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"I
declare, my recitation has made you cry, Marilla," said Anne gaily
stooping over Marilla's chair to drop a butterfly kiss on that lady's cheek.
"Now, I call that a positive triumph."
"No,
I wasn't crying over your piece," said Marilla, who would have scorned
to be betrayed into such weakness by any poetry stuff.
"I just couldn't help thinking of the little girl you used to
be, Anne. And I was wishing you
could have stayed a little girl, even with all your queer ways. You've grown
up now and you're going away; and you look so tall and stylish and
so--so--different altogether in that dress--as if you didn't belong in
Avonlea at all-- and I just got lonesome thinking it all over."
"Marilla!" Anne sat down on Marilla's gingham lap, took Marilla's lined
face between her hands, and looked gravely and tenderly into Marilla's eyes.
"I'm not a bit changed-- not really.
I'm only just pruned down and branched out. The real ME--back
here--is just the same. It
won't make a bit of difference where I go or how much I change outwardly; at
heart I shall always be your little Anne, who will love you and Matthew and
dear Green Gables more and better every day of her life."
Anne
laid her fresh young cheek against Marilla's faded one, and reached out a
hand to pat Matthew's shoulder. Marilla would have given much just then to
have possessed Anne's power of putting her feelings into words; but nature
and habit had willed it otherwise, and she could only put her arms close
about her girl and hold her tenderly to her heart, wishing that she need
never let her go.
Matthew,
with a suspicious moisture in his eyes, got up and went out-of-doors.
Under the stars of the blue summer night he walked agitatedly across
the yard to the gate under the poplars.
"Well
now, I guess she ain't been much spoiled," he muttered, proudly.
"I guess my putting in my oar occasional never did much harm
after all. She's smart and
pretty, and loving, too, which is better than all the rest. She's been a
blessing to us, and there never was a luckier mistake than what Mrs. Spencer
made--if it WAS luck. I don't believe it was any such thing.
It was Providence, because the Almighty saw we needed her, I
reckon."
The
day finally came when Anne must go to town.
She and Matthew drove in one fine September morning, after a tearful
parting with Diana and an untearful practical one-- on Marilla's side at
least--with Marilla. But when
Anne had gone Diana dried her tears and went to a beach picnic at White
Sands with some of her Carmody cousins, where she contrived to enjoy herself
tolerably well; while Marilla plunged fiercely into unnecessary work and
kept at it all day long with the bitterest kind of heartache--the ache that
burns and gnaws and cannot wash itself away in ready tears.
But that night, when Marilla went to bed, acutely and miserably
conscious that the little gable room at the end of the hall was untenanted
by any vivid young life and unstirred by any soft breathing, she buried her
face in her pillow, and wept for her girl in a passion of sobs that appalled
her when she grew calm enough to reflect how very wicked it must be to take
on so about a sinful fellow creature.
Anne
and the rest of the Avonlea scholars reached town just in time to hurry off
to the Academy. That first day
passed pleasantly enough in a whirl of excitement, meeting all the new
students, learning to know the professors by sight and being assorted and
organized into classes. Anne intended taking up the Second Year work being
advised to do so by Miss Stacy; Gilbert Blythe elected to do the same. This
meant getting a First Class teacher's license in one year instead of two, if
they were successful; but it also meant much more and harder work.
Jane, Ruby, Josie, Charlie, and Moody Spurgeon, not being troubled
with the stirrings of ambition, were content to take up the Second Class
work. Anne was conscious of a
pang of loneliness when she found herself in a room with fifty other
students, not one of whom she knew, except the tall, brown-haired boy across
the room; and knowing him in the fashion she did, did not help her much, as
she reflected pessimistically. Yet
she was undeniably glad that they were in the same class; the old rivalry
could still be carried on, and Anne would hardly have known what to do if it
had been lacking.
"I
wouldn't feel comfortable without it," she thought. "Gilbert looks
awfully determined. I suppose he's making up his mind, here and now, to win the
medal. What a splendid chin he
has! I never noticed it before.
I do wish Jane and Ruby had gone in for First Class, too.
I suppose I won't feel so much like a cat in a strange garret when I
get acquainted, though. I
wonder which of the girls here are going to be my friends.
It's really an interesting speculation. Of course I promised Diana
that no Queen's girl, no matter how much I liked her, should ever be as dear
to me as she is; but I've lots of second-best affections to bestow.
I like the look of that girl with the brown eyes and the crimson
waist. She looks vivid and
red-rosy; there's that pale, fair one gazing out of the window. She has lovely hair, and looks as if she knew a thing or two
about dreams. I'd like to know
them both--know them well--well enough to walk with my arm about their
waists, and call them nicknames. But
just now I don't know them and they don't know me, and probably don't want
to know me particularly. Oh,
it's lonesome!"
It
was lonesomer still when Anne found herself alone in her hall bedroom that
night at twilight. She was not
to board with the other girls, who all had relatives in town to take pity on
them. Miss Josephine Barry
would have liked to board her, but Beechwood was so far from the Academy
that it was out of the question; so miss Barry hunted up a boarding-house,
assuring Matthew and Marilla that it was the very place for Anne.
"The
lady who keeps it is a reduced gentlewoman," explained Miss Barry.
