but”--

“Red,” said Anne, with gloomy satisfaction.

“Yes, red--to give warmth to that milk-white skin and those shining
gray-green eyes of yours.  Golden hair wouldn’t suit you at all Queen
Anne--MY Queen Anne--queen of my heart and life and home.”

“Then you may admire Leslie’s all you like,” said Anne magnanimously.




CHAPTER 13

A GHOSTLY EVENING

One evening, a week later, Anne decided to run over the fields to the
house up the brook for an informal call.  It was an evening of gray fog
that had crept in from the gulf, swathed the harbor, filled the glens
and valleys, and clung heavily to the autumnal meadows.  Through it the
sea sobbed and shuddered.  Anne saw Four Winds in a new aspect, and
found it weird and mysterious and fascinating; but it also gave her a
little feeling of loneliness.  Gilbert was away and would be away until
the morrow, attending a medical pow-wow in Charlottetown.  Anne longed
for an hour of fellowship with some girl friend.  Captain Jim and Miss
Cornelia were “good fellows” each, in their own way; but youth yearned
to youth.

“If only Diana or Phil or Pris or Stella could drop in for a chat,” she
said to herself, “how delightful it would be!  This is such a GHOSTLY
night.  I’m sure all the ships that ever sailed out of Four Winds to
their doom could be seen tonight sailing up the harbor with their
drowned crews on their decks, if that shrouding fog could suddenly be
drawn aside.  I feel as if it concealed innumerable mysteries--as if I
were surrounded by the wraiths of old generations of Four Winds people
peering at me through that gray veil.  If ever the dear dead ladies of
this little house came back to revisit it they would come on just such
a night as this.  If I sit here any longer I’ll see one of them there
opposite me in Gilbert’s chair.  This place isn’t exactly canny
tonight.  Even Gog and Magog have an air of pricking up their ears to
hear the footsteps of unseen guests.  I’ll run over to see Leslie
before I frighten myself with my own fancies, as I did long ago in the
matter of the Haunted Wood.  I’ll leave my house of dreams to welcome
back its old inhabitants.  My fire will give them my good-will and
greeting--they will be gone before I come back, and my house will be
mine once more.  Tonight I am sure it is keeping a tryst with the past.”

Laughing a little over her fancy, yet with something of a creepy
sensation in the region of her spine, Anne kissed her hand to Gog and
Magog and slipped out into the fog, with some of the new magazines
under her arm for Leslie.

“Leslie’s wild for books and magazines,” Miss Cornelia had told her,
“and she hardly ever sees one.  She can’t afford to buy them or
subscribe for them.  She’s really pitifully poor, Anne.  I don’t see
how she makes out to live at all on the little rent the farm brings in.
She never even hints a complaint on the score of poverty, but I know
what it must be.  She’s been handicapped by it all her life.  She
didn’t mind it when she was free and ambitious, but it must gall now,
believe ME.  I’m glad she seemed so bright and merry the evening she
spent with you.  Captain Jim told me he had fairly to put her cap and
coat on and push her out of the door.  Don’t be too long going to see
her either.  If you are she’ll think it’s because you don’t like the
sight of Dick, and she’ll crawl into her shell again.  Dick’s a great,
big, harmless baby, but that silly grin and chuckle of his do get on
some people’s nerves.  Thank goodness, I’ve no nerves myself.  I like
Dick Moore better now than I ever did when he was in his right
senses--though the Lord knows that isn’t saying much.  I was down there
one day in housecleaning time helping Leslie a bit, and I was frying
doughnuts.  Dick was hanging round to get one, as usual, and all at
once he picked up a scalding hot one I’d just fished out and dropped it
on the back of my neck when I was bending over.  Then he laughed and
laughed.  Believe ME, Anne, it took all the grace of God in my heart to
keep me from just whisking up that stew-pan of boiling fat and pouring
it over his head.”

Anne laughed over Miss Cornelia’s wrath as she sped through the
darkness.  But laughter accorded ill with that night.  She was sober
enough when she reached the house among the willows.  Everything was
very silent.  The front part of the house seemed dark and deserted, so
Anne slipped round to the side door, which opened from the veranda into
a little sitting room.  There she halted noiselessly.

The door was open.  Beyond, in the dimly lighted room, sat Leslie
Moore, with her arms flung out on the table and her head bent upon
them.  She was weeping horribly--with low, fierce, choking sobs, as if
some agony in her soul were trying to tear itself out.  An old black
dog was sitting by her, his nose resting on his lap, his big doggish
eyes full of mute, imploring sympathy and devotion.  Anne drew back in
dismay.  She felt that she could not intermeddle with this bitterness.
Her heart ached with a sympathy she might not utter.  To go in now
would be to shut the door forever on any possible help or friendship.
Some instinct warned Anne that the proud, bitter girl would never
forgive the one who thus surprised her in her abandonment of despair.

