Anne of Avonlea
Mrs. Lynde,” said Anne. “I had intended to study some Latin composition
tonight but it can wait.”
“I suppose Gilbert Blythe is going to college in the fall,” said
Marilla jerkily. “How would you like to go too, Anne?”
Anne looked up in astonishment.
“I would like it, of course, Marilla. But it isn’t possible.”
“I guess it can be made possible. I’ve always felt that you should go.
I’ve never felt easy to think you were giving it all up on my account.”
“But Marilla, I’ve never been sorry for a moment that I stayed home.
I’ve been so happy . . . Oh, these past two years have just been
delightful.”
“Oh, yes, I know you’ve been contented enough. But that isn’t the
question exactly. You ought to go on with your education. You’ve saved
enough to put you through one year at Redmond and the money the stock
brought in will do for another year . . . and there’s scholarships and
things you might win.”
“Yes, but I can’t go, Marilla. Your eyes are better, of course; but I
can’t leave you alone with the twins. They need so much looking after.”
“I won’t be alone with them. That’s what I meant to discuss with you. I
had a long talk with Rachel tonight. Anne, she’s feeling dreadful bad
over a good many things. She’s not left very well off. It seems they
mortgaged the farm eight years ago to give the youngest boy a start
when he went west; and they’ve never been able to pay much more than
the interest since. And then of course Thomas’ illness has cost a good
deal, one way or another. The farm will have to be sold and Rachel
thinks there’ll be hardly anything left after the bills are settled.
She says she’ll have to go and live with Eliza and it’s breaking her
heart to think of leaving Avonlea. A woman of her age doesn’t make new
friends and interests easy. And, Anne, as she talked about it the
thought came to me that I would ask her to come and live with me, but I
thought I ought to talk it over with you first before I said anything
to her. If I had Rachel living with me you could go to college. How do
you feel about it?”
“I feel . . . as if . . . somebody . . . had handed me . . . the moon .
. . and I didn’t know . . . exactly . . . what to do . . . with it,”
said Anne dazedly. “But as for asking Mrs. Lynde to come here, that is
for you to decide, Marilla. Do you think . . . are you sure . . . you
would like it? Mrs. Lynde is a good woman and a kind neighbor, but . .
. but . . .”
“But she’s got her faults, you mean to say? Well, she has, of course;
but I think I’d rather put up with far worse faults than see Rachel go
away from Avonlea. I’d miss her terrible. She’s the only close friend
I’ve got here and I’d be lost without her. We’ve been neighbors for
forty-five years and we’ve never had a quarrel . . . though we came
rather near it that time you flew at Mrs. Rachel for calling you homely
and redhaired. Do you remember, Anne?”
“I should think I do,” said Anne ruefully. “People don’t forget things
like that. How I hated poor Mrs. Rachel at that moment!”
“And then that ‘apology’ you made her. Well, you were a handful, in all
conscience, Anne. I did feel so puzzled and bewildered how to manage
you. Matthew understood you better.”
“Matthew understood everything,” said Anne softly, as she always spoke
of him.
“Well, I think it could be managed so that Rachel and I wouldn’t clash
at all. It always seemed to me that the reason two women can’t get
along in one house is that they try to share the same kitchen and get
in each other’s way. Now, if Rachel came here, she could have the north
gable for her bedroom and the spare room for a kitchen as well as not,
for we don’t really need a spare room at all. She could put her stove
there and what furniture she wanted to keep, and be real comfortable
and independent. She’ll have enough to live on of course...her
children’ll see to that...so all I’d be giving her would be house room.
Yes, Anne, far as I’m concerned I’d like it.”
“Then ask her,” said Anne promptly. “I’d be very sorry myself to see
Mrs. Rachel go away.”
“And if she comes,” continued Marilla, “You can go to college as well
as not. She’ll be company for me and she’ll do for the twins what I
can’t do, so there’s no reason in the world why you shouldn’t go.”
Anne had a long meditation at her window that night. Joy and regret
struggled together in her heart. She had come at last . . . suddenly
and unexpectedly . . . to the bend in the road; and college _was_
around it, with a hundred rainbow hopes and visions; but Anne realized
as well that when she rounded that curve she must leave many sweet
things behind. . . all the little simple duties and interests which had
grown so dear to her in the last two years and which she had glorified
into beauty and delight by the enthusiasm she had put into them. She
must give up her school . . . and she loved every one of her pupils,
even the stupid and naughty ones. The mere thought of Paul Irving made
her wonder if Redmond were such a name to conjure with after all.
“I’ve put out a lot of little roots these two years,” Anne told the
moon, “and when I’m pulled up they’re going to hurt a great deal. But
it’s best to go, I think, and, as Marilla says, there’s no good reason
why I shouldn’t. I must get out all my ambitions and dust them.”
Anne sent in her resignation the next day; and Mrs. Rachel, after a
heart to heart talk with Marilla, gratefully accepted the offer of a
home at Green Gables. She elected to remain in her own house for the
summer, however; the farm was not to be sold until the fall and there
were many arrangements to be made.
“I certainly never thought of living as far off the road as Green
Gables,” sighed Mrs. Rachel to herself. “But really, Green Gables
doesn’t seem as out of the world as it used to do . . . Anne has lots
of company and the twins make it real lively. And anyhow, I’d rather
live at the bottom of a well than leave Avonlea.”
