“I assure you I did.” Mr. Phillips sounded so sarcastic, so puffed up, that Diana fought the urge to poke out her tongue at him. “Obey me at once.”
Anne stiffened; Diana was sure she would defy Mr. Phillips, and then… oh, what horrible further punishment might await her! But after another moment, Anne thought better of her rebellion. She rose slowly and gracefully, with a splendidly arrogant poise despite her disheveled appearance. Then she stepped silently across the aisle, and without looking once at Gilbert Blythe, she sat down beside him, on the very edge of the seat.
There her icy control met its limits. Anne’s face flushed an alarming shade of pink; Diana, with a lurch of sympathy in her stomach, felt certain Anne would cry. Anne folded her thin arms on the desk, dropped her head down on her arms, and refused to look up for the remainder of the day.
When the afternoon finally came to its merciful end, Anne stood abruptly from Gilbert’s desk, turned her back on that person with eloquent disdain, and opened the desk she normally shared with Diana. Whereupon she piled up everything she had kept inside—books, pen, ink pot, and even the cracked pieces of her slate—and gathered the bundle in her arms.
“What are you doing, Anne?” Diana asked. “Why are you taking all those things home?”
“I am not coming back to school anymore.”
Diana gasped, stung right to her core. “Will Marilla let you stay home?”
“She’ll have to,” Anne said as they marched out the door and found their way down toward the Birch Path. “I’ll never go to school to that man again. He is insufferable.”
“But what about those things you said this morning, Anne? About how we must never be parted?” Diana felt tears welling up in her eyes; she blinked them away, determined not to cry, but she was quickly losing that battle. It had been such an emotional day! “I do think you’re mean. What shall I do? I’ll be made to sit with Gertie Pye!”
Anne’s sensitive little face turned down toward her boots. She watched over the heap of supplies in her arms as her own feet marched along resolutely. “I’d do almost anything in the world for you, Diana. I’d let myself be torn limb from limb if it would do you any good. But I can’t do this, so please don’t ask it. You harrow up my very soul.”
Diana tried in vain to convince Anne of her folly. She brought up every delight the school year promised: building a new play-house down by the brook with the other girls—a private spot where they could all share their lunches in peace, without any interference from the boys. Also the ball games they were to learn the following week, and the songs Jane Andrews promised to teach the girls, and the story book they had planned to read together. But nothing could divert Anne from her path.
They parted ways sadly at the foot bridge. Diana was sniffling, miserable with the effort of holding back her sorrow. “I suppose this is good-bye,” Diana said softly. “Not forever, I hope.”
“Of course not, dear Diana,” Anne promised. But she didn’t sound reassured by her own words. After all, now that school was in for the year and the days were growing shorter, they would find little time to play and to share their idles. The long, sweet days of summer were behind them.
Diana trudged up the hill of Orchard Slope, and the weight of all her woes seemed to drag behind her like an anchor chain. That weight only grew heavier when Diana entered by the kitchen door.
Mrs. Barry there in her green-striped apron, stirring a pot on the wood stove with a tense air of triumph. Her expression when she looked up at Diana was somewhere between a scowl and a grim smile.
“I saw the Pye girls not five minutes ago,” she said. “Their father picked them up from school in his buggy, since they must all go down to Carmody. And do you know what Gertie Pye told me?”
Diana said nothing. She felt her face drain of all color.
“She told me that Anne Shirley was punished today for consorting with boys!”
“That’s not so,” Diana wailed. “Mr. Phillips was cross and was looking for someone to take it out on. You can’t believe anything a Pye says!”
“Diana Barry, your tone is too pert by half.”
Diana didn’t care if she was being pert. The many injustices of the day seemed to fall upon her like an avalanche. “It wasn’t like Gertie says. I was there, Mother; I know!”
“Any girl who runs about with boys like some wild thing is not fit company for you. I suppose I must speak to the schoolmaster and see to it that you’re kept apart from Anne Shirley from now on.”
