“I’ll write to her,” Diana decided, “and explain everything, as best I can.”
She went at once to the little table beside her window, where her flower-covered writing box stood ready beside the little brass lamp. But even though the paper was smooth and inviting, and even though her pencil was sharp, Diana stared helplessly at the blank page, never knowing how to begin. After many fruitless minutes, she rose from her table in consternation and rummaged around her room until she found some small gifts of her own: a piece of saltwater taffy wrapped in wax paper, a square of pretty fabric for patchwork, and the new green hair ribbons she had received for Christmas. Green always looked very pretty in Anne’s hair. These she bundled up in a tiny linen bag. She would leave them in the oak tree for Anne to find first thing tomorrow morning.
On the paper, she wrote the simplest of messages: “Love always, Diana.” The message was short, and perhaps it was an inadequate response to Anne’s heartfelt letter. But the words were also true, even if Diana wished they weren’t.
January would have been a dull disappointment of a month, if not for the fact that the Premier had taken it into his head to visit sleepy little Prince Edward Island on his big political tour. The whole of Avonlea was in an uproar. Most folks thought it likely that nobody in the town would ever have a chance to see a real, live politician at close quarters again, and so everyone who was anyone planned to attend the mass meeting in Charlottetown, thirty miles away, whether they agreed with the Premier’s political stances or not.
Mr. and Mrs. Barry were in a grand bustle for days before the event. They flitted and dashed around Orchard Slope making preparations for their departure and absence—for the meeting was at night, so they would be obliged to take a room in Charlottetown and return the morning after. Diana was terribly excited, too. She was not to go with them, which was all right by her, for a political meeting sounded impossibly dreary. She would have liked to visit Charlottetown, for she always enjoyed the island’s biggest city on the few occasions when she’d been allowed to accompany her parents there. However, remaining at home with Orchard Slope to herself… more or less… was the next best thing to visiting the city.
I say “more or less” because Diana was not quite old enough, at eleven years of age, to be left entirely in charge of home and hearth. She was a good, responsible girl, but there are situations even the best of little girls can’t be expected to handle on their own. Mrs. Barry had employed Mary Joe, a wonderfully plump and stoic French girl from the creek, to look after things at Orchard Slope while she and Mr. Barry were off enjoying the meeting. Mary Joe was fifteen and had a reputation for steadiness that did her service. No turn of events ever unsettled her—she was known to be quite unflappable—which made her the perfect candidate to oversee Diana and little Minnie May for the night.
Mary Joe arrived just as the sun was beginning to set. She set her bag of overnight things on the little, plain sofa beside the kitchen stove and hung up her hat and scarf, which she did indeed do a steady, unflappable, business-like way. Diana didn’t mind having Mary Joe about. She spoke English well enough to get by, and although she was never any fun she also didn’t meddle with Diana or Minnie May, as long as they behaved themselves.
“So good of you to come,” Mrs. Barry said to Mary Joe. “The girls won’t give you any trouble tonight, but it gladdens me to know they are in your capable hands.”
At that moment Minnie May, who had been lounging rather listlessly on the sofa as close as she could get to the warmth of the stove, set up a rackety cough. Mary Joe paused, eyeing the three-year-old with a worried expression.
“She caught a cold in the chest two weeks back,” Mrs. Barry explained. “It hasn’t left her yet, the poor mite, but she’ll be all right.”
“Are you sure, Missus Barry?” Mary Joe asked. “Dat sound like de croup to me.”
“Nonsense, my dear,” Mrs. Barry said with a light-hearted laugh. “It’s only a cold. She’s nearly over it now. She’ll be just fine, won’t you, darling?”
Minnie May, pale-faced and with violet rings shadowing her sad, dark eyes, looked up at her mother in solemn silence. Then she sniffled noisily.
“Just put her to bed early. She can have some chamomile tea. The steam will soothe her. There’s George driving up with the sleigh. We’re on our way to Charlottetown. You be perfect, Diana, and help Mary Joe with anything she needs.”
“Yes, Mother,” Diana said. But she didn’t look at her mother as she hurried out the door and climbed into the sleigh. Diana couldn’t take her eyes off her little sister. There was something wilting and frail about Minnie May’s demeanor… something Diana hadn’t seen in the girl for all the long weeks she had nursed her fearful cold. As the sleigh glided away down the snow-covered hill, the bells on the horse’s collar fading into the distance, a shiver of fear crept up Diana’s spine.
