“You look exactly like him.”
“Then no wonder you took me for a ghost. And you? I think I must have dreamed you years ago. You have just stepped out of my dream. Won’t you be unconventional and tell me who you are?”
“I am Esme Dalley.”
Even in the moonlight she could see his face fall.
“Esme Dalley! Oh, I’ve heard ... Allardyce’s young lady! ...”
“No, no, no!” Esme cried it almost violently. “And there is nobody at Longmeadow. It is shut up and is for sale. Allardyce and his mother have gone abroad for good, I believe.”
“You believe? Don’t you know? Aren’t you his ... his fiancee?”
“No!” cried Esme again. For some mysterious reason she could not bear to have him think that. “There is no truth in that report. Allardyce and I are nothing but friends ... hardly even that,” she added, in her desire to be strictly truthful and recalling her last interview with Allardyce. “Besides, as I have told you, he and his mother have gone to Europe and are not expected to return.”
“Too bad,” said Stephen quite cheerfully. “I had counted on seeing them. I’m to be here a couple of months and relations liven things up a bit. Still ... there are compensations. I’ve seen you, ‘moving in moonlight through a haunted hour’ to me. Are you quite sure you are not a ghost, little Esme Dalley?”
Esme laughed ... delightful laughter.
“Quite sure. But I came here to meet a ghost ... I’ll tell you all about it sometime.”
She felt quite sure he would not laugh as Allardyce had done. And he would not try to explain it away. Besides, somehow or other, it mattered no longer whether it could be explained away or not. They would just forget it together.
“Let’s sit down here on this old stone wall and you can tell me all about it now,” said Stephen.
It was just about that time that Dr. Blythe was saying to his wife,
“I met Stephen Barry for a moment today. He is to be in Charlottetown for a few months. He is really a splendid fellow. I wish he and Esme Dalley would meet and fall in love. They would just suit each other.”
“Who is matchmaking now?” asked Anne sleepily.
“Trust a woman to have the last word,” retorted the doctor.
The Fifth Evening
MIDSUMMER DAY
When the pale east glows like a rosy pearl
And a lyric dawn-wind is out in the meadows,
The morning comes like a lithe-limbed girl
Adance with a drift of filmy shadows;
Frolicking over the beaded dew,
Peeping the boughs of the pineland through,
And the laughter born of a myriad rills
Attends her over the dappled hills.
She sings a song that is glad and gay
With the heart o’ morning’s gayness and gladness,
She bids us forget the yesterday
With all its travail of failure and sadness;
Her little feet on the broidered heath
Are white as the daisies that spring beneath ...
A virgin nymph of the wild is she ...
An unwon, alluring divinity.
The noon is a drowsy sorceress,
Poppy crowned in a haunted valley,
Wooing us all with a mute caress
To loiter with her where the south winds dally;
Idly she weaveth a golden spell,
Soft as a song and sweet as a bell;
Idly she beckoneth ... come away,
We shall be hers for this one ripe day.
Perfume of incense and musk and rose
Hangs on the breath of her honeyed kisses,
All the magic the summer knows
Is ours at once in her wealth of blisses;
She offers to us her cup of dreams
Filled from her nectared Arcadian streams,
Under the dome of the slumberous sky
Drink we and let the world go by.
Evening comes as an angel fair
Over the hills of western glory,
With a mist of starshine upon her hair
In her lucent eyes a remembered story;
Walking graciously over the lands,
Benediction and peace in her hands,
Holding close to her ivory breast
Dear memories like infants hushed to rest.
Under the purring pines she sings
Where the clear, cold dews are limpidly falling,
Hers is the wisdom of long-loved things,
Lo, in her voice we may hear them calling.
She will teach us the holy mystery
Of the darkness glimmering o’er the lea,
And we shall know ere we fall asleep
That our souls are given to her to keep.
Anne Blythe
ANNE:- “It should be signed ‘Anne Shirley.’ I wrote it in my teens.”
DR. BLYTHE:- “So you had poetic aspirations then ... and never told me?”
ANNE:- “I wrote it at Patty’s Place. And we were not on the best of terms those last two years, you remember? Would you have married me if you had known?”
DR. BLYTHE, teasingly:- “Oh, probably. But I should have been scared to death. I knew you wrote stories ... but poetry is a different matter.”
SUSAN, taking all this literally:- “The idea!”
REMEMBERED
Through the shriek of the city comes to me
A whisper of some old ecstasy,
Dusk on the meadows and dusk on the sea;
Apple-blossoms cool with night,
Grey ghost-mists by the harbour light,
And a new moon setting sad and fair
Behind a hill that has knelt in prayer.
I had forgotten that far spruce hill
With its wind of darkness blowing chill,
Haunt of owl and of whippoorwill.
But now I think of it and know
That it has my heart wherever I go,
There with the friendship of wind and star,
Where one can believe the Green Folk are.
People rush by me mad and fleet
But I am not on this haggard street,
I am out where the shadows and silences meet
Round an old grey house that is dear to me
Between the hills and the calling sea,
Where one in the twilight magic may
Find a lost and lovely yesterday.
