Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the ninth chapter of Anne's House of Dreams.

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Wherever you listen to podcasts today, we'll be continuing anne's House of Dreams by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Chapter Nine an Evening at Four Winds Point.

It was late September when Anne and Gilbert were able to pay Four Winds light their promised visit.

They had often plans to go, but something always occurred to prevent them.

Captain Jim had dropped in several times at the little house.

I don't stand on ceremony.

Mistress Blithe.

He told Anne.

It's a real pleasure to me to come here, and I'm not going to.

Deny myself just because you haven't got.

Down to see me.

There oughtn't to be no bargaining like that among the race that knows Joseph.

I'll come when I can, and you come when you can.

And so long as we have our.

Pleasant little chat, it don't matter a mind what roof's over us.

Captain Jim took a great fancy to GOG and mugog who were presiding over the destinies of the hearth in the little house with as much dignity and aplomb as they had done at Patty's place.

Aren't they the cutest little cusses?

He would say, delightedly.

And he bade them greeting and farewell as gravely and invariably as he did his host and hostess.

Captain Jim was not going to offend.

Household deities by any lack of reverence and ceremony.

Eve made this little house just about.

Perfect, he told Anne.

It never was so nice before.

Mistress Selwyn had your taste and cheated wonders, but folks in those days didn't have the pretty little curtains and pictures and knickknacks you have.

As for Elizabeth, she lived in the past.

You've kind of brought the future into.

It, so to speak.

I'd be real happy even if we couldn't talk at all when I come here just to sit and look at you in your pictures and your flowers would be enough of a treat.

It's beautiful.

Beautiful.

Captain Jim was a passionate worshipper of beauty.

Every lovely thing heard or seen gave him a deep, subtle inner joy that irradiated his life.

He was quite keenly aware of his own lack of outward comeliness and lamented it.

Folks say I'm good, he remarked whimsically upon one occasion, but I sometimes wish.

The Lord had made me only half as good and put the rest of it into looks.

But there, I reckon he knew what he was about.

As a good captain should.

Some of us have to be homely, or the purty ones like Mistress Blythe here wouldn't show up so well.

One evening, Anne and Gilbert finally walked down to the Forewind's light.

The day had begun, somberly and grey, cloud and mist, but it had ended in a pump of scarlet and gold.

Over the western hills beyond the harbor were amber deeps and crystalline shadows with the fire of sunset.

Below the north was a mackerel sky of little fiery golden clouds.

The red light flamed on the white sails of a vessel gliding down the Channel, bound to a southern port in a land of palms.

Beyond her it smote upon an incarndine to the shining white grassless faces of the sand dunes to the right.

It fell on the old house among the willows of the brook and gave it for a fleeting space casements more splendid than those of an old cathedral.

They glowed out of its quiet and grainus like the throbbing bloodbread thoughts of a vivid soul imprisoned in a dull husk of environment.

That old house up the brook always seems so lonely, said Anne.

I never see visitors there.

Of course.

Its lane opens on the upper road, but I don't think there's much coming and going.

It seems odd.

We've never met the moors yet when they live within 15 minutes walk of us.

I may have seen them in church, of course, but if so, I didn't know them.

I'm sorry they're so unsociable when they are only near neighbors.

Evidently they don't belong to the race that knows.

Joseph, laughed Gilbert.

Have you ever found out who that girl was whom you thought so beautiful?

No.

Somehow I've never remembered to ask about her.

But I've never seen her anywhere, so I suppose she must have been a stranger.

Oh, the sun has just vanished.

And there's the light.

As the dusk deepened, the great beacon cut swaths of light through it, sweeping in a circle over the fields and the harbor, the sandbar and the gulf.

I feel as if it might catch me and whisk me leagues out to sea, said Anne, as one drenched them with radiance.

And she felt rather relieved when they got so near the point that they were inside the range of those dazzling recurrent flashes as they turned into the little lane that led across the fields to the point they met a man coming out of it.

A man of such extraordinary appearance that for a moment they both frankly stared.

He was a decidedly fine looking person tall, broad shoulders, well featured, with a Roman nose and frank gray eyes.

He was dressed in a prosperous farmer Sunday best in so far.

He might have been any inhabitant of four winds or the glen.

But flowing over his breast, nearly to his knees, was a river of crinkly brown beard.

And down his back, beneath his commonplace felt hat was a corresponding cascade of thick, wavy brown hair.

Anne, murmured Gilbert when they were out of ear shot, you didn't put what.

Uncle Dave calls a little of the Scott act in that lemonade you gave me just before we left home, did you?

