Chapter IX
An Unwelcome Lover and a Welcome Friend
The second term at Redmond sped as quickly as had the first--"actuallywhizzed away," Philippa said. Anne enjoyed it thoroughly in all itsphases--the stimulating class rivalry, the making and deepening of newand helpful friendships, the gay little social stunts, the doings of thevarious societies of which she was a member, the widening of horizonsand interests. She studied hard, for she had made up her mind to win theThorburn Scholarship in English. This being won, meant that she couldcome back to Redmond the next year without trenching on Marilla's smallsavings--something Anne was determined she would not do.
Gilbert, too, was in full chase after a scholarship, but found plentyof time for frequent calls at Thirty-eight, St. John's. He was Anne'sescort at nearly all the college affairs, and she knew that their nameswere coupled in Redmond gossip. Anne raged over this but was helpless;she could not cast an old friend like Gilbert aside, especially whenhe had grown suddenly wise and wary, as behooved him in the dangerousproximity of more than one Redmond youth who would gladly have taken hisplace by the side of the slender, red-haired coed, whose gray eyes wereas alluring as stars of evening. Anne was never attended by the crowd ofwilling victims who hovered around Philippa's conquering march throughher Freshman year; but there was a lanky, brainy Freshie, a jolly,little, round Sophomore, and a tall, learned Junior who all liked tocall at Thirty-eight, St. John's, and talk over 'ologies and 'isms, aswell as lighter subjects, with Anne, in the becushioned parlor of thatdomicile. Gilbert did not love any of them, and he was exceedinglycareful to give none of them the advantage over him by any untimelydisplay of his real feelings Anne-ward. To her he had become again theboy-comrade of Avonlea days, and as such could hold his own againstany smitten swain who had so far entered the lists against him. As acompanion, Anne honestly acknowledged nobody could be so satisfactory asGilbert; she was very glad, so she told herself, that he had evidentlydropped all nonsensical ideas--though she spent considerable timesecretly wondering why.
Only one disagreeable incident marred that winter. Charlie Sloane,sitting bolt upright on Miss Ada's most dearly beloved cushion, askedAnne one night if she would promise "to become Mrs. Charlie Sloane someday." Coming after Billy Andrews' proxy effort, this was not quite theshock to Anne's romantic sensibilities that it would otherwise havebeen; but it was certainly another heart-rending disillusion. She wasangry, too, for she felt that she had never given Charlie the slightestencouragement to suppose such a thing possible. But what could youexpect of a Sloane, as Mrs. Rachel Lynde would ask scornfully? Charlie'swhole attitude, tone, air, words, fairly reeked with Sloanishness. "Hewas conferring a great honor--no doubt whatever about that. And whenAnne, utterly insensible to the honor, refused him, as delicately andconsiderately as she could--for even a Sloane had feelings which oughtnot to be unduly lacerated--Sloanishness still further betrayed itself.Charlie certainly did not take his dismissal as Anne's imaginaryrejected suitors did. Instead, he became angry, and showed it; he saidtwo or three quite nasty things; Anne's temper flashed up mutinously andshe retorted with a cutting little speech whose keenness pierced evenCharlie's protective Sloanishness and reached the quick; he caught uphis hat and flung himself out of the house with a very red face; Annerushed upstairs, falling twice over Miss Ada's cushions on the way,and threw herself on her bed, in tears of humiliation and rage. Hadshe actually stooped to quarrel with a Sloane? Was it possible anythingCharlie Sloane could say had power to make her angry? Oh, this wasdegradation, indeed--worse even than being the rival of Nettie Blewett!
"I wish I need never see the horrible creature again," she sobbedvindictively into her pillows.
She could not avoid seeing him again, but the outraged Charlie took carethat it should not be at very close quarters. Miss Ada's cushions werehenceforth safe from his depredations, and when he met Anne on thestreet, or in Redmond's halls, his bow was icy in the extreme. Relationsbetween these two old schoolmates continued to be thus strained fornearly a year! Then Charlie transferred his blighted affections to around, rosy, snub-nosed, blue-eyed, little Sophomore who appreciatedthem as they deserved, whereupon he forgave Anne and condescended to becivil to her again; in a patronizing manner intended to show her justwhat she had lost.
