Chapter 3 — Chapter 3

That September was a month of golden mists and purple hazes at Four
Winds Harbor—a month of sun-steeped days and of nights that were
swimming in moonlight, or pulsating with stars. No storm marred it, no
rough wind blew. Anne and Gilbert put their nest in order, rambled on
the shores, sailed on the harbor, drove about Four Winds and the Glen,
or through the ferny, sequestered roads of the woods around the harbor
head; in short, had such a honeymoon as any lovers in the world might
have envied them.

“If life were to stop short just now it would still have been richly
worth while, just for the sake of these past four weeks, wouldn’t it?”
said Anne. “I don’t suppose we will ever have four such perfect weeks
again—but we’ve HAD them. Everything—wind, weather, folks, house of
dreams—has conspired to make our honeymoon delightful. There hasn’t
even been a rainy day since we came here.”

“And we haven’t quarrelled once,” teased Gilbert.

“Well, 'that’s a pleasure all the greater for being deferred,’” quoted
Anne. “I’m so glad we decided to spend our honeymoon here. Our
memories of it will always belong here, in our house of dreams, instead
of being scattered about in strange places.”

There was a certain tang of romance and adventure in the atmosphere of
their new home which Anne had never found in Avonlea. There, although
she had lived in sight of the sea, it had not entered intimately into
her life. In Four Winds it surrounded her and called to her
constantly. From every window of her new home she saw some varying
aspect of it. Its haunting murmur was ever in her ears. Vessels
sailed up the harbor every day to the wharf at the Glen, or sailed out
again through the sunset, bound for ports that might be half way round
the globe. Fishing boats went white-winged down the channel in the
mornings, and returned laden in the evenings. Sailors and fisher-folk
travelled the red, winding harbor roads, light-hearted and content.
There was always a certain sense of things going to happen—of
adventures and farings-forth. The ways of Four Winds were less staid
and settled and grooved than those of Avonlea; winds of change blew
over them; the sea called ever to the dwellers on shore, and even those
who might not answer its call felt the thrill and unrest and mystery
and possibilities of it.

“I understand now why some men must go to sea,” said Anne. “That
desire which comes to us all at times—'to sail beyond the bourne of
sunset’—must be very imperious when it is born in you. I don’t wonder
Captain Jim ran away because of it. I never see a ship sailing out of
the channel, or a gull soaring over the sand-bar, without wishing I
were on board the ship or had wings, not like a dove 'to fly away and
be at rest,’ but like a gull, to sweep out into the very heart of a
storm.”

“You’ll stay right here with me, Anne-girl,” said Gilbert lazily. “I
won’t have you flying away from me into the hearts of storms.”

They were sitting on their red sand-stone doorstep in the late
afternoon. Great tranquillities were all about them in land and sea
and sky. Silvery gulls were soaring over them. The horizons were
laced with long trails of frail, pinkish clouds. The hushed air was
threaded with a murmurous refrain of minstrel winds and waves. Pale
asters were blowing in the sere and misty meadows between them and the
harbor.

“Doctors who have to be up all night waiting on sick folk don’t feel
very adventurous, I suppose,” Anne said indulgently. “If you had had a
good sleep last night, Gilbert, you’d be as ready as I am for a flight
of imagination.”

“I did good work last night, Anne,” said Gilbert quietly. “Under God,
I saved a life. This is the first time I could ever really claim that.
In other cases I may have helped; but, Anne, if I had not stayed at
Allonby’s last night and fought death hand to hand, that woman would
have died before morning. I tried an experiment that was certainly
never tried in Four Winds before. I doubt if it was ever tried
anywhere before outside of a hospital. It was a new thing in Kingsport
hospital last winter. I could never have dared try it here if I had
not been absolutely certain that there was no other chance. I risked
it—and it succeeded. As a result, a good wife and mother is saved for
long years of happiness and usefulness. As I drove home this morning,
while the sun was rising over the harbor, I thanked God that I had
chosen the profession I did. I had fought a good fight and won—think
of it, Anne, WON, against the Great Destroyer. It’s what I dreamed of
doing long ago when we talked together of what we wanted to do in life.
That dream of mine came true this morning.”

“Was that the only one of your dreams that has come true?” asked Anne,
who knew perfectly well what the substance of his answer would be, but
wanted to hear it again.

“YOU know, Anne-girl,” said Gilbert, smiling into her eyes. At that
moment there were certainly two perfectly happy people sitting on the
doorstep of a little white house on the Four Winds Harbor shore.

Presently Gilbert said, with a change of tone, “Do I or do I not see a
full-rigged ship sailing up our lane?”

Anne looked and sprang up.

“That must be either Miss Cornelia Bryant or Mrs. Moore coming to
call,” she said.

“I’m going into the office, and if it is Miss Cornelia I warn you that
I’ll eavesdrop,” said Gilbert. “From all I’ve heard regarding Miss
Cornelia I conclude that her conversation will not be dull, to say the
least.”

