Anne's House of Dreams - L. M. Montgomery [94]
‘Anyway, I hope when my time comes I’ll go quick and easy. I don’t think I’m a coward, Mistress Blythe – I’ve looked an ugly death in the face more than once without blenching. But the thought of a lingering death does give me a queer, sick feeling of horror.’
‘Don’t talk about leaving us, dear, dear Captain Jim,’ pleaded Anne, in a choked voice, patting the old brown hand, once so strong, but now grown very feeble. ‘What would we do without you?’
Captain Jim smiled beautifully.
‘Oh, you’d get along nicely – nicely – but you wouldn’t forget the old man altogether, Mistress Blythe – no, I don’t think you’ll ever quite forget him. The race of Joseph always remembers one another. But it’ll be a memory that won’t hurt – I like to think that my memory won’t hurt my friends – it’ll always be kind of pleasant to them, I hope and believe. It won’t be very long now before lost Margaret calls me, for the last time. I’ll be all ready to answer. I jest spoke of this because there’s a little favour I want to ask you. Here’s this poor old Matey of mine’ – Captain Jim reached out a hand and poked the big, warm, velvety, golden ball on the sofa. The First Mate uncoiled himself like a spring with a nice, throaty, comfortable sound, half purr, half meow, stretched his paws in air, turned over and coiled himself up again. ‘He’ll miss me when I start on the Long V’yage. I can’t bear to think of leaving the poor critter to starve, like he was left before. If anything happens to me will you give Matey a bite and a corner, Mistress Blythe?’
‘Indeed I will.’
‘Then that is all I had on my mind. Your little Jem is to have the few curious things I picked up – I’ve seen to that. And now I don’t like to see tears in those pretty eyes, Mistress Blythe. I’ll mebbe hang on for quite a spell yet. I heard you reading a piece of poetry one day last winter – one of Tennyson’s pieces. I’d sorter like to hear it again, if you could recite it for me.’
Softly and clearly, while the sea-wind blew in on them, Anne repeated the beautiful lines of Tennyson’s wonderful swan song – ‘Crossing the Bar’. The old captain kept time gently with his sinewy hand.
‘Yes, yes, Mistress Blythe,’ he said, when she had finished, ‘that’s it, that’s it. He wasn’t a sailor, you tell me – I dunno how he could have put an old sailor’s feelings into words like that, if he wasn’t one. He didn’t want any “sadness o’ farewells” and neither do I, Mistress Blythe – for all will be well with me and mine beyant the bar.’
36
BEAUTY FOR ASHES
‘Any news from Green Gables, Anne?’
‘Nothing very especial,’ replied Anne, folding up Marilla’s letter. ‘Jake Donnell has been there shingling the roof. He is a full-fledged carpenter now, so it seems he has had his own way in regard to the choice of a life-work. You remember his mother wanted him to be a college professor. I shall never forget the day she came to the school and rated me for failing to call him St Clair.’
‘Does anyone ever call him that now?’
‘Evidently not. It seems that he has completely lived it down. Even his mother has succumbed. I always thought that a boy with Jake’s chin and mouth would get his own way in the end. Diana writes me that Dora has a beau. Just think of it – that child!’
‘Dora is seventeen,’ said Gilbert. ‘Charlie Sloane and I were both mad about you when you were seventeen, Anne.’
‘Really, Gilbert, we must be getting on in years,’ said Anne with a half-rueful smile, ‘when children who were six when we thought ourselves grown up are old enough now to have beaux. Dora’s is Ralph Andrews – Jane’s brother. I remember him as a little, round, fat, white-headed fellow who was always at the foot of his class. But I understand he is quite a fine-looking young man now.’
‘Dora will probably marry young. She’s of the same type as Charlotta the Fourth – she’ll never miss her first chance for fear she might not get another.’
‘Well, if she marries Ralph I hope he will be a little more up-and-coming than his brother Billy,’ mused Anne.
‘For instance,’ said