XXVII
An Afternoon at the Stone House
"Where are you going, all dressed up, Anne?" Davy wanted to know. "Youlook bully in that dress."
Anne had come down to dinner in a new dress of pale green muslin . . .the first color she had worn since Matthew's death. It became herperfectly, bringing out all the delicate, flower-like tints of her faceand the gloss and burnish of her hair.
"Davy, how many times have I told you that you mustn't use that word,"she rebuked. "I'm going to Echo Lodge."
"Take me with you," entreated Davy.
"I would if I were driving. But I'm going to walk and it's too far foryour eight-year-old legs. Besides, Paul is going with me and I fear youdon't enjoy yourself in his company."
"Oh, I like Paul lots better'n I did," said Davy, beginning to makefearful inroads into his pudding. "Since I've got pretty good myself Idon't mind his being gooder so much. If I can keep on I'll catch up withhim some day, both in legs and goodness. 'Sides, Paul's real nice tous second primer boys in school. He won't let the other big boys meddlewith us and he shows us lots of games."
"How came Paul to fall into the brook at noon hour yesterday?" askedAnne. "I met him on the playground, such a dripping figure that I senthim promptly home for clothes without waiting to find out what hadhappened."
"Well, it was partly a zacksident," explained Davy. "He stuck his headin on purpose but the rest of him fell in zacksidentally. We was alldown at the brook and Prillie Rogerson got mad at Paul about something. . . she's awful mean and horrid anyway, if she IS pretty . . . and saidthat his grandmother put his hair up in curl rags every night. Paulwouldn't have minded what she said, I guess, but Gracie Andrews laughed,and Paul got awful red, 'cause Gracie's his girl, you know. He's CLEANGONE on her . . . brings her flowers and carries her books as far as theshore road. He got as red as a beet and said his grandmother didn't doany such thing and his hair was born curly. And then he laid down onthe bank and stuck his head right into the spring to show them. Oh,it wasn't the spring we drink out of . . ." seeing a horrified look onMarilla's face . . . "it was the little one lower down. But the bank'sawful slippy and Paul went right in. I tell you he made a bully splash.Oh, Anne, Anne, I didn't mean to say that . . . it just slipped out beforeI thought. He made a SPLENDID splash. But he looked so funny when hecrawled out, all wet and muddy. The girls laughed more'n ever, butGracie didn't laugh. She looked sorry. Gracie's a nice girl but she'sgot a snub nose. When I get big enough to have a girl I won't have onewith a snub nose . . . I'll pick one with a pretty nose like yours, Anne."
"A boy who makes such a mess of syrup all over his face when he iseating his pudding will never get a girl to look at him," said Marillaseverely.
"But I'll wash my face before I go courting," protested Davy, trying toimprove matters by rubbing the back of his hand over the smears. "AndI'll wash behind my ears too, without being told. I remembered to thismorning, Marilla. I don't forget half as often as I did. But . . ." andDavy sighed . . . "there's so many corners about a fellow that it's awfulhard to remember them all. Well, if I can't go to Miss Lavendar's I'llgo over and see Mrs. Harrison. Mrs. Harrison's an awful nice woman, Itell you. She keeps a jar of cookies in her pantry a-purpose for littleboys, and she always gives me the scrapings out of a pan she's mixedup a plum cake in. A good many plums stick to the sides, you see. Mr.Harrison was always a nice man, but he's twice as nice since he gotmarried over again. I guess getting married makes folks nicer. Why don'tYOU get married, Marilla? I want to know."
Marilla's state of single blessedness had never been a sore point withher, so she answered amiably, with an exchange of significant looks withAnne, that she supposed it was because nobody would have her.
"But maybe you never asked anybody to have you," protested Davy.
"Oh, Davy," said Dora primly, shocked into speaking without being spokento, "it's the MEN that have to do the asking."
"I don't know why they have to do it ALWAYS," grumbled Davy. "Seemsto me everything's put on the men in this world. Can I have some morepudding, Marilla?"
"You've had as much as was good for you," said Marilla; but she gave hima moderate second helping.