“It may be Mrs. Moore.”

“I don’t think Mrs. Moore is built on those lines. I saw her working
in her garden the other day, and, though I was too far away to see
clearly, I thought she was rather slender. She doesn’t seem very
socially inclined when she has never called on you yet, although she’s
your nearest neighbor.”

“She can’t be like Mrs. Lynde, after all, or curiosity would have
brought her,” said Anne. “This caller is, I think, Miss Cornelia.”

Miss Cornelia it was; moreover, Miss Cornelia had not come to make any
brief and fashionable wedding call. She had her work under her arm in
a substantial parcel, and when Anne asked her to stay she promptly took
off her capacious sun-hat, which had been held on her head, despite
irreverent September breezes, by a tight elastic band under her hard
little knob of fair hair. No hat pins for Miss Cornelia, an it please
ye! Elastic bands had been good enough for her mother and they were
good enough for HER. She had a fresh, round, pink-and-white face, and
jolly brown eyes. She did not look in the least like the traditional
old maid, and there was something in her expression which won Anne
instantly. With her old instinctive quickness to discern kindred
spirits she knew she was going to like Miss Cornelia, in spite of
uncertain oddities of opinion, and certain oddities of attire.

Nobody but Miss Cornelia would have come to make a call arrayed in a
striped blue-and-white apron and a wrapper of chocolate print, with a
design of huge, pink roses scattered over it. And nobody but Miss
Cornelia could have looked dignified and suitably garbed in it. Had
Miss Cornelia been entering a palace to call on a prince’s bride, she
would have been just as dignified and just as wholly mistress of the
situation. She would have trailed her rose-spattered flounce over the
marble floors just as unconcernedly, and she would have proceeded just
as calmly to disabuse the mind of the princess of any idea that the
possession of a mere man, be he prince or peasant, was anything to brag
of.

“I’ve brought my work, Mrs. Blythe, dearie,” she remarked, unrolling
some dainty material. “I’m in a hurry to get this done, and there
isn’t any time to lose.”

Anne looked in some surprise at the white garment spread over Miss
Cornelia’s ample lap. It was certainly a baby’s dress, and it was most
beautifully made, with tiny frills and tucks. Miss Cornelia adjusted
her glasses and fell to embroidering with exquisite stitches.

“This is for Mrs. Fred Proctor up at the Glen,” she announced. “She’s
expecting her eighth baby any day now, and not a stitch has she ready
for it. The other seven have wore out all she made for the first, and
she’s never had time or strength or spirit to make any more. That
woman is a martyr, Mrs. Blythe, believe ME. When she married Fred
Proctor I knew how it would turn out. He was one of your wicked,
fascinating men. After he got married he left off being fascinating
and just kept on being wicked. He drinks and he neglects his family.
Isn’t that like a man? I don’t know how Mrs. Proctor would ever keep
her children decently clothed if her neighbors didn’t help her out.”

I

As Anne was afterwards to learn, Miss Cornelia was the only neighbor
who troubled herself much about the decency of the young Proctors.

“When I heard this eighth baby was coming I decided to make some things
for it,” Miss Cornelia went on. “This is the last and I want to finish
it today.”

“It’s certainly very pretty,” said Anne. “I’ll get my sewing and we’ll
have a little thimble party of two. You are a beautiful sewer, Miss
Bryant.”

“Yes, I’m the best sewer in these parts,” said Miss Cornelia in a
matter-of-fact tone. “I ought to be! Lord, I’ve done more of it than
if I’d had a hundred children of my own, believe ME! I s’pose I’m a
fool, to be putting hand embroidery on this dress for an eighth baby.
But, Lord, Mrs. Blythe, dearie, it isn’t to blame for being the eighth,
and I kind of wished it to have one real pretty dress, just as if it
WAS wanted. Nobody’s wanting the poor mite—so I put some extra fuss
on its little things just on that account.”

“Any baby might be proud of that dress,” said Anne, feeling still more
strongly that she was going to like Miss Cornelia.

“I s’pose you’ve been thinking I was never coming to call on you,”
resumed Miss Cornelia. “But this is harvest month, you know, and I’ve
been busy—and a lot of extra hands hanging round, eating more’n they
work, just like the men. I’d have come yesterday, but I went to Mrs.
Roderick MacAllister’s funeral. At first I thought my head was aching
so badly I couldn’t enjoy myself if I did go. But she was a hundred
years old, and I’d always promised myself that I’d go to her funeral.”

“Was it a successful function?” asked Anne, noticing that the office
door was ajar.

“What’s that? Oh, yes, it was a tremendous funeral. She had a very
large connection. There was over one hundred and twenty carriages in
the procession. There was one or two funny things happened. I thought
that die I would to see old Joe Bradshaw, who is an infidel and never
darkens the door of a church, singing 'Safe in the Arms of Jesus’ with
great gusto and fervor. He glories in singing—that’s why he never
misses a funeral. Poor Mrs. Bradshaw didn’t look much like
singing—all wore out slaving. Old Joe starts out once in a while to
buy her a present and brings home some new kind of farm machinery.
Isn’t that like a man? But what else would you expect of a man who
never goes to church, even a Methodist one? I was real thankful to see
you and the young Doctor in the Presbyterian church your first Sunday.
No doctor for me who isn’t a Presbyterian.”

