CHAPTER 14
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."
