Chapter XXVII
Mutual Confidences
March came in that winter like the meekest and mildest of lambs,bringing days that were crisp and golden and tingling, each followedby a frosty pink twilight which gradually lost itself in an elfland ofmoonshine.
Over the girls at Patty's Place was falling the shadow of Aprilexaminations. They were studying hard; even Phil had settled down totext and notebooks with a doggedness not to be expected of her.
"I'm going to take the Johnson Scholarship in Mathematics," sheannounced calmly. "I could take the one in Greek easily, but I'd rathertake the mathematical one because I want to prove to Jonas that I'mreally enormously clever."
"Jonas likes you better for your big brown eyes and your crooked smilethan for all the brains you carry under your curls," said Anne.
"When I was a girl it wasn't considered lady-like to know anything aboutMathematics," said Aunt Jamesina. "But times have changed. I don't knowthat it's all for the better. Can you cook, Phil?"
"No, I never cooked anything in my life except a gingerbread and it wasa failure--flat in the middle and hilly round the edges. You know thekind. But, Aunty, when I begin in good earnest to learn to cook don'tyou think the brains that enable me to win a mathematical scholarshipwill also enable me to learn cooking just as well?"
"Maybe," said Aunt Jamesina cautiously. "I am not decrying the highereducation of women. My daughter is an M.A. She can cook, too. ButI taught her to cook BEFORE I let a college professor teach herMathematics."
In mid-March came a letter from Miss Patty Spofford, saying that she andMiss Maria had decided to remain abroad for another year.
"So you may have Patty's Place next winter, too," she wrote. "Maria andI are going to run over Egypt. I want to see the Sphinx once before Idie."
"Fancy those two dames 'running over Egypt'! I wonder if they'll look upat the Sphinx and knit," laughed Priscilla.
"I'm so glad we can keep Patty's Place for another year," said Stella."I was afraid they'd come back. And then our jolly little nest herewould be broken up--and we poor callow nestlings thrown out on the cruelworld of boardinghouses again."
"I'm off for a tramp in the park," announced Phil, tossing her bookaside. "I think when I am eighty I'll be glad I went for a walk in thepark tonight."
"What do you mean?" asked Anne.
"Come with me and I'll tell you, honey."
They captured in their ramble all the mysteries and magics of a Marchevening. Very still and mild it was, wrapped in a great, white, broodingsilence--a silence which was yet threaded through with many littlesilvery sounds which you could hear if you hearkened as much with yoursoul as your ears. The girls wandered down a long pineland aisle thatseemed to lead right out into the heart of a deep-red, overflowingwinter sunset.
"I'd go home and write a poem this blessed minute if I only knew how,"declared Phil, pausing in an open space where a rosy light was stainingthe green tips of the pines. "It's all so wonderful here--this great,white stillness, and those dark trees that always seem to be thinking."
"'The woods were God's first temples,'" quoted Anne softly. "One can'thelp feeling reverent and adoring in such a place. I always feel so nearHim when I walk among the pines."
"Anne, I'm the happiest girl in the world," confessed Phil suddenly.
"So Mr. Blake has asked you to marry him at last?" said Anne calmly.
"Yes. And I sneezed three times while he was asking me. Wasn't thathorrid? But I said 'yes' almost before he finished--I was so afraid hemight change his mind and stop. I'm besottedly happy. I couldn't reallybelieve before that Jonas would ever care for frivolous me."
"Phil, you're not really frivolous," said Anne gravely. "'Way downunderneath that frivolous exterior of yours you've got a dear, loyal,womanly little soul. Why do you hide it so?"
"I can't help it, Queen Anne. You are right--I'm not frivolous at heart.But there's a sort of frivolous skin over my soul and I can't take itoff. As Mrs. Poyser says, I'd have to be hatched over again and hatcheddifferent before I could change it. But Jonas knows the real me andloves me, frivolity and all. And I love him. I never was so surprisedin my life as I was when I found out I loved him. I'd never thought itpossible to fall in love with an ugly man. Fancy me coming down to onesolitary beau. And one named Jonas! But I mean to call him Jo. That'ssuch a nice, crisp little name. I couldn't nickname Alonzo."
