Anne's House of Dreams (4 page)

Green Gables was a busy and joyous house that forenoon. Diana arrived early, with little Fred and Small Anne Cordelia, to lend a hand. Davy and Dora, the Green Gable twins, whisked the babies off to the garden.

‘Don’t let Small Anne Cordelia spoil her clothes,’ warned Diana anxiously.

‘You needn’t be afraid to trust her with Dora,’ said Marilla. ‘That child is more sensible and careful than most of the mothers I’ve known. She’s really a wonder in some ways. Not much like that other harum-scarum I brought up.’

Marilla smiled across her chicken salad at Anne. It might even be suspected that she liked the harum-scarum best after all.

‘Those twins are real nice children,’ said Mrs Rachel, when she was sure they were out of earshot, ‘Dora is so womanly and helpful, and Davy is developing into a very smart boy. He isn’t the holy terror for mischief he used to be.’

‘I never was so distracted in my life as I was the first six months he was here,’ acknowledged Marilla. ‘After that I suppose I got used to him. He’s taken a great notion to farming lately, and wants me to let him try running the farm next year. I may, for Mr Barry doesn’t think he’ll want to rent it much longer, and some new arrangement will have to be made.’

‘Well, you certainly have a lovely day for your wedding, Anne,’ said Diana, as she slipped a voluminous apron over her silken array. ‘You couldn’t have had a finer one if you’d ordered it from Eaton’s.’

‘Indeed, there’s too much money going out of this Island to that same Eaton’s,’ said Mrs Lynde indignantly. She had strong views on the subject of octopus-like department stores, and never lost an opportunity of airing them. ‘And as for those catalogues of theirs, they’re the Avonlea girls’ Bible now, that’s what. They pore over them on Sundays instead of studying the Holy Scriptures.’

‘Well, they’re splendid to amuse children with,’ said Diana. ‘Fred and Small Anne look at the pictures by the hour.’

‘
I
amused ten children without the aid of Eaton’s catalogue,’ said Mrs Rachel severely.

‘Come, you two, don’t quarrel over Eaton’s catalogue,’ said Anne gaily. ‘This is my day of days, you know. I’m so happy I want everyone else to be happy, too.’

‘I’m sure I hope your happiness will last, child,’ sighed Mrs Rachel. She did hope it truly, and believed it, but she was afraid it was in the nature of a challenge to Providence to flaunt your happiness too openly. Anne, for her own good, must be toned down a trifle.

But it was a happy and beautiful bride who came down the old, homespun-carpeted stairs that September noon – the first bride of Green Gables, slender and shining-eyed, in the mist of her maiden veil, with her arms full of roses. Gilbert, waiting for her in the hall below, looked up at her with adoring eyes. She was his at last, this evasive, long-sought Anne, won after years of patient waiting. It was to him she was coming in the sweet surrender of the bride. Was he worthy of her? Could he make her as happy as he hoped? If he failed her – if he could not measure up to her standard of manhood – then, as she held out her hand, their eyes met and all doubt was swept away in a glad certainty. They belonged to each other; and, no matter what life might hold for them, it could never alter that. Their happiness was in each other’s keeping and both were unafraid.

They were married in the sunshine of the old orchard, circled by the loving and kindly faces of long-familiar friends. Mr Allan married them, and the Reverend Jo made what Mrs Rachel Lynde afterwards pronounced to be ‘the most beautiful wedding prayer’ she had ever heard. Birds do not often sing in September, but one sang sweetly from some hidden bough while Gilbert and Anne repeated their deathless vows. Anne heard it, and thrilled to it; Gilbert heard it, and wondered only that all the birds in the world had not burst into jubilant song; Paul heard it and later wrote a lyric about it which was one of the most admired in his first volume of verse; Charlotta the Fourth heard it and was blissfully sure it meant good luck for her adored Miss Shirley. The bird sang until the ceremony was ended and then it wound up with one mad little, glad little trill. Never had the old grey-green house among its enfolding orchards known a blither, merrier afternoon. All the old jests and quips, that must have done duty at weddings since Eden, were served up, and seemed as new and brilliant and mirth-provoking as if they had never been uttered before. Laughter and joy had their way; and when Anne and Gilbert left to catch the Carmody train, with Paul as driver, the twins were ready with rice and old shoes, in the throwing of which Charlotta the Fourth and Mr Harrison bore a valiant part. Marilla stood at the gate and watched the carriage out of sight down the long lane with its banks of golden-rod. Anne turned at its end to wave her last good-bye. She was gone – Green Gables was her home no more; Marilla’s face looked very grey and old as she turned to the house which Anne had filled for fourteen years, and even in her absence, with light and life.

