CHAPTER 10
LESLIE MOORE
"I'm going for a walk to the outside shore tonight,"
Anne told Gog and Magog one October evening. There was
no one else to tell, for Gilbert had gone over the
harbor. Anne had her little domain in the speckless
order one would expect of anyone brought up by Marilla
Cuthbert, and felt that she could gad shoreward with a
clear conscience. Many and delightful had been her
shore rambles, sometimes with Gilbert, sometimes with
Captain Jim, sometimes alone with her own thoughts and
new, poignantly-sweet dreams that were beginning to
span life with their rainbows. She loved the gentle,
misty harbor shore and the silvery, wind-haunted sand
shore, but best of all she loved the rock shore, with
its cliffs and caves and piles of surf-worn boulders,
and its coves where the pebbles glittered under the
pools; and it was to this shore she hied herself
tonight.
There had been an autumn storm of wind and rain,
lasting for three days. Thunderous had been the crash
of billows on the rocks, wild the white spray and spume
that blew over the bar, troubled and misty and
tempest-torn the erstwhile blue peace of Four Winds
Harbor. Now it was over, and the shore lay
clean-washed after the storm; not a wind stirred, but
there was still a fine surf on, dashing on sand and
rock in a splendid white turmoil--the only restless
thing in the great, pervading stillness and peace.
"Oh, this is a moment worth living through weeks of
storm and stress for," Anne exclaimed, delightedly
sending her far gaze across the tossing waters from the
top of the cliff where she stood. Presently she
scrambled down the steep path to the little cove below,
where she seemed shut in with rocks and sea and sky.
"I'm going to dance and sing," she said. "There's no
one here to see me--the seagulls won't carry tales of
the matter. I may be as crazy as I like."
She caught up her skirt and pirouetted along the hard
strip of sand just out of reach of the waves that
almost lapped her feet with their spent foam. Whirling
round and round, laughing like a child, she reached the
little headland that ran out to the east of the cove;
then she stopped suddenly, blushing crimson; she was
not alone; there had been a witness to her dance and
laughter.
The girl of the golden hair and sea-blue eyes was
sitting on a boulder of the headland, half-hidden by a
jutting rock. She was looking straight at Anne with a
strange expression--part wonder, part sympathy,
part--could it be?--envy. She was bare-headed, and her
splendid hair, more than ever like Browning's "gorgeous
snake," was bound about her head with a crimson
ribbon. She wore a dress of some dark material, very
plainly made; but swathed about her waist, outlining
its fine curves, was a vivid girdle of red silk. Her
hands, clasped over her knee, were brown and somewhat
work- hardened; but the skin of her throat and cheeks
was as white as cream. A flying gleam of sunset broke
through a low-lying western cloud and fell across her
hair. For a moment she seemed the spirit of the sea
personified--all its mystery, all its passion, all its
elusive charm.
"You--you must think me crazy," stammered Anne, trying
to recover her self-possession. To be seen by this
stately girl in such an abandon of childishness--she,
Mrs. Dr. Blythe, with all the dignity of the matron to
keep up--it was too bad!
"No," said the girl, "I don't."
She said nothing more; her voice was expressionless;
her manner slightly repellent; but there was something
in her eyes--eager yet shy, defiant yet pleading--which
turned Anne from her purpose of walking away. Instead,
she sat down on the boulder beside the girl.
"Let's introduce ourselves," she said, with the smile
that had never yet failed to win confidence and
friendliness. "I am Mrs. Blythe--and I live in that
little white house up the harbor shore."
"Yes, I know," said the girl. "I am Leslie
Moore--Mrs. Dick Moore," she added stiffly.
Anne was silent for a moment from sheer amazement. It
had not occurred to her that this girl was
married--there seemed nothing of the wife about her.
And that she should be the neighbor whom Anne had
pictured as a commonplace Four Winds housewife! Anne
could not quickly adjust her mental focus to this
astonishing change.
"Then--then you live in that gray house up the brook,"
she stammered.
