Anne's House of Dreams (9 page)

‘Like my lad Davy at home,’ said Anne. ‘He wants tales that reek with gore.’

Captain Jim’s tea proved to be nectar. He was pleased as a child with Anne’s compliments, but he affected a fine indifference.

‘The secret is I don’t skimp the cream,’ he remarked airily. Captain Jim had never heard of Oliver Wendell Holmes, but he evidently agreed with that writer’s dictum that ‘big heart never liked little cream pot’.

‘We met an odd-looking personage coming out of your lane,’ said Gilbert as they sipped. ‘Who was he?’

Captain Jim grinned.

‘That’s Marshall Elliott – a mighty fine man with jest one streak of foolishness in him. I s’pose you wondered what his object was in turning himself into a sort of dime museum freak.’

‘Is he a modern Nazarite or a Hebrew prophet left over from olden times?’ asked Anne.

‘Neither of them. It’s politics that’s at the bottom of his freak. All those Elliotts and Crawfords and MacAllisters are dyed-in-the-wool politicians. They’re born Grit or Tory, as the case may be, and they live Grit or Tory, and they die Grit or Tory; and what they’re going to do in heaven, where there’s probably no politics, is more than I can fathom. This Marshall Elliott was born a Grit. I’m a Grit myself in moderation, but there’s no moderation about Marshall. Fifteen years ago there was a specially bitter general election. Marshall fought for his party tooth and nail. He was dead sure the Liberals would win – so sure that he got up at a public meeting and vowed that he wouldn’t shave his face or cut his hair until the Grits were in power. Well, they didn’t go in – and they’ve never got in yet – and you saw the result tonight for yourselves. Marshall stuck to his word.’

‘What does his wife think of it?’ asked Anne.

‘He’s a bachelor. But if he had a wife I reckon she couldn’t make him break that vow. That family of Elliotts has always been more stubborn than natteral. Marshall’s brother Alexander had a dog he set great store by, and when it died the man actilly wanted to have it buried in the graveyard, “along with the other Christians”, he said. Course, he wasn’t allowed to; so he buried it just outside the graveyard fence, and never darkened the church door again. But Sundays he’d drive his family to church and sit by that dog’s grave and read his Bible all the time service was going on. They say when he was dying he asked his wife to bury him beside the dog; she was a meek little soul but she fired up at
that
. She said
she
wasn’t going to be buried beside no dog, and if he’d rather have his last resting-place beside the dog than beside her, jest to say so. Alexander Elliott was a stubborn mule, but he was fond of his wife, so he give in and said, “Well, durn it, bury me where you please. But when Gabriel’s trump blows I expect my dog to rise with the rest of us, for he had as much soul as any durned Elliott or Crawford or MacAllister that ever strutted.” Them was
his
parting words. As for Marshall we’re all used to him, but he must strike strangers as right down peculiar-looking. I’ve known him ever since he was ten – he’s about fifty now – and I like him. Him and me was out cod-fishing today. That’s about all I’m good for now – catching trout and cod occasional. But ’tweren’t always so – not by no manner of means. I used to do other things, as you’d admit if you saw my life-book.’

Anne was just going to ask what his life-book was when the First Mate created a diversion by springing upon Captain Jim’s knee. He was a gorgeous beastie, with a face as round as a full moon, vivid green eyes, and immense white double paws. Captain Jim stroked his velvet back gently.

‘I never fancied cats much till I found the First Mate,’ he remarked, to the accompaniment of the Mate’s tremendous purrs. ‘I saved his life, and when you’ve saved a creature’s life you’re bound to love it. It’s next thing to giving life. There’s some turrible thoughtless people in the world, Mistress Blythe. Some of them city folks who have summer homes over the harbour are so thoughtless that they’re cruel. It’s the worst kind of cruelty – the thoughtless kind. You can’t cope with it. They keep cats there in the summer, and feed and pet ’em, and doll ’em up with ribbons and collars. And then in the fall they go off and leave ‘em to starve or freeze. It makes my blood boil, Mistress Blythe. One day last winter I found a poor old mother cat dead on the shore, lying against the skin-and-bone bodies of her three little kittens. She’d died trying to shelter ’em. She had her poor stiff paws around ’em. Master, I cried. Then I swore. Then I carried them poor little kittens home and fed ’em up and found good homes for ’em. I knew the woman who left the cat and when she come back this summer I jest went over the harbour and told her my opinion of her. It was rank meddling, but I do love meddling in a good cause.’

