Chapter XXIII
Paul Cannot Find the Rock People
Life was very pleasant in Avonlea that summer, although Anne, amid all her vacation joys, was haunted by a sense of “something gone which should be there.” She would not admit, even in her inmost reflections, that this was caused by Gilbert’s absence. But when she had to walk home alone from prayer meetings and A.V.I.S. pow-wows, while Diana and Fred, and many other gay couples, loitered along the dusky, starlit country roads, there was a queer, lonely ache in her heart which she could not explain away. Gilbert did not even write to her, as she thought he might have done. She knew he wrote to Diana occasionally, but she would not inquire about him; and Diana, supposing that Anne heard from him, volunteered no information. Gilbert’s mother, who was a gay, frank, light-hearted lady, but not overburdened with tact, had a very embarrassing habit of asking Anne, always in a painfully distinct voice and always in the presence of a crowd, if she had heard from Gilbert lately. Poor Anne could only blush horribly and murmur, “not very lately,” which was taken by all, Mrs. Blythe included, to be merely a maidenly evasion.
Apart from this, Anne enjoyed her summer. Priscilla came for a merry visit in June; and, when she had gone, Mr. and Mrs. Irving, Paul and Charlotta the Fourth came “home” for July and August.
Echo Lodge was the scene of gaieties once more, and the echoes over the river were kept busy mimicking the laughter that rang in the old garden behind the spruces.
“Miss Lavendar” had not changed, except to grow even sweeter and prettier. Paul adored her, and the companionship between them was beautiful to see.
“But I don’t call her ‘mother’ just by itself,” he explained to Anne. “You see, that name belongs just to my own little mother, and I can’t give it to any one else. You know, teacher. But I call her ‘Mother Lavendar’ and I love her next best to father. I—I even love her a little better than you, teacher.”
“Which is just as it ought to be,” answered Anne.
Paul was thirteen now and very tall for his years. His face and eyes were as beautiful as ever, and his fancy was still like a prism, separating everything that fell upon it into rainbows. He and Anne had delightful rambles to wood and field and shore. Never were there two more thoroughly “kindred spirits.”
Charlotta the Fourth had blossomed out into young ladyhood. She wore her hair now in an enormous pompador and had discarded the blue ribbon bows of auld lang syne, but her face was as freckled, her nose as snubbed, and her mouth and smiles as wide as ever.
“You don’t think I talk with a Yankee accent, do you, Miss Shirley, ma’am?” she demanded anxiously.
“I don’t notice it, Charlotta.”
“I’m real glad of that. They said I did at home, but I thought likely they just wanted to aggravate me. I don’t want no Yankee accent. Not that I’ve a word to say against the Yankees, Miss Shirley, ma’am. They’re real civilized. But give me old P.E. Island every time.”
Paul spent his first fortnight with his grandmother Irving in Avonlea. Anne was there to meet him when he came, and found him wild with eagerness to get to the shore—Nora and the Golden Lady and the Twin Sailors would be there. He could hardly wait to eat his supper. Could he not see Nora’s elfin face peering around the point, watching for him wistfully? But it was a very sober Paul who came back from the shore in the twilight.
“Didn’t you find your Rock People?” asked Anne.
Paul shook his chestnut curls sorrowfully.
“The Twin Sailors and the Golden Lady never came at all,” he said. “Nora was there—but Nora is not the same, teacher. She is changed.”
“Oh, Paul, it is you who are changed,” said Anne. “You have grown too old for the Rock People. They like only children for playfellows. I am afraid the Twin Sailors will never again come to you in the pearly, enchanted boat with the sail of moonshine; and the Golden Lady will play no more for you on her golden harp. Even Nora will not meet you much longer. You must pay the penalty of growing-up, Paul. You must leave fairyland behind you.”
“You two talk as much foolishness as ever you did,” said old Mrs. Irving, half-indulgently, half-reprovingly.
“Oh, no, we don’t,” said Anne, shaking her head gravely. “We are getting very, very wise, and it is such a pity. We are never half so interesting when we have learned that language is given us to enable us to conceal our thoughts.”
“But it isn’t—it is given us to exchange our thoughts,” said Mrs. Irving seriously. She had never heard of Tallyrand and did not understand epigrams.
Anne spent a fortnight of halcyon days at Echo Lodge in the golden prime of August. While there she incidentally contrived to hurry Ludovic Speed in his leisurely courting of Theodora Dix, as related duly in another chronicle of her history.(1) Arnold Sherman, an elderly friend of the Irvings, was there at the same time, and added not a little to the general pleasantness of life.
(1 Chronicles of Avonlea.)
“What a nice play-time this has been,” said Anne. “I feel like a giant refreshed. And it’s only a fortnight more till I go back to Kingsport, and Redmond and Patty’s Place. Patty’s Place is the dearest spot, Miss Lavendar. I feel as if I had two homes—one at Green Gables and one at Patty’s Place. But where has the summer gone? It doesn’t seem a day since I came home that spring evening with the Mayflowers. When I was little I couldn’t see from one end of the summer to the other. It stretched before me like an unending season. Now, ‘’tis a handbreadth, ’tis a tale.’”
“Anne, are you and Gilbert Blythe as good friends as you used to be?” asked Miss Lavendar quietly.
“I am just as much Gilbert’s friend as ever I was, Miss Lavendar.”
Miss Lavendar shook her head.
“I see something’s gone wrong, Anne. I’m going to be impertinent and ask what. Have you quarrelled?”
“No; it’s only that Gilbert wants more than friendship and I can’t give him more.”
“Are you sure of that, Anne?”
“Perfectly sure.”
“I’m very, very sorry.”
“I wonder why everybody seems to think I ought to marry Gilbert Blythe,” said Anne petulantly.
“Because you were made and meant for each other, Anne—that is why. You needn’t toss that young head of yours. It’s a fact.”