"I wish people could live on pudding. Why can't they, Marilla? I want toknow."
"Because they'd soon get tired of it."
"I'd like to try that for myself," said skeptical Davy. "But I guessit's better to have pudding only on fish and company days than none atall. They never have any at Milty Boulter's. Milty says when companycomes his mother gives them cheese and cuts it herself . . . one littlebit apiece and one over for manners."
"If Milty Boulter talks like that about his mother at least you needn'trepeat it," said Marilla severely.
"Bless my soul," . . . Davy had picked this expression up from Mr.Harrison and used it with great gusto . . . "Milty meant it as acompelment. He's awful proud of his mother, cause folks say she couldscratch a living on a rock."
"I . . . I suppose them pesky hens are in my pansy bed again," saidMarilla, rising and going out hurriedly.
The slandered hens were nowhere near the pansy bed and Marilla did noteven glance at it. Instead, she sat down on the cellar hatch and laugheduntil she was ashamed of herself.
When Anne and Paul reached the stone house that afternoon they foundMiss Lavendar and Charlotta the Fourth in the garden, weeding, raking,clipping, and trimming as if for dear life. Miss Lavendar herself, allgay and sweet in the frills and laces she loved, dropped her shearsand ran joyously to meet her guests, while Charlotta the Fourth grinnedcheerfully.
"Welcome, Anne. I thought you'd come today. You belong to the afternoonso it brought you. Things that belong together are sure to cometogether. What a lot of trouble that would save some people if they onlyknew it. But they don't . . . and so they waste beautiful energy movingheaven and earth to bring things together that DON'T belong. And you,Paul . . . why, you've grown! You're half a head taller than when you werehere before."
"Yes, I've begun to grow like pigweed in the night, as Mrs. Lyndesays," said Paul, in frank delight over the fact. "Grandma says it's theporridge taking effect at last. Perhaps it is. Goodness knows . . ." Paulsighed deeply . . . "I've eaten enough to make anyone grow. I do hope,now that I've begun, I'll keep on till I'm as tall as father. He is sixfeet, you know, Miss Lavendar."
Yes, Miss Lavendar did know; the flush on her pretty cheeks deepeneda little; she took Paul's hand on one side and Anne's on the other andwalked to the house in silence.
"Is it a good day for the echoes, Miss Lavendar?" queried Paulanxiously. The day of his first visit had been too windy for echoes andPaul had been much disappointed.
"Yes, just the best kind of a day," answered Miss Lavendar, rousingherself from her reverie. "But first we are all going to have somethingto eat. I know you two folks didn't walk all the way back here throughthose beechwoods without getting hungry, and Charlotta the Fourth andI can eat any hour of the day . . . we have such obliging appetites. Sowe'll just make a raid on the pantry. Fortunately it's lovely andfull. I had a presentiment that I was going to have company today andCharlotta the Fourth and I prepared."
"I think you are one of the people who always have nice things intheir pantry," declared Paul. "Grandma's like that too. But she doesn'tapprove of snacks between meals. I wonder," he added meditatively, "if IOUGHT to eat them away from home when I know she doesn't approve."
"Oh, I don't think she would disapprove after you have had a long walk.That makes a difference," said Miss Lavendar, exchanging amused glanceswith Anne over Paul's brown curls. "I suppose that snacks ARE extremelyunwholesome. That is why we have them so often at Echo Lodge. We. . .Charlotta the Fourth and I . . . live in defiance of every known lawof diet. We eat all sorts of indigestible things whenever we happen tothink of it, by day or night; and we flourish like green bay trees.We are always intending to reform. When we read any article in a paperwarning us against something we like we cut it out and pin it up on thekitchen wall so that we'll
remember it. But we never can somehow . . .until after we've gone and eaten that very thing. Nothing has everkilled us yet; but Charlotta the Fourth has been known to have baddreams after we had eaten doughnuts and mince pie and fruit cake beforewe went to bed."
