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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âShe always speaks well of you, Captain Jim,â said Mrs. Doctor.
âYes, Iâm afraid so. I donât half like it. It makes me feel as if there must be something sorter unnateral about me.â
âWho was the first bride who came to this house, Captain Jim?â Anne asked, as they sat around the fireplace after supper.
âWas she a part of the story Iâve heard was connected with this house?â asked Gilbert. âSomebody told me you could tell it, Captain Jim.â
âWell, yes, I know it. I reckon Iâm the only person living in Four Winds now that can remember the schoolmasterâs bride as she was when she come to the Island. Sheâs been dead this thirty year, but she was one of them women you never forget.â
âTell us the story,â pleaded Anne. âI want to find out all about the women who have lived in this house before me.â
âWell, thereâs jest been threeâElizabeth Russell, and Mrs. Ned Russell, and the schoolmasterâs bride. Elizabeth Russell was a nice, clever little critter, and Mrs. Ned was a nice woman, too. But they werenât ever like the schoolmasterâs bride.
âThe schoolmasterâs name was John Selwyn. He came out from the Old Country to teach school at the Glen when I was a boy of sixteen. He wasnât much like the usual run of derelicts who used to come out to P.E.I. to teach school in them days. Most of them were clever, drunken critters who taught the children the three Râs when they were sober, and lambasted them when they wasnât. But John Selwyn was a fine, handsome young fellow. He boarded at my fatherâs, and he and me were cronies, though he was ten years olderân me. We read and walked and talked a heap together. He knew about all the poetry that was ever written, I reckon, and he used to quote it to me along shore in the evenings. Dad thought it an awful waste of time, but he sorter endured it, hoping itâd put me off the notion of going to sea. Well, nothing could do THATâmother come of a race of sea-going folk and it was born in me. But I loved to hear John read and recite. Itâs almost sixty years ago, but I could repeat yards of poetry I learned from him. Nearly sixty years!â
Captain Jim was silent for a space, gazing into the glowing fire in a quest of the bygones. Then, with a sigh, he resumed his story.
âI remember one spring evening I met him on the sandhills. He looked sorter upliftedâjest like you did, Dr. Blythe, when you brought Mistress Blythe in tonight. I thought of him the minute I seen you. And he told me that he had a sweetheart back home and that she was coming out to him. I wasnât moreân half pleased, ornery young lump of selfishness that I was; I thought he wouldnât be as much my friend after she came. But Iâd enough decency not to let him see it. He told me all about her. Her name was Persis Leigh, and she would have come out with him if it hadnât been for her old uncle. He was sick, and heâd looked after her when her parents died and she wouldnât leave him. And now he was dead and she was coming out to marry John Selwyn. âTwasnât no easy journey for a woman in them days. There werenât no steamers, you must ricollect.
â`When do you expect her?â says I.
â`She sails on the Royal William, the 20th of June,â says he, `and so she should be here by mid-July. I must set Carpenter Johnson to building me a home for her. Her letter come today. I know before I opened it that it had good news for me. I saw her a few nights ago.â
âI didnât understand him, and then he explainedâthough I didnât understand THAT much better. He said he had a giftâor a curse. Them was his words, Mistress Blytheâa gift or a curse. He didnât know which it was. He said a great-great-grandmother of his had had it, and they burned her for a witch on account of it. He said queer spellsâtrances, I think was the name he give âemâcome over him now and again. Are there such things, Doctor?â
âThere are people who are certainly subject to trances,â answered Gilbert. âThe matter is more in the line of psychical research than medical. What were the trances of this John Selwyn like?â
âLike dreams,â said the old Doctor skeptically.
âHe said he could see things in them,â said Captain Jim slowly.
âMind you, Iâm telling you jest what HE saidâthings that were happeningâthings that were GOING to happen. He said they were sometimes a comfort to him and sometimes a horror. Four nights before this heâd been in oneâwent into it while he was sitting looking at the fire. And he saw an old room he knew well in England, and Persis Leigh in it, holding out her hands to him and looking glad and happy. So he knew he was going to hear good news of her.â
âA dreamâa dream,â scoffed the old Doctor.
âLikelyâlikely,â conceded Captain Jim. âThatâs what I said to him at the time. It was a vast more comfortable to think so. I didnât like the idea of him seeing things like thatâit was real uncanny.
â`No,â says he, `I didnât dream it. But we wonât talk of this again. You wonât be so much my friend if you think much about it.â
âI told him nothing could make me any less his friend. But he jest shook his head and says, says he:
â`Lad, I know. Iâve lost friends before because of this. I donât blame them. There are times when I feel hardly friendly to myself because of it. Such a power has a bit of divinity in itâwhether of a good or an evil divinity who shall say? And we mortals all shrink from too close contact with God or devil.â
âThem was his words. I remember them as if âtwas yesterday, though I didnât know jest what he meant. What do you sâpose he DID mean, doctor?â
âI doubt if he knew what he meant himself,â said Doctor Dave testily.
