Anne's House of Dreams
“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