Anne's House of Dreams (14 page)

‘I suppose you are in favour of votes for women, Miss Cornelia,’ said Gilbert.

‘I’m not hankering after the vote, believe
me
,’ said Miss Cornelia scornfully. ‘
I
know what it is to clean up after the men. But some of these days, when the men realize they’ve got the world into a mess they can’t get it out of, they’ll be glad to gives us the vote, and shoulder their troubles over on us. That’s
their
scheme. Oh, it’s well that women are patient, believe
me
!’

‘What about Job?’ suggested Captain Jim.

‘Job! It was such a rare thing to find a patient man that when one was really discovered they were determined he shouldn’t be forgotten,’ retorted Miss Cornelia triumphantly. ‘Anyhow, the virtue doesn’t go with the name. There never was such an impatient man born as old Job Taylor over harbour.’

‘Well, you know, he had a good deal to try him, Cornelia. Even you can’t defend his wife. I always remember what old William MacAllister said of her at her funeral, “There’s nae doot she was a Chreestian wumman, but she had the de’il’s own temper.”’

‘I suppose she
was
trying,’ admitted Miss Cornelia reluctantly, ‘but that didn’t justify what Job said when she died. He rode home from the graveyard the day of the funeral with my father. He never said a word till they got near home. Then he heaved a big sigh and said, “You may not believe it, Stephen, but this is the happiest day of my life!” Wasn’t that like a man?’

‘I s’pose poor old Mrs Job did make life kinder uneasy for him,’ reflected Captain Jim.

‘Well, there’s such a thing as decency, isn’t there? Even if a man is rejoicing in his heart over his wife being dead, he needn’t proclaim it to the four winds of heaven. And happy day or not, Job Taylor wasn’t long in marrying again, you might notice. His second wife could manage him. She made him walk Spanish, believe me! The first thing she did was to make him hustle round and put up a tombstone to the first Mrs Job – and she had a place left on it for her own name. She said there’d be nobody to make Job put up a monument to
her
.’

‘Speaking of Taylors, how is Mrs Lewis Taylor up at the Glen, Doctor?’ asked Captain Jim.

‘She’s getting better slowly – but she has to work too hard,’ replied Gilbert.

‘Her husband works hard too – raising prize pigs,’ said Miss Cornelia. ‘He’s noted for his beautiful pigs. He’s a heap prouder of his pigs than of his children. But then, to be sure, his pigs are the best pigs possible, while his children don’t amount to much. He picked a poor mother for them, and starved her while she was bearing and rearing them. His pigs got the cream and his children got the skim milk.’

‘There are times, Cornelia, when I have to agree with you, though it hurts me,’ said Captain Jim. ‘That’s just exactly the truth about Lewis Taylor. When I see those poor, miserable children of his, robbed of all children ought to have, it p’isens my own bite and sup for days afterwards.’

Gilbert went out to the kitchen in response to Anne’s beckoning. Anne shut the door and gave him a connubial lecture.

‘Gilbert, you and Captain Jim must stop baiting Miss Cornelia. Oh, I’ve been listening to you – and I just won’t allow it.’

‘Anne, Miss Cornelia is enjoying herself hugely. You know she is.’

‘Well, never mind. You two needn’t egg her on like that. Dinner is ready now, and, Gilbert,
don’t
let Mrs Rachel carve the geese. I know she means to offer to do it because she doesn’t think you can do it properly. Show her you can.’

‘I ought to be able to. I’ve been studying A-B-C-D diagrams of carving for the past month,’ said Gilbert. ‘Only don’t talk to me while I’m doing it, Anne, for if you drive the letters out of my head I’ll be in a worse predicament than you were in old geometry days when the teacher changed them.’

Gilbert carved the geese beautifully. Even Mrs Rachel had to admit that. And everybody ate of them and enjoyed them. Anne’s first Christmas dinner was a great success and she beamed with housewifely pride. Merry was the feast and long; and when it was over they gathered around the cheer of the red hearth flame and Captain Jim told them stories until the red sun swung low over Four Winds Harbour, and the long blue shadows of the Lombardies fell across the snow in the lane.

‘I must be getting back to the light,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll jest have time to walk home before sun-down. Thank you for a beautiful Christmas, Mistress Blythe. Bring Master Davy down to the light some night before he goes home.’

‘I want to see those stone gods,’ said Davy with a relish.