"Yes. I should have gone over to call on you long
ago," said the other. She did not offer any
explanation or excuse for not having gone.
"I wish you WOULD come," said Anne, recovering herself
somewhat. "We're such near neighbors we ought to be
friends. That is the sole fault of Four Winds--there
aren't quite enough neighbors. Otherwise it is
perfection."
"You like it?"
"LIKE it! I love it. It is the most beautiful place I
ever saw."
"I've never seen many places," said Leslie Moore,
slowly, "but I've always thought it was very lovely
here. I--I love it, too."
She spoke, as she looked, shyly, yet eagerly. Anne had
an odd impression that this strange girl--the word
"girl" would persist-- could say a good deal if she
chose.
"I often come to the shore," she added.
"So do I," said Anne. "It's a wonder we haven't met
here before."
"Probably you come earlier in the evening than I do.
It is generally late--almost dark--when I come. And I
love to come just after a storm--like this. I don't
like the sea so well when it's calm and quiet. I like
the struggle--and the crash--and the noise."
"I love it in all its moods," declared Anne. "The sea
at Four Winds is to me what Lover's Lane was at home.
Tonight it seemed so free--so untamed--something broke
loose in me, too, out of sympathy. That was why I
danced along the shore in that wild way. I didn't
suppose anybody was looking, of course. If Miss
Cornelia Bryant had seen me she would have forboded a
gloomy prospect for poor young Dr. Blythe."
"You know Miss Cornelia?" said Leslie, laughing. She
had an exquisite laugh; it bubbled up suddenly and
unexpectedly with something of the delicious quality of
a baby's. Anne laughed, too.
"Oh, yes. She has been down to my house of dreams
several times."
"Your house of dreams?"
"Oh, that's a dear, foolish little name Gilbert and I
have for our home. We just call it that between
ourselves. It slipped out before I thought."
"So Miss Russell's little white house is YOUR house of
dreams," said Leslie wonderingly. "_I_ had a house of
dreams once--but it was a palace," she added, with a
laugh, the sweetness of which was marred by a little
note of derision.
"Oh, I once dreamed of a palace, too," said Anne. "I
suppose all girls do. And then we settle down
contentedly in eight-room houses that seem to fulfill
all the desires of our hearts--because our prince is
there. YOU should have had your palace really,
though--you are so beautiful. You MUST let me say
it--it has to be said--I'm nearly bursting with
admiration. You are the loveliest thing I ever saw,
Mrs. Moore."
"If we are to be friends you must call me Leslie,"
said the other with an odd passion.
"Of course I will. And MY friends call me Anne."
"I suppose I am beautiful," Leslie went on, looking
stormily out to sea. "I hate my beauty. I wish I had
always been as brown and plain as the brownest and
plainest girl at the fishing village over there.
Well, what do you think of Miss Cornelia?"
The abrupt change of subject shut the door on any
further confidences.
"Miss Cornelia is a darling, isn't she?" said Anne.
"Gilbert and I were invited to her house to a state tea
last week. You've heard of groaning tables."
"I seem to recall seeing the expression in the
newspaper reports of weddings," said Leslie, smiling.
"Well, Miss Cornelia's groaned--at least, it
creaked--positively. You couldn't have believed she
would have cooked so much for two ordinary people. She
had every kind of pie you could name, I think--except
lemon pie. She said she had taken the prize for lemon
pies at the Charlottetown Exhibition ten years ago and
had never made any since for fear of losing her
reputation for them."
"Were you able to eat enough pie to please her?"
"_I_ wasn't. Gilbert won her heart by eating--I won't
tell you how much. She said she never knew a man who
didn't like pie better than his Bible. Do you know, I
love Miss Cornelia."
"So do I," said Leslie. "She is the best friend I
have in the world."
Anne wondered secretly why, if this were so, Miss
Cornelia had never mentioned Mrs. Dick Moore to her.
Miss Cornelia had certainly talked freely about every
other individual in or near Four Winds.
