Anne of Green Gables
CHAPTER XXXII
The Pass List Is Out
With the end of June came the close of the term and the close of Miss Stacy's
rule in Avonlea school. Anne and Diana walked home that evening feeling very
sober indeed. Red eyes and damp handkerchiefs bore convincing testimony to the
fact that Miss Stacy's farewell words must have been quite as touching as Mr.
Phillips's had been under similar circumstances three years before. Diana looked
back at the schoolhouse from the foot of the spruce hill and sighed deeply.
"It does seem as if it was the end of everything, doesn't it?" she said
dismally.
"You oughtn't to feel half as badly as I do," said Anne, hunting vainly for a
dry spot on her handkerchief. "You'll be back again next winter, but I suppose
I've left the dear old school forever—if I have good luck, that is."
"It won't be a bit the same. Miss Stacy won't be there, nor you nor Jane nor
Ruby probably. I shall have to sit all alone, for I couldn't bear to have
another deskmate after you. Oh, we have had jolly times, haven't we, Anne? It's
dreadful to think they're all over."
Two big tears rolled down by Diana's nose.
"If you would stop crying I could," said Anne imploringly. "Just as soon as I
put away my hanky I see you brimming up and that starts me off again. As Mrs.
Lynde says, 'If you can't be cheerful, be as cheerful as you can.' After all, I
dare say I'll be back next year. This is one of the times I KNOW I'm not going
to pass. They're getting alarmingly frequent."
"Why, you came out splendidly in the exams Miss Stacy gave."
"Yes, but those exams didn't make me nervous. When I think of the real thing
you can't imagine what a horrid cold fluttery feeling comes round my heart. And
then my number is thirteen and Josie Pye says it's so unlucky. I am NOT
superstitious and I know it can make no difference. But still I wish it wasn't
thirteen."
"I do wish I was going in with you," said Diana. "Wouldn't we have a
perfectly elegant time? But I suppose you'll have to cram in the evenings."
"No; Miss Stacy has made us promise not to open a book at all. She says it
would only tire and confuse us and we are to go out walking and not think about
the exams at all and go to bed early. It's good advice, but I expect it will be
hard to follow; good advice is apt to be, I think. Prissy Andrews told me that
she sat up half the night every night of her Entrance week and crammed for dear
life; and I had determined to sit up AT LEAST as long as she did. It was so kind
of your Aunt Josephine to ask me to stay at Beechwood while I'm in town."
"You'll write to me while you're in, won't you?"
"I'll write Tuesday night and tell you how the first day goes," promised
Anne.
"I'll be haunting the post office Wednesday," vowed Diana.
Anne went to town the following Monday and on Wednesday Diana haunted the
post office, as agreed, and got her letter.
"Dearest Diana" [wrote Anne],
"Here it is Tuesday night and I'm writing this in the library at Beechwood.
Last night I was horribly lonesome all alone in my room and wished so much you
were with me. I couldn't "cram" because I'd promised Miss Stacy not to, but it
was as hard to keep from opening my history as it used to be to keep from
reading a story before my lessons were learned.
"This morning Miss Stacy came for me and we went to the Academy, calling for
Jane and Ruby and Josie on our way. Ruby asked me to feel her hands and they
were as cold as ice. Josie said I looked as if I hadn't slept a wink and she
didn't believe I was strong enough to stand the grind of the teacher's course
even if I did get through. There are times and seasons even yet when I don't
feel that I've made any great headway in learning to like Josie Pye!
"When we reached the Academy there were scores of students there from all
over the Island. The first person we saw was Moody Spurgeon sitting on the steps
and muttering away to himself. Jane asked him what on earth he was doing and he
said he was repeating the multiplication table over and over to steady his
nerves and for pity's sake not to interrupt him, because if he stopped for a
moment he got frightened and forgot everything he ever knew, but the
multiplication table kept all his facts firmly in their proper place!
"When we were assigned to our rooms Miss Stacy had to leave us. Jane and I
sat together and Jane was so composed that I envied her. No need of the
multiplication table for good, steady, sensible Jane! I wondered if I looked as
I felt and if they could hear my heart thumping clear across the room. Then a
man came in and began distributing the English examination sheets. My hands grew
cold then and my head fairly whirled around as I picked it up. Just one awful
moment—Diana, I felt exactly as I did four years ago when I asked Marilla if I
might stay at Green Gables—and then everything cleared up in my mind and my
heart began beating again—I forgot to say that it had stopped altogether!—for I
knew I could do something with THAT paper anyhow.
