“I suppose I’ll have to tell her sooner or later,” Diana mused darkly, staring out her bedroom window from the quiet shelter of her bed. “But I can’t face her now. It’s all so unfair, and Mother is so mean! She doesn’t understand at all. Anne never harmed me. And I wasn’t drunk. How could I be? Raspberry cordial never set anybody drunk.”
She no longer felt ill, though her head did ache a little, and she was so thirsty that she drank in one draft the tall glass of water her father had brought her before he and Mrs. Barry and little Minnie May had departed for church. Orchard Slope was enshrouded in silence. Even outside her window no birds sang, for autumn had driven them all away with its cold, hard stare. The world seemed very bleak to Diana now. She slept through the hours of the church service, grateful that she could sleep, that she could retreat from her troubling, heartbroken thoughts.
She woke shortly before the family was due to come home. Resigned to her fate, Diana climbed out of bed. She was groggy from too much sleep, and her eyes stung as if she’d been weeping in her dreams. But she dressed in her Sunday best and did what she could to put herself in order. Mrs. Barry would expect help with dinner. Diana supposed there was nothing to be done but pitch in and act the part of the complacent, perfect little girl.
A familiar clop of hooves sounded in the yard below. Diana looked down from her bedroom window to see the buggy swinging into the yard—Father driving, Mother sitting straight and motionless beside him, and Minnie May kicking her feet on the bench seat in the back. The buggy paused in front of the porch. Mrs. Barry stepped delicately down, then lifted Minnie May out of the buggy and turned her loose to run up into the house on her own. Father drove on toward the barn.
Mrs. Barry should have gone straight into the house, but she paused, looking back down the lane that led to the road. At first Diana couldn’t see what she was looking at, but just as she was about to leave the window and go downstairs to greet Minnie May, a familiar tall, gray figure appeared from the russet curve of the lane. It was Marilla Cuthbert.
Diana gasped. Suddenly her whole body was tingling with a tense, nervous energy. She pulled her curtains down from their iron tie-backs to hide her face, then wedged her fingers beneath her window and cautiously pried up the sash, just far enough that she could hear the goings-on in the yard below.
“Good afternoon, Miss Cuthbert,” Mrs. Barry said stiffly. “Though I must say, I am surprised to see you here.”
Marilla hesitated a moment before answering. “Good afternoon. I thought it only right to pay you a call, seeing as how—” here an unaccustomed edge of hardness suddenly formed in Marilla’s voice— “I’ve just been speaking with Rachel Lynde.”
“Oh?” Mrs. Barry seemed unconcerned, even airy. It made Diana grit her teeth.
“Mrs. Barry, Rachel Lynde tells me you paid her a visit yesterday evening and you told her that my Anne intoxicated your Diana.”
Mrs. Barry drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t a patch on Marilla’s tall, imposing stature. “That girl of yours did intoxicate Diana. The poor child was sick, and has been sleeping it off all day, as if she were some kind of hardened degenerate! I don’t know what you’re thinking, keeping a wild thing like that under your roof. No good can come of it, Marilla, and you’d be wise to listen when your neighbors tell you so.”
Marilla clenched her fists and trembled slightly. She seemed to be wrestling inside herself, struggling valiantly to control her temper. Finally she said, slowly and evenly, “It was nothing more than a mistake, Mrs. Barry. I told Anne she could serve raspberry cordial for tea, and the poor girl didn’t know which bottle was which.”
“What do you mean, which bottle was which?”
“She got out my currant wine by mistake. Having no experience with such things, Anne can hardly be blamed. It’s not as if she made Diana drunk intentionally.”
Mrs. Barry wagged her finger right at Marilla; Diana was so mortified to see it that she wanted to sink down into the floorboards. “That currant wine of yours! You know I’ve long objected to your making it. As have many others in Avonlea—oh, yes! None of us approve, yet you go on making it year after year. It isn’t Christianly, Miss Cuthbert. Ladies have no place drinking spirits, let alone brewing them up in their kitchens!”