Anne slipped noiselessly from the veranda and found her way across the
yard.  Beyond, she heard voices in the gloom and saw the dim glow of a
light.  At the gate she met two men--Captain Jim with a lantern, and
another who she knew must be Dick Moore--a big man, badly gone to fat,
with a broad, round, red face, and vacant eyes.  Even in the dull light
Anne got the impression that there was something unusual about his eyes.

“Is this you, Mistress Blythe?” said Captain Jim.  “Now, now, you
hadn’t oughter be roaming about alone on a night like this.  You could
get lost in this fog easier than not.  Jest you wait till I see Dick
safe inside the door and I’ll come back and light you over the fields.
I ain’t going to have Dr. Blythe coming home and finding that you
walked clean over Cape Leforce in the fog.  A woman did that once,
forty years ago.

“So you’ve been over to see Leslie,” he said, when he rejoined her.

“I didn’t go in,” said Anne, and told what she had seen.  Captain Jim
sighed.

“Poor, poor, little girl!  She don’t cry often, Mistress Blythe--she’s
too brave for that.  She must feel terrible when she does cry.  A night
like this is hard on poor women who have sorrows.  There’s something
about it that kinder brings up all we’ve suffered--or feared.”

“It’s full of ghosts,” said Anne, with a shiver.  “That was why I came
over--I wanted to clasp a human hand and hear a human voice.

“There seem to be so many INHUMAN presences about tonight.  Even my own
dear house was full of them.  They fairly elbowed me out.  So I fled
over here for companionship of my kind.”

“You were right not to go in, though, Mistress Blythe.  Leslie wouldn’t
have liked it.  She wouldn’t have liked me going in with Dick, as I’d
have done if I hadn’t met you.  I had Dick down with me all day.  I
keep him with me as much as I can to help Leslie a bit.”

“Isn’t there something odd about his eyes?” asked Anne.

“You noticed that?  Yes, one is blue and t’other is hazel--his father
had the same.  It’s a Moore peculiarity.  That was what told me he was
Dick Moore when I saw him first down in Cuby.  If it hadn’t a-bin for
his eyes I mightn’t a-known him, with his beard and fat.  You know, I
reckon, that it was me found him and brought him home.  Miss Cornelia
always says I shouldn’t have done it, but I can’t agree with her.  It
was the RIGHT thing to do--and so ’twas the only thing.  There ain’t no
question in my mind about THAT.  But my old heart aches for Leslie.
She’s only twenty-eight and she’s eaten more bread with sorrow than
most women do in eighty years.”

They walked on in silence for a little while.  Presently Anne said, “Do
you know, Captain Jim, I never like walking with a lantern.  I have
always the strangest feeling that just outside the circle of light,
just over its edge in the darkness, I am surrounded by a ring of
furtive, sinister things, watching me from the shadows with hostile
eyes.  I’ve had that feeling from childhood.  What is the reason?  I
never feel like that when I’m really in the darkness--when it is close
all around me--I’m not the least frightened.”

“I’ve something of that feeling myself,” admitted Captain Jim.  “I
reckon when the darkness is close to us it is a friend.  But when we
sorter push it away from us--divorce ourselves from it, so to speak,
with lantern light--it becomes an enemy.  But the fog is lifting.

“There’s a smart west wind rising, if you notice.  The stars will be
out when you get home.”

They were out; and when Anne re-entered her house of dreams the red
embers were still glowing on the hearth, and all the haunting presences
were gone.




CHAPTER 14

NOVEMBER DAYS

The splendor of color which had glowed for weeks along the shores of
Four Winds Harbor had faded out into the soft gray-blue of late
autumnal hills.  There came many days when fields and shores were dim
with misty rain, or shivering before the breath of a melancholy
sea-wind--nights, too, of storm and tempest, when Anne sometimes
wakened to pray that no ship might be beating up the grim north shore,
for if it were so not even the great, faithful light whirling through
the darkness unafraid, could avail to guide it into safe haven.

“In November I sometimes feel as if spring could never come again,” she
sighed, grieving over the hopeless unsightliness of her frosted and
bedraggled flower-plots.  The gay little garden of the schoolmaster’s
bride was rather a forlorn place now, and the Lombardies and birches
were under bare poles, as Captain Jim said.  But the fir-wood behind
the little house was forever green and staunch; and even in November
and December there came gracious days of sunshine and purple hazes,
when the harbor danced and sparkled as blithely as in midsummer, and
the gulf was so softly blue and tender that the storm and the wild wind
seemed only things of a long-past dream.

Anne and Gilbert spent many an autumn evening at the lighthouse.  It
was always a cheery place.  Even when the east wind sang in minor and
the sea was dead and gray, hints of sunshine seemed to be lurking all
about it.  Perhaps this was because the First Mate always paraded it in
panoply of gold.  He was so large and effulgent that one hardly missed
the sun, and his resounding purrs formed a pleasant accompaniment to
the laughter and conversation which went on around Captain Jim’s
fireplace.  Captain Jim and Gilbert had many long discussions and high
converse on matters beyond the ken of cat or king.