These two decisions being noised abroad speedily ousted the arrival of
Mrs. Harrison in popular gossip. Sage heads were shaken over Marilla
Cuthbert’s rash step in asking Mrs. Rachel to live with her. People
opined that they wouldn’t get on together. They were both “too fond of
their own way,” and many doleful predictions were made, none of which
disturbed the parties in question at all. They had come to a clear and
distinct understanding of the respective duties and rights of their new
arrangements and meant to abide by them.
“I won’t meddle with you nor you with me,” Mrs. Rachel had said
decidedly, “and as for the twins, I’ll be glad to do all I can for
them; but I won’t undertake to answer Davy’s questions, that’s what.
I’m not an encyclopedia, neither am I a Philadelphia lawyer. You’ll
miss Anne for that.”
“Sometimes Anne’s answers were about as queer as Davy’s questions,”
said Marilla drily. “The twins will miss her and no mistake; but her
future can’t be sacrificed to Davy’s thirst for information. When he
asks questions I can’t answer I’ll just tell him children should be
seen and not heard. That was how _I_ was brought up, and I don’t know
but what it was just as good a way as all these new-fangled notions for
training children.”
“Well, Anne’s methods seem to have worked fairly well with Davy,” said
Mrs. Lynde smilingly. “He is a reformed character, that’s what.”
“He isn’t a bad little soul,” conceded Marilla. “I never expected to
get as fond of those children as I have. Davy gets round you somehow .
. . and Dora is a lovely child, although she is . . . kind of . . .
well, kind of . . .”
“Monotonous? Exactly,” supplied Mrs. Rachel. “Like a book where every
page is the same, that’s what. Dora will make a good, reliable woman
but she’ll never set the pond on fire. Well, that sort of folks are
comfortable to have round, even if they’re not as interesting as the
other kind.”
Gilbert Blythe was probably the only person to whom the news of Anne’s
resignation brought unmixed pleasure. Her pupils looked upon it as a
sheer catastrophe. Annetta Bell had hysterics when she went home.
Anthony Pye fought two pitched and unprovoked battles with other boys
by way of relieving his feelings. Barbara Shaw cried all night. Paul
Irving defiantly told his grandmother that she needn’t expect him to
eat any porridge for a week.
“I can’t do it, Grandma,” he said. “I don’t really know if I can eat
_anything_. I feel as if there was a dreadful lump in my throat. I’d
have cried coming home from school if Jake Donnell hadn’t been watching
me. I believe I will cry after I go to bed. It wouldn’t show on my eyes
tomorrow, would it? And it would be such a relief. But anyway, I can’t
eat porridge. I’m going to need all my strength of mind to bear up
against this, Grandma, and I won’t have any left to grapple with
porridge. Oh Grandma, I don’t know what I’ll do when my beautiful
teacher goes away. Milty Boulter says he bets Jane Andrews will get the
school. I suppose Miss Andrews is very nice. But I know she won’t
understand things like Miss Shirley.”
Diana also took a very pessimistic view of affairs.
“It will be horribly lonesome here next winter,” she mourned, one
twilight when the moonlight was raining “airy silver” through the
cherry boughs and filling the east gable with a soft, dream-like
radiance in which the two girls sat and talked, Anne on her low rocker
by the window, Diana sitting Turkfashion on the bed. “You and Gilbert
will be gone . . . and the Allans too. They are going to call Mr. Allan
to Charlottetown and of course he’ll accept. It’s too mean. We’ll be
vacant all winter, I suppose, and have to listen to a long string of
candidates . . . and half of them won’t be any good.”
“I hope they won’t call Mr. Baxter from East Grafton here, anyhow,”
said Anne decidedly. “He wants the call but he does preach such gloomy
sermons. Mr. Bell says he’s a minister of the old school, but Mrs.
Lynde says there’s nothing whatever the matter with him but
indigestion. His wife isn’t a very good cook, it seems, and Mrs. Lynde
says that when a man has to eat sour bread two weeks out of three his
theology is bound to get a kink in it somewhere. Mrs. Allan feels very
badly about going away. She says everybody has been so kind to her
since she came here as a bride that she feels as if she were leaving
lifelong friends. And then, there’s the baby’s grave, you know. She
says she doesn’t see how she can go away and leave that . . . it was
such a little mite of a thing and only three months old, and she says
she is afraid it will miss its mother, although she knows better and
wouldn’t say so to Mr. Allan for anything. She says she has slipped
through the birch grove back of the manse nearly every night to the
graveyard and sung a little lullaby to it. She told me all about it
last evening when I was up putting some of those early wild roses on
Matthew’s grave. I promised her that as long as I was in Avonlea I
would put flowers on the baby’s grave and when I was away I felt sure
that . . .”
“That I would do it,” supplied Diana heartily. “Of course I will. And
I’ll put them on Matthew’s grave too, for your sake, Anne.”
“Oh, thank you. I meant to ask you to if you would. And on little
Hester Gray’s too? Please don’t forget hers. Do you know, I’ve thought
and dreamed so much about little Hester Gray that she has become
strangely real to me. I think of her, back there in her little garden
in that cool, still, green corner; and I have a fancy that if I could
steal back there some spring evening, just at the magic time ’twixt
light and dark, and tiptoe so softly up the beech hill that my
footsteps could not frighten her, I would find the garden just as it
used to be, all sweet with June lilies and early roses, with the tiny
house beyond it all hung with vines; and little Hester Gray would be