Lucy Maud Montgomery - Anne's House of Dreams

“Oh, I do, Mistress Doctor, I do,” protested Captain Jim. “Why, I live like a king gen’rally. Last night I was up to the Glen and took home two pounds of steak. I meant to have a spanking good dinner today.”

“And what happened to the steak?” asked Mrs. Doctor Dave. “Did you lose it on the way home?”

“No.” Captain Jim looked sheepish. “Just at bedtime a poor, ornery sort of dog came along and asked for a night’s lodging. Guess he belonged to some of the fishermen ‘long shore. I couldn’t turn the poor cur out—he had a sore foot. So I shut him in the porch, with an old bag to lie on, and went to bed. But somehow I couldn’t sleep. Come to think it over, I sorter remembered that the dog looked hungry.”

“And you got up and gave him that steak—ALL that steak,” said Mrs. Doctor Dave, with a kind of triumphant reproof.

“Well, there wasn’t anything else TO give him,” said Captain Jim deprecatingly. “Nothing a dog’d care for, that is. I reckon he WAS hungry, for he made about two bites of it. I had a fine sleep the rest of the night but my dinner had to be sorter scanty—potatoes and point, as you might say. The dog, he lit out for home this morning. I reckon HE weren’t a vegetarian.”

“The idea of starving yourself for a worthless dog!” sniffed Mrs. Doctor.

“You don’t know but he may be worth a lot to somebody,” protested Captain Jim. “He didn’t LOOK of much account, but you can’t go by looks in jedging a dog. Like meself, he might be a real beauty inside. The First Mate didn’t approve of him, I’ll allow. His language was right down forcible. But the First Mate is prejudiced. No use in taking a cat’s opinion of a dog. ‘Tennyrate, I lost my dinner, so this nice spread in this dee-lightful company is real pleasant. It’ s a great thing to have good neighbors.”

“Who lives in the house among the willows up the brook?” asked Anne.

“Mrs. Dick Moore,” said Captain Jim—“and her husband,” he added, as if by way of an afterthought.

Anne smiled, and deduced a mental picture of Mrs. Dick Moore from Captain Jim’s way of putting it; evidently a second Mrs. Rachel Lynde.

“You haven’t many neighbors, Mistress Blythe,” Captain Jim went on. “This side of the harbor is mighty thinly settled. Most of the land belongs to Mr. Howard up yander past the Glen, and he rents it out for pasture. The other side of the harbor, now, is thick with folks—‘specially MacAllisters. There’s a whole colony of MacAllisters you can’t throw a stone but you hit one. I was talking to old Leon Blacquiere the other day. He’s been working on the harbor all summer. `Dey’re nearly all MacAllisters over thar,’ he told me. `Dare’s Neil MacAllister and Sandy MacAllister and William MacAllister and Alec MacAllister and Angus MacAllister—and I believe dare’s de Devil MacAllister.’”

“There are nearly as many Elliotts and Crawfords,” said Doctor Dave, after the laughter had subsided. “You know, Gilbert, we folk on this side of Four Winds have an old saying—`From the conceit of the Elliotts, the pride of the MacAllisters, and the vainglory of the Crawfords, good Lord deliver us.’”

“There’s a plenty of fine people among them, though,” said Captain Jim. “I sailed with William Crawford for many a year, and for courage and endurance and truth that man hadn’t an equal. They’ve got brains over on that side of Four Winds. Mebbe that’s why this side is sorter inclined to pick on ‘em. Strange, ain’t it, how folks seem to resent anyone being born a mite cleverer than they be.”

Doctor Dave, who had a forty years’ feud with the over-harbor people, laughed and subsided.

“Who lives in that brilliant emerald house about half a mile up the road?” asked Gilbert.

Captain Jim smiled delightedly.

“Miss Cornelia Bryant. She’ll likely be over to see you soon, seeing you’re Presbyterians. If you were Methodists she wouldn’t come at all. Cornelia has a holy horror of Methodists.”

“She’s quite a character,” chuckled Doctor Dave. “A most inveterate man-hater!”

“Sour grapes?” queried Gilbert, laughing.

“No, ‘tisn’t sour grapes,” answered Captain Jim seriously. “Cornelia could have had her pick when she was young. Even yet she’s only to say the word to see the old widowers jump. She jest seems to have been born with a sort of chronic spite agin men and Methodists. She’s got the bitterest tongue and the kindest heart in Four Winds. Wherever there’s any trouble, that woman is there, doing everything to help in the tenderest way. She never says a harsh word about another woman, and if she likes to card us poor scalawags of men down I reckon our tough old hides can stand it.”

“She always speaks well of you, Captain Jim,” said Mrs. Doctor.

“Yes, I’m afraid so. I don’t half like it. It makes me feel as if there must be something sorter unnateral about me.”

“Who was the first bride who came to this house, Captain Jim?” Anne asked, as they sat around the fireplace after supper.

“Was she a part of the story I’ve heard was connected with this house?” asked Gilbert. “Somebody told me you could tell it, Captain Jim.”

“Well, yes, I know it. I reckon I’m the only person living in Four Winds now that can remember the schoolmaster’s bride as she was when she come to the Island. She’s been dead this thirty year, but she was one of them women you never forget.”

“Tell us the story,” pleaded Anne. “I want to find out all about the women who have lived in this house before me.”

“Well, there’s jest been three—Elizabeth Russell, and Mrs. Ned Russell, and the schoolmaster’s bride. Elizabeth Russell was a nice, clever little critter, and Mrs. Ned was a nice woman, too. But they weren’t ever like the schoolmaster’s bride.

“The schoolmaster’s name was John Selwyn. He came out from the Old Country to teach school at the Glen when I was a boy of sixteen. He wasn’t much like the usual run of derelicts who used to come out to P.E.I. to teach school in them days. Most of them were clever, drunken critters who taught the children the three R’s when they were sober, and lambasted them when they wasn’t. But John Selwyn was a fine, handsome young fellow. He boarded at my father’s, and he and me were cronies, though he was ten years older’n me. We read and walked and talked a heap together. He knew about all the poetry that was ever written, I reckon, and he used to quote it to me along shore in the evenings. Dad thought it an awful waste of time, but he sorter endured it, hoping it’d put me off the notion of going to sea. Well, nothing could do THAT—mother come of a race of sea-going folk and it was born in me. But I loved to hear John read and recite. It’s almost sixty years ago, but I could repeat yards of poetry I learned from him. Nearly sixty years!”

Captain Jim was silent for a space, gazing into the glowing fire in a quest of the bygones. Then, with a sigh, he resumed his story.

“I remember one spring evening I met him on the sand-hills. He looked sorter uplifted—jest like you did, Dr. Blythe, when you brought Mistress Blythe in tonight. I thought of him the minute I seen you. And he told me that he had a sweetheart back home and that she was coming out to him. I wasn’t more’n half pleased, ornery young lump of selfishness that I was; I thought he wouldn’t be as much my friend after she came. But I’d enough decency not to let him see it. He told me all about her. Her name was Persis Leigh, and she would have come out with him if it hadn’t been for her old uncle. He was sick, and he’d looked after her when her parents died and she wouldn’t leave him. And now he was dead and she was coming out to marry John Selwyn. ‘Twasn’t no easy journey for a woman in them days. There weren’t no steamers, you must ricollect.