Diana passed around her raspberry tarts, so each girl could sample a bite. “I think you did really well at reading, Anne,” she said.
“Mr. Phillips didn’t think so.”
“Oh, he was more impressed than he let on,” Jane Andrews said. “He’s an awful prickly man. He wouldn’t say anything nice about anybody if his life depended on it.”
“And I think you did grandly,” Ruby Gillis said to Anne as she broke off her portion of raspberry tart. Ruby was a remarkably pretty little girl, with shiny, golden hair and big, twinkling blue eyes. “Really, I never saw anybody do the fourth reader so well. Last year I never read it half as good as you.”
“I fear that you are all flattering me just to soothe my pride,” Anne said soberly. “But it is nice to be flattered now and again.”
“I wouldn’t ever guess that you were a wild, uneducated orphan, to hear how smartly you read,” Ruby said.
Diana blushed on her friend’s behalf. “Ruby, it’s not polite to call Anne ‘wild’ and ‘uneducated.’”
“But I didn’t mean anything by it,” Ruby said, with a hint of a whine. “My mother said you were a wild orphan, Anne, and had no schooling.”
“That is true,” Anne said. “Well… I had no proper schooling before today. The part about being wild isn’t so true, but I sort of like it all the same. It makes me feel like a heroine in a story.”
All of the girls laughed delightedly at that, even Gertie Pye, who for once had no hint of meanness in her merriment.
When lunch was over, the students headed back to the schoolhouse to resume their lessons. Anne clung to Diana’s arm. “Do you think the girls like me well enough?” she asked anxiously.
“I know they do,” Diana said. “Why, you seem really popular, Anne.”
“I’m glad they’re able to look past my red hair. I was so fearful that they never could, and I do so want to make friends. But of course, I have only one bosom friend, and that is you.”
“I’m proud to be the bosom friend of such a well-liked girl,” Diana said. A soft murmur, deep down in her heart, told her that perhaps she shouldn’t be so glad. Perhaps she ought to give in to a sneaking, Pye-like instinct and despise Anne, for she was so very popular with the school crowd, and gained their admiration with no effort at all.
“But I never could despise her,” Diana reassured herself with decisive calm. “We are bosom friends, after all… sworn by a sacred oath. And I will stand by my friend forever.”
The Incident of the Slate
The school year unfolded as school years do, with the fresh excitement of the first week settling down into a cozy, steady rhythm. By the third week, the summer’s sunny, breezy delights already seemed a lifetime past, and the routine of rising early, dressing for school, and walking with Anne to the whitewashed building on the spruce hill was well ingrained in Diana’s habits.
Anne, too, had adapted nicely to her new reality as a scholar. She was often distracted by her daydreams. (Mr. Phillips had been obliged to crack his pointer down across Diana’s and Anne’s shared desk more than once, thanks to the latter’s habit of sighing as she gazed out the window at the Lake of Shining Waters instead of gazing at Mr. Phillips’s blackboard lessons.) But despite her wayward wandering through the realms of fancy, Anne still managed to succeed at school. She was already so strong in the fourth reader that all the girls agreed she’d soon be moved up to the fifth, and her arithmetic was so improved that she hardly ever needed Diana’s help anymore. Anne seemed to have found her place in the world at last. She was made for scholarly endeavors, and pursued them with a bright-eyed gusto that did her credit.
“Your mother packed your lunch basket,” Father said as Diana came down the stairs to the kitchen. It was a Monday morning; the sky outside the kitchen window was still flushed with the golden memory of summer. “She was called down to the Wilsons’ early this morning to help old Cousin Francine until her special doctor arrives from Carmody.”
Francine Wilson was barely a cousin at all; the old lady’s relation to the Barry household was so distant that Diana was sure Adam and Eve were closer kin. But Mrs. Barry was well known throughout the island for her family loyalty. She would certainly never leave a family member in need, no matter how tenuous the relation.
“Is Cousin Francine all right?” Diana asked, peeking in at her lunch as she wriggled into her coat.
Father barely glanced up from his newspaper. “It’s only her rheumatism, but her daughter couldn’t sit with her this morning, since her baby was colicky all night… or something like that. I don’t exactly recall just what your mother said as she was leaving. Anyway, I’ve made breakfast.”
