Anne's House of Dreams by Lucy Maud Montgomery (free ebooks for android .txt) đ
- Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
- Performer: 0553213180
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âProbably sheâs some visitor in Four Windsâlikely some one from that big summer hotel over the harbor.â
âShe wore a white apron and she was driving geese.â
âShe might do that for amusement. Look, Anneâthereâs our house.â
Anne looked and forgot for a time the girl with the splendid, resentful eyes. The first glimpse of her new home was a delight to eye and spiritâit looked so like a big, creamy seashell stranded on the harbor shore. The rows of tall Lombardy poplars down its lane stood out in stately, purple silhouette against the sky. Behind it, sheltering its garden from the too keen breath of sea winds, was a cloudy fir wood, in which the winds might make all kinds of weird and haunting music. Like all woods, it seemed to be holding and enfolding secrets in its recesses,âsecrets whose charm is only to be won by entering in and patiently seeking. Outwardly, dark green arms keep them inviolate from curious or indifferent eyes.
The night winds were beginning their wild dances beyond the bar and the fishing hamlet across the harbor was gemmed with lights as Anne and Gilbert drove up the poplar lane. The door of the little house opened, and a warm glow of firelight flickered out into the dusk. Gilbert lifted Anne from the buggy and led her into the garden, through the little gate between the ruddy-tipped firs, up the trim, red path to the sandstone step.
âWelcome home,â he whispered, and hand in hand they stepped over the threshold of their house of dreams.
âOld Doctor Daveâ and âMrs. Doctor Daveâ had come down to the little house to greet the bride and groom. Doctor Dave was a big, jolly, white-whiskered old fellow, and Mrs. Doctor was a trim rosy-cheeked, silver-haired little lady who took Anne at once to her heart, literally and figuratively.
âIâm so glad to see you, dear. You must be real tired. Weâve got a bite of supper ready, and Captain Jim brought up some trout for you. Captain Jimâwhere are you? Oh, heâs slipped out to see to the horse, I suppose. Come upstairs and take your things off.â
Anne looked about her with bright, appreciative eyes as she followed Mrs. Doctor Dave upstairs. She liked the appearance of her new home very much. It seemed to have the atmosphere of Green Gables and the flavor of her old traditions.
âI think I would have found Miss Elizabeth Russell a `kindred spirit,ââ she murmured when she was alone in her room. There were two windows in it; the dormer one looked out on the lower harbor and the sandbar and the Four Winds light.
âA magic casement opening on the foam Of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn,â
quoted Anne softly. The gable window gave a view of a little harvest-hued valley through which a brook ran. Half a mile up the brook was the only house in sightâan old, rambling, gray one surrounded by huge willows through which its windows peered, like shy, seeking eyes, into the dusk. Anne wondered who lived there; they would be her nearest neighbors and she hoped they would be nice. She suddenly found herself thinking of the beautiful girl with the white geese.
âGilbert thought she didnât belong here,â mused Anne, âbut I feel sure she does. There was something about her that made her part of the sea and the sky and the harbor. Four Winds is in her blood.â
When Anne went downstairs Gilbert was standing before the fireplace talking to a stranger. Both turned as Anne entered.
âAnne, this is Captain Boyd. Captain Boyd, my wife.â
It was the first time Gilbert had said âmy wifeâ to anybody but Anne, and he narrowly escaped bursting with the pride of it. The old captain held out a sinewy hand to Anne; they smiled at each other and were friends from that moment. Kindred spirit flashed recognition to kindred spirit.
âIâm right down pleased to meet you, Mistress Blythe; and I hope youâll be as happy as the first bride was who came here. I canât wish you no better than THAT. But your husband doesnât introduce me jest exactly right. `Captain Jimâ is my week-a-day name and you might as well begin as youâre sartain to end upâcalling me that. You sartainly are a nice little bride, Mistress Blythe. Looking at you sorter makes me feel that Iâve jest been married myself.â
Amid the laughter that followed Mrs. Doctor Dave urged Captain Jim to stay and have supper with them.
âThank you kindly. âTwill be a real treat, Mistress Doctor. I mostly has to eat my meals alone, with the reflection of my ugly old phiz in a looking-glass opposite for company. âTisnât often I have a chance to sit down with two such sweet, purty ladies.â
Captain Jimâs compliments may look very bald on paper, but he paid them with such a gracious, gentle deference of tone and look that the woman upon whom they were bestowed felt that she was being offered a queenâs tribute in a kingly fashion.
Captain Jim was a high-souled, simple-minded old man, with eternal youth in his eyes and heart. He had a tall, rather ungainly figure, somewhat stooped, yet suggestive of great strength and endurance; a clean-shaven face deeply lined and bronzed; a thick mane of iron-gray hair falling quite to his shoulders, and a pair of remarkably blue, deep-set eyes, which sometimes twinkled and sometimes dreamed, and sometimes looked out seaward with a wistful quest in them, as of one seeking something precious and lost. Anne was to learn one day what it was for which Captain Jim looked.
It could not be denied that Captain Jim was a homely man. His spare jaws, rugged mouth, and square brow were not fashioned on the lines of beauty; and he had passed through many hardships and sorrows which had marked his body as well as his soul; but though at first sight Anne thought him plain she never thought anything more about itâthe spirit shining through that rugged tenement beautified it so wholly.
