Anne's House of Dreams (30 page)

‘Can you read futures in the fire, Captain Jim?’ asked Owen.

Captain Jim looked at them all affectionately, and then back again at Leslie’s vivid face and glowing eyes.

‘I don’t need the fire to read your future,’ he said. ‘I see happiness for all of you – all of you – for Leslie and Mr Ford – and the Doctor here and Mistress Blythe – and Little Jem – and children that ain’t born yet but will be. Happiness for you all – though, mind you, I reckon you’ll have your troubles and worries and sorrows, too. They’re bound to come – and no house, whether it’s a palace or a little house of dreams, can bar ’em out. But they won’t get the better of you if you face ’em
together
with love and trust. You can weather any storm with them two for compass and pilot.’

The old man rose suddenly and placed one hand on Leslie’s head and one on Anne’s.

‘Two good, sweet women,’ he said. ‘True and faithful and to be depended on. Your husbands will have honour in the gates because of you – your children will rise up and call you blessed in the years to come.’

There was a strange solemnity about the little scene. Anne and Leslie bowed as those receiving a benediction. Gilbert suddenly brushed his hand over his eyes; Owen Ford was rapt as one who can see visions. All were silent for a space. The little house of dreams added another poignant and unforgettable moment to its store of memories.

‘I must be going now,’ said Captain Jim slowly at last. He took up his hat and looked lingeringly about the room.

‘Good night, all of you,’ he said, as he went out.

Anne, pierced by the unusual wistfulness of his farewell, ran to the door after him.

‘Come back soon, Captain Jim,’ she called, as he passed through the little gate hung between the firs.

‘Ay, ay,’ he called cheerily back to her. But Captain Jim had sat by the old fireside of the house of dreams for the last time.

Anne went slowly back to the others.

‘It’s so – so pitiful to think of him going all alone down to that lonely Point,’ she said. ‘And there is no one to welcome him there.’

‘Captain Jim is such good company for others that one can’t imagine him being anything but good company for himself,’ said Owen. ‘But he must often be lonely. There was a touch of the seer about him tonight – he spoke as one to whom it had been given to speak. Well, I must be going, too.’

Anne and Gilbert discreetly melted away; but when Owen had gone Anne returned, to find Leslie standing by the hearth.

‘Oh, Leslie – I know – and I’m so glad, dear,’ she said, putting her arms about her.

‘Anne, my happiness frightens me,’ whispered Leslie. ‘It seems too great to be real, I’m afraid to speak of it – to think of it. It seems to me that it must just be another dream of this house of dreams and it will vanish when I leave here.’

‘Well, you are not going to leave here – until Owen takes you. You are going to stay with me until that time comes. Do you think I’d let you go over to that lonely, sad place again?’

‘Thank you, dear. I meant to ask you if I might stay with you. I didn’t want to go back there – it would seem like going back into the chill and dreariness of the old life again. Anne, Anne, what a friend you’ve been to me – “a good, sweet woman – true and faithful and to be depended on” – Captain Jim summed you up.’

‘He said “women”, not “woman”,’ smiled Anne. ‘Perhaps Captain Jim sees us both through the rose-coloured spectacles of his love for us. But we can try to live up to his belief in us, at least.’

‘Do you remember, Anne,’ said Leslie slowly, ‘that I once said – that night we met on the shore – that I hated my good looks? I did – then. It always seemed to me that if I had been homely Dick would never have thought of me. I hated my beauty because it had attracted him, but now – oh, I’m glad that I have it. It’s all I have to offer Owen – his artist soul delights in it. I feel as if I do not come to him quite empty-handed.’

‘Owen loves your beauty, Leslie. Who would not? But it’s foolish of you to say or think that that is all you bring him.
He
will tell you that – I needn’t. And now I must lock up. I expected Susan back tonight, but she has not come.’

‘Oh, yes, here I am, Mrs Doctor, dear,’ said Susan entering unexpectedly from the kitchen, ‘and puffing like a hen drawing rails at that! It’s quite a walk from the Glen down here.’

‘I’m glad to see you back, Susan. How is your sister?’

