Anne's House of Dreams (19 page)

Miss Cornelia stared at him for a moment. Then she leaned back in her rocker and laughed long and ungrudgingly.

‘Well, you
have
got one on me at last, Jim Boyd, I’ll admit. Just look how pleased he is, Anne, dearie, grinning like a Chessy-cat. As for the robins’ legs, if robins have great, big, bare, sunburned legs, with ragged trousers hanging on ’em, such as I saw up in my cherry-tree one morning at sunrise last week, I’ll beg the Gilman boys’ pardon. By the time I got down they were gone. I couldn’t understand how they had disappeared so quick, but Captain Jim has enlightened me. They flew away, of course.’

Captain Jim laughed and went away, regretfully declining an invitation to stay to supper and partake of cherry pie.

‘I’m on my way to see Leslie and ask her if she’ll take a boarder,’ Miss Cornelia resumed. ‘I’d a letter yesterday from a Mrs Daly in Toronto, who boarded a spell with me two years ago. She wanted me to take a friend of hers for the summer. His name is Owen Ford, and he’s a newspaper man, and it seems he’s a grandson of the schoolmaster who built this house. John Selwyn’s oldest daughter married an Ontario man named Ford, and this is her son. He wants to see the old place his grandparents lived in. He had a bad spell of typhoid in the spring and hasn’t got rightly over it, so his doctor has ordered him to the sea. He doesn’t want to go to the hotel – he just wants a quiet home place. I can’t take him, for I have to be away in August. I’ve been appointed a delegate to the W.F.M.S. convention in Kingsport and I’m going. I don’t know whether Leslie’ll want to be bothered with him, either, but there’s no one else. If she can’t take him he’ll have to go over the harbour.’

‘When you’ve seen her come back and help us eat our cherry pies,’ said Anne. ‘Bring Leslie and Dick, too, if they can come. And so you’re going to Kingsport? What a nice time you will have. I must give you a letter to a friend of mine there – Mrs Jonas Blake.’

‘I’ve prevailed on Mrs Thomas Holt to go with me,’ said Miss Cornelia complacently. ‘It’s time she had a little holiday, believe
me
. She has just about worked herself to death. Tom Holt can crochet beautifully, but he can’t make a living for his family. He never seems to be able to get up early enough to do any work, but I notice he can always get up early to go fishing. Isn’t that like a man?’

Anne smiled. She had learned to discount largely Miss Cornelia’s opinions of the Four Winds men. Otherwise she must have believed them the most hopeless assortment of reprobates and ne’er-do-wells in the world, with veritable slaves and martyrs for wives. This particular Tom Holt, for example, she knew to be a kind husband, a much-loved father, and an excellent neighbour. If he were rather inclined to be lazy, liking better the fishing he had been born for than the farming he had not, and if he had a harmless eccentricity for doing fancy work, nobody save Miss Cornelia seemed to hold it against him. His wife was a ‘hustler’, who gloried in hustling; his family got a comfortable living off the farm; and his strapping sons and daughters, inheriting their mother’s energy, were all in a fair way to do well in the world. There was not a happier household in Glen St Mary than the Holts.

Miss Cornelia returned satisfied from the house up the brook.

‘Leslie’s going to take him,’ she announced. ‘She jumped at the chance. She wants to make a little money to shingle the roof of her house this fall, and she didn’t know how she was going to manage it. I expect Captain Jim’ll be more than interested when he hears that a grandson of the Selwyns is coming here. Leslie said to tell you she hankered after cherry pie, but she couldn’t come to tea because she has to go and hunt up her turkeys. They’ve strayed away. But she said, if there was a piece left, for you to put it in the pantry and she’d run over in the cat’s light, when prowling’s in order, to get it. You don’t know, Anne, dearie, what good it did my heart to hear Leslie send you a message like that, laughing like she used to long ago. There’s a great change come over her lately. She laughs and jokes like a girl, and from her talk I gather she’s here real often.’

‘Every day – or else I’m over there,’ said Anne. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without Leslie, especially just now when Gilbert is so busy. He’s hardly ever home except for a few hours in the wee sma’s. He’s really working himself to death. So many of the over-harbour people send for him now.’

