Anne's House of Dreams (15 page)

Winter set in vigorously after New Year’s. Big white drifts heaped themselves about the little house, and palms of frost covered its windows. The harbour ice grew harder and thicker, until the Four Winds people began their usual winter travelling over it. The safe ways were ‘bushed’ by a benevolent Government, and night and day the gay tinkle of the sleigh-bells sounded on it. On moonlit nights Anne heard them in her house of dreams like fairy chimes. The gulf froze over, and the Four Winds light flashed no more. During the months when navigation was closed Captain Jim’s office was a sinecure.

‘The First Mate and I will have nothing to do till spring, except keep warm and amuse ourselves. The last lighthouse keeper always used to move up to the Glen in winter; but I’d rather stay at the Point. The First Mate might get poisoned or chewed up by dogs at the Glen. It’s a mite lonely, to be sure, with neither the light nor the water for company, but if our friends come to see us often we’ll weather it through.’

Captain Jim had an ice boat, and many a wild, glorious spin Gilbert and Anne and Leslie had over the glib harbour ice with him. Anne and Leslie took long snowshoe tramps together, too, over the fields, or across the harbour after storms, or through the woods beyond the Glen. They were very good comrades in their rambles and their fireside communings. Each had something to give the other – each felt life the richer for friendly exchange of thought and friendly silence; each looked across the white fields between their homes with a pleasant consciousness of a friend beyond. But, in spite of all this, Anne felt that there was always a barrier between Leslie and herself – a constraint that never wholly vanished.

‘I don’t know why I can’t get closer to her,’ Anne said one evening to Captain Jim. ‘I like her so much – I admire her so much – I
want
to take her right into my heart and creep right into hers. But I can never cross the barrier.’

‘You’ve been too happy all your life, Mistress Blythe,’ said Captain Jim thoughtfully. ‘I reckon that’s why you and Leslie can’t get real close together in your souls. The barrier between you is her experience of sorrow and trouble. She ain’t responsible for it and you ain’t; but it’s there and neither of you can cross it.’

‘My childhood wasn’t very happy before I came to Green Gables,’ said Anne, gazing soberly out of the window at the still, sad, dead beauty of the leafless tree-shadows on the moonlit snow.

‘Mebbe not – but it was just the usual unhappiness of a child who hasn’t anyone to look after it properly. There hasn’t been any
tragedy
in your life, Mistress Blythe. And poor Leslie’s has been almost
all
tragedy. She feels, I reckon, though mebbe she hardly knows she feels it, that there’s a vast deal in her life you can’t enter nor understand – and so she has to keep you back from it – hold you off, so to speak, from hurting her. You know if we’ve got anything about us that hurts we shrink from anyone’s touch on or near it. It holds good with our souls as well as our bodies, I reckon. Leslie’s soul must be near raw – it’s no wonder she hides it away.’

‘If that were really all, I wouldn’t mind, Captain Jim. I would understand. But there are times – not always, but now and again – when I almost have to believe that Leslie doesn’t – doesn’t like me. Sometimes I surprise a look in her eyes that seems to show resentment and dislike – it goes so quickly – but – I’ve seen it, I’m sure of that. And it hurts me, Captain Jim. I’m not used to being disliked – and I’ve tried so hard to win Leslie’s friendship.’

‘You have won it, Mistress Blythe. Don’t you go cherishing any foolish notion that Leslie don’t like you. If she didn’t she wouldn’t have anything to do with you, much less chumming with you as she does. I know Leslie Moore too well not to be sure of that.’

‘The first time I ever saw her, driving her geese down the hill on the day I came to Four Winds, she looked at me with the same expression,’ persisted Anne. ‘I felt it, even in the midst of my admiration of her beauty. She looked at me resentfully – she did, indeed, Captain Jim.’