“We were in the Methodist church last Sunday evening,” said Anne
wickedly.

“Oh, I s’pose Dr. Blythe has to go to the Methodist church once in a
while or he wouldn’t get the Methodist practice.”

“We liked the sermon very much,” declared Anne boldly. “And I thought
the Methodist minister’s prayer was one of the most beautiful I ever
heard.”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt he can pray. I never heard anyone make more
beautiful prayers than old Simon Bentley, who was always drunk, or
hoping to be, and the drunker he was the better he prayed.”

“The Methodist minister is very fine looking,” said Anne, for the
benefit of the office door.

“Yes, he’s quite ornamental,” agreed Miss Cornelia. “Oh, and VERY
ladylike. And he thinks that every girl who looks at him falls in love
with him—as if a Methodist minister, wandering about like any Jew, was
such a prize! If you and the young doctor take MY advice, you won’t
have much to do with the Methodists. My motto is—if you ARE a
Presbyterian, BE a Presbyterian.”

“Don’t you think that Methodists go to heaven as well as
Presbyterians?” asked Anne smilelessly.

“That isn’t for US to decide. It’s in higher hands than ours,” said
Miss Cornelia solemnly. “But I ain’t going to associate with them on
earth whatever I may have to do in heaven. THIS Methodist minister
isn’t married. The last one they had was, and his wife was the
silliest, flightiest little thing I ever saw. I told her husband once
that he should have waited till she was grown up before he married her.
He said he wanted to have the training of her. Wasn’t that like a man?”

“It’s rather hard to decide just when people ARE grown up,” laughed
Anne.

“That’s a true word, dearie. Some are grown up when they’re born, and
others ain’t grown up when they’re eighty, believe ME. That same Mrs.
Roderick I was speaking of never grew up. She was as foolish when she
was a hundred as when she was ten.”

“Perhaps that was why she lived so long,” suggested Anne.

“Maybe ’twas. I’d rather live fifty sensible years than a hundred
foolish ones.”

I

“But just think what a dull world it would be if everyone was
sensible,” pleaded Anne.

Miss Cornelia disdained any skirmish of flippant epigram.

“Mrs. Roderick was a Milgrave, and the Milgraves never had much sense.
Her nephew, Ebenezer Milgrave, used to be insane for years. He
believed he was dead and used to rage at his wife because she wouldn’t
bury him. I’d a-done it.”

I

Miss Cornelia looked so grimly determined that Anne could almost see
her with a spade in her hand.

“Don’t you know ANY good husbands, Miss Bryant?”

“Oh, yes, lots of them—over yonder,” said Miss Cornelia, waving her
hand through the open window towards the little graveyard of the church
across the harbor.

“But living—going about in the flesh?” persisted Anne.

“Oh, there’s a few, just to show that with God all things are
possible,” acknowledged Miss Cornelia reluctantly. “I don’t deny that
an odd man here and there, if he’s caught young and trained up proper,
and if his mother has spanked him well beforehand, may turn out a
decent being. YOUR husband, now, isn’t so bad, as men go, from all I
hear. I s’pose”—Miss Cornelia looked sharply at Anne over her
glasses—“you think there’s nobody like him in the world.”

“There isn’t,” said Anne promptly.

“Ah, well, I heard another bride say that once,” sighed Miss Cornelia.
“Jennie Dean thought when she married that there wasn’t anybody like
HER husband in the world. And she was right—there wasn’t! And a good
thing, too, believe ME! He led her an awful life—and he was courting
his second wife while Jennie was dying.

“Wasn’t that like a man? However, I hope YOUR confidence will be
better justified, dearie. The young doctor is taking real well. I was
afraid at first he mightn’t, for folks hereabouts have always thought
old Doctor Dave the only doctor in the world. Doctor Dave hadn’t much
tact, to be sure—he was always talking of ropes in houses where
someone had hanged himself. But folks forgot their hurt feelings when
they had a pain in their stomachs. If he’d been a minister instead of
a doctor they’d never have forgiven him. Soul-ache doesn’t worry folks
near as much as stomach-ache. Seeing as we’re both Presbyterians and
no Methodists around, will you tell me your candid opinion of OUR
minister?”

“Why—really—I—well,” hesitated Anne.

Miss Cornelia nodded.

