The Complete Anne of Green (56 page)

“Oh, do you imagine things too?”

That “too” revealed a kindred spirit to Miss Lavendar.

“Yes, I do,” she confessed, boldly. “Of course it’s silly in anybody as old as I am. But what is the use of being an independent old maid if you can’t be silly when you want to, and when it doesn’t hurt anybody? A person must have some compensations. I don’t believe I could live at times if I didn’t pretend things. I’m not often caught at it though, and Charlotta the Fourth never tells. But I’m glad to be caught today, for you have really come and I have tea all ready for you. Will you go up to the spare room and take off your hats? It’s the white door at the head of the stairs. I must run out to the kitchen and see that Charlotta the Fourth isn’t letting the tea boil. Charlotta the Fourth is a very good girl but she
will
let the tea boil.”

Miss Lavendar tripped off to the kitchen on hospitable
thoughts intent and the girls found their way up to the spare room, an apartment as white as its door, lighted by the ivy-hung dormer window and looking, as Anne said, like the place where happy dreams grew.

“This is quite an adventure, isn’t it?” said Diana. “And isn’t Miss Lavendar sweet, if she
is
a little odd? She doesn’t look a bit like an old maid.”

“She looks just as music sounds, I think,” answered Anne.

When they went down Miss Lavendar was carrying in the teapot, and behind her, looking vastly pleased, was Charlotta the Fourth, with a plate of hot biscuits.

“Now, you must tell me your names,” said Miss Lavendar. “I’m so glad you are young girls. I love young girls. It’s so easy to pretend I’m a girl myself when I’m with them. I do hate”…with a little grimace…“to believe I’m old. Now, who are you…just for convenience’ sake? Diana Barry? And Anne Shirley? May I pretend that I’ve known you for a hundred years and call you Anne and Diana right away?”

“You may,” the girls said both together.

“Then just let’s sit comfily down and eat everything,” said Miss Lavendar happily. “Charlotta, you sit at the foot and help with the chicken. It is so fortunate that I made the sponge cake and doughnuts. Of course, it was foolish to do it for imaginary guests…I know Charlotta the Fourth thought so, didn’t you, Charlotta? But you see how well it has turned out. Of course they wouldn’t have been wasted, for Charlotta the Fourth and I could have eaten them through time. But sponge cake is not a thing that improves with time.”

That was a merry and memorable meal; and when it was over
they all went out to the garden, lying in the glamor of sunset.

“I do think you have the loveliest place here,” said Diana, looking round her admiringly.

“Why do you call it Echo Lodge?” asked Anne.

“Charlotta,” said Miss Lavendar, “go into the house and bring out the little tin horn that is hanging over the clock shelf.”

Charlotta the Fourth skipped off and returned with the horn.

“Blow it, Charlotta,” commanded Miss Lavendar.

Charlotta accordingly blew, a rather raucous, strident blast. There was moment’s stillness…and then from the woods over the river came a multitude of fairy echoes, sweet, elusive, silvery, as if all the “horns of elfland” were blowing against the sunset. Anne and Diana exclaimed in delight.

“Now laugh, Charlotta…laugh loudly.”

Charlotta, who would probably have obeyed if Miss Lavendar had told her to stand on her head, climbed upon the stone bench and laughed loud and heartily. Back came the echoes, as if a host of pixy people were mimicking her laughter in the purple woodlands and along the fir-fringed points.

“People always admire my echoes very much,” said Miss Lavendar, as if the echoes were her personal property. “I love them myself. They are very good company…with a little pretending. On calm evenings Charlotta the Fourth and I often sit out here and amuse ourselves with them. Charlotta, take back the horn and hang it carefully in its place.”

“Why do you call her Charlotta the Fourth?” asked Diana, who was bursting with curiosity on this point.

