CHAPTER 18
SPRING DAYS
The ice in the harbor grew black and rotten in the
March suns; in April there were blue waters and a
windy, white-capped gulf again; and again the Four
Winds light begemmed the twilights.
"I'm so glad to see it once more," said Anne, on the
first evening of its reappearance. "I've missed it so
all winter. The northwestern sky has seemed blank and
lonely without it."
The land was tender with brand-new, golden-green, baby
leaves. There was an emerald mist on the woods beyond
the Glen. The seaward valleys were full of fairy mists
at dawn.
Vibrant winds came and went with salt foam in their
breath. The sea laughed and flashed and preened and
allured, like a beautiful, coquettish woman. The
herring schooled and the fishing village woke to life.
The harbor was alive with white sails making for the
channel. The ships began to sail outward and inward
again.
"On a spring day like this," said Anne, "I know
exactly what my soul will feel like on the resurrection
morning."
"There are times in spring when I sorter feel that I
might have been a poet if I'd been caught young,"
remarked Captain Jim. "I catch myself conning over old
lines and verses I heard the schoolmaster reciting
sixty years ago. They don't trouble me at other times.
Now I feel as if I had to get out on the rocks or the
fields or the water and spout them."
Captain Jim had come up that afternoon to bring Anne a
load of shells for her garden, and a little bunch of
sweet-grass which he had found in a ramble over the
sand dunes.
"It's getting real scarce along this shore now," he
said. "When I was a boy there was a-plenty of it. But
now it's only once in a while you'll find a plot--and
never when you're looking for it. You jest have to
stumble on it--you're walking along on the sand hills,
never thinking of sweet-grass--and all at once the air
is full of sweetness-- and there's the grass under your
feet. I favor the smell of sweet-grass. It always
makes me think of my mother."
"She was fond of it?" asked Anne.
"Not that I knows on. Dunno's she ever saw any
sweet-grass. No, it's because it has a kind of
motherly perfume--not too young, you
understand--something kind of seasoned and wholesome
and dependable--jest like a mother. The schoolmaster's
bride always kept it among her handkerchiefs. You
might put that little bunch among yours, Mistress
Blythe. I don't like these boughten scents-- but a
whiff of sweet-grass belongs anywhere a lady does."
Anne had not been especially enthusiastic over the idea
of surrounding her flower beds with quahog shells; as a
decoration they did not appeal to her on first thought.
But she would not have hurt Captain Jim's feelings for
anything; so she assumed a virtue she did not at first
feel, and thanked him heartily. And when Captain Jim
had proudly encircled every bed with a rim of the big,
milk-white shells, Anne found to her surprise that she
liked the effect. On a town lawn, or even up at the
Glen, they would not have been in keeping, but here, in
the old-fashioned, sea-bound garden of the little house
of dreams, they BELONGED.
"They DO look nice," she said sincerely.
"The schoolmaster's bride always had cowhawks round her
beds," said Captain Jim. "She was a master hand with
flowers. She LOOKED at 'em--and touched 'em--SO--and
they grew like mad. Some folks have that knack--I
reckon you have it, too, Mistress Blythe."
"Oh, I don't know--but I love my garden, and I love
working in it. To potter with green, growing things,
watching each day to see the dear, new sprouts come up,
is like taking a hand in creation, I think. Just now
my garden is like faith--the substance of things hoped
for. But bide a wee."
"It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled
brown seeds and think of the rainbows in 'em," said
Captain Jim. "When I ponder on them seeds I don't find
it nowise hard to believe that we've got souls that'll
live in other worlds. You couldn't hardly believe
there was life in them tiny things, some no bigger than
grains of dust, let alone color and scent, if you
hadn't seen the miracle, could you?"
Anne, who was counting her days like silver beads on a
rosary, could not now take the long walk to the
lighthouse or up the Glen road. But Miss Cornelia and
Captain Jim came very often to the little house. Miss
Cornelia was the joy of Anne's and Gilbert's existence.
They laughed side-splittingly over her speeches after
every visit. When Captain Jim and she happened to
visit the little house at the same time there was much
sport for the listening. They waged wordy warfare, she
attacking, he defending. Anne once reproached the
Captain for his baiting of Miss Cornelia.