Red are the poppies there that blow
Spilling their silk on the paths I know,
White are the lilies as hillside snow.
And the roses that wait by the open door
Are waiting just to be friends once more,
The bluebells are ringing an elfin chime
And nobody there is a slave of time.
There once again I could be alone
With the night as kind as a friend well-known ...
I think I shall go and find my own.
With a dream for compass I’ll steal away
To the hill that kneels and the house that is grey,
Where the sea and the dunes and the fir trees hold
A secret worth more than my tarnished gold.
Anne Blythe
ANNE, laughing:- “I wrote that poem twenty years ago at Redmond ... and never could get an editor to accept it.”
SUSAN, over her knitting:- “Which shows what poor judgment they had, Mrs. Dr. dear. But, speaking of apple blossoms, I am afraid we shall have a very poor crop this year. There are hardly any blossoms.”
WALTER:- “But there are always new moons. I saw one last night in Rainbow Valley.”
SUSAN:- “I admit I have seen hills that seemed to be praying. ‘Don’t be so fanciful, Susan,’ my mother used to say. But as for the Green Folk, if you mean fairies, the less truck you have with them the better, in my humble opinion, Mrs. Dr. dear, even if they existed, which they do not.”
WALTER:- “How do you know, Susan?”
SUSAN:- “Because I?
??ve never seen one.” walter:- “Have you ever seen a pyramid?”
SUSAN, admiringly:- “There’s no getting ahead of you.”
DR. BLYTHE:- “It should be ‘green’ house, not ‘grey,’ shouldn’t it?”
ANNE:- “Yes, but grey sounded more romantic to me then.”
DR. BLYTHE:- “I remember the June lilies at Green Gables ... but as far as being a slave of time goes we are all that in one way or another, Anne-girl.”
SUSAN:- “But a good deal depends on who is your master.”
JEM:- “Gold, whether tarnished or not, is a very necessary thing in this world, mother.”
SUSAN:- “Good sound sense for you.”
DR. BLYTHE:- “So long as you are not its slave, Jem. Perhaps that is why the editors wouldn’t take your poem, Anne. They saw too little gold to be sympathetic with your scorn of it.”
A Dream Comes True
When Anthony Fingold left home on Saturday evening he intended merely to go down to the store at Glen St. Mary to get the bottle of liniment Clara wanted. Then he would come back and go to bed.
There would be nothing else to do, he sadly reflected. Get up in the morning ... work all day ... eat three meals ... and go to bed at half past nine. What a life!
Clara didn’t seem to mind it. None of his neighbours in the Upper Glen seemed to mind it. Apparently they never got tired of the old routine. They hadn’t enough imagination to realize what they were missing, probably.
When he remarked gloomily at the supper table ... it couldn’t be denied that Clara cooked excellent suppers, though it never entered Anthony’s head to tell her so ...
“There ain’t been anything exciting in this part of the Island this summer ... not even a funeral,”
Clara had calmly reminded him that the Barnard washing at Mowbray Narrows had been stolen three weeks ago and that there had been a robbery at Carter Flagg’s store at Glen St. Mary several weeks before ... and then she passed him the ginger cookies.
Did she think ginger cookies a substitute for impassioned longings and mad, wild, glamorous adventures?
Then she added insult to injury by remarking that Carter Flagg was offering bargains in pyjamas!
It was the one source of difference between him and Clara that she wanted him to wear pyjamas and he was determined he would never wear anything but nightshirts.
“Dr. Blythe wears pyjamas,” Clara would say mournfully.
Anthony thought there was nobody on earth worth mentioning in the same breath with Dr. Blythe. Even his wife was a rather intelligent woman. As for Susan Baker, maid-of-all-work at Ingleside, he had been at feud with her for years. He always suspected that she put Clara up to the pyjama idea. In which he did them both a grievous wrong.
As for the Mowbray Narrows washing, of course it would have to be at Mowbray Narrows! No such good fortune for the Upper Glen or the Fingolds. And what did the robbery at Carter Flagg’s store matter? Carter had lost only ten dollars and a roll of flannel. Why, it wasn’t worth mentioning. And yet people had talked about it for days. Susan Baker had been up one evening and she and Clara had talked of nothing else ... unless the whispered conversation on the doorstep when Susan took her departure had to do with pyjamas. Anthony strongly suspected it had. He had seen the doctor buying a pair in Carter Flagg’s store not long ago.
Anthony had never done anything more adventurous in his life than climb a tree or throw a stone at a strange dog. But that was Fate’s fault, not his. Given anything of a chance he felt that he had it in him to be William Tell or Richard Coeur de Lion or any other of the world’s gallant adventurers. But he had been born a Fingold of the Upper Glen in Prince Edward Island, so he had no chance of being a hero. It was all very well for Dr. Blythe to say the graveyards were full of men who had been greater heroes than any mentioned in history, but everyone knew the doctor’s wife was romantic.
And had William Tell ever worn pyjamas? Not very likely. What did he wear? Why did books never tell you the things you really wanted to know? What a boon it would be if he could show Clara in a printed book that some great hero of history or romance had worn a nightshirt!
He had asked somebody once ... and the somebody ... he had forgotten who he was ... had said he didn’t think they wore anything in those days.
