XXVI
Around the Bend
Thomas Lynde faded out of life as quietly and unobtrusively as he
had lived it. His wife was a tender, patient, unwearied nurse.
Sometimes Rachel had been a little hard on her Thomas in health,
when his slowness or meekness had provoked her; but when he became
ill no voice could be lower, no hand more gently skillful, no vigil
more uncomplaining.
"You've been a good wife to me, Rachel," he once said simply, when
she was sitting by him in the dusk, holding his thin, blanched old
hand in her work-hardened one. "A good wife. I'm sorry I ain't
leaving you better off; but the children will look after you.
They're all smart, capable children, just like their mother.
A good mother. . .a good woman. . . ."
He had fallen asleep then, and the next morning, just as the white
dawn was creeping up over the pointed firs in the hollow, Marilla
went softly into the east gable and wakened Anne.
"Anne, Thomas Lynde is gone. . .their hired boy just brought the word.
I'm going right down to Rachel."
On the day after Thomas Lynde's funeral Marilla went about Green Gables
with a strangely preoccupied air. Occasionally she looked at Anne,
seemed on the point of saying something, then shook her head and
buttoned up her mouth. After tea she went down to see Mrs. Rachel;
and when she returned she went to the east gable, where Anne was
correcting school exercises.
"How is Mrs. Lynde tonight?" asked the latter.
"She's feeling calmer and more composed," answered Marilla, sitting
down on Anne's bed. . .a proceeding which betokened some unusual
mental excitement, for in Marilla's code of household ethics to
sit on a bed after it was made up was an unpardonable offense.
"But she's very lonely. Eliza had to go home today. . .her son
isn't well and she felt she couldn't stay any longer."
"When I've finished these exercises I'll run down and chat awhile
with Mrs. Lynde," said Anne. "I had intended to study some Latin
composition tonight but it can wait."
"I suppose Gilbert Blythe is going to college in the fall," said
Marilla jerkily. "How would you like to go too, Anne?"
Anne looked up in astonishment.
"I would like it, of course, Marilla. But it isn't possible."
"I guess it can be made possible. I've always felt that you should go.
I've never felt easy to think you were giving it all up on my account."
"But Marilla, I've never been sorry for a moment that I stayed home.
I've been so happy. . .Oh, these past two years have just been delightful."
"Oh, yes, I know you've been contented enough. But that isn't the
question exactly. You ought to go on with your education. You've
saved enough to put you through one year at Redmond and the money the
stock brought in will do for another year. . .and there's scholarships
and things you might win."
"Yes, but I can't go, Marilla. Your eyes are better, of course;
but I can't leave you alone with the twins. They need so much
looking after."
"I won't be alone with them. That's what I meant to discuss with you.
I had a long talk with Rachel tonight. Anne, she's feeling dreadful
bad over a good many things. She's not left very well off. It seems
they mortgaged the farm eight years ago to give the youngest boy a
start when he went west; and they've never been able to pay much more
than the interest since. And then of course Thomas' illness has cost
a good deal, one way or another. The farm will have to be sold and Rachel
thinks there'll be hardly anything left after the bills are settled.
She says she'll have to go and live with Eliza and it's breaking her
heart to think of leaving Avonlea. A woman of her age doesn't make
new friends and interests easy. And, Anne, as she talked about it
the thought came to me that I would ask her to come and live with me,
but I thought I ought to talk it over with you first before I said
anything to her. If I had Rachel living with me you could go to college.
How do you feel about it?"
"I feel. . .as if. . .somebody. . .had handed me. . .the moon. . .and I
didn't know. . .exactly. . .what to do. . .with it," said Anne dazedly.
"But as for asking Mrs. Lynde to come here, that is for you to decide,
Marilla. Do you think. . .are you sure. . .you would like it? Mrs. Lynde
is a good woman and a kind neighbor, but. . .but. . ."
"But she's got her faults, you mean to say? Well, she has, of course;
but I think I'd rather put up with far worse faults than see Rachel
go away from Avonlea. I'd miss her terrible. She's the only close
friend I've got here and I'd be lost without her. We've been neighbors
for forty-five years and we've never had a quarrel. . .though we came
rather near it that time you flew at Mrs. Rachel for calling you homely
and redhaired. Do you remember, Anne?"
"I should think I do," said Anne ruefully. "People don't forget
things like that. How I hated poor Mrs. Rachel at that moment!"
"And then that `apology' you made her. Well, you were a handful,
in all conscience, Anne. I did feel so puzzled and bewildered how
to manage you. Matthew understood you better."
"Matthew understood everything," said Anne softly, as she always
spoke of him.
