Anne's House of Dreams by Lucy Maud Montgomery (crime books to read TXT) 📕
- Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
- Performer: 0553213180
Book online «Anne's House of Dreams by Lucy Maud Montgomery (crime books to read TXT) 📕». Author Lucy Maud Montgomery
“So you are to have THAT, too,” she said in a choked voice. And without another word she had turned and gone across the fields homeward. Anne was deeply hurt; for the moment she felt as if she could never like Leslie again. But when Leslie came over a few evenings later she was so pleasant, so friendly, so frank, and witty, and winsome, that Anne was charmed into forgiveness and forgetfulness. Only, she never mentioned her darling hope to Leslie again; nor did Leslie ever refer to it. But one evening, when late winter was listening for the word of spring, she came over to the little house for a twilight chat; and when she went away she left a small, white box on the table. Anne found it after she was gone and opened it wonderingly. In it was a tiny white dress of exquisite workmanship— delicate embroidery, wonderful tucking, sheer loveliness. Every stitch in it was handwork; and the little frills of lace at neck and sleeves were of real Valenciennes. Lying on it was a card—“with Leslie’s love.”
“What hours of work she must have put on it,” said Anne. “And the material must have cost more than she could really afford. It is very sweet of her.”
But Leslie was brusque and curt when Anne thanked her, and again the latter felt thrown back upon herself.
Leslie’s gift was not alone in the little house. Miss Cornelia had, for the time being, given up sewing for unwanted, unwelcome eighth babies, and fallen to sewing for a very much wanted first one, whose welcome would leave nothing to be desired. Philippa Blake and Diana Wright each sent a marvellous garment; and Mrs. Rachel Lynde sent several, in which good material and honest stitches took the place of embroidery and frills. Anne herself made many, desecrated by no touch of machinery, spending over them the happiest hours of the happy winter.
Captain Jim was the most frequent guest of the little house, and none was more welcome. Every day Anne loved the simple-souled, true-hearted old sailor more and more. He was as refreshing as a sea breeze, as interesting as some ancient chronicle. She was never tired of listening to his stories, and his quaint remarks and comments were a continual delight to her. Captain Jim was one of those rare and interesting people who “never speak but they say something.” The milk of human kindness and the wisdom of the serpent were mingled in his composition in delightful proportions.
Nothing ever seemed to put Captain Jim out or depress him in any way.
“I’ve kind of contracted a habit of enj’ying things,” he remarked once, when Anne had commented on his invariable cheerfulness. “It’s got so chronic that I believe I even enj’y the disagreeable things. It’s great fun thinking they can’t last. `Old rheumatiz,’ says I, when it grips me hard, `you’ve GOT to stop aching sometime. The worse you are the sooner you’ll stop, mebbe. I’m bound to get the better of you in the long run, whether in the body or out of the body.’”
One night, by the fireside at the light Anne saw Captain Jim’s “life-book.” He needed no coaxing to show it and proudly gave it to her to read.
“I writ it to leave to little Joe,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of everything I’ve done and seen being clean forgot after I’ve shipped for my last v’yage. Joe, he’ll remember it, and tell the yarns to his children.”
It was an old leather-bound book filled with the record of his voyages and adventures. Anne thought what a treasure trove it would be to a writer. Every sentence was a nugget. In itself the book had no literary merit; Captain Jim’s charm of storytelling failed him when he came to pen and ink; he could only jot roughly down the outline of his famous tales, and both spelling and grammar were sadly askew. But Anne felt that if anyone possessed of the gift could take that simple record of a brave, adventurous life, reading between the bald lines the tales of dangers staunchly faced and duty manfully done, a wonderful story might be made from it. Rich comedy and thrilling tragedy were both lying hidden in Captain Jim’s “life-book,” waiting for the touch of the master hand to waken the laughter and grief and horror of thousands.
Anne said something of this to Gilbert as they walked home.
“Why don’t you try your hand at it yourself, Anne?”
Anne shook her head.
” No. I only wish I could. But it’s not in the power of my gift. You know what my forte is, Gilbert—the fanciful, the fairylike, the pretty. To write Captain Jim’s life-book as it should be written one should be a master of vigorous yet subtle style, a keen psychologist, a born humorist and a born tragedian. A rare combination of gifts is needed. Paul might do it if he were older. Anyhow, I’m going to ask him to come down next summer and meet Captain Jim.”
“Come to this shore,” wrote Anne to Paul. “I am afraid you cannot find here Nora or the Golden Lady or the Twin Sailors; but you will find one old sailor who can tell you wonderful stories.”
Paul, however wrote back, saying regretfully that he could not come that year. He was going abroad for two year’s study.
“When I return I’ll come to Four Winds, dear Teacher,” he wrote.
“But meanwhile, Captain Jim is growing old,” said Anne, sorrowfully, “and there is nobody to write his life-book.”
The ice in the harbor grew black and rotten in the March suns; in April there were blue waters and a windy, white-capped gulf again; and again the Four Winds light begemmed the twilights.