‘How did she take it?’ asked Gilbert.

‘Cried and said she “didn’t think”. I says to her, says I, “Do you s’pose that’ll be held for a good excuse in the day of Jedgment, when you’ll have to account for that poor old mother’s life? The Lord’ll ask you what He give you your brains for if it wasn’t to think, I reckon.” I don’t fancy she’ll leave cats to starve another time.’

‘Was the First Mate one of the forsaken?’ asked Anne, making advances to him which were responded to graciously, if condescendingly.

‘Yes. I found
him
one bitter cold day in winter, caught in the branches of a tree by his durn-fool ribbon collar. He was almost starving. If you could have seen his eyes, Mistress Blythe! He was nothing but a kitten, and he’d got his living somehow since he’d been left until he got hung up. When I loosed him he give my hand a pitiful swipe with his little red tongue. He wasn’t the able seaman you see now. He was meek as Moses. That was nine years ago. His life has been long in the land for a cat. He’s a good old pal, the First Mate is.’

‘I should have expected you to have a dog,’ said Gilbert.

Captain Jim shook his head.

‘I had a dog once. I thought so much of him that when he died I couldn’t bear the thought of getting another in his place. He was a
friend
– you understand, Mistress Blythe? Matey’s only a pal. I’m fond of Matey – all the fonder on account of the spice of devilment that’s in him – like there is in all cats. But I
loved
my dog. I always had a sneaking sympathy for Alexander Elliott about
his
dog. There isn’t any devil in a good dog. That’s why they’re more lovable than cats, I reckon. But I’m darned if they’re as interesting. Here I am, talking too much. Why don’t you check me? When I do get a chance to talk to anyone I run on turrible. If you’ve done your tea I’ve a few little things you might like to look at – picked ’em up in the queer corners I used to be poking my nose into.’

Captain Jim’s ‘few little things’ turned out to be a most interesting collection of curios, hideous, quaint, and beautiful. And almost every one had some striking story attached to it.

Anne never forgot the delight with which she listened to those old tales that moonlit evening by that enchanted driftwood fire, while the silver sea called to them through the open window and sobbed against the rocks below them.

Captain Jim never said a boastful word, but it was impossible to help seeing what a hero the man had been – brave, true, resourceful, unselfish. He sat there in his little room and made those things live again for his hearers. By a lift of the eyebrow, a twist of the lip, a gesture, a word, he painted a whole scene or character so that they saw it as it was.

Some of Captain Jim’s adventures had such a marvellous edge that Anne and Gilbert secretly wondered if he were not drawing a rather long bow at their credulous expense. But in this, as they found later, they did him injustice. His tales were all literally true. Captain Jim had the gift of the born story-teller, whereby ‘unhappy, far-off things’ can be brought vividly before the hearer in all their pristine poignancy.

Anne and Gilbert laughed and shivered over his tales, and once Anne found herself crying. Captain Jim surveyed her tears with pleasure shining from his face.

‘I like to see folks cry that way,’ he remarked. ‘It’s a compliment. But I can’t do justice to the things I’ve seen or helped to do. I’ve ’em all jotted down in my life-book, but I haven’t got the knack of writing them out properly. If I could hit on jest the right words and string ’em together proper on paper I could make a great book. It would beat
A Mad Love
holler, and I believe Joe’d like it as well as the pirate yarns. Yes, I’ve had some adventures in my time; and, do you know, Mistress Blythe, I still lust after ’em. Yes, old and useless as I be, there’s an awful longing sweeps over me at times to sail out – out – out there – for ever and ever.’

‘Like Ulysses, you would

said Anne dreamily.

‘Ulysses? I’ve read of him. Yes, that’s jest how I feel – jest how all us old sailors feel, I reckon. I’ll die on land after all, I s’pose. Well, what is to be will be. There was old William Ford at the Glen who never went on the water in his life, ’cause he was afraid of being drowned. A fortune-teller had predicted he would be. And one day he fainted and fell with his face in the barn trough and was drowned. Must you go? Well, come soon and come often. The doctor is to do the talking next time. He knows a heap of things I want to find out. I’m sorter lonesome here by times. It’s been worse since Elizabeth Russell died. Her and me was such cronies.’

