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 sea-wind—nights, 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.
“In November I sometimes feel as if spring could never come again,” she sighed, grieving over the hopeless unsightliness of her frosted and bedraggled flower-plots. The gay little garden of the schoolmaster’s bride was rather a forlorn place now, and the Lombardies and birches were under bare poles, as Captain Jim said. But the fir-wood 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 Jim’s fireplace. Captain Jim and Gilbert had many long discussions and high converse on matters beyond the ken of cat or king.
“I like to ponder on all kinds of problems, though I can’t solve ’em,” said Captain Jim. “My father held that we should never talk of things we couldn’t understand, but if we didn’t, 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 we’re only men and don’t take to fancying that we’re gods ourselves, really, knowing good and evil. I reckon our pow-wows won’t do us or anyone much harm, so let’s have another whack at the whence, why and whither this evening, doctor.”
While they “whacked,” Anne listened or dreamed. Sometimes Leslie went to the lighthouse with them, and she and Anne wandered along the shore in the eerie twilight, or sat on the rocks below the lighthouse until the darkness drove them back to the cheer of the driftwood fire. Then Captain Jim would brew them tea and tell them
“tales of land and seaAnd whatsoever might betideThe great forgotten world outside.”
Leslie seemed always to enjoy those lighthouse carousals very much, and bloomed out for the time being into ready wit and beautiful laughter, or glowing-eyed silence. There was a certain tang and savor in the conversation when Leslie was present which they missed when she was absent. Even when she did not talk she seemed to inspire others to brilliancy. Captain Jim told his stories better, Gilbert was quicker in argument and repartee, Anne felt little gushes and trickles of fancy and imagination bubbling to her lips under the influence of Leslie’s personality.
“That girl was born to be a leader in social and intellectual circles, far away from Four Winds,” she said to Gilbert as they walked home one night. “She’s just wasted here—wasted.”
“Weren’t you listening to Captain Jim and yours truly the other night when we discussed that subject generally? We came to the comforting conclusion that the Creator probably knew how to run His universe quite as well as we do, and that, after all, there are no such things as 'wasted’ lives, saving and except when an individual wilfully squanders and wastes his own life—which Leslie Moore certainly hasn’t done. And some people might think that a Redmond B.A., whom editors were beginning to honor, was 'wasted’ as the wife of a struggling country doctor in the rural community of Four Winds.”
“Gilbert!”
“If you had married Roy Gardner, now,” continued Gilbert mercilessly, “YOU could have been 'a leader in social and intellectual circles far away from Four Winds.’”
“Gilbert BLYTHE!”
“You KNOW you were in love with him at one time, Anne.”
“Gilbert, that’s mean—'pisen mean, just like all the men,’ as Miss Cornelia says. I NEVER was in love with him. I only imagined I was. YOU know that. You KNOW I’d rather be your wife in our house of dreams and fulfillment than a queen in a palace.”
Gilbert’s answer was not in words; but I am afraid that both of them forgot poor Leslie speeding her lonely way across the fields to a house that was neither a palace nor the fulfillment of a dream.
The moon was rising over the sad, dark sea behind them and transfiguring it. Her light had not yet reached the harbor, the further side of which was shadowy and suggestive, with dim coves and rich glooms and jewelling lights.
“How the home lights shine out tonight through the dark!” said Anne. “That string of them over the harbor looks like a necklace. And what a coruscation there is up at the Glen! Oh, look, Gilbert; there is ours. I’m so glad we left it burning. I hate to come home to a dark house. OUR homelight, Gilbert! Isn’t it lovely to see?”
“Just one of earth’s many millions of homes, Anne—girl—but ours—OURS—our beacon in 'a naughty world.’ When a fellow has a home and a dear, little, red-haired wife in it what more need he ask of life?”
“Well, he might ask ONE thing more,” whispered Anne happily. “Oh, Gilbert, it seems as if I just COULDN’T wait for the spring.”
At first Anne and Gilbert talked of going home to Avonlea for Christmas; but eventually they decided to stay in Four Winds. “I want to spend the first Christmas of our life together in our own home,” decreed Anne.
