Chapter XV. The Beginning of Vacation
Anne locked the schoolhouse door on a still, yellow evening, when the winds were purring in the spruces around the playground, and the shadows were long and lazy by the edge of the woods. She dropped the key into her pocket with a sigh of satisfaction. The school year was ended, she had been reengaged for the next, with many expressions of satisfaction. . . . only Mr. Harmon Andrews told her she ought to use the strap oftener . . . and two delightful months of a well-earned vacation beckoned her invitingly. Anne felt at peace with the world and herself as she walked down the hill with her basket of flowers in her hand. Since the earliest mayflowers Anne had never missed her weekly pilgrimage to Matthew’s grave. Everyone else in Avonlea, except Marilla, had already forgotten quiet, shy, unimportant Matthew Cuthbert; but his memory was still green in Anne’s heart and always would be. She could never forget the kind old man who had been the first to give her the love and sympathy her starved childhood had craved.
At the foot of the hill a boy was sitting on the fence in the shadow of the spruces . . . a boy with big, dreamy eyes and a beautiful, sensitive face. He swung down and joined Anne, smiling; but there were traces of tears on his cheeks.
“I thought I’d wait for you, teacher, because I knew you were going to the graveyard,” he said, slipping his hand into hers. “I’m going there, too . . . I’m taking this bouquet of geraniums to put on Grandpa Irving’s grave for grandma. And look, teacher, I’m going to put this bunch of white roses beside Grandpa’s grave in memory of my little mother. . . because I can’t go to her grave to put it there. But don’t you think she’ll know all about it, just the same?”
“Yes, I am sure she will, Paul.”
“You see, teacher, it’s just three years today since my little mother died. It’s such a long, long time but it hurts just as much as ever . . . and I miss her just as much as ever. Sometimes it seems to me that I just can’t bear it, it hurts so.”
Paul’s voice quivered and his lip trembled. He looked down at his roses, hoping that his teacher would not notice the tears in his eyes.
“And yet,” said Anne, very softly, “you wouldn’t want it to stop hurting . . . you wouldn’t want to forget your little mother even if you could.”
“No, indeed, I wouldn’t . . . that’s just the way I feel. You’re so good at understanding, teacher. Nobody else understands so well . . . not even grandma, although she’s so good to me. Father understood pretty well, but still I couldn’t talk much to him about mother, because it made him feel so bad. When he put his hand over his face I always knew it was time to stop. Poor father, he must be dreadfully lonesome without me; but you see he has nobody but a housekeeper now and he thinks housekeepers are no good to bring up little boys, especially when he has to be away from home so much on business. Grandmothers are better, next to mothers. Someday, when I’m brought up, I’ll go back to father and we’re never going to be parted again.”
Paul had talked so much to Anne about his mother and father that she felt as if she had known them. She thought his mother must have been very like what he was himself, in temperament and disposition; and she had an idea that Stephen Irving was a rather reserved man with a deep and tender nature which he kept hidden scrupulously from the world.
“Father’s not very easy to get acquainted with,” Paul had said once. “I never got really acquainted with him until after my little mother died. But he’s splendid when you do get to know him. I love him the best in all the world, and Grandma Irving next, and then you, teacher. I’d love you next to father if it wasn’t my duty to love Grandma Irving best, because she’s doing so much for me. You know, teacher. I wish she would leave the lamp in my room till I go to sleep, though. She takes it right out as soon as she tucks me up because she says I mustn’t be a coward. I’m not scared, but I’d rather have the light. My little mother used always to sit beside me and hold my hand till I went to sleep. I expect she spoiled me. Mothers do sometimes, you know.”
No, Anne did not know this, although she might imagine it. She thought sadly of her “little mother,” the mother who had thought her so “perfectly beautiful” and who had died so long ago and was buried beside her boyish husband in that unvisited grave far away. Anne could not remember her mother and for this reason she almost envied Paul.
