Chapter XIV

The Summons

Anne was sitting with Ruby Gillis in the Gillis’ garden after the day

had crept lingeringly through it and was gone. It had been a warm,

smoky summer afternoon. The world was in a splendor of out-flowering.

The idle valleys were full of hazes. The woodways were pranked with

shadows and the fields with the purple of the asters.

Anne had given up a moonlight drive to the White Sands beach that she

might spend the evening with Ruby. She had so spent many evenings that

summer, although she often wondered what good it did any one, and

sometimes went home deciding that she could not go again.

Ruby grew paler as the summer waned; the White Sands school was given

up—“her father thought it better that she shouldn’t teach till New

Year’s”—and the fancy work she loved oftener and oftener fell from

hands grown too weary for it. But she was always gay, always hopeful,

always chattering and whispering of her beaux, and their rivalries and

despairs. It was this that made Anne’s visits hard for her. What had

once been silly or amusing was gruesome, now; it was death peering

through a wilful mask of life. Yet Ruby seemed to cling to her, and

never let her go until she had promised to come again soon. Mrs. Lynde

grumbled about Anne’s frequent visits, and declared she would catch

consumption; even Marilla was dubious.

“Every time you go to see Ruby you come home looking tired out,” she

said.

“It’s so very sad and dreadful,” said Anne in a low tone. “Ruby doesn’t

seem to realize her condition in the least. And yet I somehow feel she

needs help—craves it—and I want to give it to her and can’t. All the

time I’m with her I feel as if I were watching her struggle with an

invisible foe—trying to push it back with such feeble resistance as she

has. That is why I come home tired.”

But tonight Anne did not feel this so keenly. Ruby was strangely quiet.

She said not a word about parties and drives and dresses and “fellows.”

She lay in the hammock, with her untouched work beside her, and a white

shawl wrapped about her thin shoulders. Her long yellow braids of

hair—how Anne had envied those beautiful braids in old schooldays!—lay

on either side of her. She had taken the pins out—they made her head

ache, she said. The hectic flush was gone for the time, leaving her

pale and childlike.

The moon rose in the silvery sky, empearling the clouds around her.

Below, the pond shimmered in its hazy radiance. Just beyond the Gillis

homestead was the church, with the old graveyard beside it. The

moonlight shone on the white stones, bringing them out in clear-cut

relief against the dark trees behind.

“How strange the graveyard looks by moonlight!” said Ruby suddenly.

“How ghostly!” she shuddered. “Anne, it won’t be long now before I’ll

be lying over there. You and Diana and all the rest will be going

about, full of life—and I’ll be there—in the old graveyard—dead!”

The surprise of it bewildered Anne. For a few moments she could not

speak.

“You know it’s so, don’t you?” said Ruby insistently.

“Yes, I know,” answered Anne in a low tone. “Dear Ruby, I know.”

“Everybody knows it,” said Ruby bitterly. “I know it—I’ve known it all

summer, though I wouldn’t give in. And, oh, Anne”—she reached out and

caught Anne’s hand pleadingly, impulsively—“I don’t want to die. I’m

_afraid_ to die.”

“Why should you be afraid, Ruby?” asked Anne quietly.

“Because—because—oh, I’m not afraid but that I’ll go to heaven, Anne.

I’m a church member. But—it’ll be all so different. I think—and

think—and I get so frightened—and—and—homesick. Heaven must be very

beautiful, of course, the Bible says so—but, Anne, _it won’t be what

’ve been used to_.”

Through Anne’s mind drifted an intrusive recollection of a funny story

she had heard Philippa Gordon tell—the story of some old man who had

said very much the same thing about the world to come. It had sounded

funny then—she remembered how she and Priscilla had laughed over it.