"What about Alec and Alonzo?"
"Oh, I told them at Christmas that I never could marry either of them.It seems so funny now to remember that I ever thought it possible that Imight. They felt so badly I just cried over both of them--howled. But Iknew there was only one man in the world I could ever marry. I had madeup my own mind for once and it was real easy, too. It's very delightfulto feel so sure, and know it's your own sureness and not somebodyelse's."
"Do you suppose you'll be able to keep it up?"
"Making up my mind, you mean? I don't know, but Jo has given me asplendid rule. He says, when I'm perplexed, just to do what I wouldwish I had done when I shall be eighty. Anyhow, Jo can make up his mindquickly enough, and it would be uncomfortable to have too much mind inthe same house."
"What will your father and mother say?"
"Father won't say much. He thinks everything I do right. But mother WILLtalk. Oh, her tongue will be as Byrney as her nose. But in the end itwill be all right."
"You'll have to give up a good many things you've always had, when youmarry Mr. Blake, Phil."
"But I'll have HIM. I won't miss the other things. We're to be marrieda year from next June. Jo graduates from St. Columbia this spring, youknow. Then he's going to take a little mission church down on PattersonStreet in the slums. Fancy me in the slums! But I'd go there or toGreenland's icy mountains with him."
"And this is the girl who would NEVER marry a man who wasn't rich,"commented Anne to a young pine tree.
"Oh, don't cast up the follies of my youth to me. I shall be poor asgaily as I've been rich. You'll see. I'm going to learn how to cookand make over dresses. I've learned how to market since I've livedat Patty's Place; and once I taught a Sunday School class for a wholesummer. Aunt Jamesina says I'll ruin Jo's career if I marry him. ButI won't. I know I haven't much sense or sobriety, but I've got what isever so much better--the knack of making people like me. There is aman in Bolingbroke who lisps and always testifies in prayer-meeting.He says, 'If you can't thine like an electric thtar thine like acandlethtick.' I'll be Jo's little candlestick."
"Phil, you're incorrigible. Well, I love you so much that I can't makenice, light, congratulatory little speeches. But I'm heart-glad of yourhappiness."
"I know. Those big gray eyes of yours are brimming over with realfriendship, Anne. Some day I'll look the same way at you. You're goingto marry Roy, aren't you, Anne?"
"My dear Philippa, did you ever hear of the famous Betty Baxter, who'refused a man before he'd axed her'? I am not going to emulate thatcelebrated lady by either refusing or accepting any one before he 'axes'me."
"All Redmond knows that Roy is crazy about you," said Phil candidly."And you DO love him, don't you, Anne?"
"I--I suppose so," said Anne reluctantly. She felt that she ought to beblushing while making such a confession; but she was not; on the otherhand, she always blushed hotly when any one said anything about GilbertBlythe or Christine Stuart in her hearing. Gilbert Blythe and ChristineStuart were nothing to her--absolutely nothing. But Anne had given uptrying to analyze the reason of her blushes. As for Roy, of course shewas in love with him--madly so. How could she help it? Was he not herideal? Who could resist those glorious dark eyes, and that pleadingvoice? Were not half the Redmond girls wildly envious? And what acharming sonnet he had sent her, with a box of violets, on her birthday!Anne knew every word of it by heart. It was very good stuff of its kind,too. Not exactly up to the level of Keats or Shakespeare--even Annewas not so deeply in love as to think that. But it was very tolerablemagazine verse. And it was addressed to HER--not to Laura or B
eatrice orthe Maid of Athens, but to her, Anne Shirley. To be told in rhythmicalcadences that her eyes were stars of the morning--that her cheek hadthe flush it stole from the sunrise--that her lips were redder than theroses of Paradise, was thrillingly romantic. Gilbert would never havedreamed of writing a sonnet to her eyebrows. But then, Gilbert couldsee a joke. She had once told Roy a funny story--and he had not seenthe point of it. She recalled the chummy laugh she and Gilbert had hadtogether over it, and wondered uneasily if life with a man who had nosense of humor might not be somewhat uninteresting in the long run. Butwho could expect a melancholy, inscrutable hero to see the humorous sideof things? It would be flatly unreasonable.