“No, you can’t!” Diana still didn’t quite believe that Anne would really remove herself from the school; the very thought of being in the same room with Anne, but forever separated by the unseen but still impenetrable barriers of grown-up authority, cut Diana right to the very center of her tender little heart. “You can’t, Mother, I won’t let you!”
“That is enough of your backtalk,” Mrs. Barry said in a dangerous tone.
Diana knew she should heed that warning, but her grief, and her sense of injustice, carried her on. “You can’t keep me from Anne. You can’t, you can’t! She’s the only one in all the world who understands me. If you try, I’ll… I’ll simply disobey you! I’m big enough now that you can’t stop me from doing anything I please!”
Mrs. Barry set her spoon aside on a trivet, crossed the room in three quick, measured strides, and then struck a stinging blow right across Diana’s cheek.
Diana gasped, wordless with shock, fear, and pain. She stared at her mother for a long moment. Through the tears in her eyes, Diana could see a flash of remorse and grief cross her mother’s features. But then Mrs. Barry’s mask of stern poise and perfect control returned.
With a great cry of sorrow, Diana turned and ran from the kitchen, out into her garden. She crumpled down among the dead stalks of her tiger lilies, wiping tears from her cheeks. But more tears fell, faster than she could brush them away. Never in her life had she felt so lonesome, so “harrowed up,” as Anne would say.
“Oh, it’s terrible growing up,” Diana sobbed to the empty, autumn-brown garden. “It’s more terrible and lonely than anyone can understand!”
An Unexpectedly Potent Cordial
October arrived to bless Avonlea with color and salt-laden winds, and with the cozy, heart-warming smell of wood smoke. The last fruits of the harvest hung heavy on orchard boughs, and the final cutting of hay was gathered up in Mr. Andrews’s field, leaving only dry, pale stubble behind.
Ordinarily Diana loved this time of year, for the early sunsets and the snuggling down into thick woolen sweaters appealed to her quiet, thoughtful nature. Now, however, the grayness and dullness of the world seemed to emphasize how very alone she felt. True to her prediction, Mr. Phillips made her sit with Gertie Pye in school, and Gertie was a terrible sneak who was forever peeking at Diana’s work and copying it on her own tablet. The girls of Avonlea school soldiered ahead with their songs and stories and play-houses, just as they had planned, but without Anne by her side, Diana felt as if she existed only on the fringes of their frolics, never quite welcomed into the heart of the group. And her walks to and from the schoolhouse, which had previously been full of fun and the sparkling of crystalline imaginations, were now nothing more than rote, joyless trudges through a landscape that was cold, colorless, and muddy.
Diana still had Saturdays with Anne, for which she was grateful. Together they rambled along hedges and lanes, tucking sprigs of bright berries into their hair and reading to one another from the story books Diana borrowed from school.
She longed for those Saturdays with the all-encompassing hunger of a starving person. Being deprived of Anne’s company had only made the red-haired girl all the more fascinating and wonderful in Diana’s estimation. Now Anne’s life seemed positively glamorous, for she existed outside of the common sphere of everyday little girls. She no longer went to school, and so her daily routine sparkled in Diana’s imagination with the splendor of a faceted gem.
It was true that Anne’s day-to-day
existence was now given over almost entirely to chores. Plain, ordinary, workaday chores; female creatures up and down the length of Prince Edward Island devoted themselves to those same tasks from sunrise to sunset. Even so, for Anne to perform them as if she were the mistress of a household filled Diana with awe.
“I wash all the dishes in the house, after every meal,” Anne confided, showing Diana how pink and chapped her hands had become. “I think Marilla secretly hates dish-washing and is glad to have someone else to do it. I don’t like it, either, but seeing as how she dislikes it so, I am glad to relieve her of the burden, since she has been so kind in taking me in. I think I would find the washing-up very tedious, Diana, except that I can stand beside the window while I do it, and oh, it is so nice to look out at the world and imagine romantic things about it. Just this morning, while I was washing up after porridge and bacon, I was thinking how nice it would be if I were the daughter of an exiled baron, and I had to be hidden away in a quaint countryside farm where no one would suspect my true identity while the war raged on in my homeland. And just as I was about to be discovered by villains, word would arrive that we had won after all, and my father would come sweeping over the hills in a grand sleigh—for you know, such a story would have to take place while it’s snowing; snow is so much more dramatic than autumn fields—and he would be dressed in all his finery, and would reveal me as a noble lady before the whole village, and then the Pyes would repent of ever having used me ill.