"Her husband was a British officer, and she is very careful what
sort of boarders she takes. Anne will not meet with any objectionable
persons under her roof. The
table is good, and the house is near the Academy, in a quiet
neighborhood."
All
this might be quite true, and indeed, proved to be so, but it did not
materially help Anne in the first agony of homesickness that seized upon
her. She looked dismally about
her narrow little room, with its dull-papered, pictureless walls, its small
iron bedstead and empty book- case; and a horrible choke came into her
throat as she thought of her own white room at Green Gables, where she would
have the pleasant consciousness of a great green still outdoors, of sweet
peas growing in the garden, and moonlight falling on the orchard, of the
brook below the slope and the spruce boughs tossing in the night wind beyond
it, of a vast starry sky, and the light from Diana's window shining out
through the gap in the trees. Here
there was nothing of this; Anne knew that outside of her window was a hard
street, with a network of telephone wires shutting out the sky, the tramp of
alien feet, and a thousand lights gleaming on stranger faces.
She knew that she was going to cry, and fought against it.
"I
WON'T cry. It's silly--and
weak--there's the third tear splashing down by my nose.
There are more coming! I must think of something funny to stop them.
But there's nothing funny except what is connected with Avonlea, and
that only makes things worse--four--five--I'm going home next Friday, but
that seems a hundred years away. Oh,
Matthew is nearly home by now--and Marilla is at the gate, looking down the
lane for him--six--seven--eight-- oh, there's no use in counting them!
They're coming in a flood presently.
I can't cheer up--I don't WANT to cheer up.
It's nicer to be miserable!"
The
flood of tears would have come, no doubt, had not Josie Pye appeared at that
moment. In the joy of seeing a
familiar face Anne forgot that there had never been much love lost between
her and Josie. As a part of
Avonlea life even a Pye was welcome.
"I'm
so glad you came up," Anne said sincerely.
"You've
been crying," remarked Josie, with aggravating pity. "I suppose
you're homesick--some people have so little self-control in that respect.
I've no intention of being homesick, I can tell you.
Town's too jolly after that poky old Avonlea. I wonder how I ever existed there so long. You shouldn't cry,
Anne; it isn't becoming, for your nose and eyes get red, and then you seem
ALL red. I'd a perfectly
scrumptious time in the Academy today.
Our French professor is simply a duck.
His moustache would give you kerwollowps of the heart. Have you anything eatable around, Anne? I'm literally starving.
Ah, I guessed likely Marilla'd load you up with cake.
That's why I called round. Otherwise
I'd have gone to the park to hear the band play with Frank Stockley.
He boards same place as I do, and he's a sport. He noticed you in
class today, and asked me who the red-headed girl was.
I told him you were an orphan that the Cuthberts had adopted, and
nobody knew very much about what you'd been before that."
Anne
was wondering if, after all, solitude and tears were not more satisfactory
than Josie Pye's companionship when Jane and Ruby appeared, each with an
inch of Queen's color ribbon--purple and scarlet--pinned proudly to her
coat. As Josie was not
"speaking" to Jane just then she had to subside into comparative
harmlessness.
"Well,"
said Jane with a sigh, "I feel as if I'd lived many moons since the
morning. I ought to be home studying my Virgil--that horrid old
professor gave us twenty lines to start in on tomorrow.
But I simply couldn't settle down to study tonight.
Anne, methinks I see the traces of tears.
If you've been crying DO own up.
It will restore my self-respect, for I was shedding tears freely
before Ruby came along. I don't
mind being a goose so much if somebody else is goosey, too.
Cake? You'll give me a
teeny piece, won't you? Thank
you. It has the real Avonlea
flavor."
Ruby,
perceiving the Queen's calendar lying on the table, wanted to know if Anne
meant to try for the gold medal.
Anne
blushed and admitted she was thinking of it.
"Oh,
that reminds me," said Josie, "Queen's is to get one of the Avery
scholarships after all. The
word came today. Frank Stockley told me--his uncle is one of the board of
governors, you know. It will be
announced in the Academy tomorrow."
An
Avery scholarship! Anne felt her heart beat more quickly, and the horizons of
her ambition shifted and broadened as if by magic.
Before Josie had told the news Anne's highest pinnacle of aspiration
had been a teacher's provincial license, First Class, at the end of the
year, and perhaps the medal! But
now in one moment Anne saw herself winning the Avery scholarship, taking an
Arts course at Redmond College, and graduating in a gown and mortar board,
before the echo of Josie's words had died away.
For the Avery scholarship was in English, and Anne felt that here her
foot was on native heath.???
A
wealthy manufacturer of New Brunswick had died and left part of his fortune
to endow a large number of scholarships to be distributed among the various
high schools and academies of the Maritime Provinces, according to their
respective standings. There had been much doubt whether one would be allotted to
Queen's, but the matter was settled at last, and at the end of the year the
graduate who made the highest mark in English and English Literature would
win the scholarship-- two hundred and fifty dollars a year for four years at
Redmond College. No wonder that
Anne went to bed that night with tingling cheeks!
"I'll
win that scholarship if hard work can do it," she resolved.
"Wouldn't Matthew be proud if I got to be a B.A.? Oh, it's
delightful to have ambitions. I'm
so glad I have such a lot. And
there never seems to be any end to them-- that's the best of it.
Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one
glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting."
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