Anne's House of Dreams
“Oh, I suppose I must reconcile myself to being the odd one again,”
said poor Leslie with another bitter laugh. “Forgive me, Anne--that
was hateful. I ought to be thankful--and I AM--that I have two good
friends who are glad to count me in as a third. Don’t mind my hateful
speeches. I just seem to be one great pain all over and everything
hurts me.”
“Leslie seemed very quiet tonight, didn’t she?” said Gilbert, when he
and Anne reached home. “What in the world was she doing over there on
the bar alone?”
“Oh, she was tired--and you know she likes to go to the shore after one
of Dick’s bad days.”
“What a pity she hadn’t met and married a fellow like Ford long ago,”
ruminated Gilbert. “They’d have made an ideal couple, wouldn’t they?”
“For pity’s sake, Gilbert, don’t develop into a match-maker. It’s an
abominable profession for a man,” cried Anne rather sharply, afraid
that Gilbert might blunder on the truth if he kept on in this strain.
“Bless us, Anne-girl, I’m not matchmaking,” protested Gilbert, rather
surprised at her tone. “I was only thinking of one of the
might-have-beens.”
“Well, don’t. It’s a waste of time,” said Anne. Then she added
suddenly:
“Oh, Gilbert, I wish everybody could be as happy as we are.”
CHAPTER 28
ODDS AND ENDS
“I’ve been reading obituary notices,” said Miss Cornelia, laying down
the Daily Enterprise and taking up her sewing.
The harbor was lying black and sullen under a dour November sky; the
wet, dead leaves clung drenched and sodden to the window sills; but the
little house was gay with firelight and spring-like with Anne’s ferns
and geraniums.
“It’s always summer here, Anne,” Leslie had said one day; and all who
were the guests of that house of dreams felt the same.
“The Enterprise seems to run to obituaries these days,” quoth Miss
Cornelia. “It always has a couple of columns of them, and I read every
line. It’s one of my forms of recreation, especially when there’s some
original poetry attached to them. Here’s a choice sample for you:
She’s gone to be with her Maker,
Never more to roam.
She used to play and sing with joy
The song of Home, Sweet Home.
Who says we haven’t any poetical talent on the Island! Have you ever
noticed what heaps of good people die, Anne, dearie? It’s kind of
pitiful. Here’s ten obituaries, and every one of them saints and
models, even the men. Here’s old Peter Stimson, who has ‘left a large
circle of friends to mourn his untimely loss.’ Lord, Anne, dearie, that
man was eighty, and everybody who knew him had been wishing him dead
these thirty years. Read obituaries when you’re blue, Anne,
dearie--especially the ones of folks you know. If you’ve any sense of
humor at all they’ll cheer you up, believe ME. I just wish _I_ had the
writing of the obituaries of some people. Isn’t ‘obituary’ an awful
ugly word? This very Peter I’ve been speaking of had a face exactly
like one. I never saw it but I thought of the word OBITUARY then and
there. There’s only one uglier word that I know of, and that’s RELICT.
Lord, Anne, dearie, I may be an old maid, but there’s this comfort in
it--I’ll never be any man’s ‘relict.’”
“It IS an ugly word,” said Anne, laughing. “Avonlea graveyard was full
of old tombstones ‘sacred to the memory of So-and-So, RELICT of the
late So-and-So.’ It always made me think of something worn out and
moth eaten. Why is it that so many of the words connected with death
are so disagreeable? I do wish that the custom of calling a dead body
‘the remains’ could be abolished. I positively shiver when I hear the
undertaker say at a funeral, ‘All who wish to see the remains please
step this way.’ It always gives me the horrible impression that I am
about to view the scene of a cannibal feast.”
“Well, all I hope,” said Miss Cornelia calmly, “is that when I’m dead
nobody will call me ‘our departed sister.’ I took a scunner at this
sister-and-brothering business five years ago when there was a
travelling evangelist holding meetings at the Glen. I hadn’t any use
for him from the start. I felt in my bones that there was something
wrong with him. And there was. Mind you, he was pretending to be a
Presbyterian--PresbyTARian, HE called it--and all the time he was a
Methodist. He brothered and sistered everybody. He had a large circle
of relations, that man had. He clutched my hand fervently one night,
and said imploringly, ‘My DEAR sister Bryant, are you a Christian?’ I
just looked him over a bit, and then I said calmly, ‘The only brother I
ever had, MR. Fiske, was buried fifteen years ago, and I haven’t
adopted any since. As for being a Christian, I was that, I hope and
believe, when you were crawling about the floor in petticoats.’ THAT
squelched him, believe ME. Mind you, Anne dearie, I’m not down on all
evangelists. We’ve had some real fine, earnest men, who did a lot of
good and made the old sinners squirm. But this Fiske-man wasn’t one of
them. I had a good laugh all to myself one evening. Fiske had asked
all who were Christians to stand up. _I_ didn’t, believe me! I never
had any use for that sort of thing. But most of them did, and then he
asked all who wanted to be Christians to stand up. Nobody stirred for
a spell, so Fiske started up a hymn at the top of his voice. Just in
front of me poor little Ikey Baker was sitting in the Millison pew. He
was a home boy, ten years old, and Millison just about worked him to
death. The poor little creature was always so tired he fell asleep
right off whenever he went to church or anywhere he could sit still for
a few minutes. He’d been sleeping all through the meeting, and I was
thankful to see the poor child getting a rest, believe ME. Well, when
Fiske’s voice went soaring skyward and the rest joined in, poor Ikey
wakened with a start. He thought it was just an ordinary singing and
that everybody ought to stand up, so he scrambled to his feet mighty
quick, knowing he’d get a combing down from Maria Millison for sleeping
in meeting. Fiske saw him, stopped and shouted, ‘Another soul saved!