“I like to ponder on all kinds of problems, though I can’t solve ’em,”
said Captain Jim.  “My father held that we should never talk of things
we couldn’t understand, but if we didn’t, doctor, the subjects for
conversation would be mighty few.  I reckon the gods laugh many a time
to hear us, but what matters so long as we remember that we’re only men
and don’t take to fancying that we’re gods ourselves, really, knowing
good and evil.  I reckon our pow-wows won’t do us or anyone much harm,
so let’s have another whack at the whence, why and whither this
evening, doctor.”

While they “whacked,” Anne listened or dreamed.  Sometimes Leslie went
to the lighthouse with them, and she and Anne wandered along the shore
in the eerie twilight, or sat on the rocks below the lighthouse until
the darkness drove them back to the cheer of the driftwood fire.  Then
Captain Jim would brew them tea and tell them

    “tales of land and sea
    And whatsoever might betide
    The great forgotten world outside.”

Leslie seemed always to enjoy those lighthouse carousals very much, and
bloomed out for the time being into ready wit and beautiful laughter,
or glowing-eyed silence.  There was a certain tang and savor in the
conversation when Leslie was present which they missed when she was
absent.  Even when she did not talk she seemed to inspire others to
brilliancy.  Captain Jim told his stories better, Gilbert was quicker
in argument and repartee, Anne felt little gushes and trickles of fancy
and imagination bubbling to her lips under the influence of Leslie’s
personality.

“That girl was born to be a leader in social and intellectual circles,
far away from Four Winds,” she said to Gilbert as they walked home one
night.  “She’s just wasted here--wasted.”

“Weren’t you listening to Captain Jim and yours truly the other night
when we discussed that subject generally?  We came to the comforting
conclusion that the Creator probably knew how to run His universe quite
as well as we do, and that, after all, there are no such things as
‘wasted’ lives, saving and except when an individual wilfully squanders
and wastes his own life--which Leslie Moore certainly hasn’t done.  And
some people might think that a Redmond B.A., whom editors were
beginning to honor, was ‘wasted’ as the wife of a struggling country
doctor in the rural community of Four Winds.”

“Gilbert!”

“If you had married Roy Gardner, now,” continued Gilbert mercilessly,
“YOU could have been ‘a leader in social and intellectual circles far
away from Four Winds.’”

“Gilbert BLYTHE!”

“You KNOW you were in love with him at one time, Anne.”

“Gilbert, that’s mean--‘pisen mean, just like all the men,’ as Miss
Cornelia says.  I NEVER was in love with him.  I only imagined I was.
YOU know that.  You KNOW I’d rather be your wife in our house of dreams
and fulfillment than a queen in a palace.”

Gilbert’s answer was not in words; but I am afraid that both of them
forgot poor Leslie speeding her lonely way across the fields to a house
that was neither a palace nor the fulfillment of a dream.

The moon was rising over the sad, dark sea behind them and
transfiguring it.  Her light had not yet reached the harbor, the
further side of which was shadowy and suggestive, with dim coves and
rich glooms and jewelling lights.

“How the home lights shine out tonight through the dark!” said Anne.
“That string of them over the harbor looks like a necklace.  And what a
coruscation there is up at the Glen!  Oh, look, Gilbert; there is ours.
I’m so glad we left it burning.  I hate to come home to a dark house.
OUR homelight, Gilbert!  Isn’t it lovely to see?”

“Just one of earth’s many millions of homes, Anne--girl--but
ours--OURS--our beacon in ‘a naughty world.’  When a fellow has a home
and a dear, little, red-haired wife in it what more need he ask of
life?”

“Well, he might ask ONE thing more,” whispered Anne happily.  “Oh,
Gilbert, it seems as if I just COULDN’T wait for the spring.”




CHAPTER 15

CHRISTMAS AT FOUR WINDS

At first Anne and Gilbert talked of going home to Avonlea for
Christmas; but eventually they decided to stay in Four Winds.  “I want
to spend the first Christmas of our life together in our own home,”
decreed Anne.

So it fell out that Marilla and Mrs. Rachel Lynde and the twins came to
Four Winds for Christmas.  Marilla had the face of a woman who had
circumnavigated the globe.  She had never been sixty miles away from
home before; and she had never eaten a Christmas dinner anywhere save
at Green Gables.

Mrs. Rachel had made and brought with her an enormous plum pudding.
Nothing could have convinced Mrs. Rachel that a college graduate of the
younger generation could make a Christmas plum pudding properly; but
she bestowed approval on Anne’s house.

“Anne’s a good housekeeper,” she said to Marilla in the spare room the
night of their arrival.  “I’ve looked into her bread box and her scrap
pail.  I always judge a housekeeper by those, that’s what.  There’s
nothing in the pail that shouldn’t have been thrown away, and no stale
pieces in the bread box.  Of course, she was trained up with you--but,
then, she went to college afterwards.  I notice she’s got my tobacco
stripe quilt on the bed here, and that big round braided mat of yours
before her living-room fire.  It makes me feel right at home.”