So it fell out that Marilla and Mrs. Rachel Lynde and the twins came to Four Winds for Christmas. Marilla had the face of a woman who had circumnavigated the globe. She had never been sixty miles away from home before; and she had never eaten a Christmas dinner anywhere save at Green Gables.
Mrs. Rachel had made and brought with her an enormous plum pudding. Nothing could have convinced Mrs. Rachel that a college graduate of the younger generation could make a Christmas plum pudding properly; but she bestowed approval on Anne’s house.
“Anne’s a good housekeeper,” she said to Marilla in the spare room the night of their arrival. “I’ve looked into her bread box and her scrap pail. I always judge a housekeeper by those, that’s what. There’s nothing in the pail that shouldn’t have been thrown away, and no stale pieces in the bread box. Of course, she was trained up with you—but, then, she went to college afterwards. I notice she’s got my tobacco stripe quilt on the bed here, and that big round braided mat of yours before her living-room fire. It makes me feel right at home.”
Anne’s first Christmas in her own house was as delightful as she could have wished. The day was fine and bright; the first skim of snow had fallen on Christmas Eve and made the world beautiful; the harbor was still open and glittering.
Captain Jim and Miss Cornelia came to dinner. Leslie and Dick had been invited, but Leslie made excuse; they always went to her Uncle Isaac West’s for Christmas, she said.
“She’d rather have it so,” Miss Cornelia told Anne. “She can’t bear taking Dick where there are strangers. Christmas is always a hard time for Leslie. She and her father used to make a lot of it.”
Miss Cornelia and Mrs. Rachel did not take a very violent fancy to each other. “Two suns hold not their courses in one sphere.” But they did not clash at all, for Mrs. Rachel was in the kitchen helping Anne and Marilla with the dinner, and it fell to Gilbert to entertain Captain Jim and Miss Cornelia,—or rather to be entertained by them, for a dialogue between those two old friends and antagonists was assuredly never dull.
“It’s many a year since there was a Christmas dinner here, Mistress Blythe,” said Captain Jim. “Miss Russell always went to her friends in town for Christmas. But I was here to the first Christmas dinner that was ever eaten in this house—and the schoolmaster’s bride cooked it. That was sixty years ago today, Mistress Blythe—and a day very like this—just enough snow to make the hills white, and the harbor as blue as June. I was only a lad, and I’d never been invited out to dinner before, and I was too shy to eat enough. I’ve got all over THAT.”
“Most men do,” said Miss Cornelia, sewing furiously. Miss Cornelia was not going to sit with idle hands, even on Christmas.
Babies come without any consideration for holidays, and there was one expected in a poverty-stricken household at Glen St. Mary. Miss Cornelia had sent that household a substantial dinner for its little swarm, and so meant to eat her own with a comfortable conscience.
“Well, you know, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, Cornelia,” explained Captain Jim.
“I believe you—when he HAS a heart,” retorted Miss Cornelia. “I suppose that’s why so many women kill themselves cooking—just as poor Amelia Baxter did. She died last Christmas morning, and she said it was the first Christmas since she was married that she didn’t have to cook a big, twenty-plate dinner. It must have been a real pleasant change for her. Well, she’s been dead a year, so you’ll soon hear of Horace Baxter taking notice.”
“I heard he was taking notice already,” said Captain Jim, winking at Gilbert. “Wasn’t he up to your place one Sunday lately, with his funeral blacks on, and a boiled collar?”
“No, he wasn’t. And he needn’t come neither. I could have had him long ago when he was fresh. I don’t want any second-hand goods, believe ME. As for Horace Baxter, he was in financial difficulties a year ago last summer, and he prayed to the Lord for help; and when his wife died and he got her life insurance he said he believed it was the answer to his prayer. Wasn’t that like a man?”
“Have you really proof that he said that, Cornelia?”
“I have the Methodist minister’s word for it—if you call THAT proof. Robert Baxter told me the same thing too, but I admit THAT isn’t evidence. Robert Baxter isn’t often known to tell the truth.”
“Come, come, Cornelia, I think he generally tells the truth, but he changes his opinion so often it sometimes sounds as if he didn’t.”
