“Gilbert and Captain Jim are men, and it is through them that the truth has been discovered at last,” said Anne.
“Well, I admit that,” conceded Miss Cornelia reluctantly. “I’m sorry I raked the doctor off so. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever felt ashamed of anything I said to a man. I don’t know as I shall tell him so, though. He’ll just have to take it for granted. Well, Anne, dearie, it’s a mercy the Lord doesn’t answer all our prayers. I’ve been praying hard right along that the operation wouldn’t cure Dick. Of course I didn’t put it just quite so plain. But that was what was in the back of my mind, and I have no doubt the Lord knew it.”
“Well, He has answered the spirit of your prayer. You really wished that things shouldn’t be made any harder for Leslie. I’m afraid that in my secret heart I’ve been hoping the operation wouldn’t succeed, and I am wholesomely ashamed of it.”
“How does Leslie seem to take it?”
“She writes like one dazed. I think that, like ourselves, she hardly realises it yet. She says, ‘It all seems like a strange dream to me, Anne.’ That is the only reference she makes to herself.”
“Poor child! I suppose when the chains are struck off a prisoner he’d feel queer and lost without them for a while. Anne, dearie, here’s a thought keeps coming into my mind. What about Owen Ford? We both know Leslie was fond of him. Did it ever occur to you that he was fond of her?”
“It — did — once,” admitted Anne, feeling that she might say so much.
“Well, I hadn’t any reason to think he was, but it just appeared to me he MUST be. Now, Anne, dearie, the Lord knows I’m not a match-maker, and I scorn all such doings. But if I were you and writing to that Ford man I’d just mention, casual-like, what has happened. That is what I’d do.”
“Of course I will mention it when I write him,” said Anne, a trifle distantly. Somehow, this was a thing she could not discuss with Miss Cornelia. And yet, she had to admit that the same thought had been lurking in her mind ever since she had heard of Leslie’s freedom. But she would not desecrate it by free speech.
“Of course there is no great rush, dearie. But Dick Moore’s been dead for thirteen years and Leslie has wasted enough of her life for him. We’ll just see what comes of it. As for this George Moore, who’s gone and come back to life when everyone thought he was dead and done for, just like a man, I’m real sorry for him. He won’t seem to fit in anywhere.”
“He is still a young man, and if he recovers completely, as seems likely, he will be able to make a place for himself again. It must be very strange for him, poor fellow. I suppose all these years since his accident will not exist for him.”
CHAPTER 33
LESLIE RETURNS
A fortnight later Leslie Moore came home alone to the old house where she had spent so many bitter years. In the June twilight she went over the fields to Anne’s, and appeared with ghost-like suddenness in the scented garden.
“Leslie!” cried Anne in amazement. “Where have you sprung from? We never knew you were coming. Why didn’t you write? We would have met you.”
“I couldn’t write somehow, Anne. It seemed so futile to try to say anything with pen and ink. And I wanted to get back quietly and unobserved.”
Anne put her arms about Leslie and kissed her. Leslie returned the kiss warmly. She looked pale and tired, and she gave a little sigh as she dropped down on the grasses beside a great bed of daffodils that were gleaming through the pale, silvery twilight like golden stars.
“And you have come home alone, Leslie?”
“Yes. George Moore’s sister came to Montreal and took him home with her. Poor fellow, he was sorry to part with me — though I was a stranger to him when his memory first came back. He clung to me in those first hard days when he was trying to realise that Dick’s death was not the thing of yesterday that it seemed to him. It was all very hard for him. I helped him all I could. When his sister came it was easier for him, because it seemed to him only the other day that he had seen her last. Fortunately she had not changed much, and that helped him, too.”
“It is all so strange and wonderful, Leslie. I think we none of us realise it yet.”
“I cannot. When I went into the house over there an hour ago, I felt that it MUST be a dream — that Dick must be there, with his childish smile, as he had been for so long. Anne, I seem stunned yet. I’m not glad or sorry — or ANYTHING. I feel as if something had been torn suddenly out of my life and left a terrible hole. I feel as if I couldn’t be I — as if I must have changed into somebody else and couldn’t get used to it. It gives me a horrible lonely, dazed, helpless feeling. It’s good to see you again — it seems as if you were a sort of anchor for my drifting soul. Oh, Anne, I dread it all — the gossip and wonderment and questioning. When I think of that, I wish that I need not have come home at all. Dr. Dave was at the station when I came off the train — he brought me home. Poor old man, he feels very badly because he told me years ago that nothing could be done for Dick. ‘I honestly thought so, Leslie,’ he said to me today. ‘But I should have told you not to depend on my opinion — I should have told you to go to a specialist. If I had, you would have been saved many bitter years, and poor George Moore many wasted ones. I blame myself very much, Leslie.’ I told him not to do that — he had done what he thought right. He has always been so kind to me — I couldn’t bear to see him worrying over it.”