‘The resentment must have been about something else, Mistress Blythe, and you jest come in for a share of it because you happened past. Leslie
does
take sullen spells now and again, poor girl. I can’t blame her, when I know what she has to put up with. I don’t know why it’s permitted. The doctor and I have talked a lot about the origin of evil, but we haven’t quite found out all about it yet. There’s a vast of onunderstandable things in life, ain’t there, Mistress Blythe? Sometimes things seem to work out real proper-like, same as with you and the doctor. And then again they all seem to go catawampus. There’ Leslie, so clever and beautiful you’d think she was meant for a queen, and instead she’s cooped up over there, robbed of almost everything a woman’d value, with no prospect except waiting on Dick Moore all her life. Though, mind you, Mistress Blythe, I dare say she’d choose her life now, such as it is, rather than the life she lived with Dick before he went away.
That’s
something a clumsy old sailor’s tongue mustn’t meddle with. But you’ve helped Leslie a lot – she’s a different creature since you come to Four Winds. Us old friends see the difference in her, as you can’t. Miss Cornelia and me was talking it over the other day, and it’s one of the mighty few p’ints that we see eye to eye on. So jest you throw overboard any idea of her not liking you.’

Anne could hardly discard it completely, for there were undoubtedly times when she felt, with an instinct that was not to be combated by reason, that Leslie harboured a queer, indefinable resentment towards her. At times this secret consciousness marred the delight of their comradeship; at others it was almost forgotten but Anne always felt the hidden thorn was there, and might prick her at any moment. She felt a cruel sting from it on the day when she told Leslie of what she hoped the spring would bring to the little house of dreams. Leslie looked at her with hard, bitter, unfriendly eyes.

‘So you are to have
that
, too,’ she said in a choked voice. And without another word she had turned and gone across the fields homeward. Anne was deeply hurt; for the moment she felt as if she could never like Leslie again. But when Leslie came over a few evenings later she was so pleasant, so friendly, so frank, and witty, and winsome, that Anne was charmed into forgiveness and forgetfulness. Only, she never mentioned her darling hope to Leslie again; nor did Leslie ever refer to it. But one evening, when late winter was listening for the word of spring, she came over to the little house for a twilight chat; and when she went away she left a small white box on the table. Anne found it after she was gone and opened it wonderingly. In it was a tiny white dress of exquisite workmanship – delicate embroidery, wonderful tucking, sheer loveliness. Every stitch in it was handwork; and the little frills of lace at neck and sleeves were of real Valenciennes. Lying on it was a card – ‘with Leslie’s love’.

‘What hours of work she must have put on it,’ said Anne. ‘And the material must have cost more than she could really afford. It is very sweet of her.’

But Leslie was brusque and curt when Anne thanked her, and again the latter felt thrown back upon herself.

Leslie’s gift was not alone in the little house. Miss Cornelia had, for the time being, given up sewing for unwanted, unwelcome eighth babies, and fallen to sewing for a very much wanted first one, whose welcome would leave nothing to be desired. Philippa Blake and Diana Wright each sent a marvellous garment; and Mrs Rachel Lynde sent several, in which good material and honest stitches took the place of embroidery and frills. Anne herself made many, desecrated by no touch of machinery, spending over them the happiest hours of that happy winter.

Captain Jim was the most frequent guest of the little house, and none was more welcome. Every day Anne loved the simple-souled, true-hearted old sailor more and more. He was as refreshing as a sea-breeze, as interesting as some ancient chronicle. She was never tired of listening to his stories, and his quaint remarks and comments were a continual delight to her. Captain Jim was one of those rare and interesting people who ‘never speak but they say something’. The milk of human kindness and the wisdom of the serpent were mingled in his composition in delightful proportions.

Nothing ever seemed to put Captain Jim out or depress him in any way.

‘I’ve kind of contracted a habit of enj’ying things,’ he remarked once, when Anne had commented on his invariable cheerfulness. ‘It’s got so chronic that I believe I even enj’y the disagreeable things. It’s great fun thinking they can’t last. “Old rheumatiz,” says I, when it grips me hard, “you’ve
got
to stop aching sometime. The worse you are the sooner you’ll stop, mebbe. I’m bound to get the better of you in the long run, whether in the body or out of the body.”’

One night, by the fireside at the light, Anne saw Captain Jim’s ‘life-book’. He needed no coaxing to show it and proudly gave it to her to read.

‘I writ it to leave to little Joe,’ he said. ‘I don’t like the idea of everything I’ve done and seen being clean forgot after I’ve shipped for my last v’yage. Joe, he’ll remember it, and tell the yarns to his children.’