Anne’s first Christmas in her own house was as delightful as she could
have wished.  The day was fine and bright; the first skim of snow had
fallen on Christmas Eve and made the world beautiful; the harbor was
still open and glittering.

Captain Jim and Miss Cornelia came to dinner.  Leslie and Dick had been
invited, but Leslie made excuse; they always went to her Uncle Isaac
West’s for Christmas, she said.

“She’d rather have it so,” Miss Cornelia told Anne.  “She can’t bear
taking Dick where there are strangers.  Christmas is always a hard time
for Leslie.  She and her father used to make a lot of it.”

Miss Cornelia and Mrs. Rachel did not take a very violent fancy to each
other.  “Two suns hold not their courses in one sphere.”  But they did
not clash at all, for Mrs. Rachel was in the kitchen helping Anne and
Marilla with the dinner, and it fell to Gilbert to entertain Captain
Jim and Miss Cornelia,--or rather to be entertained by them, for a
dialogue between those two old friends and antagonists was assuredly
never dull.

“It’s many a year since there was a Christmas dinner here, Mistress
Blythe,” said Captain Jim.  “Miss Russell always went to her friends in
town for Christmas.  But I was here to the first Christmas dinner that
was ever eaten in this house--and the schoolmaster’s bride cooked it.
That was sixty years ago today, Mistress Blythe--and a day very like
this--just enough snow to make the hills white, and the harbor as blue
as June.  I was only a lad, and I’d never been invited out to dinner
before, and I was too shy to eat enough.  I’ve got all over THAT.”

“Most men do,” said Miss Cornelia, sewing furiously.  Miss Cornelia was
not going to sit with idle hands, even on Christmas.

Babies come without any consideration for holidays, and there was one
expected in a poverty-stricken household at Glen St. Mary.  Miss
Cornelia had sent that household a substantial dinner for its little
swarm, and so meant to eat her own with a comfortable conscience.

“Well, you know, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,
Cornelia,” explained Captain Jim.

“I believe you--when he HAS a heart,” retorted Miss Cornelia.  “I
suppose that’s why so many women kill themselves cooking--just as poor
Amelia Baxter did.  She died last Christmas morning, and she said it
was the first Christmas since she was married that she didn’t have to
cook a big, twenty-plate dinner.  It must have been a real pleasant
change for her.  Well, she’s been dead a year, so you’ll soon hear of
Horace Baxter taking notice.”

“I heard he was taking notice already,” said Captain Jim, winking at
Gilbert.  “Wasn’t he up to your place one Sunday lately, with his
funeral blacks on, and a boiled collar?”

“No, he wasn’t.  And he needn’t come neither.  I could have had him
long ago when he was fresh.  I don’t want any second-hand goods,
believe ME.  As for Horace Baxter, he was in financial difficulties a
year ago last summer, and he prayed to the Lord for help; and when his
wife died and he got her life insurance he said he believed it was the
answer to his prayer.  Wasn’t that like a man?”

“Have you really proof that he said that, Cornelia?”

“I have the Methodist minister’s word for it--if you call THAT proof.
Robert Baxter told me the same thing too, but I admit THAT isn’t
evidence.  Robert Baxter isn’t often known to tell the truth.”

“Come, come, Cornelia, I think he generally tells the truth, but he
changes his opinion so often it sometimes sounds as if he didn’t.”

“It sounds like it mighty often, believe ME.  But trust one man to
excuse another.  I have no use for Robert Baxter.  He turned Methodist
just because the Presbyterian choir happened to be singing ‘Behold the
bridegroom cometh’ for a collection piece when him and Margaret walked
up the aisle the Sunday after they were married.  Served him right for
being late!  He always insisted the choir did it on purpose to insult
him, as if he was of that much importance.  But that family always
thought they were much bigger potatoes than they really were.  His
brother Eliphalet imagined the devil was always at his elbow--but _I_
never believed the devil wasted that much time on him.”

“I--don’t--know,” said Captain Jim thoughtfully.  “Eliphalet Baxter
lived too much alone--hadn’t even a cat or dog to keep him human.  When
a man is alone he’s mighty apt to be with the devil--if he ain’t with
God.  He has to choose which company he’ll keep, I reckon.  If the
devil always was at Life Baxter’s elbow it must have been because Life
liked to have him there.”

“Man-like,” said Miss Cornelia, and subsided into silence over a
complicated arrangement of tucks until Captain Jim deliberately stirred
her up again by remarking in a casual way:

“I was up to the Methodist church last Sunday morning.”

“You’d better have been home reading your Bible,” was Miss Cornelia’s
retort.

“Come, now, Cornelia, _I_ can’t see any harm in going to the Methodist
church when there’s no preaching in your own.  I’ve been a Presbyterian
for seventy-six years, and it isn’t likely my theology will hoist
anchor at this late day.”