The Green Gable folk went home after Christmas, Marilla under solemn covenant to return for a month in the spring. More snow came before New Year’s, and the harbour froze over, but the gulf still was free, beyond the white imprisoned fields. The last day of the old year was one of those bright, cold, dazzling winter days, which bombard us with their brilliancy and command our admiration but never our love. The sky was sharp and blue; the snow diamonds sparkled insistently; the stark trees were bare and shameless, with a kind of brazen beauty; the hills shot assaulting lances of crystal. Even the shadows were sharp and stiff and clear-cut, as no proper shadows should be. Everything that was handsome seemed ten times handsomer and less attractive in the glaring splendour; and everything that was ugly seemed ten times uglier, and everything was either handsome or ugly. There was no soft blending, or kind obscurity, or elusive mistiness in that searching glitter. The only things that held their own individuality were the firs – for the fir is the tree of mystery and shadow, and yields never to the encroachments of crude radiance.

But finally the day began to realize that she was growing old. Then a certain pensiveness fell over her beauty which dimmed yet intensified it sharp angles, glittering points, melted away into curves and enticing gleams. The white harbour put on soft greys and pinks; the far-away hills turned amethyst.

‘The old year is going away beautifully,’ said Anne.

She and Leslie and Gilbert were on their way to the Four Winds Point, having plotted with Captain Jim to watch the New Year in at the light. The sun had set and in the south-western sky hung Venus, glorious and golden, having drawn as near to her earth-sister as is possible for her. For the first time Anne and Gilbert saw the shadow cast by that brilliant star of evening, that faint, mysterious shadow, never seen save when there is white snow to reveal it, and then only with averted vision, vanishing when you gaze at it directly.

‘It’s like the spirit of a shadow, isn’t it?’ whispered Anne. ‘You can see it so plainly haunting your side when you look ahead; but when you turn and look at it – it’s gone.’

‘I have heard that you can see the shadow of Venus only once in a lifetime, and that within a year of seeing it your life’s most wonderful gift will come to you,’ said Leslie. But she spoke rather hardly; perhaps she thought that even the shadow of Venus could bring her no gift of life. Anne smiled in the soft twilight; she felt quite sure what the mystic shadow promised her.

They found Marshall Elliott at the lighthouse. At first Anne felt inclined to resent the intrusion of this long-haired, long-bearded eccentric into the familiar little circle. But Marshall Elliott soon proved his legitimate claim to membership in the household of Joseph. He was a witty, intelligent, well-read man, rivalling Captain Jim himself in the knack of telling a good story. They were all glad when he agreed to watch the old year out with them.

Captain Jim’s small nephew Joe had come down to spend New Year’s with his great-uncle, and had fallen asleep on the sofa with the First Mate curled up in a huge golden ball at his feet.

‘Ain’t he a dear little man?’ said Captain Jim gloatingly. ‘I do love to watch a little child asleep, Mistress Blythe. It’s the most beautiful sight in the world, I reckon. Joe does love to get down here for a night, because I have him sleep with me. At home he has to sleep with the other two boys, and he doesn’t like it. “Why can’t I sleep with Father, Uncle Jim?” say he. “Everybody in the Bible slept with their fathers.” As for the questions he asks, the minister himself couldn’t answer them. They fair swamp me. “Uncle Jim, if I wasn’t
me
who’d I be?” and “Uncle Jim, what would happen if God died?” He fired them two off at me tonight, afore he went to sleep. As for his imagination, it sails away from everything. He makes up the most remarkable yarns – and then his mother shuts him up in the closet for telling stories. And he sits down and makes up another one, and has it ready to relate to her when she lets him out. He had one for me when he come down tonight. “Uncle Jim,” says he, solemn as a tombstone, “I had a ’venture in the Glen today.” “Yes, what was it?” says I, expecting something quite startling, but no-wise prepared for what I really got. “I met a wolf in the street,” says he, “a ’normous wolf with a big red mouf and
awful
long teeth, Uncle Jim.” “I didn’t know there was any wolves up at the Glen,” says I. “Oh, he corned there from far, far away,” says Joe, “and I fought he was going to eat me up, Uncle Jim.” “Were you scared?” says I. “No, ’cause I had a big gun,” says Joe, “and I shot the wolf dead, Uncle Jim – solid dead – and then he went up to heaven and bit God,” says he. Well, I was fair staggered, Mistress Blythe.’