One day Anne scurried excitedly into Priscilla's room.
"Read that," she cried, tossing Priscilla a letter. "It's fromStella--and she's coming to Redmond next year--and what do you think ofher idea? I think it's a perfectly splendid one, if we can only carry itout. Do you suppose we can, Pris?"
"I'll be better able to tell you when I find out what it is," saidPriscilla, casting aside a Greek lexicon and taking up Stella's letter.Stella Maynard had been one of their chums at Queen's Academy and hadbeen teaching school ever since.
"But I'm going to give it up, Anne dear," she wrote, "and go to collegenext year. As I took the third year at Queen's I can enter the Sophomoreyear. I'm tired of teaching in a back country school. Some day I'm goingto write a treatise on 'The Trials of a Country Schoolmarm.' It willbe a harrowing bit of realism. It seems to be the prevailing impressionthat we live in clover, and have nothing to do but draw our quarter'ssalary. My treatise shall tell the truth about us. Why, if a week shouldpass without some one telling me that I am doing easy work for big pay Iwould conclude that I might as well order my ascension robe 'immediatelyand to onct.' 'Well, you get your money easy,' some rate-payer willtell me, condescendingly. 'All you have to do is to sit there and hearlessons.' I used to argue the matter at first, but I'm wiser now.Facts are stubborn things, but as some one has wisely said, not half sostubborn as fallacies. So I only smile loftily now in eloquent silence.Why, I have nine grades in my school and I have to teach a little ofeverything, from investigating the interiors of earthworms to the studyof the solar system. My youngest pupil is four--his mother sends him toschool to 'get him out of the way'--and my oldest twenty--it 'suddenlystruck him' that it would be easier to go to school and get an educationthan follow the plough any longer. In the wild effort to cram all sortsof research into six hours a day I don't wonder if the children feellike the little boy who was taken to see the biograph. 'I have to lookfor what's coming next before I know what went last,' he complained. Ifeel like that myself.
"And the letters I get, Anne! Tommy's mother writes me that Tommy is notcoming on in arithmetic as fast as she would like. He is only in simplereduction yet, and Johnny Johnson is in fractions, and Johnny isn't halfas smart as her Tommy, and she can't understand it. And Susy's fatherwants to know why Susy can't write a letter without misspelling halfthe words, and Dick's aunt wants me to change his seat, because that badBrown boy he is sitting with is teaching him to say naughty words.
"As to the financial part--but I'll not begin on that. Those whom thegods wish to destroy they first make country schoolmarms!
"There, I feel better, after that growl. After all, I've enjoyed thesepast two years. But I'm coming to Redmond.
"And now, Anne, I've a little plan. You know how I loathe boarding.I've boarded for four years and I'm so tired of it. I don't feel likeenduring three years more of it.
"Now, why can't you and Priscilla and I club together, rent a littlehouse somewhere in Kingsport, and board ourselves? It would be cheaperthan any other way. Of course, we would have to have a housekeeper andI have one ready on the spot. You've heard me speak of Aunt Jamesina?She's the sweetest aunt that ever lived, in spite of her name. She can'thelp that! She was called Jamesina because her father, whose name wasJames, was drowned at sea a month before she was born. I always call herAunt Jimsie. Well, her only daughter has recently married and gone tothe foreign mission field. Aunt Jamesina is left alone in a great bighouse, and she is horribly lonesome. She will come to Kingsport and keephouse for us if we want her, and I know you'll both love her. The moreI think of the plan the more I like it. We could have such good,independent times.
"Now, if you and Priscilla agree to it, wouldn't it be a good ideafor you, wh
o are on the spot, to look around and see if you can find asuitable house this spring? That would be better than leaving it tillthe fall. If you could get a furnished one so much the better, but ifnot, we can scare up a few sticks of finiture between us and old familyfriends with attics. Anyhow, decide as soon as you can and write me, sothat Aunt Jamesina will know what plans to make for next year."
"I think it's a good idea," said Priscilla.
"So do I," agreed Anne delightedly. "Of course, we have a niceboardinghouse here, but, when all's said and done, a boardinghouse isn'thome. So let's go house-hunting at once, before exams come on."