"Well, I think it could be managed so that Rachel and I wouldn't
clash at all. It always seemed to me that the reason two women
can't get along in one house is that they try to share the same
kitchen and get in each other's way. Now, if Rachel came here,
she could have the north gable for her bedroom and the spare room
for a kitchen as well as not, for we don't really need a spare room
at all. She could put her stove there and what furniture she wanted
to keep, and be real comfortable and independent. She'll have enough
to live on of course...her children'll see to that...so all I'd be
giving her would be house room. Yes, Anne, far as I'm concerned
I'd like it."
"Then ask her," said Anne promptly. "I'd be very sorry myself to
see Mrs. Rachel go away."
"And if she comes," continued Marilla, "You can go to college as well
as not. She'll be company for me and she'll do for the twins what I
can't do, so there's no reason in the world why you shouldn't go."
Anne had a long meditation at her window that night. Joy and regret
struggled together in her heart. She had come at last. . .suddenly
and unexpectedly. . .to the bend in the road; and college was around it,
with a hundred rainbow hopes and visions; but Anne realized as well that
when she rounded that curve she must leave many sweet things behind. . .
all the little simple duties and interests which had grown so dear to her
in the last two years and which she had glorified into beauty and delight
by the enthusiasm she had put into them. She must give up her school. . .
and she loved every one of her pupils, even the stupid and naughty ones.
The mere thought of Paul Irving made her wonder if Redmond were such a
name to conjure with after all.
"I've put out a lot of little roots these two years," Anne told the moon,
"and when I'm pulled up they're going to hurt a great deal. But it's best
to go, I think, and, as Marilla says, there's no good reason why I shouldn't.
I must get out all my ambitions and dust them."
Anne sent in her resignation the next day; and Mrs. Rachel, after
a heart to heart talk with Marilla, gratefully accepted the offer
of a home at Green Gables. She elected to remain in her own house
for the summer, however; the farm was not to be sold until the fall
and there were many arrangements to be made.
"I certainly never thought of living as far off the road as Green Gables,"
sighed Mrs. Rachel to herself. "But really, Green Gables doesn't seem as
out of the world as it used to do. . .Anne has lots of company and the
twins make it real lively. And anyhow, I'd rather live at the bottom
of a well than leave Avonlea."
These two decisions being noised abroad speedily ousted the arrival
of Mrs. Harrison in popular gossip. Sage heads were shaken over
Marilla Cuthbert's rash step in asking Mrs. Rachel to live with her.
People opined that they wouldn't get on together. They were both
"too fond of their own way," and many doleful predictions were made,
none of which disturbed the parties in question at all. They had
come to a clear and distinct understanding of the respective duties
and rights of their new arrangements and meant to abide by them.
"I won't meddle with you nor you with me," Mrs. Rachel had said decidedly,
"and as for the twins, I'll be glad to do all I can for them; but I won't
undertake to answer Davy's questions, that's what. I'm not an encyclopedia,
neither am I a Philadelphia lawyer. You'll miss Anne for that."
"Sometimes Anne's answers were about as queer as Davy's questions,"
said Marilla drily. "The twins will miss her and no mistake; but
her future can't be sacrificed to Davy's thirst for information.
When he asks questions I can't answer I'll just tell him children
should be seen and not heard. That was how I was brought up,
and I don't know but what it was just as good a way as all these
new-fangled notions for training children."
"Well, Anne's methods seem to have worked fairly well with Davy,"
said Mrs. Lynde smilingly. "He is a reformed character, that's what."
"He isn't a bad little soul," conceded Marilla. "I never expected to get
as fond of those children as I have. Davy gets round you somehow . . .and
Dora is a lovely child, although she is. . .kind of. . .well, kind of. . ."
"Monotonous? Exactly," supplied Mrs. Rachel. "Like a book where every
page is the same, that's what. Dora will make a good, reliable woman but
she'll never set the pond on fire. Well, that sort of folks are comfortable
to have round, even if they're not as interesting as the other kind."
Gilbert Blythe was probably the only person to whom the news of
Anne's resignation brought unmixed pleasure. Her pupils looked
upon it as a sheer catastrophe. Annetta Bell had hysterics when
she went home. Anthony Pye fought two pitched and unprovoked
battles with other boys by way of relieving his feelings. Barbara
Shaw cried all night. Paul Irving defiantly told his grandmother
that she needn't expect him to eat any porridge for a week.
"I can't do it, Grandma," he said. "I don't really know if I can
eat ANYTHING. I feel as if there was a dreadful lump in my throat.
I'd have cried coming home from school if Jake Donnell hadn't been
watching me. I believe I will cry after I go to bed. It wouldn't
show on my eyes tomorrow, would it? And it would be such a relief.
