Anne's House of Dreams
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.”