“Certainly not,” Diana said. She looked out Anne’s window, and there was Orchard Slope, grandly white and brilliant against the majestic, spotless sky. She could see her bedroom window clearly, a square of reflected blue glinting above the tallest treetops. And there on the table before Anne’s window, held in an old brass candlestick, was the candle stump which Anne used for signaling. The girls had worked out an ingenious code of candle-light flashes, which could be read clearly between their two widely separated bedrooms.
With formalities observed, the girls returned to the sitting room, where they engaged in sedate, ladylike discussion of their families’ farms and crops, until Diana raised the subject of apples. That made Anne start up in her chair with a jolt of delight. “Let’s go out to the orchard and get some of the Red Sweetings.”
The Red Sweeting apples, and the orchard itself, proved an irresistible distraction. Anne and Diana quite forgot their dignity and played for hours in the Green Gables orchard, picking the last delicious apples straight off the leaf-bare boughs and lounging in the last lingering patch of green grass behind the shed. The sun was warm and glorious, caressing their rosy cheeks with a benevolent touch, and shining brightly on the apples they had gathered in their skirts.
“Tell me everything about school,” Anne implored. “I do miss it, you know, though I’d never admit it to Marilla, because then she’d make me go back, and this has become a matter of honor for me.”
Diana spun out every tale she could recall of school goings-on: Whose name was written up with whose on the porch wall, and which girls had been unkind to the others. She told all about Gertie Pye—what a torment it was to sit with her day after day!—and the airs that were put on during lunch hours, the games and jokes that were played. Both girls doubled over with laughter when Diana told how Mr. Phillips had whipped Sam Boulter for backtalk, only to be confronted the next day by Sam’s father, who barged into the schoolroom and shouted at Mr. Phillips, and dared him to so much as touch one of the Boulter children ever again. Diana’s impression of the look that had fallen over Mr. Phillips’s face had Anne so helpless with laughter that she could scarcely breathe.
But when Diana tried to bring up Gilbert Blythe—and oh, didn’t she just want to talk about Gilbert with her dearest friend!—Anne sprang up, letting the last of her apples roll off her lap and tumble across the grass.
“What if we go in now and have some raspberry cordial?”
“I’m awful fond of raspberry cordial,” Diana said, climbing to her feet more slowly than Anne had done. She was reluctant to halt their chatter, for it felt so nice to be chummy with Anne again, to laugh and share their secrets, to be carefree. Best of all was that it was just the two of them… Diana and Anne alone together, without Mrs. Barry or Marilla looming over them, without the schoolmaster glaring at them or even the well-meaning but still judgmental gazes of their peers. In one another’s company, as nowhere else in the world, Anne and Diana could truly be Anne and Diana.
But on the other hand, this was supposed to be a real, grown-up tea. Diana supposed it was only fitting that they go about it the right way.
Back in the sitting room, Diana settled on the sofa, sitting primly upright with her very best posture, while Anne vanished into the pantry. Diana could hear a rustling and bumping as her friend searched for the bottle of cordial. Diana’s mouth watered with anticipation; Marilla Cuthbert was famed for every kind of preserve, including the refreshing drinks she made each summer when the berry canes back behind Green Gables were heavy and ripe. A taste of real summer raspberries would be welcome now, with autumn so persistent in the air.
Anne reappeared, triumphant, with an uncorked bottle of red liquid in one hand and a tumbler in the other. She set them before Diana on the little tea table. “Please help yourself,” she said. “I fear I ate so many apples that I can’t have any, myself, not just now.”
Diana poured and tasted. She leaned back in surprise, gazing down at the drink in her tumbler. The taste was far more complex than any cordial she’d ever had before, with a strange, almost vinegarish bite. Even after she swallowed, the feel of it seemed to linger in her nose as she exhaled, rather like a strong perfume.
“That’s awfully nice raspberry cordial, Anne. I didn’t know raspberry cordial could be so nice.”
Anne encouraged Diana to have all the cordial she pleased while she, Anne, tended to the kitchen stove. She was tasked with having supper ready for Matthew and his hired boy when they returned from town, where they had gone to sell the potato harvest. Anne wandered into the kitchen to see to her work, but she talked as she went, as was Anne’s habit, of course. Diana listened with half an ear while she drank down more of the cordial, wondering at its earthy, luscious flavor.
