CHAPTER 13
A GHOSTLY EVENING
One evening, a week later, Anne decided to run over the
fields to the house up the brook for an informal call.
It was an evening of gray fog that had crept in from
the gulf, swathed the harbor, filled the glens and
valleys, and clung heavily to the autumnal meadows.
Through it the sea sobbed and shuddered. Anne saw Four
Winds in a new aspect, and found it weird and
mysterious and fascinating; but it also gave her a
little feeling of loneliness. Gilbert was away and
would be away until the morrow, attending a medical
pow-wow in Charlottetown. Anne longed for an hour of
fellowship with some girl friend. Captain Jim and Miss
Cornelia were "good fellows" each, in their own way;
but youth yearned to youth.
"If only Diana or Phil or Pris or Stella could drop in
for a chat," she said to herself, "how delightful it
would be! This is such a GHOSTLY night. I'm sure all
the ships that ever sailed out of Four Winds to their
doom could be seen tonight sailing up the harbor with
their drowned crews on their decks, if that shrouding
fog could suddenly be drawn aside. I feel as if it
concealed innumerable mysteries--as if I were
surrounded by the wraiths of old generations of Four
Winds people peering at me through that gray veil. If
ever the dear dead ladies of this little house came
back to revisit it they would come on just such a night
as this. If I sit here any longer I'll see one of them
there opposite me in Gilbert's chair. This place isn't
exactly canny tonight. Even Gog and Magog have an air
of pricking up their ears to hear the footsteps of
unseen guests. I'll run over to see Leslie before I
frighten myself with my own fancies, as I did long ago
in the matter of the Haunted Wood. I'll leave my house
of dreams to welcome back its old inhabitants. My fire
will give them my good-will and greeting--they will be
gone before I come back, and my house will be mine once
more. Tonight I am sure it is keeping a tryst with the
past."
Laughing a little over her fancy, yet with something of
a creepy sensation in the region of her spine, Anne
kissed her hand to Gog and Magog and slipped out into
the fog, with some of the new magazines under her arm
for Leslie.
"Leslie's wild for books and magazines," Miss Cornelia
had told her, "and she hardly ever sees one. She can't
afford to buy them or subscribe for them. She's really
pitifully poor, Anne. I don't see how she makes out to
live at all on the little rent the farm brings in.
She never even hints a complaint on the score of
poverty, but I know what it must be. She's been
handicapped by it all her life. She didn't mind it
when she was free and ambitious, but it must gall now,
believe ME. I'm glad she seemed so bright and merry
the evening she spent with you. Captain Jim told me he
had fairly to put her cap and coat on and push her out
of the door. Don't be too long going to see her
either. If you are she'll think it's because you don't
like the sight of Dick, and she'll crawl into her shell
again. Dick's a great, big, harmless baby, but that
silly grin and chuckle of his do get on some people's
nerves. Thank goodness, I've no nerves myself. I like
Dick Moore better now than I ever did when he was in
his right senses--though the Lord knows that isn't
saying much. I was down there one day in housecleaning
time helping Leslie a bit, and I was frying doughnuts.
Dick was hanging round to get one, as usual, and all at
once he picked up a scalding hot one I'd just fished
out and dropped it on the back of my neck when I was
bending over. Then he laughed and laughed. Believe
ME, Anne, it took all the grace of God in my heart to
keep me from just whisking up that stew-pan of boiling
fat and pouring it over his head."
Anne laughed over Miss Cornelia's wrath as she sped
through the darkness. But laughter accorded ill with
that night. She was sober enough when she reached the
house among the willows. Everything was very silent.
The front part of the house seemed dark and deserted,
so Anne slipped round to the side door, which opened
from the veranda into a little sitting room. There she
halted noiselessly.
The door was open. Beyond, in the dimly lighted room,
sat Leslie Moore, with her arms flung out on the table
and her head bent upon them. She was weeping
horribly--with low, fierce, choking sobs, as if some
agony in her soul were trying to tear itself out. An
old black dog was sitting by her, his nose resting on
his lap, his big doggish eyes full of mute, imploring
sympathy and devotion. Anne drew back in dismay. She
felt that she could not intermeddle with this
bitterness. Her heart ached with a sympathy she might
not utter. To go in now would be to shut the door
forever on any possible help or friendship. Some
instinct warned Anne that the proud, bitter girl would
never forgive the one who thus surprised her in her
abandonment of despair.
Anne slipped noiselessly from the veranda and found her
way across the yard. Beyond, she heard voices in the
gloom and saw the dim glow of a light. At the gate she
met two men--Captain Jim with a lantern, and another
who she knew must be Dick Moore--a big man, badly gone
to fat, with a broad, round, red face, and vacant eyes.
Even in the dull light Anne got the impression that
there was something unusual about his eyes.
"Is this you, Mistress Blythe?" said Captain Jim.
"Now, now, you hadn't oughter be roaming about alone on
a night like this. You could get lost in this fog
easier than not. Jest you wait till I see Dick safe
inside the door and I'll come back and light you over
the fields. I ain't going to have Dr. Blythe coming
home and finding that you walked clean over Cape
Leforce in the fog. A woman did that once, forty years
ago.
"So you've been over to see Leslie," he said, when he
rejoined her.
"I didn't go in," said Anne, and told what she had
seen. Captain Jim sighed.
"Poor, poor, little girl! She don't cry often,
Mistress Blythe-- she's too brave for that. She must
feel terrible when she does cry. A night like this is
hard on poor women who have sorrows. There's
something about it that kinder brings up all we've
suffered--or feared."
"It's full of ghosts," said Anne, with a shiver.
"That was why I came over--I wanted to clasp a human
hand and hear a human voice.
There seem to be so many INHUMAN presences about
tonight. Even my own dear house was full of them.
They fairly elbowed me out. So I fled over here for
companionship of my kind."
"You were right not to go in, though, Mistress Blythe.
Leslie wouldn't have liked it. She wouldn't have liked
me going in with Dick, as I'd have done if I hadn't met
you. I had Dick down with me all day. I keep him with
me as much as I can to help Leslie a bit."
"Isn't there something odd about his eyes?" asked
Anne.
"You noticed that? Yes, one is blue and t'other is
hazel--his father had the same. It's a Moore
peculiarity. That was what told me he was Dick Moore
when I saw him first down in Cuby. If it hadn't a-bin
for his eyes I mightn't a-known him, with his beard and
fat. You know, I reckon, that it was me found him and
brought him home. Miss Cornelia always says I
shouldn't have done it, but I can't agree with her. It
was the RIGHT thing to do--and so 'twas the only thing.
There ain't no question in my mind about THAT. But my
old heart aches for Leslie. She's only twenty-eight
and she's eaten more bread with sorrow than most women
do in eighty years."
They walked on in silence for a little while.
Presently Anne said, "Do you know, Captain Jim, I never
like walking with a lantern. I have always the
strangest feeling that just outside the circle of
light, just over its edge in the darkness, I am
surrounded by a ring of furtive, sinister things,
watching me from the shadows with hostile eyes. I've
had that feeling from childhood. What is the reason?
I never feel like that when I'm really in the
darkness--when it is close all around me--I'm not the
least frightened."
"I've something of that feeling myself," admitted
Captain Jim. "I reckon when the darkness is close to
us it is a friend. But when we sorter push it away
from us--divorce ourselves from it, so to speak, with
lantern light--it becomes an enemy. But the fog is
lifting.
There's a smart west wind rising, if you notice. The
stars will be out when you get home."
They were out; and when Anne re-entered her house of
dreams the red embers were still glowing on the hearth,
and all the haunting presences were gone.
