Anne's House of Dreams (10 page)

‘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 harbour 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 neighbour 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 grey 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 neighbours we ought to be friends. That is the sole fault of Four Winds – there aren’t quite enough neighbours. 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 Lovers’ 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 foreboded 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 fulfil 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 harbour, and I sit at its window and feast my eyes. The colours 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 everyone 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.’

‘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 harbour, 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 harbour. 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 favourite 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.