“It sounds like it mighty often, believe ME. But trust one man to excuse another. I have no use for Robert Baxter. He turned Methodist just because the Presbyterian choir happened to be singing 'Behold the bridegroom cometh’ for a collection piece when him and Margaret walked up the aisle the Sunday after they were married. Served him right for being late! He always insisted the choir did it on purpose to insult him, as if he was of that much importance. But that family always thought they were much bigger potatoes than they really were. His brother Eliphalet imagined the devil was always at his elbow—butInever believed the devil wasted that much time on him.”
“I—don’t—know,” said Captain Jim thoughtfully. “Eliphalet Baxter lived too much alone—hadn’t even a cat or dog to keep him human. When a man is alone he’s mighty apt to be with the devil—if he ain’t with God. He has to choose which company he’ll keep, I reckon. If the devil always was at Life Baxter’s elbow it must have been because Life liked to have him there.”
“Man-like,” said Miss Cornelia, and subsided into silence over a complicated arrangement of tucks until Captain Jim deliberately stirred her up again by remarking in a casual way:
“I was up to the Methodist church last Sunday morning.”
“You’d better have been home reading your Bible,” was Miss Cornelia’s retort.
“Come, now, Cornelia,Ican’t see any harm in going to the Methodist church when there’s no preaching in your own. I’ve been a Presbyterian for seventy-six years, and it isn’t likely my theology will hoist anchor at this late day.”
“It’s setting a bad example,” said Miss Cornelia grimly.
“Besides,” continued wicked Captain Jim, “I wanted to hear some good singing. The Methodists have a good choir; and you can’t deny, Cornelia, that the singing in our church is awful since the split in the choir.”
“What if the singing isn’t good? They’re doing their best, and God sees no difference between the voice of a crow and the voice of a nightingale.”
“Come, come, Cornelia,” said Captain Jim mildly, “I’ve a better opinion of the Almighty’s ear for music than THAT.”
“What caused the trouble in our choir?” asked Gilbert, who was suffering from suppressed laughter.
“It dates back to the new church, three years ago,” answered Captain Jim. “We had a fearful time over the building of that church—fell out over the question of a new site. The two sites wasn’t more’n two hundred yards apart, but you’d have thought they was a thousand by the bitterness of that fight. We was split up into three factions—one wanted the east site and one the south, and one held to the old. It was fought out in bed and at board, and in church and at market. All the old scandals of three generations were dragged out of their graves and aired. Three matches was broken up by it. And the meetings we had to try to settle the question! Cornelia, will you ever forget the one when old Luther Burns got up and made a speech? HE stated his opinions forcibly.”
“Call a spade a spade, Captain. You mean he got red-mad and raked them all, fore and aft. They deserved it too—a pack of incapables. But what would you expect of a committee of men? That building committee held twenty-seven meetings, and at the end of the twenty-seventh weren’t no nearer having a church than when they begun—not so near, for a fact, for in one fit of hurrying things along they’d gone to work and tore the old church down, so there we were, without a church, and no place but the hall to worship in.”
“The Methodists offered us their church, Cornelia.”
“The Glen St. Mary church wouldn’t have been built to this day,” went on Miss Cornelia, ignoring Captain Jim, “if we women hadn’t just started in and took charge. We said WE meant to have a church, if the men meant to quarrel till doomsday, and we were tired of being a laughing-stock for the Methodists. We held ONE meeting and elected a committee and canvassed for subscriptions. We got them, too. When any of the men tried to sass us we told them they’d tried for two years to build a church and it was our turn now. We shut them up close, believe ME, and in six months we had our church. Of course, when the men saw we were determined they stopped fighting and went to work, man-like, as soon as they saw they had to, or quit bossing. Oh, women can’t preach or be elders; but they can build churches and scare up the money for them.”
“The Methodists allow women to preach,” said Captain Jim.
Miss Cornelia glared at him.
“I never said the Methodists hadn’t common sense, Captain. What I say is, I doubt if they have much religion.”
“I suppose you are in favor of votes for women, Miss Cornelia,” said Gilbert.
“I’m not hankering after the vote, believe ME,” said Miss Cornelia scornfully. “Iknow 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 give 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 harbor.”
