Anne's House of Dreams (21 page)

‘Will you go down to the Point with me this evening, Mrs Blythe? I’ll ask him about the life-book myself, but I want you to tell him that you told me the story of lost Margaret and ask him if he will let me use it as a thread of romance with which to weave the stories of the life-book into a harmonious whole.’

Captain Jim was more excited than ever when Owen Ford told him of his plan. At last his cherished dream was to be realized and his ‘life-book’ given to the world. He was also pleased that the story of lost Margaret should be woven into it.

‘It will keep her name from being forgotten,’ he said wistfully. ‘That’s why I want it put in.’

‘We’ll collaborate,’ cried Owen delightedly. ‘You will give the soul and I the body. Oh, we’ll write a famous book between us, Captain Jim. And we’ll get right to work.’

‘And to think my book is to be writ by the schoolmaster’s grandson!’ exclaimed Captain Jim. ‘Lad, your grandfather was my dearest friend. I thought there was nobody like him. I see now why I had to wait so long. It couldn’t be writ till the right man come. You
belong
here – you’ve got the soul of this old north shore in you – you’re the only one who
could
write it.’

It was arranged that the tiny room off the living-room at the lighthouse should be given over to Owen for a workshop. It was necessary that Captain Jim should be near him as he wrote, for consultation upon many matters of sea-faring and gulf lore of which Owen was quite ignorant.

He began work on the book the very next morning, and flung himself into it heart and soul. As for Captain Jim, he was a happy man that summer. He looked upon the little room where Owen worked as a sacred shrine. Owen talked everything over with Captain Jim, but he would not let him see the manuscript.

‘You must wait until it is published,’ he said. ‘Then you’ll get it all at once in its best shape.’

He delved into the treasures of the life-book and used them freely. He dreamed and brooded over lost Margaret until she became a vivid reality to him and lived in his pages. As the book progressed it took possession of him and he worked at it with feverish eagerness. He let Anne and Leslie read the manuscript and criticize it; and the concluding chapter of the book, which the critics, later on, were pleased to call idyllic, was modelled upon a suggestion of Leslie’s.

Anne fairly hugged herself with delight over the success of her idea.

‘I knew when I looked at Owen Ford that he was the very man for it,’ she told Gilbert. ‘Both humour and passion were in his face, and that, together with the art of expression, was just what was necessary for the writing of such a book. As Mrs Rachel would say, he was predestined for the part.’

Owen Ford wrote in the mornings. The afternoons were generally spent in some merry outing with the Blythes. Leslie often went, too, for Captain Jim took charge of Dick frequently, in order to set her free. They went boating on the harbour and up the three pretty rivers that flowed into it they had clam-bakes on the bar and mussel-bakes on the rocks; they picked strawberries on the sand-dunes; they went out cod-fishing with Captain Jim; they shot plover in the shore fields and wild ducks in the cove – at least, the men did. In the evenings they rambled in the low-lying, daisied, shore fields under a golden moon, or they sat in the living-room at the little house where often the coolness of the sea-breeze justified a driftwood fire, and talked of the thousand and one things which happy, eager, clever young people can find to talk about.

Ever since the day on which she had made her confession to Anne, Leslie had been a changed creature. There was no trace of her old coldness and reserve, no shadow of her old bitterness. The girlhood of which she had been cheated seemed to come back to her with the ripeness of womanhood; she expanded like a flower of flame and perfume; no laugh was readier than hers, no wit quicker, in the twilight circles of that enchanted summer. When she could not be with them all felt that some exquisite savour was lacking in their intercourse. Her beauty was illumined by the awakened soul within, as some rosy lamp might shine through a flawless vase of alabaster. There were hours when Anne’s eyes seemed to ache with the splendour of her. As for Owen Ford, the ‘Margaret’ of his book, although she had the soft brown hair and elfin face of the real girl who had vanished so long ago, ‘pillowed where lost Atlantis sleeps’, had the personality of Leslie Moore, as it was revealed to him in those halcyon days at Four Winds Harbour.

And in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer – one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going – one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends, and delightful doings, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.

