Part 35 (2/2)
”Oh, I suppose so. But I can't prove it to myself just now.”
”Just think of all the great and n.o.ble souls who have lived and worked in the world,” said Anne dreamily. ”Isn't it worthwhile to come after them and inherit what they won and taught? Isn't it worthwhile to think we can share their inspiration? And then, all the great souls that will come in the future? Isn't it worthwhile to work a little and prepare the way for them--make just one step in their path easier?”
”Oh, my mind agrees with you, Anne. But my soul remains doleful and uninspired. I'm always grubby and dingy on rainy nights.”
”Some nights I like the rain--I like to lie in bed and hear it pattering on the roof and drifting through the pines.”
”I like it when it stays on the roof,” said Stella. ”It doesn't always.
I spent a gruesome night in an old country farmhouse last summer. The roof leaked and the rain came pattering down on my bed. There was no poetry in THAT. I had to get up in the 'mirk midnight' and chivy round to pull the bedstead out of the drip--and it was one of those solid, old-fas.h.i.+oned beds that weigh a ton--more or less. And then that drip-drop, drip-drop kept up all night until my nerves just went to pieces. You've no idea what an eerie noise a great drop of rain falling with a mushy thud on a bare floor makes in the night. It sounds like ghostly footsteps and all that sort of thing. What are you laughing over, Anne?”
”These stories. As Phil would say they are killing--in more senses than one, for everybody died in them. What dazzlingly lovely heroines we had--and how we dressed them!
”Silks--satins--velvets--jewels--laces--they never wore anything else.
Here is one of Jane Andrews' stories depicting her heroine as sleeping in a beautiful white satin nightdress trimmed with seed pearls.”
”Go on,” said Stella. ”I begin to feel that life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it.”
”Here's one I wrote. My heroine is disporting herself at a ball 'glittering from head to foot with large diamonds of the first water.'
But what booted beauty or rich attire? 'The paths of glory lead but to the grave.' They must either be murdered or die of a broken heart. There was no escape for them.”
”Let me read some of your stories.”
”Well, here's my masterpiece. Note its cheerful t.i.tle--'My Graves.' I shed quarts of tears while writing it, and the other girls shed gallons while I read it. Jane Andrews' mother scolded her frightfully because she had so many handkerchiefs in the wash that week. It's a harrowing tale of the wanderings of a Methodist minister's wife. I made her a Methodist because it was necessary that she should wander. She buried a child every place she lived in. There were nine of them and their graves were severed far apart, ranging from Newfoundland to Vancouver. I described the children, pictured their several death beds, and detailed their tombstones and epitaphs. I had intended to bury the whole nine but when I had disposed of eight my invention of horrors gave out and I permitted the ninth to live as a hopeless cripple.”
While Stella read My Graves, punctuating its tragic paragraphs with chuckles, and Rusty slept the sleep of a just cat who has been out all night curled up on a Jane Andrews tale of a beautiful maiden of fifteen who went to nurse in a leper colony--of course dying of the loathsome disease finally--Anne glanced over the other ma.n.u.scripts and recalled the old days at Avonlea school when the members of the Story Club, sitting under the spruce trees or down among the ferns by the brook, had written them. What fun they had had! How the suns.h.i.+ne and mirth of those olden summers returned as she read. Not all the glory that was Greece or the grandeur that was Rome could weave such wizardry as those funny, tearful tales of the Story Club. Among the ma.n.u.scripts Anne found one written on sheets of wrapping paper. A wave of laughter filled her gray eyes as she recalled the time and place of its genesis. It was the sketch she had written the day she fell through the roof of the Cobb duckhouse on the Tory Road.
Anne glanced over it, then fell to reading it intently. It was a little dialogue between asters and sweet-peas, wild canaries in the lilac bush, and the guardian spirit of the garden. After she had read it, she sat, staring into s.p.a.ce; and when Stella had gone she smoothed out the crumpled ma.n.u.script.
”I believe I will,” she said resolutely.
Chapter x.x.xVI
The Gardners'Call
”Here is a letter with an Indian stamp for you, Aunt Jimsie,” said Phil.
”Here are three for Stella, and two for Pris, and a glorious fat one for me from Jo. There's nothing for you, Anne, except a circular.”
n.o.body noticed Anne's flush as she took the thin letter Phil tossed her carelessly. But a few minutes later Phil looked up to see a transfigured Anne.
”Honey, what good thing has happened?”
”The Youth's Friend has accepted a little sketch I sent them a fortnight ago,” said Anne, trying hard to speak as if she were accustomed to having sketches accepted every mail, but not quite succeeding.
”Anne s.h.i.+rley! How glorious! What was it? When is it to be published?
Did they pay you for it?”
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