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.