“Exactly. I agree with you, dearie. We made a mistake when we called
HIM. His face just looks like one of those long, narrow stones in the
graveyard, doesn’t it? 'Sacred to the memory’ ought to be written on
his forehead. I shall never forget the first sermon he preached after
he came. It was on the subject of everyone doing what they were best
fitted for—a very good subject, of course; but such illustrations as
he used! He said, 'If you had a cow and an apple tree, and if you tied
the apple tree in your stable and planted the cow in your orchard, with
her legs up, how much milk would you get from the apple tree, or how
many apples from the cow?’ Did you ever hear the like in your born
days, dearie? I was so thankful there were no Methodists there that
day—they’d never have been done hooting over it. But what I dislike
most in him is his habit of agreeing with everybody, no matter what is
said. If you said to him, 'You’re a scoundrel,’ he’d say, with that
smooth smile of his, 'Yes, that’s so.’ A minister should have more
backbone. The long and the short of it is, I consider him a reverend
jackass. But, of course, this is just between you and me. When there
are Methodists in hearing I praise him to the skies. Some folks think
his wife dresses too gay, but I say when she has to live with a face
like that she needs something to cheer her up. You’ll never hear ME
condemning a woman for her dress. I’m only too thankful when her
husband isn’t too mean and miserly to allow it. Not that I bother much
with dress myself. Women just dress to please the men, and I’d never
stoop to THAT. I have had a real placid, comfortable life, dearie, and
it’s just because I never cared a cent what the men thought.”

I

“Why do you hate the men so, Miss Bryant?”

“Lord, dearie, I don’t hate them. They aren’t worth it. I just sort
of despise them. I think I’ll like YOUR husband if he keeps on as he
has begun. But apart from him about the only men in the world I’ve
much use for are the old doctor and Captain Jim.”

“Captain Jim is certainly splendid,” agreed Anne cordially.

“Captain Jim is a good man, but he’s kind of vexing in one way. You
CAN’T make him mad. I’ve tried for twenty years and he just keeps on
being placid. It does sort of rile me. And I s’pose the woman he
should have married got a man who went into tantrums twice a day.”

“Who was she?”

“Oh, I don’t know, dearie. I never remember of Captain Jim making up
to anybody. He was edging on old as far as my memory goes. He’s
seventy-six, you know. I never heard any reason for his staying a
bachelor, but there must be one, believe ME. He sailed all his life
till five years ago, and there’s no corner of the earth he hasn’t poked
his nose into. He and Elizabeth Russell were great cronies, all their
lives, but they never had any notion of sweet-hearting. Elizabeth
never married, though she had plenty of chances. She was a great
beauty when she was young. The year the Prince of Wales came to the
Island she was visiting her uncle in Charlottetown and he was a
Government official, and so she got invited to the great ball. She was
the prettiest girl there, and the Prince danced with her, and all the
other women he didn’t dance with were furious about it, because their
social standing was higher than hers and they said he shouldn’t have
passed them over. Elizabeth was always very proud of that dance. Mean
folks said that was why she never married—she couldn’t put up with an
ordinary man after dancing with a prince. But that wasn’t so. She
told me the reason once—it was because she had such a temper that she
was afraid she couldn’t live peaceably with any man. She HAD an awful
temper—she used to have to go upstairs and bite pieces out of her
bureau to keep it down by times. But I told her that wasn’t any reason
for not marrying if she wanted to. There’s no reason why we should let
the men have a monopoly of temper, is there, Mrs. Blythe, dearie?”

“I’ve a bit of temper myself,” sighed Anne.

“It’s well you have, dearie. You won’t be half so likely to be trodden
on, believe ME! My, how that golden glow of yours is blooming! Your
garden looks fine. Poor Elizabeth always took such care of it.”

“I love it,” said Anne. “I’m glad it’s so full of old-fashioned
flowers. Speaking of gardening, we want to get a man to dig up that
little lot beyond the fir grove and set it out with strawberry plants
for us. Gilbert is so busy he will never get time for it this fall.
Do you know anyone we can get?”

“Well, Henry Hammond up at the Glen goes out doing jobs like that.
He’ll do, maybe. He’s always a heap more interested in his wages than
in his work, just like a man, and he’s so slow in the uptake that he
stands still for five minutes before it dawns on him that he’s stopped.
His father threw a stump at him when he was small.

“Nice gentle missile, wasn’t it? So like a man! Course, the boy never
got over it. But he’s the only one I can recommend at all. He painted
my house for me last spring. It looks real nice now, don’t you think?”

Anne was saved by the clock striking five.

“Lord, is it that late?” exclaimed Miss Cornelia. “How time does slip
by when you’re enjoying yourself! Well, I must betake myself home.”

“No, indeed! You are going to stay and have tea with us,” said Anne
eagerly.

“Are you asking me because you think you ought to, or because you
really want to?” demanded Miss Cornelia.

“Because I really want to.”

“Then I’ll stay. YOU belong to the race that knows Joseph.”

“I know we are going to be friends,” said Anne, with the smile that
only they of the household of faith ever saw.

“Yes, we are, dearie. Thank goodness, we can choose our friends. We
have to take our relatives as they are, and be thankful if there are no
penitentiary birds among them. Not that I’ve many—none nearer than
second cousins. I’m a kind of lonely soul, Mrs. Blythe.”

