Anne's House of Dreams by Lucy Maud Montgomery Read Free Book Online

a power has a bit of divinity in it – whether of a good or an evil divinity who shall say? And we mortals all shrink from too close contact with God or devil.”
    ‘Them was his words. I remember them as if ’twas yesterday, though I didn’t know jest what he meant. What do you s’pose he
did
mean, doctor?’
    ‘I doubt if he knew what he meant himself,’ said Doctor Dave testily.
    ‘I think I understand,’ whispered Anne. She was listening in her old attitude of clasped lips and shining eyes. Captain Jim treated himself to an admiring smile before he went on with his story.
    ‘Well, purty soon all the Glen and Four Winds people knew the schoolmaster’s bride was coming, and they were all glad because they thought so much of him. And everybody took an interest in his new house –
this
house. He picked this site for it, because you could see the harbour and hear the sea from it. He made the garden out there for his bride, but he didn’t plant the Lombardies. Mrs Ned Russell planted
them
. But there’s a double row of rose-bushes in the garden that the little girls who went to the Glen school set out there, for the schoolmaster’s bride. He said they were pink for her cheeks and white for her brow and red for her lips. He’d quoted poetry so much that he sorter got into the habit of talking it, too, I reckon.
    ‘Almost everybody sent him some little present to help out the furnishing of the house. When the Russells came into it they were well-to-do and furnished it real handsome, as you can see; but the first furniture that went into it was plain enough. This little house was rich in love, though. The women sent in quilts and table-cloths and towels, and one man made a chest for her, and another a table and so on. Even blind old Aunt Margaret Boyd wove a little basket for her out of the sweet-scented sand-hill grass. The schoolmaster’s wife used it for years to keep her handkerchiefs in.
    ‘Well, at last everything was ready – even to the logs in the big fireplace ready for lighting. ’Twasn’t exactly
this
fireplace, though ’twas in the same place. Miss Elizabeth had this put in when she made the house over fifteen years ago. It was a big, old-fashioned fireplace where you could have roasted an ox. Many’s the time I’ve sat here and spun yarns, same’s I’m doing tonight.’
    Again there was a silence, while Captain Jim kept a passing tryst with visitants Anne and Gilbert could not see – the folks who had sat with him around that fireplace in the vanished years, with mirth and bridal joy shining in eyes long since closed for ever, under churchyard sod or heaving leagues of sea. Here on olden nights children had tossed laughter lightly to and fro. Here on winter evenings friends had gathered. Dance and music and jest had been here. Here youths and maidens had dreamed. For Captain Jim the little house was tenanted with shapes entreating remembrance.
    ‘It was the first of July when the house was finished. The schoolmaster began to count the days then. We used to see him walking along the shore, and we’d say to each other, “She’ll soon be with him now.”
    ‘She was expected the middle of July, but she didn’t come then. Nobody felt anxious. Vessels were often delayed for days and mebbe weeks. The
Royal William
was a week overdue – and then two – and then three. And at last we began to be frightened, and it got worse and worse. Fin’lly I couldn’t bear to look into John Selwyn’s eyes. D’ye know, Mistress Blythe’ – Captain Jim lowered his voice – ‘I used to think that they looked just like what his old great-great-grandmother’s must have been when they were burning her to death. He never said much, but he taught school like a man in a dream and then hurried to the shore. Many a night he walked there from dark to dawn. People said he was losing his mind. Everybody had given up hope – the
Royal William
was eight weeks overdue. It was the middle of September and the