Anne's House of Dreams
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.”