“My birthday is next week,” said Paul, as they walked up the long red hill, basking in the June sunshine, “and father wrote me that he is sending me something that he thinks I’ll like better than anything else he could send. I believe it has come already, for Grandma is keeping the bookcase drawer locked and that is something new. And when I asked her why, she just looked mysterious and said little boys mustn’t be too curious. It’s very exciting to have a birthday, isn’t it? I’ll be eleven. You’d never think it to look at me, would you? Grandma says I’m very small for my age and that it’s all because I don’t eat enough porridge. I do my very best, but Grandma gives such generous platefuls . . . there’s nothing mean about Grandma, I can tell you. Ever since you and I had that talk about praying going home from Sunday School that day, teacher . . . when you said we ought to pray about all our difficulties . . . I’ve prayed every night that God would give me enough grace to enable me to eat every bit of my porridge in the mornings. But I’ve never been able to do it yet, and whether it’s because I have too little grace or too much porridge I really can’t decide. Grandma says father was brought up on porridge, and it certainly did work well in his case, for you ought to see the shoulders he has. But sometimes,” concluded Paul with a sigh and a meditative air “I really think porridge will be the death of me.”
Anne permitted herself a smile, since Paul was not looking at her. All Avonlea knew that old Mrs. Irving was bringing her grandson up in accordance with the good, old-fashioned methods of diet and morals.
“Let us hope not, dear,” she said cheerfully. “How are your rock people coming on? Does the oldest Twin still continue to behave himself?”
“He has to,” said Paul emphatically. “He knows I won’t associate with him if he doesn’t. He is really full of wickedness, I think.”
“And has Nora found out about the Golden Lady yet?”
“No; but I think she suspects. I’m almost sure she watched me the last time I went to the cave. I don’t mind if she finds out . . . it is only for her sake I don’t want her to . . . so that her feelings won’t be hurt. But if she is determined to have her feelings hurt it can’t be helped.”
“If I were to go to the shore some night with you do you think I could see your rock people too?”
Paul shook his head gravely.
“No, I don’t think you could see my rock people. I’m the only person who can see them. But you could see rock people of your own. You’re one of the kind that can. We’re both that kind. You know, teacher,” he added, squeezing her hand chummily. “Isn’t it splendid to be that kind, teacher?”
“Splendid,” Anne agreed, gray shining eyes looking down into blue shining ones. Anne and Paul both knew
“How fair the realm
Imagination opens to the view,”
and both knew the way to that happy land. There the rose of joy bloomed immortal by dale and stream; clouds never darkened the sunny sky; sweet bells never jangled out of tune; and kindred spirits abounded. The knowledge of that land’s geography . . . “east o’ the sun, west o’ the moon” . . . is priceless lore, not to be bought in any market place. It must be the gift of the good fairies at birth and the years can never deface it or take it away. It is better to possess it, living in a garret, than to be the inhabitant of palaces without it.
The Avonlea graveyard was as yet the grass-grown solitude it had always been. To be sure, the Improvers had an eye on it, and Priscilla Grant had read a paper on cemeteries before the last meeting of the Society. At some future time the Improvers meant to have the lichened, wayward old board fence replaced by a neat wire railing, the grass mown and the leaning monuments straightened up.
Anne put on Matthew’s grave the flowers she had brought for it, and then went over to the little poplar shaded corner where Hester Gray slept. Ever since the day of the spring picnic Anne had put flowers on Hester’s grave when she visited Matthew’s. The evening before she had made a pilgrimage back to the little deserted garden in the woods and brought therefrom some of Hester’s own white roses.
“I thought you would like them better than any others, dear,” she said softly.
Anne was still sitting there when a shadow fell over the grass and she looked up to see Mrs. Allan. They walked home together.
Mrs. Allan’s face was not the face of the girlbride whom the minister had brought to Avonlea five years before. It had lost some of its bloom and youthful curves, and there were fine, patient lines about eyes and mouth. A tiny grave in that very cemetery accounted for some of them; and some new ones had come during the recent illness, now happily over, of her little son. But Mrs. Allan’s dimples were as sweet and sudden as ever, her eyes as clear and bright and true; and what her face lacked of girlish beauty was now more than atoned for in added tenderness and strength.
“I suppose you are looking forward to your vacation, Anne?” she said, as they left the graveyard.
