The Complete Works of L M Montgomery, page 61
“I really did. I COULD have, you know. Come, let’s all sit down on this gravestone and get acquainted. It won’t be hard. I know we’re going to adore each other — I knew it as soon as I saw you at Redmond this morning. I wanted so much to go right over and hug you both.”
“Why didn’t you?” asked Priscilla.
“Because I simply couldn’t make up my mind to do it. I never can make up my mind about anything myself — I’m always afflicted with indecision. Just as soon as I decide to do something I feel in my bones that another course would be the correct one. It’s a dreadful misfortune, but I was born that way, and there is no use in blaming me for it, as some people do. So I couldn’t make up my mind to go and speak to you, much as I wanted to.”
“We thought you were too shy,” said Anne.
“No, no, dear. Shyness isn’t among the many failings — or virtues — of Philippa Gordon — Phil for short. Do call me Phil right off. Now, what are your handles?”
“She’s Priscilla Grant,” said Anne, pointing.
“And SHE’S Anne Shirley,” said Priscilla, pointing in turn.
“And we’re from the Island,” said both together.
“I hail from Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia,” said Philippa.
“Bolingbroke!” exclaimed Anne. “Why, that is where I was born.”
“Do you really mean it? Why, that makes you a Bluenose after all.”
“No, it doesn’t,” retorted Anne. “Wasn’t it Dan O’Connell who said that if a man was born in a stable it didn’t make him a horse? I’m Island to the core.”
“Well, I’m glad you were born in Bolingbroke anyway. It makes us kind of neighbors, doesn’t it? And I like that, because when I tell you secrets it won’t be as if I were telling them to a stranger. I have to tell them. I can’t keep secrets — it’s no use to try. That’s my worst failing — that, and indecision, as aforesaid. Would you believe it? — it took me half an hour to decide which hat to wear when I was coming here — HERE, to a graveyard! At first I inclined to my brown one with the feather; but as soon as I put it on I thought this pink one with the floppy brim would be more becoming. When I got IT pinned in place I liked the brown one better. At last I put them close together on the bed, shut my eyes, and jabbed with a hat pin. The pin speared the pink one, so I put it on. It is becoming, isn’t it? Tell me, what do you think of my looks?”
At this naive demand, made in a perfectly serious tone, Priscilla laughed again. But Anne said, impulsively squeezing Philippa’s hand,
“We thought this morning that you were the prettiest girl we saw at Redmond.”
Philippa’s crooked mouth flashed into a bewitching, crooked smile over very white little teeth.
“I thought that myself,” was her next astounding statement, “but I wanted some one else’s opinion to bolster mine up. I can’t decide even on my own appearance. Just as soon as I’ve decided that I’m pretty I begin to feel miserably that I’m not. Besides, have a horrible old great-aunt who is always saying to me, with a mournful sigh, ‘You were such a pretty baby. It’s strange how children change when they grow up.’ I adore aunts, but I detest great-aunts. Please tell me quite often that I am pretty, if you don’t mind. I feel so much more comfortable when I can believe I’m pretty. And I’ll be just as obliging to you if you want me to — I CAN be, with a clear conscience.”
“Thanks,” laughed Anne, “but Priscilla and I are so firmly convinced of our own good looks that we don’t need any assurance about them, so you needn’t trouble.”
“Oh, you’re laughing at me. I know you think I’m abominably vain, but I’m not. There really isn’t one spark of vanity in me. And I’m never a bit grudging about paying compliments to other girls when they deserve them. I’m so glad I know you folks. I came up on Saturday and I’ve nearly died of homesickness ever since. It’s a horrible feeling, isn’t it? In Bolingbroke I’m an important personage, and in Kingsport I’m just nobody! There were times when I could feel my soul turning a delicate blue. Where do you hang out?”
“Thirty-eight St. John’s Street.”
“Better and better. Why, I’m just around the corner on Wallace Street. I don’t like my boardinghouse, though. It’s bleak and lonesome, and my room looks out on such an unholy back yard. It’s the ugliest place in the world. As for cats — well, surely ALL the Kingsport cats can’t congregate there at night, but half of them must. I adore cats on hearth rugs, snoozing before nice, friendly fires, but cats in back yards at midnight are totally different animals. The first night I was here I cried all night, and so did the cats. You should have seen my nose in the morning. How I wished I had never left home!”
