After Many Years

by Carolyn Strom Collins

  Winifred, however, had possibly not heard and certainly had not heeded them. Nobody knew better than herself that she was dull. For that very reason she admired the talented girls all the more earnestly, and she had a girlish admiration for Helen Lewis. It was a little sentimental, perhaps, for Winifred Fair, in spite of her three years at college, was as much a schoolgirl at heart as she had ever been. All the same, it was very warm and real, and the news that Helen could not come back to college to take her degree with honours and cast still more lustre over the class was to Winifred nothing short of a calamity.

  She sat in the English corner a long time after Eleanor and Irene had gone, with her chin propped on her hand and her blue eyes filled with perplexity. Finally she, too, rose, replaced her book, and went out. In the hall she met a tall, dark-eyed girl with thoughtful brown eyes and a plain yet striking face. She smiled brightly at Winifred and the two walked together down the entrance steps and across the grounds, where the musically minded were still celebrating. It was not until they had left the grounds and turned down a quiet elm-shaded street that Winifred ventured to speak of the subject uppermost in her mind.

  “Is it really true, Helen, that you are not coming back to Lakeside next year?”

  “Quite true,” answered Helen calmly.

  “O, I’m so sorry!” cried Winifred impulsively. “We can never get along without you, Helen. Are you sure there is no chance?”

  “Not the foggiest, darling. You know my family isn’t rich. It has always involved a good deal of self-sacrifice on their part to send me here, but I expected to be able to make it up to them some day. I had a letter from mother a few days ago. Father has met with business losses and it will be quite impossible for me to come back next year. It will be necessary for me to find something to do at once. I may be able to come back some time, but that is uncertain. Just now the only thing for me to do is to make it all as easy for mother as I can. Of course, I can’t deny that it is a great disappointment, but I mean to think as little about it as possible.”

  “O, Helen, if it’s only a question of money, you needn’t be disappointed,” cried Winifred eagerly. “You know I have plenty of my own—ten times as much as I need. I’m really disgustingly rich. Let me help you, Helen. Do! I’d be so glad!”

  Helen had turned crimson and then pale, but she answered very steadily: “Thank you so much, Winnie, but, of course, that’s impossible. I could not borrow money not knowing when I could pay it back.”

  “I don’t want it repaid,” protested Winifred. “O, Helen, can’t you take a gift from me after we’ve been such friends?”

  “That would be still further out of the question,” said Helen rather coldly. “I know you mean it in all kindness, dear,” she added hastily, seeing the crestfallen look on Winifred’s face, “and I thank you with all my heart for your offer. I simply couldn’t accept such a favour from anyone.”

  “I wish you would let me help you, Helen,” said Winifred sadly, as she turned up the street that led to her beautiful home.

  Helen walked rapidly down the street to her boarding-house. Alone in her own room, the pride and courage that had sustained her before her friends almost failed, and she sat down in a chair by the window with tears in her eyes. She had been eager, so ambitious! Her three years at Lakeside had been filled with triumphs and she had looked forward so radiantly to next year, when she had hoped to graduate with honours. Then would come the proud and happy home-going and after that the finding of a worthwhile place among the world’s busy workers.

  “Well, this is the end of my dreams,” said Helen bitterly. “But at least Mother shan’t suspect how bad I feel. She is worrying so about my having to give up college. I mustn’t make her more miserable.”

  From somewhere through the open window the sound of voices drifted up to her. At the window of the room below her own two other girls were talking. Margaret Mitchell, a senior girl, was saying in her high, clear voice: “To accept a favour gracefully is one of the hardest things to learn. Anyone can refuse. Independent people make a merit of refusing. It’s only ungracious pride not to grant a friend the privilege of helping us.”

  Helen smiled involuntarily. Margaret was rather noted for laying down the law about everything. Then she winced a little. She wondered if her refusal of Winifred’s impulsive offer could be classed under the head of “ungracious pride.” Upon reflection she decided it could not. Certainly she couldn’t possibly take money from Winifred Fair. No one could blame her for that. Not wishing to hear more, she shut her window and began to study half-heartedly for the last examination of the term.