The hours bloomed into mirth around the driftwood fire. Captain Jim told tales, and Marshall Elliott sang old Scotch ballads in a fine tenor voice; finally Captain Jim took down his old brown fiddle from the wall and began to play. He had a tolerable knack of fiddling, which all appreciated save the First Mate, who sprang from the sofa as if he had been shot, emitted a shriek of protest, and fled wildly up the stairs.

‘Can’t cultivate an ear for music in that cat nohow,’ said Captain Jim. ‘He won’t stay long enough to learn to like it. When we got the organ up at the Glen church old Elder Richards bounced up from his seat the minute the organist began to play and scuttled down the aisle and out of the church at the rate of no-man’s-business. It reminded me so strong of the First Mate tearing loose as soon as I begin to fiddle that I come nearer to laughing out loud in church than I ever did before or since.’

There was something so infectious in the rollicking tunes which Captain Jim played that very soon Marshall Elliott’s feet began to twitch. He had been a noted dancer in his youth. Presently he started up and held out his hands to Leslie. Instantly she responded. Round and round the firelit room they circled with a rhythmic grace that was wonderful. Leslie danced like one inspired; the wild, sweet abandon of the music seemed to have entered into and possessed her. Anne watched her in fascinated admiration. She had never seen her like this. All the innate richness and colour and charm of her nature seemed to have broken loose and overflowed in crimson cheek and glowing eye and grace of motion. Even the aspect of Marshall Elliott, with his long beard and hair, could not spoil the picture. On the contrary, it seemed to enhance it. Marshall Elliott looked like a Viking of elder days, dancing with one of the blue-eyed, golden-haired daughters of the Northland.

‘The purtiest dancing I ever saw, and I’ve seen some in my time,’ declared Captain Jim, when at last the bow fell from his tired hand. Leslie dropped into her chair, laughing breathless.

‘I love dancing,’ she said apart to Anne. ‘I haven’t danced since I was sixteen – but I love it. The music seems to run through my veins like quicksilver and I forget everything – everything – except the delight of keeping time to it. There isn’t any floor beneath me, or walls about me, or roof over me – I’m floating amid the stars.’

Captain Jim hung his fiddle up in its place, beside a large frame enclosing several banknotes.

‘Is there anybody else of your acquaintance who can afford to hang his walls with banknotes for pictures?’ he asked. ‘There’s twenty ten-dollar notes there, not worth the glass over them. They’re old Bank of P.E. Island notes. Had them by me when the bank failed, and I had ’em framed and hung up, partly as a reminder not to put your trust in banks, and partly to give me a real luxurious, millionairy feeling. Hullo, Matey, don’t be scared. You can come back now. The music and revelry is over for tonight. The old year has just another hour to stay with us. I’ve seen seventy-six New Years come in over that gulf yonder, Mistress Blythe.’

‘You’ll see a hundred,’ said Marshall Elliott.

Captain Jim shook his head.

‘No; and I don’t want to – at least, I think I don’t. Death grows friendlier as we grow older. Not that one of us really wants to die though, Marshall. Tennyson spoke the truth when he said that. There’s old Mrs Wallace up at the Glen. She’s had heaps of trouble all her life, poor soul, and she’s lost almost everyone she cared about. She’s always saying that she’ll be glad when her time comes, and she doesn’t want to sojourn any longer in this vale of tears. But when she takes a sick spell there’s a fuss! Doctors from town, and a trained nurse, and enough medicine to kill a dog. Life may be a vale of tears, all right, but there are some folks who enjoy weeping, I reckon.’

They spent the old year’s last hour quietly around the fire. A few minutes before twelve Captain Jim rose and opened the door.

‘We must let the New Year in,’ he said.

Outside was a fine blue night. A sparkling ribbon of moonlight garlanded the gulf. Inside the bar the harbour shone like a pavement of pearl. They stood before the door and waited – Captain Jim with his ripe, full experience, Marshall Elliott in his vigorous but empty middle life, Gilbert and Anne with their precious memories and exquisite hopes, Leslie with her record of starved years and her hopeless future. The clock on the little shelf above the fireplace struck twelve.

‘Welcome, New Year,’ said Captain Jim, bowing low as the last stroke died away. ‘I wish you all the best year of your lives, mates. I reckon that whatever the New Year brings us will be the best the Great Captain has for us – and somehow or other we’ll all make port in a good harbour.’