Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the twenty-fifth chapter of Anne's House of Dreams.
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Today we'll be continuing Anne's House of Dreams by Lucy Maude Montgomery.
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Chapter 25 The Writing of the Book owen Ford came over to the little house the next morning in a state of great excitement.
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Mistress Blithe, this is a wonderful book, absolutely wonderful.
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If I could take it and use the material for a book, I feel certain I could make the novel of the year out of it.
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Do you suppose Captain Jim would let me do it?
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Let you?
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I'm sure he would be delighted, cried Anne.
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I admit that it was what was in my head when I took you down last night.
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Captain Jim has always been wishing he could get somebody to write his lifebook properly for him.
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Will you go down to the point with me this evening, Mrs.
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Blythe?
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I'll ask him about that life book myself, but I want you to tell him that you told me the story of Lost Margaret, and ask him if he will let me use it as a threat of romance with which to weave the stories of the lifebook into a harmonious hole.
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Captain Jim was more excited than ever when Owen Ford told him of his plan at last.
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His cherished dream was to be realized and his life book given to the world.
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He was also pleased that the story of Lost Margaret should be woven into it.
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It will keep her name from being forgotten, he said wistfully.
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That's why I want to put it in.
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We'll collaborate, cried Owen.
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Delightedly.
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You will give the soul and thy the body.
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Oh, we'll write a famous book between us, Captain Jim, and we'll get right to work.
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And to think.
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My book is to be written by the schoolmaster's grandson, exclaimed Captain Jim.
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Lad, your grandfather was my dearest friend.
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I thought there was nobody like him.
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I've seen now why I had to wait so long.
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It couldn't be writ till the right man come.
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You belong here.
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You've got the soul of this old north shore in you.
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You're the only one who could ride it.
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It was arranged that the tiny room off the living room with a lighthouse should be given over to Owen for a workshop.
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It was necessary that Captain Jim should be near him, as he wrote for consultation upon many matters of seafaring and Gulf lore, of which Owen was quite ignorant.
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He began work on the book the very next morning and flung himself into it, heart and soul.
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As for Captain Jim, he was a happy man.
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That summer he looked upon the little room where Owen worked as a sacred shrine.
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Owen talked everything over with Captain Jim, but he would not let him see the manuscript.
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You must wait until it is published, he said.
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Then you'll get it all at once in its best shape.
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He dealt into the treasures of the life book and used them freely.
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He dreamed and brooded over lost Margaret until she became a vivid reality to him and lived in his pages.
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As the book progressed, it took possession of him, and he worked at it with feverish eagerness.
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He let Anne and Leslie read the manuscript and criticize it.
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And the concluding chapter of the book, which the critics later on were pleased to call idealik, was modeled upon a suggestion of Leslie's.
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Anne fairly hugged herself with delight over the success of her idea.
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I knew when I looked at Owen Ford that he was the very man for it, she told Gilbert.
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Both humor and passion were in his face, and that, together with the art of expression, was just what was necessary for the writing of such a book.
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And Mrs.
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Rachel would say he was predestined for the part Owen Ford wrote in the mornings.
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The afternoons were generally spent in some merry outing with the blives.
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Leslie often went too, for Captain Jim took charge of D*** frequently in order to set her free.
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They went boating on the harbor and up the three pretty rivers that flowed into it.
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They had clam bakes on the bar and mussel bakes on the rocks.
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They picked strawberries on the sand dunes.
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They went out cod fishing with Captain Jim.
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They shot clover in the shore fields and wild ducks in the COVID at.
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Least the men did.
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In the evenings, they rambled in the low lying, daisied shore fields under a golden moon.
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Or they sat in the living room with a little house where often the coolness of the sea breeze justified a driftwood fire and talked of the thousand in one things which happy, eager, clever young people can find to talk about.
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Ever since the day on which she had made her confession to Anne, leslie had been a changed creature.
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There was no trace of her old coldness and reserve no shadow of her old bitterness.
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The girlhood of which she had been cheated seemed to come back to her with the ripeness of womanhood.
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She expanded like a flower of flame and perfume.
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No laugh was readier than hers, no wit quicker in the twilight circles of that enchanted summer when she could not be with them all felt that some exquisite savor was lacking in their intercourse.
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Her beauty was illumined by the awakened soul within, as some rosy lamp might shine through a flawless vase of alabaster.
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There were hours when Anne's eyes seemed to ache with the splendor of her.
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As for Owen Ford, the Margaret of his book, although she had the soft brown hair and elfin face of the real girl who had vanished so long ago, pillowed, where Lost Atlantis Sleeps had the personality of Leslie Moore as it was revealed to him in those halcyon.
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Days at Fourwinth Harbor.
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All in all, it was a never to be forgotten summer.
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One of those summers which come seldom into any life but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going.
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One of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doings, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world too good to last.
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Anne told herself with a little sigh on the September day when a certain nip in the wind and a certain shade of intense blue on the gulf water said that autumn was hard.
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By that evening, Owen Ford told them that he had finished his book and that his vacation must come to an end.
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I have a good deal to do to it yet.
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Revising and pruning and so forth, he said, but in the main it's done.
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I wrote the last sentence this morning.
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If I can find a publisher for it, it will probably be out next summer or fall.
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Owen had not much doubt that he would find a publisher.
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He knew that he had written a great book, a book that would score a wonderful success, a book that would live.
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He knew that it would bring him both fame and fortune.
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But when he had written the last line of it, he had bowed his head on the manuscript and so sat for a long time and his thoughts were not of the good work he had done.
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Thank you for joining Bite at Time Books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.
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Again, my name is Brie Carlyle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Anne's House of Dreams.
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You can check out the show notes or our website byteedimebooks.com for the rest of the links for our show.
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Thank you.
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Take a look and look and let's see what we can find.