They gathered gaily around the supper table. The hearth fire banished the chill of the September evening, but the window of the dining room was open and sea breezes entered at their own sweet will. The view was magnificent, taking in the harbor and the sweep of low, purple hills beyond. The table was heaped with Mrs. Doctorâs delicacies but the piece de resistance was undoubtedly the big platter of sea trout.
âThought theyâd be sorter tasty after travelling,â said Captain Jim. âTheyâre fresh as trout can be, Mistress Blythe. Two hours ago they were swimming in the Glen Pond.â
âWho is attending to the light tonight, Captain Jim?â asked Doctor Dave.
âNephew Alec. He understands it as well as I do. Well, now, Iâm real glad you asked me to stay to supper. Iâm proper hungryâdidnât have much of a dinner today.â
âI believe you half starve yourself most of the time down at that light,â said Mrs. Doctor Dave severely. âYou wonât take the trouble to get up a decent meal.â
âOh, I do, Mistress Doctor, I do,â protested Captain Jim. âWhy, I live like a king genârally. Last night I was up to the Glen and took home two pounds of steak. I meant to have a spanking good dinner today.â
âAnd what happened to the steak?â asked Mrs. Doctor Dave. âDid you lose it on the way home?â
âNo.â Captain Jim looked sheepish. âJust at bedtime a poor, ornery sort of dog came along and asked for a nightâs lodging. Guess he belonged to some of the fishermen âlong shore. I couldnât turn the poor cur outâhe had a sore foot. So I shut him in the porch, with an old bag to lie on, and went to bed. But somehow I couldnât sleep. Come to think it over, I sorter remembered that the dog looked hungry.â
âAnd you got up and gave him that steakâALL that steak,â said Mrs. Doctor Dave, with a kind of triumphant reproof.
âWell, there wasnât anything else TO give him,â said Captain Jim deprecatingly. âNothing a dogâd care for, that is. I reckon he WAS hungry, for he made about two bites of it. I had a fine sleep the rest of the night but my dinner had to be sorter scantyâpotatoes and point, as you might say. The dog, he lit out for home this morning. I reckon HE werenât a vegetarian.â
âThe idea of starving yourself for a worthless dog!â sniffed Mrs. Doctor.
âYou donât know but he may be worth a lot to somebody,â protested Captain Jim. âHe didnât LOOK of much account, but you canât go by looks in jedging a dog. Like meself, he might be a real beauty inside. The First Mate didnât approve of him, Iâll allow. His language was right down forcible. But the First Mate is prejudiced. No use in taking a catâs opinion of a dog. âTennyrate, I lost my dinner, so this nice spread in this dee-lightful company is real pleasant. Itâ s a great thing to have good neighbors.â
âWho lives in the house among the willows up the brook?â asked Anne.
âMrs. Dick Moore,â said Captain Jimââand her husband,â he added, as if by way of an afterthought.
Anne smiled, and deduced a mental picture of Mrs. Dick Moore from Captain Jimâs way of putting it; evidently a second Mrs. Rachel Lynde.
âYou havenât many neighbors, Mistress Blythe,â Captain Jim went on. âThis side of the harbor is mighty thinly settled. Most of the land belongs to Mr. Howard up yander past the Glen, and he rents it out for pasture. The other side of the harbor, now, is thick with folksââspecially MacAllisters. Thereâs a whole colony of MacAllisters you canât throw a stone but you hit one. I was talking to old Leon Blacquiere the other day. Heâs been working on the harbor all summer. `Deyâre nearly all MacAllisters over thar,â he told me. `Dareâs Neil MacAllister and Sandy MacAllister and William MacAllister and Alec MacAllister and Angus MacAllisterâand I believe dareâs de Devil MacAllister.ââ
âThere are nearly as many Elliotts and Crawfords,â said Doctor Dave, after the laughter had subsided. âYou know, Gilbert, we folk on this side of Four Winds have an old sayingâ`From the conceit of the Elliotts, the pride of the MacAllisters, and the vainglory of the Crawfords, good Lord deliver us.ââ
âThereâs a plenty of fine people among them, though,â said Captain Jim. âI sailed with William Crawford for many a year, and for courage and endurance and truth that man hadnât an equal. Theyâve got brains over on that side of Four Winds. Mebbe thatâs why this side is sorter inclined to pick on âem. Strange, ainât it, how folks seem to resent anyone being born a mite cleverer than they be.â
Doctor Dave, who had a forty yearsâ feud with the over-harbor people, laughed and subsided.
âWho lives in that brilliant emerald house about half a mile up the road?â asked Gilbert.
Captain Jim smiled delightedly.
âMiss Cornelia Bryant. Sheâll likely be over to see you soon, seeing youâre Presbyterians. If you were Methodists she wouldnât come at all. Cornelia has a holy horror of Methodists.â
âSheâs quite a character,â chuckled Doctor Dave. âA most inveterate man-hater!â
âSour grapes?â queried Gilbert, laughing.
âNo, âtisnât sour grapes,â answered Captain Jim seriously. âCornelia could have had her pick when she was young. Even yet sheâs only to say the word to see the old widowers jump. She jest seems to have been born with a sort of chronic spite agin men and Methodists. Sheâs got the bitterest tongue and the kindest heart in Four Winds. Wherever thereâs any trouble, that woman is there, doing everything to help in the tenderest way. She
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