NOVEMBER DAYS
The splendor of color which had glowed for weeks along the shores of
Four Winds Harbor had faded out into the soft gray-blue of late
autumnal hills. There came many days when fields and shores were dim
with misty rain, or shivering before the breath of a melancholy
sea-wind--nights, too, of storm and tempest, when Anne sometimes
wakened to pray that no ship might be beating up the grim north shore,
for if it were so not even the great, faithful light whirling through
the darkness unafraid, could avail to guide it into safe haven.
“In November I sometimes feel as if spring could never come again,” she
sighed, grieving over the hopeless unsightliness of her frosted and
bedraggled flower-plots. The gay little garden of the schoolmaster’s
bride was rather a forlorn place now, and the Lombardies and birches
were under bare poles, as Captain Jim said. But the fir-wood behind
the little house was forever green and staunch; and even in November
and December there came gracious days of sunshine and purple hazes,
when the harbor danced and sparkled as blithely as in midsummer, and
the gulf was so softly blue and tender that the storm and the wild wind
seemed only things of a long-past dream.
Anne and Gilbert spent many an autumn evening at the lighthouse. It
was always a cheery place. Even when the east wind sang in minor and
the sea was dead and gray, hints of sunshine seemed to be lurking all
about it. Perhaps this was because the First Mate always paraded it in
panoply of gold. He was so large and effulgent that one hardly missed
the sun, and his resounding purrs formed a pleasant accompaniment to
the laughter and conversation which went on around Captain Jim’s
fireplace. Captain Jim and Gilbert had many long discussions and high
converse on matters beyond the ken of cat or king.
“I like to ponder on all kinds of problems, though I can’t solve ’em,”
said Captain Jim. “My father held that we should never talk of things
we couldn’t understand, but if we didn’t, doctor, the subjects for
conversation would be mighty few. I reckon the gods laugh many a time
to hear us, but what matters so long as we remember that we’re only men
and don’t take to fancying that we’re gods ourselves, really, knowing
good and evil. I reckon our pow-wows won’t do us or anyone much harm,
so let’s have another whack at the whence, why and whither this
evening, doctor.”
While they “whacked,” Anne listened or dreamed. Sometimes Leslie went
to the lighthouse with them, and she and Anne wandered along the shore
in the eerie twilight, or sat on the rocks below the lighthouse until
the darkness drove them back to the cheer of the driftwood fire. Then
Captain Jim would brew them tea and tell them
“tales of land and sea
And whatsoever might betide
The great forgotten world outside.”
Leslie seemed always to enjoy those lighthouse carousals very much, and
bloomed out for the time being into ready wit and beautiful laughter,
or glowing-eyed silence. There was a certain tang and savor in the
conversation when Leslie was present which they missed when she was
absent. Even when she did not talk she seemed to inspire others to
brilliancy. Captain Jim told his stories better, Gilbert was quicker
in argument and repartee, Anne felt little gushes and trickles of fancy
and imagination bubbling to her lips under the influence of Leslie’s
personality.
“That girl was born to be a leader in social and intellectual circles,
far away from Four Winds,” she said to Gilbert as they walked home one
night. “She’s just wasted here--wasted.”
“Weren’t you listening to Captain Jim and yours truly the other night
when we discussed that subject generally? We came to the comforting
conclusion that the Creator probably knew how to run His universe quite
as well as we do, and that, after all, there are no such things as
‘wasted’ lives, saving and except when an individual wilfully squanders
and wastes his own life--which Leslie Moore certainly hasn’t done. And
some people might think that a Redmond B.A., whom editors were
beginning to honor, was ‘wasted’ as the wife of a struggling country
doctor in the rural community of Four Winds.”
“Gilbert!”
“If you had married Roy Gardner, now,” continued Gilbert mercilessly,
“YOU could have been ‘a leader in social and intellectual circles far
away from Four Winds.’”
“Gilbert BLYTHE!”
“You KNOW you were in love with him at one time, Anne.”
“Gilbert, that’s mean--‘pisen mean, just like all the men,’ as Miss
Cornelia says. I NEVER was in love with him. I only imagined I was.
YOU know that. You KNOW I’d rather be your wife in our house of dreams
and fulfillment than a queen in a palace.”
Gilbert’s answer was not in words; but I am afraid that both of them
forgot poor Leslie speeding her lonely way across the fields to a house
that was neither a palace nor the fulfillment of a dream.
The moon was rising over the sad, dark sea behind them and
transfiguring it. Her light had not yet reached the harbor, the
further side of which was shadowy and suggestive, with dim coves and
rich glooms and jewelling lights.
“How the home lights shine out tonight through the dark!” said Anne.
“That string of them over the harbor looks like a necklace. And what a
coruscation there is up at the Glen! Oh, look, Gilbert; there is ours.
I’m so glad we left it burning. I hate to come home to a dark house.
OUR homelight, Gilbert! Isn’t it lovely to see?”
“Just one of earth’s many millions of homes, Anne--girl--but
ours--OURS--our beacon in ‘a naughty world.’ When a fellow has a home
and a dear, little, red-haired wife in it what more need he ask of
life?”
“Well, he might ask ONE thing more,” whispered Anne happily. “Oh,
Gilbert, it seems as if I just COULDN’T wait for the spring.”