"Grandma lets me have a glass of milk and a slice of bread and butterbefore I go to bed; and on Sunday nights she puts jam on the bread,"said Paul. "So I'm always glad when it's Sunday night . . . for morereasons than one. Sunday is a very long day on the shore road. Grandmasays it's all too short for her and that father never found Sundaystiresome when he was a little boy. It wouldn't seem so long if I couldtalk to my rock people but I never do that because Grandma doesn'tapprove of it on Sundays. I think a good deal; but I'm afraid mythoughts are worldly. Grandma says we should never think anything butreligious thoughts on Sundays. But teacher here said once that everyreally beautiful thought was religious, no matter what it was about, orwhat day we thought it on. But I feel sure Grandma thinks that sermonsand Sunday School lessons are the only things you can think trulyreligious thoughts about. And when it comes to a difference of opinionbetween Grandma and teacher I don't know what to do. In my heart" . . .Paul laid his hand on his breast and raised very serious blue eyes toMiss Lavendar's immediately sympathetic face . . . "I agree with teacher.But then, you see, Grandma has brought father up HER way and made abrilliant success of him; and teacher has never brought anybody up yet,though she's helping with Davy and Dora. But you can't tell how they'llturn out till they ARE grown up. So sometimes I feel as if it might besafer to go by Grandma's opinions."
"I think it would," agreed Anne solemnly. "Anyway, I daresay that ifyour Grandma and I both got down to what we really do mean, under ourdifferent ways of expressing it, we'd find out we both meant much thesame thing. You'd better go by her way of expressing it, since it's beenthe result of experience. We'll have to wait until we see how the twinsdo turn out before we can be sure that my way is equally good." Afterlunch they went back to the garden, where Paul made the acquaintance ofthe echoes, to his wonder and delight, while Anne and Miss Lavendar saton the stone bench under the poplar and talked.
"So you are going away in the fall?" said Miss Lavendar wistfully. "Iought to be glad for your sake, Anne . . . but I'm horribly, selfishlysorry. I shall miss you so much. Oh, sometimes, I think it is of no useto make friends. They only go out of your life after awhile and leave ahurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came."
"That sounds like something Miss Eliza Andrews might say but never MissLavendar," said Anne. "NOTHING is worse than emptiness . . . and I'm notgoing out of your life. There are such things as letters and vacations.Dearest, I'm afraid you're looking a little pale and tired."
"Oh . . . hoo . . . hoo . . . hoo," went Paul on the dyke, where he hadbeen making noises diligently . . . not all of them melodious in themaking, but all coming back transmuted into the very gold and silver ofsound by the fairy alchemists over the river. Miss Lavendar made animpatient movement with her pretty hands.
"I'm just tired of everything . . . even of the echoes. There is nothingin my life but echoes . . . echoes of lost hopes and dreams and joys.They're beautiful and mocking. Oh Anne, it's horrid of me to talk likethis when I have company. It's just that I'm getting old and it doesn'tagree with me. I know I'll be fearfully cranky by the time I'm sixty.But perhaps all I need is a course of blue pills." At this momentCharlotta the Fourth, who had disappeared after lunch, returned, andannounced that the northeast corner of Mr. John Kimball's pasture wasred with early strawberries, and wouldn't Miss Shirley like to go andpick some.
"Early strawberries for tea!" exclaimed Miss Lavendar. "Oh, I'm not soold as I thought . . . and I don't need a single blue pill! Girls, whenyou come back with your strawberries we'll have tea out here under thesilver poplar. I'll have it all ready for you with home-grown cream."
Anne and Charlotta the Fourth accordingly betook themselves back to Mr.Kimball's pasture, a green remote place where the air was as soft asvelvet and fragrant as a bed of violets and golden as amber.
"Oh, isn't it sweet and fresh back here?" breathed Anne. "I just feel asif I were drinking in the sunshine."
