I shall respect their memory. There's a box of flowers in your room, Anne. They came about an hour ago."After the first week the girls of Patty's Place settled down to a steady grind of study; for this was their last year at Redmond and graduation honors must be fought for persistently. Anne devoted herself to English, Priscilla pored over classics, and Philippa pounded away at Mathematics. Sometimes they grew tired, sometimes they felt discouraged, sometimes nothing seemed worth the struggle for it. In one such mood Stella wandered up to the blue room one rainy November evening. Anne sat on the floor in a little circle of light cast by the lamp beside her, amid a surrounding snow of crumpled manuscript.
"What in the world are you doing?"
"Just looking over some old Story Club yarns. I wanted something to cheer AND inebriate. I'd studied until the world seemed azure.
So I came up here and dug these out of my trunk. They are so drenched in tears and tragedy that they are excruciatingly funny.""I'm blue and discouraged myself," said Stella, throwing herself on the couch. "Nothing seems worthwhile. My very thoughts are old. I've thought them all before. What is the use of living after all, Anne?""Honey, it's just brain fag that makes us feel that way, and the weather.
A pouring rainy night like this, coming after a hard day's grind, would squelch any one but a Mark Tapley. You know it IS worthwhile to live.""Oh, I suppose so. But I can't prove it to myself just now.""Just think of all the great and noble 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-fashioned 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 title -- `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 manuscripts 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 sunshine 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 manuscripts 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 space; and when Stella had gone she smoothed out the crumpled manuscript.
"I believe I will," she said resolutely.
