THE HOME COMING
Dr. David Blythe had sent his horse and buggy to meet them, and the
urchin who had brought it slipped away with a sympathetic grin, leaving
them to the delight of driving alone to their new home through the
radiant evening.
Anne never forgot the loveliness of the view that broke upon them when
they had driven over the hill behind the village. Her new home could
not yet be seen; but before her lay Four Winds Harbor like a great,
shining mirror of rose and silver. Far down, she saw its entrance
between the bar of sand dunes on one side and a steep, high, grim, red
sandstone cliff on the other. Beyond the bar the sea, calm and
austere, dreamed in the afterlight. The little fishing village,
nestled in the cove where the sand-dunes met the harbor shore, looked
like a great opal in the haze. The sky over them was like a jewelled
cup from which the dusk was pouring; the air was crisp with the
compelling tang of the sea, and the whole landscape was infused with
the subtleties of a sea evening. A few dim sails drifted along the
darkening, fir-clad harbor shores. A bell was ringing from the tower
of a little white church on the far side; mellowly and dreamily sweet,
the chime floated across the water blent with the moan of the sea. The
great revolving light on the cliff at the channel flashed warm and
golden against the clear northern sky, a trembling, quivering star of
good hope. Far out along the horizon was the crinkled gray ribbon of a
passing steamer’s smoke.
“Oh, beautiful, beautiful,” murmured Anne. “I shall love Four Winds,
Gilbert. Where is our house?”
“We can’t see it yet--the belt of birch running up from that little
cove hides it. It’s about two miles from Glen St. Mary, and there’s
another mile between it and the light-house. We won’t have many
neighbors, Anne. There’s only one house near us and I don’t know who
lives in it. Shall you be lonely when I’m away?”
“Not with that light and that loveliness for company. Who lives in
that house, Gilbert?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t look--exactly--as if the occupants would be
kindred spirits, Anne, does it?”
The house was a large, substantial affair, painted such a vivid green
that the landscape seemed quite faded by contrast. There was an
orchard behind it, and a nicely kept lawn before it, but, somehow,
there was a certain bareness about it. Perhaps its neatness was
responsible for this; the whole establishment, house, barns, orchard,
garden, lawn and lane, was so starkly neat.
“It doesn’t seem probable that anyone with that taste in paint could be
VERY kindred,” acknowledged Anne, “unless it were an accident--like our
blue hall. I feel certain there are no children there, at least. It’s
even neater than the old Copp place on the Tory road, and I never
expected to see anything neater than that.”
They had not met anybody on the moist, red road that wound along the
harbor shore. But just before they came to the belt of birch which hid
their home, Anne saw a girl who was driving a flock of snow-white geese
along the crest of a velvety green hill on the right. Great, scattered
firs grew along it. Between their trunks one saw glimpses of yellow
harvest fields, gleams of golden sand-hills, and bits of blue sea. The
girl was tall and wore a dress of pale blue print. She walked with a
certain springiness of step and erectness of bearing. She and her
geese came out of the gate at the foot of the hill as Anne and Gilbert
passed. She stood with her hand on the fastening of the gate, and
looked steadily at them, with an expression that hardly attained to
interest, but did not descend to curiosity. It seemed to Anne, for a
fleeting moment, that there was even a veiled hint of hostility in it.
But it was the girl’s beauty which made Anne give a little gasp--a
beauty so marked that it must have attracted attention anywhere. She
was hatless, but heavy braids of burnished hair, the hue of ripe wheat,
were twisted about her head like a coronet; her eyes were blue and
star-like; her figure, in its plain print gown, was magnificent; and
her lips were as crimson as the bunch of blood-red poppies she wore at
her belt.
“Gilbert, who is the girl we have just passed?” asked Anne, in a low
voice.
“I didn’t notice any girl,” said Gilbert, who had eyes only for his
bride.
“She was standing by that gate--no, don’t look back. She is still
watching us. I never saw such a beautiful face.”
“I don’t remember seeing any very handsome girls while I was here.
There are some pretty girls up at the Glen, but I hardly think they
could be called beautiful.”
“This girl is. You can’t have seen her, or you would remember her.
Nobody could forget her. I never saw such a face except in pictures.
And her hair! It made me think of Browning’s ‘cord of gold’ and
‘gorgeous snake’!”
“Probably she’s some visitor in Four Winds--likely some one from that
big summer hotel over the harbor.”
“She wore a white apron and she was driving geese.”
“She might do that for amusement. Look, Anne--there’s our house.”
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
spirit--it 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,--secrets 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.
“Welcome home,” he whispered, and hand in hand they stepped over the
threshold of their house of dreams.