But Diana and her small fry, the Echo Lodge people and the Allans, had stayed to help the two old ladies over the loneliness of the first evening; and they contrived to have a quietly pleasant little supper-time, sitting long around the table and chatting over all the details of the day. While they were sitting there Anne and Gilbert were alighting from the train at Glen St Mary.

Dr David Blythe had sent his horse and buggy to meet them, and the urchin who had brought it slipped away with a sympathetic grin, leaving them to the delight of driving alone to their new home through the radiant evening.

Anne never forgot the loveliness of the view that broke upon them when they had driven over the hill behind the village. Her new home could not yet be seen; but before her lay Four Winds Harbour like a great, shining mirror of rose and silver. Far down, she saw its entrance between the bar of sand-dunes on one side and a steep, high, grim, red-sandstone cliff on the other. Beyond the bar the sea, calm and austere, dreamed in the afterlight. The little fishing village, nestled in the cove where the sand-dunes met the harbour shore, looked like a great opal in the haze. The sky over them was like a jewelled cup from which the dusk was pouring; the air was crisp with the compelling tang of the sea, and the whole landscape was infused with the subtleties of a sea evening. A few dim sails drifted along the darkening, fir-clad harbour shores. A bell was ringing from the tower of a little white church on the far side mellowly and dreamily sweet, the chime floated across the water blent with the moan of the sea. The great revolving light on the cliff at the channel flashed warm and golden against the clear northern sky, a trembling, quivering star of good hope. Far out along the horizon was the crinkled grey ribbon of a passing steamer’s smoke.

‘Oh, beautiful, beautiful,’ murmured Anne. ‘I shall love Four Winds, Gilbert. Where is our house?’

‘We can’t see it yet – the belt of birch running up from that little cove hides it. It’s about two miles from Glen St Mary, and there’s another mile between it and the lighthouse. We won’t have many neighbours, Anne. There’s only one house near us and I don’t know who lives in it. Shall you be lonely when I’m away?’

‘Not with that light and that loveliness for company. Who lives in that house, Gilbert?’

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t look – exactly – as if the occupants would be kindred spirits, Anne, does it?’

The house was a large, substantial affair, painted such a vivid green that the landscape seemed quite faded by contrast. There was an orchard behind it, and a nicely kept lawn before it, but, somehow, there was a certain bareness about it. Perhaps its neatness was responsible for this; the whole establishment, house, barns, orchard, garden, lawn, and lane, was so starkly neat.

‘It doesn’t seem probable that anyone with that taste in paint could be
very
kindred,’ acknowledged Anne, ‘unless it were an accident like our blue hall. I feel certain there are no children there, at least. It’s even neater than the old Copp place on the Tory road, and I never expected to see anything neater than that.’

They had not met anybody on the moist red road that wound along the harbour shore. But just before they came to the belt of birch which hid their home Anne saw a girl who was driving a flock of snow-white geese along the crest of a velvety green hill on the right. Great, scattered firs grew along it. Between their trunks one saw glimpses of yellow harvest fields, gleams of golden sand-hills, and bits of blue sea. The girl was tall and wore a dress of pale blue print. She walked with a certain springiness of step and erectness of bearing. She and her geese came out of the gate at the foot of the hill as Anne and Gilbert passed. She stood with her hand on the fastening of the gate, and looked steadily at them, with an expression that hardly attained to interest, but did not descend to curiosity. It seemed to Anne, for a fleeting moment, that there was even a veiled hint of hostility in it. But it was the girl’s beauty which made Anne give a little gasp – a beauty so marked that it must have attracted attention anywhere. She was hatless, but heavy braids of burnished hair, the hue of ripe wheat, were twisted about her head like a coronet; her eyes were blue and star-like; her figure, in its plain print gown, was magnificent; and her lips were as crimson as the bunch of blood-red poppies she wore at her belt.

‘Gilbert, who is the girl we have just passed?’ asked Anne, in a low voice.