There was a wistful note in Miss Cornelia’s voice.

“I wish you would call me Anne,” exclaimed Anne impulsively. “It would
seem more HOMEY. Everyone in Four Winds, except my husband, calls me
Mrs. Blythe, and it makes me feel like a stranger. Do you know that
your name is very near being the one I yearned after when I was a
child. I hated 'Anne’ and I called myself 'Cordelia’ in imagination.”

“I like Anne. It was my mother’s name. Old-fashioned names are the
best and sweetest in my opinion. If you’re going to get tea you might
send the young doctor to talk to me. He’s been lying on the sofa in
that office ever since I came, laughing fit to kill over what I’ve been
saying.”

“How did you know?” cried Anne, too aghast at this instance of Miss
Cornelia’s uncanny prescience to make a polite denial.

“I saw him sitting beside you when I came up the lane, and I know men’s
tricks,” retorted Miss Cornelia. “There, I’ve finished my little
dress, dearie, and the eighth baby can come as soon as it pleases.”

It was late September when Anne and Gilbert were able to pay Four Winds
light their promised visit. They had often planned to go, but
something always occurred to prevent them. Captain Jim had “dropped
in” several times at the little house.

“I don’t stand on ceremony, Mistress Blythe,” he told Anne. “It’s a
real pleasure to me to come here, and I’m not going to deny myself jest
because you haven’t got down to see me. There oughtn’t to be no
bargaining like that among the race that knows Joseph. I’ll come when
I can, and you come when you can, and so long’s we have our pleasant
little chat it don’t matter a mite what roof’s over us.”

Captain Jim took a great fancy to Gog and Magog, who were presiding
over the destinies of the hearth in the little house with as much
dignity and aplomb as they had done at Patty’s Place.

“Aren’t they the cutest little cusses?” he would say delightedly; and
he bade them greeting and farewell as gravely and invariably as he did
his host and hostess. Captain Jim was not going to offend household
deities by any lack of reverence and ceremony.

“You’ve made this little house just about perfect,” he told Anne. “It
never was so nice before. Mistress Selwyn had your taste and she did
wonders; but folks in those days didn’t have the pretty little curtains
and pictures and nicknacks you have. As for Elizabeth, she lived in
the past. You’ve kinder brought the future into it, so to speak. I’d
be real happy even if we couldn’t talk at all, when I come here—jest
to sit and look at you and your pictures and your flowers would be
enough of a treat. It’s beautiful—beautiful.”

Captain Jim was a passionate worshipper of beauty. Every lovely thing
heard or seen gave him a deep, subtle, inner joy that irradiated his
life. He was quite keenly aware of his own lack of outward comeliness
and lamented it.

“Folks say I’m good,” he remarked whimsically upon one occasion, “but I
sometimes wish the Lord had made me only half as good and put the rest
of it into looks. But there, I reckon He knew what He was about, as a
good Captain should. Some of us have to be homely, or the purty
ones—like Mistress Blythe here—wouldn’t show up so well.”

One evening Anne and Gilbert finally walked down to the Four Winds
light. The day had begun sombrely in gray cloud and mist, but it had
ended in a pomp of scarlet and gold. Over the western hills beyond the
harbor were amber deeps and crystalline shallows, with the fire of
sunset below. The north was a mackerel sky of little, fiery golden
clouds. The red light flamed on the white sails of a vessel gliding
down the channel, bound to a southern port in a land of palms. Beyond
her, it smote upon and incarnadined the shining, white, grassless faces
of the sand dunes. To the right, it fell on the old house among the
willows up the brook, and gave it for a fleeting space casements more
splendid than those of an old cathedral. They glowed out of its quiet
and grayness like the throbbing, blood-red thoughts of a vivid soul
imprisoned in a dull husk of environment.

“That old house up the brook always seems so lonely,” said Anne. “I
never see visitors there. Of course, its lane opens on the upper
road—but I don’t think there’s much coming and going. It seems odd
we’ve never met the Moores yet, when they live within fifteen minutes’
walk of us. I may have seen them in church, of course, but if so I
didn’t know them. I’m sorry they are so unsociable, when they are our
only near neighbors.”

“Evidently they don’t belong to the race that knows Joseph,” laughed
Gilbert. “Have you ever found out who that girl was whom you thought
so beautiful?”

“No. Somehow I have never remembered to ask about her. But I’ve never
seen her anywhere, so I suppose she must have been a stranger. Oh, the
sun has just vanished—and there’s the light.”

As the dusk deepened, the great beacon cut swathes of light through it,
sweeping in a circle over the fields and the harbor, the sandbar and
the gulf.

“I feel as if it might catch me and whisk me leagues out to sea,” said
Anne, as one drenched them with radiance; and she felt rather relieved
when they got so near the Point that they were inside the range of
those dazzling, recurrent flashes.