No, I didn't, said Anne, stifling her laughter lest the retreating enigma should hear her.

Who in the world can he be?

I don't know, but if Captain Jim keeps apparitions like that down at this point I'm going to carry cold iron in my pocket when I come here.

He wasn't a sailor, or one might pardon his eccentricity of appearance.

He must belong to the Overharbor clans.

Uncle Dave says they have several freaks over there.

Uncle Dave is a little prejudiced, I think.

You know, all over harbor, people who come to the Glenn Church seem very nice.

Oh, Gilbert, isn't this beautiful?

The Forewind's light was built on a spur of red sandstone cliff jutting out into the gulf.

On one side, across the channel stretched the silvery sand shore of the Bar.

On the other extended a long curving beach of red cliffs rising steeply from the Pebbled coves.

It was a shore that knew the.

Magic and mystery of storm and star.

There's a great solitude about such a shore.

The woods are never solitary.

They are full of whispering, beckoning, friendly life.

But the sea is a mighty soul forever moaning of some great unsharable sorrow which shuts it up into itself for all eternity.

We can never pierce its infinite mystery.

We may only wander awed and spellbound on the outer fringe of it.

The woods call to us with a hundred voices.

But the sea has one only a mighty voice that drowns our souls and its majestic music.

The woods are human, but the sea is of the company of the Ark angels.

Anne and Gilbert found Uncle Jim sitting on a bench outside the lighthouse, putting the finishing touches to a wonderful full rigged toy schooner.

He rose and welcomed them to his abode with a gentle, unconscious courtesy that became him so well.

This has been a pretty nice day all through, Mistress Blithe.

And now, right at the last, it's brought its best.

Would you like to sit down here.

Outside a bit while the light lasts?

I've just finished this bit of a.

Plaything for my little grand nephew Joe up at the Glen after I promised to make it for him.

I was kind of sorry for his mother was vexed.

She's afraid he'll be wanting to go to sea later on, and she don't want the notion encouraged in him.

But what can I do, Mistress Blythe?

I'd promised him, and I think it's.

Sort of real dastardly to break a.

Promise you make to a child.

Come, sit down.

It won't take long to stay an hour.

The wind was offshore and only broke the sea's surface into long silvery ripples and sent sheeny shadows flying out across it from every point and headland like transparent wings.

A dusk was hanging a curtain of violet gloom over the sand dunes and the headlands where gulls were huddling.

The sky was faintly filmed over with scarves of silken vapor.

Cloud fleets rode at anchor along the horizons.

An evening star was watching over the bar.

Isn't that of you worth looking at?

Said Captain Jim with a loving, proprietary pride.

Nice and far from the marketplace, ain't it?

No buying and selling and getting gain.

You don't have to pay anything.

All that sea and sky free without money and without price.

There's going to be a moonrise pretty soon, too.

I'm never tired of finding out what a moonrise can be.

Over them rocks and sea and harbor.

There's a surprise in it every time.

They had their moonrise and watched its marvel and magic and a silence that asked nothing of the world or each other.

Then they went up into the tower, and Captain Jim showed and explained the mechanism of the great light.

Finally they found themselves in the dining room, where a fire of driftwood was weaving flames of wavering, elusive seaborne hues in the open fireplace.

I put this fireplace in myself, remarked Captain Jim.

The government don't give lighthouse keepers such luxuries.

Look at the colors that wood makes.

If you'd like some driftwood for your fire, Mistress Blythe, I'll bring you up a load someday.

Sit down.

I'm going to make you a cup of tea.

Captain Jim placed a chair for Anne, having first removed there from a huge orange colored cat in the newspaper.

Get down, lady.

The sofa is your place.

I must put this paper way safe until I can find time to finish the story in it.

It's called a mad love.

T isn't my favorite brand of fiction, but I'm reading it just to see how long she can spin it out.

It's at the 62nd chapter now, and the wedding ain't any nearer than when it begun, far as I can see, when little Joe comes to have read him pirate yarns.

Ain't it strange how innocent little creatures like children, like the bloodthirstiest stories?

Like my lad Davy at home, said Anne.

He wants tales that wreak with gore.

Captain Jim's tea proved to be nectar.

He was pleased as a child with Anne's compliments, but he affected a fine indifference.

The secret is I don't skimp the cream, he remarked.

Airily Captain jim had never heard of Oliver Wendell holmes, but he evidently agreed.

With that writer's dictum.

That big heart never liked little cream pot.

We met an odd looking personage coming.

Out of your lane, said Gilbert as they sipped.

