Where the Brook and River Meet

ANNE had her “good” summer and enjoyed it wholeheartedly. She and Diana

fairly lived outdoors, reveling in all the delights that Lover’s Lane

and the Dryad’s Bubble and Willowmere and Victoria Island afforded.

Marilla offered no objections to Anne’s gypsyings. The Spencervale

doctor who had come the night Minnie May had the croup met Anne at the

house of a patient one afternoon early in vacation, looked her over

sharply, screwed up his mouth, shook his head, and sent a message to

Marilla Cuthbert by another person. It was:

“Keep that redheaded girl of yours in the open air all summer and don’t

let her read books until she gets more spring into her step.”

This message frightened Marilla wholesomely. She read Anne’s death

warrant by consumption in it unless it was scrupulously obeyed. As a

result, Anne had the golden summer of her life as far as freedom and

frolic went. She walked, rowed, berried, and dreamed to her heart’s

content; and when September came she was bright-eyed and alert, with a

step that would have satisfied the Spencervale doctor and a heart full

of ambition and zest once more.

“I feel just like studying with might and main,” she declared as she

brought her books down from the attic. “Oh, you good old friends, I’m

glad to see your honest faces once more--yes, even you, geometry. I’ve

had a perfectly beautiful summer, Marilla, and now I’m rejoicing as a

strong man to run a race, as Mr. Allan said last Sunday. Doesn’t Mr.

Allan preach magnificent sermons? Mrs. Lynde says he is improving every

day and the first thing we know some city church will gobble him up

and then we’ll be left and have to turn to and break in another green

preacher. But I don’t see the use of meeting trouble halfway, do you,

Marilla? I think it would be better just to enjoy Mr. Allan while we

have him. If I were a man I think I’d be a minister. They can have

such an influence for good, if their theology is sound; and it must be

thrilling to preach splendid sermons and stir your hearers’ hearts. Why

can’t women be ministers, Marilla? I asked Mrs. Lynde that and she was

shocked and said it would be a scandalous thing. She said there might

be female ministers in the States and she believed there was, but thank

goodness we hadn’t got to that stage in Canada yet and she hoped we

never would. But I don’t see why. I think women would make splendid

ministers. When there is a social to be got up or a church tea or

anything else to raise money the women have to turn to and do the work.

I’m sure Mrs. Lynde can pray every bit as well as Superintendent Bell

and I’ve no doubt she could preach too with a little practice.”

“Yes, I believe she could,” said Marilla dryly. “She does plenty of

unofficial preaching as it is. Nobody has much of a chance to go wrong

in Avonlea with Rachel to oversee them.”

“Marilla,” said Anne in a burst of confidence, “I want to tell you

something and ask you what you think about it. It has worried me

terribly--on Sunday afternoons, that is, when I think specially about

such matters. I do really want to be good; and when I’m with you or Mrs.

Allan or Miss Stacy I want it more than ever and I want to do just what

would please you and what you would approve of. But mostly when I’m with

Mrs. Lynde I feel desperately wicked and as if I wanted to go and do the

very thing she tells me I oughtn’t to do. I feel irresistibly tempted

to do it. Now, what do you think is the reason I feel like that? Do you

think it’s because I’m really bad and unregenerate?”

Marilla looked dubious for a moment. Then she laughed.

“If you are I guess I am too, Anne, for Rachel often has that very

effect on me. I sometimes think she’d have more of an influence for

good, as you say yourself, if she didn’t keep nagging people to do

right. There should have been a special commandment against nagging.

But there, I shouldn’t talk so. Rachel is a good Christian woman and she

means well. There isn’t a kinder soul in Avonlea and she never shirks

her share of work.”

“I’m very glad you feel the same,” said Anne decidedly. “It’s so

encouraging. I shan’t worry so much over that after this. But I dare say

there’ll be other things to worry me. They keep coming up new all the

time--things to perplex you, you know. You settle one question and

there’s another right after. There are so many things to be thought over

and decided when you’re beginning to grow up. It keeps me busy all the

time thinking them over and deciding what is right. It’s a serious thing

to grow up, isn’t it, Marilla? But when I have such good friends as

you and Matthew and Mrs. Allan and Miss Stacy I ought to grow up

successfully, and I’m sure it will be my own fault if I don’t. I feel

it’s a great responsibility because I have only the one chance. If I

don’t grow up right I can’t go back and begin over again. I’ve grown two

inches this summer, Marilla. Mr. Gillis measured me at Ruby’s party. I’m

so glad you made my new dresses longer. That dark-green one is so pretty

and it was sweet of you to put on the flounce. Of course I know it

wasn’t really necessary, but flounces are so stylish this fall and Josie

Pye has flounces on all her dresses. I know I’ll be able to study better

because of mine. I shall have such a comfortable feeling deep down in my

mind about that flounce.”

“It’s worth something to have that,” admitted Marilla.

Miss Stacy came back to Avonlea school and found all her pupils eager

for work once more. Especially did the Queen’s class gird up their loins

for the fray, for at the end of the coming year, dimly shadowing their

pathway already, loomed up that fateful thing known as “the Entrance,”

at the thought of which one and all felt their hearts sink into their

very shoes. Suppose they did not pass! That thought was doomed to

haunt Anne through the waking hours of that winter, Sunday afternoons

inclusive, to the almost entire exclusion of moral and theological

problems. When Anne had bad dreams she found herself staring miserably

at pass lists of the Entrance exams, where Gilbert Blythe’s name was

blazoned at the top and in which hers did not appear at all.

