XXVIII
The Prince Comes Back to the Enchanted Palace
The last day of school came and went. A triumphant
"semi-annual examination" was held and Anne's pupils
acquitted themselves splendidly. At the close they gave
her an address and a writing desk. All the girls and ladies
present cried, and some of the boys had it cast up to them
later on that they cried too, although they always denied it.
Mrs. Harmon Andrews, Mrs. Peter Sloane, and Mrs. William Bell
walked home together and talked things over.
"I do think it is such a pity Anne is leaving when the children seem
so much attached to her," sighed Mrs. Peter Sloane, who had a habit
of sighing over everything and even finished off her jokes that way.
"To be sure," she added hastily, "we all know we'll have a good
teacher next year too."
"Jane will do her duty, I've no doubt," said Mrs. Andrews rather stiffly.
"I don't suppose she'll tell the children quite so many fairy tales or
spend so much time roaming about the woods with them. But she has her
name on the Inspector's Roll of Honor and the Newbridge people are in
a terrible state over her leaving."
"I'm real glad Anne is going to college," said Mrs. Bell.
"She has always wanted it and it will be a splendid thing for her."
"Well, I don't know." Mrs. Andrews was determined not to agree fully
with anybody that day. "I don't see that Anne needs any more education.
She'll probably be marrying Gilbert Blythe, if his infatuation for her
lasts till he gets through college, and what good will Latin and Greek
do her then? If they taught you at college how to manage a man there
might be some sense in her going."
Mrs. Harmon Andrews, so Avonlea gossip whispered, had never
learned how to manage her "man," and as a result the Andrews
household was not exactly a model of domestic happiness.
"I see that the Charlottetown call to Mr. Allan is up before the
Presbytery," said Mrs. Bell. "That means we'll be losing him soon,
I suppose."
"They're not going before September," said Mrs. Sloane. "It will
be a great loss to the community. . .though I always did think
that Mrs. Allan dressed rather too gay for a minister's wife.
But we are none of us perfect. Did you notice how neat and snug
Mr. Harrison looked today? I never saw such a changed man. He goes
to church every Sunday and has subscribed to the salary."
"Hasn't that Paul Irving grown to be a big boy?" said Mrs. Andrews.
"He was such a mite for his age when he came here. I declare I
hardly knew him today. He's getting to look a lot like his father."
"He's a smart boy," said Mrs. Bell.
"He's smart enough, but". . .Mrs. Andrews lowered her voice. . ."I
believe he tells queer stories. Gracie came home from school one
day last week with the greatest rigmarole he had told her about
people who lived down at the shore. . .stories there couldn't be a
word of truth in, you know. I told Gracie not to believe them,
and she said Paul didn't intend her to. But if he didn't what did
he tell them to her for?"
"Anne says Paul is a genius," said Mrs. Sloane.
"He may be. You never know what to expect of them Americans,"
said Mrs. Andrews. Mrs. Andrews' only acquaintance with the word
"genius" was derived from the colloquial fashion of calling any
eccentric individual "a queer genius." She probably thought,
with Mary Joe, that it meant a person with something wrong
in his upper story.
Back in the schoolroom Anne was sitting alone at her desk, as she
had sat on the first day of school two years before, her face
leaning on her hand, her dewy eyes looking wistfully out of the
window to the Lake of Shining Waters. Her heart was so wrung over
the parting with her pupils that for a moment college had lost all
its charm. She still felt the clasp of Annetta Bell's arms about
her neck and heard the childish wail, "I'll NEVER love any teacher
as much as you, Miss Shirley, never, never."
For two years she had worked earnestly and faithfully, making many
mistakes and learning from them. She had had her reward. She had
taught her scholars something, but she felt that they had taught
her much more. . .lessons of tenderness, self-control, innocent
wisdom, lore of childish hearts. Perhaps she had not succeeded in
"inspiring" any wonderful ambitions in her pupils, but she had
taught them, more by her own sweet personality than by all her
careful precepts, that it was good and necessary in the years that
were before them to live their lives finely and graciously, holding
fast to truth and courtesy and kindness, keeping aloof from all
that savored of falsehood and meanness and vulgarity. They were,
perhaps, all unconscious of having learned such lessons; but they
would remember and practice them long after they had forgotten the
capital of Afghanistan and the dates of the Wars of the Roses.
"Another chapter in my life is closed," said Anne aloud, as she
locked her desk. She really felt very sad over it; but the romance
in the idea of that "closed chapter" did comfort her a little.
