THE WINTER AT QUEEN’S
Anne’s homesickness wore off, greatly helped in the wearing by her
week-end visits home. As long as the open weather lasted the Avonlea
students went out to Carmody on the new branch railway every Friday
night. Diana and several other Avonlea young folks were generally on
hand to meet them and they all walked over to Avonlea in a merry party.
Anne thought those Friday evening gipsyings over the autumnal hills in
the crisp golden air, with the homelights of Avonlea twinkling beyond,
were the best and dearest hours in the whole week.
Gilbert Blythe nearly always walked with Ruby Gillis and carried her
satchel for her. Ruby was a very handsome young lady, now thinking
herself quite as grown up as she really was; she wore her skirts as
long as her mother would let her and did her hair up in town, though
she had to take it down when she went home. She had large, bright-blue
eyes, a brilliant complexion, and a plump showy figure. She laughed a
great deal, was cheerful and good-tempered, and enjoyed the pleasant
things of life frankly.
“But I shouldn’t think she was the sort of girl Gilbert would like,”
whispered Jane to Anne. Anne did not think so either, but she would not
have said so for the Avery scholarship. She could not help thinking,
too, that it would be very pleasant to have such a friend as Gilbert to
jest and chatter with and exchange ideas about books and studies and
ambitions. Gilbert had ambitions, she knew, and Ruby Gillis did not
seem the sort of person with whom such could be profitably discussed.
There was no silly sentiment in Anne’s ideas concerning Gilbert. Boys
were to her, when she thought about them at all, merely possible good
comrades. If she and Gilbert had been friends she would not have cared
how many other friends he had nor with whom he walked. She had a genius
for friendship; girl friends she had in plenty; but she had a vague
consciousness that masculine friendship might also be a good thing to
round out one’s conceptions of companionship and furnish broader
standpoints of judgment and comparison. Not that Anne could have put
her feelings on the matter into just such clear definition. But she
thought that if Gilbert had ever walked home with her from the train,
over the crisp fields and along the ferny byways, they might have had
many and merry and interesting conversations about the new world that
was opening around them and their hopes and ambitions therein. Gilbert
was a clever young fellow, with his own thoughts about things and a
determination to get the best out of life and put the best into it.
Ruby Gillis told Jane Andrews that she didn’t understand half the
things Gilbert Blythe said; he talked just like Anne Shirley did when
she had a thoughtful fit on and for her part she didn’t think it any
fun to be bothering about books and that sort of thing when you didn’t
have to. Frank Stockley had lots 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 a small but critical minority in favour 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 honours in the domestic science course. Even Josie
Pye attained a certain pre-eminence 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 vigour of her tongue in the least abated. But she never
sharpened the latter on Anne, who continued to be a prime favourite
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 May-time 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 to-morrow, 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 yourselves what it must look like over the purply-dark
beechwoods 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.