“It’s setting a bad example,” said Miss Cornelia grimly.

“Besides,” continued wicked Captain Jim, “I wanted to hear some good
singing.  The Methodists have a good choir; and you can’t deny,
Cornelia, that the singing in our church is awful since the split in
the choir.”

“What if the singing isn’t good?  They’re doing their best, and God
sees no difference between the voice of a crow and the voice of a
nightingale.”

“Come, come, Cornelia,” said Captain Jim mildly, “I’ve a better opinion
of the Almighty’s ear for music than THAT.”

“What caused the trouble in our choir?” asked Gilbert, who was
suffering from suppressed laughter.

“It dates back to the new church, three years ago,” answered Captain
Jim.  “We had a fearful time over the building of that church--fell out
over the question of a new site.  The two sites wasn’t more’n two
hundred yards apart, but you’d have thought they was a thousand by the
bitterness of that fight.  We was split up into three factions--one
wanted the east site and one the south, and one held to the old.  It
was fought out in bed and at board, and in church and at market.  All
the old scandals of three generations were dragged out of their graves
and aired.  Three matches was broken up by it.  And the meetings we had
to try to settle the question!  Cornelia, will you ever forget the one
when old Luther Burns got up and made a speech?  HE stated his opinions
forcibly.”

“Call a spade a spade, Captain.  You mean he got red-mad and raked them
all, fore and aft.  They deserved it too--a pack of incapables.  But
what would you expect of a committee of men?  That building committee
held twenty-seven meetings, and at the end of the twenty-seventh
weren’t no nearer having a church than when they begun--not so near,
for a fact, for in one fit of hurrying things along they’d gone to work
and tore the old church down, so there we were, without a church, and
no place but the hall to worship in.”

“The Methodists offered us their church, Cornelia.”

“The Glen St. Mary church wouldn’t have been built to this day,” went
on Miss Cornelia, ignoring Captain Jim, “if we women hadn’t just
started in and took charge.  We said WE meant to have a church, if the
men meant to quarrel till doomsday, and we were tired of being a
laughing-stock for the Methodists.  We held ONE meeting and elected a
committee and canvassed for subscriptions.  We got them, too.  When any
of the men tried to sass us we told them they’d tried for two years to
build a church and it was our turn now.  We shut them up close, believe
ME, and in six months we had our church.  Of course, when the men saw
we were determined they stopped fighting and went to work, man-like, as
soon as they saw they had to, or quit bossing.  Oh, women can’t preach
or be elders; but they can build churches and scare up the money for
them.”

“The Methodists allow women to preach,” said Captain Jim.

Miss Cornelia glared at him.

“I never said the Methodists hadn’t common sense, Captain. What I say
is, I doubt if they have much religion.”

“I suppose you are in favor of votes for women, Miss Cornelia,” said
Gilbert.

“I’m not hankering after the vote, believe ME,” said Miss Cornelia
scornfully.  “_I_ know what it is to clean up after the men.  But some
of these days, when the men realize they’ve got the world into a mess
they can’t get it out of, they’ll be glad to give us the vote, and
shoulder their troubles over on us.  That’s THEIR scheme.  Oh, it’s
well that women are patient, believe ME!”

“What about Job?” suggested Captain Jim.

“Job!  It was such a rare thing to find a patient man that when one was
really discovered they were determined he shouldn’t be forgotten,”
retorted Miss Cornelia triumphantly.  “Anyhow, the virtue doesn’t go
with the name.  There never was such an impatient man born as old Job
Taylor over harbor.”

“Well, you know, he had a good deal to try him, Cornelia.  Even you
can’t defend his wife.  I always remember what old William MacAllister
said of her at her funeral, ‘There’s nae doot she was a Chreestian
wumman, but she had the de’il’s own temper.’”

“I suppose she WAS trying,” admitted Miss Cornelia reluctantly, “but
that didn’t justify what Job said when she died.  He rode home from the
graveyard the day of the funeral with my father.  He never said a word
till they got near home.  Then he heaved a big sigh and said, ‘You may
not believe it, Stephen, but this is the happiest day of my life!’
Wasn’t that like a man?”

“I s’pose poor old Mrs. Job did make life kinder uneasy for him,”
reflected Captain Jim.

“Well, there’s such a thing as decency, isn’t there?  Even if a man is
rejoicing in his heart over his wife being dead, he needn’t proclaim it
to the four winds of heaven.  And happy day or not, Job Taylor wasn’t
long in marrying again, you might notice.  His second wife could manage
him.  She made him walk Spanish, believe me!  The first thing she did
was to make him hustle round and put up a tombstone to the first Mrs.
Job--and she had a place left on it for her own name.  She said there’d
be nobody to make Job put up a monument to HER.”

“Speaking of Taylors, how is Mrs. Lewis Taylor up at the Glen, doctor?”
asked Captain Jim.

