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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, “en treated 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.