Anne's House of Dreams (20 page)

‘Well, that’s just what Leslie is doing,’ said Anne crisply. ‘And it isn’t altogether pleasant for her, either. I hope you won’t mind Dick. If you do, please don’t let Leslie see it. It would hurt her horribly. He’s just a big baby, and sometimes a rather annoying one.’

‘Oh, I won’t mind him. I don’t suppose I’ll be much in the house, anyhow, except for meals. But what a shame it all is! Her life must be a hard one.’

‘It is. But she doesn’t like to be pitied.’

Leslie had gone back into the house and now met them at the front door. She greeted Owen Ford with cold civility, and told him in a business-like tone that his room and his supper were ready for him. Dick, with a pleased grin, shambled upstairs with the valise, and Owen Ford was installed as an inmate of the old house among the willows.

‘I have a little brown cocoon of an idea that may possibly expand into a magnificent moth of fulfilment,’ Anne told Gilbert when she reached home. He had returned earlier than she had expected, and was enjoying Susan’s cherry pie. Susan herself hovered in the background, like a rather grim but beneficent guardian spirit, and found as much pleasure in watching Gilbert eat pie as he did in eating it.

‘What is your idea?’ he asked.

‘I shan’t tell you just yet – not till I see if I can bring the thing about.’

‘What sort of a chap is Ford?’

‘Oh, very nice, and quite good-looking.’

‘Such beautiful ears, doctor, dear,’ interjected Susan with a relish.

‘He is about thirty or thirty-five, I think, and he meditates writing a novel. His voice is pleasant and his smile delightful, and he knows how to dress. He looks as if life hadn’t been altogether easy for him, somehow.’

Owen Ford came over the next evening with a note to Anne from Leslie; they spent the sunset-time in the garden and then went for a moonlit sail on the harbour, in the little boat Gilbert had set up for summer outings. They liked Owen immensely and had that feeling of having known him for many years which distinguishes the freemasonry of the house of Joseph. ‘He is as nice as his ears, Mrs Doctor, dear,’ said Susan, when he had gone. He had told Susan that he had never tasted anything like her strawberry shortcake, and Susan’s susceptible heart was his for ever.

‘He has got a way with him,’ she reflected, as she cleared up the relics of the supper. ‘It is real queer he is not married, for a man like that could have anybody for the asking. Well, maybe he is like me, and has not met the right one yet.’

Susan really grew quite romantic in her musings as she washed the supper dishes.

Two nights later Anne took Owen Ford down to Four Winds Point to introduce him to Captain Jim. The clover fields along the harbour shore were whitening in the western wind, and Captain Jim had one of his finest sunsets on exhibition. He himself had just returned from a trip over the harbour.

‘I had to go over and tell Henry Pollock he was dying. Everybody else was afraid to tell him. They expected he’d take on turrible, for he’s been dreadful determined to live, and been making no end of plans for the fall. His wife thought he oughter be told and that I’d be the best one to break it to him that he couldn’t get better. Henry and me are old cronies – we sailed in the
Grey Gulf
for years together. Well, I went over and sat down by Henry’s bed and I says to him, says I, jest right out plain and simple, for if a thing’s got to be told it may as well be told first as last, says I, “Mate, I reckon you’ve got your sailing orders this time.” I was sorter quaking inside, for it’s an awful thing to have to tell a man who hain’t any idea he’s dying that he is. But lo and behold, Mistress Blythe, Henry looks up at me, with those bright old black eyes of his in his wizened face and says, says he, “Tell me something I don’t know, Jim Boyd, if you want to give me information. I’ve known
that
for a week.” I was too astonished to speak, and Henry, he chuckled. “To see you coming in here,” says he, “with your face as solemn as a tombstone and sitting down there with your hands clasped over your stomach, and passing me out a blue-mouldy old item of news like that! It’d make a cat laugh, Jim Boyd,” says he. “Who told you?” says I, stupid like. “Nobody,” says he. “A week ago Tuesday night I was lying here awake – and I jest
knew
. I’d suspicioned it before, but then I knew. I’ve been keeping up for the wife’s sake. And I’d
like
to have got that barn built, for Eben’ll never get it right. But anyhow, now that you’ve eased your mind, Jim, put on a smile and tell me something interesting.” Well, there it was. They’d been so scared to tell him and he knew it all the time. Strange how nature looks out for us, ain’t it, and lets us know what we should know when the time comes? Did I never tell you the yarn about Henry getting the fish-hook in his nose, Mistress Blythe?’