“Just to keep her from getting mixed up with other Charlottas in my thoughts,” said Miss Lavendar seriously. “They all
look so much alike there’s no telling them apart. Her name isn’t really Charlotta at all. It is…let me see…what is it? I
think
it’s Leonora…yes, it
is
Leonora. You see, it is this way. When mother died ten years ago I couldn’t stay here alone…and I couldn’t afford to pay the wages of a grown-up girl. So I got little Charlotta Bowman to come and stay with me for board and clothes. Her name really was Charlotta…she was Charlotta the First. She was just thirteen. She stayed with me till she was sixteen and then she went away to Boston, because she could do better there. Her sister came to stay with me then. Her name was Julietta…Mrs. Bowman had a weakness for fancy names I think…but she looked so like Charlotta that I kept calling her that all the time…and she didn’t mind. So I just gave up trying to remember her right name. She was Charlotta the Second, and when she went away Evelina came and she was Charlotta the Third. Now I have Charlotta the Fourth; but when she is sixteen…she’s fourteen now…she will want to go to Boston too, and what I shall do then I really do not know. Charlotta the Fourth is the last of the Bowman girls, and the best. The other Charlottas always let me see that they thought it silly of me to pretend things, but Charlotta the Fourth never does, no matter what she may really think. I don’t care what people think about me if they don’t let me see it.”

“Well,” said Diana, looking regretfully at the setting sun. “I suppose we must go if we want to get to Mr. Kimball’s before dark. We’ve had a lovely time, Miss Lewis.”

“Won’t you come again to see me?” pleaded Miss Lavendar.

Tall Anne put her arm about the little lady.

“Indeed we shall,” she promised. “Now that we have discov
ered you we’ll wear out our welcome coming to see you. Yes, we must go…‘we must tear ourselves away,’ as Paul Irving says every time he comes to Green Gables.”

“Paul Irving?” There was a subtle change in Miss Lavendar’s voice. “Who is he? I didn’t think there was anybody of that name in Avonlea.”

Anne felt vexed at her own heedlessness. She had forgotten about Miss Lavendar’s old romance when Paul’s name slipped out.

“He is a little pupil of mine,” she explained slowly. “He came from Boston last year to live with his grandmother, Mrs. Irving of the shore road.”

“Is he Stephen Irving’s son?” Miss Lavendar asked, bending over her namesake border so that her face was hidden.

“Yes.”

“I’m going to give you girls a bunch of lavender apiece,” said Miss Lavendar brightly, as if she had not heard the answer to her question. “It’s very sweet, don’t you think? Mother always loved it. She planted these borders long ago. Father named me Lavendar because he was so fond of it. The very first time he saw mother was when he visited her home in East Grafton with her brother. He fell in love with her at first sight; and they put him in the spare room bed to sleep and the sheets were scented with lavender and he lay awake all night and thought of her. He always loved the scent of lavender after that…and that was why he gave me the name. Don’t forget to come back soon, girls dear. We’ll be looking for you, Charlotta the Fourth and I.”

She opened the gate under the firs for them to pass through. She looked suddenly old and tired; the glow and radiance had
faded from her face; her parting smile was as sweet with ineradicable youth as ever, but when the girls looked back from the first curve in the lane they saw her sitting on the old stone bench under the silver poplar in the middle of the garden with her head leaning wearily on her hand.

“She does look lonely,” said Diana softly. “We must come often to see her.”

“I think her parents gave her the only right and fitting name that could possibly be given her,” said Anne. “If they had been so blind as to name her Elizabeth or Nellie or Muriel she must have been called Lavendar just the same, I think. It’s so suggestive of sweetness and old-fashioned graces and ‘silk attire.’ Now, my name just smacks of bread and butter, patchwork and chores.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Diana. “Anne seems to me real stately and like a queen. But I’d like Kerrenhappuch if it happened to be your name. I think people make their names nice or ugly just by what they are themselves. I can’t bear Josie or Gertie for names now but before I knew the Pye girls I thought them real pretty.”