An hour later, Diana’s shiver of fear had turned to a constant, cold clutch of the purest, most hideous dread. She and Mary Joe had tried fruitlessly to get Minnie May to take her supper, a wholesome and tasty chicken stew. But Minnie May murmured and whined and turned her face away, and couldn’t be convinced to try so much as a bite.
“This isn’t like her at all,” Diana said quietly to Mary Joe. They watched Minnie May sag at the kitchen table, drooping down to rest her curly little head miserably on the tabletop beside her untouched bowl of stew. “She always eats her supper, every bite. Oh, Mary Joe, I’m awful scared. What if she’s really, truly sick?”
Mary Joe shook her head soberly. “I still say it’s de croup. I seen babies wit’ it before. Always sound de same.”
As if to punctuate Mary Joe’s assertion, Minnie May sat suddenly straight on her chair and began to cough. It was a cough like nothing Diana had ever heard before: harsh and barking, wild and fierce, as if some terrible beast had possessed Minnie May from the inside. The poor child hacked and shook with the force of the spasm. Her face darkened; she gasped for air between coughs with a desperate, frightened look in her glazed, tearful eyes.
Diana started back, horrified. “Mary Joe! What’s happening?”
“Oh, Lord have mercy!” Mary Joe’s hands flew up to clutch at her own broad face. “Dat’s a bad case, Miss Diana! What are we to do?”
“I thought you would know,” Diana moaned.
“Merciful Heaven,” Mary Joe said, staggering uselessly across the kitchen and then back again. “Merciful Heaven, save de baby!”
Diana caught Mary Joe by the arm and pulled her around to face her. “You must think, Mary Joe! Don’t lose your head now! How do we treat croup?”
“I don’t know, Miss Diana, I don’t know!”
“You said you’ve seen babies with it before!”
“But I never treated dem, Miss Diana! We need a doctor, dat’s what.”
Diana felt quite sick with fear. A slow, cold realization flooded her limbs and made her tremble with hopelessness. “Mother and Father have taken the sleigh to Charlottetown,” she whispered.
“De roads too icy for a buggy,” Mary Joe said, just as softly. Her eyes were wide with terror. “And de doctor is miles away. Even if you ran de whole way, it would take hours, Miss Diana… hours!”
At that point, Mary Joe let out a great wail of grief and caught up Minnie May (still coughing and choking piteously.) She clutched the little girl in her arms, a useless gesture, but it was the only expression the poor thing could find for her fear.
“Oh, Mary Joe, this is useless,” Diana shrieked. “We must do something. We can’t just let her…” She couldn’t finish that bleak thought.
“But what, Miss Diana? What can we do?”
Giving in to nervous energy, Diana twisted the bracelet on her wrist. The thread bracelet, braided and beaded. Suddenly she knew exactly what she must do. The Barrys’ only sleigh was gone, but Diana knew where there was another close by.
She whisked a shawl from the peg beside the stove and tied it hastily around her head and neck. “W
ait here,” she said to Mary Joe. “I’m going to run for help.”
“No,” the French girl protested, her face pale with fright. “Don’t leave me ’lone, Miss Diana!”
But there was no time to explain. Diana flung herself through the kitchen door and down the porch steps. The moon was beginning to rise, glowing faintly through the dark net of bare orchard branches. Her icy, treacherous path was poorly lit, and the world around her was disorienting in its patched cloak of moonlight and shadow. But Diana ran as fast as her legs could carry her, down the snowy slope and over the footbridge toward Green Gables… and, she fervently prayed, salvation.
A Night of Desperation
Never had the great stretch of field between Orchard Slope and Green Gables seemed so impossibly vast. Every ragged breath of night air burned in Diana’s throat and chest with a vicious, brutal cold. The snow had crusted and frozen over, so that each step held a moment on the glittering surface before cracking and breaking underfoot. Her legs were sore and tired from that faltering, falling gait long before she reached the green-peaked farmhouse… long before she even reached the end of its pastures.
But after what seemed an eternity, Diana struggled up the last bit of hillside and wrestled with the pasture gate. It was coated in ice that stuck to her palms as she forced it open against a drift of snow. When she pulled her hands away, the ice scraped alarmingly against her skin. She was nearly there now. Green Gables was close, and behind her, the Orchard Slope farmhouse was distant and small. A single, wan light burned in the kitchen, where Mary Joe was no doubt still clinging uselessly to Minnie May. By contrast, the lights in Green Gables were like beacons of hope and welcome. Orange light spilled out across the shapeless mounds of the snow-covered kitchen garden. The sight made Diana weep afresh, but whether from fear or relief… or both… she didn’t know.
