A FOUR WINDS WINTER
Winter set in vigorously after New Year’s. Big, white drifts heaped
themselves about the little house, and palms of frost covered its
windows. The harbor ice grew harder and thicker, until the Four Winds
people began their usual winter travelling over it. The safe ways were
“bushed” by a benevolent Government, and night and day the gay tinkle
of the sleigh-bells sounded on it. On moonlit nights Anne heard them
in her house of dreams like fairy chimes. The gulf froze over, and the
Four Winds light flashed no more. During the months when navigation
was closed Captain Jim’s office was a sinecure.
“The First Mate and I will have nothing to do till spring except keep
warm and amuse ourselves. The last lighthouse keeper used always to
move up to the Glen in winter; but I’d rather stay at the Point. The
First Mate might get poisoned or chewed up by dogs at the Glen. It’s a
mite lonely, to be sure, with neither the light nor the water for
company, but if our friends come to see us often we’ll weather it
through.”
Captain Jim had an ice boat, and many a wild, glorious spin Gilbert and
Anne and Leslie had over the glib harbor ice with him. Anne and Leslie
took long snowshoe tramps together, too, over the fields, or across the
harbor after storms, or through the woods beyond the Glen. They were
very good comrades in their rambles and their fireside communings.
Each had something to give the other--each felt life the richer for
friendly exchange of thought and friendly silence; each looked across
the white fields between their homes with a pleasant consciousness of a
friend beyond. But, in spite of all this, Anne felt that there was
always a barrier between Leslie and herself--a constraint that never
wholly vanished.
“I don’t know why I can’t get closer to her,” Anne said one evening to
Captain Jim. “I like her so much--I admire her so much--I WANT to take
her right into my heart and creep right into hers. But I can never
cross the barrier.”
“You’ve been too happy all your life, Mistress Blythe,” said Captain
Jim thoughtfully. “I reckon that’s why you and Leslie can’t get real
close together in your souls. The barrier between you is her
experience of sorrow and trouble. She ain’t responsible for it and you
ain’t; but it’s there and neither of you can cross it.”
“My childhood wasn’t very happy before I came to Green Gables,” said
Anne, gazing soberly out of the window at the still, sad, dead beauty
of the leafless tree-shadows on the moonlit snow.
“Mebbe not--but it was just the usual unhappiness of a child who hasn’t
anyone to look after it properly. There hasn’t been any TRAGEDY in
your life, Mistress Blythe. And poor Leslie’s has been almost ALL
tragedy. She feels, I reckon, though mebbe she hardly knows she feels
it, that there’s a vast deal in her life you can’t enter nor
understand--and so she has to keep you back from it--hold you off, so
to speak, from hurting her. You know if we’ve got anything about us
that hurts we shrink from anyone’s touch on or near it. It holds good
with our souls as well as our bodies, I reckon. Leslie’s soul must be
near raw--it’s no wonder she hides it away.”
“If that were really all, I wouldn’t mind, Captain Jim. I would
understand. But there are times--not always, but now and again--when I
almost have to believe that Leslie doesn’t--doesn’t like me. Sometimes
I surprise a look in her eyes that seems to show resentment and
dislike--it goes so quickly--but I’ve seen it, I’m sure of that. And
it hurts me, Captain Jim. I’m not used to being disliked--and I’ve
tried so hard to win Leslie’s friendship.”
“You have won it, Mistress Blythe. Don’t you go cherishing any foolish
notion that Leslie don’t like you. If she didn’t she wouldn’t have
anything to do with you, much less chumming with you as she does. I
know Leslie Moore too well not to be sure of that.”
“The first time I ever saw her, driving her geese down the hill on the
day I came to Four Winds, she looked at me with the same expression,”
persisted Anne. “I felt it, even in the midst of my admiration of her
beauty. She looked at me resentfully--she did, indeed, Captain Jim.”
“The resentment must have been about something else, Mistress Blythe,
and you jest come in for a share of it because you happened past.
Leslie DOES take sullen spells now and again, poor girl. I can’t blame
her, when I know what she has to put up with. I don’t know why it’s
permitted. The doctor and I have talked a lot abut the origin of evil,
but we haven’t quite found out all about it yet. There’s a vast of
onunderstandable things in life, ain’t there, Mistress Blythe?
Sometimes things seem to work out real proper-like, same as with you
and the doctor. And then again they all seem to go catawampus.
There’s Leslie, so clever and beautiful you’d think she was meant for a
queen, and instead she’s cooped up over there, robbed of almost
everything a woman’d value, with no prospect except waiting on Dick
Moore all her life. Though, mind you, Mistress Blythe, I daresay she’d
choose her life now, such as it is, rather than the life she lived with
Dick before he went away. THAT’S something a clumsy old sailor’s
tongue mustn’t meddle with. But you’ve helped Leslie a lot--she’s a
different creature since you come to Four Winds. Us old friends see
the difference in her, as you can’t. Miss Cornelia and me was talking
it over the other day, and it’s one of the mighty few p’ints that we
see eye to eye on. So jest you throw overboard any idea of her not
liking you.”