“She’s getting better slowly--but she has to work too hard,” replied
Gilbert.

“Her husband works hard too--raising prize pigs,” said Miss Cornelia.
“He’s noted for his beautiful pigs.  He’s a heap prouder of his pigs
than of his children.  But then, to be sure, his pigs are the best pigs
possible, while his children don’t amount to much.  He picked a poor
mother for them, and starved her while she was bearing and rearing
them.  His pigs got the cream and his children got the skim milk.

“There are times, Cornelia, when I have to agree with you, though it
hurts me,” said Captain Jim.  “That’s just exactly the truth about
Lewis Taylor.  When I see those poor, miserable children of his, robbed
of all children ought to have, it p’isens my own bite and sup for days
afterwards.”

Gilbert went out to the kitchen in response to Anne’s beckoning.  Anne
shut the door and gave him a connubial lecture.

“Gilbert, you and Captain Jim must stop baiting Miss Cornelia.  Oh,
I’ve been listening to you--and I just won’t allow it.”

‘Anne, Miss Cornelia is enjoying herself hugely.  You know she is.’

“Well, never mind.  You two needn’t egg her on like that.  Dinner is
ready now, and, Gilbert, DON’T let Mrs. Rachel carve the geese.  I know
she means to offer to do it because she doesn’t think you can do it
properly.  Show her you can.”

“I ought to be able to.  I’ve been studying A-B-C-D diagrams of carving
for the past month,” said Gilbert.  “Only don’t talk to me while I’m
doing it, Anne, for if you drive the letters out of my head I’ll be in
a worse predicament than you were in old geometry days when the teacher
changed them.”

Gilbert carved the geese beautifully.  Even Mrs. Rachel had to admit
that.  And everybody ate of them and enjoyed them.  Anne’s first
Christmas dinner was a great success and she beamed with housewifely
pride.  Merry was the feast and long; and when it was over they
gathered around the cheer of the red hearth flame and Captain Jim told
them stories until the red sun swung low over Four Winds Harbor, and
the long blue shadows of the Lombardies fell across the snow in the
lane.

“I must be getting back to the light,” he said finally.  “I’ll jest
have time to walk home before sundown.  Thank you for a beautiful
Christmas, Mistress Blythe.  Bring Master Davy down to the light some
night before he goes home.

“I want to see those stone gods,” said Davy with a relish.




CHAPTER 16

NEW YEAR’S EVE AT THE LIGHT

The Green Gables folk went home after Christmas, Marilla under solemn
covenant to return for a month in the spring.  More snow came before
New Year’s, and the harbor froze over, but the gulf still was free,
beyond the white, imprisoned fields.  The last day of the old year was
one of those bright, cold, dazzling winter days, which bombard us with
their brilliancy, and command our admiration but never our love.  The
sky was sharp and blue; the snow diamonds sparkled insistently; the
stark trees were bare and shameless, with a kind of brazen beauty; the
hills shot assaulting lances of crystal.  Even the shadows were sharp
and stiff and clear-cut, as no proper shadows should be.  Everything
that was handsome seemed ten times handsomer and less attractive in the
glaring splendor; and everything that was ugly seemed ten times uglier,
and everything was either handsome or ugly.  There was no soft
blending, or kind obscurity, or elusive mistiness in that searching
glitter.  The only things that held their own individuality were the
firs--for the fir is the tree of mystery and shadow, and yields never
to the encroachments of crude radiance.

But finally the day began to realize that she was growing old.  Then a
certain pensiveness fell over her beauty which dimmed yet intensified
it; sharp angles, glittering points, melted away into curves and
enticing gleams.  The white harbor put on soft grays and pinks; the
far-away hills turned amethyst.

“The old year is going away beautifully,” said Anne.

She and Leslie and Gilbert were on their way to the Four Winds Point,
having plotted with Captain Jim to watch the New Year in at the light.
The sun had set and in the southwestern sky hung Venus, glorious and
golden, having drawn as near to her earth-sister as is possible for
her.  For the first time Anne and Gilbert saw the shadow cast by that
brilliant star of evening, that faint, mysterious shadow, never seen
save when there is white snow to reveal it, and then only with averted
vision, vanishing when you gaze at it directly.

“It’s like the spirit of a shadow, isn’t it?” whispered Anne.  “You can
see it so plainly haunting your side when you look ahead; but when you
turn and look at it--it’s gone.”

“I have heard that you can see the shadow of Venus only once in a
lifetime, and that within a year of seeing it your life’s most
wonderful gift will come to you,” said Leslie.  But she spoke rather
hardly; perhaps she thought that even the shadow of Venus could bring
her no gift of life.  Anne smiled in the soft twilight; she felt quite
sure what the mystic shadow promised her.

They found Marshall Elliott at the lighthouse.  At first Anne felt
inclined to resent the intrusion of this long-haired, long-bearded
eccentric into the familiar little circle.  But Marshall Elliott soon
proved his legitimate claim to membership in the household of Joseph.
He was a witty, intelligent, well-read man, rivalling Captain Jim
himself in the knack of telling a good story.  They were all glad when
he agreed to watch the old year out with them.