  The afternoon waned slowly, and at last a creamy-golden sunset began to reveal itself above the housetops. Helen did not go down to tea. Her head ached and she felt that she could not bear the gay talk and laughter of the other girls that evening. They would be talking of their plans for next year and the fun they expected to have as seniors. She would only sit among them silent and unhappy.

  When it grew too dark to study she went to the window and watched the glow of sunset along the hills over the lake and the crystal glimmer of a star above the woods that crested them. She was still sitting there when somebody tapped softly at her door and Winifred Fair came in.

  She came over to Helen and sat down on the low stool at her feet. Winifred’s pretty face was flushed and her eyes sparkled in the dusk.

  “Helen,” she said, speaking more rapidly than usual, “I’ve come down to tell you something and ask you something. I couldn’t keep from thinking about you after I left you to-day. No, don’t say anything until I finish, please. I want to explain it all to you if I can, but it is so hard for me to put into words just what I feel. You are clever and perhaps you will understand. You see, dear, it’s this way. I’m stupid, awfully stupid. I know I am. I know I can never do anything to make my class or my college proud of me. I’ll be lucky if I just manage to scrape through; but I love Lakeside so much and I do so want to do something for it. You are brilliant, and we are all so proud of you, and it’s a great thing for our class to have you in it. Don’t you understand, Helen? If you would let me help you to come back next year it would seem somehow as if I, poor stupid I, were doing something for my class. It wouldn’t be I who was conferring the favour at all. It would be you, and I should be so grateful and so proud.

  “I felt all this to-day, but I couldn’t express it then. I had to go home and think it out. O, don’t refuse, my dear. You don’t know how much it means to me. I wouldn’t feel so useless, so superfluous. Nobody need ever know but you and me. My money is my own—Aunt Grace left it to me—and it seems to me that I never had any chance before to do any good with it. It is your pride that makes you refuse, Helen, and it is a selfish pride, for it takes away from me the chance of doing something for my dear old class, and I never can do anything for it in any other way. Let me help you, Helen. Do try to understand what it means to me. You can look upon it as a loan if you will. That isn’t what I care about.”

  Winifred leaned forward and touched Helen while she looked pleadingly up into her face. Helen did not answer at once. She was thinking earnestly. For perhaps the first time in her life she tried to put herself fairly in another girls’ place and look at the matter through Winifred’s eyes. She understood her friend better than the latter had dared to hope. Her own love of class and college helped her to understand. Margaret Mitchell’s words came back, too. “Ungracious pride.” Yes, perhaps it was. To refuse Winifred would be to wound her deeply.

  “You will, won’t you?” whispered Winifred.

  “Well, my dear—” Helen stopped suddenly, too overcome for words. Then quickly: “O, thank you, thank you,” she said with a little break in her voice. “It means so much to me.”

  “Not half as much as it means to me,” said Winifred gravely. She reached over and kissed Helen’s cheek. The action was spontaneous. The girls were great friends and understood
each other perfectly.

  When Winifred had gone Helen opened her window again. Three jolly students passed along the street below, shouting out a class ditty with all the fervor of youthful lungs. Far out over the maze of roofs the lights gleamed from the cottage at Lakeside where the senior class were holding a reception. At the window next to her own two girls were chatting gaily about the class work for next year. Helen’s heart thrilled happily. She would be back again to share in it all. Her place next year would not be vacant.

  “It is hard for some of us to learn to accept favours, but the lesson is worth learning,” she said softly.

  Editors’ note: This story was published in Girl’s Own Paper (December 1939), illustrated by George Clark. It was not listed in the 1986 Bibliography but was found by Christy Woster and Carolyn Strom Collins, while they were both in the process of updating references for Montgomery’s stories and poems, and Donna Campbell. This story is available to view online in the Ryrie-Campbell Collection.