Anne spent a fortnight at Echo Lodge early in her vacation and
everybody concerned had a good time.
She took Miss Lavendar on a shopping expedition to town and persuaded
her to buy a new organdy dress; then came the excitement of cutting
and making it together, while the happy Charlotta the Fourth basted
and swept up clippings. Miss Lavendar had complained that she could
not feel much interest in anything, but the sparkle came back to her
eyes over her pretty dress.
"What a foolish, frivolous person I must be," she sighed.
"I'm wholesomely ashamed to think that a new dress. . .
even it is a forget-me-not organdy. . .should exhilarate me so,
when a good conscience and an extra contribution to Foreign Missions
couldn't do it."
Midway in her visit Anne went home to Green Gables for a day to mend
the twins' stockings and settle up Davy's accumulated store of questions.
In the evening she went down to the shore road to see Paul Irving.
As she passed by the low, square window of the Irving sitting room
she caught a glimpse of Paul on somebody's lap; but the next moment
he came flying through the hall.
"Oh, Miss Shirley," he cried excitedly, "you can't think what
has happened! Something so splendid. Father is here. . .
just think of that! Father is here! Come right in. Father,
this is my beautiful teacher. YOU know, father."
Stephen Irving came forward to meet Anne with a smile. He was a
tall, handsome man of middle age, with iron-gray hair, deep-set,
dark blue eyes, and a strong, sad face, splendidly modeled about
chin and brow. Just the face for a hero of romance, Anne thought
with a thrill of intense satisfaction. It was so disappointing to
meet someone who ought to be a hero and find him bald or stooped,
or otherwise lacking in manly beauty. Anne would have thought it
dreadful if the object of Miss Lavendar's romance had not looked
the part.
"So this is my little son's `beautiful teacher,' of whom I have
heard so much," said Mr. Irving with a hearty handshake. "Paul's
letters have been so full of you, Miss Shirley, that I feel as if I
were pretty well acquainted with you already. I want to thank you
for what you have done for Paul. I think that your influence has
been just what he needed. Mother is one of the best and dearest of
women; but her robust, matter-of-fact Scotch common sense could not
always understand a temperament like my laddie's. What was lacking in
her you have supplied. Between you, I think Paul's training in these
two past years has been as nearly ideal as a motherless boy's could be."
Everybody likes to be appreciated. Under Mr. Irving's praise
Anne's face "burst flower like into rosy bloom," and the busy,
weary man of the world, looking at her, thought he had never seen a
fairer, sweeter slip of girlhood than this little "down east"
schoolteacher with her red hair and wonderful eyes.
Paul sat between them blissfully happy.
"I never dreamed father was coming," he said radiantly. "Even Grandma
didn't know it. It was a great surprise. As a general thing. . ."
Paul shook his brown curls gravely. . ."I don't like to be surprised.
You lose all the fun of expecting things when you're surprised.
But in a case like this it is all right. Father came last night
after I had gone to bed. And after Grandma and Mary Joe had stopped
being surprised he and Grandma came upstairs to look at me, not meaning
to wake me up till morning. But I woke right up and saw father.
I tell you I just sprang at him."
"With a hug like a bear's," said Mr. Irving, putting his arms
around Paul's shoulder smilingly. "I hardly knew my boy, he had
grown so big and brown and sturdy."
"I don't know which was the most pleased to see father, Grandma or I,"
continued Paul. "Grandma's been in kitchen all day making the things
father likes to eat. She wouldn't trust them to Mary Joe, she says.
That's HER way of showing gladness. _I_ like best just to sit and
talk to father. But I'm going to leave you for a little while now
if you'll excuse me. I must get the cows for Mary Joe. That is one
of my daily duties."
When Paul had scampered away to do his "daily duty" Mr. Irving
talked to Anne of various matters. But Anne felt that he was
thinking of something else underneath all the time. Presently it
came to the surface.
"In Paul's last letter he spoke of going with you to visit an old. . .
friend of mine. . .Miss Lewis at the stone house in Grafton.
Do you know her well?"
"Yes, indeed, she is a very dear friend of mine," was Anne's demure
reply, which gave no hint of the sudden thrill that tingled over
her from head to foot at Mr. Irving's question. Anne "felt
instinctively" that romance was peeping at her around a corner.