“I don’t know how you managed to make up your mind to come to Redmond at all, if you are really such an undecided person,” said amused Priscilla.
“Bless your heart, honey, I didn’t. It was father who wanted me to come here. His heart was set on it — why, I don’t know. It seems perfectly ridiculous to think of me studying for a B.A. degree, doesn’t it? Not but what I can do it, all right. I have heaps of brains.”
“Oh!” said Priscilla vaguely.
“Yes. But it’s such hard work to use them. And B.A.’s are such learned, dignified, wise, solemn creatures — they must be. No, I didn’t want to come to Redmond. I did it just to oblige father. He IS such a duck. Besides, I knew if I stayed home I’d have to get married. Mother wanted that — wanted it decidedly. Mother has plenty of decision. But I really hated the thought of being married for a few years yet. I want to have heaps of fun before I settle down. And, ridiculous as the idea of my being a B.A. is, the idea of my being an old married woman is still more absurd, isn’t it? I’m only eighteen. No, I concluded I would rather come to Redmond than be married. Besides, how could I ever have made up my mind which man to marry?”
“Were there so many?” laughed Anne.
“Heaps. The boys like me awfully — they really do. But there were only two that mattered. The rest were all too young and too poor. I must marry a rich man, you know.”
“Why must you?”
“Honey, you couldn’t imagine ME being a poor man’s wife, could you? I can’t do a single useful thing, and I am VERY extravagant. Oh, no, my husband must have heaps of money. So that narrowed them down to two. But I couldn’t decide between two any easier than between two hundred. I knew perfectly well that whichever one I chose I’d regret all my life that I hadn’t married the other.”
“Didn’t you — love — either of them?” asked Anne, a little hesitatingly. It was not easy for her to speak to a stranger of the great mystery and transformation of life.
“Goodness, no. I couldn’t love anybody. It isn’t in me. Besides I wouldn’t want to. Being in love makes you a perfect slave, I think. And it would give a man such power to hurt you. I’d be afraid. No, no, Alec and Alonzo are two dear boys, and I like them both so much that I really don’t know which I like the better. That is the trouble. Alec is the best looking, of course, and I simply couldn’t marry a man who wasn’t handsome. He is good-tempered too, and has lovely, curly, black hair. He’s rather too perfect — I don’t believe I’d like a perfect husband — somebody I could never find fault with.”
“Then why not marry Alonzo?” asked Priscilla gravely.
“Think of marrying a name like Alonzo!” said Phil dolefully. “I don’t believe I could endure it. But he has a classic nose, and it WOULD be a comfort to have a nose in the family that could be depended on. I can’t depend on mine. So far, it takes after the Gordon pattern, but I’m so afraid it will develop Byrne tendencies as I grow older. I examine it every day anxiously to make sure it’s still Gordon. Mother was a Byrne and has the Byrne nose in the Byrnest degree. Wait till you see it. I adore nice noses. Your nose is awfully nice, Anne Shirley. Alonzo’s nose nearly turned the balance in his favor. But ALONZO! No, I couldn’t decide. If I could have done as I did with the hats — stood them both up together, shut my eyes, and jabbed with a hatpin — it would have been quite easy.”
“What did Alec and Alonzo feel like when you came away?” queried Priscilla.
“Oh, they still have hope. I told them they’d have to wait till I could make up my mind. They’re quite willing to wait. They both worship me, you know. Meanwhile, I intend to have a good time. I expect I shall have heaps of beaux at Redmond. I can’t be happy unless I have, you know. But don’t you think the freshmen are fearfully homely? I saw only one really handsome fellow among them. He went away before you came. I heard his chum call him Gilbert. His chum had eyes that stuck out THAT FAR. But you’re not going yet, girls? Don’t go yet.”
“I think we must,” said Anne, rather coldly. “It’s getting late, and I’ve some work to do.”
“But you’ll both come to see me, won’t you?” asked Philippa, getting up and putting an arm around each. “And let me come to see you. I want to be chummy with you. I’ve taken such a fancy to you both. And I haven’t quite disgusted you with my frivolity, have I?”
“Not quite,” laughed Anne, responding to Phil’s squeeze, with a return of cordiality.
“Because I’m not half so silly as I seem on the surface, you know. You just accept Philippa Gordon, as the Lord made her, with all her faults, and I believe you’ll come to like her. Isn’t this graveyard a sweet place? I’d love to be buried here. Here’s a grave I didn’t see before — this one in the iron railing — oh, girls, look, see — the stone says it’s the grave of a middy who was killed in the fight between the Shannon and the Chesapeake. Just fancy!”