"I'm afraid it will be hard enough to get a really suitable house,"warned Priscilla. "Don't expect too much, Anne. Nice houses in nicelocalities will probably be away beyond our means. We'll likely have tocontent ourselves with a shabby little place on some street whereon livepeople whom to know is to be unknown, and make life inside compensatefor the outside."
Accordingly they went house-hunting, but to find just what they wantedproved even harder than Priscilla had feared. Houses there were galore,furnished and unfurnished; but one was too big, another too small; thisone too expensive, that one too far from Redmond. Exams were on andover; the last week of the term came and still their "house o'dreams,"as Anne called it, remained a castle in the air.
"We shall have to give up and wait till the fall, I suppose," saidPriscilla wearily, as they rambled through the park on one of April'sdarling days of breeze and blue, when the harbor was creaming andshimmering beneath the pearl-hued mists floating over it. "We may findsome shack to shelter us then; and if not, boardinghouses we shall havealways with us."
"I'm not going to worry about it just now, anyway, and spoil this lovelyafternoon," said Anne, gazing around her with delight. The fresh chillair was faintly charged with the aroma of pine balsam, and the sky abovewas crystal clear and blue--a great inverted cup of blessing. "Spring issinging in my blood today, and the lure of April is abroad on the air.I'm seeing visions and dreaming dreams, Pris. That's because the wind isfrom the west. I do love the west wind. It sings of hope and gladness,doesn't it? When the east wind blows I always think of sorrowful rainon the eaves and sad waves on a gray shore. When I get old I shall haverheumatism when the wind is east."
"And isn't it jolly when you discard furs and winter garments forthe first time and sally forth, like this, in spring attire?" laughedPriscilla. "Don't you feel as if you had been made over new?"
"Everything is new in the spring," said Anne. "Springs themselves arealways so new, too. No spring is ever just like any other spring. Italways has something of its own to be its own peculiar sweetness. Seehow green the grass is around that little pond, and how the willow budsare bursting."
"And exams are over and gone--the time of Convocation will comesoon--next Wednesday. This day next week we'll be home."
"I'm glad," said Anne dreamily. "There are so many things I want to do.I want to sit on the back porch steps and feel the breeze blowing downover Mr. Harrison's fields. I want to hunt ferns in the Haunted Woodand gather violets in Violet Vale. Do you remember the day of our goldenpicnic, Priscilla? I want to hear the frogs singing and the poplarswhispering. But I've learned to love Kingsport, too, and I'm glad I'mcoming back next fall. If I hadn't won the Thorburn I don't believe Icould have. I COULDN'T take any of Marilla's little hoard."
"If we could only find a house!" sighed Priscilla. "Look over there atKingsport, Anne--houses, houses everywhere, and not one for us."
"Stop it, Pris. 'The best is yet to be.' Like the old Roman, we'll finda house or build one. On a day like this there's no such word as fail inmy bright lexicon."
They lingered in the park until sunset, living in the amazing miracleand glory and wonder of the springtide; and they went home as usual, byway of Spofford Avenue, that they might have the delight of looking atPatty's Place.
"I feel as if something mysterious were going to happen right away--'bythe pricking of my thumbs,'" said Anne, as they went up the slope."It's a nice story-bookish feeling. Why--why--why! Priscilla Grant, lookover there and tell me if it's true, or am I seein' things?"
Priscilla looked. Anne's thumbs and eyes had not deceived her. Over thearched gateway of Patty's Place dangled a little, modest sign. It said"To Let, Furnished. Inquire Within."
"Priscilla," said Anne, in a whisper, "do you suppose it's possible thatwe could rent Patty's Place?"
"No, I don't," averred Priscilla. "It would be too good to betrue. Fairy tales don't happen nowadays. I won't hope, Anne. Thedisappointment would be too awful to bear. They're sure to want more forit than we can afford. Remember, it's on Spofford Avenue."
"We must find out anyhow," said Anne resolutely. "It's too late to callthis evening, but we'll come tomorrow. Oh, Pris, if we can get thisdarling spot! I've always felt that my fortunes were linked with Patty'sPlace, ever since I saw it first."