Mr. Irving rose and went to the window, looking out on a great,
golden, billowing sea where a wild wind was harping. For a few
moments there was silence in the little dark-walled room. Then he
turned and looked down into Anne's sympathetic face with a smile,
half-whimsical, half-tender.
"I wonder how much you know," he said.
"I know all about it," replied Anne promptly. "You see," she explained
hastily, "Miss Lavendar and I are very intimate. She wouldn't tell
things of such a sacred nature to everybody. We are kindred spirits."
"Yes, I believe you are. Well, I am going to ask a favor of you.
I would like to go and see Miss Lavendar if she will let me. Will
you ask her if I may come?"
Would she not? Oh, indeed she would! Yes, this was romance, the very,
the real thing, with all the charm of rhyme and story and dream.
It was a little belated, perhaps, like a rose blooming in October
which should have bloomed in June; but none the less a rose,
all sweetness and fragrance, with the gleam of gold in its heart.
Never did Anne's feet bear her on a more willing errand than on
that walk through the beechwoods to Grafton the next morning.
She found Miss Lavendar in the garden. Anne was fearfully excited.
Her hands grew cold and her voice trembled.
"Miss Lavendar, I have something to tell you. . .something very important.
Can you guess what it is?"
Anne never supposed that Miss Lavendar could GUESS; but Miss Lavendar's
face grew very pale and Miss Lavendar said in a quiet, still voice,
from which all the color and sparkle that Miss Lavendar's voice usually
suggested had faded.
"Stephen Irving is home?"
"How did you know? Who told you?" cried Anne disappointedly,
vexed that her great revelation had been anticipated.
"Nobody. I knew that must be it, just from the way you spoke."
"He wants to come and see you," said Anne. "May I send him word
that he may?"
"Yes, of course," fluttered Miss Lavendar. "There is no reason why
he shouldn't. He is only coming as any old friend might."
Anne had her own opinion about that as she hastened into the house
to write a note at Miss Lavendar's desk.
"Oh, it's delightful to be living in a storybook," she thought gaily.
"It will come out all right of course. . .it must. . .and Paul will
have a mother after his own heart and everybody will be happy.
But Mr. Irving will take Miss Lavendar away. . .and dear knows
what will happen to the little stone house. . .and so there are
two sides to it, as there seems to be to everything in this world."
The important note was written and Anne herself carried it to the
Grafton post office, where she waylaid the mail carrier and asked
him to leave it at the Avonlea office.
"It's so very important," Anne assured him anxiously. The mail
carrier was a rather grumpy old personage who did not at all look
the part of a messenger of Cupid; and Anne was none too certain
that his memory was to be trusted. But he said he would do his
best to remember and she had to be contented with that.
Charlotta the Fourth felt that some mystery pervaded the stone
house that afternoon. . .a mystery from which she was excluded.
Miss Lavendar roamed about the garden in a distracted fashion.
Anne, too, seemed possessed by a demon of unrest, and walked to
and fro and went up and down. Charlotta the Fourth endured it
till patience ceased to be a virtue; then she confronted Anne
on the occasion of that romantic young person's third aimless
peregrination through the kitchen.
"Please, Miss Shirley, ma'am," said Charlotta the Fourth, with an
indignant toss of her very blue bows, "it's plain to be seen you
and Miss Lavendar have got a secret and I think, begging your
pardon if I'm too forward, Miss Shirley, ma'am, that it's real
mean not to tell me when we've all been such chums."
"Oh, Charlotta dear, I'd have told you all about it if it were my
secret. . .but it's Miss Lavendar's, you see. However, I'll tell
you this much. . .and if nothing comes of it you must never
breathe a word about it to a living soul. You see, Prince Charming
is coming tonight. He came long ago, but in a foolish moment went
away and wandered afar and forgot the secret of the magic pathway
to the enchanted castle, where the princess was weeping her
faithful heart out for him. But at last he remembered it again and
the princess is waiting still. . .because nobody but her own dear
prince could carry her off."
"Oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am, what is that in prose?" gasped the
mystified Charlotta.
Anne laughed.
"In prose, an old friend of Miss Lavendar's is coming to see her
tonight."
"Do you mean an old beau of hers?" demanded the literal Charlotta.
"That is probably what I do mean. . .in prose," answered Anne gravely.
"It is Paul's father. . .Stephen Irving. And goodness knows what will
come of it, but let us hope for the best, Charlotta."
"I hope that he'll marry Miss Lavendar," was Charlotta's unequivocal response.