  Montgomery must have reflected on her own college experience to some extent when writing this story—she had attended Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown in 1893–94. In 1895–96, she managed one year at Dalhousie College but could not afford to stay any longer. How she might have wished for a friend such as “Winifred Fair” to offer to help her!

  Other stories published in 1939 were “The Little Black Doll” and “An Afternoon with Mr. Jenkins” (both also published in Girl’s Own Paper and both available to view online in the Ryrie-Campbell Collection) and a series of eight “Ingleside” stories in September and October issues of Onward, selected from Anne of Ingleside which had been published earlier that year.

  Also in 1939, Montgomery began writing a sequel to Jane of Lantern Hill (1937). Due to the ill health of her husband and her own health problems, that book was never completed. For the first half of 1939, Montgomery was negotiating with RKO Pictures to make films of Anne of Windy Poplars and perhaps Anne’s House of Dreams. Anne of Windy Poplars was debuted in 1940 and starred “Anne Shirley” (formerly “Dawn O’Day”), the actress who had played “Anne” in the 1934 version of Anne of Green Gables. Anne’s House of Dreams was never made into a film.

  Resources

  Canadian Home Journal. Toronto: Consolidated Press Ltd., August 1918; September 1919; February 1931; July 1934; and September 1936.

  Children’s Companion Annual. London, England: The Children’s Companion, 1924.

  Collins, Carolyn Strom, ed. An Annotated Bibliography of the Stories and Poems of L. M. Montgomery. Charlottetown: The L. M. Montgomery Institute, 2016.

  Girl’s Own Paper. London: Lutterworth Press, December 1938 and December 1939.

  Kentuckian, The. Hopkinsville, Kentucky, November 14, 1907.

  Montgomery, L. M. Anne of Green Gables. Boston, Massachusetts: L. C. Page Co., 1908.

  ———. Jane of Lantern Hill. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1934.

  ———. Anne of Ingleside. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1939.

  New York Tribune. New York, October 23, 1910, Sunday Edition.

  People’s Home Journal. New York: F. M. Lupton, July 1926.

  Pictorial Review. New York: American Fashion Company, August 1909.

  Rubio, Mary and Elizabeth Waterston, eds. The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery (Volumes I–V). Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1985–2004.

  Russell, Ruth Weber, D. W. Russell, and Rea Wilmshurst. Lucy Maud Montgomery: A Preliminary Bibliography. Waterloo: University of Waterloo Library, 1986.

  True Story. New York: Street & Smith Corporation, March 17, 1923.

  Western Christian Advocate. Cincinnati, Ohio: Methodist Episcopal Church, May 9, 1906; May 16, 1906; June 5, 1907; June 12, 1907; November 13, 1907; August 26, 1908; and September 29, 1909.

  For more information on L. M. Montgomery’s stories and poems, consult An Annotated Bibliography of the Stories and Poems of L. M. Montgomery, published by the L. M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island in 2016.

  Editor Biographies

  Carolyn Strom Collins is the author of The Anne of Green Gables Treasury and other “Anne” companion books (published by Penguin Canada); she has also published companion books on Little Women (Viking Penguin), The Secret Garden (HarperCollins), and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” books (HarperCollins). Carolyn wrote two chapters for The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album—“Green Gables” and “The Scrapbooks”—published by Fitzhenry and Whiteside (1999), and has presented papers at many L. M. Montgomery Symposia at the University of Prince Edward Island, including pieces on the arrival of the Montgomery family in PEI (published in Storm and Dissonance: L. M. Montgomery and Conflict, Cambridge Scholars Publishing [2008]), the 1919 black-and-white silent movie Anne of Green Gables, Montgomery’s stories that were based on actual events, Montgomery’s publications during the Great War, Montgomery’s Island scrapbooks of memorabilia, and Montgomery’s poems about women.

  In 2010, Carolyn helped found The Friends of the L. M. Montgomery Institute at UPEI in order to raise funds for enlarging and maintaining their Montgomery collection of publications and other materials. She also founded the L. M. Montgomery Literary Society, based in Minnesota, in 1992 with co-author Christina Wyss Eriksson. She has written many articles for the LMMLS annual newsletter, The Shining Scroll.