As they turned into the little lane that led across the fields to the
Point they met a man coming out of it—a man of such extraordinary
appearance that for a moment they both frankly stared. He was a
decidedly fine-looking person-tall, broad-shouldered, well-featured,
with a Roman nose and frank gray eyes; he was dressed in a prosperous
farmer’s Sunday best; in so far he might have been any inhabitant of
Four Winds or the Glen. But, flowing over his breast nearly to his
knees, was a river of crinkly brown beard; and adown his back, beneath
his commonplace felt hat, was a corresponding cascade of thick, wavy,
brown hair.

“Anne,” murmured Gilbert, when they were out of earshot, “you didn’t
put what Uncle Dave calls 'a little of the Scott Act’ in that lemonade
you gave me just before we left home, did you?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Anne, stifling her laughter, lest the retreating
enigma should hear here. “Who in the world can he be?”

“I don’t know; but if Captain Jim keeps apparitions like that down at
this Point I’m going to carry cold iron in my pocket when I come here.
He wasn’t a sailor, or one might pardon his eccentricity of appearance;
he must belong to the over-harbor clans. Uncle Dave says they have
several freaks over there.”

“Uncle Dave is a little prejudiced, I think. You know all the
over-harbor people who come to the Glen Church seem very nice. Oh,
Gilbert, isn’t this beautiful?”

The Four Winds light was built on a spur of red sand-stone cliff
jutting out into the gulf. On one side, across the channel, stretched
the silvery sand shore of the bar; on the other, extended a long,
curving beach of red cliffs, rising steeply from the pebbled coves. It
was a shore that knew the magic and mystery of storm and star. There
is a great solitude about such a shore. The woods are never
solitary—they are full of whispering, beckoning, friendly life. But
the sea is a mighty soul, forever moaning of some great, unshareable
sorrow, which shuts it up into itself for all eternity. We can never
pierce its infinite mystery—we may only wander, awed and spellbound,
on the outer fringe of it. The woods call to us with a hundred voices,
but the sea has one only—a mighty voice that drowns our souls in its
majestic music. The woods are human, but the sea is of the company of
the archangels.

Anne and Gilbert found Uncle Jim sitting on a bench outside the
lighthouse, putting the finishing touches to a wonderful, full-rigged,
toy schooner. He rose and welcomed them to his abode with the gentle,
unconscious courtesy that became him so well.

“This has been a purty nice day all through, Mistress Blythe, and now,
right at the last, it’s brought its best. Would you like to sit down
here outside a bit, while the light lasts? I’ve just finished this bit
of a plaything for my little grand nephew, Joe, up at the Glen. After
I promised to make it for him I was kinder sorry, for his mother was
vexed. She’s afraid he’ll be wanting to go to sea later on and she
doesn’t want the notion encouraged in him. But what could I do,
Mistress Blythe? I’d PROMISED him, and I think it’s sorter real
dastardly to break a promise you make to a child. Come, sit down. It
won’t take long to stay an hour.”

The wind was off shore, and only broke the sea’s surface into long,
silvery ripples, and sent sheeny shadows flying out across it, from
every point and headland, like transparent wings. The dusk was hanging
a curtain of violet gloom over the sand dunes and the headlands where
gulls were huddling. The sky was faintly filmed over with scarfs of
silken vapor. Cloud fleets rode at anchor along the horizons. An
evening star was watching over the bar.

“Isn’t that a view worth looking at?” said Captain Jim, with a loving,
proprietary pride. “Nice and far from the market-place, ain’t it? No
buying and selling and getting gain. You don’t have to pay
anything—all that sea and sky free—'without money and without price.’
There’s going to be a moonrise purty soon, too—I’m never tired of
finding out what a moonrise can be over them rocks and sea and harbor.
There’s a surprise in it every time.”

They had their moonrise, and watched its marvel and magic in a silence
that asked nothing of the world or each other. Then they went up into
the tower, and Captain Jim showed and explained the mechanism of the
great light. Finally they found themselves in the dining room, where a
fire of driftwood was weaving flames of wavering, elusive, sea-born
hues in the open fireplace.

“I put this fireplace in myself,” remarked Captain Jim. “The
Government don’t give lighthouse keepers such luxuries. Look at the
colors that wood makes. If you’d like some driftwood for your fire,
Mistress Blythe, I’ll bring you up a load some day. Sit down. I’m
going to make you a cup of tea.”

Captain Jim placed a chair for Anne, having first removed therefrom a
huge, orange-colored cat and a newspaper.

“Get down, Matey. The sofa is your place. I must put this paper away
safe till I can find time to finish the story in it. It’s called A Mad
Love. ’Tisn’t my favorite brand of fiction, but I’m reading it jest to
see how long she can spin it out. It’s at the sixty-second chapter
now, and the wedding ain’t any nearer than when it begun, far’s I can
see. When little Joe comes I have to read him pirate yarns. Ain’t it
strange how innocent little creatures like children like the
blood-thirstiest stories?”

“Like my lad Davy at home,” said Anne. “He wants tales that reek with
gore.”