"Some women's intended from the start to be old maids, and I'm afraid I'm one
of them, Miss Shirley, ma'am, because I've awful little patience with the men.
But Miss Lavendar never was. And I've been awful worried, thinking what on
earth she'd do when I got so big I'd HAVE to go to Boston. There ain't any
more girls in our family and dear knows what she'd do if she got some
stranger that might laugh at her pretendings and leave things lying round
out of their place and not be willing to be called Charlotta the Fifth.
She might get someone who wouldn't be as unlucky as me in breaking dishes
but she'd never get anyone who'd love her better."
And the faithful little handmaiden dashed to the oven door with a sniff.
They went through the form of having tea as usual that night at
Echo Lodge; but nobody really ate anything. After tea Miss Lavendar
went to her room and put on her new forget-me-not organdy,
while Anne did her hair for her. Both were dreadfully excited;
but Miss Lavendar pretended to be very calm and indifferent.
"I must really mend that rent in the curtain tomorrow," she said
anxiously, inspecting it as if it were the only thing of any
importance just then. "Those curtains have not worn as well as
they should, considering the price I paid. Dear me, Charlotta
has forgotten to dust the stair railing AGAIN. I really MUST
speak to her about it."
Anne was sitting on the porch steps when Stephen Irving came down
the lane and across the garden.
"This is the one place where time stands still," he said, looking
around him with delighted eyes. "There is nothing changed about
this house or garden since I was here twenty-five years ago.
It makes me feel young again."
"You know time always does stand still in an enchanted palace," said Anne
seriously. "It is only when the prince comes that things begin to happen."
Mr. Irving smiled a little sadly into her uplifted face, all astar with
its youth and promise.
"Sometimes the prince comes too late," he said. He did not ask Anne to
translate her remark into prose. Like all kindred spirits he "understood."
"Oh, no, not if he is the real prince coming to the true princess,"
said Anne, shaking her red head decidedly, as she opened the parlor door.
When he had gone in she shut it tightly behind him and turned to confront
Charlotta the Fourth, who was in the hall, all "nods and becks and
wreathed smiles."
"Oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am," she breathed, "I peeked from the kitchen
window. . .and he's awful handsome. . .and just the right age for
Miss Lavendar. And oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am, do you think it would
be much harm to listen at the door?"
"It would be dreadful, Charlotta," said Anne firmly, "so just you
come away with me out of the reach of temptation."
"I can't do anything, and it's awful to hang round just waiting," sighed
Charlotta. "What if he don't propose after all, Miss Shirley, ma'am?
You can never be sure of them men. My older sister, Charlotta the First,
thought she was engaged to one once. But it turned out HE had a
different opinion and she says she'll never trust one of them again.
And I heard of another case where a man thought he wanted one girl
awful bad when it was really her sister he wanted all the time.
When a man don't know his own mind, Miss Shirley, ma'am, how's
a poor woman going to be sure of it?"
"We'll go to the kitchen and clean the silver spoons," said Anne.
"That's a task which won't require much thinking fortunately. . .
for I COULDN'T think tonight. And it will pass the time."
It passed an hour. Then, just as Anne laid down the last shining spoon,
they heard the front door shut. Both sought comfort fearfully in each
other's eyes.
"Oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am," gasped Charlotta, "if he's going away this
early there's nothing into it and never will be." They flew to the window.
Mr. Irving had no intention of going away. He and Miss Lavendar were
strolling slowly down the middle path to the stone bench.
"Oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am, he's got his arm around her waist,"
whispered Charlotta the Fourth delightedly. "He must have proposed
to her or she'd never allow it."
Anne caught Charlotta the Fourth by her own plump waist and danced
her around the kitchen until they were both out of breath.
"Oh, Charlotta," she cried gaily, "I'm neither a prophetess nor the
daughter of a prophetess but I'm going to make a prediction.
There'll be a wedding in this old stone house before the maple
leaves are red. Do you want that translated into prose, Charlotta?"
"No, I can understand that," said Charlotta. "A wedding ain't
poetry. Why, Miss Shirley, ma'am, you're crying! What for?"
"Oh, because it's all so beautiful. . .and story bookish. . .and
romantic. . .and sad," said Anne, winking the tears out of her
eyes. "It's all perfectly lovely. . .but there's a little sadness
mixed up in it too, somehow."
"Oh, of course there's a resk in marrying anybody," conceded
Charlotta the Fourth, "but, when all's said and done, Miss Shirley,
ma'am, there's many a worse thing than a husband."