"Yes, ma'am, so do I. That's just exactly how I feel too, ma'am," agreedCharlotta the Fourth, who would have said precisely the same thing ifAnne had remarked that she felt like a pelican of the wilderness. Alwaysafter Anne had visited Echo Lodge Charlotta the Fourth mounted to herlittle room over the kitchen and tried before her looking glass to speakand look and move like Anne. Charlotta could never flatter herselfthat she quite succeeded; but practice makes perfect, as Charlotta hadlearned at school, and she fondly hoped that in time she might catch thetrick of that dainty uplift of chin, that quick, starry outflashingof eyes, that fashion of walking as if you were a bough swaying in thewind. It seemed so easy when you watched Anne. Charlotta the Fourthadmired Anne wholeheartedly. It was not that she thought her so veryhandsome. Diana Barry's beauty of crimson cheek and black curls wasmuch more to Charlotta the Fourth's taste than Anne's moonshine charm ofluminous gray eyes and the pale, everchanging roses of her cheeks.
"But I'd rather look like you than be pretty," she told Anne sincerely.
Anne laughed, sipped the honey from the tribute, and cast away thesting. She was used to taking her compliments mixed. Public opinionnever agreed on Anne's looks. People who had heard her called handsomemet her and were disappointed. People who had heard her called plainsaw her and wondered where other people's eyes were. Anne herself wouldnever believe that she had any claim to beauty. When she looked in theglass all she saw was a little pale face with seven freckles on the nosethereof. Her mirror never revealed to her the elusive, ever-varying playof feeling that came and went over her features like a rosy illuminatingflame, or the charm of dream and laughter alternating in her big eyes.
While Anne was not beautiful in any strictly defined sense of the wordshe possessed a certain evasive charm and distinction of appearance thatleft beholders with a pleasurable sense of satisfaction in that softlyrounded girlhood of hers, with all its strongly felt potentialities.Those who knew Anne best felt, without realizing that they felt it, thather greatest attraction was the aura of possibility surrounding her. . .the power of future development that was in her. She seemed to walk inan atmosphere of things about to happen.
As they picked, Charlotta the Fourth confided to Anne her fearsregarding Miss Lavendar. The warm-hearted little handmaiden was honestlyworried over her adored mistress' condition.
"Miss Lavendar isn't well, Miss Shirley, ma'am. I'm sure she isn't,though she never complains. She hasn't seemed like herself this longwhile, ma'am . . . not since that day you and Paul were here togetherbefore. I feel sure she caught cold that night, ma'am. After you and himhad gone she went out and walked in the garden for long after dark withnothing but a little shawl on her. There was a lot of snow on the walksand I feel sure she got a chill, ma'am. Ever since then I've noticed heracting tired and lonesome like. She don't seem to take an interest inanything, ma'am. She never pretends company's coming, nor fixes up forit, nor nothing, ma'am. It's only when you come she seems to chirk up abit. And the worst sign of all, Miss Shirley, ma'am . . ." Charlotta theFourth lowered her voice as if she were about to tell some exceedinglyweird and awful symptom indeed . . . "is that she never gets cross nowwhen I breaks things. Why, Miss Shirley, ma'am, yesterday I brukher green and yaller bowl that's always stood on the bookcase. Hergrandmother brought it out from England and Miss Lavendar was awfulchoice of it. I was dusting it just as careful, Miss Shirley, ma'am, andit slipped out, so fashion, afore I could grab holt of it, and bruk intoabout forty millyun pieces. I tell you I was sorry and scared. I thoughtMiss Lavendar would scold me awful, ma'am; and I'd ruther she had thantake it the way she did. She just come in and hardly looked at it andsaid, 'It's no matter, Charlotta. Take up the pieces and throw themaway.' Just like that, Miss Shirley, ma'am . . . 'take up the pieces andthrow them away,' as if it wasn't her grandmother's bowl from England.Oh, sh
e isn't well and I feel awful bad about it. She's got nobody tolook after her but me."
Charlotta the Fourth's eyes brimmed up with tears. Anne patted thelittle brown paw holding the cracked pink cup sympathetically.
"I think Miss Lavendar needs a change, Charlotta. She stays here alonetoo much. Can't we induce her to go away for a little trip?"
Charlotta shook her head, with its rampant bows, disconsolately.