‘They might better be content with their own doctor,’ said Miss Cornelia. ‘Though to be sure I can’t blame them, for he’s a Methodist. Ever since Dr Blythe brought Mrs Allonby round folks think he can raise the dead. I believe Dr Dave is a mite jealous – just like a man. He thinks Dr Blythe has too many new-fangled notions! “Well,” I say to him, “it was a new-fangled notion saved Rhoda Allonby. If
you’d
been attending her she’d have died, and had a tombstone saying it had pleased God to take her away.” Oh, I
do
like to speak my mind to Dr Dave! He’s bossed the Glen for years, and he thinks he’s forgotten more than other people ever knew. Speaking of doctors, I wish Dr Blythe’d run over and see to that boil on Dick Moore’s neck. It’s getting past Leslie’s skill. I’m sure I don’t know what Dick Moore wants to start in having boils for – as if he wasn’t enough trouble without that!’

‘Do you know, Dick has taken quite a fancy to me,’ said Anne. ‘He follows me round like a dog, and smiles like a pleased child when I notice him.’

‘Does it make you creepy?’

‘Not at all. I rather like poor Dick Moore. He seems so pitiful and appealing, somehow.’

‘You wouldn’t think him very appealing if you’d see him on his cantankerous days, believe
me
. But I’m glad you don’t mind him – it’s all the nicer for Leslie. She’ll have more to do when her boarder comes. I hope he’ll be a decent creature. You’ll probably like him – he’s a writer.’

‘I wonder why people so commonly suppose that if two individuals are both writers they must therefore be hugely congenial,’ said Anne, rather scornfully. ‘Nobody would expect two blacksmiths to be violently attracted towards each other merely because they were both blacksmiths.’

Nevertheless, she looked forward to the advent of Owen Ford with a pleasant sense of expectation. If he were young and likeable he might prove a very pleasant addition to society in Four Winds. The latch-string of the little house was always out for the race of Joseph.

One evening Miss Cornelia telephoned down to Anne.

‘The writer man has just arrived here. I’m going to drive him down to your place, and you can show him the way over to Leslie’s. It’s shorter than driving round by the other road, and I’m in a mortal hurry. The Reese baby has gone and fallen into a pail of hot water at the Glen, and got nearly scalded to death, and they want me right off – to put a new skin on the child, I presume. Mrs Reese is always so careless, and then expects other people to mend her mistakes. You won’t mind, will you, dearie? His trunk can go down tomorrow.’

‘Very well,’ said Anne. ‘What is he like, Miss Cornelia?’

‘You’ll see what he’s like outside when I take him down. As for what he’s like inside only the Lord who made him knows
that
. I’m not going to say another word, for every receiver in the Glen is down.’

‘Miss Cornelia evidently can’t find much fault with Mr Ford’s looks, or she would find it in spite of the receivers,’ said Anne. ‘I conclude therefore, Susan, that Mr Ford is rather handsome than otherwise.’

‘Well, Mrs Doctor, dear, I
do
enjoy seeing a well-looking man,’ said Susan candidly. ‘Had I not better get up a snack for him? There is a strawberry pie that would melt in your mouth.’

‘No, Leslie is expecting him and has his supper ready. Besides, I want that strawberry pie for my own poor man. He won’t be home till late, so leave the pie and a glass of milk out for him, Susan.’

‘That I will, Mrs Doctor, dear. Susan is at the helm. After all, it is better to give pie to your own men than to strangers, who may be only seeking to devour, and the doctor himself is as well-looking a man as you often come across.’

When Owen Ford came Anne secretly admitted, as Miss Cornelia towed him in, that he was very ‘well-looking’ indeed. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with thick brown hair, finely-cut nose and chin, large and brilliant dark-grey eyes.

‘And did you notice his ears and his teeth, Mrs Doctor, dear?’ queried Susan later on. ‘He has got the nicest-shaped ears I ever saw on a man’s head. I am choice about ears. When I was young I was scared that I might have to marry a man with ears like flaps. But I need not have worried, for never a chance did I have with any kind of ears.’

Anne had not noticed Owen Ford’s ears, but she did see his teeth, as his lips parted over them in a frank and friendly smile. Unsmiling, his face was rather sad and absent in expression, not unlike the melancholy, inscrutable hero of Anne’s own early dreams; but mirth and humour and charm lighted it up when he smiled. Certainly, on the outside, as Miss Cornelia said, Owen Ford was a very presentable fellow.