“And Dick — George, I mean? Is his memory fully restored?”
“Practically. Of course, there are a great many details he can’t recall yet — but he remembers more and more every day. He went out for a walk on the evening after Dick was buried. He had Dick’s money and watch on him; he meant to bring them home to me, along with my letter. He admits he went to a place where the sailors resorted — and he remembers drinking — and nothing else. Anne, I shall never forget the moment he remembered his own name. I saw him looking at me with an intelligent but puzzled expression. I said, ‘Do you know me, Dick?’ He answered, ‘I never saw you before. Who are you? And my name is not Dick. I am George Moore, and Dick died of yellow fever yesterday! Where am I? What has happened to me?’ I — I fainted, Anne. And ever since I have felt as if I were in a dream.”
“You will soon adjust yourself to this new state of things, Leslie. And you are young — life is before you — you will have many beautiful years yet.”
“Perhaps I shall be able to look at it in that way after a while, Anne. Just now I feel too tired and indifferent to think about the future. I’m — I’m — Anne, I’m lonely. I miss Dick. Isn’t it all very strange? Do you know, I was really fond of poor Dick — George, I suppose I should say — just as I would have been fond of a helpless child who depended on me for everything. I would never have admitted it — I was really ashamed of it — because, you see, I had hated and despised Dick so much before he went away. When I heard that Captain Jim was bringing him home I expected I would just feel the same to him. But I never did — although I continued to loathe him as I remembered him before. From the time he came home I felt only pity — a pity that hurt and wrung me. I supposed then that it was just because his accident had made him so helpless and changed. But now I believe it was because there was really a different personality there. Carlo knew it, Anne — I know now that Carlo knew it. I always thought it strange that Carlo shouldn’t have known Dick. Dogs are usually so faithful. But HE knew it was not his master who had come back, although none of the rest of us did. I had never seen George Moore, you know. I remember now that Dick once mentioned casually that he had a cousin in Nova Scotia who looked as much like him as a twin; but the thing had gone out of my memory, and in any case I would never have thought it of any importance. You see, it never occurred to me to question Dick’s identity. Any change in him seemed to me just the result of the accident.
“Oh, Anne, that night in April when Gilbert told me he thought Dick might be cured! I can never forget it. It seemed to me that I had once been a prisoner in a hideou
s cage of torture, and then the door had been opened and I could get out. I was still chained to the cage but I was not in it. And that night I felt that a merciless hand was drawing me back into the cage — back to a torture even more terrible than it had once been. I didn’t blame Gilbert. I felt he was right. And he had been very good — he said that if, in view of the expense and uncertainty of the operation, I should decide not to risk it, he would not blame me in the least. But I knew how I ought to decide — and I couldn’t face it. All night I walked the floor like a mad woman, trying to compel myself to face it. I couldn’t, Anne — I thought I couldn’t — and when morning broke I set my teeth and resolved that I WOULDN’T. I would let things remain as they were. It was very wicked, I know. It would have been just punishment for such wickedness if I had just been left to abide by that decision. I kept to it all day. That afternoon I had to go up to the Glen to do some shopping. It was one of Dick’s quiet, drowsy days, so I left him alone. I was gone a little longer than I had expected, and he missed me. He felt lonely. And when I got home, he ran to meet me just like a child, with such a pleased smile on his face. Somehow, Anne, I just gave way then. That smile on his poor vacant face was more than I could endure. I felt as if I were denying a child the chance to grow and develop. I knew that I must give him his chance, no matter what the consequences might be. So I came over and told Gilbert. Oh, Anne, you must have thought me hateful in those weeks before I went away. I didn’t mean to be — but I couldn’t think of anything except what I had to do, and everything and everybody about me were like shadows.”
“I know — I understood, Leslie. And now it is all over — your chain is broken — there is no cage.”
“There is no cage,” repeated Leslie absently, plucking at the fringing grasses with her slender, brown hands. “But — it doesn’t seem as if there were anything else, Anne. You — you remember what I told you of my folly that night on the sand-bar? I find one doesn’t get over being a fool very quickly. Sometimes I think there are people who are fools forever. And to be a fool — of that kind — is almost as bad as being a — a dog on a chain.”
“You will feel very differently after you get over being tired and bewildered,” said Anne, who, knowing a certain thing that Leslie did not know, did not feel herself called upon to waste overmuch sympathy.
Leslie laid her splendid golden head against Anne’s knee.
“Anyhow, I have YOU,” she said. “Life can’t be altogether empty with such a friend. Anne, pat my head — just as if I were a little girl — MOTHER me a bit — and let me tell you while my stubborn tongue is loosed a little just what you and your comradeship have meant to me since that night I met you on the rock shore.”