‘I didn’t notice any girl,’ said Gilbert, who had eyes only for his bride.

‘She was standing by that gate – no, don’t look back. She is still watching us. I never saw such a beautiful face.’

‘I don’t remember seeing any very handsome girls while I was here. There are some pretty girls up at the Glen, but I hardly think they could be called beautiful.’

‘This girl is. You can’t have seen her, or you would remember her. Nobody could forget her. I never saw such a face except in pictures. And her hair! It made me think of Browning’s “cord of gold” and “gorgeous snake”!’

‘Probably she’s some visitor in Four Winds – likely someone from that big summer hotel over the harbour.’

‘She wore a white apron and she was driving geese.’

‘She might do that for amusement. Look, Anne – there’s our house.’

Anne looked and forgot for a time the girl with the splendid, resentful eyes. The first glimpse of her new home was a delight to eye and spirit – it looked so like a big, creamy sea-shell stranded on the harbour shore. The rows of tall Lombardy poplars down its lane stood out in stately purple silhouette against the sky. Behind it, sheltering its garden from the too keen breath of sea winds, was a cloudy fir-wood, in which the winds might make all kinds of weird and haunting music. Like all woods, it seemed to be holding and enfolding secrets in its recesses – secrets whose charm is only to be won by entering in and patiently seeking. Outwardly, dark green arms keep them inviolate from curious or indifferent eyes.

The night winds were beginning their wild dances beyond the bar and the fishing hamlet across the harbour was gemmed with lights as Anne and Gilbert drove up the poplar lane. The door of the little house opened, and a warm glow of fire-light flickered out into the dusk. Gilbert lifted Anne from the buggy and led her into the garden, through the little gate between the ruddy-tipped firs, up the trim red path to the sandstone step.

‘Welcome home,’ he whispered, and hand in hand they stepped over the threshold of their house of dreams.

‘Old Doctor Dave’ and ‘Mrs Doctor Dave’ had come down to the little house to greet the bride and groom. Doctor Dave was a big, jolly, white-whiskered old fellow, and Mrs Doctor was a trim, rosy-cheeked, silver-haired little lady who took Anne at once to her heart, literally and figuratively.

‘I’m so glad to see you, dear. You must be real tired. We’ve got a bite of supper ready, and Captain Jim brought up some trout for you. Captain Jim – where are you? Oh, he’s slipped out to see to the horse, I suppose. Come upstairs and take your things off.’

Anne looked about her with bright, appreciative eyes as she followed Mrs Doctor Dave upstairs. She liked the appearance of her new home very much. It seemed to have the atmosphere of Green Gables and the flavour of her old traditions.

‘I think I would have found Miss Elizabeth Russell a “kindred spirit”,’ she murmured when she was alone in her room. There were two windows in it; the dormer one looked out on the lower harbour and the sand-bar and the Four Winds light.

quoted Anne softly. The gable window gave a view of a little harvest-hued valley through which a brook ran. Half a mile up the brook was the only house in sight – an old, rambling grey one surrounded by huge willows through which its windows peered, like shy, seeking eyes, into the dusk. Anne wondered who lived there; they would be her nearest neighbours and she hoped they would be nice. She suddenly found herself thinking of the beautiful girl with the white geese.

‘Gilbert thought she didn’t belong here,’ mused Anne, ‘but I feel sure she does. There was something about her that made her part of the sea and the sky and the harbour. Four Winds is in her blood.’

When Anne went downstairs Gilbert was standing before the fireplace talking to a stranger. Both turned as Anne entered.

‘Anne, this is Captain Boyd. Captain Boyd, my wife.’

It was the first time Gilbert had said ‘my wife’ to anybody but Anne, and he narrowly escaped bursting with the pride of it. The old captain held out a sinewy hand to Anne; they smiled at each other and were friends from that moment. Kindred spirit flashed recognition to kindred spirit.

‘I’m right down pleased to meet you, Mistress Blythe; and I hope you’ll be as happy as the first bride was who came here. I can’t wish you no better than
that
. But your husband doesn’t introduce me jest exactly right. “Captain Jim” is my week-a-day name and you might as well begin as you’re sartain to end up – calling me that. You sartainly are a nice little bride, Mistress Blythe. Looking at you sorter makes me feel that I’ve jest been married myself.’