It was an old leather-bound book filled with the record of his voyages and adventures. Anne thought what a treasure trove it would be to a writer. Every sentence was a nugget. In itself the book had no literary merit; Captain Jim’s charm of story-telling failed him when he came to pen and ink; he could only jot roughly down the outline of his famous tales, and both spelling and grammar were sadly askew. But Anne felt that if anyone possessed of the gift could take that simple record of a brave, adventurous life, reading between the bald lines the tales of dangers staunchly faced and duty manfully done, a wonderful story might be made from it. Rich comedy and thrilling tragedy were both lying hidden in Captain Jim’s ‘life-book’, waiting for the touch of the master hand to waken the laughter and grief and horror of thousands.

Anne said something of this to Gilbert as they walked home.

‘Why don’t you try your hand at it yourself, Anne?’

Anne shook her head.

‘No. I only wish I could. But it’s not in the power of my gift. You know what my forte is, Gilbert – the fanciful, the fairylike, the pretty. To write Captain Jim’s life-book as it should be written one should be a master of vigorous yet subtle style, a keen psychologist, a born humorist and a born tragedian. A rare combination of gifts is needed. Paul might do it if he were older. Anyhow, I’m going to ask him to come down next summer and meet Captain Jim.’

‘Come to this shore,’ wrote Anne to Paul. ‘I am afraid you cannot find here Nora or the Golden Lady or the Twin Sailors; but you will find one old sailor who can tell you wonderful stories.’

Paul, however, wrote back, saying regretfully that he could not come that year. He was going abroad for two years’ study.

‘When I return I’ll come to Four Winds, dear Teacher,’ he wrote.

‘But meanwhile, Captain Jim is growing old,’ said Anne, sorrowfully, ‘and there is nobody to write his life-book.’

The ice in the harbour grew black and rotten in the March suns; in April there were blue waters and a windy, white-capped gulf again; and again the Four Winds light begemmed the twilights.

‘I’m so glad to see it once more,’ said Anne, on the first evening of its reappearance. ‘I’ve missed it so all winter. The north-western sky has seemed blank and lonely without it.’

The land was tender with brand-new, golden-green, baby leaves. There was an emerald mist on the woods beyond the Glen. The seaward valleys were full of fairy mists at dawn.

Vibrant winds came and went with salt foam in their breath. The sea laughed and flashed and preened and allured, like a beautiful, coquettish woman. The herring schooled and the fishing village woke to life. The harbour was alive with white sails making for the channel. The ships began to sail outward and inward again.

‘On a spring day like this,’ said Anne, ‘I know exactly what my soul will feel like on the resurrection morning.’

‘There are times in spring when I sorter feel that I might have been a poet if I’d been caught young,’ remarked Captain Jim. ‘I catch myself conning over old lines and verses I heard the schoolmaster reciting sixty years ago. They don’t trouble me at other times. Now I feel as if I had to get out on the rocks or the fields or the water and spout them.’

Captain Jim had come up that afternoon to bring Anne a load of shells for her garden and a little bunch of sweet-grass which he had found in a ramble over the sand-dunes.

‘It’s getting real scarce along this shore now,’ he said. ‘When I was a boy there was a-plenty of it. But now it’s only once in a while you’ll find a plot – and never when you’re looking for it. You jest have to stumble on it – you’re walking along on the sand-hills, never thinking of sweet-grass – and all at once the air is full of sweetness – and there’s the grass under your feet. I favour the smell of sweet-grass. It always makes me think of my mother.’

‘She was fond of it?’ asked Anne.

‘Not that I knows on. Dunno’s she ever saw any sweet-grass. No, it’s because it has a kind of motherly perfume – not too young, you understand – something kind of seasoned and wholesome and dependable – jest like a mother. The schoolmaster’s bride always kept it among her handkerchiefs. You might put that little bunch among yours, Mistress Blythe. I don’t like these boughten scents – but a whiff of sweet-grass belongs anywhere a lady does.’

Anne had not been especially enthusiastic over the idea of surrounding her flower-beds with quahog shells; as a decoration they did not appeal to her on first thought. But she would not have hurt Captain Jim’s feelings for anything; so she assumed a virtue she did not at first feel, and thanked him heartily. And when Captain Jim had proudly encircled every bed with a rim of the big milk-white shells Anne found to her surprise that she liked the effect. On a town lawn, or even tip at the Glen, they would not have been in keeping, but here, in the old-fashioned, sea-bound garden of the little house of dreams, they
belonged
.