“That’s the sort of daydream you can have while you’re washing dishes. It’s easy to let your thoughts wander, since you don’t have to pay attention to much, other than being sure you don’t drop a dish and break it. I’ve gotten pretty good at getting all the dishes cleaned by feel alone, so I hardly ever have to look away from the window. At least, Marilla doesn’t complain that I’ve left spots on them.”
“What else do you do?” Diana asked. “Dishes can’t take up the whole day.”
“No… I collect the eggs for Marilla and rake the hen yard and sweep the floors—and wash them, too, for you know she likes the floors washed every third day. She is terribly neat, though I suspect some ladies in Avonlea feel she isn’t neat enough, and believe floors ought to be washed every second day if a home is to be properly kept. And I help with the washing, though she doesn’t trust me to do it all by myself yet, so I mostly hang things up to dry. That, at least, I can manage on my own. It does make my arms sore and tired, though. Wet laundry is heavier than you might think.”
“And what do you imagine while you’re hanging laundry?”
Anne wove fanciful tales of her dream-wanderings—stories about lost princesses and spurned lovers—about benevolent house-sprites helping the unsuspecting old dears, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, and about tragic step-daughters ruthlessly enslaved to cold-hearted, villainous women. The stories thrilled Diana’s heart and set her to sighing. Anne’s imaginings always made things seem so much grander than they really were. Avonlea would surely never be the prosy old village it once had been, not ever again… not now that Anne was here. Now it was a world wreathed in gossamers of fancy.
On one Saturday in particular, when a welcome clear sky reigned over the valley with a deep wash of regal, sapphire blue, Diana was engaged in her own bout of dish-washing. She was trying in vain to summon up Anne’s dancing, delightful imaginings, with the hope that she might apply a veneer of romance and adventure to her very dull and uninspiring chores. She sighed as she gazed out the kitchen window, down the slope toward Green Gables. She could see the deep, hunter-green peak of the roofline clearly through the trees, and the white sides of the old farmhouse, too, for the orchard and the birches that grew along the book had lost most of their leaves to a fierce wind the night before. No fancies would come to her as she splashed and slopped in the wash bucket, but she did catch sight of something not a fancy at all… something altogether real, and entirely welcome. It was a small figure dashing excitedly over the field toward the foot bridge, with red braids flying out behind.
Diana stacked the last dish in the drying rack and patted her hands quickly on a towel. “Mother,” she called into the parlor, “Anne is running over from Green Gables.”
There was a faint rattling of wooden rings in the parlor, as Mrs. Barry drew back the curtain to have a look. “Land sakes. Do you think there’s trouble at the Cuthberts’ place?”
Diana didn’t think so. Even parted by cruel fate (except for on Saturdays), she and Anne shared such a perfect bond that she felt certain she would know if anything was amiss. She would be able to sense the danger. There was no aura of worry hanging over Anne… only excitement. Diana hung up her apron and did her best to smooth the wrinkles from her skirt, and presently a rapid tap sounded at the kitchen door. She hurried to open it.
Anne’s cheeks were flushed from the October cold, and from her barely suppressed joy. A light of pure delight sparkled and glinted in her eyes, but she didn’t burst out with her news. She drew herself up to her fullest height, lifted her chin proudly, and pronounced with exaggerated dignity, “Diana, Marilla is going away to Carmody and won’t be back until after dark. She said I may invite you to afternoon tea. Won’t you please join me?”
Diana’s mouth fell open. She heard her mother’s footsteps behind her, and prickled with worry. Mrs. Barry was not likely to permit it, Diana knew. She was convinced that Anne was an influence for mischief, and only grudgingly allowed their Saturday rambles only because she felt that walking with an urchin of questionable morals was, when weighed in the balance, only slightly better than mooning around the parlor with one’s nose pressed in a yellow novel.