“Currant wine can hardly be called ‘spirits,’” Marilla objected smoothly. “And in any case, I haven’t made a drop of currant wine in three years, not since I found out the minister didn’t look kindly on it. Though he has enough manners to be polite about his disapproval.”
Diana couldn’t help but smile at that. If anyone was more than equal to Mrs. Barry in the fullest of her wraths, it was good old Marilla.
“I kept that bottle of wine for treating sickness,” Marilla went on.
“Well, now it has caused sickness. That goes to show you!”
“My wine didn’t cause your child’s illness,” Marilla returned, with more than a hint of sauce. “I dare say it was common greed. Even if that bottle had contained innocent raspberry cordial, three glasses of it would have sickened any child, purely from too much sweetness.”
“A sick stomach from too much sweet is an entirely different matter from sickness due to wine, Marilla. Wine! Of all things! I’m not the kind to speak my mind so frankly, but I feel I must now. You’ve never been one to follow the order of things, to do what ought to be done. And I have always known that your ways would sting you in the end. But now they have stung us, too, Miss Cuthbert. I hope you will reconsider your choices. It’s too late now for you to marry and settle down, as is proper—” at this, Marilla gave one loud, sharp laugh— “but at least you can be more sensible when it comes to that girl you’ve taken into your home. For my part, I must draw the line. Diana will never see Anne again. It’s clear that the child is dangerous, and you should heed the warning while you still can.”
“Perhaps you should heed the warning,” Marilla said, coldly dignified. “Currant wine wasn’t meant to be drunk three tumblerfuls at a time, and if any child I had to do with was so greedy, I’d sober her up with a right good spanking.”
Diana’s face burned, but even in the midst of that humiliation she gaped in delighted awe at Marilla as the woman turned on her heel and walked away. Mrs. Barry quivered helplessly, alone in the yard, watching her neighbor saunter off like a cat with its tail in the air. Then she spun, too, and stormed into the house. Diana shut the window quickly. She knew it was long past time she was down in the kitchen, helping her mother prepare dinner. But how would she ever keep the secret smile of mischief from her face?
Later that evening, supper was tense and quiet. Neither of Diana’s parents said much, for offense and anger were rolling from Mrs. Barry in waves as cold as the ocean’s swells. Diana confined herself to conversation with Minnie May, who, at three years old, was not exactly an elocutionist. But at least the little girl was unaware of the ill feelings that were drawn up like a hunter’s net around the Barry table. She chattered on sunnily about the flowers she’d seen in the frosted autumn dells on the drive home from church, and about the story books she wanted Diana to read to her that night. Her dear, innocent face was so charming and sweet with its bright, rosy cheeks… thanks to her gay little sister, Diana nearly convinced herself that nothing had gone wrong in the world.
But then, as Mrs. Barry stood to carry a load of dishes into the kitchen for washing, all rudiments of joy were swept away. Mrs. Barry drew in a sharp, hissing breath through her nose as she stared out the window toward Green Gables, bristling like a cat. She flashed a swift, commanding glance at Diana. “You, up to your bedroom, and don’t make a peep. Take Minnie May with you.”
“But Mother, I—”
“Do not argue, Diana. And George,” Mrs. Barry added, narrowing her eyes at her husband, “leave this to me. Remain in the parlor, please, until I’ve handled it.”
What it was, Diana could not begin to guess. But she figured it was neither safe nor wise to test her mother’s patience ton
ight. She took Minnie May by the hand and hustled her upstairs. When they safely shut up in Diana’s bedroom, she sat her sister on the bed and said sternly, “Now, you heard Mother. Don’t make a sound.” She handed Minnie May a book, a volume of fairy stories with beautiful painted illustrations, to keep her distracted and quiet. Then she crept to her window for a repeat performance of the afternoon’s subterfuge.
The curtains were still down. Diana barely parted them with one finger, and squinted past the lace and ruffles to the world outside. A purply-gray dusk was just setting in, lit palely by a low western moon. Tints of silver and white hung about the orchard, picking out bare branches and the occasional dull orb of an overlooked apple high up in the skeletal branches. Something moved on the slope. A lone, forlorn shape was making its way up the orchard path, moving with hesitant, dragging steps as if it went to a gallows. A russet-red coat was pulled tightly about the little figure’s thin shoulders, shielding her against the evening chill, and where a good stout cap should have been pulled down to cover her ears, there was nothing but a crown of fiery red, exposed to the cold.