‘No.’

‘Well, him and me had a laugh over it today. It happened nigh unto thirty years ago. Him and me and several more was out mackerel-fishing one day. It was a great day – never saw such a school of mackerel in the gulf – and in the general excitement Henry got quite wild and contrived to stick a fish-hook clean through one side of his nose. Well, there he was; there was barb on one end and a big piece of lead on the other, so it couldn’t be pulled out. We wanted to take him ashore at once, but Henry was game; he said he’d be jiggered if he’d leave a school like that for anything short of lockjaw; then he kept fishing away, hauling in hand over fist and groaning between times. Fin’lly the school passed and we come in with a load; I got a file and begun to try to file through that hook. I tried to be as easy as I could, but you should have heard Henry – no, you shouldn’t either. It was well no ladies were around. Henry wasn’t a swearing man, but he’d heard some few matters of that sort along shore in his time, and he fished ’em all out of his recollection and hurled ’em at me. Fin’lly he declared he couldn’t stand it and I had no bowels of compassion. So we hitched up and I drove him to a doctor in Charlottetown, thirty-five miles – there weren’t none nearer in them days – with that blessed hook still hanging from his nose. When we got there old Dr Crabb jest took a file and filed that hook jest the same as I’d tried to do, only he weren’t a mite particular about doing it easy!’

Captain Jim’s visit to his old friend had revived many recollections and he was now in the full tide of reminiscences.

‘Henry was asking me today if I remembered the time old Father Chiniquy blessed Alexander MacAllister’s boat. Another odd yarn – and true as gospel. I was in the boat myself. We went out, him and me, in Alexander MacAllister’s boat one morning at sunrise. Besides, there was a French boy in the boat – Catholic of course. You know old Father Chiniquy had turned Protestant, so the Catholics hadn’t much use for him. Well, we sat out in the gulf in the broiling sun till noon, and not a bite did we get. When we went ashore old Father Chiniquy had to go, so he said in that polite way of his, “I’m very sorry I cannot go out with you dis afternoon, Mr MacAllister, but I leave you my blessing. You will catch a t’ousand dis afternoon.” Well, we did not catch a thousand, but we caught exactly nine hundred and ninety-nine – the biggest catch for a small boat on the whole north shore that summer. Curious, wasn’t it? Alexander MacAllister, he says to Andrew Peters, “Well, and what do you think of Father Chiniquy now?” “Vell,” growled Andrew, “I t’ink de old devil has got a blessing left yet.” Laws, how Henry did laugh over that today!’

‘Do you know who Mr Ford is, Captain Jim?’ asked Anne, seeing that Captain Jim’s fountain of reminiscence had run out for the present. ‘I want you to guess.’

Captain Jim shook his head.

‘I never was any hand at guessing, Mistress Blythe, and yet somehow when I come in I thought, “Where have I seen them eyes before?” – for I
have
seen ’em.’

‘Think of a September morning many years ago,’ said Anne, softly. ‘Think of a ship sailing up the harbour – a ship long waited for and despaired of. Think of the day the
Royal William
came in and the first look you had at the schoolmaster’s bride.’

Captain Jim sprang up.

‘They’re Persis Selwyn’s eyes,’ he almost shouted. ‘You can’t be her son – you must be her –’

‘Grandson; yes, I am Alice Selwyn’s son.’

Captain Jim swooped down on Owen Ford and shook his hand over again.

‘Alice Selwyn’s son! Lord, but you’re welcome! Many’s the time I’ve wondered where the descendants of the schoolmaster were living. I knew there was none on the Island. Alice – Alice – the first baby ever born in that little house. No baby ever brought more joy! I’ve dandled her a hundred times. It was from my knee she took her first steps alone. Can’t I see her mother’s face watching her – and it was near sixty years ago. Is she living yet?’

‘No, she died when I was only a boy.’

‘Oh, it doesn’t seem right that I should be living to hear that,’ sighed Captain Jim. ‘But I’m heart-glad to see you. It’s brought back my youth for a little while. You don’t know yet what a boon
that
is. Mistress Blythe here has the trick – she does it quite often for me.’

