Anne of Green Gables
CHAPTER XXIV
Miss Stacy and Her Pupils Get Up a Concert
It was October again when Anne was ready to go back to school—a glorious
October, all red and gold, with mellow mornings when the valleys were filled
with delicate mists as if the spirit of autumn had poured them in for the sun to
drain—amethyst, pearl, silver, rose, and smoke-blue. The dews were so heavy that
the fields glistened like cloth of silver and there were such heaps of rustling
leaves in the hollows of many-stemmed woods to run crisply through. The Birch
Path was a canopy of yellow and the ferns were sear and brown all along it.
There was a tang in the very air that inspired the hearts of small maidens
tripping, unlike snails, swiftly and willingly to school; and it WAS jolly to be
back again at the little brown desk beside Diana, with Ruby Gillis nodding
across the aisle and Carrie Sloane sending up notes and Julia Bell passing a
"chew" of gum down from the back seat. Anne drew a long breath of happiness as
she sharpened her pencil and arranged her picture cards in her desk. Life was
certainly very interesting.
In the new teacher she found another true and helpful friend. Miss Stacy was
a bright, sympathetic young woman with the happy gift of winning and holding the
affections of her pupils and bringing out the best that was in them mentally and
morally. Anne expanded like a flower under this wholesome influence and carried
home to the admiring Matthew and the critical Marilla glowing accounts of
schoolwork and aims.
"I love Miss Stacy with my whole heart, Marilla. She is so ladylike and she
has such a sweet voice. When she pronounces my name I feel INSTINCTIVELY that
she's spelling it with an E. We had recitations this afternoon. I just wish you
could have been there to hear me recite 'Mary, Queen of Scots.' I just put my
whole soul into it. Ruby Gillis told me coming home that the way I said the
line, 'Now for my father's arm,' she said, 'my woman's heart farewell,' just
made her blood run cold."
"Well now, you might recite it for me some of these days, out in the barn,"
suggested Matthew.
"Of course I will," said Anne meditatively, "but I won't be able to do it so
well, I know. It won't be so exciting as it is when you have a whole schoolful
before you hanging breathlessly on your words. I know I won't be able to make
your blood run cold."
"Mrs. Lynde says it made HER blood run cold to see the boys climbing to the
very tops of those big trees on Bell's hill after crows' nests last Friday,"
said Marilla. "I wonder at Miss Stacy for encouraging it."
"But we wanted a crow's nest for nature study," explained Anne. "That was on
our field afternoon. Field afternoons are splendid, Marilla. And Miss Stacy
explains everything so beautifully. We have to write compositions on our field
afternoons and I write the best ones."
"It's very vain of you to say so then. You'd better let your teacher say it."
"But she DID say it, Marilla. And indeed I'm not vain about it. How can I be,
when I'm such a dunce at geometry? Although I'm really beginning to see through
it a little, too. Miss Stacy makes it so clear. Still, I'll never be good at it
and I assure you it is a humbling reflection. But I love writing compositions.
Mostly Miss Stacy lets us choose our own subjects; but next week we are to write
a composition on some remarkable person. It's hard to choose among so many
remarkable people who have lived. Mustn't it be splendid to be remarkable and
have compositions written about you after you're dead? Oh, I would dearly love
to be remarkable. I think when I grow up I'll be a trained nurse and go with the
Red Crosses to the field of battle as a messenger of mercy. That is, if I don't
go out as a foreign missionary. That would be very romantic, but one would have
to be very good to be a missionary, and that would be a stumbling block. We have
physical culture exercises every day, too. They make you graceful and promote
digestion."
"Promote fiddlesticks!" said Marilla, who honestly thought it was all
nonsense.
But all the field afternoons and recitation Fridays and physical culture
contortions paled before a project which Miss Stacy brought forward in November.
This was that the scholars of Avonlea school should get up a concert and hold it
in the hall on Christmas Night, for the laudable purpose of helping to pay for a
schoolhouse flag. The pupils one and all taking graciously to this plan, the
preparations for a program were begun at once. And of all the excited
performers-elect none was so excited as Anne Shirley, who threw herself into the
undertaking heart and soul, hampered as she was by Marilla's disapproval.
Marilla thought it all rank foolishness.
"It's just filling your heads up with nonsense and taking time that ought to
be put on your lessons," she grumbled. "I don't approve of children's getting up
concerts and racing about to practices. It makes them vain and forward and fond
of gadding."
"But think of the worthy object," pleaded Anne. "A flag will cultivate a
spirit of patriotism, Marilla."
"Fudge! There's precious little patriotism in the thoughts of any of you. All
you want is a good time."
"Well, when you can combine patriotism and fun, isn't it all right? Of course
it's real nice to be getting up a concert. We're going to have six choruses and
Diana is to sing a solo. I'm in two dialogues—'The Society for the Suppression
of Gossip' and 'The Fairy Queen.' The boys are going to have a dialogue too. And
I'm to have two recitations, Marilla. I just tremble when I think of it, but
it's a nice thrilly kind of tremble. And we're to have a tableau at the
last—'Faith, Hope and Charity.' Diana and Ruby and I are to be in it, all draped
in white with flowing hair. I'm to be Hope, with my hands clasped—so—and my eyes
uplifted. I'm going to practice my recitations in the garret. Don't be alarmed
if you hear me groaning. I have to groan heartrendingly in one of them, and it's
really hard to get up a good artistic groan, Marilla. Josie Pye is sulky because
she didn't get the part she wanted in the dialogue. She wanted to be the fairy
queen. That would have been ridiculous, for who ever heard of a fairy queen as
fat as Josie? Fairy queens must be slender. Jane Andrews is to be the queen and
I am to be one of her maids of honor. Josie says she thinks a red-haired fairy
is just as ridiculous as a fat one, but I do not let myself mind what Josie
says. I'm to have a wreath of white roses on my hair and Ruby Gillis is going to
lend me her slippers because I haven't any of my own. It's necessary for fairies
to have slippers, you know. You couldn't imagine a fairy wearing boots, could
you? Especially with copper toes? We are going to decorate the hall with
creeping spruce and fir mottoes with pink tissue-paper roses in them. And we are
all to march in two by two after the audience is seated, while Emma White plays
a march on the organ. Oh, Marilla, I know you are not so enthusiastic about it
as I am, but don't you hope your little Anne will distinguish herself?"
"All I hope is that you'll behave yourself. I'll be heartily glad when all
this fuss is over and you'll be able to settle down. You are simply good for
nothing just now with your head stuffed full of dialogues and groans and
tableaus. As for your tongue, it's a marvel it's not clean worn out."
Anne sighed and betook herself to the back yard, over which a young new moon
was shining through the leafless poplar boughs from an apple-green western sky,
and where Matthew was splitting wood. Anne perched herself on a block and talked
the concert over with him, sure of an appreciative and sympathetic listener in
this instance at least.
"Well now, I reckon it's going to be a pretty good concert. And I expect
you'll do your part fine," he said, smiling down into her eager, vivacious
little face. Anne smiled back at him. Those two were the best of friends and
Matthew thanked his stars many a time and oft that he had nothing to do with
bringing her up. That was Marilla's exclusive duty; if it had been his he would
have been worried over frequent conflicts between inclination and said duty. As
it was, he was free to, "spoil Anne"—Marilla's phrasing—as much as he liked. But
it was not such a bad arrangement after all; a little "appreciation" sometimes
does quite as much good as all the conscientious "bringing up" in the world.