Anne's House of Dreams - L. M. Montgomery [59]
‘No, but I couldn’t understand you, Leslie. One moment you drew me to you – the next you pushed me back.’
‘I was very unhappy that evening. I had had a hard day. Dick had been very – very hard to manage that day. Generally he is quite good-natured and easily controlled, you know, Anne. But some days he is very different. I was so heartsick – I ran away to the shore as soon as he went to sleep. It was my only refuge. I sat there thinking of how my poor father had ended his life, and wondering if I wouldn’t be driven to it some day. Oh, my heart was full of black thoughts! And then you came dancing along the cove like a glad, light-hearted child. I – I hated you more then than I’ve ever done since. And yet I craved your friendship. The one feeling swayed me one moment, the other feeling the next. When I got home that night I cried for shame of what you must think of me. But it’s always been just the same when I came over here. Sometimes I’d be happy and enjoy my visit. And at other times that hideous feeling would mar it all. There were times when everything about you and your house hurt me. You had so many dear little things I couldn’t have. Do you know – it’s ridiculous – but I had an especial spite at those china dogs of yours. There were times when I wanted to catch up Gog and Magog and bang their pert black noses together! Oh, you smile, Anne – but it was never funny to me. I would come here and see you and Gilbert with your books and your flowers, and your household gods, and your little family jokes – and your love for each other showing in every look and word, even when you didn’t know it – and I would go home to – you know what I went home to! Oh, Anne, I don’t believe I’m jealous and envious by nature. When I was a girl I lacked many things my schoolmates had, but I never cared – I never disliked them for it. But I seem to have grown so hateful –’
‘Leslie, dearest, stop blaming yourself. You are not hateful or jealous or envious. The life you have to live has warped you a little, perhaps – but it would have ruined a nature less fine and noble than yours. I’m letting you tell me all this because I believe it’s better for you to talk it out and rid your soul of it. But don’t blame yourself any more.’
‘Well, I won’t. I just wanted you to know me as I am. That time you told me of your darling hope for the spring was the worst of all, Anne. I shall never forgive myself for the way I behaved then. I repented it with tears. And I did put many a tender and loving thought of you into the little dress I made. But I might have known that anything I made could only be a shroud in the end.’
‘Now, Leslie, that is bitter and morbid – put such thoughts away. I was so glad when you brought the little dress; and since I had to lose little Joyce I like to think that the dress she wore was the one you made for her when you let yourself love me.’
‘Anne, do you know, I believe I shall always love you after this. I don’t think I’ll ever feel that dreadful way about you again. Talking it all out seems to have done away with it, somehow. It’s very strange – and I thought it so real and bitter. It’s like opening the door of a dark room to show some hideous creature you’ve believed to be there – and when the light streams in your monster turns out to have been just a shadow, vanishing when the light comes. It will never come between us again.’
‘No, we are real friends now, Leslie, and I am very glad.’
‘I hope you won’t misunderstand me if I say something else. Anne, I was grieved to the core of my heart when you lost your baby; and if I could have saved her for you by cutting off one of my hands I would have done it. But your sorrow has brought us closer together.