XXI
Sweet Miss Lavendar
School opened and Anne returned to her work, with fewer theories but
considerably more experience. She had several new pupils, six- and
seven-year-olds just venturing, round-eyed, into a world of wonder.
Among them were Davy and Dora. Davy sat with Milty Boulter, who had been
going to school for a year and was therefore quite a man of the world.
Dora had made a compact at Sunday School the previous Sunday to sit
with Lily Sloane; but Lily Sloane not coming the first day, she was
temporarily assigned to Mirabel Cotton, who was ten years old and
therefore, in Dora's eyes, one of the "big girls."
"I think school is great fun," Davy told Marilla when he got home
that night. "You said I'd find it hard to sit still and I did. . .
you mostly do tell the truth, I notice. . .but you can wriggle
your legs about under the desk and that helps a lot. It's splendid
to have so many boys to play with. I sit with Milty Boulter and
he's fine. He's longer than me but I'm wider. It's nicer to sit
in the back seats but you can't sit there till your legs grow long
enough to touch the floor. Milty drawed a picture of Anne on his
slate and it was awful ugly and I told him if he made pictures of
Anne like that I'd lick him at recess. I thought first I'd draw
one of him and put horns and a tail on it, but I was afraid it
would hurt his feelings, and Anne says you should never hurt
anyone's feelings. It seems it's dreadful to have your feelings
hurt. It's better to knock a boy down than hurt his feelings if
you MUST do something. Milty said he wasn't scared of me but he'd
just as soon call it somebody else to 'blige me, so he rubbed out
Anne's name and printed Barbara Shaw's under it. Milty doesn't
like Barbara 'cause she calls him a sweet little boy and once she
patted him on his head."
Dora said primly that she liked school; but she was very quiet,
even for her; and when at twilight Marilla bade her go upstairs to
bed she hesitated and began to cry.
"I'm. . .I'm frightened," she sobbed. "I. . .I don't want to go
upstairs alone in the dark."
"What notion have you got into your head now?" demanded Marilla.
"I'm sure you've gone to bed alone all summer and never been
frightened before."
Dora still continued to cry, so Anne picked her up, cuddled her
sympathetically, and whispered,
"Tell Anne all about it, sweetheart. What are you frightened of?"
"Of. . .of Mirabel Cotton's uncle," sobbed Dora. "Mirabel Cotton told
me all about her family today in school. Nearly everybody in her
family has died. . .all her grandfathers and grandmothers and ever
so many uncles and aunts. They have a habit of dying, Mirabel says.
Mirabel's awful proud of having so many dead relations, and she told
me what they all died of, and what they said, and how they looked in
their coffins. And Mirabel says one of her uncles was seen walking
around the house after he was buried. Her mother saw him. I don't
mind the rest so much but I can't help thinking about that uncle."
Anne went upstairs with Dora and sat by her until she fell asleep.
The next day Mirabel Cotton was kept in at recess and "gently but
firmly" given to understand that when you were so unfortunate as to
possess an uncle who persisted in walking about houses after he had
been decently interred it was not in good taste to talk about that
eccentric gentleman to your deskmate of tender years. Mirabel
thought this very harsh. The Cottons had not much to boast of.
How was she to keep up her prestige among her schoolmates if she
were forbidden to make capital out of the family ghost?
September slipped by into a gold and crimson graciousness of October.
One Friday evening Diana came over.
"I'd a letter from Ella Kimball today, Anne, and she wants us to go over
to tea tomorrow afternoon to meet her cousin, Irene Trent, from town.
But we can't get one of our horses to go, for they'll all be in use
tomorrow, and your pony is lame. . .so I suppose we can't go."
"Why can't we walk?" suggested Anne. "If we go straight back
through the woods we'll strike the West Grafton road not far from
the Kimball place. I was through that way last winter and I know
the road. It's no more than four miles and we won't have to walk
home, for Oliver Kimball will be sure to drive us. He'll be only
too glad of the excuse, for he goes to see Carrie Sloane and they
say his father will hardly ever let him have a horse."
It was accordingly arranged that they should walk, and the
following afternoon they set out, going by way of Lover's Lane to
the back of the Cuthbert farm, where they found a road leading into
the heart of acres of glimmering beech and maple woods, which were
all in a wondrous glow of flame and gold, lying in a great purple
stillness and peace.
