Anne of Green Gables
more dash and go, but then he wasn’t half as good-looking as Gilbert and
she really couldn’t decide which she liked best!
In the Academy Anne gradually drew a little circle of friends about
her, thoughtful, imaginative, ambitious students like herself. With the
“rose-red” girl, Stella Maynard, and the “dream girl,” Priscilla Grant,
she soon became intimate, finding the latter pale spiritual-looking
maiden to be full to the brim of mischief and pranks and fun, while the
vivid, black-eyed Stella had a heartful of wistful dreams and fancies,
as aerial and rainbow-like as Anne’s own.
After the Christmas holidays the Avonlea students gave up going home
on Fridays and settled down to hard work. By this time all the Queen’s
scholars had gravitated into their own places in the ranks and
the various classes had assumed distinct and settled shadings of
individuality. Certain facts had become generally accepted. It was
admitted that the medal contestants had practically narrowed down
to three--Gilbert Blythe, Anne Shirley, and Lewis Wilson; the Avery
scholarship was more doubtful, any one of a certain six being a possible
winner. The bronze medal for mathematics was considered as good as
won by a fat, funny little up-country boy with a bumpy forehead and a
patched coat.
Ruby Gillis was the handsomest girl of the year at the Academy; in the
Second Year classes Stella Maynard carried off the palm for beauty, with
small but critical minority in favor of Anne Shirley. Ethel Marr was
admitted by all competent judges to have the most stylish modes
of hair-dressing, and Jane Andrews--plain, plodding, conscientious
Jane--carried off the honors in the domestic science course. Even Josie
Pye attained a certain preeminence as the sharpest-tongued young lady in
attendance at Queen’s. So it may be fairly stated that Miss Stacy’s old
pupils held their own in the wider arena of the academical course.
Anne worked hard and steadily. Her rivalry with Gilbert was as intense
as it had ever been in Avonlea school, although it was not known in the
class at large, but somehow the bitterness had gone out of it. Anne no
longer wished to win for the sake of defeating Gilbert; rather, for the
proud consciousness of a well-won victory over a worthy foeman. It
would be worth while to win, but she no longer thought life would be
insupportable if she did not.
In spite of lessons the students found opportunities for pleasant times.
Anne spent many of her spare hours at Beechwood and generally ate her
Sunday dinners there and went to church with Miss Barry. The latter was,
as she admitted, growing old, but her black eyes were not dim nor the
vigor of her tongue in the least abated. But she never sharpened the
latter on Anne, who continued to be a prime favorite with the critical
old lady.
“That Anne-girl improves all the time,” she said. “I get tired of other
girls--there is such a provoking and eternal sameness about them. Anne
has as many shades as a rainbow and every shade is the prettiest while
it lasts. I don’t know that she is as amusing as she was when she was
a child, but she makes me love her and I like people who make me love
them. It saves me so much trouble in making myself love them.”
Then, almost before anybody realized it, spring had come; out in
Avonlea the Mayflowers were peeping pinkly out on the sere barrens where
snow-wreaths lingered; and the “mist of green” was on the woods and in
the valleys. But in Charlottetown harassed Queen’s students thought and
talked only of examinations.
“It doesn’t seem possible that the term is nearly over,” said Anne.
“Why, last fall it seemed so long to look forward to--a whole winter
of studies and classes. And here we are, with the exams looming up next
week. Girls, sometimes I feel as if those exams meant everything, but
when I look at the big buds swelling on those chestnut trees and
the misty blue air at the end of the streets they don’t seem half so
important.”
Jane and Ruby and Josie, who had dropped in, did not take this view
of it. To them the coming examinations were constantly very important
indeed--far more important than chestnut buds or Maytime hazes. It was
all very well for Anne, who was sure of passing at least, to have her
moments of belittling them, but when your whole future depended on
them--as the girls truly thought theirs did--you could not regard them
philosophically.
“I’ve lost seven pounds in the last two weeks,” sighed Jane. “It’s no
use to say don’t worry. I _will_ worry. Worrying helps you some--it
seems as if you were doing something when you’re worrying. It would be
dreadful if I failed to get my license after going to Queen’s all winter
and spending so much money.”
“_I_ don’t care,” said Josie Pye. “If I don’t pass this year I’m coming
back next. My father can afford to send me. Anne, Frank Stockley says
that Professor Tremaine said Gilbert Blythe was sure to get the medal
and that Emily Clay would likely win the Avery scholarship.”
“That may make me feel badly tomorrow, Josie,” laughed Anne, “but just
now I honestly feel that as long as I know the violets are coming out
all purple down in the hollow below Green Gables and that little ferns
are poking their heads up in Lovers’ Lane, it’s not a great deal of
difference whether I win the Avery or not. I’ve done my best and I begin
to understand what is meant by the ‘joy of the strife.’ Next to trying
and winning, the best thing is trying and failing. Girls, don’t talk
about exams! Look at that arch of pale green sky over those houses
and picture to yourself what it must look like over the purply-dark
beech-woods back of Avonlea.”
“What are you going to wear for commencement, Jane?” asked Ruby
practically.