"Oh, I do love to set her going, Mistress Blythe,"
chuckled the unrepentant sinner. "It's the greatest
amusement I have in life. That tongue of hers would
blister a stone. And you and that young dog of a
doctor enj'y listening to her as much as I do."
Captain Jim came along another evening to bring Anne
some mayflowers. The garden was full of the moist,
scented air of a maritime spring evening. There was a
milk-white mist on the edge of the sea, with a young
moon kissing it, and a silver gladness of stars over
the Glen. The bell of the church across the harbor was
ringing dreamily sweet. The mellow chime drifted
through the dusk to mingle with the soft spring-moan of
the sea. Captain Jim's mayflowers added the last
completing touch to the charm of the night.
"I haven't seen any this spring, and I've missed
them," said Anne, burying her face in them.
"They ain't to be found around Four Winds, only in the
barrens away behind the Glen up yander. I took a
little trip today to the Land-of-nothing-to-do, and
hunted these up for you. I reckon they're the last
you'll see this spring, for they're nearly done."
"How kind and thoughtful you are, Captain Jim. Nobody
else-- not even Gilbert"--with a shake of her head at
him--"remembered that I always long for mayflowers in
spring."
"Well, I had another errand, too--I wanted to take Mr.
Howard back yander a mess of trout. He likes one
occasional, and it's all I can do for a kindness he did
me once. I stayed all the afternoon and talked to him.
He likes to talk to me, though he's a highly eddicated
man and I'm only an ignorant old sailor, because he's
one of the folks that's GOT to talk or they're
miserable, and he finds listeners scarce around here.
The Glen folks fight shy of him because they think he's
an infidel. He ain't that far gone exactly--few men
is, I reckon--but he's what you might call a heretic.
Heretics are wicked, but they're mighty int'resting.
It's jest that they've got sorter lost looking for
God, being under the impression that He's hard to
find--which He ain't never. Most of 'em blunder to Him
after awhile, I guess. I don't think listening to Mr.
Howard's arguments is likely to do me much harm. Mind
you, I believe what I was brought up to believe. It
saves a vast of bother--and back of it all, God is
good. The trouble with Mr. Howard is that he's a
leetle TOO clever. He thinks that he's bound to live
up to his cleverness, and that it's smarter to thrash
out some new way of getting to heaven than to go by the
old track the common, ignorant folks is travelling.
But he'll get there sometime all right, and then he'll
laugh at himself."
"Mr. Howard was a Methodist to begin with," said Miss
Cornelia, as if she thought he had not far to go from
that to heresy.
"Do you know, Cornelia," said Captain Jim gravely,
"I've often thought that if I wasn't a Presbyterian I'd
be a Methodist."
"Oh, well," conceded Miss Cornelia, "if you weren't a
Presbyterian it wouldn't matter much what you were.
Speaking of heresy, reminds me, doctor--I've brought
back that book you lent me--that Natural Law in the
Spiritual World--I didn't read more'n a third of it. I
can read sense, and I can read nonsense, but that book
is neither the one nor the other."
"It IS considered rather heretical in some quarters,"
admitted Gilbert, "but I told you that before you took
it, Miss Cornelia."
"Oh, I wouldn't have minded its being heretical. I can
stand wickedness, but I can't stand foolishness," said
Miss Cornelia calmly, and with the air of having said
the last thing there was to say about Natural Law.
"Speaking of books, A Mad Love come to an end at last
two weeks ago," remarked Captain Jim musingly. "It
run to one hundred and three chapters. When they got
married the book stopped right off, so I reckon their
troubles were all over. It's real nice that that's the
way in books anyhow, isn't it, even if 'tistn't so
anywhere else?"
"I never read novels," said Miss Cornelia. "Did you
hear how Geordie Russell was today, Captain Jim?"
"Yes, I called in on my way home to see him. He's
getting round all right--but stewing in a broth of
trouble, as usual, poor man.
'Course he brews up most of it for himself, but I
reckon that don't make it any easier to bear."
