Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII. A GHOSTLY EVENING One evening, a week later, Anne decided to run over the fields to the house up the brook for an informal call. It was an evening of grey fog that had crept in from the gulf, swathed the harbour, filled the glens and valleys, and clung heavily to the autumnal meadows. Through it the sea sobbed and shuddered. Anne saw four winds in a new aspect and found
it weird and mysterious and fascinating, but it also gave her a little feeling of loneliness. Gilbert was away and would be away until the morrow, attending a medical powwow in Charlottetown. Anne longed for an hour of fellowship with some girlfriend. Captain Jim and Miss Cornelia were good fellows each, in their own way, but youth yearned to youth. If only Diana or Phil or Pris or Stella could drop in for a chat, she said to herself. How
delightful it would be! This is such a ghostly night! I'm sure all the ships that ever sailed out of Four Winds to their doom could be seen tonight, sailing up the harbour with their drowned crews on their decks, if that shrouding fog could suddenly be drawn aside. I feel as if it concealed innumerable mysteries, as if I were surrounded by the wraiths of old generations of Four Winds people peering at me through that grey vale. If ever the
dear dead ladies of this little house came back to revisit it, they would come on just such a night as this. If I sit here any longer I'll see one of them opposite me in Gilbert's chair. This place isn't exactly canny tonight. Even Gog and Magog have an air of pricking up their ears to hear the footsteps of unseen guests. I'll run over to see Leslie before I frighten myself with my own fancies, as I did long ago in the matter of the haunted
wood. I'll leave my house of dreams to welcome back its old inhabitants. My fire will give them my goodwill and greeting. They will be gone before I come back, and my house will be mine once more. Tonight I am sure it is keeping at rest with the past. Laughing a little over her fancy, yet with something of a creepy sensation in the region of her spine, Anne kissed her hand to Gog and Magog and slipped out into the fog, with
some of the new magazines under her arm for Leslie. Leslie's wild for books and magazines, Miss Cornelia had told her, and she hardly ever sees one. She can't afford to buy them or subscribe for them. She's really pitifully poor, Anne. I don't see how she makes out to live at all on the little rent that farm brings in. She never even hints a complaint on the score of poverty, but I know what it
been handicapped by it all her life. She didn't mind it when she was free and ambitious, but it must go now, believe me. I'm glad she seems so bright and merry the evening she spent with you. Captain Jim told me he fairly had to put on her cap and coat and push her out the door. Don't be too long going to see her either. If you are, she'll think it's because you don't like the sight of Dick, and she'll crawl into her shell again. Dick's a great
big harmless baby, but that silly grin and chuckle of his do get on some people's nerves. Thank goodness I've no nerves myself. I like Dick more better now than I ever did when he was in his right senses, though the Lord knows that isn't saying much. I was down there one day in housecleaning time helping Leslie a bit, and I was frying doughnuts. Dick was hanging round to get one, as usual, and all at once he picked up a scalding hot
one I'd just fished out and dropped it on the back of my neck when I was bending over. Then he laughed and laughed. Believe me, Anne, it took all the grace of God in my heart just to keep me from whisking up that stewpan of boiling fat and pouring it over his head. Anne laughed over Miss Cornelia's wrath as she sped through the darkness. But laughter accorded ill with that night. She was sober enough when she reached the house among the
willows. Everything was very silent. The front part of the house seemed dark and deserted, so Anne slipped round to the side door, which opened from the veranda into a little sitting room. There she halted noiselessly. The door was open. Beyond, in the dimly lighted room, sat Leslie Moore, with her arms flung out on the table and her head bent upon them. She was weeping horribly, with low, fierce choking sobs, as if some agony in her soul
were trying to tear itself out. An old black dog was sitting by her, his nose resting on her lap, his big doggish eyes full of mute imploring sympathy and devotion. Anne drew back in dismay. She felt that she could not intermeddle with this bitterness. Her heart ached with a sympathy she might not utter. To go in now would be to shut the door forever on any possible help or friendship. Some instinct warned Anne that the proud, bitter girl would
never forgive the one who thus surprised her in her abandonment of despair. Anne slipped noiselessly from the veranda and found her way across the yard. Beyond, she heard voices in the gloom and saw the dim glow of a light. At the gate she met two men, Captain Jim with a lantern and another who she knew must be Dick Moore, a big man, badly gone to fat, with a broad, round, red face and vacant eyes. Even in the dull light Anne got the impression
that there was something unusual about his eyes. "'Is this you, Mistress Blythe?' said Captain Jim. "'Now, now, you had not a be rolling about alone on a night like this. You could get lost in this fog easier than not. Just you wait till I see Dick safe inside the door, and I'll come back and light you over the fields. I ain't going to have Dr. Blythe coming
home and finding that you walked clean over Cape La Force in the fall. A woman did that 40 years ago. So you've been over to see Leslie?' "'He said when he rejoined her.' "'I didn't go in,' said Anne, and told what she had seen. Captain Jim sighed. "'Poor, poor little girl! She don't cry often, Mistress Blythe. She's too brave for that.
She must feel terrible when she does cry. A night like this is hard on poor women who have sorrows. There's something about it that kind of brings up all we've suffered—or feared.' "'It's full of ghosts,' said Anne with a shiver. That was why I came over. I wanted to clasp a human hand and hear a human voice. There seemed to be so many inhuman presences
about to-night. Even my own dear house was full of them. They fairly elbowed me out. So I fled over here for companionship of my kind.' "'You were right not to go in, though, Mistress Blythe. Leslie wouldn't have liked it. She wouldn't have liked me going in with Dick as I'd have done if I hadn't met you. I had Dick down with me all day. I keep him with me as much as I can, to help Leslie a bit.'
"'Isn't there something odd about his eyes?' asked Anne. "'You notice that? Yes. One is blue and the other is hazel. His father had the same. It's a more peculiarity. That's what told me he was Dick Moore when I first saw him down in Cubby. If it hadn't been for his eyes I mightn't have known him.' "'With his beard and fat.'
"'You know, I reckon that it was me found him and brought him home. Miss Cornelia always says I shouldn't have done it. But I can't agree with her. It was the right thing to do. And so it was the only thing.' There ain't no question in my mind about that. But my old heart aches for Leslie. She's only twenty-eight and she's eaten more bread with sorrow than most women do in eighty years."
They walked on in silence for a little while. Presently Anne said, "'D'you know, Captain Jim, I never like walking with a lantern. I have always the strangest feeling that just outside the circle of light, just over its edge in the darkness, I am surrounded by a ring of furtive, sinister things, watching me from the shadows with hostile eyes. I've had that feeling from childhood. What is the reason? I never feel like that when I'm really
in the darkness. When it is close all around me I'm not the least frightened.' "'I've something of that feeling myself,' admitted Captain Jim. "'I reckon when the darkness is close to us it is a friend. But when we sort of push it away from us, divorce ourselves from it, so to speak, with lantern light, it becomes an enemy. But the fog is lifting, there's a smart west wind rising, if you noticed. The stars
will be out when you get home.' They were out. And when Anne re-entered her house of dreams the red embers were still glowing on the hearth, and all the haunting presences were gone. End of chapter 13