She finished the glass more quickly than she’d intended, then sit it aside on the table and stared at it rather blearily while Anne went on talking.
“It’s strange,” Diana thought. “I’ve never tasted anything quite like that before.” A queer little twist of fear in her stomach told her perhaps she ought not to have any more of the cordial. But the cordial itself was also very compelling. It sat there in its tall, slender jar, sparkling in a most inviting way when a shaft of sunlight fell through the window and lit up its ruby insides. Finally, Diana decided, “One more cup can’t hurt me. It’s only cordial, after all.” She poured another.
Anne returned from the kitchen, talking rapturously about a most pathetic and affecting tale she had imagined while her chores. It had something to do with smallpox, and Anne nursing Diana when no one else would go near her, which didn’t sound very grand to Diana at all, but she was so enraptured by her second tumbler of cordial that she raised no objection to Anne’s story.
Before Diana knew it, she had drained her second cup. A hiccup seized her chest and came out of her mouth in a terribly undignified, backwards squeak.
“’Scuse me,” Diana said. Her tongue was thick and tingling. It moved more slowly than she liked.
“Here, now, have another glassful if you’d like,” Anne said, tilting the cordial bottle eagerly toward Diana. “Marilla said we may finish it off.”
By now, Diana could think of no reason to object to the cordial. Her head felt pleasantly light; her arms insisted that they were floating, although she knew they were not because she could see them behaving just as arms ought to behave. The outlines of whatever she looked at did seem a bit fuzzy, though. She lifted her cordial cup so energetically that she nearly spilled it on her velveteen dress. Then she drank it… and drank… and drank, unable to stop herself from gulping down the whole tumbler in one long draught, though she knew it was a very unladylike thing to do. The cordial was just so good. It refused to be ignored!
“I meant to cover it just as much as could be,” Anne was saying. Her voice sounded strangely bubbly and slow, as if Diana were listening to her from the bottom of Barry’s Pond. “But when I carried it in, I was imagining I was a nun…”
“Cover what?” Diana said. Her tongue stumbled worse than before.
“The pudding sauce, of course.”
Diana thought dizzily, “Oh… the pudding sauce. Of course.” Anne had been recounting some funny tale about a plum pudding gone wrong. Diana blinked heavily, trying to sort out the details of the story.
“I thought to cover it the next morning,” Anne said, “and ran to the pantry. Diana, fancy if you can my extreme horror at finding a mouse drowned in the pudding sauce!”
Diana stared at Anne in sluggish disgust. She couldn’t think of anything worse than scampering mice, unless it was a dead mouse floating in a perfectly good pitcher of pudding sauce. Her stomach lurched at the thought. Anne continued with her story, telling of how her distractibility led her to neglect the tainted sauce until Marilla’s guests from Spencervale very nearly ate it.
The thought was too much for Diana. She clutched at her stomach, and as she did so the room lurched and whirled around her. Groaning, she shut her eyes tightly, but the d
izzy, disorienting sensation did not abate.
“Why, Diana, what is the matter?”
Diana was sure she couldn’t speak. If she opened her mouth at all, she feared nothing would come out of it but sick. She tried to stand, but her legs were as wobbly as aspic. She sank back onto the sofa again and clutched her head with both hands. “I’m… I’m awful sick. I… I must go right home.”
“Oh, no, no!” Anne cried in distress. “You must have your tea, Diana… think of our tea! Wait here. I’ll go and start it off this very minute.”
Diana tried unsuccessfully to rise again. “I must go home,” she insisted thickly.
Anne tried to press food on Diana, which only turned her stomach all the more. Diana shook her head weakly and squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to look at the fruit cake and cherry preserves that Anne offered up with trembling hands.
“Oh, Diana,” Anne wailed, “do you suppose it’s possible that you’re really taking the smallpox? If you are, I’ll nurse you. You can depend on that. Even if I die from it… I’ll never forsake you. Where do you feel bad?”
