Anne's House of Dreams - Lucy Maud Montgomery (ebook reader macos .txt) š
- Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
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āIf only Diana or Phil or Pris or Stella could drop in for a chat,ā she said to herself, āhow delightful it would be! This is such a GHOSTLY night. Iām sure all the ships that ever sailed out of Four Winds to their doom could be seen tonight sailing up the harbor with their drowned crews on their decks, if that shrouding fog could suddenly be drawn aside. I feel as if it concealed innumerable mysteriesāas if I were surrounded by the wraiths of old generations of Four Winds people peering at me through that gray veil. If ever the dear dead ladies of this little house came back to revisit it they would come on just such a night as this. If I sit here any longer Iāll see one of them there opposite me in Gilbertās chair. This place isnāt exactly canny tonight. Even Gog and Magog have an air of pricking up their ears to hear the footsteps of unseen guests. Iāll run over to see Leslie before I frighten myself with my own fancies, as I did long ago in the matter of the Haunted Wood. Iāll leave my house of dreams to welcome back its old inhabitants. My fire will give them my good-will and greetingāthey will be gone before I come back, and my house will be mine once more. Tonight I am sure it is keeping a tryst with the past.ā
Laughing a little over her fancy, yet with something of a creepy sensation in the region of her spine, Anne kissed her hand to Gog and Magog and slipped out into the fog, with some of the new magazines under her arm for Leslie.
āLeslieās wild for books and magazines,ā Miss Cornelia had told her, āand she hardly ever sees one. She canāt afford to buy them or subscribe for them. Sheās really pitifully poor, Anne. I donāt see how she makes out to live at all on the little rent the farm brings in. She never even hints a complaint on the score of poverty, but I know what it must be. Sheās been handicapped by it all her life. She didnāt mind it when she was free and ambitious, but it must gall now, believe ME. Iām glad she seemed so bright and merry the evening she spent with you. Captain Jim told me he had fairly to put her cap and coat on and push her out of the door. Donāt be too long going to see her either. If you are sheāll think itās because you donāt like the sight of Dick, and sheāll crawl into her shell again. Dickās a great, big, harmless baby, but that silly grin and chuckle of his do get on some peopleās nerves. Thank goodness, Iāve no nerves myself. I like Dick Moore better now than I ever did when he was in his right sensesāthough the Lord knows that isnāt saying much. I was down there one day in housecleaning time helping Leslie a bit, and I was frying doughnuts. Dick was hanging round to get one, as usual, and all at once he picked up a scalding hot one Iād just fished out and dropped it on the back of my neck when I was bending over. Then he laughed and laughed. Believe ME, Anne, it took all the grace of God in my heart to keep me from just whisking up that stew-pan of boiling fat and pouring it over his head.ā
Anne laughed over Miss Corneliaās wrath as she sped through the darkness. But laughter accorded ill with that night. She was sober enough when she reached the house among the willows. Everything was very silent. The front part of the house seemed dark and deserted, so Anne slipped round to the side door, which opened from the veranda into a little sitting room. There she halted noiselessly.
The door was open. Beyond, in the dimly lighted room, sat Leslie Moore, with her arms flung out on the table and her head bent upon them. She was weeping horriblyāwith low, fierce, choking sobs, as if some agony in her soul were trying to tear itself out. An old black dog was sitting by her, his nose resting on his lap, his big doggish eyes full of mute, imploring sympathy and devotion. Anne drew back in dismay. She felt that she could not intermeddle with this bitterness. Her heart ached with a sympathy she might not utter. To go in now would be to shut the door forever on any possible help or friendship. Some instinct warned Anne that the proud, bitter girl would never forgive the one who thus surprised her in her abandonment of despair.
Anne slipped noiselessly from the veranda and found her way across the yard. Beyond, she heard voices in the gloom and saw the dim glow of a light. At the gate she met two menāCaptain Jim with a lantern, and another who she knew must be Dick Mooreāa big man, badly gone to fat, with a broad, round, red face, and vacant eyes. Even in the dull light Anne got the impression that there was something unusual about his eyes.
āIs this you, Mistress Blythe?ā said Captain Jim. āNow, now, you hadnāt oughter be roaming about alone on a night like this. You could get lost in this fog easier than not. Jest you wait till I see Dick safe inside the door and Iāll come back and light you over the fields. I aināt going to have Dr. Blythe coming home and finding that you walked clean over Cape Leforce in the fog. A woman did that once, forty years ago.