Anne paused by the railing and looked at the worn stone, her pulses thrilling with sudden excitement. The old graveyard, with its over-arching trees and long aisles of shadows, faded from her sight. Instead, she saw the Kingsport Harbor of nearly a century agone. Out of the mist came slowly a great frigate, brilliant with “the meteor flag of England.” Behind her was another, with a still, heroic form, wrapped in his own starry flag, lying on the quarter deck — the gallant Lawrence. Time’s finger had turned back his pages, and that was the Shannon sailing triumphant up the bay with the Chesapeake as her prize.
“Come back, Anne Shirley — come back,” laughed Philippa, pulling her arm. “You’re a hundred years away from us. Come back.”
Anne came back with a sigh; her eyes were shining softly.
“I’ve always loved that old story,” she said, “and although the English won that victory, I think it was because of the brave, defeated commander I love it. This grave seems to bring it so near and make it so real. This poor little middy was only eighteen. He ‘died of desperate wounds received in gallant action’ — so reads his epitaph. It is such as a soldier might wish for.”
Before she turned away, Anne unpinned the little cluster of purple pansies she wore and dropped it softly on the grave of the boy who had perished in the great sea-duel.
“Well, what do you think of our new friend?” asked Priscilla, when Phil had left them.
“I like her. There is something very lovable about her, in spite of all her nonsense. I believe, as she says herself, that she isn’t half as silly as she sounds. She’s a dear, kissable baby — and I don’t know that she’ll ever really grow up.”
“I like her, too,” said Priscilla, decidedly. “She talks as much about boys as Ruby Gillis does. But it always enrages or sickens me to hear Ruby, whereas I just wanted to laugh good-naturedly at Phil. Now, what is the why of that?”
“There is a difference,” said Anne meditatively. “I think it’s because Ruby is really so CONSCIOUS of boys. She plays at love and love-making. Besides, you feel, when she is boasting of her beaux that she is doing it to rub it well into you that you haven’t half so many. Now, when Phil talks of her beaux it sounds as if she was just speaking of chums. She really looks upon boys as good comrades, and she is pleased when she has dozens of them tagging round, simply because she likes to be popular and to be thought popular. Even Alex and Alonzo — I’ll never be able to think of those two names separately after this — are to her just two playfellows who want her to play with them all their lives. I’m glad we met her, and I’m glad we went to Old St. John’s. I believe I’ve put forth a tiny soul-root into Kingsport soil this afternoon. I hope so. I hate to feel transplanted.”
Chapter V
Letters from Home
For the next three weeks Anne and Priscilla continued to feel as strangers in a strange land. Then, suddenly, everything seemed to fall into focus — Redmond, professors, classes, students, studies, social doings. Life became homogeneous again, instead of being made up of detached fragments. The Freshmen, instead of being a collection of unrelated individuals, found themselves a class, with a class spirit, a class yell, class interests, class antipathies and class ambitions. They won the day in the annual “Arts Rush” against the Sophomores, and thereby gained the respect of all the classes, and an enormous, confidence-giving opinion of themselves. For three years the Sophomores had won in the “rush”; that the victory of this year perched upon the Freshmen’s banner was attributed to the strategic generalship of Gilbert Blythe, who marshalled the campaign and originated certain new tactics, which demoralized the Sophs and swept the Freshmen to triumph. As a reward of merit he was elected president of the Freshman Class, a position of honor and responsibility — from a Fresh point of view, at least — coveted by many. He was also invited to join the “Lambs” — Redmondese for Lamba Theta — a compliment rarely paid to a Freshman. As a preparatory initiation ordeal he had to parade the principal business streets of Kingsport for a whole day wearing a sunbonnet and a voluminous kitchen apron of gaudily flowered calico. This he did cheerfully, doffing his sunbonnet with courtly grace when he met ladies of his acquaintance. Charlie Sloane, who had not been asked to join the Lambs, told Anne he did not see how Blythe could do it, and HE, for his part, could never humiliate himself so.
“Fancy Charlie Sloane in a ‘caliker’ apron and a ‘sunbunnit,’” giggled Priscilla. “He’d look exactly like his old Grandmother Sloane. Gilbert, now, looked as much like a man in them as in his own proper habiliments.”
