THE PASS LIST IS OUT
With the end of June came the close of the term and the close of Miss
Stacy’s rule in Avonlea school. Anne and Diana walked home that evening
feeling very sober indeed. Red eyes and damp handkerchiefs bore
convincing testimony to the fact that Miss Stacy’s farewell words must
have been quite as touching as Mr. Phillips’ had been under similar
circumstances three years before. Diana looked back at the schoolhouse
from the foot of the spruce hill and sighed deeply.
“It does seem as if it was the end of everything, doesn’t it?” she said
dismally.
“You oughtn’t to feel half as badly as I do,” said Anne, hunting vainly
for a dry spot on her handkerchief. “You’ll be back again next winter,
but I suppose I’ve left the dear old school for ever—if I have good
luck, that is.”
“It won’t be a bit the same. Miss Stacy won’t be there, nor you nor
Jane nor Ruby probably. I shall have to sit all alone, for I couldn’t
bear to have another deskmate after you. Oh, we have had jolly times,
haven’t we, Anne? It’s dreadful to think they’re all over.”
Two big tears rolled down by Diana’s nose.
“If you would stop crying I could,” said Anne imploringly. “Just as
soon as I put away my hanky I see you brimming up and that starts me
off again. As Mrs. Lynde says, ‘If you can’t be cheerful, be as
cheerful as you can.’ After all, I dare say I’ll be back next year.
This is one of the times I _know_ I’m not going to pass. They’re
getting alarmingly frequent.”
“Why, you came out splendidly in the exams Miss Stacy gave.”
“Yes, but those exams didn’t make me nervous. When I think of the real
thing you can’t imagine what a horrid cold fluttery feeling comes round
my heart. And then my number is thirteen and Josie Pye says it’s so
unlucky. I am _not_ superstitious and I know it can make no difference.
But still I wish it wasn’t thirteen.”
“I do wish I were going in with you,” said Diana. “Wouldn’t we have a
perfectly elegant time? But I suppose you’ll have to cram in the
evenings.”
“No; Miss Stacy has made us promise not to open a book at all. She says
it would only tire and confuse us and we are to go out walking and not
think about the exams at all and go to bed early. It’s good advice, but
I expect it will be hard to follow; good advice is apt to be, I think.
Prissy Andrews told me that she sat up half the night every night of
her Entrance week and crammed for dear life; and I had determined to
sit up _at least_ as long as she did. It was so kind of your Aunt
Josephine to ask me to stay at Beechwood while I’m in town.”
“You’ll write to me while you’re in, won’t you?”
“I’ll write Tuesday night and tell you how the first day goes,”
promised Anne.
“I’ll be haunting the post-office Wednesday,” vowed Diana.
Anne went to town the following Monday and on Wednesday Diana haunted
the post-office, as agreed, and got her letter.
“Dearest Diana,” wrote Anne, “here it is Tuesday night and I’m writing
this in the library at Beechwood. Last night I was horribly lonesome
all alone in my room and wished so much you were with me. I couldn’t
‘cram’ because I’d promised Miss Stacy not to, but it was as hard to
keep from opening my history as it used to be to keep from reading a
story before my lessons were learned.
“This morning Miss Stacy came for me and we went to the Academy, calling
for Jane and Ruby and Josie on our way. Ruby asked me to feel her hands
and they were as cold as ice. Josie said I looked as if I hadn’t slept
a wink and she didn’t believe I was strong enough to stand the grind of
the teacher’s course even if I did get through. There are times and
seasons even yet when I don’t feel that I’ve made any great headway in
learning to like Josie Pye!
“When we reached the Academy there were scores of students there from
all over the Island. The first person we saw was Moody Spurgeon sitting
on the steps and muttering away to himself. Jane asked him what on
earth he was doing and he said he was repeating the multiplication
table over and over to steady his nerves and for pity’s sake not to
interrupt him, because if he stopped for a moment he got frightened and
forgot everything he ever knew, but the multiplication table kept all
his facts firmly in their proper place!
“When we were assigned to our rooms Miss Stacy had to leave us. Jane and
I sat together and Jane was so composed that I envied her. No need of
the multiplication table for good, steady, sensible Jane! I wondered if
I looked as I felt and if they could hear my heart thumping clear
across the room. Then a man came in and began distributing the English
examination sheets. My hands grew cold then and my head fairly whirled
around as I picked it up. Just one awful moment,—Diana, I felt exactly
as I did four years ago when I asked Marilla if I might stay at Green
Gables—and then everything cleared up in my mind and my heart began
beating again—I forgot to say that it had stopped altogether!—for I
knew I could do something with _that_ paper anyhow.