“Anne,” Diana whispered. Her heart gave a great, painful lurch. Carefully, she eased up the sash so she could hear what would transpire below.
Anne went right to the front door, not to the kitchen, for her business was serious and formal. She disappeared under the porch roof, but Diana could hear her slow, hollow footsteps, and then the timid knock on the door below. Then there was the squeal of hinges as Mrs. Barry opened to confront Anne.
“What do you want?” Mrs. Barry’s voice was stiff and loud enough to carry up to Diana’s bedroom window.
“Oh, please, Mrs. Barry, please forgive me.” Anne’s words were earnest, her voice thick with emotion. “I did not mean to—to—intoxicate Diana.” Anne went on to plead her case in the most heart-rending and moving terms, imploring Mrs. Barry to imagine herself in Anne’s position: an orphan without a friend in the world, except the kindly folks who had adopted her. “If you had just one bosom friend in all the world, do you think you would intoxicate her on purpose?” Anne said. “I thought it was only raspberry cordial. I was firmly convinced it was raspberry cordial. Oh, please don’t say that you won’t let Diana play with me anymore. If you do, you will cover my life with a dark cloud of woe.”
The speech brought a tear to Diana’s eye. She was obliged to let her nose run, for if she sniffled she might be heard down on the porch, or Minnie May might pipe up, and she was now so conveniently absorbed in the fairy book.
Mrs. Barry answered Anne at once, without even pausing to consider her moving plea. “I don’t think you are a fit little girl for Diana to associate with,” she said coldly. “You’d better go home and behave yourself.”
“Won’t you let me see Diana just once, to say farewell?” Anne all but wailed.
“Diana has gone over to Carmody with her father.” Then the door closed abruptly, cutting Anne off from the Barry household forever.
Diana gaped out at the purple dusk and the silvery moon, seeing none of it in her shock and hurt. Her mother had lied. Mrs. Barry never lied, as far as Diana knew, and certainly did not permit her daughters to tell any falsehoods—not even Minnie May, who only made up stories in fun, as little children do, and who meant no wickedness by it. The very thought that her mother could lie so smoothly and easily stunned Diana to her very core. Mrs. Barry was not the paragon of virtue Diana had always grudgingly thought her to be.
Her eyes flooding with tears, her lip trembling with uncontained feeling, Diana watched as Anne stumbled blindly back down the porch steps and trudged slowly back toward Green Gables. As she passed through the orchard gate, a gust of wind caught at her coat and lifted her red braids, but Anne seemed not to notice. A desultory swirl of dry leaves gusted across her path, but she didn’t turn to watch their flight with her usual star-eyed fancy. She only walked, head down and steps dragging, as if all the hope had drained right out of her world.
“Anne,” Diana said plaintively, causing Minnie May to drop her book and look around. “Oh, Anne, is this to be the end of our friendship forever?”
There was no answer but the wind howling around the eaves of the old white farmhouse.
The Realities of Tragedy
The next afternoon, Diana worked her rosy-cheeked charm on her highly susceptible father, and he pled the case to Mrs. Barry on Diana’s behalf. Diana knew there was no hope of her mother relenting and allowing Diana and Anne to play together again. She did not even attempt to win the unwinnable fight. But she did manage to gain her mother’s permission to say a proper farewell to Anne.
“You have ten minutes exactly,” Mrs. Barry warned, stern-faced and hard-eyed. “I shall be timing you by the kitchen clock. If you are back even one minute late, Diana, there will be consequences.”
Her heart pounding with mingled hope and despair, Diana flew down the hill to the back road and along it to the little fern-fringed spring the girls had named the Dryad’s Bubble. There was an unobstructed view of Green Gables from that point. It being situated in the little hollow halfway between the two farms, Diana supposed the location would give her and Anne the most time together. She stood beside the spring, which was matted and clogged with brown oak and maple leaves, and waved desperately toward Green Gables. Time was winging by, and Diana was beginning to feel desperate. But presently Anne appeared on the back porch, capped and scarfed and running as fast as she could go toward the hollow.