Captain Jim’s small nephew Joe had come down to spend New Year’s with
his great-uncle, and had fallen asleep on the sofa with the First Mate
curled up in a huge golden ball at his feet.

“Ain’t he a dear little man?” said Captain Jim gloatingly.  “I do love
to watch a little child asleep, Mistress Blythe.  It’s the most
beautiful sight in the world, I reckon.  Joe does love to get down here
for a night, because I have him sleep with me.  At home he has to sleep
with the other two boys, and he doesn’t like it.  Why can’t I sleep
with father, Uncle Jim?” says he.  ‘Everybody in the Bible slept with
their fathers.’  As for the questions he asks, the minister himself
couldn’t answer them.  They fair swamp me.  ‘Uncle Jim, if I wasn’t ME
who’d I be?’ and, ‘Uncle Jim, what would happen if God died?’  He fired
them two off at me tonight, afore he went to sleep.  As for his
imagination, it sails away from everything.  He makes up the most
remarkable yarns--and then his mother shuts him up in the closet for
telling stories.  And he sits down and makes up another one, and has it
ready to relate to her when she lets him out.  He had one for me when
he come down tonight.  ‘Uncle Jim,’ says he, solemn as a tombstone, ‘I
had a ’venture in the Glen today.’  ‘Yes, what was it?’ says I,
expecting something quite startling, but nowise prepared for what I
really got.  ‘I met a wolf in the street,’ says he, ‘a ’normous wolf
with a big, red mouf and AWFUL long teeth, Uncle Jim.’  ‘I didn’t know
there was any wolves up at the Glen,’ says I.  ‘Oh, he comed there from
far, far away,’ says Joe, ‘and I fought he was going to eat me up,
Uncle Jim.’  ‘Were you scared?’ says I.  ‘No, ’cause I had a big gun,’
says Joe, ‘and I shot the wolf dead, Uncle Jim,--solid dead--and then
he went up to heaven and bit God,’ says he.  Well, I was fair
staggered, Mistress Blythe.”

The hours bloomed into mirth around the driftwood fire.  Captain Jim
told tales, and Marshall Elliott sang old Scotch ballads in a fine
tenor voice; finally Captain Jim took down his old brown fiddle from
the wall and began to play.  He had a tolerable knack of fiddling,
which all appreciated save the First Mate, who sprang from the sofa as
if he had been shot, emitted a shriek of protest, and fled wildly up
the stairs.

“Can’t cultivate an ear for music in that cat nohow,” said Captain Jim.
“He won’t stay long enough to learn to like it.  When we got the organ
up at the Glen church old Elder Richards bounced up from his seat the
minute the organist began to play and scuttled down the aisle and out
of the church at the rate of no-man’s-business.  It reminded me so
strong of the First Mate tearing loose as soon as I begin to fiddle
that I come nearer to laughing out loud in church than I ever did
before or since.”

There was something so infectious in the rollicking tunes which Captain
Jim played that very soon Marshall Elliott’s feet began to twitch.  He
had been a noted dancer in his youth.  Presently he started up and held
out his hands to Leslie.  Instantly she responded.  Round and round the
firelit room they circled with a rhythmic grace that was wonderful.
Leslie danced like one inspired; the wild, sweet abandon of the music
seemed to have entered into and possessed her.  Anne watched her in
fascinated admiration.  She had never seen her like this.  All the
innate richness and color and charm of her nature seemed to have broken
loose and overflowed in crimson cheek and glowing eye and grace of
motion.  Even the aspect of Marshall Elliott, with his long beard and
hair, could not spoil the picture.  On the contrary, it seemed to
enhance it.  Marshall Elliott looked like a Viking of elder days,
dancing with one of the blue-eyed, golden-haired daughters of the
Northland.

“The purtiest dancing I ever saw, and I’ve seen some in my time,”
declared Captain Jim, when at last the bow fell from his tired hand.
Leslie dropped into her chair, laughing, breathless.

“I love dancing,” she said apart to Anne.  “I haven’t danced since I
was sixteen--but I love it.  The music seems to run through my veins
like quicksilver and I forget everything--everything--except the
delight of keeping time to it.  There isn’t any floor beneath me, or
walls about me, or roof over me--I’m floating amid the stars.”

Captain Jim hung his fiddle up in its place, beside a large frame
enclosing several banknotes.

“Is there anybody else of your acquaintance who can afford to hang his
walls with banknotes for pictures?” he asked.  “There’s twenty
ten-dollar notes there, not worth the glass over them.  They’re old
Bank of P. E.  Island notes.  Had them by me when the bank failed, and
I had ’em framed and hung up, partly as a reminder not to put your
trust in banks, and partly to give me a real luxurious, millionairy
feeling.  Hullo, Matey, don’t be scared.  You can come back now.  The
music and revelry is over for tonight.  The old year has just another
hour to stay with us.  I’ve seen seventy-six New Years come in over
that gulf yonder, Mistress Blythe.”