Anne could hardly discard it completely, for there were undoubtedly
times when she felt, with an instinct that was not to be combated by
reason, that Leslie harbored a queer, indefinable resentment towards
her. At times, this secret consciousness marred the delight of their
comradeship; at others it was almost forgotten; but Anne always felt
the hidden thorn was there, and might prick her at any moment. She
felt a cruel sting from it on the day when she told Leslie of what she
hoped the spring would bring to the little house of dreams. Leslie
looked at her with hard, bitter, unfriendly eyes.
“So you are to have THAT, too,” she said in a choked voice. And
without another word she had turned and gone across the fields
homeward. Anne was deeply hurt; for the moment she felt as if she
could never like Leslie again. But when Leslie came over a few
evenings later she was so pleasant, so friendly, so frank, and witty,
and winsome, that Anne was charmed into forgiveness and forgetfulness.
Only, she never mentioned her darling hope to Leslie again; nor did
Leslie ever refer to it. But one evening, when late winter was
listening for the word of spring, she came over to the little house for
a twilight chat; and when she went away she left a small, white box on
the table. Anne found it after she was gone and opened it wonderingly.
In it was a tiny white dress of exquisite workmanship--delicate
embroidery, wonderful tucking, sheer loveliness. Every stitch in it
was handwork; and the little frills of lace at neck and sleeves were of
real Valenciennes. Lying on it was a card--“with Leslie’s love.”
“What hours of work she must have put on it,” said Anne. “And the
material must have cost more than she could really afford. It is very
sweet of her.”
But Leslie was brusque and curt when Anne thanked her, and again the
latter felt thrown back upon herself.
Leslie’s gift was not alone in the little house. Miss Cornelia had,
for the time being, given up sewing for unwanted, unwelcome eighth
babies, and fallen to sewing for a very much wanted first one, whose
welcome would leave nothing to be desired. Philippa Blake and Diana
Wright each sent a marvellous garment; and Mrs. Rachel Lynde sent
several, in which good material and honest stitches took the place of
embroidery and frills. Anne herself made many, desecrated by no touch
of machinery, spending over them the happiest hours of the happy winter.
Captain Jim was the most frequent guest of the little house, and none
was more welcome. Every day Anne loved the simple-souled, true-hearted
old sailor more and more. He was as refreshing as a sea breeze, as
interesting as some ancient chronicle. She was never tired of
listening to his stories, and his quaint remarks and comments were a
continual delight to her. Captain Jim was one of those rare and
interesting people who “never speak but they say something.” The milk
of human kindness and the wisdom of the serpent were mingled in his
composition in delightful proportions.
Nothing ever seemed to put Captain Jim out or depress him in any way.
“I’ve kind of contracted a habit of enj’ying things,” he remarked once,
when Anne had commented on his invariable cheerfulness. “It’s got so
chronic that I believe I even enj’y the disagreeable things. It’s
great fun thinking they can’t last. ‘Old rheumatiz,’ says I, when it
grips me hard, ‘you’ve GOT to stop aching sometime. The worse you are
the sooner you’ll stop, mebbe. I’m bound to get the better of you in
the long run, whether in the body or out of the body.’”
One night, by the fireside at the light Anne saw Captain Jim’s
“life-book.” He needed no coaxing to show it and proudly gave it to
her to read.
“I writ it to leave to little Joe,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of
everything I’ve done and seen being clean forgot after I’ve shipped for
my last v’yage. Joe, he’ll remember it, and tell the yarns to his
children.”
It was an old leather-bound book filled with the record of his voyages
and adventures. Anne thought what a treasure trove it would be to a
writer. Every sentence was a nugget. In itself the book had no
literary merit; Captain Jim’s charm of storytelling failed him when he
came to pen and ink; he could only jot roughly down the outline of his
famous tales, and both spelling and grammar were sadly askew. But Anne
felt that if anyone possessed of the gift could take that simple record
of a brave, adventurous life, reading between the bald lines the tales
of dangers staunchly faced and duty manfully done, a wonderful story
might be made from it. Rich comedy and thrilling tragedy were both
lying hidden in Captain Jim’s “life-book,” waiting for the touch of the
master hand to waken the laughter and grief and horror of thousands.
Anne said something of this to Gilbert as they walked home.
“Why don’t you try your hand at it yourself, Anne?”
Anne shook her head.
“No. I only wish I could. But it’s not in the power of my gift. You
know what my forte is, Gilbert--the fanciful, the fairylike, the
pretty. To write Captain Jim’s life-book as it should be written one
should be a master of vigorous yet subtle style, a keen psychologist, a
born humorist and a born tragedian. A rare combination of gifts is
needed. Paul might do it if he were older. Anyhow, I’m going to ask
him to come down next summer and meet Captain Jim.”
“Come to this shore,” wrote Anne to Paul. “I am afraid you cannot find
here Nora or the Golden Lady or the Twin Sailors; but you will find one
old sailor who can tell you wonderful stories.”
Paul, however wrote back, saying regretfully that he could not come
that year. He was going abroad for two years’ study.
“When I return I’ll come to Four Winds, dear Teacher,” he wrote.
“But meanwhile, Captain Jim is growing old,” said Anne, sorrowfully,
“and there is nobody to write his life-book.”