But it did not seem in the least humorous now, coming from Ruby’s pale,

trembling lips. It was sad, tragic—and true! Heaven could not be what

Ruby had been used to. There had been nothing in her gay, frivolous

life, her shallow ideals and aspirations, to fit her for that great

change, or make the life to come seem to her anything but alien and

unreal and undesirable. Anne wondered helplessly what she could say

that would help her. Could she say anything? “I think, Ruby,” she began

hesitatingly—for it was difficult for Anne to speak to any one of the

deepest thoughts of her heart, or the new ideas that had vaguely begun

to shape themselves in her mind, concerning the great mysteries of life

here and hereafter, superseding her old childish conceptions, and it

was hardest of all to speak of them to such as Ruby Gillis—“I think,

perhaps, we have very mistaken ideas about heaven—what it is and what

it holds for us. I don’t think it can be so very different from life

here as most people seem to think. I believe we’ll just go on living, a

good deal as we live here—and be _ourselves_ just the same—only it will

be easier to be good and to—follow the highest. All the hindrances and

perplexities will be taken away, and we shall see clearly. Don’t be

afraid, Ruby.”

“I can’t help it,” said Ruby pitifully. “Even if what you say about

heaven is true—and you can’t be sure—it may be only that imagination of

yours—it won’t be _just_ the same. It _can’t_ be. I want to go on

living _here_. I’m so young, Anne. I haven’t had my life. I’ve fought

so hard to live—and it isn’t any use—I have to die—and leave

_everything_ I care for.” Anne sat in a pain that was almost

intolerable. She could not tell comforting falsehoods; and all that

Ruby said was so horribly true. She _was_ leaving everything she cared

for. She had laid up her treasures on earth only; she had lived solely

for the little things of life—the things that pass—forgetting the great

things that go onward into eternity, bridging the gulf between the two

lives and making of death a mere passing from one dwelling to the

other—from twilight to unclouded day. God would take care of her

there—Anne believed—she would learn—but now it was no wonder her soul

clung, in blind helplessness, to the only things she knew and loved.

Ruby raised herself on her arm and lifted up her bright, beautiful blue

eyes to the moonlit skies.

“I want to live,” she said, in a trembling voice. “I want to live like

other girls. I—I want to be married, Anne—and—and—have little children.

You know I always loved babies, Anne. I couldn’t say this to any one

but you. I know you understand. And then poor Herb—he—he loves me and I

love him, Anne. The others meant nothing to me, but _he_ does—and if I

could live I would be his wife and be so happy. Oh, Anne, it’s hard.”

Ruby sank back on her pillows and sobbed convulsively. Anne pressed her

hand in an agony of sympathy—silent sympathy, which perhaps helped Ruby

more than broken, imperfect words could have done; for presently she

grew calmer and her sobs ceased.

“I’m glad I’ve told you this, Anne,” she whispered. “It has helped me

just to say it all out. I’ve wanted to all summer—every time you came.

I wanted to talk it over with you—but I _couldn’t_. It seemed as if it

would make death so _sure_ if I _said_ I was going to die, or if any

one else said it or hinted it. I wouldn’t say it, or even think it. In

the daytime, when people were around me and everything was cheerful, it

wasn’t so hard to keep from thinking of it. But in the night, when I

couldn’t sleep—it was so dreadful, Anne. I couldn’t get away from it

then. Death just came and stared me in the face, until I got so

frightened I could have screamed.

“But you won’t be frightened any more, Ruby, will you? You’ll be brave,

and believe that all is going to be well with you.”

“I’ll try. I’ll think over what you have said, and try to believe it.

And you’ll come up as often as you can, won’t you, Anne?”

“Yes, dear.”

“It—it won’t be very long now, Anne. I feel sure of that. And I’d

rather have you than any one else. I always liked you best of all the

girls I went to school with. You were never jealous, or mean, like some

of them were. Poor Em White was up to see me yesterday. You remember Em

and I were such chums for three years when we went to school? And then

we quarrelled the time of the school concert. We’ve never spoken to

each other since. Wasn’t it silly? Anything like that seems silly

_now_. But Em and I made up the old quarrel yesterday. She said she’d

have spoken years ago, only she thought I wouldn’t. And I never spoke

to her because I was sure she wouldn’t speak to me. Isn’t it strange

how people misunderstand each other, Anne?”

“Most of the trouble in life comes from misunderstanding, I think,”

said Anne. “I must go now, Ruby. It’s getting late—and you shouldn’t be

out in the damp.”