Glory Hallelujah!’ And there was poor, frightened Ikey, only half
awake and yawning, never thinking about his soul at all. Poor child,
he never had time to think of anything but his tired, overworked little
body.
“Leslie went one night and the Fiske-man got right after her--oh, he
was especially anxious about the souls of the nice-looking girls,
believe me!--and he hurt her feelings so she never went again. And
then he prayed every night after that, right in public, that the Lord
would soften her hard heart. Finally I went to Mr. Leavitt, our
minister then, and told him if he didn’t make Fiske stop that I’d just
rise up the next night and throw my hymn book at him when he mentioned
that ‘beautiful but unrepentant young woman.’ I’d have done it too,
believe ME. Mr. Leavitt did put a stop to it, but Fiske kept on with
his meetings until Charley Douglas put an end to his career in the
Glen. Mrs. Charley had been out in California all winter. She’d been
real melancholy in the fall--religious melancholy--it ran in her
family. Her father worried so much over believing that he had
committed the unpardonable sin that he died in the asylum. So when
Rose Douglas got that way Charley packed her off to visit her sister in
Los Angeles. She got perfectly well and came home just when the Fiske
revival was in full swing. She stepped off the train at the Glen, real
smiling and chipper, and the first thing she saw staring her in the
face on the black, gable-end of the freight shed, was the question, in
big white letters, two feet high, ‘Whither goest thou--to heaven or
hell?’ That had been one of Fiske’s ideas, and he had got Henry Hammond
to paint it. Rose just gave a shriek and fainted; and when they got
her home she was worse than ever. Charley Douglas went to Mr. Leavitt
and told him that every Douglas would leave the church if Fiske was
kept there any longer. Mr. Leavitt had to give in, for the Douglases
paid half his salary, so Fiske departed, and we had to depend on our
Bibles once more for instructions on how to get to heaven. After he
was gone Mr. Leavitt found out he was just a masquerading Methodist,
and he felt pretty sick, believe ME. Mr. Leavitt fell short in some
ways, but he was a good, sound Presbyterian.”
“By the way, I had a letter from Mr. Ford yesterday,” said Anne. “He
asked me to remember him kindly to you.”
“I don’t want his remembrances,” said Miss Cornelia, curtly.
“Why?” said Anne, in astonishment. “I thought you liked him.”
“Well, so I did, in a kind of way. But I’ll never forgive him for what
he done to Leslie. There’s that poor child eating her heart out about
him--as if she hadn’t had trouble enough--and him ranting round
Toronto, I’ve no doubt, enjoying himself same as ever. Just like a
man.”
“Oh, Miss Cornelia, how did you find out?”
“Lord, Anne, dearie, I’ve got eyes, haven’t I? And I’ve known Leslie
since she was a baby. There’s been a new kind of heartbreak in her
eyes all the fall, and I know that writer-man was behind it somehow.
I’ll never forgive myself for being the means of bringing him here.
But I never expected he’d be like he was. I thought he’d just be like
the other men Leslie had boarded--conceited young asses, every one of
them, that she never had any use for. One of them did try to flirt
with her once and she froze him out--so bad, I feel sure he’s never got
himself thawed since. So I never thought of any danger.”
“Don’t let Leslie suspect you know her secret,” said Anne hurriedly.
“I think it would hurt her.”
“Trust me, Anne, dearie. _I_ wasn’t born yesterday. Oh, a plague on
all the men! One of them ruined Leslie’s life to begin with, and now
another of the tribe comes and makes her still more wretched. Anne,
this world is an awful place, believe me.”
“There’s something in the world amiss
Will be unriddled by and by,”
quoted Anne dreamily.
“If it is, it’ll be in a world where there aren’t any men,” said Miss
Cornelia gloomily.
“What have the men been doing now?” asked Gilbert, entering.
“Mischief--mischief! What else did they ever do?”
“It was Eve ate the apple, Miss Cornelia.”
“’Twas a he-creature tempted her,” retorted Miss Cornelia triumphantly.
Leslie, after her first anguish was over, found it possible to go on
with life after all, as most of us do, no matter what our particular
form of torment has been. It is even possible that she enjoyed moments
of it, when she was one of the gay circle in the little house of
dreams. But if Anne ever hoped that she was forgetting Owen Ford she
would have been undeceived by the furtive hunger in Leslie’s eyes
whenever his name was mentioned. Pitiful to that hunger, Anne always
contrived to tell Captain Jim or Gilbert bits of news from Owen’s
letters when Leslie was with them. The girl’s flush and pallor at such
moments spoke all too eloquently of the emotion that filled her being.
But she never spoke of him to Anne, or mentioned that night on the
sand-bar.
One day her old dog died and she grieved bitterly over him.
“He’s been my friend so long,” she said sorrowfully to Anne. “He was
Dick’s old dog, you know--Dick had him for a year or so before we were
married. He left him with me when he sailed on the Four Sisters.
Carlo got very fond of me--and his dog-love helped me through that
first dreadful year after mother died, when I was alone. When I heard
that Dick was coming back I was afraid Carlo wouldn’t be so much mine.
But he never seemed to care for Dick, though he had been so fond of him
once. He would snap and growl at him as if he were a stranger. I was
glad. It was nice to have one thing whose love was all mine. That old