“I’m d…” Diana gave another tremendous hiccup. “I’m dizzy, Anne. Awful dizzy.”
Pale with worry, Anne pulled Diana to her feet. Diana tottered and swayed in a most alarming way. The sitting room spun around her, a whirl of the dark, sober colors, serviceable furnishings, and meager doilies favored by the staid Marilla Cuthbert. The room seemed to press in upon Diana; she felt quite confined, on the verge of suffocating. She would have run from the room, but her feet would not move with any reliable speed. She clung to Anne’s arm, gazing about her in thick confusion.
“Outside,” Diana muttered. “I must go… outside.”
“But what if you catch your death?” Anne shrieked, though there was no real danger of Diana catching her death, for the October afternoon was still quite mild and sunny.
Diana’s stomach lurched. She choked back a most unladylike heave. That inspired Anne to propel her outside with all haste; Diana staggered along until she found herself on the Green Gables porch, where Anne eased her down on a wicker seat to wait while she fetched Diana’s hat from the east gable room. Anne returned and set the hat on Diana’s head, but it kept sliding down over one ear as Diana’s head wobbled weakly on her neck. It seemed she couldn’t keep herself straight—couldn’t even look straight at the tilting, shifting world.
“Home,” she pleaded with her friend.
“Oh, all right,” Anne gave in at last. “But if you are truly sick I shall never forgive myself for abandoning you.”
It took some doing for Diana to descend the unexpectedly treacherous steps of the front porch. The walk across the field to the brook was longer and more laborious than it ever had been before. With ever step, Diana’s stomach churned. She felt decidedly precarious, even with Anne supporting her.
When they arrived at the foot bridge, both girls paused and gazed up the hill to Orchard Slope—Anne desperately, Diana blearily. Diana could see the dark shape of her mother standing at the kitchen door. Even through her curious fog, she could read the tension in Mrs. Barry’s stance.
“I’d better go on alone,” she managed to say. “Mother looks awful cross.”
“No, Diana, you mustn’t! Let me help you. What if you were to fall?”
“Let me go, Anne… let me go!”
Diana hadn’t meant to speak so sharply to her friend, and the pained look that crossed Anne’s features wasn’t lost on Diana, even in her present state. She wanted to apologize, but she now feared that if she said anything at all, she would be sick all down the front of her dress. She turned as quickly as she dared and staggered away from Anne, over the bridge and up the sunlit hill to where her mother was waiting. Anne’s cries of, “I won’t abandon you, Diana!” followed her up the path below the orchard boughs.
Mrs. Barry Tells a Falsehood
“For the land’s sake,” Mrs. Barry exclaimed when Diana came woozily through the garden gate. “Diana Barry, what is the matter with you?”
Diana tried to reply, but there were suddenly two images of her mother standing before her, both furry and indistinct around the edges. The dual Mrs. Barrys were more than she could bear. She groaned and clutched at her stomach, struggling valiantly to keep herself from vomiting.
Mrs. Barry rushed forward to catch her daughter, frightened that she was about to fall. When she drew close, though, she stiffened with sudden affront. Then she sniffed the air around Diana, wary as an old hound, not quite believing what her nose was telling her.
“You’re… you’re drunk,” Mrs. Barry said, caught somewhere between fury and wonder.
Despite her sick stomach, Diana laughed at that. It was such a silly proposition. “No, Mother, I… I can’t… be.” She punctuated her statement with an enormous hiccup.
“By every angel in the heavens,” Mrs. Barry said darkly. It was as close as she ever came to swearing. Then she dragged Diana roughly into the house. Diana, hauled along like a kitten in a sack, could only mewl weakly in protest.
Mr. Barry was seated at the kitchen table, having his afternoon tea. He stood at once, for it was clear from his wife’s indignant quiver that something was terribly wrong.
“Your daughter,” Mrs. Barry said in cruel triumph, “has been set drunk by that orphan girl… that child the Cuthberts have taken in. Drunk, George! Of all things!”
“Diana!” Father rushed to her side, lifting her face gently to peer down at her in concern. He looked carefully at her eyes (which were, it must be said, quite red-rimmed), and turned her this way and that to examine the flush on her cheeks. He, too, caught the unmistakable scent and turned a frown of reluctant agreement on his wife.