Diana stifled a mischievous giggle. Father had sliced a loaf of bread. A crock of plum preserves stood open on the table beside a roll of yellow butter. It wasn’t much of a breakfast—Mother would have fainted dead away at the thought of calling such a rustic spread a meal—but it did look delicious. There was a pail of fresh, creamy milk on the table, too, just brought in by the hired boy. Diana dipped a cupful, careful to catch as much of the rich, frothy cream as she could. Then she spread an immoderate amount of butter on her bread and followed it with a heaping spoonful of preserves.
“I’m sorry to hear Cousin Francine’s rheumatism is troubling her,” Diana said. Her speech was prim and proper enough to please Mrs. Barry, if she had been there to hear it. But she promptly ruined the effect by biting into her thick bread and painting her cheek with a smear of sticky preserves. “Is there any other news?” she asked, scrubbing at her face with a napkin.
Father scanned the paper without real interest. “Not much to speak of. Oh, the Blythes are back from New Brunswick.”
Diana swallowed her mouthful of bread with a gulp, as if it were a boulder in her throat.
“They just got back on Saturday,” Father went on, not looking up from the advertisement section. “By now, I suspect young Gilbert will be so far behind in school that his father will think of pulling him out and putting him to work as a farm hand. Perhaps I’ll see if Gilbert would like to come and work for us. He’s a strong, sturdy boy. He could do quite well, to learn how to manage a farm first-hand.”
Diana’s heart pounded so hard in her chest that it nearly made the ruffles jump on the bib of her dress. She was glad her father was still engrossed in his paper.
“I… I don’t think Gilbert will be behind in school,” she stammered.
“He missed three years of schooling when his father was ill and the Blythes went out to Alberta.”
“But he’s terribly smart,” Diana said quickly—too quickly. Father looked up from his paper with a curious expression, and he didn’t fail to note the hot flush on Diana’s cheeks.
“Ah,” he said with a knowing, comforting smile. “Perhaps I won’t ask young Gilbert to work for me after all. If he wants to take up as a hired boy, I’m sure there are plenty of farms in Avonlea who would be glad to have him.”
“He won’t,” Diana muttered, studying her cup of milk so she wouldn’t have to meet her father’s eye. “He’ll be a teacher or a lawyer or a doctor someday, I’m sure of it.”
Just thinking about Gilbert Blythe made her feel prickly and wobbly. Talking about him was even worse. Diana had never felt so unnerved before, merely by the thought of a boy… a boy, of all creatures! It certainly was strange, being eleven years old.
“I must go now.” Diana drained the last of her milk and jumped up from the table before she could babble on and betray more of her thoughts to her father… thoughts she herself didn’t fully understand.
Father smiled a little ruefully as Diana took her felt tam and scarf from the peg beside the stove. “Your secret is safe with me, darling.”
“Secret?” Diana thought, half-furious with her father. “There is no secret.” But she suspected that there was a secret, buried so deep down in her heart that she hadn’t quite found it herself.
Outside, the morning was crisp and bracing. Each tree of
the orchard was robed in magnificence: rich scarlets, flaring orange, mellow gold, and dark, royal purple for the plums. Most trees of the countryside hadn’t yet given up all of their summery green, but the gnarled old apples and pears loved to display their autumn finery as early as they could manage. It was one of the things Diana loved best about the orchard. But as she hurried down the long, sloping foot-path toward the Cuthberts’ farm, she hardly noticed the colorful display.
Anne was waiting for her at the log bridge, as ever. Diana hoped Anne would take the color in her cheeks for the rosy tint of autumn’s chill, or the exertion of running. She prayed desperately that Anne would not be as observant as her father was.