âI think I understand,â whispered Anne. She was listening in her old attitude of clasped lips and shining eyes. Captain Jim treated himself to an admiring smile before he went on with his story.
âWell, purty soon all the Glen and Four Winds people knew the schoolmasterâs bride was coming, and they were all glad because they thought so much of him. And everybody took an interest in his new houseâTHIS house. He picked this site for it, because you could see the harbor and hear the sea from it. He made the garden out there for his bride, but he didnât plant the Lombardies. Mrs. Ned Russell planted THEM. But thereâs a double row of rose-bushes in the garden that the little girls who went to the Glen school set out there for the schoolmasterâs bride. He said they were pink for her cheeks and white for her brow and red for her lips. Heâd quoted poetry so much that he sorter got into the habit of talking it, too, I reckon.
âAlmost everybody sent him some little present to help out the furnishing of the house. When the Russells came into it they were well-to-do and furnished it real handsome, as you can see; but the first furniture that went into it was plain enough. This little house was rich in love, though. The women sent in quilts and tablecloths and towels, and one man made a chest for her, and another a table and so on. Even blind old Aunt Margaret Boyd wove a little basket for her out of the sweet-scented sandhill grass. The schoolmasterâs wife used it for years to keep her handkerchiefs in.
âWell, at last everything was readyâeven to the logs in the big fireplace ready for lighting. âTwasnât exactly THIS fireplace, though âtwas in the same place. Miss Elizabeth had this put in when she made the house over fifteen years ago. It was a big, old-fashioned fireplace where you could have roasted an ox. Manyâs the time Iâve sat here and spun yarns, sameâs Iâm doing tonight.â
Again there was a silence, while Captain Jim kept a passing tryst with visitants Anne and Gilbert could not seeâthe folks who had sat with him around that fireplace in the vanished years, with mirth and bridal joy shining in eyes long since closed forever under churchyard sod or heaving leagues of sea. Here on olden nights children had tossed laughter lightly to and fro. Here on winter evenings friends had gathered. Dance and music and jest had been here. Here youths and maidens had dreamed. For Captain Jim the little house was tenanted with shapes entreating remembrance.
âIt was the first of July when the house was finished. The schoolmaster began to count the days then. We used to see him walking along the shore, and weâd say to each other, `Sheâll soon be with him now.â
âShe was expected the middle of July, but she didnât come then. Nobody felt anxious. Vessels were often delayed for days and mebbe weeks. The Royal William was a week overdueâand then twoâand then three. And at last we began to be frightened, and it got worse and worse. Finâlly I couldnât bear to look into John Selwynâs eyes. Dâye know, Mistress BlytheââCaptain Jim lowered his voiceââI used to think that they looked just like what his old great-great-grandmotherâs must have been when they were burning her to death. He never said much but he taught school like a man in a dream and then hurried to the shore. Many a night he walked there from dark to dawn. People said he was losing his mind. Everybody had given up hopeâthe Royal William was eight weeks overdue. It was the middle of September and the schoolmasterâs bride hadnât comeâ never would come, we thought.
âThere was a big storm then that lasted three days, and on the evening after it died away I went to the shore. I found the schoolmaster there, leaning with his arms folded against a big rock, gazing out to sea.
âI spoke to him but he didnât answer. His eyes seemed to be looking at something I couldnât see. His face was set, like a dead manâs.
â`JohnâJohn,â I called outâjest like thatâjest like a frightened child, `wake upâwake up.â
âThat strange, awful look seemed to sorter fade out of his eyes.
He turned his head and looked at me. Iâve never forgot his faceâ never will forget it till I ships for my last voyage.
â`All is well, lad,â he says. `Iâve seen the Royal William coming around East Point. She will be here by dawn. Tomorrow night I shall sit with my bride by my own hearth-fire.â
âDo you think he did see it?â demanded Captain Jim abruptly.
âGod knows,â said Gilbert softly. âGreat love and great pain might compass we know not what marvels.â
âI am sure he did see it,â said Anne earnestly.
âFol-de-rol,â said Doctor Dave, but he spoke with less conviction than usual.
âBecause, you know,â said Captain Jim solemnly, âthe Royal William came into Four Winds Harbor at daylight the next morning.
Every soul in the Glen and along the shore was at the old wharf to meet her. The schoolmaster had been watching there all night. How we cheered as she sailed up the channel.â
Captain Jimâs eyes were shining. They were looking at the Four Winds Harbor of sixty
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