‘Too good to last,’ Anne told herself with a little sigh, on the September day when a certain nip in the wind and a certain shade of intense blue on the gulf water said that autumn was hard by.

That evening Owen Ford told them that he had finished his book and that his vacation must come to an end.

‘I have a good deal to do to it yet – revising and pruning and so forth,’ he said, ‘but in the main it’s done. I wrote the last sentence this morning. If I can find a publisher for it it will probably be out next summer or fall.’

Owen had not much doubt that he would find a publisher. He knew that he had written a great book – a book that would score a wonderful success – a book that would
live
. He knew that it would bring him both fame and fortune; but when he had written the last line of it he had bowed his head on the manuscript, and so sat for a long time. And his thoughts were not of the good work he had done.

‘I’m so sorry Gilbert is away,’ said Anne. ‘He had to go – Allan Lyons at the Glen has met with a serious accident. He will not likely be home till very late. But he told me to tell you he’d be up and over early enough in the morning to see you before you left. It’s too provoking. Susan and I had planned such a nice little jamboree for your last night here.’

She was sitting beside the garden brook on the little rustic seat Gilbert had built. Owen Ford stood before her, leaning against the bronze column of a yellow birch. He was very pale and his face bore the marks of the preceding sleepless night. Anne, glancing up at him, wondered if, after all, his summer had brought him the strength it should. Had he worked too hard over his book? She remembered that for a week he had not been looking well.

‘I’m rather glad the doctor is away,’ said Owen slowly. ‘I wanted to see you alone, Mrs Blythe. There is something I must tell somebody, or I think it will drive me mad. I’ve been trying for a week to look it in the face – and I can’t. I know I can trust you – and, besides, you will understand. A woman with eyes like yours always understands. You are one of the folks people instinctively tell things to. Mrs Blythe, I love Leslie.
Love
her! That seems too weak a word!’

His voice suddenly broke with the suppressed passion of his utterance. He turned his head away and hid his face on his arm. His whole form shook. Anne sat looking at him, pale and aghast. She had never thought of this! And yet – how was it she had never thought of it? It now seemed a natural and inevitable thing. She wondered at her own blindness. But – but – things like this did not happen in Four Winds. Elsewhere in the world human passions might set at defiance human conventions and laws – but not
here
, surely. Leslie had kept summer boarders off and on for ten years, and nothing like this had happened. But perhaps they had not been like Owen Ford; and the vivid,
living
Leslie of this summer was not the cold, sullen girl of other years. Oh,
somebody
should have thought of this! Why hadn’t Miss Cornelia thought of it? Miss Cornelia was always ready enough to sound the alarum where men were concerned. Anne felt an unreasonable resentment against Miss Cornelia. Then she gave a little inward groan. No matter who was to blame, the mischief was done. And Leslie – what of Leslie? It was for Leslie Anne felt most concerned.

‘Does Leslie know this, Mr Ford?’ she asked quietly.

‘No – no – unless she has guessed it. You surely don’t think I’d be cad and scoundrel enough to tell her, Mrs Blythe. I couldn’t help loving her – that’s all – and my misery is greater than I can bear.’

‘Does
she
care?’ asked Anne. The moment the question crossed her lips she felt that she should not have asked it. Owen Ford answered it with over-eager protest.

‘No – no, of course not. But I could make her care if she were free – I know I could.’

‘She does care – and he knows it,’ thought Anne. Aloud she said, sympathetically but decidedly:

‘But she is not free, Mr Ford. And the only thing you can do is to go away in silence and leave her to her own life.’

‘I know – I know,’ groaned Owen. He sat down on the grassy bank and stared moodily into the amber water beneath him. ‘I know there’s nothing to do – nothing but to say conventionally, “Good-bye, Mrs Moore. Thank you for all your kindness, to me this summer,” just as I would have said it to the sonsy, bustling, keen-eyed housewife I expected her to be when I came. Then I’ll pay my board money like any honest boarder and go! Oh, it’s very simple. No doubt – no perplexity – a straight road to the end of the world! And I’ll walk it – you needn’t fear that I won’t, Mrs Blythe. But it would be easier to walk over red-hot ploughshares.’