“That’s a lovely idea, Diana,” said Anne enthusiastically. “Living so that you beautify your name, even if it wasn’t beautiful to begin with…making it stand in people’s thoughts for something so lovely and pleasant that they never think of it by itself. Thank you, Diana.”

“
SO YOU HAD
tea at the stone house with Lavendar Lewis?” said Marilla at the breakfast table next morning. “What is she like now? It’s over fifteen years since I saw her last…it was one Sunday in Grafton church. I suppose she has changed a great deal. Davy Keith, when you want something you can’t reach, ask to have it passed and don’t spread yourself over the table in that fashion. Did you ever see Paul Irving doing that when he was here to meals?”

“But Paul’s arms are longer’n mine,” rumbled Davy. “They’ve had eleven years to grow and mine’ve only had seven. ’Sides, I
did
ask, but you and Anne was so busy talking you didn’t pay any ’tention. ’Sides, Paul’s never been here to any meal escept tea, and it’s easier to be p’lite at tea than at breakfast. You ain’t half as hungry. It’s an awful long while between supper and breakfast. Now, Anne, that spoonful ain’t any bigger than it was last year and
I’m
ever so much bigger.”

“Of course, I don’t know what Miss Lavendar used to look like but I don’t fancy somehow that she has changed a great deal,” said Anne, after she had helped Davy to maple syrup, giving him two spoonfuls to pacify him. “Her hair is snow-white but her face is fresh and almost girlish, and she has the sweetest brown eyes…such a pretty shade of wood-brown with little golden glints in them…and her voice makes you think of white satin and tinkling water and fairy bells all mixed up together.”

“She was reckoned a great beauty when she was a girl,” said Marilla. “I never knew her very well but I liked her as far as I did know her. Some folks thought her peculiar even then.
Davy
, if ever I catch you at such a trick again you’ll be made to wait for your meals till everyone else is done, like the French.”

Most conversations between Anne and Marilla in the presence of the twins were punctuated by these rebukes Davy-ward. In this instance, Davy, sad to relate, not being able to scoop up the last drops of his syrup with his spoon, had solved the difficulty by lifting his plate in both hands and applying his small pink tongue to it. Anne looked at him with such horrified eyes that the little sinner turned red and said, half shamefacedly, half defiantly:

“There ain’t any wasted that way.”

“People who are different from other people are always called peculiar,” said Anne. “And Miss Lavendar is certainly different, though it’s hard to say just where the difference comes in. Perhaps it is because she is one of those people who never grow old.”

“One might as well grow old when all your generation do,” said Marilla, rather reckless of her pronouns. “If you don’t, you
don’t fit in anywhere. Far as I can learn Lavendar Lewis has just dropped out of everything. She’s lived in that out of the way place until everybody has forgotten her. That stone house is one of the oldest on the Island. Old Mr. Lewis built it eighty years ago when he came out from England. Davy, stop joggling Dora’s elbow. Oh, I saw you! You needn’t try to look innocent. What does make you behave so this morning?”

“Maybe I got out of the wrong side of the bed,” suggested Davy. “Milty Boulter says if you do that things are bound to go wrong with you all day. His grandmother told him. But which
is
the right side? And what are you to do when your bed’s against the wall? I want to know.”

“I’ve always wondered what went wrong between Stephen Irving and Lavendar Lewis,” continued Marilla, ignoring Davy. “They were certainly engaged twenty-five years ago and then all at once it was broken off. I don’t know what the trouble was, but it must have been something terrible, for he went away to the States and never come home since.”

“Perhaps it was nothing very dreadful after all. I think the little things in life often make more trouble than the big things,” said Anne, with one of those flashes of insight which experience could not have bettered. “Marilla, please don’t say anything about my being at Miss Lavendar’s to Mrs. Lynde. She’d be sure to ask a hundred questions and somehow I wouldn’t like it…nor Miss Lavendar either if she knew, I feel sure.”

