Anne of Green Gables
CHAPTER XXXI
Where the Brook and River Meet
Anne had her "good" summer and enjoyed it wholeheartedly. She and Diana
fairly lived outdoors, reveling in all the delights that Lover's Lane and the
Dryad's Bubble and Willowmere and Victoria Island afforded. Marilla offered no
objections to Anne's gypsyings. The Spencervale doctor who had come the night
Minnie May had the croup met Anne at the house of a patient one afternoon early
in vacation, looked her over sharply, screwed up his mouth, shook his head, and
sent a message to Marilla Cuthbert by another person. It was:
"Keep that redheaded girl of yours in the open air all summer and don't let
her read books until she gets more spring into her step."
This message frightened Marilla wholesomely. She read Anne's death warrant by
consumption in it unless it was scrupulously obeyed. As a result, Anne had the
golden summer of her life as far as freedom and frolic went. She walked, rowed,
berried, and dreamed to her heart's content; and when September came she was
bright-eyed and alert, with a step that would have satisfied the Spencervale
doctor and a heart full of ambition and zest once more.
"I feel just like studying with might and main," she declared as she brought
her books down from the attic. "Oh, you good old friends, I'm glad to see your
honest faces once more—yes, even you, geometry. I've had a perfectly beautiful
summer, Marilla, and now I'm rejoicing as a strong man to run a race, as Mr.
Allan said last Sunday. Doesn't Mr. Allan preach magnificent sermons? Mrs. Lynde
says he is improving every day and the first thing we know some city church will
gobble him up and then we'll be left and have to turn to and break in another
green preacher. But I don't see the use of meeting trouble halfway, do you,
Marilla? I think it would be better just to enjoy Mr. Allan while we have him.
If I were a man I think I'd be a minister. They can have such an influence for
good, if their theology is sound; and it must be thrilling to preach splendid
sermons and stir your hearers' hearts. Why can't women be ministers, Marilla? I
asked Mrs. Lynde that and she was shocked and said it would be a scandalous
thing. She said there might be female ministers in the States and she believed
there was, but thank goodness we hadn't got to that stage in Canada yet and she
hoped we never would. But I don't see why. I think women would make splendid
ministers. When there is a social to be got up or a church tea or anything else
to raise money the women have to turn to and do the work. I'm sure Mrs. Lynde
can pray every bit as well as Superintendent Bell and I've no doubt she could
preach too with a little practice."
"Yes, I believe she could," said Marilla dryly. "She does plenty of
unofficial preaching as it is. Nobody has much of a chance to go wrong in
Avonlea with Rachel to oversee them."
"Marilla," said Anne in a burst of confidence, "I want to tell you something
and ask you what you think about it. It has worried me terribly—on Sunday
afternoons, that is, when I think specially about such matters. I do really want
to be good; and when I'm with you or Mrs. Allan or Miss Stacy I want it more
than ever and I want to do just what would please you and what you would approve
of. But mostly when I'm with Mrs. Lynde I feel desperately wicked and as if I
wanted to go and do the very thing she tells me I oughtn't to do. I feel
irresistibly tempted to do it. Now, what do you think is the reason I feel like
that? Do you think it's because I'm really bad and unregenerate?"
Marilla looked dubious for a moment. Then she laughed.
"If you are I guess I am too, Anne, for Rachel often has that very effect on
me. I sometimes think she'd have more of an influence for good, as you say
yourself, if she didn't keep nagging people to do right. There should have been
a special commandment against nagging. But there, I shouldn't talk so. Rachel is
a good Christian woman and she means well. There isn't a kinder soul in Avonlea
and she never shirks her share of work."
"I'm very glad you feel the same," said Anne decidedly. "It's so encouraging.
I shan't worry so much over that after this. But I dare say there'll be other
things to worry me. They keep coming up new all the time—things to perplex you,
you know. You settle one question and there's another right after. There are so
many things to be thought over and decided when you're beginning to grow up. It
keeps me busy all the time thinking them over and deciding what is right. It's a
serious thing to grow up, isn't it, Marilla? But when I have such good friends
as you and Matthew and Mrs. Allan and Miss Stacy I ought to grow up
successfully, and I'm sure it will be my own fault if I don't. I feel it's a
great responsibility because I have only the one chance. If I don't grow up
right I can't go back and begin over again. I've grown two inches this summer,
Marilla. Mr. Gillis measured me at Ruby's party. I'm so glad you made my new
dresses longer. That dark-green one is so pretty and it was sweet of you to put
on the flounce. Of course I know it wasn't really necessary, but flounces are so
stylish this fall and Josie Pye has flounces on all her dresses. I know I'll be
able to study better because of mine. I shall have such a comfortable feeling
deep down in my mind about that flounce."
"It's worth something to have that," admitted Marilla.
Miss Stacy came back to Avonlea school and found all her pupils eager for
work once more. Especially did the Queen's class gird up their loins for the
fray, for at the end of the coming year, dimly shadowing their pathway already,
loomed up that fateful thing known as "the Entrance," at the thought of which
one and all felt their hearts sink into their very shoes. Suppose they did not
pass! That thought was doomed to haunt Anne through the waking hours of that
winter, Sunday afternoons inclusive, to the almost entire exclusion of moral and
theological problems. When Anne had bad dreams she found herself staring
miserably at pass lists of the Entrance exams, where Gilbert Blythe's name was
blazoned at the top and in which hers did not appear at all.