But that was indecent. He couldn’t tell anything like that to Clara.
Sometimes he thought it would have been a great thing even to have been a highwayman. Yes, with any luck he could have been a highwayman. Prowling all night as they did, they might not need either nightshirts or pyjamas.
Of course a great many of them got hanged ... but at least they had lived before death. And he could have been as bold and bad as he wanted to be, dancing corantos on moonlit heaths with scores of voluptuous, enticing ladies ... they might as well be princesses while they were about it ... and of course he would return their jewels or gold for the dance. Oh, what life might have been! The Methodist minister in Lowbridge had preached once on “Dreams of what we might have been.” Though he and Clara were rigid Presbyterians they happened to be visiting Methodist friends, so went with them.
Clara thought the sermon a very fine one. As if she ever had dreams! Unless it was of seeing him decked out in pyjamas! She was perfectly contented with her narrow existence. So was everybody he knew, or he thought so.
Well ... Anthony sighed ... it all came to this. He was only little, thin, pepper-and-salt Anthony Fingold, general handyman of the Glens, and the only excitement that ever came his way was stealing cream for the cat.
Clara found out about his stealing it but not until the cat had lapped it. She never scolded about it ... though he had a horrid conviction that she told Susan Baker all about it. What else would they be laughing about? He found himself hoping Susan would not tell Dr. or Mrs. Blythe. It was so paltry. And they might not think it was the proper thing for a church elder.
But he resented Clara’s calm acceptance of his crime. All she said was,
“That cat is as fat as butter now. And you could have all the cream you wanted for him if you had asked for it.”
“She won’t even quarrel with me,” thought Anthony in exasperation. “If she’d only get mad once in a while things wouldn’t be so tame. They say Tom Crossbee and his wife fight every day ... and that scratch he had on his face last Sunday was one she gave him. Even that would be something. But the only thing that riles Clara is that I won’t wear pyjamas. And even then she doesn’t say much except that they are more up-to-date. Well, I must endure my life as everyone else does ... ‘God pity us all, who vainly the dreams of our youth recall.’”
Anthony couldn’t remember where he had heard or learned those lines. But they certainly hit the mark. He sighed.
He met nobody but a tramp on his way to the store. The tramp had boots ... of a sort ... but no socks. His bare skin showed through the holes in his shirt. He was smoking and looked very contented and happy.
Anthony envied him. Why, this man could sleep out all night if he wanted to ... likely he did, with the whole sky for a roof. Nobody would pester him to wear pyjamas. How delightful it must be not to have any idea where you were going to sleep at night!
Dr. Blythe whirled by him in his new car. But he was so near to the Glen store that he did not offer him a ride. Anthony was just as well pleased. He liked Dr. Blythe ... but he always had a secret suspicion that the doctor was laughing at him. Besides, he had heard too much about his pyjamas.
Why did adventures come to everybody but him, Anthony Fingold? Old Sam Smallwood down at the Harbour Mouth was suspected of having been a pirate in his youth ... or of having been captured by pirates ... Anthony was not quite sure which. Old Sam always contrived to give the impression that it had been the former but the Smallwoods always liked to make themselves big. Jim Millar had narrowly escaped death in a train collision ... Ned MacAllister had been through a San Francisco earthquake ... even old Frank Carter had caught a hen thief single-handed and had been a witness in court.
Every man-jack of them had something to tell or talk about when tales were going round at night in Carter’s store ... several of them had been written up in Delia Bradley’s series of Island notables in the Charlottetown Enterprise. But he had never had his name in the paper except when he was married.
He had never sown any wild oats ... that was the trouble. So there was no harvest ... no enjoyment to look forward to ... nothing but years of monotony ... and then die in bed. In bed! Anthony groaned in spirit over such a colourless death. The only comfort was that it would be in a nightshirt. Fancy dying in pyjamas! He must put that idea up to Clara the next time she wanted him to get pyjamas. He had an idea that it would shock her a bit, in spite of her modern whims.
He had never even been drunk! Of course now it wouldn’t do for an elder in the church to get drunk. But when he was young! Abner MacAllister was an elder now, too, but he had been drunk many a time in his youth, before he got converted. Durn it, had you to miss everything just for the sake of being an elder in middle life or old age?
It wasn’t worth it!
He remembered that he had heard that Jimmy Flagg wore pyjamas ... and Jimmy was an elder. But then everyone knew what his wife was. Perhaps even the minister wore them. The idea came to Anthony with a shock. It had never occurred to him before. He felt that he could never enjoy Mr. Meredith’s sermons as much again. He could forgive him all his absent-minded doings ... even his marrying again, which Anthony did not approve of ... but a minister who slept in pyjamas! He must find out. It would be easy enough. Susan Baker would know. She could see the washing line from Ingleside. But could he bring himself to ask her? No, never.
He would go down to the Glen some Monday and see for himself. Now that the question had entered his mind it must be answered.
They would never have elected him elder, he reflected, as he trotted along the village street, if they had known what a desperate fellow he was in reality. They never dreamed of the wild adventures and glorious deeds he was constantly having and performing in imagination.