āSo youāve been over to see Leslie,ā he said, when he rejoined her.
āI didnāt go in,ā said Anne, and told what she had seen. Captain Jim sighed.
āPoor, poor, little girl! She donāt cry often, Mistress Blytheā sheās too brave for that. She must feel terrible when she does cry. A night like this is hard on poor women who have sorrows. Thereās something about it that kinder brings up all weāve sufferedāor feared.ā
āItās full of ghosts,ā said Anne, with a shiver. āThat was why I came overāI wanted to clasp a human hand and hear a human voice.
There seem to be so many INHUMAN presences about tonight. Even my own dear house was full of them. They fairly elbowed me out. So I fled over here for companionship of my kind.ā
āYou were right not to go in, though, Mistress Blythe. Leslie wouldnāt have liked it. She wouldnāt have liked me going in with Dick, as Iād have done if I hadnāt met you. I had Dick down with me all day. I keep him with me as much as I can to help Leslie a bit.ā
āIsnāt there something odd about his eyes?ā asked Anne.
āYou noticed that? Yes, one is blue and tāother is hazelāhis father had the same. Itās a Moore peculiarity. That was what told me he was Dick Moore when I saw him first down in Cuby. If it hadnāt a-bin for his eyes I mightnāt a-known him, with his beard and fat. You know, I reckon, that it was me found him and brought him home. Miss Cornelia always says I shouldnāt have done it, but I canāt agree with her. It was the RIGHT thing to doāand so ātwas the only thing. There aināt no question in my mind about THAT. But my old heart aches for Leslie. Sheās only twenty-eight and sheās eaten more bread with sorrow than most women do in eighty years.ā
They walked on in silence for a little while. Presently Anne said, āDo you know, Captain Jim, I never like walking with a lantern. I have always the strangest feeling that just outside the circle of light, just over its edge in the darkness, I am surrounded by a ring of furtive, sinister things, watching me from the shadows with hostile eyes. Iāve had that feeling from childhood. What is the reason? I never feel like that when Iām really in the darknessāwhen it is close all around meāIām not the least frightened.ā
āIāve something of that feeling myself,ā admitted Captain Jim. āI reckon when the darkness is close to us it is a friend. But when we sorter push it away from usādivorce ourselves from it, so to speak, with lantern lightāit becomes an enemy. But the fog is lifting.
Thereās a smart west wind rising, if you notice. The stars will be out when you get home.ā
They were out; and when Anne re-entered her house of dreams the red embers were still glowing on the hearth, and all the haunting presences were gone.
The splendor of color which had glowed for weeks along the shores of Four Winds Harbor had faded out into the soft gray-blue of late autumnal hills. There came many days when fields and shores were dim with misty rain, or shivering before the breath of a melancholy seawindānights, too, of storm and tempest, when Anne sometimes wakened to pray that no ship might be beating up the grim north shore, for if it were so not even the great, faithful light whirling through the darkness unafraid, could avail to guide it into safe haven.
āIn November I sometimes feel as if spring could never come again,ā she sighed, grieving over the hopeless unsightliness of her frosted and bedraggled flower-plots. The gay little garden of the schoolmasterās bride was rather a forlorn place now, and the Lombardies and birches were under bare poles, as Captain Jim said. But the firwood behind the little house was forever green and staunch; and even in November and December there came gracious days of sunshine and purple hazes, when the harbor danced and sparkled as blithely as in midsummer, and the gulf was so softly blue and tender that the storm and the wild wind seemed only things of a long-past dream.
Anne and Gilbert spent many an autumn evening at the lighthouse. It was always a cheery place. Even when the east wind sang in minor and the sea was dead and gray, hints of sunshine seemed to be lurking all about it. Perhaps this was because the First Mate always paraded it in panoply of gold. He was so large and effulgent that one hardly missed the sun, and his resounding purrs formed a pleasant accompaniment to the laughter and conversation which went on around Captain Jimās fireplace. Captain Jim and Gilbert had many long discussions and high converse on matters beyond the ken of cat or king.
āI like to ponder on all kinds of problems, though I canāt solve āem,ā said Captain Jim. āMy father held that we should never talk of things we couldnāt understand, but if we didnāt, doctor, the subjects for conversation would be mighty few. I reckon the gods laugh many a time to hear us, but what matters so long as we remember that weāre only men and donāt take to fancying that weāre gods ourselves, really, knowing good and evil. I reckon our pow-wows wonāt do us or anyone much harm, so
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