Anne nodded.
“Yes. . . . I could roll the word as a sweet morsel under my tongue. I think the summer is going to be lovely. For one thing, Mrs. Morgan is coming to the Island in July and Priscilla is going to bring her up. I feel one of my old ‘thrills’ at the mere thought.”
“I hope you’ll have a good time, Anne. You’ve worked very hard this past year and you have succeeded.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve come so far short in so many things. I haven’t done what I meant to do when I began to teach last fall. I haven’t lived up to my ideals.”
“None of us ever do,” said Mrs. Allan with a sigh. “But then, Anne, you know what Lowell says, ‘Not failure but low aim is crime.’ We must have ideals and try to live up to them, even if we never quite succeed. Life would be a sorry business without them. With them it’s grand and great. Hold fast to your ideals, Anne.”
“I shall try. But I have to let go most of my theories,” said Anne, laughing a little. “I had the most beautiful set of theories you ever knew when I started out as a schoolma’am, but every one of them has failed me at some pinch or another.”
“Even the theory on corporal punishment,” teased Mrs. Allan.
But Anne flushed.
“I shall never forgive myself for whipping Anthony.”
“Nonsense, dear, he deserved it. And it agreed with him. You have had no trouble with him since and he has come to think there’s nobody like you. Your kindness won his love after the idea that a ‘girl was no good’ was rooted out of his stubborn mind.”
“He may have deserved it, but that is not the point. If I had calmly and deliberately decided to whip him because I thought it a just punishment for him I would not feel over it as I do. But the truth is, Mrs. Allan, that I just flew into a temper and whipped him because of that. I wasn’t thinking whether it was just or unjust . . . even if he hadn’t deserved it I’d have done it just the same. That is what humiliates me.”
“Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us. There goes Gilbert Blythe on his wheel . . . home for his vacation too, I suppose. How are you and he getting on with your studies?”
“Pretty well. We plan to finish the Virgil tonight . . . there are only twenty lines to do. Then we are not going to study any more until September.”
“Do you think you will ever get to college?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Anne looked dreamily afar to the opal-tinted horizon. “Marilla’s eyes will never be much better than they are now, although we are so thankful to think that they will not get worse. And then there are the twins . . . somehow I don’t believe their uncle will ever really send for them. Perhaps college may be around the bend in the road, but I haven’t got to the bend yet and I don’t think much about it lest I might grow discontented.”
“Well, I should like to see you go to college, Anne; but if you never do, don’t be discontented about it. We make our own lives wherever we are, after all . . . college can only help us to do it more easily. They are broad or narrow according to what we put into them, not what we get out. Life is rich and full here . . . everywhere . . . if we can only learn how to open our whole hearts to its richness and fulness.”
“I think I understand what you mean,” said Anne thoughtfully, “and I know I have so much to feel thankful for . . . oh, so much . . . my work, and Paul Irving, and the dear twins, and all my friends. Do you know, Mrs. Allan, I’m so thankful for friendship. It beautifies life so much.”
“True friendship is a very helpful thing indeed,” said Mrs. Allan, “and we should have a very high ideal of it, and never sully it by any failure in truth and sincerity. I fear the name of friendship is often degraded to a kind of intimacy that has nothing of real friendship in it.”
“Yes . . . like Gertie Pye’s and Julia Bell’s. They are very intimate and go everywhere together; but Gertie is always saying nasty things of Julia behind her back and everybody thinks she is jealous of her because she is always so pleased when anybody criticizes Julia. I think it is desecration to call that friendship. If we have friends we should look only for the best in them and give them the best that is in us, don’t you think? Then friendship would be the most beautiful thing in the world.”
“Friendship is very beautiful,” smiled Mrs. Allan, “but some day . . .”
Then she paused abruptly. In the delicate, white-browed face beside her, with its candid eyes and mobile features, there was still far more of the child than of the woman. Anne’s heart so far harbored only dreams of friendship and ambition, and Mrs. Allan did not wish to brush the bloom from her sweet unconsciousness. So she left her sentence for the future years to finish.