"It's as if the year were kneeling to pray in a vast cathedral full
of mellow stained light, isn't it?" said Anne dreamily. "It doesn't
seem right to hurry through it, does it? It seems irreverent,
like running in a church."
"We MUST hurry though," said Diana, glancing at her watch.
"We've left ourselves little enough time as it is."
"Well, I'll walk fast but don't ask me to talk," said Anne, quickening
her pace. "I just want to drink the day's loveliness in. . .I feel as
if she were holding it out to my lips like a cup of airy wine and
I'll take a sip at every step."
Perhaps it was because she was so absorbed in "drinking it in" that
Anne took the left turning when they came to a fork in the road.
She should have taken the right, but ever afterward she counted it
the most fortunate mistake of her life. They came out finally to a
lonely, grassy road, with nothing in sight along it but ranks of
spruce saplings.
"Why, where are we?" exclaimed Diana in bewilderment. "This isn't
the West Grafton road."
"No, it's the base line road in Middle Grafton," said Anne, rather
shamefacedly. "I must have taken the wrong turning at the fork.
I don't know where we are exactly, but we must be all of three miles
from Kimballs' still."
"Then we can't get there by five, for it's half past four now,"
said Diana, with a despairing look at her watch. "We'll arrive
after they have had their tea, and they'll have all the bother of
getting ours over again."
"We'd better turn back and go home," suggested Anne humbly.
But Diana, after consideration, vetoed this.
"No, we may as well go and spend the evening, since we
have come this far"
A few yards further on the girls came to a place where
the road forked again.
"Which of these do we take?" asked Diana dubiously.
Anne shook her head.
"I don't know and we can't afford to make any more mistakes. Here
is a gate and a lane leading right into the wood. There must be a
house at the other side. Let us go down and inquire."
"What a romantic old lane this it," said Diana, as they walked
along its twists and turns. It ran under patriarchal old firs
whose branches met above, creating a perpetual gloom in which
nothing except moss could grow. On either hand were brown wood
floors, crossed here and there by fallen lances of sunlight.
All was very still and remote, as if the world and the cares
of the world were far away.
"I feel as if we were walking through an enchanted forest," said
Anne in a hushed tone. "Do you suppose we'll ever find our way
back to the real world again, Diana? We shall presently come to a
palace with a spellbound princess in it, I think."
Around the next turn they came in sight, not indeed of a palace,
but of a little house almost as surprising as a palace would have
been in this province of conventional wooden farmhouses, all as
much alike in general characteristics as if they had grown from the
same seed. Anne stopped short in rapture and Diana exclaimed,
"Oh, I know where we are now. That is the little stone house where
Miss Lavendar Lewis lives. . .Echo Lodge, she calls it, I think.
I've often heard of it but I've never seen it before. Isn't it a
romantic spot?"
"It's the sweetest, prettiest place I ever saw or imagined," said
Anne delightedly. "It looks like a bit out of a story book or a dream."
The house was a low-eaved structure built of undressed blocks of
red Island sandstone, with a little peaked roof out of which peered
two dormer windows, with quaint wooden hoods over them, and two
great chimneys. The whole house was covered with a luxuriant
growth of ivy, finding easy foothold on the rough stonework and
turned by autumn frosts to most beautiful bronze and wine-red tints.
Before the house was an oblong garden into which the lane gate
where the girls were standing opened. The house bounded it on
one side; on the three others it was enclosed by an old stone dyke,
so overgrown with moss and grass and ferns that it looked like a high,
green bank. On the right and left the tall, dark spruces spread
their palm-like branches over it; but below it was a little meadow,
green with clover aftermath, sloping down to the blue loop of the
Grafton River. No other house or clearing was in sight. . .nothing
but hills and valleys covered with feathery young firs.
"I wonder what sort of a person Miss Lewis is," speculated Diana as
they opened the gate into the garden. "They say she is very peculiar."
"She'll be interesting then," said Anne decidedly. "Peculiar people
are always that at least, whatever else they are or are not.
Didn't I tell you we would come to an enchanted palace?
I knew the elves hadn't woven magic over that lane for nothing."
"But Miss Lavendar Lewis is hardly a spellbound princess," laughed
Diana. "She's an old maid. . .she's forty-five and quite gray,
I've heard."
"Oh, that's only part of the spell," asserted Anne confidently.
"At heart she's young and beautiful still. . .and if we only knew
how to unloose the spell she would step forth radiant and fair again.