“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 Harbor, 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 sundown. 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 Gables 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 harbor 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 splendor; 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 harbor put on soft grays 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 southwestern 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?” says 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 nowise 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 comed 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 color 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 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 harbor 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 harbor.”
Winter set in vigorously after New Year’s. Big, white drifts heaped themselves about the little house, and palms of frost covered its windows. The harbor ice grew harder and thicker, until the Four Winds people began their usual winter travelling over it. The safe ways were “bushed” by a benevolent Government, and night and day the gay tinkle of the sleigh-bells sounded on it. On moonlit nights Anne heard them in her house of dreams like fairy chimes. The gulf froze over, and the Four Winds light flashed no more. During the months when navigation was closed Captain Jim’s office was a sinecure.
“The First Mate and I will have nothing to do till spring except keep warm and amuse ourselves. The last lighthouse keeper used always to move up to the Glen in winter; but I’d rather stay at the Point. The First Mate might get poisoned or chewed up by dogs at the Glen. It’s a mite lonely, to be sure, with neither the light nor the water for company, but if our friends come to see us often we’ll weather it through.”
Captain Jim had an ice boat, and many a wild, glorious spin Gilbert and Anne and Leslie had over the glib harbor ice with him. Anne and Leslie took long snowshoe tramps together, too, over the fields, or across the harbor after storms, or through the woods beyond the Glen. They were very good comrades in their rambles and their fireside communings. Each had something to give the other—each felt life the richer for friendly exchange of thought and friendly silence; each looked across the white fields between their homes with a pleasant consciousness of a friend beyond. But, in spite of all this, Anne felt that there was always a barrier between Leslie and herself—a constraint that never wholly vanished.
“I don’t know why I can’t get closer to her,” Anne said one evening to Captain Jim. “I like her so much—I admire her so much—I WANT to take her right into my heart and creep right into hers. But I can never cross the barrier.”
“You’ve been too happy all your life, Mistress Blythe,” said Captain Jim thoughtfully. “I reckon that’s why you and Leslie can’t get real close together in your souls. The barrier between you is her experience of sorrow and trouble. She ain’t responsible for it and you ain’t; but it’s there and neither of you can cross it.”
“My childhood wasn’t very happy before I came to Green Gables,” said Anne, gazing soberly out of the window at the still, sad, dead beauty of the leafless tree-shadows on the moonlit snow.
“Mebbe not—but it was just the usual unhappiness of a child who hasn’t anyone to look after it properly. There hasn’t been any TRAGEDY in your life, Mistress Blythe. And poor Leslie’s has been almost ALL tragedy. She feels, I reckon, though mebbe she hardly knows she feels it, that there’s a vast deal in her life you can’t enter nor understand—and so she has to keep you back from it—hold you off, so to speak, from hurting her. You know if we’ve got anything about us that hurts we shrink from anyone’s touch on or near it. It holds good with our souls as well as our bodies, I reckon. Leslie’s soul must be near raw—it’s no wonder she hides it away.”
“If that were really all, I wouldn’t mind, Captain Jim. I would understand. But there are times—not always, but now and again—when I almost have to believe that Leslie doesn’t—doesn’t like me. Sometimes I surprise a look in her eyes that seems to show resentment and dislike—it goes so quickly—but I’ve seen it, I’m sure of that. And it hurts me, Captain Jim. I’m not used to being disliked—and I’ve tried so hard to win Leslie’s friendship.”
“You have won it, Mistress Blythe. Don’t you go cherishing any foolish notion that Leslie don’t like you. If she didn’t she wouldn’t have anything to do with you, much less chumming with you as she does. I know Leslie Moore too well not to be sure of that.”
“The first time I ever saw her, driving her geese down the hill on the day I came to Four Winds, she looked at me with the same expression,” persisted Anne. “I felt it, even in the midst of my admiration of her beauty. She looked at me resentfully—she did, indeed, Captain Jim.”