“You’ll come up soon again.”

“Yes, very soon. And if there’s anything I can do to help you I’ll be

so glad.”

“I know. You _have_ helped me already. Nothing seems quite so dreadful

now. Good night, Anne.”

“Good night, dear.”

Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight. The evening had changed

something for her. Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On

the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been

stirred. It must not be with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she

came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the

shrinking terror of something wholly different—something for which

accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. The

little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be

the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life

of heaven must be begun here on earth.

That good night in the garden was for all time. Anne never saw Ruby in

life again. The next night the A.V.I.S. gave a farewell party to Jane

Andrews before her departure for the West. And, while light feet danced

and bright eyes laughed and merry tongues chattered, there came a

summons to a soul in Avonlea that might not be disregarded or evaded.

The next morning the word went from house to house that Ruby Gillis was

dead. She had died in her sleep, painlessly and calmly, and on her face

was a smile—as if, after all, death had come as a kindly friend to lead

her over the threshold, instead of the grisly phantom she had dreaded.

Mrs. Rachel Lynde said emphatically after the funeral that Ruby Gillis

was the handsomest corpse she ever laid eyes on. Her loveliness, as she

lay, white-clad, among the delicate flowers that Anne had placed about

her, was remembered and talked of for years in Avonlea. Ruby had always

been beautiful; but her beauty had been of the earth, earthy; it had

had a certain insolent quality in it, as if it flaunted itself in the

beholder’s eye; spirit had never shone through it, intellect had never

refined it. But death had touched it and consecrated it, bringing out

delicate modelings and purity of outline never seen before—doing what

life and love and great sorrow and deep womanhood joys might have done

for Ruby. Anne, looking down through a mist of tears, at her old

playfellow, thought she saw the face God had meant Ruby to have, and

remembered it so always.

Mrs. Gillis called Anne aside into a vacant room before the funeral

procession left the house, and gave her a small packet.

“I want you to have this,” she sobbed. “Ruby would have liked you to

have it. It’s the embroidered centerpiece she was working at. It isn’t

quite finished—the needle is sticking in it just where her poor little

fingers put it the last time she laid it down, the afternoon before she

died.”

“There’s always a piece of unfinished work left,” said Mrs. Lynde, with

tears in her eyes. “But I suppose there’s always some one to finish

it.”

“How difficult it is to realize that one we have always known can

really be dead,” said Anne, as she and Diana walked home. “Ruby is the

first of our schoolmates to go. One by one, sooner or later, all the

rest of us must follow.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Diana uncomfortably. She did not want to talk

of that. She would have preferred to have discussed the details of the

funeral—the splendid white velvet casket Mr. Gillis had insisted on

having for Ruby—“the Gillises must always make a splurge, even at

funerals,” quoth Mrs. Rachel Lynde—Herb Spencer’s sad face, the

uncontrolled, hysteric grief of one of Ruby’s sisters—but Anne would

not talk of these things. She seemed wrapped in a reverie in which

Diana felt lonesomely that she had neither lot nor part.

“Ruby Gillis was a great girl to laugh,” said Davy suddenly. “Will she

laugh as much in heaven as she did in Avonlea, Anne? I want to know.”

“Yes, I think she will,” said Anne.

“Oh, Anne,” protested Diana, with a rather shocked smile.

“Well, why not, Diana?” asked Anne seriously. “Do you think we’ll never

laugh in heaven?”

“Oh—I—I don’t know” floundered Diana. “It doesn’t seem just right,

somehow. You know it’s rather dreadful to laugh in church.”

“But heaven won’t be like church—all the time,” said Anne.

“I hope it ain’t,” said Davy emphatically. “If it is I don’t want to

go. Church is awful dull. Anyway, I don’t mean to go for ever so long.

I mean to live to be a hundred years old, like Mr. Thomas Blewett of

White Sands. He says he’s lived so long ’cause he always smoked tobacco

and it killed all the germs. Can I smoke tobacco pretty soon, Anne?”

“No, Davy, I hope you’ll never use tobacco,” said Anne absently.

“What’ll you feel like if the germs kill me then?” demanded Davy.