‘She is able to sit up, but of course she cannot walk yet. However, she is very well able to get on without me now, for her daughter has come home for her vacation. And I am thankful to be back, Mrs Doctor, dear. Matilda’s leg was broken and no mistake, but her tongue was not. She would talk the legs off an iron pot, that she would, Mrs Doctor, dear, though I grieve to say it of my own sister. She was always a great talker and yet she was the first of our family to get married. She really did not care much about marrying James Clow, but she could not bear to disoblige him. Not but what James is a good man – the only fault I have to find with him is that he always starts to say grace with such an unearthly groan, Mrs Doctor, dear. It always frightens my appetite clear away. And speaking of getting married, Mrs Doctor, dear, is it true Cornelia Bryant is going to be married to Marshall Elliott?’

‘Yes, quite true, Susan.’

‘Well, Mrs Doctor, dear, it does
not
seem to me fair. Here is me, who never said a word against the men, and I cannot get married nohow. And there is Cornelia Bryant, who is never done abusing them, and all she has to do is to reach out her hand and pick one up, as it were. It is a very strange world, Mrs Doctor, dear.’

‘There’s another world, you know, Susan.’

‘Yes,’ said Susan with a heavy sigh, ‘but, Mrs Doctor dear, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage there.’

One day in late September Owen Ford’s book came at last. Captain Jim had gone faithfully to the Glen post-office every day for a month, expecting it. This day he had not gone, and Leslie brought his copy home with hers and Anne’s.

‘We’ll take it down to him this evening,’ said Anne, excited as a schoolgirl.

The walk to the Point on that clear, beguiling evening along the red harbour road was very pleasant. Then the sun dropped down behind the western hills into some valley that must have been full of lost sunsets, and at the same instant the big light flashed out on the white tower of the point.

‘Captain Jim is never late by the fraction of a second,’ said Leslie. Neither Anne nor Leslie ever forgot Captain Jim’s face when they gave him the book –
his
book, transfigured and glorified. The cheeks that had been blanched of late suddenly flamed with the colour of boyhood, his eyes glowed with all the fire of youth; but his hands trembled as he opened it.

It was called simply
The Life-book of Captain Jim
, and on the title-page the names of Owen Ford and James Boyd were printed as collaborators. The frontispiece was a photograph of Captain Jim himself, standing at the door of the lighthouse, looking across the gulf. Owen Ford had ‘snapped’ him one day while the book was being written. Captain Jim had known this, but he had not known that the picture was to be in the book.

‘Just think of it,’ he said, ‘the old sailor right there in a real printed book. This is the proudest day of my life. I’m like to bust, girls. There’ll be no sleep for me tonight. I’ll read my book clean through before sun-up.’

‘We’ll go right away and leave you free to begin it,’ said Anne.

Captain Jim had been handling the book in a kind of reverent rapture. Now he decidedly closed it and laid it aside.

‘No, no, you’re not going away before you take a cup of tea with the old man,’ he protested. ‘I couldn’t hear to that – could you, Matey? The life-book will keep, I reckon. I’ve waited for it this many a year. I can wait a little longer while I’m enjoying my friends.’

Captain Jim moved about getting his kettle on to boil, and setting out his bread and butter. Despite his excitements he did not move with his old briskness. His movements were slow and halting. But the girls did not offer to help him. They knew it would hurt his feelings.

‘You just picked the right evening to visit me,’ he said, producing a cake from his cupboard. ‘Leetle Joe’s mother sent me down a big basket full of cakes and pies today. A blessing on all good cooks, says I. Look at this purty cake, all frosting and nuts. ’Tain’t often I can entertain in such style. Set in, girls, set in! We’ll “tak a cup o’ kindness yet for auld lang syne”.’

The girls ‘set in’ right merrily. The tea was up to Captain Jim’s best brewing. Little Joe’s mother’s cake was the last word in cakes; Captain Jim was the prince of gracious hosts, never even permitting his eyes to wander to the corner where the life-book lay, in all its bravery of green and gold. But when his door finally closed behind Anne and Leslie they knew that he went straight to it, and as they walked home they pictured the delight of the old man poring over the printed pages wherein his own life was portrayed with all the charm and colour of reality itself.

‘I wonder how he will like the ending – the ending I suggested,’ said Leslie.