"He's an awful pessimist," said Miss Cornelia.
"Well, no, he ain't a pessimist exactly, Cornelia. He
only jest never finds anything that suits him."
"And isn't that a pessimist?"
"No, no. A pessimist is one who never expects to find
anything to suit him. Geordie hain't got THAT far
yet."
"You'd find something good to say of the devil himself,
Jim Boyd."
"Well, you've heard the story of the old lady who said
he was persevering. But no, Cornelia, I've nothing
good to say of the devil."
"Do you believe in him at all?" asked Miss Cornelia
seriously.
"How can you ask that when you know what a good
Presbyterian I am, Cornelia? How could a Presbyterian
get along without a devil?"
"DO you?" persisted Miss Cornelia.
Captain Jim suddenly became grave.
"I believe in what I heard a minister once call `a
mighty and malignant and INTELLIGENT power of evil
working in the universe,'" he said solemnly. "I do
THAT, Cornelia. You can call it the devil, or the
`principle of evil,' or the Old Scratch, or any name
you like. It's THERE, and all the infidels and
heretics in the world can't argue it away, any more'n
they can argue God away. It's there, and it's
working. But, mind you, Cornelia, I believe it's going
to get the worst of it in the long run."
"I am sure I hope so," said Miss Cornelia, none too
hopefully. "But speaking of the devil, I am positive
that Billy Booth is possessed by him now. Have you
heard of Billy's latest performance?"
"No, what was that?"
"He's gone and burned up his wife's new, brown
broadcloth suit, that she paid twenty-five dollars for
in Charlottetown, because he declares the men looked
too admiring at her when she wore it to church the
first time. Wasn't that like a man?"
"Mistress Booth IS mighty pretty, and brown's her
color," said Captain Jim reflectively.
"Is that any good reason why he should poke her new
suit into the kitchen stove? Billy Booth is a jealous
fool, and he makes his wife's life miserable. She's
cried all the week about her suit. Oh, Anne, I wish I
could write like you, believe ME. Wouldn't I score
some of the men round here!"
"Those Booths are all a mite queer," said Captain Jim.
"Billy seemed the sanest of the lot till he got married
and then this queer jealous streak cropped out in him.
His brother Daniel, now, was always odd."
"Took tantrums every few days or so and wouldn't get
out of bed," said Miss Cornelia with a relish. "His
wife would have to do all the barn work till he got
over his spell. When he died people wrote her letters
of condolence; if I'd written anything it would have
been one of congratulation. Their father, old Abram
Booth, was a disgusting old sot. He was drunk at his
wife's funeral, and kept reeling round and hiccuping `I
didn't dri--i--i--nk much but I feel a--a-- awfully
que--e--e--r.' I gave him a good jab in the back with
my umbrella when he came near me, and it sobered him up
until they got the casket out of the house. Young
Johnny Booth was to have been married yesterday, but
he couldn't be because he's gone and got the mumps.
Wasn't that like a man?"
"How could he help getting the mumps, poor fellow?"
"I'd poor fellow him, believe ME, if I was Kate Sterns.
I don't know how he could help getting the mumps, but I
DO know the wedding supper was all prepared and
everything will be spoiled before he's well again.
Such a waste! He should have had the mumps when he was
a boy."
"Come, come, Cornelia, don't you think you're a mite
unreasonable?"
Miss Cornelia disdained to reply and turned instead to
Susan Baker, a grim-faced, kind-hearted elderly
spinster of the Glen, who had been installed as
maid-of-all-work at the little house for some weeks.
Susan had been up to the Glen to make a sick call, and
had just returned.
"How is poor old Aunt Mandy tonight?" asked Miss
Cornelia.
Susan sighed.
"Very poorly--very poorly, Cornelia. I am afraid she
will soon be in heaven, poor thing!"
"Oh, surely, it's not so bad as that!" exclaimed Miss
Cornelia, sympathetically .
Captain Jim and Gilbert looked at each other. Then
they suddenly rose and went out.
"There are times," said Captain Jim, between spasms,
"when it would be a sin NOT to laugh. Them two
excellent women!"