“Isn’t it a lovely day?” Anne said ecstatically. “Of course, springtime is my favorite, because all the flowers are so sweet and gay, and the whole world seems to be waking up, fresh and new and ready to make the best of itself. But I think fall is second-best. It’s as if the whole of creation is having one big, grand party to celebrate how well the year has gone, and all the beauties that have passed through it. Oh, Diana, look at that big plum tree! Its leaves are so glossy and red. It looks like a fine old queen wearing a thousand glittering rubies. And see these maple leaves on the path? If I were an autumn fairy, I would make my dresses out of maple leaves. Their edges are as pretty as the finest lace, but orange and gold veined with green is so much prettier than plain white. Yesterday I went for a walk over the Lake of Shining Waters, and I looked down from the bridge and watched the fallen maple leaves drifting on the water’s surface. They were so beautiful against the velvety black of the water that I sort of hurt inside, but in a very pleasant way, and I actually got tears in my eyes, Diana.”
Anne went on chattering about her seasonal bliss as the girls walked down to Violet Vale and the Birch Path beyond. The bright, biting feel of the morning air reminded Diana of tart-skinned apples. That made her think of how good the strawberry apples were from the Blythe orchard, and all at once the morning’s turmoil rushed back into her mind. She had to tell Anne about Gilbert… had to say something, or she feared very much that she would burst open.
“I guess Gilbert Blythe will be in school today,” Diana said suddenly, when Anne paused in her litany to draw a deep breath. “He was in New Brunswick all summer long, visiting his cousins, but he came home Saturday night.”
Anne looked at Diana… just that, nothing more. But the way she looked caused Diana’s heart to flutter frantically. Anne’s red-gold eyebrows were arced up in an unspoken question. It was plain that Anne could read some difference in Diana… a difference Diana didn’t yet fully understand.
“He’s awfully handsome, Anne,” Diana said, trying to explain. “And he teases the girls something terrible. He just torments our lives out!”
Anne sniffed and lifted her chin to a haughty angle. “Gilbert Blythe? Isn’t it his name that’s written up that’s written up on the porch wall with Julia Bell’s, and a big ‘take notice’ over them?”
“Yes,” Diana admitted. She had seen the aforesaid “take notice” on Friday afternoon. She’d been sure Julia had written it herself when no one was looking, and how she had longed to scribble it out! She would have done it, too, if so many other children hadn’t been around to see. “But I’m sure he doesn’t like Julia Bell so very much. I’ve heard him say he studied the multiplication table by her freckles.”
Anne bemoaned her own freckles then, which Diana thought were perfectly adorable in a sunny, innocent sort of way, even if freckles weren’t in fashion. They talked of inconsequential things—Anne’s speckled nose and boys both liked and despised—until at last they reached the school. There, Diana paused beside the bell and looked around tensely for Gilbert. There was no sign of him. She was glad of that; she wasn’t sure how she might react when she first saw him again. It had been so long!
“You’ll have Gilbert in your class,” Diana said to Anne. “He’s used to being head of his class, Anne, I can tell you. He’s only in the fourth book although he’s almost fourteen. But four years ago his father got dreadfully sick and had to move to Alberta for his health. Gilbert went with him, and for three years he barely had any schooling at all. But he’s awfully smart and, as I said, he likes to be first in everything. I’m afraid you won’t find it so easy to keep head of the fourth readers after this, Anne.”
Anne professed gladness, saying she couldn’t feel proud of keeping ahead of little boys and girls. Josie Pye was her biggest competition, and both girls agreed that keeping ahead of a Pye was about as difficult as outsmarting a chicken. They filed into the schoolhouse with the other students, Diana with her eyes on the ground and a burning in her cheeks, Anne with her gray eyes narrowed, looking around boldly for the new challenger.
Gilbert Blythe’s seat certainly was not empty now. Diana never looked directly at him, yet she was as much aware of his presence as if he stood directly in front of her. From the corner of her eye, across the aisle that separated them, she could see his new, pale blue shirt and his dark suspenders, and the shine of his new leather shoes. He had grown taller—quite a bit taller. Even sitting at his desk, she could tell how much he had sprouted up. He was about as tall as a man now, a fact which made Diana feel rather dizzy and bewildered. His hair was still the same, though, dark brown and curly, and tousled from his habit of running his hands through it. Gilbert never could keep his hair combed straight.