"I don't think so, Miss Shirley, ma'am. Miss Lavendar hates visiting.She's only got three relations she ever visits and she says she justgoes to see them as a family duty. Last time when she come home she saidshe wasn't going to visit for family duty no more. 'I've come home inlove with loneliness, Charlotta,' she says to me, 'and I never want tostray from my own vine and fig tree again. My relations try so hard tomake an old lady of me and it has a bad effect on me.' Just like that,Miss Shirley, ma'am. 'It has a very bad effect on me.' So I don't thinkit would do any good to coax her to go visiting."
"We must see what can be done," said Anne decidedly, as she put the lastpossible berry in her pink cup. "Just as soon as I have my vacation I'llcome through and spend a whole week with you. We'll have a picnic everyday and pretend all sorts of interesting things, and see if we can'tcheer Miss Lavendar up."
"That will be the very thing, Miss Shirley, ma'am," exclaimed Charlottathe Fourth in rapture. She was glad for Miss Lavendar's sake and for herown too. With a whole week in which to study Anne constantly she wouldsurely be able to learn how to move and behave like her.
When the girls got back to Echo Lodge they found that Miss Lavendarand Paul had carried the little square table out of the kitchen tothe garden and had everything ready for tea. Nothing ever tasted sodelicious as those strawberries and cream, eaten under a great bluesky all curdled over with fluffy little white clouds, and in the longshadows of the wood with its lispings and its murmurings. After tea Annehelped Charlotta wash the dishes in the kitchen, while Miss Lavendar saton the stone bench with Paul and heard all about his rock people. Shewas a good listener, this sweet Miss Lavendar, but just at the last itstruck Paul that she had suddenly lost interest in the Twin Sailors.
"Miss Lavendar, why do you look at me like that?" he asked gravely.
"How do I look, Paul?"
"Just as if you were looking through me at somebody I put you in mindof," said Paul, who had such occasional flashes of uncanny insight thatit wasn't quite safe to have secrets when he was about.
"You do put me in mind of somebody I knew long ago," said Miss Lavendardreamily.
"When you were young?"
"Yes, when I was young. Do I seem very old to you, Paul?"
"Do you know, I can't make up my mind about that," said Paulconfidentially. "Your hair looks old . . . I never knew a young personwith white hair. But your eyes are as young as my beautiful teacher'swhen you laugh. I tell you what, Miss Lavendar" . . . Paul's voice andface were as solemn as a judge's . . . "I think you would make a splendidmother. You have just the right look in your eyes . . . the look mylittle mother always had. I think it's a pity you haven't any boys ofyour own."
"I have a little dream boy, Paul."
"Oh, have you really? How old is he?"
"About your age I think. He ought to be older because I dreamed him longbefore you were born. But I'll never let him get any older than elevenor twelve; because if I did some day he might grow up altogether andthen I'd lose him."
"I know," nodded Paul. "That's the beauty of dream-people . . . they stayany age you want them. You and my beautiful teacher and me myself arethe only folks in the world that I know of that have dream-people. Isn'tit funny and nice we should all know each other? But I guess that kindof people always find each other out. Grandma never has dream-people andMary Joe thinks I'm wrong in the upper story because I have them. But Ithink it's splendid to have them. YOU know, Miss Lavendar. Tell me allabout your little dream-boy."
"He has blue eyes and curly hair. He steals in and wakens me with a kissevery morning. Then all day he plays here in the garden . . . and I playwith him. Such games as we have. We run races and talk with the echoes;and I tell him stories. And when twilight comes . . ."
"I know," interrupted Paul eagerly. "He comes and sits beside you . . .SO . . . because of course at twelve he'd be too big to climb into yourlap . . . and lays his head on your shoulder . . . SO . . . and you putyour arms about him and hold him tight, tight, and rest your cheek onhis head . . . yes, that's the very way. Oh, you DO know, MissLavendar."
Anne found the two of them there when she came out of the stone house,and something in Miss Lavendar's face made her hate to disturb them.
"I'm afraid we must go, Paul, if we want to get home before dark. MissLavendar, I'm going to invite myself to Echo Lodge for a whole weekpretty soon."
"If you come for a week I'll keep you for two," threatened MissLavendar.