But it was a jolly, busy, happy swift-flying winter. Schoolwork was as
interesting, class rivalry as absorbing, as of yore. New worlds of thought,
feeling, and ambition, fresh, fascinating fields of unexplored knowledge seemed
to be opening out before Anne's eager eyes.
"Hills peeped o'er hill and Alps on Alps arose."
Much of all this was due to Miss Stacy's tactful, careful, broadminded
guidance. She led her class to think and explore and discover for themselves and
encouraged straying from the old beaten paths to a degree that quite shocked
Mrs. Lynde and the school trustees, who viewed all innovations on established
methods rather dubiously.
Apart from her studies Anne expanded socially, for Marilla, mindful of the
Spencervale doctor's dictum, no longer vetoed occasional outings. The Debating
Club flourished and gave several concerts; there were one or two parties almost
verging on grown-up affairs; there were sleigh drives and skating frolics
galore.
Betweentimes Anne grew, shooting up so rapidly that Marilla was astonished
one day, when they were standing side by side, to find the girl was taller than
herself.
"Why, Anne, how you've grown!" she said, almost unbelievingly. A sigh
followed on the words. Marilla felt a queer regret over Anne's inches. The child
she had learned to love had vanished somehow and here was this tall,
serious-eyed girl of fifteen, with the thoughtful brows and the proudly poised
little head, in her place. Marilla loved the girl as much as she had loved the
child, but she was conscious of a queer sorrowful sense of loss. And that night,
when Anne had gone to prayer meeting with Diana, Marilla sat alone in the wintry
twilight and indulged in the weakness of a cry. Matthew, coming in with a
lantern, caught her at it and gazed at her in such consternation that Marilla
had to laugh through her tears.
"I was thinking about Anne," she explained. "She's got to be such a big
girl—and she'll probably be away from us next winter. I'll miss her terrible."
"She'll be able to come home often," comforted Matthew, to whom Anne was as
yet and always would be the little, eager girl he had brought home from Bright
River on that June evening four years before. "The branch railroad will be built
to Carmody by that time."
"It won't be the same thing as having her here all the time," sighed Marilla
gloomily, determined to enjoy her luxury of grief uncomforted. "But there—men
can't understand these things!"
There were other changes in Anne no less real than the physical change. For
one thing, she became much quieter. Perhaps she thought all the more and dreamed
as much as ever, but she certainly talked less. Marilla noticed and commented on
this also.
"You don't chatter half as much as you used to, Anne, nor use half as many
big words. What has come over you?"
Anne colored and laughed a little, as she dropped her book and looked
dreamily out of the window, where big fat red buds were bursting out on the
creeper in response to the lure of the spring sunshine.
"I don't know—I don't want to talk as much," she said, denting her chin
thoughtfully with her forefinger. "It's nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and
keep them in one's heart, like treasures. I don't like to have them laughed at
or wondered over. And somehow I don't want to use big words any more. It's
almost a pity, isn't it, now that I'm really growing big enough to say them if I
did want to. It's fun to be almost grown up in some ways, but it's not the kind
of fun I expected, Marilla. There's so much to learn and do and think that there
isn't time for big words. Besides, Miss Stacy says the short ones are much
stronger and better. She makes us write all our essays as simply as possible. It
was hard at first. I was so used to crowding in all the fine big words I could
think of—and I thought of any number of them. But I've got used to it now and I
see it's so much better."
"What has become of your story club? I haven't heard you speak of it for a
long time."
"The story club isn't in existence any longer. We hadn't time for it—and
anyhow I think we had got tired of it. It was silly to be writing about love and
murder and elopements and mysteries. Miss Stacy sometimes has us write a story
for training in composition, but she won't let us write anything but what might
happen in Avonlea in our own lives, and she criticizes it very sharply and makes
us criticize our own too. I never thought my compositions had so many faults
until I began to look for them myself. I felt so ashamed I wanted to give up
altogether, but Miss Stacy said I could learn to write well if I only trained
myself to be my own severest critic. And so I am trying to."
"You've only two more months before the Entrance," said Marilla. "Do you
think you'll be able to get through?"
Anne shivered.
"I don't know. Sometimes I think I'll be all right—and then I get horribly
afraid. We've studied hard and Miss Stacy has drilled us thoroughly, but we
mayn't get through for all that. We've each got a stumbling block. Mine is
geometry of course, and Jane's is Latin, and Ruby and Charlie's is algebra, and
Josie's is arithmetic. Moody Spurgeon says he feels it in his bones that he is
going to fail in English history. Miss Stacy is going to give us examinations in
June just as hard as we'll have at the Entrance and mark us just as strictly, so
we'll have some idea. I wish it was all over, Marilla. It haunts me. Sometimes I
wake up in the night and wonder what I'll do if I don't pass."
"Why, go to school next year and try again," said Marilla unconcernedly.
"Oh, I don't believe I'd have the heart for it. It would be such a disgrace
to fail, especially if Gil—if the others passed. And I get so nervous in an
examination that I'm likely to make a mess of it. I wish I had nerves like Jane
Andrews. Nothing rattles her."
Anne sighed and, dragging her eyes from the witcheries of the spring world,
the beckoning day of breeze and blue, and the green things upspringing in the
garden, buried herself resolutely in her book. There would be other springs, but
if she did not succeed in passing the Entrance, Anne felt convinced that she
would never recover sufficiently to enjoy them.