"At noon we went home for dinner and then back again for history in the
afternoon. The history was a pretty hard paper and I got dreadfully mixed up in
the dates. Still, I think I did fairly well today. But oh, Diana, tomorrow the
geometry exam comes off and when I think of it it takes every bit of
determination I possess to keep from opening my Euclid. If I thought the
multiplication table would help me any I would recite it from now till tomorrow
morning.
"I went down to see the other girls this evening. On my way I met Moody
Spurgeon wandering distractedly around. He said he knew he had failed in history
and he was born to be a disappointment to his parents and he was going home on
the morning train; and it would be easier to be a carpenter than a minister,
anyhow. I cheered him up and persuaded him to stay to the end because it would
be unfair to Miss Stacy if he didn't. Sometimes I have wished I was born a boy,
but when I see Moody Spurgeon I'm always glad I'm a girl and not his sister.
"Ruby was in hysterics when I reached their boardinghouse; she had just
discovered a fearful mistake she had made in her English paper. When she
recovered we went uptown and had an ice cream. How we wished you had been with
us.
"Oh, Diana, if only the geometry examination were over! But there, as Mrs.
Lynde would say, the sun will go on rising and setting whether I fail in
geometry or not. That is true but not especially comforting. I think I'd rather
it didn't go on if I failed!
"Yours devotedly,
"Anne"
The geometry examination and all the others were over in due time and Anne
arrived home on Friday evening, rather tired but with an air of chastened
triumph about her. Diana was over at Green Gables when she arrived and they met
as if they had been parted for years.
"You old darling, it's perfectly splendid to see you back again. It seems
like an age since you went to town and oh, Anne, how did you get along?"
"Pretty well, I think, in everything but the geometry. I don't know whether I
passed in it or not and I have a creepy, crawly presentiment that I didn't. Oh,
how good it is to be back! Green Gables is the dearest, loveliest spot in the
world."
"How did the others do?"
"The girls say they know they didn't pass, but I think they did pretty well.
Josie says the geometry was so easy a child of ten could do it! Moody Spurgeon
still thinks he failed in history and Charlie says he failed in algebra. But we
don't really know anything about it and won't until the pass list is out. That
won't be for a fortnight. Fancy living a fortnight in such suspense! I wish I
could go to sleep and never wake up until it is over."
Diana knew it would be useless to ask how Gilbert Blythe had fared, so she
merely said:
"Oh, you'll pass all right. Don't worry."
"I'd rather not pass at all than not come out pretty well up on the list,"
flashed Anne, by which she meant—and Diana knew she meant—that success would be
incomplete and bitter if she did not come out ahead of Gilbert Blythe.
With this end in view Anne had strained every nerve during the examinations.
So had Gilbert. They had met and passed each other on the street a dozen times
without any sign of recognition and every time Anne had held her head a little
higher and wished a little more earnestly that she had made friends with Gilbert
when he asked her, and vowed a little more determinedly to surpass him in the
examination. She knew that all Avonlea junior was wondering which would come out
first; she even knew that Jimmy Glover and Ned Wright had a bet on the question
and that Josie Pye had said there was no doubt in the world that Gilbert would
be first; and she felt that her humiliation would be unbearable if she failed.
But she had another and nobler motive for wishing to do well. She wanted to
"pass high" for the sake of Matthew and Marilla—especially Matthew. Matthew had
declared to her his conviction that she "would beat the whole Island." That,
Anne felt, was something it would be foolish to hope for even in the wildest
dreams. But she did hope fervently that she would be among the first ten at
least, so that she might see Matthew's kindly brown eyes gleam with pride in her
achievement. That, she felt, would be a sweet reward indeed for all her hard
work and patient grubbing among unimaginative equations and conjugations.
At the end of the fortnight Anne took to "haunting" the post office also, in
the distracted company of Jane, Ruby, and Josie, opening the Charlottetown
dailies with shaking hands and cold, sinkaway feelings as bad as any experienced
during the Entrance week. Charlie and Gilbert were not above doing this too, but
Moody Spurgeon stayed resolutely away.