  In addition to this volume of newly discovered Montgomery stories, Carolyn compiled A Guide to L. M. Montgomery’s Story and Poem Scrapbooks (1890–1940) and edited An Annotated Bibliography of L. M. Montgomery’s Stories and Poems (updating Lucy Maud Montgomery: A Preliminary Bibliography, published in 1986 by the University of Waterloo); both the Guide and the Annotated Bibliography are published by the L. M. Montgomery Institute of the University of Prince Edward Island.

  Christy Woster collected L. M. Montgomery materials for fifty years, beginning when she was just ten years old. Her goal was to have an original copy of everything Montgomery published, including over five hundred stories and five hundred poems, as well as first-edition books and related materials. She was nearly to that goal when she died unexpectedly in late April 2016, just a few weeks before this volume originally went to press.

  In addition to co-editing this volume of stories, many of which she discovered, Christy also provided hundreds of new citations to the updated Annotated Bibliography of L. M. Montgomery’s Stories and Poems. Her sleuthing skills were impressive—virtually unparalleled—and she was very generous to share her “finds” with the Montgomery community.

  Christy attended most of the L. M. Montgomery International Symposia at the University of Prince Edward Island and presented papers at several of them, highlighting some of the many items in her Montgomery collection. She was a charter board member of The Friends of the L. M. Montgomery Institute and volunteered to chair the Silent Auction Committee for the last several years, helping to raise thousands of dollars for the Friends. She was also a charter member of the L. M. Montgomery Literary Society, contributing much of her time, talent, energy, and research to that group. Many of her articles were published in the LMMLS newsletter, The Shining Scroll.

  Acknowledgements

  Researchers in this project used a variety of resources to discover new citations and new stories: many public and university libraries in Canada, the United States, and Great Britain; websites devoted to digitizing magazines and newspapers from years past; online auction sites; and personal collections.

  We would like to thank the independent researchers whose work has contributed to the current collection of stories as well as to hundreds of new references for an updating of Rea Wilmshurst’s chronological listing of stories and poems in Lucy Maud Montgomery: A Preliminary Bibliography (Ruth Weber Russell, D. W Russell, and Rea Wilmshurst, University of Waterloo: 1986). The updated version of this bibliography, An Annotated Bibliography of L. M. Montgomery’s Stories and Poems, also published by the L
. M. Montgomery Institute of the University of Prince Edward Island, will identify some of the independent scholars, including Alan John Radmore, Benjamin Lefebvre, Donna Campbell, James Keeline, Joanne Lebold, Sarah Riedel, Mary Beth Cavert, and Janice Trowsdale and ourselves. Names of the researchers who found the stories included in this volume (and shared their discoveries with us) are listed with each story.

  Some of the stories herein are included in the Ryrie-Campbell collection of Montgomery materials at UPEI and can be seen as they originally appeared in periodicals. Readers are encouraged to consult the L. M. Montgomery Institute website (lmmontgomery.ca) for more information about the KindredSpaces project launched at the 2016 L. M. Montgomery Institute conference.

  At the University of Prince Edward Island Donald Moses, Mark Leggott, Simon Lloyd, Lindsey MacCallum, Dr. Philip Smith, and the L. M. Montgomery Institute management committee have provided encouragement and technical support in helping to produce this collection. Copies of L. M. Montgomery’s story and poem scrapbooks are available in UPEI’s Special Collections in Robertson Library (the original scrapbooks are kept in the Confederation Centre Archives in Charlottetown); Rea Wilmshurst’s files on the Montgomery stories were donated to the L. M. Montgomery Institute at UPEI by her partner, the late Dr. Andrew Silber.

  We are enormously grateful to Elizabeth Epperly for her careful reading of the stories during the final weeks of readying the stories for publication.

  Proceeds from the sale of this collection go directly to the L. M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island for the purpose of adding to and maintaining its collection of Montgomery artifacts, which are made available for study by Montgomery scholars and researchers all over the world.