“This is the end, George, the very end! Even you can’t deny it now: That Anne girl is a bad influence on our Diana. I won’t have her around any longer, nor let Diana or Minnie May associate with her. I will not permit it!”
“No,” Diana protested. “Anne never… I didn’t…!” But she couldn’t form a clear thought, couldn’t find the words to express her innocence or her parents’ injustice.
“I suppose you are right after all, Rebecca,” Father said quietly. “I had hoped the girl would be a good play-mate for Diana, but I suppose it’s true, what Mrs. Lynde said. Perhaps orphans really can’t be trusted.” He didn’t sound as if he actually agreed with Mrs. Lynde’s low opinion of orphans, but before Mrs. Barry’s towering fury, there was little he could do. “If you think it’s best to keep the girls separated, I won’t interfere.”
Mrs. Barry gave a sharp sniff, one that said, “Perhaps next time you’ll listen to me before your daughter turns up intoxicated” with an economy of sound. Then she seized Diana by the arm again and marched her upstairs to her bedroom.
“Really, Diana,” Mrs. Barry said as she undressed her tottering, swaying daughter. “Of all the unladylike things. Of all the foolhardy, wild, reputation-destroying things you could have done… this truly takes the cake!” She found a night dress and pulled it roughly over Diana’s head, then led her to the iron-framed bed and stuffed her under the covers. “I’m only grateful that no one saw you but that Anne girl. No one else saw you, I trust? Good. That is one indescribably small mercy in this whole mess. If word got around town that you were as drunk as a tramp, why, there would be no hope for you, not in a hundred years! Don’t you understand, girl? I do all this for you. I guard you and protect you because it’s a mother’s duty… because I want for you what I—” She cut herself off abruptly, shaking her head and turning away, unwilling to say those words. After a moment, when her anger was better controlled, she resumed her lecture with ice-cool calm. “Diana, I know you are very young, but still you have a future to think of. We all must think of your future. You’re only a girl now, but you will be a woman sooner than you think. The best life for a woman is one of quiet dignity… married well to a man of standing, keeping a home in fine order, and raising well-behaved children who do their mother credit. Any other life
, any other path, would be below you. Less than you deserve. Do you understand?”
Diana blinked back tears. She understood all too well… and she wanted nothing of the life her mother described. Oh, it would be fine to be a wife and a mother someday. She hoped she would. But a man of standing? Her mother meant a plain, dull, uninteresting man. Not a handsome one. Not one whose eyes sparkled with mischief and adventure. She turned her face away and tried not to think about Gilbert Blythe. She wouldn’t think of him now… not now, when her head was already so mixed up that she couldn’t even see straight.
There was a gentle tap at her door. A moment later Diana’s father entered, carrying a wide porcelain basin. He set it on the floor beside her bed.
Diana wanted to ask what the bowl was for, but all at once her stomach heaved, and she leaned instinctively over the bowl. As she retched up her lunch—and the raspberry cordial with it—her mother sighed deeply and pulled Diana’s black curls back so they wouldn’t be fouled. Mrs. Barry rubbed Diana’s back with a surprisingly gentle hand.
“We have your future to think about,” she murmured, again and again, until Diana’s stomach was as empty as it could be.
When Diana sank back on her pillows with a shuddering sob, Mrs. Barry covered the basin with a towel and stood, stiff and resolute once again. “Make no mistake. You will never see Anne Shirley again.” Then she swept out of the room like a cold winter wind.
Diana felt too sick and wrung-out to argue.
She was permitted to stay home from church the next morning, though Diana couldn’t be sure the previous day’s sickness had anything to do with her vacation. She suspected her mother was afraid to risk her safety too soon: The Cuthberts would certainly be there for the morning’s sermon, sitting in their usual pew with Anne beside them. Mrs. Barry wouldn’t allow Diana and Anne to come under the same roof until she could be entirely assured of keeping the two girls separate. It was all one to Diana. She hadn’t the heart to tell Anne that she had been entirely forbidden to see her again… not yet.
Diana of Orchard Slope Page 10