ANNE'S HOUSE OF DREAMS. Lucy Maud Montgomery

love Four Winds, Gilbert. Where is our house?”

      “We can’t see it yet — the belt of birch running up from that little cove hides it. It’s about two miles from Glen St. Mary, and there’s another mile between it and the lighthouse. We won’t have many neighbors, Anne. There’s only one house near us and I don’t know who lives in it. Shall you be lonely when I’m away?”

      “Not with that light and that loveliness for company. Who lives in that house, Gilbert?”

      “I don’t know. It doesn’t look — exactly — as if the occupants would be kindred spirits, Anne, does it?”

      The house was a large, substantial affair, painted such a vivid green that the landscape seemed quite faded by contrast. There was an orchard behind it, and a nicely kept lawn before it, but, somehow, there was a certain bareness about it. Perhaps its neatness was responsible for this; the whole establishment, house, barns, orchard, garden, lawn and lane, was so starkly neat.

      “It doesn’t seem probable that anyone with that taste in paint could be VERY kindred,” acknowledged Anne, “unless it were an accident — like our blue hall. I feel certain there are no children there, at least. It’s even neater than the old Copp place on the Tory road, and I never expected to see anything neater than that.”

      They had not met anybody on the moist, red road that wound along the harbor shore. But just before they came to the belt of birch which hid their home, Anne saw a girl who was driving a flock of snow-white geese along the crest of a velvety green hill on the right. Great, scattered firs grew along it. Between their trunks one saw glimpses of yellow harvest fields, gleams of golden sandhills, and bits of blue sea. The girl was tall and wore a dress of pale blue print. She walked with a certain springiness of step and erectness of bearing. She and her geese came out of the gate at the foot of the hill as Anne and Gilbert passed. She stood with her hand on the fastening of the gate, and looked steadily at them, with an expression that hardly attained to interest, but did not descend to curiosity. It seemed to Anne, for a fleeting moment, that there was even a veiled hint of hostility in it. But it was the girl’s beauty which made Anne give a little gasp — a beauty so marked that it must have attracted attention anywhere. She was hatless, but heavy braids of burnished hair, the hue of ripe wheat, were twisted about her head like a coronet; her eyes were blue and starlike; her figure, in its plain print gown, was magnificent; and her lips were as crimson as the bunch of blood-red poppies she wore at her belt.

      “Gilbert, who is the girl we have just passed?” asked Anne, in a low voice.

      “I didn’t notice any girl,” said Gilbert, who had eyes only for his bride.

      “She was standing by that gate — no, don’t look back. She is still watching us. I never saw such a beautiful face.”

      “I don’t remember seeing any very handsome girls while I was here. There are some pretty girls up at the Glen, but I hardly think they could be called beautiful.”

      “This girl is. You can’t have seen her, or you would remember her. Nobody could forget her. I never saw such a face except in pictures. And her hair! It made me think of Browning’s ‘cord of gold’ and ‘gorgeous snake’!”

      “Probably she’s some visitor in Four Winds — likely some one from that big summer hotel over the harbor.”

      “She wore a white apron and she was driving geese.”

      “She might do that for amusement. Look, Anne — there’s our house.”

      Anne looked and forgot for a time the girl with the splendid, resentful eyes. The first glimpse of her new home was a delight to eye and spirit — it looked so like a big, creamy seashell stranded on the harbor shore. The rows of tall Lombardy poplars down its lane stood out in stately, purple silhouette against the sky. Behind it, sheltering its garden from the too keen breath of sea winds, was a cloudy fir wood, in which the winds might make all kinds of weird and haunting music. Like all woods, it seemed to be holding and enfolding secrets in its recesses, — secrets whose charm is only to be won by entering in and patiently seeking. Outwardly, dark green arms keep them inviolate from curious or indifferent eyes.

      The night winds were beginning their wild dances beyond the bar and the fishing hamlet across the harbor was gemmed with lights as Anne and Gilbert drove up the poplar lane. The door of the little house opened, and a warm glow of firelight flickered out into the dusk. Gilbert lifted Anne from the buggy and led her into the garden, through the little gate between the ruddy-tipped firs, up the trim, red path to the sandstone step.

      “Welcome home,” he whispered, and hand in hand they stepped over the threshold of their house of dreams.

      CHAPTER 6

      CAPTAIN JIM

      Table of Contents

      “Old Doctor Dave” and “Mrs. Doctor Dave” had come down to the little house to greet the bride and groom. Doctor Dave was a big, jolly, white-whiskered old fellow, and Mrs. Doctor was a trim rosy-cheeked, silver-haired little lady who took Anne at once to her heart, literally and figuratively.

      “I’m so glad to see you, dear. You must be real tired. We’ve got a bite of supper ready, and Captain Jim brought up some trout for you. Captain Jim — where are you? Oh, he’s slipped out to see to the horse, I suppose. Come upstairs and take your things off.”

      Anne looked about her with bright, appreciative eyes as she followed Mrs. Doctor Dave upstairs. She liked the appearance of her new home very much. It seemed to have the atmosphere of Green Gables and the flavor of her old traditions.

      “I think I would have found Miss Elizabeth Russell a ‘kindred spirit,’” she murmured when she was alone in her room. There were two windows in it; the dormer one looked out on the lower harbor and the sandbar and the Four Winds light.

      “A magic casement opening on the foam

       Of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn,”

      quoted Anne softly. The gable window gave a view of a little harvest-hued valley through which a brook ran. Half a mile up the brook was the only house in sight — an old, rambling, gray one surrounded by huge willows through which its windows peered, like shy, seeking eyes, into the dusk. Anne wondered who lived there; they would be her nearest neighbors and she hoped they would be nice. She suddenly found herself thinking of the beautiful girl with the white geese.

      “Gilbert thought she didn’t belong here,” mused Anne, “but I feel sure she does. There was something about her that made her part of the sea and the sky and the harbor. Four Winds is in her blood.”

      When Anne went downstairs Gilbert was standing before the fireplace talking to a stranger. Both turned as Anne entered.

      “Anne, this is Captain Boyd. Captain Boyd, my wife.”

      It was the first time Gilbert had said “my wife” to anybody but Anne, and he narrowly escaped bursting with the pride of it. The old captain held out a sinewy hand to Anne; they smiled at each other and were friends from that moment. Kindred spirit flashed recognition to kindred spirit.

      “I’m right down pleased to meet you, Mistress Blythe; and I hope you’ll be as happy as the first bride was who came here. I can’t wish you no better than THAT. But your husband doesn’t introduce me jest exactly right. ‘Captain Jim’ is my week-a-day name and you might as well begin as you’re sartain to end up — calling me that. You sartainly are a nice little bride, Mistress Blythe. Looking at you sorter makes me feel that I’ve jest been married myself.”

      Amid the laughter that followed Mrs. Doctor Dave urged Captain Jim to stay and have supper with them.

      “Thank you kindly. ‘Twill be a real treat, Mistress Doctor. I mostly has to eat my meals alone, with the reflection of my ugly old phiz in a looking-glass