“The resentment must have been about something else, Mistress Blythe, and you jest come in for a share of it because you happened past. Leslie DOES take sullen spells now and again, poor girl. I can’t blame her, when I know what she has to put up with. I don’t know why it’s permitted. The doctor and I have talked a lot abut the origin of evil, but we haven’t quite found out all about it yet. There’s a vast of onunderstandable things in life, ain’t there, Mistress Blythe? Sometimes things seem to work out real proper-like, same as with you and the doctor. And then again they all seem to go catawampus. There’s Leslie, so clever and beautiful you’d think she was meant for a queen, and instead she’s cooped up over there, robbed of almost everything a woman’d value, with no prospect except waiting on Dick Moore all her life. Though, mind you, Mistress Blythe, I daresay she’d choose her life now, such as it is, rather than the life she lived with Dick before he went away. THAT’S something a clumsy old sailor’s tongue mustn’t meddle with. But you’ve helped Leslie a lot—she’s a different creature since you come to Four Winds. Us old friends see the difference in her, as you can’t. Miss Cornelia and me was talking it over the other day, and it’s one of the mighty few p’ints that we see eye to eye on. So jest you throw overboard any idea of her not liking you.”
Anne could hardly discard it completely, for there were undoubtedly times when she felt, with an instinct that was not to be combated by reason, that Leslie harbored a queer, indefinable resentment towards her. At times, this secret consciousness marred the delight of their comradeship; at others it was almost forgotten; but Anne always felt the hidden thorn was there, and might prick her at any moment. She felt a cruel sting from it on the day when she told Leslie of what she hoped the spring would bring to the little house of dreams. Leslie looked at her with hard, bitter, unfriendly eyes.
“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 years’ 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 nearly done.”
“How kind and thoughtful you are, Captain Jim. Nobody else—not even Gilbert”—with a shake of her head at him—“remembered that I always long for mayflowers in spring.”
“Well, I had another errand, too—I wanted to take Mr. Howard back yander a mess of trout. He likes one occasional, and it’s all I can do for a kindness he did me once. I stayed all the afternoon and talked to him. He likes to talk to me, though he’s a highly eddicated man and I’m only an ignorant old sailor, because he’s one of the folks that’s GOT to talk or they’re miserable, and he finds listeners scarce around here. The Glen folks fight shy of him because they think he’s an infidel. He ain’t that far gone exactly—few men is, I reckon—but he’s what you might call a heretic. Heretics are wicked, but they’re mighty int’resting. It’s jest that they’ve got sorter lost looking for God, being under the impression that He’s hard to find—which He ain’t never. Most of ’em blunder to Him after awhile, I guess. I don’t think listening to Mr. Howard’s arguments is likely to do me much harm. Mind you, I believe what I was brought up to believe. It saves a vast of bother—and back of it all, God is good. The trouble with Mr. Howard is that he’s a leetle TOO clever. He thinks that he’s bound to live up to his cleverness, and that it’s smarter to thrash out some new way of getting to heaven than to go by the old track the common, ignorant folks is travelling. But he’ll get there sometime all right, and then he’ll laugh at himself.”
“Mr. Howard was a Methodist to begin with,” said Miss Cornelia, as if she thought he had not far to go from that to heresy.
“Do you know, Cornelia,” said Captain Jim gravely, “I’ve often thought that if I wasn’t a Presbyterian I’d be a Methodist.”
“Oh, well,” conceded Miss Cornelia, “if you weren’t a Presbyterian it wouldn’t matter much what you were. Speaking of heresy, reminds me, doctor—I’ve brought back that book you lent me—that Natural Law in the Spiritual World—I didn’t read more’n a third of it. I can read sense, and I can read nonsense, but that book is neither the one nor the other.”
“It IS considered rather heretical in some quarters,” admitted Gilbert, “but I told you that before you took it, Miss Cornelia.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t have minded its being heretical. I can stand wickedness, but I can’t stand foolishness,” said Miss Cornelia calmly, and with the air of having said the last thing there was to say about Natural Law.
“Speaking of books, A Mad Love come to an end at last two weeks ago,” remarked Captain Jim musingly. “It run to one hundred and three chapters. When they got married the book stopped right off, so I reckon their troubles were all over. It’s real nice that that’s the way in books anyhow, isn’t it, even if ’tistn’t so anywhere else?”
“I never read novels,” said Miss Cornelia. “Did you hear how Geordie Russell was today, Captain Jim?”
“Yes, I called in on my way home to see him. He’s getting round all right—but stewing in a broth of trouble, as usual, poor man.