“You’ll see a hundred,” said Marshall Elliott.

Captain Jim shook his head.

“No; and I don’t want to--at least, I think I don’t.  Death grows
friendlier as we grow older.  Not that one of us really wants to die
though, Marshall.  Tennyson spoke truth when he said that.  There’s old
Mrs. Wallace up at the Glen.  She’s had heaps of trouble all her life,
poor soul, and she’s lost almost everyone she cared about.  She’s
always saying that she’ll be glad when her time comes, and she doesn’t
want to sojourn any longer in this vale of tears.  But when she takes a
sick spell there’s a fuss!  Doctors from town, and a trained nurse, and
enough medicine to kill a dog.  Life may be a vale of tears, all right,
but there are some folks who enjoy weeping, I reckon.”

They spent the old year’s last hour quietly around the fire.  A few
minutes before twelve Captain Jim rose and opened the door.

“We must let the New Year in,” he said.

Outside was a fine blue night.  A sparkling ribbon of moonlight
garlanded the gulf.  Inside the bar the harbor shone like a pavement of
pearl.  They stood before the door and waited--Captain Jim with his
ripe, full experience, Marshall Elliott in his vigorous but empty
middle life, Gilbert and Anne with their precious memories and
exquisite hopes, Leslie with her record of starved years and her
hopeless future.  The clock on the little shelf above the fireplace
struck twelve.

“Welcome, New Year,” said Captain Jim, bowing low as the last stroke
died away.  “I wish you all the best year of your lives, mates.  I
reckon that whatever the New Year brings us will be the best the Great
Captain has for us--and somehow or other we’ll all make port in a good
harbor.”




CHAPTER 17

A FOUR WINDS WINTER

Winter set in vigorously after New Year’s.  Big, white drifts heaped
themselves about the little house, and palms of frost covered its
windows.  The harbor ice grew harder and thicker, until the Four Winds
people began their usual winter travelling over it.  The safe ways were
“bushed” by a benevolent Government, and night and day the gay tinkle
of the sleigh-bells sounded on it.  On moonlit nights Anne heard them
in her house of dreams like fairy chimes.  The gulf froze over, and the
Four Winds light flashed no more.  During the months when navigation
was closed Captain Jim’s office was a sinecure.

“The First Mate and I will have nothing to do till spring except keep
warm and amuse ourselves.  The last lighthouse keeper used always to
move up to the Glen in winter; but I’d rather stay at the Point.  The
First Mate might get poisoned or chewed up by dogs at the Glen.  It’s a
mite lonely, to be sure, with neither the light nor the water for
company, but if our friends come to see us often we’ll weather it
through.”

Captain Jim had an ice boat, and many a wild, glorious spin Gilbert and
Anne and Leslie had over the glib harbor ice with him.  Anne and Leslie
took long snowshoe tramps together, too, over the fields, or across the
harbor after storms, or through the woods beyond the Glen.  They were
very good comrades in their rambles and their fireside communings.
Each had something to give the other--each felt life the richer for
friendly exchange of thought and friendly silence; each looked across
the white fields between their homes with a pleasant consciousness of a
friend beyond.  But, in spite of all this, Anne felt that there was
always a barrier between Leslie and herself--a constraint that never
wholly vanished.

“I don’t know why I can’t get closer to her,” Anne said one evening to
Captain Jim.  “I like her so much--I admire her so much--I WANT to take
her right into my heart and creep right into hers.  But I can never
cross the barrier.”

“You’ve been too happy all your life, Mistress Blythe,” said Captain
Jim thoughtfully.  “I reckon that’s why you and Leslie can’t get real
close together in your souls.  The barrier between you is her
experience of sorrow and trouble.  She ain’t responsible for it and you
ain’t; but it’s there and neither of you can cross it.”

“My childhood wasn’t very happy before I came to Green Gables,” said
Anne, gazing soberly out of the window at the still, sad, dead beauty
of the leafless tree-shadows on the moonlit snow.

“Mebbe not--but it was just the usual unhappiness of a child who hasn’t
anyone to look after it properly.  There hasn’t been any TRAGEDY in
your life, Mistress Blythe.  And poor Leslie’s has been almost ALL
tragedy.  She feels, I reckon, though mebbe she hardly knows she feels
it, that there’s a vast deal in her life you can’t enter nor
understand--and so she has to keep you back from it--hold you off, so
to speak, from hurting her.  You know if we’ve got anything about us
that hurts we shrink from anyone’s touch on or near it.  It holds good
with our souls as well as our bodies, I reckon.  Leslie’s soul must be
near raw--it’s no wonder she hides it away.”

“If that were really all, I wouldn’t mind, Captain Jim.  I would
understand.  But there are times--not always, but now and again--when I
almost h

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