But we don't know how. . .it's always and only the prince who knows that
. . .and Miss Lavendar's prince hasn't come yet. Perhaps some fatal
mischance has befallen him. . .though THAT'S against the law of all
fairy tales."
"I'm afraid he came long ago and went away again," said Diana.
"They say she used to be engaged to Stephan Irving. . .Paul's
father. . .when they were young. But they quarreled and parted."
"Hush," warned Anne. "The door is open."
The girls paused in the porch under the tendrils of ivy and knocked
at the open door. There was a patter of steps inside and a rather
odd little personage presented herself. . .a girl of about
fourteen, with a freckled face, a snub nose, a mouth so wide that
it did really seem as if it stretched "from ear to ear," and two
long braids of fair hair tied with two enormous bows of blue ribbon.
"Is Miss Lewis at home?" asked Diana.
"Yes, ma'am. Come in, ma'am. I'll tell Miss Lavendar you're here,
ma'am. She's upstairs, ma'am."
With this the small handmaiden whisked out of sight and the girls,
left alone, looked about them with delighted eyes. The interior of
this wonderful little house was quite as interesting as its exterior.
The room had a low ceiling and two square, small-paned windows,
curtained with muslin frills. All the furnishings were old-fashioned,
but so well and daintily kept that the effect was delicious.
But it must be candidly admitted that the most attractive feature,
to two healthy girls who had just tramped four miles through autumn air,
was a table, set out with pale blue china and laden with delicacies,
while little golden-hued ferns scattered over the cloth gave it what
Anne would have termed "a festal air."
"Miss Lavendar must be expecting company to tea," she whispered.
"There are six places set. But what a funny little girl she has.
She looked like a messenger from pixy land. I suppose she could
have told us the road, but I was curious to see Miss Lavendar.
S. . .s. . .sh, she's coming."
And with that Miss Lavendar Lewis was standing in the doorway.
The girls were so surprised that they forgot good manners and
simply stared. They had unconsciously been expecting to see
the usual type of elderly spinster as known to their experience
. . .a rather angular personage, with prim gray hair and spectacles.
Nothing more unlike Miss Lavendar could possibly be imagined.
She was a little lady with snow-white hair beautifully wavy and
thick, and carefully arranged in becoming puffs and coils. Beneath
it was an almost girlish face, pink cheeked and sweet lipped, with
big soft brown eyes and dimples. . .actually dimples. She wore a
very dainty gown of cream muslin with pale-hued roses on it. . .a
gown which would have seemed ridiculously juvenile on most women of
her age, but which suited Miss Lavendar so perfectly that you never
thought about it at all.
"Charlotta the Fourth says that you wished to see me," she said,
in a voice that matched her appearance.
"We wanted to ask the right road to West Grafton," said Diana.
"We are invited to tea at Mr. Kimball's, but we took the wrong path
coming through the woods and came out to the base line instead of the
West Grafton road. Do we take the right or left turning at your gate?"
"The left," said Miss Lavendar, with a hesitating glance at her tea table.
Then she exclaimed, as if in a sudden little burst of resolution,
"But oh, won't you stay and have tea with me? Please, do.
Mr. Kimball's will have tea over before you get there.
And Charlotta the Fourth and I will be so glad to have you."
Diana looked mute inquiry at Anne.
"We'd like to stay," said Anne promptly, for she had made up her mind that
she wanted to know more of this surprising Miss Lavendar, "if it won't
inconvenience you. But you are expecting other guests, aren't you?"
Miss Lavendar looked at her tea table again, and blushed.
"I know you'll think me dreadfully foolish," she said. "I AM
foolish. . .and I'm ashamed of it when I'm found out, but never
unless I AM found out. I'm not expecting anybody. . .I was just
pretending I was. You see, I was so lonely. I love company. . .
that is, the right kind of company. . .but so few people ever
come here because it is so far out of the way. Charlotta the
Fourth was lonely too. So I just pretended I was going to have a
tea party. I cooked for it. . .and decorated the table for it. . .
and set it with my mother's wedding china . . .and I dressed up
for it." Diana secretly thought Miss Lavendar quite as peculiar as
report had pictured her. The idea of a woman of forty-five
playing at having a tea party, just as if she were a little girl!
But Anne of the shining eyes exclaimed joyfuly, "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 discovered 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 lavendar 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 lavendar and he
lay awake all night and thought of her. He always loved the scent
of lavendar 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."