“I’m so glad to see it once more,” said Anne, on the first evening of its reappearance. “I’ve missed it so all winter. The northwestern sky has seemed blank and lonely without it.”
The land was tender with brand-new, golden-green, baby leaves. There was an emerald mist on the woods beyond the Glen. The seaward valleys were full of fairy mists at dawn.
Vibrant winds came and went with salt foam in their breath. The sea laughed and flashed and preened and allured, like a beautiful, coquettish woman. The herring schooled and the fishing village woke to life. The harbor was alive with white sails making for the channel. The ships began to sail outward and inward again.
“On a spring day like this,” said Anne, “I know exactly what my soul will feel like on the resurrection morning.”
“There are times in spring when I sorter feel that I might have been a poet if I’d been caught young,” remarked Captain Jim. “I catch myself conning over old lines and verses I heard the schoolmaster reciting sixty years ago. They don’t trouble me at other times. Now I feel as if I had to get out on the rocks or the fields or the water and spout them.”
Captain Jim had come up that afternoon to bring Anne a load of shells for her garden, and a little bunch of sweet-grass which he had found in a ramble over the sand dunes.
“It’s getting real scarce along this shore now,” he said. “When I was a boy there was a-plenty of it. But now it’s only once in a while you’ll find a plot—and never when you’re looking for it. You jest have to stumble on it—you’re walking along on the sand hills, never thinking of sweet-grass—and all at once the air is full of sweetness— and there’s the grass under your feet. I favor the smell of sweet-grass. It always makes me think of my mother.”
“She was fond of it?” asked Anne.
“Not that I knows on. Dunno’s she ever saw any sweet-grass. No, it’s because it has a kind of motherly perfume—not too young, you understand—something kind of seasoned and wholesome and dependable—jest like a mother. The schoolmaster’s bride always kept it among her handkerchiefs. You might put that little bunch among yours, Mistress Blythe. I don’t like these boughten scents— but a whiff of sweet-grass belongs anywhere a lady does.”
Anne had not been especially enthusiastic over the idea of surrounding her flower beds with quahog shells; as a decoration they did not appeal to her on first thought. But she would not have hurt Captain Jim’s feelings for anything; so she assumed a virtue she did not at first feel, and thanked him heartily. And when Captain Jim had proudly encircled every bed with a rim of the big, milk-white shells, Anne found to her surprise that she liked the effect. On a town lawn, or even up at the Glen, they would not have been in keeping, but here, in the old-fashioned, sea-bound garden of the little house of dreams, they BELONGED.
“They DO look nice,” she said sincerely.
“The schoolmaster’s bride always had cowhawks round her beds,” said Captain Jim. “She was a master hand with flowers. She LOOKED at ‘em—and touched ‘em—SO—and they grew like mad. Some folks have that knack—I reckon you have it, too, Mistress Blythe.”
“Oh, I don’t know—but I love my garden, and I love working in it. To potter with green, growing things, watching each day to see the dear, new sprouts come up, is like taking a hand in creation, I think. Just now my garden is like faith—the substance of things hoped for. But bide a wee.”
“It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled brown seeds and think of the rainbows in ‘em,” said Captain Jim. “When I ponder on them seeds I don’t find it nowise hard to believe that we’ve got souls that’ll live in other worlds. You couldn’t hardly believe there was life in them tiny things, some no bigger than grains of dust, let alone color and scent, if you hadn’t seen the miracle, could you?”
Anne, who was counting her days like silver beads on a rosary, could not now take the long walk to the lighthouse or up the Glen road. But Miss Cornelia and Captain Jim came very often to the little house. Miss Cornelia was the joy of Anne’s and Gilbert’s existence. They laughed side-splittingly over her speeches after every visit. When Captain Jim and she happened to visit the little house at the same time there was much sport for the listening. They waged wordy warfare, she attacking, he defending. Anne once reproached the Captain for his baiting of Miss Cornelia.
“Oh, I do love to set her going, Mistress Blythe,” chuckled the unrepentant sinner. “It’s the greatest amusement I have in life. That tongue of hers would blister a stone. And you and that young dog of a doctor enj’y listening to her as much as I do.”
Captain Jim came along another evening to bring Anne some mayflowers. The garden was full of the moist, scented air of a maritime spring evening. There was a milk-white mist on the edge of the sea, with a young moon kissing it, and a silver gladness of stars over the Glen. The bell of the church across the harbor was ringing dreamily sweet. The mellow chime drifted through the dusk to mingle with the soft spring-moan of the sea. Captain Jim’s mayflowers added the last completing touch to the charm of the night.
“I haven’t seen any this spring, and I’ve missed them,” said Anne, burying her face in them.
“They ain’t to be found around Four Winds, only in the barrens away behind the Glen up yander. I took a little trip today to the Land-of-nothing-to-do, and hunted these up for you. I reckon they’re the last you’ll see this spring, for they’re
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