But anyway, I can't eat porridge. I'm going to need all my strength
of mind to bear up against this, Grandma, and I won't have any left
to grapple with porridge. Oh Grandma, I don't know what I'll do when
my beautiful teacher goes away. Milty Boulter says he bets Jane Andrews
will get the school. I suppose Miss Andrews is very nice. But I know
she won't understand things like Miss Shirley."
Diana also took a very pessimistic view of affairs.
"It will be horribly lonesome here next winter," she mourned, one twilight
when the moonlight was raining "airy silver" through the cherry boughs
and filling the east gable with a soft, dream-like radiance in which
the two girls sat and talked, Anne on her low rocker by the window,
Diana sitting Turkfashion on the bed. "You and Gilbert will be gone
. . .and the Allans too. They are going to call Mr. Allan to
Charlottetown and of course he'll accept. It's too mean. We'll
be vacant all winter, I suppose, and have to listen to a long
string of candidates. . .and half of them won't be any good."
"I hope they won't call Mr. Baxter from East Grafton here, anyhow,"
said Anne decidedly. "He wants the call but he does preach such
gloomy sermons. Mr. Bell says he's a minister of the old school,
but Mrs. Lynde says there's nothing whatever the matter with him
but indigestion. His wife isn't a very good cook, it seems, and
Mrs. Lynde says that when a man has to eat sour bread two weeks
out of three his theology is bound to get a kink in it somewhere.
Mrs. Allan feels very badly about going away. She says everybody
has been so kind to her since she came here as a bride that she
feels as if she were leaving lifelong friends. And then, there's
the baby's grave, you know. She says she doesn't see how she can
go away and leave that. . .it was such a little mite of a thing
and only three months old, and she says she is afraid it will miss
its mother, although she knows better and wouldn't say so to Mr. Allan
for anything. She says she has slipped through the birch grove back
of the manse nearly every night to the graveyard and sung a little
lullaby to it. She told me all about it last evening when I was
up putting some of those early wild roses on Matthew's grave.
I promised her that as long as I was in Avonlea I would put flowers
on the baby's grave and when I was away I felt sure that. . ."
"That I would do it," supplied Diana heartily. "Of course I will.
And I'll put them on Matthew's grave too, for your sake, Anne."
"Oh, thank you. I meant to ask you to if you would. And on little
Hester Gray's too? Please don't forget hers. Do you know, I've
thought and dreamed so much about little Hester Gray that she has
become strangely real to me. I think of her, back there in her
little garden in that cool, still, green corner; and I have a fancy
that if I could steal back there some spring evening, just at the
magic time 'twixt light and dark, and tiptoe so softly up the beech
hill that my footsteps could not frighten her, I would find the
garden just as it used to be, all sweet with June lilies and early
roses, with the tiny house beyond it all hung with vines; and
little Hester Gray would be there, with her soft eyes, and the wind
ruffling her dark hair, wandering about, putting her fingertips
under the chins of the lilies and whispering secrets with the roses;
and I would go forward, oh, so softly, and hold out my hands and
say to her, `Little Hester Gray, won't you let me be your playmate,
for I love the roses too?' And we would sit down on the old bench
and talk a little and dream a little, or just be beautifully silent
together. And then the moon would rise and I would look around me
. . .and there would be no Hester Gray and no little vine-hung house,
and no roses. . .only an old waste garden starred with June lilies amid the
grasses, and the wind sighing, oh, so sorrowfully in the cherry trees. And
I would not know whether it had been real or if I had just imagined it all."
Diana crawled up and got her back against the headboard of the bed.
When your companion of twilight hour said such spooky things it was
just as well not to be able to fancy there was anything behind you.
"I'm afraid the Improvement Society will go down when you and
Gilbert are both gone," she remarked dolefully.
"Not a bit of fear of it," said Anne briskly, coming back from
dreamland to the affairs of practical life. "It is too firmly
established for that, especially since the older people are
becoming so enthusiastic about it. Look what they are doing this
summer for their lawns and lanes. Besides, I'll be watching for
hints at Redmond and I'll write a paper for it next winter and
send it over. Don't take such a gloomy view of things, Diana.
And don't grudge me my little hour of gladness and jubilation now.
Later on, when I have to go away, I'll feel anything but glad."
"It's all right for you to be glad. . .you're going to college and
you'll have a jolly time and make heaps of lovely new friends."
"I hope I shall make new friends," said Anne thoughtfully.
"The possibilities of making new friends help to make life very
fascinating. But no matter how many friends I make they'll never
be as dear to me as the old ones. . .especially a certain girl
with black eyes and dimples. Can you guess who she is, Diana?"
"But there'll be so many clever girls at Redmond," sighed Diana,
"and I'm only a stupid little country girl who says `I seen'
sometimes. . .though I really know better when I stop to think.
