The Collected Works of Lucy Maud Montgomery: 20 Novels & 170+ Short Stories, Poems, Autobiography and Letters (Including Complete Anne Shirley Series, Chronicles of Avonlea & Emily Starr Trilogy). Lucy Maud Montgomery
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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, dreamlike 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