“At noon we went home for dinner and then back again for history in the
afternoon. The history was a pretty hard paper and I got dreadfully
mixed up in the dates. Still, I think I did fairly well to-day. But oh,
Diana, to-morrow the geometry exam comes off and when I think of it it
takes every bit of determination I possess to keep from opening my
Euclid. If I thought the multiplication table would help me any I would
recite it from now till to-morrow morning.
“I went down to see the other girls this evening. On my way I met Moody
Spurgeon wandering distractedly around. He said he knew he had failed
in history and he was born to be a disappointment to his parents and he
was going home on the morning train; and it would be easier to be a
carpenter than a minister, anyhow. I cheered him up and persuaded him
to stay to the end because it would be unfair to Miss Stacy if he
didn’t. Sometimes I have wished I was born a boy, but when I see Moody
Spurgeon I’m always glad I’m a girl and not his sister.
“Ruby was in hysterics when I reached their boarding-house; she had just
discovered a fearful mistake she had made in her English paper. When
she recovered we went up-town and had an ice-cream. How we wished you
had been with us.
“Oh, Diana, if only the geometry examination were over! But there, as
Mrs. Lynde would say, the sun will go on rising and setting whether I
fail in geometry or not. That is true but not especially comforting. I
think I’d rather it _didn’t_ go on if I failed!
“Yours devotedly,
“Anne.”
The geometry examination and all the others were over in due time and
Anne arrived home on Friday evening, rather tired but with an air of
chastened triumph about her. Diana was over at Green Gables when she
arrived and they met as if they had been parted for years.
“You old darling, it’s perfectly splendid to see you back again. It
seems like an age since you went to town and oh, Anne, how did you get
along?”
“Pretty well, I think, in everything but the geometry. I don’t know
whether I passed in it or not and I have a creepy, crawly presentiment
that I didn’t. Oh, how good it is to be back! Green Gables is the
dearest, loveliest spot in the world.”
“How did the others do?”
“The girls say they know they didn’t pass, but I think they did pretty
well. Josie says the geometry was so easy a child of ten could do it!
Moody Spurgeon still thinks he failed in history and Charlie says he
failed in algebra. But we don’t really know anything about it and won’t
until the pass list is out. That won’t be for a fortnight. Fancy living
a fortnight in such suspense! I wish I could go to sleep and never wake
up until it is over.”
Diana knew it would be useless to ask how Gilbert Blythe had fared, so
she merely said:
“Oh, you’ll pass all right. Don’t worry.”
“I’d rather not pass at all than not come out pretty well up on the
list,” flashed Anne, by which she meant—and Diana knew she meant—that
success would be incomplete and bitter if she did not come out ahead of
Gilbert Blythe.
With this end in view Anne had strained every nerve during the
examinations. So had Gilbert. They had met and passed each other on the
street a dozen times without any sign of recognition and every time
Anne had held her head a little higher and wished a little more
earnestly that she had made friends with Gilbert when he asked her, and
vowed a little more determinedly to surpass him in the examination. She
knew that all Avonlea junior was wondering which would come out first;
she even knew that Jimmy Glover and Ned Wright had a bet on the
question and that Josie Pye had said there was no doubt in the world
that Gilbert would be first; and she felt that her humiliation would be
unbearable if she failed.
But she had another and nobler motive for wishing to do well. She
wanted to “pass high” for the sake of Matthew and Marilla—especially
Matthew. Matthew had declared to her his conviction that she “would
beat the whole Island.” That, Anne felt, was something it would be
foolish to hope for even in the wildest dreams. But she did hope
fervently that she would be among the first ten at least, so that she
might see Matthew’s kindly brown eyes gleam with pride in her
achievement. That, she felt, would be a sweet reward indeed for all her
hard work and patient grubbing among unimaginative equations and
conjugations.
At the end of the fortnight Anne took to “haunting” the post-office
also, in the distracted company of Jane, Ruby and Josie, opening the
Charlottetown dailies with shaking hands and cold, sinkaway feelings as
bad as any experienced during the Entrance week. Charlie and Gilbert
were not above doing this too, but Moody Spurgeon stayed resolutely
away.