She was never to know. Early the next morning Anne awakened to find Gilbert bending over her, fully dressed, and with an expression of anxiety on his face.

‘Are you called out?’ she asked drowsily.

‘No. Anne, I’m afraid there’s something wrong at the Point. It’s an hour after sunrise now, and the light is still burning. You know it has always been a matter of pride with Captain Jim to start the light the moment the sun sets, and put it out the moment it rises.’

Anne sat up in dismay. Through her window she saw the light blinking palely against the blue skies of dawn.

‘Perhaps he has fallen asleep over his life-book,’ she said anxiously, ‘or become so absorbed in it that he has forgotten the light.’

Gilbert shook his head.

‘That wouldn’t be like Captain Jim. Anyway, I’m going down to see.’

‘Wait a minute and I’ll go with you,’ exclaimed Anne. ‘Oh, yes, I must – Little Jem will sleep for an hour yet, and I’ll call Susan. You may need a woman’s help if Captain Jim is ill.’

It was an exquisite morning, full of tints and sounds at once ripe and delicate. The harbour was sparkling and dimpling like a girl; white gulls were soaring over the dunes; beyond the bar was a shining, wonderful sea. The long fields by the shore were dewy and fresh in that first fine, purely tinted light. The wind came dancing and whistling up the channel to replace the beautiful silence with a music more beautiful still. Had it not been for the baleful star on the white tower that early walk would have been a delight to Anne and Gilbert. But they went softly with fear.

Their knock was not responded to. Gilbert opened the door and they went in.

The old room was very quiet. On the table were the remnants of the little evening feast. The lamp still burned on the corner stand. The First Mate was asleep in a square of sunshine by the sofa.

Captain Jim lay on the sofa, with his hands clasped over the life-book, open at the last page, lying on his breast. His eyes were closed and on his face was a look of the most perfect peace and happiness – the look of one who has long sought and found at last.

‘He is asleep?’ whispered Anne tremulously.

Gilbert went to the sofa and bent over him for a few moments. Then he straightened up.

‘Yes, he sleeps – well,’ he said quietly. ‘Anne, Captain Jim has crossed the bar.’

They could not know precisely at what hour he had died, but Anne always believed that he had had his wish and went out when the morning came across the gulf. Out on that shining tide his spirit drifted, over the sunrise sea of pearl and silver, to the haven where lost Margaret waited, beyond the storms and calms.

Captain Jim was buried in the little over-harbour graveyard, very near to the spot where the wee white lady slept. His relatives put up a very expensive, very ugly ‘monument’ – a monument at which he would have poked sly fun had he seen it in life. But his real monument was in the hearts of those who knew him, and in the book that was to live for generations.

Leslie mourned that Captain Jim had not lived to see the amazing success of it.

‘How he would have delighted in the reviews; they are almost all so kindly. And to have seen his life-book heading the lists of the best-sellers – oh, if he could just have lived to see it, Anne!’

But Anne, despite her grief, was wiser.

‘It was the book itself he cared for, Leslie – not what might be said of it – and he had it. He had read it all through. That last night must have been one of the greatest happiness for him – with the quick, painless ending he had hoped for in the morning. I am glad for Owen’s sake and yours that the book is such a success – but Captain Jim was satisfied – I
know
.’

The lighthouse star still kept its nightly vigil; a substitute keeper had been sent to the Point, until such time as an all-wise Government could decide which of many applicants was best fitted for the place – or had the strongest pull. The First Mate was at home in the little house, beloved by Anne and Gilbert and Leslie, and tolerated by a Susan who had small liking for cats.

‘I can put up with him for the sake of Captain Jim, Mrs Doctor, dear, for I liked the old man. And I will see that he gets bite and sup, and every mouse the traps account for. But do not ask me to do more than that, Mrs Doctor, dear. Cats is cats, and take my word for it, they will never be anything else. And at least, Mrs Doctor, dear, do keep him away from the blessed wee man. Picture to yourself how awful it would be if he was to suck the darling’s breath.’

‘That might be fitly called a
cat
-astrophe,’ said Gilbert.

‘Oh, you may laugh, doctor, dear, but it would be no laughing matter.’

‘Cats never suck babies’ breaths,’ said Gilbert. ‘That is only an old superstition, Susan.’