Captain Jim’s tea proved to be nectar. He was pleased as a child with
Anne’s compliments, but he affected a fine indifference.

“The secret is I don’t skimp the cream,” he remarked airily. Captain
Jim had never heard of Oliver Wendell Holmes, but he evidently agreed
with that writer’s dictum that “big heart never liked little cream pot.”

“We met an odd-looking personage coming out of your lane,” said Gilbert
as they sipped. “Who was he?”

Captain Jim grinned.

“That’s Marshall Elliott—a mighty fine man with jest one streak of
foolishness in him. I s’pose you wondered what his object was in
turning himself into a sort of dime museum freak.”

“Is he a modern Nazarite or a Hebrew prophet left over from olden
times?” asked Anne.

“Neither of them. It’s politics that’s at the bottom of his freak.
All those Elliotts and Crawfords and MacAllisters are dyed-in-the-wool
politicians. They’re born Grit or Tory, as the case may be, and they
live Grit or Tory, and they die Grit or Tory; and what they’re going to
do in heaven, where there’s probably no politics, is more than I can
fathom. This Marshall Elliott was born a Grit. I’m a Grit myself in
moderation, but there’s no moderation about Marshall. Fifteen years
ago there was a specially bitter general election. Marshall fought for
his party tooth and nail. He was dead sure the Liberals would win—so
sure that he got up at a public meeting and vowed that he wouldn’t
shave his face or cut his hair until the Grits were in power. Well,
they didn’t go in—and they’ve never got in yet—and you saw the result
today for yourselves. Marshall stuck to his word.”

“What does his wife think of it?” asked Anne.

“He’s a bachelor. But if he had a wife I reckon she couldn’t make him
break that vow. That family of Elliotts has always been more stubborn
than natteral. Marshall’s brother Alexander had a dog he set great
store by, and when it died the man actilly wanted to have it buried in
the graveyard, 'along with the other Christians,’ he said. Course, he
wasn’t allowed to; so he buried it just outside the graveyard fence,
and never darkened the church door again. But Sundays he’d drive his
family to church and sit by that dog’s grave and read his Bible all the
time service was going on. They say when he was dying he asked his
wife to bury him beside the dog; she was a meek little soul but she
fired up at THAT. She said SHE wasn’t going to be buried beside no
dog, and if he’d rather have his last resting place beside the dog than
beside her, jest to say so. Alexander Elliott was a stubborn mule, but
he was fond of his wife, so he give in and said, 'Well, durn it, bury
me where you please. But when Gabriel’s trump blows I expect my dog to
rise with the rest of us, for he had as much soul as any durned Elliott
or Crawford or MacAllister that ever strutted.’ Them was HIS parting
words. As for Marshall, we’re all used to him, but he must strike
strangers as right down peculiar-looking. I’ve known him ever since he
was ten—he’s about fifty now—and I like him. Him and me was out
cod-fishing today. That’s about all I’m good for now—catching trout
and cod occasional. But ’tweren’t always so—not by no manner of
means. I used to do other things, as you’d admit if you saw my
life-book.”

Anne was just going to ask what his life-book was when the First Mate
created a diversion by springing upon Captain Jim’s knee. He was a
gorgeous beastie, with a face as round as a full moon, vivid green
eyes, and immense, white, double paws. Captain Jim stroked his velvet
back gently.

“I never fancied cats much till I found the First Mate,” he remarked,
to the accompaniment of the Mate’s tremendous purrs. “I saved his
life, and when you’ve saved a creature’s life you’re bound to love it.
It’s next thing to giving life. There’s some turrible thoughtless
people in the world, Mistress Blythe. Some of them city folks who have
summer homes over the harbor are so thoughtless that they’re cruel.
It’s the worst kind of cruelty—the thoughtless kind. You can’t cope
with it. They keep cats there in the summer, and feed and pet ’em, and
doll ’em up with ribbons and collars. And then in the fall they go off
and leave ’em to starve or freeze. It makes my blood boil, Mistress
Blythe. One day last winter I found a poor old mother cat dead on the
shore, lying against the skin-and-bone bodies of her three little
kittens. She’d died trying to shelter ’em. She had her poor stiff
paws around ’em. Master, I cried. Then I swore. Then I carried them
poor little kittens home and fed ’em up and found good homes for ’em.
I knew the woman who left the cat and when she come back this summer I
jest went over the harbor and told her my opinion of her. It was rank
meddling, but I do love meddling in a good cause.”

“How did she take it?” asked Gilbert.

“Cried and said she 'didn’t think.’ I says to her, says I, 'Do you
s’pose that’ll be held for a good excuse in the day of Jedgment, when
you’ll have to account for that poor old mother’s life? The Lord’ll
ask you what He give you your brains for if it wasn’t to think, I
reckon.’ I don’t fancy she’ll leave cats to starve another time.”

“Was the First Mate one of the forsaken?” asked Anne, making advances
to him which were responded to graciously, if condescendingly.