Anne flinched with the pain of his voice. And there was so little she could say that would be adequate to the situation. Blame was out of the question – advice was not needed – sympathy was mocked by the man’s stark agony. She could only feel with him in a maze of compassion and regret. Her heart ached for Leslie! Had not that poor girl suffered enough without this?

‘It wouldn’t be so hard to go and leave her if she were only happy,’ resumed Owen passionately. ‘But to think of her living death – to realize what it is to which I do leave her!
That
is the worst of all. I would give my life to make her happy – and I can do nothing even to help her – nothing. She is bound for ever to that poor wretch – with nothing to look forward to but growing old in a succession of empty, meaningless, barren years. It drives me mad to think of it. But I must go through my life, never seeing her, but always knowing what she is enduring. It’s hideous – hideous!’

‘It is very hard,’ said Anne sorrowfully. ‘We – her friends here – all know how hard it is for her.’

‘And she is so richly fitted for life,’ said Owen rebelliously. ‘Her beauty is the least of her dower – and she is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. That laugh of hers! I’ve angled all summer to evoke that laugh, just for the delight of hearing it. And her eyes – they are as deep and blue as the gulf out there. I never saw such blueness – and gold! Did you ever see her hair down, Mrs Blythe?’

‘No.’

‘I did – once. I had gone down to the Point to go fishing with Captain Jim, but it was too rough to go out, so I came back. She had taken the opportunity of what she expected to be an afternoon alone to wash her hair, and she was standing on the veranda in the sunshine to dry it. It fell all about her to her feet in a fountain of living gold. When she saw me she hurried in, and the wind caught her hair and swirled it all around her – Danaë in her cloud. Somehow, just then the knowledge that I loved her came home to me – and I realized that I had loved her from the moment I first saw her standing against the darkness in that glow of light. And she must live on here – petting and soothing Dick, pinching and saving for a mere existence, while I spend my life longing vainly for her, and debarred, by that very fact, from even giving her the little help a friend might. I walked the shore last night, almost till dawn, and thrashed it all out over and over again. And yet, in spite of everything, I can’t find it in my heart to be sorry that I came to Four Winds. It seems to me that, bad as everything is, it would be still worse never to have known Leslie. It’s burning, searing pain to love her and leave her – but not to have loved her is unthinkable. I suppose all this sounds very crazy – all these terrible emotions always do sound foolish when we put them into our inadequate words. They are not meant to be spoken – only felt and endured. I shouldn’t have spoken but it has helped – some. At least, it has given me strength to go away respectably tomorrow morning, without making a scene. You’ll write me now and then, won’t you, Mrs Blythe, and give me what news there is to give of her?’

‘Yes,’ said Anne. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry you are going – we’ll miss you so – we’ve all been such friends! If it were not for this you could come back other summers. Perhaps, even yet – by and by – when you’ve forgotten, perhaps –’

‘I shall never forget – and I shall never come back to Four Winds,’ said Owen briefly.

Silence and twilight fell over the garden. Far away the sea was lapping gently and monotonously on the bar. The wind of evening in the poplars sounded like some sad, weird, old rune – some broken dream of old memories. A slender shapely young aspen rose up before them against the fine maize and emerald and paling rose of the western sky, which brought out every leaf and twig in dark, tremulous, elfin loveliness.

‘Isn’t that beautiful?’ said Owen, pointing to it with the air of a man who puts a certain conversation behind him.

‘It’s so beautiful that it hurts me,’ said Anne softly. ‘Perfect things like that always did hurt me – I remember called it “the queer ache” when I was a child. What is the reason that pain like this seems inseparable from perfection? Is it the pain of finality – when we realize that there can be nothing beyond but retrogression?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Owen dreamily, ‘it is the prisoned infinite in us calling out to its kindred infinite as expressed in that visible perfection.’

‘You seem to have a cold in the head. Better rub some tallow on your nose when you go to bed,’ said Miss Cornelia, who had come in through the little gate between the firs in time to catch Owen’s last remark. Miss Cornelia liked Owen; but it was a matter of principle with her to visit any ‘high-falutin’ language from a man with a snub.