"Isn't that beautiful?" said Leslie, after a brief
silence, pointing to the exquisite effect of a shaft of
light falling through a cleft in the rock behind them,
across a dark green pool at its base. "If I had come
here--and seen nothing but just that--I would go home
satisfied."
"The effects of light and shadow all along these shores
are wonderful," agreed Anne. "My little sewing room
looks out on the harbor, and I sit at its window and
feast my eyes. The colors and shadows are never the
same two minutes together."
"And you are never lonely?" asked Leslie abruptly.
"Never-- when you are alone?"
"No. I don't think I've ever been really lonely in my
life," answered Anne. "Even when I'm alone I have
real good company-- dreams and imaginations and
pretendings. I LIKE to be alone now and then, just to
think over things and TASTE them. But I love
friendship-- and nice, jolly little times with people.
Oh, WON'T you come to see me--often? Please do. I
believe," Anne added, laughing, "that you'd like me if
you knew me."
"I wonder if YOU would like ME," said Leslie
seriously. She was not fishing for a compliment. She
looked out across the waves that were beginning to be
garlanded with blossoms of moonlit foam, and her eyes
filled with shadows.
"I'm sure I would," said Anne. "And please don't
think I'm utterly irresponsible because you saw me
dancing on the shore at sunset. No doubt I shall be
dignified after a time. You see, I haven't been
married very long. I feel like a girl, and sometimes
like a child, yet."
"I have been married twelve years," said Leslie.
Here was another unbelievable thing.
"Why, you can't be as old as I am!" exclaimed Anne.
"You must have been a child when you were married."
"I was sixteen," said Leslie, rising, and picking up
the cap and jacket lying beside her. "I am
twenty-eight now. Well, I must go back."
"So must I. Gilbert will probably be home. But I'm so
glad we both came to the shore tonight and met each
other."
Leslie said nothing, and Anne was a little chilled.
She had offered friendship frankly but it had not been
accepted very graciously, if it had not been absolutely
repelled. In silence they climbed the cliffs and
walked across a pasture-field of which the feathery,
bleached, wild grasses were like a carpet of creamy
velvet in the moonlight. When they reached the shore
lane Leslie turned.
"I go this way, Mrs. Blythe. You will come over and
see me some time, won't you?"
Anne felt as if the invitation had been thrown at her.
She got the impression that Leslie Moore gave it
reluctantly.
"I will come if you really want me to," she said a
little coldly.
"Oh, I do--I do," exclaimed Leslie, with an eagerness
which seemed to burst forth and beat down some
restraint that had been imposed on it.
"Then I'll come. Good-night--Leslie."
"Good-night, Mrs. Blythe."
Anne walked home in a brown study and poured out her
tale to Gilbert.
"So Mrs. Dick Moore isn't one of the race that knows
Joseph?" said Gilbert teasingly.
"No--o--o, not exactly. And yet--I think she WAS one
of them once, but has gone or got into exile," said
Anne musingly. "She is certainly very different from
the other women about here. You can't talk about eggs
and butter to HER. To think I've been imagining her a
second Mrs. Rachel Lynde! Have you ever seen Dick
Moore, Gilbert?"
"No. I've seen several men working about the fields of
the farm, but I don't know which was Moore."
"She never mentioned him. I KNOW she isn't happy."
"From what you tell me I suppose she was married before
she was old enough to know her own mind or heart, and
found out too late that she had made a mistake. It's a
common tragedy enough, Anne.
A fine woman would have made the best of it. Mrs.
Moore has evidently let it make her bitter and
resentful."
"Don't let us judge her till we know," pleaded Anne.
"I don't believe her case is so ordinary. You will
understand her fascination when you meet her, Gilbert.
It is a thing quite apart from her beauty. I feel that
she possesses a rich nature, into which a friend might
enter as into a kingdom; but for some reason she bars
every one out and shuts all her possibilities up in
herself, so that they cannot develop and blossom.
There, I've been struggling to define her to myself
ever since I left her, and that is the nearest I can
get to it. I'm going to ask Miss Cornelia about her."
