CHAPTER 13
A GHOSTLY EVENING
One evening, a week later, Anne decided to run over the fields to thehouse up the brook for an informal call. It was an evening of gray fogthat had crept in from the gulf, swathed the harbor, filled the glensand valleys, and clung heavily to the autumnal meadows. Through it thesea sobbed and shuddered. Anne saw Four Winds in a new aspect, andfound it weird and mysterious and fascinating; but it also gave her alittle feeling of loneliness. Gilbert was away and would be away untilthe morrow, attending a medical pow-wow in Charlottetown. Anne longedfor an hour of fellowship with some girl friend. Captain Jim and MissCornelia were "good fellows" each, in their own way; but youth yearnedto youth.
"If only Diana or Phil or Pris or Stella could drop in for a chat," shesaid to herself, "how delightful it would be! This is such a GHOSTLYnight. I'm sure all the ships that ever sailed out of Four Winds totheir doom could be seen tonight sailing up the harbor with theirdrowned crews on their decks, if that shrouding fog could suddenly bedrawn aside. I feel as if it concealed innumerable mysteries--as if Iwere surrounded by the wraiths of old generations of Four Winds peoplepeering at me through that gray veil. If ever the dear dead ladies ofthis little house came back to revisit it they would come on just sucha night as this. If I sit here any longer I'll see one of them thereopposite me in Gilbert's chair. This place isn't exactly cannytonight. Even Gog and Magog have an air of pricking up their ears tohear the footsteps of unseen guests. I'll run over to see Lesliebefore I frighten myself with my own fancies, as I did long ago in thematter of the Haunted Wood. I'll leave my house of dreams to welcomeback its old inhabitants. My fire will give them my good-will andgreeting--they will be gone before I come back, and my house will bemine once more. Tonight I am sure it is keeping a tryst with the past."
Laughing a little over her fancy, yet with something of a creepysensation in the region of her spine, Anne kissed her hand to Gog andMagog and slipped out into the fog, with some of the new magazinesunder 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 orsubscribe for them. She's really pitifully poor, Anne. I don't seehow she makes out to live at all on the little rent the farm brings in.She never even hints a complaint on the score of poverty, but I knowwhat it must be. She's been handicapped by it all her life. Shedidn't mind it when she was free and ambitious, but it must gall now,believe ME. I'm glad she seemed so bright and merry the evening shespent with you. Captain Jim told me he had fairly to put her cap andcoat on and push her out of the door. Don't be too long going to seeher either. If you are she'll think it's because you don't like thesight 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 onsome people's nerves. Thank goodness, I've no nerves myself. I likeDick Moore better now than I ever did when he was in his rightsenses--though the Lord knows that isn't saying much. I was down thereone day in housecleaning time helping Leslie a bit, and I was fryingdoughnuts. Dick was hanging round to get one, as usual, and all atonce he picked up a scalding hot one I'd just fished out and dropped iton the back of my neck when I was bending over. Then he laughed andlaughed. Believe ME, Anne, it took all the grace of God in my heart tokeep me from just whisking up that stew-pan of boiling fat and pouringit over his head."
Anne laughed over Miss Cornelia's wrath as she sped through thedarkness. But laughter accorded ill with that night. She was soberenough when she reached the house among the willows. Everything wasvery silent. The front part of the house seemed dark and deserted, soAnne slipped round to the side door, which opened from the veranda intoa little sitting room. There she halted noiselessly.
The door was open. Beyond, in the dimly lighted room, sat LeslieMoore, with her arms flung out on the table and her head bent uponthem. She was weeping horribly--with low, fierce, choking sobs, as ifsome agony in her soul were trying to tear itself out. An old blackdog was sitting by her, his nose resting on his lap, his big doggisheyes full of mute, imploring sympathy and devotion. Anne drew back indismay. She felt that she could not intermeddle with this bitterness.Her heart ached with a sympathy she might not utter. To go in nowwould be to shut the door forever on any possible help or friendship.Some instinct warned Anne that the proud, bitter girl would neverforgive the one who thus surprised her in her abandonment of despair.
Anne slipped noiselessly from the veranda and found her way across theyard. Beyond, she heard voices in the gloom and saw the dim glow of alight. At the gate she met two men--Captain Jim with a lantern, andanother 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 lightAnne got the impression that there was something unusual about his eyes.
"Is this you, Mistress Blythe?" said Captain Jim. "Now, now, youhadn't oughter be roaming about alone on a night like this. You couldget lost in this fog easier than not. Jest you wait till I see Dicksafe 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 youwalked clean over Cape Leforce in the fog. A woman did that once,forty 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 Jimsighed.
"Poor, poor, little girl! She don't cry often, Mistress Blythe--she'stoo brave for that. She must feel terrible when she does cry. A nightlike this is hard on poor women who have sorrows. There's somethingabout it that kinder brings up all we've suffered--or feared."
"It's full of ghosts," said Anne, with a shiver. "That was why I cameover--I wanted to clasp a human hand and hear a human voice.
"There seem to be so many INHUMAN presences about tonight. Even my owndear house was full of them. They fairly elbowed me out. So I fledover here for companionship of my kind."
"You were right not to go in, though, Mistress Blythe. Leslie wouldn'thave liked it. She wouldn't have liked me going in with Dick, as I'dhave done if I hadn't met you. I had Dick down with me all day. Ikeep him with me as much as I can to help Leslie a bit."
"Isn't there something odd about his eyes?" asked Anne.
"You noticed that? Yes, one is blue and t'other is hazel--his fatherhad the same. It's a Moore peculiarity. That was what told me he wasDick Moore when I saw him first down in Cuby. If it hadn't a-bin forhis eyes I mightn't a-known him, with his beard and fat. You know, Ireckon, that it was me found him and brought him home. Miss Corneliaalways says I shouldn't have done it, but I can't agree with her. Itwas the RIGHT thing to do--and so 'twas the only thing. There ain't noquestion 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 thanmost women do in eighty years."
They walked on in silence for a little while. Presently Anne said, "Doyou know, Captain Jim, I never like walking with a lantern. I havealways the strangest feeling that just outside the circle of light,just over its edge in the darkness, I am surrounded by a ring offurtive, sinister things, watching me from the shadows with hostileeyes. I've had that feeling from childhood. What is the reason? Inever feel like that when I'm really in the darkness--when it is closeall around me--I'm not the least frightened."
"I've something of that feeling myself," admitted Captain Jim. "Ireckon when the darkness is close to us it is a friend. But when wesorter 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 notice. The stars will beout when you get home."
They were out; and when Anne re-entered her house of dreams the redembers were still glowing on the hearth, and all the haunting presenceswere gone.