Who was he?

Captain Jim grinned.

That's Marshall Elliott, a mighty fine man with just one streak of foolishness in him.

I suppose you wondered what his object was in turning himself into a sort of dime museum freak.

Is he a modern nazareite or a hebrew prophet left over from olden times?

Asked Anne.

Neither of them.

It's politics, as at the bottom of his freak.

All those Elliots and Crawfords and McAllisters are dyed in the wool politicians.

They're born Grit or tory, as the case may be, and they live grit or tory, and they die grit or tory, and what they're going to do in heaven where there's probably no politics is more than I can fathom.

This Marshall Elliot was born a Grit.

I'm a grit myself in moderation, but there's no moderation about Marshall.

15 years ago, there was a specially bitter general election.

Marshall fought for his party tooth and nail.

He was dead sure the liberals would win, so sure that he got up at a public meeting and vowed that he wouldn't shave his face or cut his hair until the grits were in power.

Well, they didn't go in, and they've never got in yet.

And you saw the result today for yourselves.

Marshall stuck to his word.

What does his wife think of it?

Asked Anne.

He's a bachelor, but if he had a wife, I reckon she couldn't make him break that vow.

That family of Elliot's has always been more stubborn than natteral.

Marshall's brother Alexander had a dog he set great store by, and when it died, the man actually wanted to have it buried in the graveyard along with the other christians.

He said.

Of course, he wasn't allowed to, so he buried it just outside the graveyard fence and never darkened the church door again.

But sundays he'd drive his family to church and sit by that dog's grave and read his bible.

All the time service was going on.

They said.

When he was dying, he asked his wife to bury him beside the dog.

She was a meek little soul, but she fired up at that.

She said she wasn't going to be buried beside no dog, and if he'd rather have his last rest in place beside the dog than beside her, just to say so.

Alexander Elliott was a stubborn mule but he was fond of his wife so he gave in and said well, darn it, bury me where you please but when Gabriel's trump blows I expect my dog to rise with the rest of us.

For he had as much soul as any dirt.

Elliot or Crawford or McAllister that ever strutted them was his parting words.

As for Marshall, we're all used to him, but he must strike strangers as right down peculiar looking.

I've known him ever since he was ten.

He's about 50 now, and I like him.

Him and me was out cod fishing today.

That's about all I'm good for now.

Catching trout and cod occasionally, but twin't always so.

Not by no matter of means.

I used to do other things, as you'd admit, if you saw my life book.

Anne was just going to ask what his life book was when the first.

Mate created a diversion by springing upon Captain Jim's knee.

He was a gorgeous beastie with a face as round as a full moon, vivid green eyes and immense white double paws.

Captain Jim stroked his velvet back gently.

Never fancied cats much till I found the first mate, he remarked to the.

Accompaniment of the mate's tremendous purse.

Saved his life.

And when you've saved a creature's life, you're bound to love it.

It's next thing to give in life.

There's some terrible thoughtless people in the world, Mistress Live, some of them city folks who have summer homes over the harbor are so thoughtless that they're cruel.

It's the worst kind of cruelty.

A thoughtless kind.

You can't cope with it.

They keep cats there in the summer and feed them and pet them and doll them up with ribbons and collars.

And then in the fall they go off and leave them to starve or freeze.

It makes my blood boil.

Mistress Blithe, one day last winter, I found a poor old mother cat dead on the shore, lying against the skin and bone bodies of her three little kittens.

She died trying to shelter them.

She had her poor stiff paws around them.

Master, I cried.

Then I swore, then I carried them poor little kittens home and fed him and found good homes for them.

I knew the woman who left the cat, and when she came back this summer, I just went over the harbor and told her my opinion of her.

It was rank Medaline, but I do love Medaline and a good cause.

How did she take it?

Asked Gilbert.

Cried and cried.

She didn't think.

I says to her, says I.

Do you suppose that'll be held for a good excuse in the day of Judgment when you'll have to account for that poor old mother's life?

The Lord will ask you what he give you your brains for if it wasn't to think, I reckon I don't fancy she'll leave cats to starve another time.

Let's the first mate, one of the forsaken, asked Anne, making advances to him which were responded to graciously if condescendingly.

Yes, I found him one bitter day in cold winter, caught in the branches of a tree by his darn full ribbon collar.

He was almost starving.

If you could have seen his eyes, Mistress Blithe.

He was nothing but a kitten.

And he'd got his livin somehow since he'd been left until he got hung up when I loosed him he gave my hand a pitiful swipe with his red little tongue.