"I haven't got the grit to go there and look at a paper in cold blood," he
told Anne. "I'm just going to wait until somebody comes and tells me suddenly
whether I've passed or not."
When three weeks had gone by without the pass list appearing Anne began to
feel that she really couldn't stand the strain much longer. Her appetite failed
and her interest in Avonlea doings languished. Mrs. Lynde wanted to know what
else you could expect with a Tory superintendent of education at the head of
affairs, and Matthew, noting Anne's paleness and indifference and the lagging
steps that bore her home from the post office every afternoon, began seriously
to wonder if he hadn't better vote Grit at the next election.
But one evening the news came. Anne was sitting at her open window, for the
time forgetful of the woes of examinations and the cares of the world, as she
drank in the beauty of the summer dusk, sweet-scented with flower breaths from
the garden below and sibilant and rustling from the stir of poplars. The eastern
sky above the firs was flushed faintly pink from the reflection of the west, and
Anne was wondering dreamily if the spirit of color looked like that, when she
saw Diana come flying down through the firs, over the log bridge, and up the
slope, with a fluttering newspaper in her hand.
Anne sprang to her feet, knowing at once what that paper contained. The pass
list was out! Her head whirled and her heart beat until it hurt her. She could
not move a step. It seemed an hour to her before Diana came rushing along the
hall and burst into the room without even knocking, so great was her excitement.
"Anne, you've passed," she cried, "passed the VERY FIRST—you and Gilbert
both—you're ties—but your name is first. Oh, I'm so proud!"
Diana flung the paper on the table and herself on Anne's bed, utterly
breathless and incapable of further speech. Anne lighted the lamp, oversetting
the match safe and using up half a dozen matches before her shaking hands could
accomplish the task. Then she snatched up the paper. Yes, she had passed—there
was her name at the very top of a list of two hundred! That moment was worth
living for.
"You did just splendidly, Anne," puffed Diana, recovering sufficiently to sit
up and speak, for Anne, starry eyed and rapt, had not uttered a word. "Father
brought the paper home from Bright River not ten minutes ago—it came out on the
afternoon train, you know, and won't be here till tomorrow by mail—and when I
saw the pass list I just rushed over like a wild thing. You've all passed, every
one of you, Moody Spurgeon and all, although he's conditioned in history. Jane
and Ruby did pretty well—they're halfway up—and so did Charlie. Josie just
scraped through with three marks to spare, but you'll see she'll put on as many
airs as if she'd led. Won't Miss Stacy be delighted? Oh, Anne, what does it feel
like to see your name at the head of a pass list like that? If it were me I know
I'd go crazy with joy. I am pretty near crazy as it is, but you're as calm and
cool as a spring evening."
"I'm just dazzled inside," said Anne. "I want to say a hundred things, and I
can't find words to say them in. I never dreamed of this—yes, I did too, just
once! I let myself think ONCE, 'What if I should come out first?' quakingly, you
know, for it seemed so vain and presumptuous to think I could lead the Island.
Excuse me a minute, Diana. I must run right out to the field to tell Matthew.
Then we'll go up the road and tell the good news to the others."
They hurried to the hayfield below the barn where Matthew was coiling hay,
and, as luck would have it, Mrs. Lynde was talking to Marilla at the lane fence.
"Oh, Matthew," exclaimed Anne, "I've passed and I'm first—or one of the
first! I'm not vain, but I'm thankful."
"Well now, I always said it," said Matthew, gazing at the pass list
delightedly. "I knew you could beat them all easy."
"You've done pretty well, I must say, Anne," said Marilla, trying to hide her
extreme pride in Anne from Mrs. Rachel's critical eye. But that good soul said
heartily:
"I just guess she has done well, and far be it from me to be backward in
saying it. You're a credit to your friends, Anne, that's what, and we're all
proud of you."
That night Anne, who had wound up the delightful evening with a serious
little talk with Mrs. Allan at the manse, knelt sweetly by her open window in a
great sheen of moonshine and murmured a prayer of gratitude and aspiration that
came straight from her heart. There was in it thankfulness for the past and
reverent petition for the future; and when she slept on her white pillow her
dreams were as fair and bright and beautiful as maidenhood might desire.