Anne and Priscilla found themselves in the thick of the social life of Redmond. That this came about so speedily was due in great measure to Philippa Gordon. Philippa was the daughter of a rich and well-known man, and belonged to an old and exclusive “Bluenose” family. This, combined with her beauty and charm — a charm acknowledged by all who met her — promptly opened the gates of all cliques, clubs and classes in Redmond to her; and where she went Anne and Priscilla went, too. Phil “adored” Anne and Priscilla, especially Anne. She was a loyal little soul, crystal-free from any form of snobbishness. “Love me, love my friends” seemed to be her unconscious motto. Without effort, she took them with her into her ever widening circle of acquaintanceship, and the two Avonlea girls found their social pathway at Redmond made very easy and pleasant for them, to the envy and wonderment of the other freshettes, who, lacking Philippa’s sponsorship, were doomed to remain rather on the fringe of things during their first college year.
To Anne and Priscilla, with their more serious views of life, Phil remained the amusing, lovable baby she had seemed on their first meeting. Yet, as she said herself, she had “heaps” of brains. When or where she found time to study was a mystery, for she seemed always in demand for some kind of “fun,” and her home evenings were crowded with callers. She had all the “beaux” that heart could desire, for nine-tenths of the Freshmen and a big fraction of all the other classes were rivals for her smiles. She was naively delighted over this, and gleefully recounted each new conquest to Anne and Priscilla, with comments that might have made the unlucky lover’s ears burn fiercely.
“Alec and Alonzo don’t seem to have any serious rival yet,” remarked Anne, teasingly.
“Not one,” agreed Philippa. “I write them both every week and tell them all about my young men here. I’m sure it must amuse them. But, of course, the one I like best I can’t get. Gilbert Blythe won’t take any notice of me, except to look at me as if I were a nice little kitten he’d like to pat. Too well I know the reason. I owe you a grudge, Queen Anne. I really ought to hate you and instead I love you madly, and I’m miserable if I don’t see you every day. You’re different from any girl I ever knew before. When you look at me in a certain way I feel what an insignificant, frivolous little beast I am, and I long to be better and wiser and stronger. And then I make good resolutions; but the first nice-looking mannie who comes my way knocks them all out of my head. Isn’t college life magnificent? It’s so funny to think I hated it that first day. But if I hadn’t I might never got really acquainted with you. Anne, please tell me over again that you like me a little bit. I yearn to hear it.”
“I like you a big bit — and I think you’re a dear, sweet, adorable, velvety, clawless, little — kitten,” laughed Anne, “but I don’t see when you ever get time to learn your lessons.”
Phil must have found time for she held her own in every class of her year. Even the grumpy old professor of Mathematics, who detested coeds, and had bitterly opposed their admission to Redmond, couldn’t floor her. She led the freshettes everywhere, except in English, where Anne Shirley left her far behind. Anne herself found the studies of her Freshman year very easy, thanks in great part to the steady work she and Gilbert had put in during those two past years in Avonlea. This left her more time for a social life which she thoroughly enjoyed. But never for a moment did she forget Avonlea and the friends there. To her, the happiest moments in each week were those in which letters came from home. It was not until she had got her first letters that she began to think she could ever like Kingsport or feel at home there. Before they came, Avonlea had seemed thousands of miles away; those letters brought it near and linked the old life to the new so closely that they began to seem one and the same, instead of two hopelessly segregated existences. The first batch contained six letters, from Jane Andrews, Ruby Gillis, Diana Barry, Marilla, Mrs. Lynde and Davy. Jane’s was a copperplate production, with every “t” nicely crossed and every “i” precisely dotted, and not an interesting sentence in it. She never mentioned the school, concerning which Anne was avid to hear; she never answered one of the questions Anne had asked in her letter. But she told Anne how many yards of lace she had recently crocheted, and the kind of weather they were having in Avonlea, and how she intended to have her new dress made, and the way she felt when her head ached. Ruby Gillis wrote a gushing epistle deploring Anne’s absence, assuring her she was horribly missed in everything, asking what the Redmond “fellows” were like, and filling the rest with accounts of her own harrowing experiences with her numerous admirers. It was a silly, harmless letter, and Anne would have laughed over it had it not been for the postscript. “Gilbert seems to be enjoying Redmond, judging from his letters,” wrote Ruby. “I don’t think Charlie is so stuck on it.”