“Yes. I found HIM one bitter cold day in winter, caught in the
branches of a tree by his durn-fool ribbon collar. He was almost
starving. If you could have seen his eyes, Mistress Blythe! He was
nothing but a kitten, and he’d got his living somehow since he’d been
left until he got hung up. When I loosed him he gave my hand a pitiful
swipe with his little red tongue. He wasn’t the able seaman you see
now. He was meek as Moses. That was nine years ago. His life has
been long in the land for a cat. He’s a good old pal, the First Mate
is.”

“I should have expected you to have a dog,” said Gilbert.

Captain Jim shook his head.

“I had a dog once. I thought so much of him that when he died I
couldn’t bear the thought of getting another in his place. He was a
FRIEND—you understand, Mistress Blythe? Matey’s only a pal. I’m fond
of Matey—all the fonder on account of the spice of devilment that’s in
him—like there is in all cats. But I LOVED my dog. I always had a
sneaking sympathy for Alexander Elliott about HIS dog. There isn’t any
devil in a good dog. That’s why they’re more lovable than cats, I
reckon. But I’m darned if they’re as interesting. Here I am, talking
too much. Why don’t you check me? When I do get a chance to talk to
anyone I run on turrible. If you’ve done your tea I’ve a few little
things you might like to look at—picked ’em up in the queer corners I
used to be poking my nose into.”

Captain Jim’s “few little things” turned out to be a most interesting
collection of curios, hideous, quaint and beautiful. And almost every
one had some striking story attached to it.

Anne never forgot the delight with which she listened to those old
tales that moonlit evening by that enchanted driftwood fire, while the
silver sea called to them through the open window and sobbed against
the rocks below them.

Captain Jim never said a boastful word, but it was impossible to help
seeing what a hero the man had been—brave, true, resourceful,
unselfish. He sat there in his little room and made those things live
again for his hearers. By a lift of the eyebrow, a twist of the lip, a
gesture, a word, he painted a whole scene or character so that they saw
it as it was.

Some of Captain Jim’s adventures had such a marvellous edge that Anne
and Gilbert secretly wondered if he were not drawing a rather long bow
at their credulous expense. But in this, as they found later, they did
him injustice. His tales were all literally true. Captain Jim had the
gift of the born storyteller, whereby “unhappy, far-off things” can be
brought vividly before the hearer in all their pristine poignancy.

Anne and Gilbert laughed and shivered over his tales, and once Anne
found herself crying. Captain Jim surveyed her tears with pleasure
shining from his face.

“I like to see folks cry that way,” he remarked. “It’s a compliment.
But I can’t do justice to the things I’ve seen or helped to do. I’ve
’em all jotted down in my life-book, but I haven’t got the knack of
writing them out properly. If I could hit on jest the right words and
string ’em together proper on paper I could make a great book. It
would beat A Mad Love holler, and I believe Joe’d like it as well as
the pirate yarns. Yes, I’ve had some adventures in my time; and, do
you know, Mistress Blythe, I still lust after ’em. Yes, old and
useless as I be, there’s an awful longing sweeps over me at times to
sail out—out—out there—forever and ever.”

“Like Ulysses, you would

'Sail beyond the sunset and the baths
Of all the western stars until you die,’”

said Anne dreamily.

“Ulysses? I’ve read of him. Yes, that’s just how I feel—jest how all
us old sailors feel, I reckon. I’ll die on land after all, I s’pose.
Well, what is to be will be. There was old William Ford at the Glen
who never went on the water in his life, ’cause he was afraid of being
drowned. A fortune-teller had predicted he would be. And one day he
fainted and fell with his face in the barn trough and was drowned.
Must you go? Well, come soon and come often. The doctor is to do the
talking next time. He knows a heap of things I want to find out. I’m
sorter lonesome here by times. It’s been worse since Elizabeth Russell
died. Her and me was such cronies.”

Captain Jim spoke with the pathos of the aged, who see their old
friends slipping from them one by one—friends whose place can never be
quite filled by those of a younger generation, even of the race that
knows Joseph. Anne and Gilbert promised to come soon and often.

“He’s a rare old fellow, isn’t he?” said Gilbert, as they walked home.

“Somehow, I can’t reconcile his simple, kindly personality with the
wild, adventurous life he has lived,” mused Anne.

“You wouldn’t find it so hard if you had seen him the other day down at
the fishing village. One of the men of Peter Gautier’s boat made a
nasty remark about some girl along the shore. Captain Jim fairly
scorched the wretched fellow with the lightning of his eyes. He seemed
a man transformed. He didn’t say much—but the way he said it! You’d
have thought it would strip the flesh from the fellow’s bones. I
understand that Captain Jim will never allow a word against any woman
to be said in his presence.”

“I wonder why he never married,” said Anne. “He should have sons with
their ships at sea now, and grandchildren climbing over him to hear his
stories—he’s that kind of a man. Instead, he has nothing but a
magnificent cat.”

But Anne was mistaken. Captain Jim had more than that. He had a
memory.