“’Course he brews up most of it for himself, but I reckon that don’t make it any easier to bear.”
“He’s an awful pessimist,” said Miss Cornelia.
“Well, no, he ain’t a pessimist exactly, Cornelia. He only jest never finds anything that suits him.”
“And isn’t that a pessimist?”
“No, no. A pessimist is one who never expects to find anything to suit him. Geordie hain’t got THAT far yet.”
“You’d find something good to say of the devil himself, Jim Boyd.”
“Well, you’ve heard the story of the old lady who said he was persevering. But no, Cornelia, I’ve nothing good to say of the devil.”
“Do you believe in him at all?” asked Miss Cornelia seriously.
“How can you ask that when you know what a good Presbyterian I am, Cornelia? How could a Presbyterian get along without a devil?”
“DO you?” persisted Miss Cornelia.
Captain Jim suddenly became grave.
“I believe in what I heard a minister once call 'a mighty and malignant and INTELLIGENT power of evil working in the universe,’” he said solemnly. “I do THAT, Cornelia. You can call it the devil, or the 'principle of evil,’ or the Old Scratch, or any name you like. It’s THERE, and all the infidels and heretics in the world can’t argue it away, any more’n they can argue God away. It’s there, and it’s working. But, mind you, Cornelia, I believe it’s going to get the worst of it in the long run.”
“I am sure I hope so,” said Miss Cornelia, none too hopefully. “But speaking of the devil, I am positive that Billy Booth is possessed by him now. Have you heard of Billy’s latest performance?”
“No, what was that?”
“He’s gone and burned up his wife’s new, brown broadcloth suit, that she paid twenty-five dollars for in Charlottetown, because he declares the men looked too admiring at her when she wore it to church the first time. Wasn’t that like a man?”
“Mistress Booth IS mighty pretty, and brown’s her color,” said Captain Jim reflectively.
“Is that any good reason why he should poke her new suit into the kitchen stove? Billy Booth is a jealous fool, and he makes his wife’s life miserable. She’s cried all the week about her suit. Oh, Anne, I wish I could write like you, believe ME. Wouldn’t I score some of the men round here!”
“Those Booths are all a mite queer,” said Captain Jim. “Billy seemed the sanest of the lot till he got married and then this queer jealous streak cropped out in him. His brother Daniel, now, was always odd.”
“Took tantrums every few days or so and wouldn’t get out of bed,” said Miss Cornelia with a relish. “His wife would have to do all the barn work till he got over his spell. When he died people wrote her letters of condolence; if I’d written anything it would have been one of congratulation. Their father, old Abram Booth, was a disgusting old sot. He was drunk at his wife’s funeral, and kept reeling round and hiccuping 'I didn’t dri—i—i—nk much but I feel a—a—awfully que—e—e—r.’ I gave him a good jab in the back with my umbrella when he came near me, and it sobered him up until they got the casket out of the house. Young Johnny Booth was to have been married yesterday, but he couldn’t be because he’s gone and got the mumps. Wasn’t that like a man?”
“How could he help getting the mumps, poor fellow?”
“I’d poor fellow him, believe ME, if I was Kate Sterns. I don’t know how he could help getting the mumps, but I DO know the wedding supper was all prepared and everything will be spoiled before he’s well again. Such a waste! He should have had the mumps when he was a boy.”
“Come, come, Cornelia, don’t you think you’re a mite unreasonable?”
Miss Cornelia disdained to reply and turned instead to Susan Baker, a grim-faced, kind-hearted elderly spinster of the Glen, who had been installed as maid-of-all-work at the little house for some weeks. Susan had been up to the Glen to make a sick call, and had just returned.
“How is poor old Aunt Mandy tonight?” asked Miss Cornelia.
Susan sighed.
“Very poorly—very poorly, Cornelia. I am afraid she will soon be in heaven, poor thing!”
“Oh, surely, it’s not so bad as that!” exclaimed Miss Cornelia, sympathetically.
Captain Jim and Gilbert looked at each other. Then they suddenly rose and went out.
“There are times,” said Captain Jim, between spasms, “when it would be a sin NOT to laugh. Them two excellent women!”