CHAPTER 34
THE SHIP O’DREAMS COMES TO HARBOR
One morning, when a windy golden sunrise was billowing over the gulf in waves of light, a certain weary stork flew over the bar of Four Winds Harbor on his way from the Land of Evening Stars. Under his wing was tucked a sleepy, starry-eyed, little creature. The stork was tired, and he looked wistfully about him. He knew he was somewhere near his destination, but he could not yet see it. The big, white light-house on the red sandstone cliff had its good points; but no stork possessed of any gumption would leave a new, velvet baby there. An old gray house, surrounded by willows, in a blossomy brook valley, looked more promising, but did not seem quite the thing either. The staring green abode further on was manifestly out of the question. Then the stork brightened up. He had caught sight of the very place — a little white house nestled against a big, whispering firwood, with a spiral of blue smoke winding up from its kitchen chimney — a house which just looked as if it were meant for babies. The stork gave a sigh of satisfaction, and softly alighted on the ridge-pole.
Half an hour later Gilbert ran down the hall and tapped on the spare-room door. A drowsy voice answered him and in a moment Marilla’s pale, scared face peeped out from behind the door.
“Marilla, Anne has sent me to tell you that a certain young gentleman has arrived here. He hasn’t brought much luggage with him, but he evidently means to stay.”
“For pity’s sake!” said Marilla blankly. “You don’t mean to tell me, Gilbert, that it’s all over. Why wasn’t I called?”
“Anne wouldn’t let us disturb you when there was no need. Nobody was called until about two hours ago. There was no ‘passage perilous’ this time.”
“And — and — Gilbert — will this baby live?”
“He certainly will. He weighs ten pounds and — why, listen to him. Nothing wrong with his lungs, is there? The nurse says his hair will be red. Anne is furious with her, and I’m tickled to death.”
That was a wonderful day in the little house of dreams.
“The best dream of all has come true,” said Anne, pale and rapturous. “Oh, Marilla, I hardly dare believe it, after that horrible day last summer. I have had a heartache ever since then — but it is gone now.”
“This baby will take Joy’s place,” said Marilla.
“Oh, no, no, NO, Marilla. He can’t — nothing can ever do that. He has his own place, my dear, wee man-child. But little Joy has hers, and always will have it. If she had lived she would have been over a year old. She would have been toddling around on her tiny feet and lisping a few words. I can see her so plainly, Marilla. Oh, I know now that Captain Jim was right when he said God would manage better than that my baby would seem a stranger to me when I found her Beyond. I’ve learned THAT this past year. I’ve followed her development day by day and week by week — I always shall. I shall know just how she grows from year to year — and when I meet her again I’ll know her — she won’t be a stranger. Oh, Marilla, LOOK at his dear, darling toes! Isn’t it strange they should be so perfect?”
“It would be stranger if they weren’t,” said Marilla crisply. Now that all was safely over, Marilla was herself again.
“Oh, I know — but it seems as if they couldn’t be quite FINISHED, you know — and they are, even to the tiny nails. And his hands — JUST look at his hands, Marilla.”
“They appear to be a good deal like hands,” Marilla conceded.
“See how he clings to my finger. I’m sure he knows me already. He cries when the nurse takes him away. Oh, Marilla, do you think — you don’t think, do you — that his hair is going to be red?”
“I don’t see much hair of any color,” said Marilla. “I wouldn’t worry about it, if I were you, until it becomes visible.”
“Marilla, he HAS hair — look at that fine little down all over his head. Anyway, nurse says his eyes will be hazel and his forehead is exactly like Gilbert’s.”
“And he has the nicest little ears, Mrs. Doctor, dear,” said Susan. “The first thing I did was to look at his ears. Hair is deceitful and noses and eyes change, and you cannot tell what is going to come of them, but ears is ears from start to finish, and you always know where you are with them. Just look at their shape — and they are set right back against his precious head. You will never need to be ashamed of his ears, Mrs. Doctor, dear.”
Anne’s convalescence was rapid and happy. Folks came and worshipped the baby, as people have bowed before the kingship of the new-born since long before the Wise Men of the East knelt in homage to the Royal Babe of the Bethlehem manger. Leslie, slowly finding herself amid the new conditions of her life, hovered over it, like a beautiful, golden-crowned Madonna. Miss Cornelia nursed it as knackily as could any mother in Israel. Captain Jim held the small creature in his big brown hands and gazed tenderly at it, with eyes that saw the children who had never been born to him.
“What are you going to call him?” asked Miss Cornelia.
“Anne has settled his name,” answered Gilbert.
“James Matthew — after the two finest gentlemen I’ve ever known — not even saving your presence,” said Anne with a saucy glance at Gilbert.
Gilbert smiled.
“I never knew Matthew very well; he was so shy we boys couldn’t get acquainted with h
im — but I quite agree with you that Captain Jim is one of the rarest and finest souls God ever clothed in clay. He is so delighted over the fact that we have given his name to our small lad. It seems he has no other namesake.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 127