‘You cannot realize how delighted I am to be here, Mrs Blythe,’ he said, looking around him with eager, interested eyes. ‘I have an odd feeling of coming home. My mother was born and spent her childhood here, you know. She used to talk a great deal to me of her old home. I know the geography of it as well as of the one I lived in, and, of course, she told me the story of the building of the house, and of my grandfather’s agonized watch for the
Royal William
. I had thought that so old a house must have vanished years ago, or I should have come to see it before this.’

‘Old houses don’t vanish easily on this enchanted coast,’ smiled Anne. ‘This is a “land where all things always seem the same” – nearly always, at least. John Selwyn’s house hasn’t even been much changed, and outside the rose-bushes your grandfather planted for his bride are blooming this very minute.’

‘How the thought links me with them! With your leave I must explore the whole place soon.’

‘Our latch-string will always be out for you,’ promised Anne. ‘And do you know that the old sea captain who keeps the Four Winds light knew John Selwyn and his bride well in his boyhood? He told me their story the night I came here – the third bride of the old house.’

‘Can it be possible? This
is
a discovery. I must hunt him up.’

‘It won’t be difficult; we are all cronies of Captain Jim. He will be as eager to see you as you could be to see him. Your grandmother shines like a star in his memory. But I think Mrs Moore is expecting you. I’ll show you our “cross-lots” road.’

Anne walked with him to the house up the brook, over a field that was as white as snow with daisies. A boat-load of people were singing far across the harbour. The sound drifted over the water like faint, unearthly music windblown across a starlit sea. The big light flashed and beaconed. Owen Ford looked around him with satisfaction.

‘And so this is Four Winds,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t prepared to find it quite so beautiful, in spite of all Mother’s praises. What colours – what scenery – what charm! I shall get as strong as a horse in no time. And if inspiration comes from beauty, I should certainly be able to begin my great Canadian novel here.’

‘You haven’t begun it yet?’ asked Anne.

‘Alack-a-day, no. I’ve never been able to get the right idea for it. It lurks beyond me – it allures – and beckons – and recedes – I almost grasp it and it is gone. Perhaps amid this peace and loveliness I shall be able to capture it. Miss Bryant tells me that you write.’

‘Oh, I do little things for children. I haven’t done much since I was married. And I have no designs on a great Canadian novel,’ laughed Anne. ‘That is quite beyond me.’

Owen Ford laughed too.

‘I dare say it is beyond me as well. All the same, I mean to have a try at it some day, if I can ever get time. A newspaper man doesn’t have much chance for that sort of thing. I’ve done a good deal of short-story writing for the magazines, but I’ve never had the leisure that seems to be necessary for the writing of a book. With three months of liberty I ought to make a start, though – if I could only get the necessary
motif
for it – the
soul
of the book.’

An idea whisked through Anne’s brain with a suddenness that made her jump. But she did not utter it, for they had reached the Moore house. As they entered the yard Leslie came out on the veranda from the side door, peering through the gloom for some sign of her expected guest. She stood just where the warm yellow light flooded her from the open door. She wore a plain dress of cheap, cream-tinted cotton voile, with the usual girdle of crimson. Leslie was never without her touch of crimson. She had told Anne that she never felt satisfied without a gleam of red somewhere about her, if it were only a flower. To Anne, it always seemed to symbolize Leslie’s glowing, pent-up personality, denied all expression save in that flaming glint. Leslie’s dress was cut a little away at the neck and had short sleeves. Her arms gleamed like ivory-tinted marble. Every exquisite curve of her form was outlined in soft darkness against the light. Her hair shone in it like flame. Beyond her was a purple sky, flowering with stars over the harbour.

Anne heard her companion give a gasp. Even in the dusk she could see the amazement and admiration on his face.

‘Who is that beautiful creature?’ he asked.

‘That is Mrs Moore,’ said Anne. ‘She is very lovely, isn’t she?’

‘I – I never saw anything like her,’ he answered, rather dazedly. ‘I wasn’t prepared – I didn’t expect – good heavens, one
doesn’t
expect a goddess for a landlady! Why, if she were clothed in a gown of sea-purple, with a rope of amethysts in her hair, she would be a veritable sea-queen. And she takes in boarders!’

‘Even goddesses must live,’ said Anne. ‘And Leslie isn’t a goddess. She’s just a very beautiful woman, as human as the rest of us. Did Miss Bryant tell you about Mr Moore?’

‘Yes – he’s mentally deficient, or something of the sort, isn’t he? But she said nothing about Mrs Moore, and I supposed she’d be the usual hustling country housewife who takes in boarders to earn an honest penny.’