Jane and Josie both answered at once and the chatter drifted into a side
eddy of fashions. But Anne, with her elbows on the window sill, her soft
cheek laid against her clasped hands, and her eyes filled with visions,
looked out unheedingly across city roof and spire to that glorious dome
of sunset sky and wove her dreams of a possible future from the golden
tissue of youth’s own optimism. All the Beyond was hers with its
possibilities lurking rosily in the oncoming years--each year a rose of
promise to be woven into an immortal chaplet.
CHAPTER XXXVI. The Glory and the Dream
ON the morning when the final results of all the examinations were to be
posted on the bulletin board at Queen’s, Anne and Jane walked down the
street together. Jane was smiling and happy; examinations were over
and she was comfortably sure she had made a pass at least; further
considerations troubled Jane not at all; she had no soaring ambitions
and consequently was not affected with the unrest attendant thereon. For
we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although
ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but
exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement.
Anne was pale and quiet; in ten more minutes she would know who had
won the medal and who the Avery. Beyond those ten minutes there did not
seem, just then, to be anything worth being called Time.
“Of course you’ll win one of them anyhow,” said Jane, who couldn’t
understand how the faculty could be so unfair as to order it otherwise.
“I have not hope of the Avery,” said Anne. “Everybody says Emily Clay
will win it. And I’m not going to march up to that bulletin board and
look at it before everybody. I haven’t the moral courage. I’m going
straight to the girls’ dressing room. You must read the announcements
and then come and tell me, Jane. And I implore you in the name of our
old friendship to do it as quickly as possible. If I have failed just
say so, without trying to break it gently; and whatever you do _don’t_
sympathize with me. Promise me this, Jane.”
Jane promised solemnly; but, as it happened, there was no necessity for
such a promise. When they went up the entrance steps of Queen’s they
found the hall full of boys who were carrying Gilbert Blythe around on
their shoulders and yelling at the tops of their voices, “Hurrah for
Blythe, Medalist!”
For a moment Anne felt one sickening pang of defeat and disappointment.
So she had failed and Gilbert had won! Well, Matthew would be sorry--he
had been so sure she would win.
And then!
Somebody called out:
“Three cheers for Miss Shirley, winner of the Avery!”
“Oh, Anne,” gasped Jane, as they fled to the girls’ dressing room amid
hearty cheers. “Oh, Anne I’m so proud! Isn’t it splendid?”
And then the girls were around them and Anne was the center of a
laughing, congratulating group. Her shoulders were thumped and her hands
shaken vigorously. She was pushed and pulled and hugged and among it all
she managed to whisper to Jane:
“Oh, won’t Matthew and Marilla be pleased! I must write the news home
right away.”
Commencement was the next important happening. The exercises were held
in the big assembly hall of the Academy. Addresses were given, essays
read, songs sung, the public award of diplomas, prizes and medals made.
Matthew and Marilla were there, with eyes and ears for only one student
on the platform--a tall girl in pale green, with faintly flushed
cheeks and starry eyes, who read the best essay and was pointed out and
whispered about as the Avery winner.
“Reckon you’re glad we kept her, Marilla?” whispered Matthew, speaking
for the first time since he had entered the hall, when Anne had finished
her essay.
“It’s not the first time I’ve been glad,” retorted Marilla. “You do like
to rub things in, Matthew Cuthbert.”
Miss Barry, who was sitting behind them, leaned forward and poked
Marilla in the back with her parasol.
“Aren’t you proud of that Anne-girl? I am,” she said.
Anne went home to Avonlea with Matthew and Marilla that evening. She had
not been home since April and she felt that she could not wait another
day. The apple blossoms were out and the world was fresh and young.
Diana was at Green Gables to meet her. In her own white room, where
Marilla had set a flowering house rose on the window sill, Anne looked
about her and drew a long breath of happiness.
“Oh, Diana, it’s so good to be back again. It’s so good to see those
pointed firs coming out against the pink sky--and that white orchard and
the old Snow Queen. Isn’t the breath of the mint delicious? And that tea
rose--why, it’s a song and a hope and a prayer all in one. And it’s _good_
to see you again, Diana!”
“I thought you liked that Stella Maynard better than me,” said
Diana reproachfully. “Josie Pye told me you did. Josie said you were
_infatuated_ with her.”
Anne laughed and pelted Diana with the faded “June lilies” of her
bouquet.
“Stella Maynard is the dearest girl in the world except one and you are
that one, Diana,” she said. “I love you more than ever--and I’ve so many
things to tell you. But just now I feel as if it were joy enough to sit
here and look at you. I’m tired, I think--tired of being studious and
ambitious. I mean to spend at least two hours tomorrow lying out in the
orchard grass, thinking of absolutely nothing.”
“You’ve done splendidly, Anne. I suppose you won’t be teaching now that
you’ve won the Avery?”
“No. I’m going to Redmond in September. Doesn’t it seem wonderful? I’ll
have a brand new stock of ambition laid in by that time after three
glorious, golden months of vacation. Jane and Ruby are going to teach.
Isn’t it splendid to think we all got through even to Moody Spurgeon and
Josie Pye?”
“The Newbridge trustees have offered Jane their school already,” said
Diana. “Gilbert Blythe is going to teach, too. He has to. His father
can’t afford to send him to college next year, after all, so he means
to earn his own way through. I expect he’ll get the school here if Miss