“I daresay Rachel would be curious,” admitted Marilla, “though she hasn’t as much time as she used to have for looking after other people’s affairs. She’s tied home now on account of Thomas; and she’s feeling pretty downhearted, for I think she’s
beginning to lose hope of his ever getting better. Rachel will be left pretty lonely if anything happens to him, with all her children settled out west, except Eliza in town; she doesn’t like her husband.”

Marilla’s pronouns slandered Eliza, who was very fond of her husband.

“Rachel says if he’d only brace up and exert his willpower he’d get better. But what is the use of asking a jellyfish to sit up straight?” continued Marilla. “Thomas Lynde never had any willpower to exert. His mother ruled him till he married and then Rachel carried it on. It’s a wonder he dared to get sick without asking her permission. But there, I shouldn’t talk so. Rachel has been a good wife to him. He’d never have amounted to anything without her, that’s certain. He was born to be ruled; and it’s well he fell into the hands of a clever, capable manager like Rachel. He didn’t mind her way. It saved him the bother of ever making up his own mind about anything. Davy, do stop squirming like an eel.”

“I’ve nothing else to do,” protested Davy. “I can’t eat any more, and it’s no fun watching you and Anne eat.”

“Well, you and Dora go out and give the hens their wheat,” said Marilla. “And don’t you try to pull any more feathers out of the white rooster’s tail either.”

“I wanted some feathers for an Injun headdress,” said Davy sulkily. “Milty Boulter has a dandy one, made out of the feathers his mother give him when she killed their old white gobbler. You might let me have some. That rooster’s got ever so many more’n he wants.”

“You may have the old feather duster in the garret,” said Anne, “and I’ll dye them green and red and yellow for you.”

“You do spoil that boy dreadfully,” said Marilla, when Davy, with a radiant face, had followed prim Dora out. Marilla’s education had made great strides in the past six years; but she had not yet been able to rid herself of the idea that it was very bad for a child to have too many of its wishes indulged.

“All the boys of his class have Indian headdresses, and Davy wants one too,” said Anne. “
I
know how it feels…I’ll never forget how I used to long for puffed sleeves when all the other girls had them. And Davy isn’t being spoiled. He is improving every day. Think what a difference there is in him since he came here a year ago.”

“He certainly doesn’t get into as much mischief since he began to go to school,” acknowledged Marilla. “I suppose he works off the tendency with the other boys. But it’s a wonder to me we haven’t heard from Richard Keith before this. Never a word since last May.”

“I’ll be afraid to hear from him,” sighed Anne, beginning to clear away the dishes. “If a letter should come I’d dread opening it, for fear it would tell us to send the twins to him.”

A month later a letter did come. But it was not from Richard Keith. A friend of his wrote to say that Richard Keith had died of consumption a fortnight previously. The writer of the letter was the executor of his will and by that will the sum of two thousand dollars was left to Miss Marilla Cuthbert in trust for David and Dora Keith until they came of age or married. In the meantime the interest was to be used for their maintenance.

“It seems dreadful to be glad of anything in connection with a death,” said Anne soberly. “I’m sorry for poor Mr. Keith; but I
am
glad that we can keep the twins.”

“It’s a very good thing about the money,” said Marilla practically. “I wanted to keep them but I really didn’t see how I could afford to do it, especially when they grew older. The rent of the farm doesn’t do any more than keep the house and I was bound that not a cent of your money should be spent on them. You do far too much for them as it is. Dora didn’t need that new hat you bought her any more than a cat needs two tails. But now the way is made clear and they are provided for.”

Davy and Dora were delighted when they heard that they were to live at Green Gables “for good.” The death of an uncle whom they had never seen could not weigh a moment in the balance against that. But Dora had one misgiving.

“Was Uncle Richard buried?” she whispered to Anne.

“Yes, dear, of course.”

“He…he…isn’t like Mirabel Cotton’s uncle, is he?” in a still more agitated whisper. “He won’t walk about houses after being buried, will he, Anne?”