Study in Lavender
"...now go right to bed and have a good sleep." Anne's House of Dreams, Ch. 36.
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It was Anne who went out and shut the door, but Leslie did not feel it was herself who rose and somewhat mechanically began to obey. The dream-like feeling from the hospital; the sense that it Could Not Be that she had found waiting for her in the old grey house among the willows; they had returned. This was a dream, not the dreams which must not be dreamed wakingly, but the one from which she would wake, to find herself back. Back in the cage.
Anne's guest room sheets were soft, and smelled of lavender and seagrass. Leslie smoothed the blankets over her legs and shifted the pillows behind herself, that she might sit up to continue to stare out into the moonlight. The harbour shimmered softly to the bar; homelights flickered along the shore through the wreathing mists; the night a paean to peace. Leslie saw it, and did not see it. The days of that happy summer passed before her: Anne's unbarred friendship, Gilbert's comradely laughter, Owen's–
All those days haunted the night. But beside them, among them, stalked the others. In a narrow gap through the spruce, Leslie could see the white waves breaking into foam on the rock shore. There, they had picnicked. From there, they had rowed. From there, she had rowed out that black night, to fight the demon of her unworthy love alone. There, she had watched the broken fury of the storm, and Anne had danced. There, she had walked alone with Carlo, waiting for a ship that had never returned, and again, struggling to bear the burden of the man who had returned. On that shore, the girl had paced, facing the truth that she must give up her ambition and her dreams, and marry Dick Moore. Along that shore, she had run, heart-stricken, to find Dick when she had heard the tale of the girl at the fishing village. Dick had stood there, on the rocks, and laughed, a harsh, scornful laugh that had made his face as black and ugly as his soul. "What did you take me for, girl?"
Kenneth, Father, Mother, Dick … the old ghosts pressed through the summer night, ran along the old paths of her life, slipped over the fields as Anne had done so often. As Anne had done that night coming up out of the twilight with Owen for the first time... Life had been so straight, so hard – it did not seem possible she was looking out to a bend in the road. A road where there would be joy, as well as sorrow. A road with–
Leslie pushed back the covers, slipped down onto the floor beside the bed and buried her head in her hands. It was too much, too much – how often had she said that? To Carlo? To the pounding waves? To the One to whom she had grumbled and railed and gone unwavering on her allotted path before?
The rag rug beneath her knees was warm and firm. Leslie put down her hand and felt the braided ridges. It was one of Anne's wedding gifts, one of Miss Cuthbert's rugs. Miss Cuthbert, whose stiff comments and blue eyes held such a hidden wealth of love. And there was love in the rug, too. The love and continuity passed down with the skills and the cloth of the generations of women before. Mothers, sisters, daughters – all those who had made something endurable, sustainable, beautiful, out of the turns and ways their womanhood had taken them. Leslie lifted her face and looked out, out at the great star of the lighthouse and the infinite heavens beyond, and found her heart could say what her mind did not have words for.