Well, of course these past two years have really been too pleasant
to last. I know SOMEBODY who is glad you are going to Redmond anyhow.
Anne, I'm going to ask you a question. . .a serious question. Don't be
vexed and do answer seriously. Do you care anything for Gilbert?"
"Ever so much as a friend and not a bit in the way you mean," said Anne
calmly and decidedly; she also thought she was speaking sincerely.
Diana sighed. She wished, somehow, that Anne had answered differently.
"Don't you mean EVER to be married, Anne?"
"Perhaps. . .some day. . .when I meet the right one," said Anne,
smiling dreamily up at the moonlight.
"But how can you be sure when you do meet the right one?" persisted Diana.
"Oh, I should know him. . .SOMETHING would tell me. You know what my
ideal is, Diana."
"But people's ideals change sometimes."
"Mine won't. And I COULDN'T care for any man who didn't fulfill it."
"What if you never meet him?"
"Then I shall die an old maid," was the cheerful response. "I daresay
it isn't the hardest death by any means."
"Oh, I suppose the dying would be easy enough; it's the living an
old maid I shouldn't like," said Diana, with no intention of being
humorous. "Although I wouldn't mind being an old maid VERY much if
I could be one like Miss Lavendar. But I never could be. When I'm
forty-five I'll be horribly fat. And while there might be some
romance about a thin old maid there couldn't possibly be any about
a fat one. Oh, mind you, Nelson Atkins proposed to Ruby Gillis
three weeks ago. Ruby told me all about it. She says she never
had any intention of taking him, because any one who married him
will have to go in with the old folks; but Ruby says that he made
such a perfectly beautiful and romantic proposal that it simply
swept her off her feet. But she didn't want to do anything rash so
she asked for a week to consider; and two days later she was at a
meeting of the Sewing Circle at his mother's and there was a book
called `The Complete Guide to Etiquette,' lying on the parlor
table. Ruby said she simply couldn't describe her feelings when in
a section of it headed, `The Deportment of Courtship and Marriage,'
she found the very proposal Nelson had made, word for word. She
went home and wrote him a perfectly scathing refusal; and she says
his father and mother have taken turns watching him ever since for
fear he'll drown himself in the river; but Ruby says they needn't
be afraid; for in the Deportment of Courtship and Marriage it told
how a rejected lover should behave and there's nothing about
drowning in THAT. And she says Wilbur Blair is literally pining
away for her but she's perfectly helpless in the matter."
Anne made an impatient movement.
"I hate to say it. . .it seems so disloyal. . .but, well, I don't
like Ruby Gillis now. I liked her when we went to school and
Queen's together. . .though not so well as you and Jane of course.
But this last year at Carmody she seems so different. . .so. . .so. . ."
"I know," nodded Diana. "It's the Gillis coming out in her. . .
she can't help it. Mrs. Lynde says that if ever a Gillis girl
thought about anything but the boys she never showed it in her
walk and conversation. She talks about nothing but boys and what
compliments they pay her, and how crazy they all are about her at
Carmody. And the strange thing is, they ARE, too. . ." Diana
admitted this somewhat resentfully. "Last night when I saw her in
Mr. Blair's store she whispered to me that she'd just made a new `mash.'
I wouldn't ask her who it was, because I knew she was dying to BE asked.
Well, it's what Ruby always wanted, I suppose. You remember even when
she was little she always said she meant to have dozens of beaus when she
grew up and have the very gayest time she could before she settled down.
She's so different from Jane, isn't she? Jane is such a nice, sensible,
lady-like girl."
"Dear old Jane is a jewel," agreed Anne, "but," she added, leaning
forward to bestow a tender pat on the plump, dimpled little hand
hanging over her pillow, "there's nobody like my own Diana after all.
Do you remember that evening we first met, Diana, and `swore'
eternal friendship in your garden? We've kept that `oath,' I
think. . .we've never had a quarrel nor even a coolness. I shall
never forget the thrill that went over me the day you told me you
loved me. I had had such a lonely, starved heart all through my
childhood. I'm just beginning to realize how starved and lonely it
really was. Nobody cared anything for me or wanted to be bothered
with me. I should have been miserable if it hadn't been for that
strange little dream-life of mine, wherein I imagined all the
friends and love I craved. But when I came to Green Gables
everything was changed. And then I met you. You don't know what
your friendship meant to me. I want to thank you here and now,
dear, for the warm and true affection you've always given me."
"And always, always will," sobbed Diana. "I shall NEVER love anybody
. . .any GIRL. . .half as well as I love you. And if I ever do marry
and have a little girl of my own I'm going to name her ANNE."