He wasn't the able seaman you see now.

He was Mika's Moses.

That was nine years ago.

His life has been long in the land for a cat.

He's a good old pal, the first mate is.

I should have expected you to have.

A dog, said Gilbert.

Captain Jim shook his head.

I had a dog once.

I thought so much of him that when he died I couldn't bear the thought of getting another in his place.

He was a friend, you understand, mistressplied.

Mady's only a pal.

I'm fond of Mady.

All the fond are on account of the spice of devilment that's in him like there is in all cats.

But I loved my dog.

I've had a sneaking sympathy for Alexander Elliot about his dog.

There isn't a devil in a good dog.

That's why they're more lovable than cats, I reckon.

But I'm darned if there is interest in here.

I am talking too much.

Why don't you check me when I do get a chance to talk to anyone?

I run on terrible.

If you've done your tea, I have a few things you might like to look at.

Pick them up in the queer corners I used to be poking my nose into.

Captain Jim's few Little Things turned out to be a most interesting collection of curious, hideous, quaint and beautiful.

And almost everyone had some striking story attached to it.

Anne never forgot the delight with which she listened to those old tales that moonlit evening by that enchanted driftwood fire while the silver sea called to them through the open window and sobbed against the rocks below them.

Captain Jim never said a boastful word.

But it was impossible to help sing.

What a hero the man had been.

Brave, true, resourceful, unselfish.

He sat there in his little room and made those things live again for his hearers.

By a lift of the eyebrow, a twist of the lip, a gesture, a word, he painted a whole scene or character so that they saw it as it was.

Some of Captain Jim's adventures had such a marvellous edge that Anne and Gilbert secretly wondered if he were not drawing a rather long bow at their credulous expense.

But in this, as they found later.

They did him injustice.

His tales were all literally true.

Captain Jim had the gift of the born storyteller, whereby unhappy, far off things can be brought vividly before the hearer in all their pristine poignancy.

Anne and Gilbert laughed and shivered over his tails.

And once Anne found herself crying, captain Jim surveyed her tears with pleasure shining from his face.

I'd like to see folks cry that way, he remarked.

It's a compliment, but I can't do justice to the things I've seen or helped to do.

I've all jotted down in my life book, but I haven't got the knack of writing them out properly.

If I could hit on just the right words and string them together proper on paper.

I could make a great book.

It would beat a mad love hauler, and I believe Joe would like it as well as the pirate yarns.

Yes, I've had some adventures in my time.

And do you know, Mistress Blythe, I still lust after him.

Yes, old and useless as I be, there's an awful longing sleeps over me at times.

To sail out, out out there forever and ever.

Like Ulysses.

You would sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars until you die, said Anne dreamily.

Ulysses.

I've read of him.

Yes, that's just how I feel.

Just how all us old sailors feel.

I reckon I'll die on land after all, I suppose.

Well, what is to be will be.

There was old William Ford at the Glenn who never went on the water in his life because he was afraid of being drowned.

A fortune teller had predicted he would be.

And one day he fainted and fell with his face in the barn trough and was drowned.

Must you go?

Well, come soon and come often.

The doctor's to do the talking next time.

He knows a heap of things I want to find out.

I'm sort of lonesome here by times.

It's been worse since Elizabeth Russell died, her and me with such cronies.

Captain Jim spoke with the pathos of the aged who see their old friends slipping from them one by one.

Friends whose place can never be quite filled by those of a younger generation.

Even of the rates that knows Joseph.

Anne and Gilbert promise to come soon and often.

He is a rare old fellow, isn't he?

Said Gilbert as they walked home.

Somehow I can't reconcile his simple, kindly personality with the wild, adventurous life he has lived, mused Anne.

You wouldn't find it so hard if you'd seen him.

The other day, down at the fishing village, one of the men of Peter Godyer's boat made a nasty remark about some girl along the shore.

Captain Jim fairly scorched the wretch fellow with the lightning of his eyes.

He seemed a man transformed.

He didn't have to say much, but the way he said it, you'd have thought it would strip the flesh from the fellow's bones.

I understand that Captain Jim will never allow a word against any woman to be said in his presence.

I wonder why he never married, said Anne.

He should have sons with their ships at sea now and grandchildren climbing over him to hear his stories.

He's that kind of a man.

Instead, he has nothing but a magnificent cat.

That Anne was mistaken.

Captain Jim had more than that.

He had a memory.

Thank you for joining Bite at a Time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Anne's house of Dreams don't forget to sign up for our newsletter@biteattitimebooks.com.

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