Anne of Green Gables
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
bookcase; 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.”
CHAPTER XXXV. The Winter at Queen’s
ANNE’S homesickness wore off, greatly helped in the wearing by her
weekend visits home. As long as the open weather lasted the Avonlea
students went out to Carmody on the new branch railway every Friday
night. Diana and several other Avonlea young folks were generally on
hand to meet them and they all walked over to Avonlea in a merry party.
Anne thought those Friday evening gypsyings over the autumnal hills in
the crisp golden air, with the homelights of Avonlea twinkling beyond,
were the best and dearest hours in the whole week.
Gilbert Blythe nearly always walked with Ruby Gillis and carried her
satchel for her. Ruby was a very handsome young lady, now thinking
herself quite as grown up as she really was; she wore her skirts as long
as her mother would let her and did her hair up in town, though she had
to take it down when she went home. She had large, bright-blue eyes,
a brilliant complexion, and a plump showy figure. She laughed a great
deal, was cheerful and good-tempered, and enjoyed the pleasant things of
life frankly.
“But I shouldn’t think she was the sort of girl Gilbert would like,”
whispered Jane to Anne. Anne did not think so either, but she would not
have said so for the Avery scholarship. She could not help thinking,
too, that it would be very pleasant to have such a friend as Gilbert
to jest and chatter with and exchange ideas about books and studies and
ambitions. Gilbert had ambitions, she knew, and Ruby Gillis did not seem
the sort of person with whom such could be profitably discussed.
There was no silly sentiment in Anne’s ideas concerning Gilbert. Boys
were to her, when she thought about them at all, merely possible good
comrades. If she and Gilbert had been friends she would not have cared
how many other friends he had nor with whom he walked. She had a genius
for friendship; girl friends she had in plenty; but she had a vague
consciousness that masculine friendship might also be a good thing
to round out one’s conceptions of companionship and furnish broader
standpoints of judgment and comparison. Not that Anne could have put her
feelings on the matter into just such clear definition. But she thought
that if Gilbert had ever walked home with her from the train, over the
crisp fields and along the ferny byways, they might have had many and
merry and interesting conversations about the new world that was opening
around them and their hopes and ambitions therein. Gilbert was a clever
young fellow, with his own thoughts about things and a determination to
get the best out of life and put the best into it. Ruby Gillis told Jane
Andrews that she didn’t understand half the things Gilbert Blythe said;
he talked just like Anne Shirley did when she had a thoughtful fit on
and for her part she didn’t think it any fun to be bothering about books
and that sort of thing when you didn’t have to. Frank Stockley had lots