But it was a jolly, busy, happy swift-flying winter. Schoolwork was

as interesting, class rivalry as absorbing, as of yore. New worlds of

thought, feeling, and ambition, fresh, fascinating fields of unexplored

knowledge seemed to be opening out before Anne’s eager eyes.

“Hills peeped o’er hill and Alps on Alps arose.”

Much of all this was due to Miss Stacy’s tactful, careful, broadminded

guidance. She led her class to think and explore and discover for

themselves and encouraged straying from the old beaten paths to a degree

that quite shocked Mrs. Lynde and the school trustees, who viewed all

innovations on established methods rather dubiously.

Apart from her studies Anne expanded socially, for Marilla, mindful of

the Spencervale doctor’s dictum, no longer vetoed occasional outings.

The Debating Club flourished and gave several concerts; there were one

or two parties almost verging on grown-up affairs; there were sleigh

drives and skating frolics galore.

Between times Anne grew, shooting up so rapidly that Marilla was

astonished one day, when they were standing side by side, to find the

girl was taller than herself.

“Why, Anne, how you’ve grown!” she said, almost unbelievingly. A sigh

followed on the words. Marilla felt a queer regret over Anne’s inches.

The child she had learned to love had vanished somehow and here was this

tall, serious-eyed girl of fifteen, with the thoughtful brows and the

proudly poised little head, in her place. Marilla loved the girl as much

as she had loved the child, but she was conscious of a queer sorrowful

sense of loss. And that night, when Anne had gone to prayer meeting

with Diana, Marilla sat alone in the wintry twilight and indulged in the

weakness of a cry. Matthew, coming in with a lantern, caught her at it

and gazed at her in such consternation that Marilla had to laugh through

her tears.

“I was thinking about Anne,” she explained. “She’s got to be such a big

girl--and she’ll probably be away from us next winter. I’ll miss her

terrible.”

“She’ll be able to come home often,” comforted Matthew, to whom Anne was

as yet and always would be the little, eager girl he had brought home

from Bright River on that June evening four years before. “The branch

railroad will be built to Carmody by that time.”

“It won’t be the same thing as having her here all the time,” sighed

Marilla gloomily, determined to enjoy her luxury of grief uncomforted.

“But there--men can’t understand these things!”

There were other changes in Anne no less real than the physical change.

For one thing, she became much quieter. Perhaps she thought all the

more and dreamed as much as ever, but she certainly talked less. Marilla

noticed and commented on this also.

“You don’t chatter half as much as you used to, Anne, nor use half as

many big words. What has come over you?”

Anne colored and laughed a little, as she dropped her book and looked

dreamily out of the window, where big fat red buds were bursting out on

the creeper in response to the lure of the spring sunshine.

“I don’t know--I don’t want to talk as much,” she said, denting her

chin thoughtfully with her forefinger. “It’s nicer to think dear, pretty

thoughts and keep them in one’s heart, like treasures. I don’t like to

have them laughed at or wondered over. And somehow I don’t want to use

big words any more. It’s almost a pity, isn’t it, now that I’m really

growing big enough to say them if I did want to. It’s fun to be almost

grown up in some ways, but it’s not the kind of fun I expected, Marilla.

There’s so much to learn and do and think that there isn’t time for big

words. Besides, Miss Stacy says the short ones are much stronger and

better. She makes us write all our essays as simply as possible. It was

hard at first. I was so used to crowding in all the fine big words I

could think of--and I thought of any number of them. But I’ve got used

to it now and I see it’s so much better.”

“What has become of your story club? I haven’t heard you speak of it for

a long time.”

“The story club isn’t in existence any longer. We hadn’t time for

it--and anyhow I think we had got tired of it. It was silly to be

writing about love and murder and elopements and mysteries. Miss Stacy

sometimes has us write a story for training in composition, but she

won’t let us write anything but what might happen in Avonlea in our own

lives, and she criticizes it very sharply and makes us criticize our own

too. I never thought my compositions had so many faults until I began to

look for them myself. I felt so ashamed I wanted to give up altogether,

but Miss Stacy said I could learn to write well if I only trained myself

to be my own severest critic. And so I am trying to.”

“You’ve only two more months before the Entrance,” said Marilla. “Do you

think you’ll be able to get through?”

Anne shivered.

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’ll be all right--and then I get

horribly afraid. We’ve studied hard and Miss Stacy has drilled us

thoroughly, but we mayn’t get through for all that. We’ve each got a

stumbling block. Mine is geometry of course, and Jane’s is Latin, and

Ruby and Charlie’s is algebra, and Josie’s is arithmetic. Moody Spurgeon

says he feels it in his bones that he is going to fail in English

history. Miss Stacy is going to give us examinations in June just as

hard as we’ll have at the Entrance and mark us just as strictly, so

we’ll have some idea. I wish it was all over, Marilla. It haunts me.

Sometimes I wake up in the night and wonder what I’ll do if I don’t

pass.”

“Why, go to school next year and try again,” said Marilla unconcernedly.

“Oh, I don’t believe I’d have the heart for it. It would be such a

disgrace to fail, especially if Gil--if the others passed. And I get so

nervous in an examination that I’m likely to make a mess of it. I wish I

had nerves like Jane Andrews. Nothing rattles her.”

Anne sighed and, dragging her eyes from the witcheries of the spring

world, the beckoning day of breeze and blue, and the green things

upspringing in the garden, buried herself resolutely in her book.

There would be other springs, but if she did not succeed in passing the

Entrance, Anne felt convinced that she would never recover sufficiently

to enjoy them.