Captain Jim spoke with the pathos of the aged, who see their old friends slipping from them one by one – friends whose place can never be quite filled by those of a younger generation, even of the race that knows Joseph. Anne and Gilbert promised to come soon and often.

‘He’s a rare old fellow, isn’t he?’ said Gilbert, as they walked home.

‘Somehow, I can’t reconcile his simple, kindly personality with the wild, adventurous life he has lived,’ mused Anne.

‘You wouldn’t find it so hard if you had seen him the other day down at the fishing village. One of the men of Peter Gautier’s boat made a nasty remark about some girl along the shore. Captain Jim fairly scorched the wretched fellow with the lightning of his eyes. He seemed a man transformed. He didn’t say much – but the way he said it! You’d have thought it would strip the flesh from the fellow’s bones. I understand that Captain Jim will never allow a word against any woman to be said in his presence.’

‘I wonder why he never married,’ said Anne. ‘He should have sons with their ships at sea now, and grandchildren climbing over him to hear his stories – he’s that kind of a man. Instead, he has nothing but a magnificent cat.’

But Anne was mistaken. Captain Jim had more than that. He had a memory.

‘I’m going for a walk to the outside shore tonight,’ Anne told Gog and Magog one October evening. There was no one else to tell, for Gilbert had gone over the harbour. Anne had her little domain in the speckless order one would expect of anyone brought up by Marilla Cuthbert, and felt that she could gad shoreward with a clear conscience. Many and delightful had been her shore rambles, sometimes with Gilbert, sometimes with Captain Jim, sometimes alone with her own thoughts and new, poignantly-sweet dreams that were beginning to span life with their rainbows. She loved the gentle, misty harbour shore and the silvery, wind-haunted sand shore, but best of all she loved the rock shore, with its cliffs and caves and piles of surf-worn boulders, and its coves where the pebbles glittered under the pools; and it was to this shore she hied herself tonight.

There had been an autumn storm of wind and rain, lasting for three days. Thunderous had been the crash of billows on the rocks, wild the white spray and spume that blew over the bar, troubled and misty and tempest-torn the erstwhile blue peace of Four Winds Harbour. Now it was over, and the shore lay clean-washed after the storm; not a wind stirred, but there was still a fine surf on, dashing on sand and rock in a splendid white turmoil – the only restless thing in the great, pervading stillness and peace.

‘Oh, this is a moment worth living through weeks of storm and stress for,’ Anne exclaimed, delightedly sending her far gaze across the tossing waters from the top of the cliff where she stood. Presently she scrambled down the steep path to the little cove below, where she seemed shut in with rocks and sea and sky.

‘I’m going to dance and sing,’ she said. ‘There’s no one here to see me – the sea-gulls won’t carry tales of the matter. I may be as crazy as I like.’

She caught up her skirt and pirouetted along the hard strip of sand just out of reach of the waves that almost lapped her feet with their spent foam. Whirling round and round, laughing like a child, she reached the little headland that ran out to the east of the cove; then she stopped suddenly, blushing crimson; she was not alone; there had been a witness to her dance and laughter.

The girl of the golden hair and sea-blue eyes was sitting on a boulder of the headland, half hidden by a jutting rock. She was looking straight at Anne with a strange expression – part wonder, part sympathy, part – could it be? – envy. She was bareheaded, and her splendid hair, more than ever like Browning’s ‘gorgeous snake’, was bound about her head with a crimson ribbon. She wore a dress of some dark material, very plainly made; but swathed about her waist, outlining its fine curves, was a vivid girdle of red silk. Her hands, clasped over her knee, were brown and somewhat work-hardened; but the skin of her throat and cheeks was as white as cream. A flying gleam of sunset broke through a low-lying western cloud and fell across her hair. For a moment she seemed the spirit of the sea personified – all its mystery, all its passion, all its elusive charm.

‘You – you must think me crazy,’ stammered Anne, trying to recover her self-possession. To be seen by this stately girl in such an abandon of childishness – she, Mrs Dr Blythe, with all the dignity of the matron to keep up – it was too bad!

‘No,’ said the girl, ‘I don’t.’

She said nothing more; her voice was expressionless, her manner slightly repellent; but there was something in her eyes – eager yet shy, defiant yet pleading – which turned Anne from her purpose of walking away. Instead, she sat down on the boulder beside the girl.