“I haven’t got the grit to go there and look at a paper in cold blood,”
he told Anne. “I’m just going to wait until somebody comes and tells me
suddenly whether I’ve passed or not.”
When three weeks had gone by without the pass list appearing Anne began
to feel that she really couldn’t stand the strain much longer. Her
appetite failed and her interest in Avonlea doings languished. Mrs.
Lynde wanted to know what else you could expect with a Tory
superintendent of education at the head of affairs, and Matthew, noting
Anne’s paleness and indifference and the lagging steps that bore her
home from the post-office every afternoon, began seriously to wonder if
he hadn’t better vote Grit at the next election.
But one evening the news came. Anne was sitting at her open window, for
the time forgetful of the woes of examinations and the cares of the
world, as she drank in the beauty of the summer dusk, sweet-scented
with flower-breaths from the garden below and sibilant and rustling
from the stir of poplars. The eastern sky above the firs was flushed
faintly pink from the reflection of the west, and Anne was wondering
dreamily if the spirit of colour looked like that, when she saw Diana
come flying down through the firs, over the log bridge, and up the
slope, with a fluttering newspaper in her hand.
Anne sprang to her feet, knowing at once what that paper contained. The
pass list was out! Her head whirled and her heart beat until it hurt
her. She could not move a step. It seemed an hour to her before Diana
came rushing along the hall and burst into the room without even
knocking, so great was her excitement.
“Anne, you’ve passed,” she cried, “passed the _very first_—you and
Gilbert both—you’re ties—but your name is first. Oh, I’m so proud!”
Diana flung the paper on the table and herself on Anne’s bed, utterly
breathless and incapable of further speech. Anne lighted the lamp,
oversetting the match-safe and using up half a dozen matches before her
shaking hands could accomplish the task. Then she snatched up the
paper. Yes, she had passed—there was her name at the very top of a list
of two hundred! That moment was worth living for.
“You did just splendidly, Anne,” puffed Diana, recovering sufficiently
to sit up and speak, for Anne, starry-eyed and rapt, had not uttered a
word. “Father brought the paper home from Bright River not ten minutes
ago—it came out on the afternoon train, you know, and won’t be here
till to-morrow by mail—and when I saw the pass list I just rushed over
like a wild thing. You’ve all passed, every one of you, Moody Spurgeon
and all, although he’s conditioned in history. Jane and Ruby did pretty
well—they’re half-way up—and so did Charlie. Josie just scraped through
with three marks to spare, but you’ll see she’ll put on as many airs as
if she’d led. Won’t Miss Stacy be delighted? Oh, Anne, what does it
feel like to see your name at the head of a pass list like that? If it
were me I know I’d go crazy with joy. I am pretty near crazy as it is,
but you’re as calm and cool as a spring evening.”
“I’m just dazzled inside,” said Anne. “I want to say a hundred things,
and I can’t find words to say them in. I never dreamed of this—yes, I
did, too, just once! I let myself think _once_, ‘What if I should come
out first?’ quakingly, you know, for it seemed so vain and presumptuous
to think I could lead the Island. Excuse me a minute, Diana. I must run
right out to the field to tell Matthew. Then we’ll go up the road and
tell the good news to the others.”
They hurried to the hayfield below the barn where Matthew was coiling
hay, and, as luck would have it, Mrs. Lynde was talking to Marilla at
the lane fence.
“Oh, Matthew,” exclaimed Anne, “I’ve passed and I’m first—or one of the
first! I’m not vain, but I’m thankful.”
“Well now, I always said it,” said Matthew, gazing at the pass list
delightedly. “I knew you could beat them all easy.”
“You’ve done pretty well, I must say, Anne,” said Marilla, trying to
hide her extreme pride in Anne from Mrs. Rachel’s critical eye. But
that good soul said heartily:
“I just guess she has done well, and far be it from me to be backward
in saying it. You’re a credit to your friends, Anne, that’s what, and
we’re all proud of you.”
That night Anne, who had wound up a delightful evening by a serious
little talk with Mrs. Allan at the manse, knelt sweetly by her open
window in a great sheen of moonshine and murmured a prayer of gratitude
and aspiration that came straight from her heart. There was in it
thankfulness for the past and reverent petition for the future; and
when she slept on her white pillow her dreams were as fair and bright
and beautiful as maidenhood might desire.