Diana could see the bright gleam of hope in Anne’s eyes before she even reached the Dryad’s Bubble. She was sorry to extinguish that hope with a forlorn shake of her head.
“Your mother hasn’t relented?” Anne said.
“No,” Diana replied tragically. “And oh, Anne, she says I’m never to play with you again. I cried and cried and told her it wasn’t your fault, but it wasn’t any use. She gave me only ten minutes, and if I’m not back exactly on time she won’t be happy.”
Anne’s eyes filled with tears. “Ten minutes isn’t very long to say an eternal farewell in.”
“I know,” Diana answered miserably.
The girls fell into each other’s arms, sobbing and sniffling. It really was the greatest tragedy either of them had ever witnessed, and all the more poignant because they stood at the very center of it. No romantic novel had ever offered such an affecting, heart-piercing, utterly hopeless scene.
After a moment, Anne pulled back, holding Diana firmly by the shoulders. “Oh, Diana, will you promise faithfully never to forget me, the friend of your youth, no matter what dearer friends may caress thee?”
Normally it amused Diana when Anne spoke so loftily, but there was nothing funny in it now. She sobbed all the harder, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her felt coat. “Indeed I will.” Diana could hardly choke out the words. “And I’ll never have another bosom friend. I don’t want to have one. I couldn’t love anybody as I love you.”
Anne clasped her hands, her face paling with awe. “Oh, Diana! Do you love me?”
Diana scrubbed the tears from her cheeks. “Why, of course I do. Didn’t you know that?”
“No. I thought you liked me, of course, but I never thought you loved me. Why, Diana, I didn’t think anybody could love me. Nobody ever has loved me since I can remember. Oh, this is wonderful! It’s a ray of light which will forever shine on the darkness of a path severed from thee, Diana. Oh, just say it once again.”
Diana smiled through the fresh welling tears. Anne was a funny creature sometimes, but Diana adored her all the more for her strangeness. “I love you devotedly, Anne,” she said, quite truthfully, “and I always will. You may be sure of that.”
Anne reached out her slender, white hand between them. Diana clutched it hard, knowing that in only a few cruelly short minutes, Anne would be torn from her grasp forever. “And I will always love thee, Diana,” Anne said. “In the years to come, thy memory will shine like a star over my lonely life. Just like in that last story we read together. Wilt
thou give me a lock of thy jet-black tresses in parting, to treasure forevermore?”
“Have you got anything to cut it with?” Diana pulled a lock of her hair out of the red ribbon that bound it.
Anne did have her patchwork scissors with her, as it happened, for she had been engaged in sewing when she’d seen Diana beckoning to her from the Dryad’s Bubble. She carefully clipped one of Diana’s black curls and wound it around her finger.
“Fare thee well, my beloved friend,” Anne said solemnly. Henceforth we must be as strangers, though living side by side. But my heart will ever be faithful to thee.”
“I have to go now,” Diana said. “I don’t want to, Anne, but Mother will be so cross with me if I’m not back exactly on time.”
Anne nodded in silent acceptance, but her chin quivered with the promise of several noisy sobs to come. Diana turned and fled before she could see or hear Anne crying afresh. She wanted to return home in full control of herself, like a grown-up lady, like a heroine from a book, overcoming all the tragedies of life.
“But how do the ladies in books stand it?” she thought as she hurried up the orchard path. “Tragedy is so much harder to bear in real life than when you read about it on the page. I suppose the ladies in books can bear it because they aren’t real at all; they’re just made up for the stories. But I am real, and I’m sure my heart is broken forever!”
Diana made it back to the house with half a minute to spare. Her mother only raised her eyebrows in mute acceptance, and Diana was glad she was not expected to talk. She knew she couldn’t trust herself to speak without crying like a helpless little baby, and she didn’t want to relinquish her dignity now.
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