Anne of the Island

“I wish I were dead, or that it were tomorrow night,” groaned Phil.

“If you live long enough both wishes will come true,” said Anne calmly.

“It’s easy for you to be serene. You’re at home in Philosophy. I’m not—and when I think of that horrible paper tomorrow I quail. If I should fail in it what would Jo say?”

“You won’t fail. How did you get on in Greek today?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps it was a good paper and perhaps it was bad enough to make Homer turn over in his grave. I’ve studied and mulled over notebooks until I’m incapable of forming an opinion of anything. How thankful little Phil will be when all this examinating is over.”

“Examinating? I never heard such a word.”

“Well, haven’t I as good a right to make a word as any one else?” demanded Phil.

“Words aren’t made—they grow,” said Anne.

“Never mind—I begin faintly to discern clear water ahead where no examination breakers loom. Girls, do you—can you realize that our Redmond Life is almost over?”

“I can’t,” said Anne, sorrowfully. “It seems just yesterday that Pris and I were alone in that crowd of Freshmen at Redmond. And now we are Seniors in our final examinations.”

“‘Potent, wise, and reverend Seniors,'” quoted Phil. “Do you suppose we really are any wiser than when we came to Redmond?”

“You don’t act as if you were by times,” said Aunt Jamesina severely.

“Oh, Aunt Jimsie, haven’t we been pretty good girls, take us by and large, these three winters you’ve mothered us?” pleaded Phil.

“You’ve been four of the dearest, sweetest, goodest girls that ever went together through college,” averred Aunt Jamesina, who never spoiled a compliment by misplaced economy.

“But I mistrust you haven’t any too much sense yet. It’s not to be expected, of course. Experience teaches sense. You can’t learn it in a college course. You’ve been to college four years and I never was, but I know heaps more than you do, young ladies.”

“‘There are lots of things that never go by rule,

There’s a powerful pile o’ knowledge

That you never get at college,

There are heaps of things you never learn at school,'”

quoted Stella.

“Have you learned anything at Redmond except dead languages and geometry and such trash?” queried Aunt Jamesina.

“Oh, yes. I think we have, Aunty,” protested Anne.

“We’ve learned the truth of what Professor Woodleigh told us last Philomathic,” said Phil. “He said, ‘Humor is the spiciest condiment in the feast of existence. Laugh at your mistakes but learn from them, joke over your troubles but gather strength from them, make a jest of your difficulties but overcome them.’ Isn’t that worth learning, Aunt Jimsie?”

“Yes, it is, dearie. When you’ve learned to laugh at the things that should be laughed at, and not to laugh at those that shouldn’t, you’ve got wisdom and understanding.”

“What have you got out of your Redmond course, Anne?” murmured Priscilla aside.

“I think,” said Anne slowly, “that I really have learned to look upon each little hindrance as a jest and each great one as the foreshadowing of victory. Summing up, I think that is what Redmond has given me.”

“I shall have to fall back on another Professor Woodleigh quotation to express what it has done for me,” said Priscilla. “You remember that he said in his address, ‘There is so much in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves—so much in men and women, so much in art and literature, so much everywhere in which to delight, and for which to be thankful.’ I think Redmond has taught me that in some measure, Anne.”

“Judging from what you all, say” remarked Aunt Jamesina, “the sum and substance is that you can learn—if you’ve got natural gumption enough—in four years at college what it would take about twenty years of living to teach you. Well, that justifies higher education in my opinion. It’s a matter I was always dubious about before.”

“But what about people who haven’t natural gumption, Aunt Jimsie?”

“People who haven’t natural gumption never learn,” retorted Aunt Jamesina, “neither in college nor life. If they live to be a hundred they really don’t know anything more than when they were born. It’s their misfortune not their fault, poor souls. But those of us who have some gumption should duly thank the Lord for it.”

“Will you please define what gumption is, Aunt Jimsie?” asked Phil.

“No, I won’t, young woman. Any one who has gumption knows what it is, and any one who hasn’t can never know what it is. So there is no need of defining it.”

The busy days flew by and examinations were over. Anne took High Honors in English. Priscilla took Honors in Classics, and Phil in Mathematics. Stella obtained a good all-round showing. Then came Convocation.