Captain Jim was still more excited when he discovered that Owen Ford was what he called a ‘real writing man’. He gazed at him as at a superior being. Captain Jim knew that Anne wrote, but he had never taken that fact very seriously. Captain Jim thought women were delightful creatures, who ought to have the vote, and everything else they wanted, bless their hearts; but he did not believe they could write.

‘Jest look at
A Mad Love
,’ he would protest. ‘A woman wrote that and jest look at it – one hundred and three chapters when it could all have been told in ten. A writing woman never knows when to stop; that’s the trouble. The p’int of good writing is to know when to stop.’

‘Mr Ford wants to hear some of your stories, Captain Jim,’ said Anne. ‘Tell him the one about the captain who went crazy and imagined he was the Flying Dutchman.’

This was Captain Jim’s best story. It was a compound of horror and humour, and though Anne had heard it several times she laughed as heartily and shivered as fearsomely over it as Mr Ford did. Other tales followed, for Captain Jim had an audience after his own heart. He told how his vessel had been run down by a steamer; how he had been boarded by Malay pirates; how his ship had caught fire; how he helped a political prisoners escape from a South African republic; how he had been wrecked one fall on the Magdalens and stranded there for the winter; how a tiger had broken loose on board ship; how his crew had mutinied and marooned him on a barren island – these and many other tales, tragic or humorous or grotesque, did Captain Jim relate. The mystery of the sea, the fascination of far lands, the lure of adventure, the laughter of the world – his hearers felt and realized them all. Owen Ford listened, with his head on his hand, and the First Mate purring on his knee, his brilliant eyes fastened on Captain Jim’s rugged, eloquent face.

‘Won’t you let Mr Ford see your life-book, Captain Jim?’ asked Anne, when Captain Jim finally declared that yarn-spinning must end for the time.

‘Oh, he don’t want to be bothered with
that
,’ protested Captain Jim, who was secretly dying to show it.

‘I should like nothing better than to see it, Captain Boyd,’ said Owen. ‘If it is half as wonderful as your tales it will be worth seeing.’

With pretended reluctance Captain Jim dug his life-book out of his old chest and handed it to Owen.

‘I reckon you won’t care to wrastle long with my old hand o’ write. I never had much schooling,’ he observed carelessly. ‘Just wrote that there to amuse my nephew Joe. He’s always wanting stories. Comes here yesterday and says to me, reproachful-like, as I was lifting a twenty-pound codfish out of my boat, “Uncle Jim, ain’t a codfish a dumb animal?” I’d been a-telling him, you see, that he must be real kind to dumb animals, and never hurt ’em in any way. I got out of the scrape by saying a codfish was dumb enough but it wasn’t an animal, but Joe didn’t look satisfied, and I wasn’t satisfied myself. You’ve got to be mighty careful what you tell them little critters.
They
can see through you.’

While talking, Captain Jim watched Owen Ford from the corner of his eye as the latter examined the life-book; and presently observing that his guest was lost in its pages, he turned smilingly to his cupboard and proceeded to make a pot of tea. Owen Ford separated himself from the life-book, with as much reluctance as a miser wrenches himself from his gold, long enough to drink his tea, and then returned to it hungrily.

‘Oh, you can take that thing home with you if you want to,’ said Captain Jim, as if the ‘thing’ were not his most treasured possession. ‘I must go down and pull my boat up a bit on the skids. There’s a wind coming. Did you notice the sky tonight?

Owen Ford accepted the offer of the life-book gladly. On their way home Anne told him the story of lost Margaret.

‘That old captain is a wonderful old fellow,’ he said. ‘What a life he has led! Why, the man had more adventures in one week of his life than most of us have in a lifetime. Do you really think his tales are all true?’

‘I certainly do. I am sure Captain Jim could not tell a lie; and besides, all the people about here say that everything happened as he relates it. There used to be plenty of his old shipmates alive to corroborate him. He’s one of the last of the old type of P.E. Island sea captains. They are almost extinct now.’

Owen Ford came over to the little house the next morning in a state of great excitement.

‘Mrs Blythe, this is a wonderful book – absolutely wonderful. If I could take it and use the material for a book I feel certain I could make the novel of the year out of it. Do you suppose Captain Jim would let me do it?’

‘Let you! I’m sure he would be delighted,’ cried Anne. ‘I admit that it was what was in my head when I took you down last night. Captain Jim has always been wishing he could get somebody to write his life-book properly for him.’