Chapter XXXV

The Last Redmond Year Opens

“Here we are, all back again, nicely sunburned and rejoicing as a

strong man to run a race,” said Phil, sitting down on a suitcase with a

sigh of pleasure. “Isn’t it jolly to see this dear old Patty’s Place

again—and Aunty—and the cats? Rusty has lost another piece of ear,

hasn’t he?”

“Rusty would be the nicest cat in the world if he had no ears at all,”

declared Anne loyally from her trunk, while Rusty writhed about her lap

in a frenzy of welcome.

“Aren’t you glad to see us back, Aunty?” demanded Phil.

“Yes. But I wish you’d tidy things up,” said Aunt Jamesina plaintively,

looking at the wilderness of trunks and suitcases by which the four

laughing, chattering girls were surrounded. “You can talk just as well

later on. Work first and then play used to be my motto when I was a

girl.”

“Oh, we’ve just reversed that in this generation, Aunty. _Our_ motto is

play your play and then dig in. You can do your work so much better if

you’ve had a good bout of play first.”

“If you are going to marry a minister,” said Aunt Jamesina, picking up

Joseph and her knitting and resigning herself to the inevitable with

the charming grace that made her the queen of housemothers, “you will

have to give up such expressions as ‘dig in.’”

“Why?” moaned Phil. “Oh, why must a minister’s wife be supposed to

utter only prunes and prisms? I shan’t. Everybody on Patterson Street

uses slang—that is to say, metaphorical language—and if I didn’t they

would think me insufferably proud and stuck up.”

“Have you broken the news to your family?” asked Priscilla, feeding the

Sarah-cat bits from her lunchbasket.

Phil nodded.

“How did they take it?”

“Oh, mother rampaged. But I stood rockfirm—even I, Philippa Gordon, who

never before could hold fast to anything. Father was calmer. Father’s

own daddy was a minister, so you see he has a soft spot in his heart

for the cloth. I had Jo up to Mount Holly, after mother grew calm, and

they both loved him. But mother gave him some frightful hints in every

conversation regarding what she had hoped for me. Oh, my vacation

pathway hasn’t been exactly strewn with roses, girls dear. But—I’ve won

out and I’ve got Jo. Nothing else matters.”

“To you,” said Aunt Jamesina darkly.

“Nor to Jo, either,” retorted Phil. “You keep on pitying him. Why,

pray? I think he’s to be envied. He’s getting brains, beauty, and a

heart of gold in _me_.”

“It’s well we know how to take your speeches,” said Aunt Jamesina

patiently. “I hope you don’t talk like that before strangers. What

would they think?”

“Oh, I don’t want to know what they think. I don’t want to see myself

as others see me. I’m sure it would be horribly uncomfortable most of

the time. I don’t believe Burns was really sincere in that prayer,

either.”

“Oh, I daresay we all pray for some things that we really don’t want,

if we were only honest enough to look into our hearts,” owned Aunt

Jamesina candidly. “I’ve a notion that such prayers don’t rise very

far. _I_ used to pray that I might be enabled to forgive a certain

person, but I know now I really didn’t want to forgive her. When I

finally got that I _did_ want to I forgave her without having to pray

about it.”

“I can’t picture you as being unforgiving for long,” said Stella.

“Oh, I used to be. But holding spite doesn’t seem worth while when you

get along in years.”

“That reminds me,” said Anne, and told the tale of John and Janet.

“And now tell us about that romantic scene you hinted so darkly at in

one of your letters,” demanded Phil.

Anne acted out Samuel’s proposal with great spirit. The girls shrieked

with laughter and Aunt Jamesina smiled.

“It isn’t in good taste to make fun of your beaux,” she said severely;

“but,” she added calmly, “I always did it myself.”

“Tell us about your beaux, Aunty,” entreated Phil. “You must have had

any number of them.”

“They’re not in the past tense,” retorted Aunt Jamesina. “I’ve got them

yet. There are three old widowers at home who have been casting sheep’s

eyes at me for some time. You children needn’t think you own all the

romance in the world.”

“Widowers and sheep’s eyes don’t sound very romantic, Aunty.”

“Well, no; but young folks aren’t always romantic either. Some of my

beaux certainly weren’t. I used to laugh at them scandalous, poor boys.

There was Jim Elwood—he was always in a sort of day-dream—never seemed

to sense what was going on. He didn’t wake up to the fact that I’d said

‘no’ till a year after I’d said it. When he did get married his wife

fell out of the sleigh one night when they were driving home from

church and he never missed her. Then there was Dan Winston. He knew too

much. He knew everything in this world and most of what is in the next.

He could give you an answer to any question, even if you asked him when

the Judgment Day was to be. Milton Edwards was real nice and I liked

him but I didn’t marry him. For one thing, he took a week to get a joke

through his head, and for another he never asked me. Horatio Reeve was

the most interesting beau I ever had. But when he told a story he

dressed it up so that you couldn’t see it for frills. I never could

decide whether he was lying or just letting his imagination run loose.”

“And what about the others, Aunty?”

“Go away and unpack,” said Aunt Jamesina, waving Joseph at them by

mistake for a needle. “The others were too nice to make fun of. I shall

respect their memory. There’s a box of flowers in your room, Anne. They

came about an hour ago.”