“This is what I would once have called an epoch in my life,” said Anne, as she took Roy’s violets out of their box and gazed at them thoughtfully. She meant to carry them, of course, but her eyes wandered to another box on her table. It was filled with lilies-of-the-valley, as fresh and fragrant as those which bloomed in the Green Gables yard when June came to Avonlea. Gilbert Blythe’s card lay beside it.

Anne wondered why Gilbert should have sent her flowers for Convocation. She had seen very little of him during the past winter. He had come to Patty’s Place only one Friday evening since the Christmas holidays, and they rarely met elsewhere. She knew he was studying very hard, aiming at High Honors and the Cooper Prize, and he took little part in the social doings of Redmond. Anne’s own winter had been quite gay socially. She had seen a good deal of the Gardners; she and Dorothy were very intimate; college circles expected the announcement of her engagement to Roy any day. Anne expected it herself. Yet just before she left Patty’s Place for Convocation she flung Roy’s violets aside and put Gilbert’s lilies-of-the-valley in their place. She could not have told why she did it. Somehow, old Avonlea days and dreams and friendships seemed very close to her in this attainment of her long-cherished ambitions. She and Gilbert had once picturedout merrily the day on which they should be capped and gowned graduates in Arts. The wonderful day had come and Roy’s violets had no place in it. Only her old friend’s flowers seemed to belong to this fruition of old-blossoming hopes which he had once shared.

For years this day had beckoned and allured to her; but when it came the one single, keen, abiding memory it left with her was not that of the breathless moment when the stately president of Redmond gave her cap and diploma and hailed her B.A.; it was not of the flash in Gilbert’s eyes when he saw her lilies, nor the puzzled pained glance Roy gave her as he passed her on the platform. It was not of Aline Gardner’s condescending congratulations, or Dorothy’s ardent, impulsive good wishes. It was of one strange, unaccountable pang that spoiled this long-expected day for her and left in it a certain faint but enduring flavor of bitterness.

The Arts graduates gave a graduation dance that night. When Anne dressed for it she tossed aside the pearl beads she usually wore and took from her trunk the small box that had come to Green Gables on Christmas day. In it was a thread-like gold chain with a tiny pink enamel heart as a pendant. On the accompanying card was written, “With all good wishes from your old chum, Gilbert.” Anne, laughing over the memory the enamel heart conjured up the fatal day when Gilbert had called her “Carrots” and vainly tried to make his peace with a pink candy heart, had written him a nice little note of thanks. But she had never worn the trinket. Tonight she fastened it about her white throat with a dreamy smile.

She and Phil walked to Redmond together. Anne walked in silence; Phil chattered of many things. Suddenly she said,

“I heard today that Gilbert Blythe’s engagement to Christine Stuart was to be announced as soon as Convocation was over. Did you hear anything of it?”

“No,” said Anne.

“I think it’s true,” said Phil lightly.

Anne did not speak. In the darkness she felt her face burning. She slipped her hand inside her collar and caught at the gold chain. One energetic twist and it gave way. Anne thrust the broken trinket into her pocket. Her hands were trembling and her eyes were smarting.

But she was the gayest of all the gay revellers that night, and told Gilbert unregretfully that her card was full when he came to ask her for a dance. Afterwards, when she sat with the girls before the dying embers at Patty’s Place, removing the spring chilliness from their satin skins, none chatted more blithely than she of the day’s events.

“Moody Spurgeon MacPherson called here tonight after you left,” said Aunt Jamesina, who had sat up to keep the fire on. “He didn’t know about the graduation dance. That boy ought to sleep with a rubber band around his head to train his ears not to stick out. I had a beau once who did that and it improved him immensely. It was I who suggested it to him and he took my advice, but he never forgave me for it.”

“Moody Spurgeon is a very serious young man,” yawned Priscilla. “He is concerned with graver matters than his ears. He is going to be a minister, you know.”

“Well, I suppose the Lord doesn’t regard the ears of a man,” said Aunt Jamesina gravely, dropping all further criticism of Moody Spurgeon. Aunt Jamesina had a proper respect for the cloth even in the case of an unfledged parson.