Mr. Phillips gave his usual morning oration, then wrote assignments on the blackboard. As he drifted back to the rear of the schoolroom (where Prissy Andrews waited, her dainty white hands folded charmingly on her desk) Diana leaned close to Anne and whispered, “That’s Gilbert Blythe sitting right across the aisle, Anne. Just look at him and see if you don’t think he’s handsome.” Diana herself could not look directly at him, but then, she had no need to verify her own opinions of Gilbert Blythe.
Anne peered at Gilbert with a scrutinizing air. She wrinkled her pretty, pointed nose in consideration. Gilbert, lounging rather than sitting in his chair, was engaged in mischief. There was a superfluity of girls that year at Avonlea School, so the classroom could not be divided evenly down the middle, and some of the girls—namely, Ruby Gillis and Jane Andrews—were obliged to sit on the boys’ side of the room. To maintain propriety, they were kept in the front row, which provided an illusion of separation from the male scholars. Unfortunately for Ruby and Jane, though, this arrangement also kept them in the convenient reach of Avonlea’s prank-players. The end of Ruby’s long, golden braid had landed, by some great misfortune, atop Gilbert Blythe’s desk, and he was engaged in quietly but firmly fixing that braid to his desk-top with a long pin. Anne gave a quiet gasp of horror. She seemed about to warn Ruby, but in that very moment, Mr. Phillips called Ruby over to show her sums. The poor girl popped up at once, then fell back into her seat immediately with a shriek. In the commotion, Gilbert plucked his pin from desk and braid, unnoticed by anyone but Anne and Diana. He casually turned a page of his history book and gazed down at it as if he were studiously reading.
Ruby Gillis, of course, began to cry, and all the harder when Mr. Phillips gave her a stern, vexed stare. Anne gaped at Gilbert Blythe, shocked by his mean teasing, while Diana’s stomach turned over with a queer mixture of excitement and dismay. As the class laughed at Ruby’s plight, Gilbert looked up from his book, caught Anne’s indignant stare, and winked, smiling like he owned the whole place: schoolhouse, yard, and every student in it.
Anne looked frostily away from Gilbert. “I think your Gilbert Blythe is handsome,” she whispered to Diana, “but I think he’s very bold. It isn’t good manners to wink at a strange girl.”
Diana’s mouth felt quite dry. Gilbert had never winked at her. And oh, wouldn’t she love it if he would! Well… no, she wouldn’t. It really was a terribly bold thing to do. But she would like to see him smile at her the way he’d smiled at Anne.
The morning passed slowly. Diana found it more difficult than ever to concentrate on her less
ons, with Gilbert sitting so near. And worst of all was the fact that he hadn’t so much as looked at Diana the whole day, let alone teased her or winked at her, as he’d done to the other girls. What Diana wouldn’t have given to be called ‘crow,’ like Gilbert used to do, and have her black curls pulled! She would pretend fury and stamp her feet, but wouldn’t it be nice to know that he had at least noticed her!
At lunchtime, Diana decided she couldn’t bear it any longer and asked Anne to switch places with her when they returned to their desks. “I want to look out at the pond today,” Diana said. “It’s such a pretty day. The sun is just like diamonds on the water. We might not have more sunny days after this.”
Anne cheerfully agreed, and duly took her place on the aisle side of the bench seat when lessons resumed. With Anne as a buffer between herself and Gilbert, Diana found it somewhat easier to tend to her learning. But Diana didn’t fail to note the special effort Gilbert went to, trying to attract Anne’s attention. He twisted paper into tiny balls and flicked them at Anne’s head. He drew pictures on his slate and flashed them in Anne’s direction whenever Mr. Phillips wasn’t looking. He even made a few snuffling, barnyard-animal noises softly, so quietly only Anne and Diana could hear, in an attempt to make Anne laugh.
Anne steadfastly ignored him. She watched Mr. Phillips with unfailing focus, worked problems steadily on her slate as if she weren’t being assailed by a barrage of paper balls, and generally treated Gilbert Blythe as if he didn’t exist at all. Diana couldn’t understand it. How could Anne remain so perfectly unaffected by such a handsome boy? How could she so thoroughly ignore him? Gilbert’s pestering was an irritant, of course. But he was so charming. That more than made up for all his annoyances.
Diana of Orchard Slope Page 7