After the first week the girls of Patty’s Place settled down to a

steady grind of study; for this was their last year at Redmond and

graduation honors must be fought for persistently. Anne devoted herself

to English, Priscilla pored over classics, and Philippa pounded away at

Mathematics. Sometimes they grew tired, sometimes they felt

discouraged, sometimes nothing seemed worth the struggle for it. In one

such mood Stella wandered up to the blue room one rainy November

evening. Anne sat on the floor in a little circle of light cast by the

lamp beside her, amid a surrounding snow of crumpled manuscript.

“What in the world are you doing?”

“Just looking over some old Story Club yarns. I wanted something to

cheer _and_ inebriate. I’d studied until the world seemed azure. So I

came up here and dug these out of my trunk. They are so drenched in

tears and tragedy that they are excruciatingly funny.”

“I’m blue and discouraged myself,” said Stella, throwing herself on the

couch. “Nothing seems worthwhile. My very thoughts are old. I’ve

thought them all before. What is the use of living after all, Anne?”

“Honey, it’s just brain fag that makes us feel that way, and the

weather. A pouring rainy night like this, coming after a hard day’s

grind, would squelch any one but a Mark Tapley. You know it _is_

worthwhile to live.”

“Oh, I suppose so. But I can’t prove it to myself just now.”

“Just think of all the great and noble souls who have lived and worked

in the world,” said Anne dreamily. “Isn’t it worthwhile to come after

them and inherit what they won and taught? Isn’t it worthwhile to think

we can share their inspiration? And then, all the great souls that will

come in the future? Isn’t it worthwhile to work a little and prepare

the way for them—make just one step in their path easier?”

“Oh, my mind agrees with you, Anne. But my soul remains doleful and

uninspired. I’m always grubby and dingy on rainy nights.”

“Some nights I like the rain—I like to lie in bed and hear it pattering

on the roof and drifting through the pines.”

“I like it when it stays on the roof,” said Stella. “It doesn’t always.

I spent a gruesome night in an old country farmhouse last summer. The

roof leaked and the rain came pattering down on my bed. There was no

poetry in _that_. I had to get up in the ‘mirk midnight’ and chivy

round to pull the bedstead out of the drip—and it was one of those

solid, old-fashioned beds that weigh a ton—more or less. And then that

drip-drop, drip-drop kept up all night until my nerves just went to

pieces. You’ve no idea what an eerie noise a great drop of rain falling

with a mushy thud on a bare floor makes in the night. It sounds like

ghostly footsteps and all that sort of thing. What are you laughing

over, Anne?”

“These stories. As Phil would say they are killing—in more senses than

one, for everybody died in them. What dazzlingly lovely heroines we

had—and how we dressed them!

“Silks—satins—velvets—jewels—laces—they never wore anything else. Here

is one of Jane Andrews’ stories depicting her heroine as sleeping in a

beautiful white satin nightdress trimmed with seed pearls.”

“Go on,” said Stella. “I begin to feel that life is worth living as

long as there’s a laugh in it.”

“Here’s one I wrote. My heroine is disporting herself at a ball

‘glittering from head to foot with large diamonds of the first water.’

But what booted beauty or rich attire? ‘The paths of glory lead but to

the grave.’ They must either be murdered or die of a broken heart.

There was no escape for them.”

“Let me read some of your stories.”

“Well, here’s my masterpiece. Note its cheerful title—‘My Graves.’ I

shed quarts of tears while writing it, and the other girls shed gallons

while I read it. Jane Andrews’ mother scolded her frightfully because

she had so many handkerchiefs in the wash that week. It’s a harrowing

tale of the wanderings of a Methodist minister’s wife. I made her a

Methodist because it was necessary that she should wander. She buried a

child every place she lived in. There were nine of them and their

graves were severed far apart, ranging from Newfoundland to Vancouver.

I described the children, pictured their several death beds, and

detailed their tombstones and epitaphs. I had intended to bury the

whole nine but when I had disposed of eight my invention of horrors

gave out and I permitted the ninth to live as a hopeless cripple.”

While Stella read My Graves, punctuating its tragic paragraphs with

chuckles, and Rusty slept the sleep of a just cat who has been out all

night curled up on a Jane Andrews tale of a beautiful maiden of fifteen

who went to nurse in a leper colony—of course dying of the loathsome

disease finally—Anne glanced over the other manuscripts and recalled

the old days at Avonlea school when the members of the Story Club,

sitting under the spruce trees or down among the ferns by the brook,

had written them. What fun they had had! How the sunshine and mirth of

those olden summers returned as she read. Not all the glory that was

Greece or the grandeur that was Rome could weave such wizardry as those

funny, tearful tales of the Story Club. Among the manuscripts Anne

found one written on sheets of wrapping paper. A wave of laughter

filled her gray eyes as she recalled the time and place of its genesis.

It was the sketch she had written the day she fell through the roof of

the Cobb duckhouse on the Tory Road.

Anne glanced over it, then fell to reading it intently. It was a little

dialogue between asters and sweet-peas, wild canaries in the lilac

bush, and the guardian spirit of the garden. After she had read it, she

sat, staring into space; and when Stella had gone she smoothed out the

crumpled manuscript.

“I believe I will,” she said resolutely.