But what trouble could two girls get up to in an old country farmhouse, quietly conversing over tea? Why, Green Gables was even quainter than Orchard Slope, if such a thing were really possible. Clinging to that slim hope, Diana turned slowly and gazed at her mother with questioning—pleading—eyes.
Mrs. Barry’s mouth thinned. She looked long and thoughtfully at Diana, though she spared only the most fleeting and dismissive of glances for Anne. Her eyes seemed to linger on the cheek where, a few weeks before, she had struck Diana in anger. Again Diana saw the faint trace of regret cross her mother’s features.
“Very well,” Mrs. Barry finally said. “Since Anne was kind enough to invite you…” in such an unexpectedly civilized way, her expression seemed to say, “then I see no harm in it, as long as you are home before sunset.”
Anne and Diana stared at one another, struck silent with disbelieving wonder. Then they threw themselves into each other’s arms. Neither could restrain herself from hopping excitedly from foot to foot.
“Now, now,” Mrs. Barry scolded—but it was a very mild scolding.
Anne broke from the embrace first. “I must go back home and get dressed. It’s such a special occasion. I want to look my best, though of course my best isn’t especially fine.”
“I’ll get dressed up, too,” Diana said.
“You certainly will not,” Mrs. Barry interjected. “Nothing nicer than your Sunday dress. It’s only tea with a neighbor, after all. It’s not as if you were off to Ottawa to dine with the Premier.”
Anne departed with grave solemnity, and Diana hurried up to her bedroom. She sorted through her closet until she found just the right dress for the occasion: a deep blue velveteen with dear little ruffles at the shoulders. When she had dressed, Diana stood before her tiny mirror for some time, fussing with her hair. Should she wear it in braids? She had some blue ribbons to match her dress… but no. Braids were a very girlish style, and not nearly fancy enough for an occasion as fine as a private tea between two bosom friends. She peeked surreptitiously out her door and, finding the upstairs hall empty, quickly twisted her hair up into a bun on the back of her head. She secured it with a few pins and then studied herself for a long while. It was a hairstyle only grown-up ladies were supposed to wear, and Diana had never tried it before. At first she thought she looked entirely too awkward with her hair
up, for her neck was so obvious and pale. She despaired of ever being pretty. But the longer she watched herself, the more the style became her. She tilted her head this way and that, delightfully shocked by the exposure of her ears and the corners of her jawline.
“Why, Diana Barry,” she told herself happily, “there might be hope for you after all.”
Then she thought of Gilbert, the smile sliding off his face as he gazed desperately across the spruce grove toward Anne, and with an angry shake of her head she pulled the pins from her hair. Her black curls tumbled down to cover her soft, white skin.
“You are a very silly girl sometimes,” she scolded her reflection. Then she pulled back a few locks at her temples, as she always did, and tied them behind with a simple bow.
Diana knocked on the green-painted front door, sheltered from the October sun by the slant of the Green Gables porch roof. She had never used the front door when visiting the Cuthberts, as they never used the front door at Orchard Slope. Front doors were so formal, and such close neighbors had no need for stiff formalities. This tea, however, was special.
Anne must have been waiting beside the door, for she swung it open almost immediately. She had on her pearl-gray dress, one she often wore to church, and Diana was glad to see that she had fixed her hair in the same style, pulled back at the sides and tied with a ribbon behind. It was the most grown-up hairstyle two girls of eleven might reasonably aspire to. Diana thought it gave them both a regal, refined appearance.
A thin, pale hand reached out to Diana. Diana took it, shaking graciously, just as if it were the first time she’d met Anne Shirley.
“Won’t you please come in?” Anne asked, and stepped aside with a grand, welcoming gesture. Diana was escorted upstairs to the east gable room, which was Anne’s very own.
“Marilla told me I ought to let you lay off your hat in the sitting room, but I didn’t feel that was quite special enough. We couldn’t enjoy a real tea with your hat sitting right there on the sofa as if this were any ordinary day, could we?”
Diana of Orchard Slope Page 9