A portion of walkway had been shoveled clear; it led from the silent garden to the kitchen door. Diana could finally run in earnest when she reached it, and she did run, straining her legs against the pained protest of her muscles. She flew up the steps and along the covered porch, and didn’t bother to knock on the green-painted door. She flung it open and hurtled inside, gasping and sagging against the door frame.
Anne was the first person Diana saw, and never was a sight more welcome. The red-haired girl had just emerged from the cellar entrance nearby, carrying a plate of russet apples and in one hand and the stub of a lit candle in the other. Anne’s mouth dropped open in shock when she saw Diana, so close and so unexpected. Apples and candle alike fell from her hands and tumbled down the cellar steps with a crash.
“Whatever is the matter, Diana?” Anne exclaimed. Her eyes widened with sudden hope. “Has your mother relented at last?”
Diana had no time to address Anne’s hope. “Oh, Anne, do come quick. Minnie May is awful sick. She’s got croup, Mary Joe says. And Father and Mother are away to town and there’s nobody to go for the doctor. Minnie May is awful bad and Mary Joe doesn’t know what to do, and oh, Anne, I’m so scared!”
Matthew Cuthbert dropped the newspaper he had been reading on the kitchen sofa. He took up his coat and hat, bundled himself with urgency, and slid silently past Diana and out the door.
Anne gazed after him admiringly for a moment, then she snatched her own coat from its hanger. “He’s gone to harness the sorrel mare to go to Carmody for the doctor. I know it as well as if he’d said so. Matthew and I are such kindred spirits, I can read his thoughts without words at all.”
Diana choked back a sob. Everything felt so hopeless, so frightening and desperate! “I don’t believe he’ll find the doctor at Carmody,” she said, trying her best to remain calm but failing. “Dr. Blair went to town to see the Premier, and I guess Dr. Spencer would go, too. Mary Joe never treated anybody with croup.”
“Mrs. Lynde had ever so many children. Surely she has seen croup before.”
“But Mrs. Lynde is away, too! Oh, Anne!”
Anne hooked her arm through Diana’s. Her demeanor was impossibly cheerful. “Don’t cry, Di. I know exactly what to do for croup. You forget that Mrs. Hammond had twins three times. When you look after three pairs of twins, you naturally get a lot of experience. Oh—I should get the ipecac bottle, in case you don’t have any at your house.” She flashed off into one of the back rooms, and returned with the medicine bottle clutched triumphantly in her white little fist. “Come on now.”
Off the two little girls went, over the snowy pastures and through the narrow band of trees that sheltered the brook. The way was as difficult as it had been for Diana alone, but somehow it didn’t seem so now, with a brisk, confident friend beside her. And not just any friend… Anne, her truest and dearest companion. It wasn’t only Anne’s surety about treating croup that put Diana’s mind at ease. It was Anne herself, intelligent and focused, ready to face whatever challenge lay ahead with a brave heart. Anne gave Diana great comfort; by the time they were beneath the orchard boughs, with the moon and stars shining diamond-bright above, Diana had stopped her crying. And when she re-entered the Orchard Slope kitchen, she was calm and steady, fully prepared to tend to Minnie May with all her might and mean.
Minnie May lay on the sofa, near the stove, covered by a pair of afghan quilts which Mary Joe had retrieved from one of the bedrooms. The little girl’s breathing was loud and hoarse. She sounded on the verge of death, but Diana looked to Anne and saw no fear of death in her face—only business-like practicality.
“She has the croup, all right,” Anne said. “She’s pretty bad, but I’ve seen worse.”
Anne set right to work, directing the formerly unflappable Mary Joe (now entirely beside herself with helpless terror) to stoke up the fire in the stove and to boil a kettle of water for the steam. Then she and Diana undressed the unprotesting Minnie May and carried her to the nearest bed, which belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Barry. Anne’s demeanor was one of brooking no nonsense, either from Minnie May or from Mary Joe. She marshalled and directed her ragtag legion with all the confidence of a general.
“Why, she’s wonderful,” Diana thought as Anne firmly persuaded Minnie May to swallow yet another spoonful of the hated ipecac. “Why did I ever snub her? And all over a boy!”
What did boys matter, after all, Diana wondered as she watched Anne care for Minnie May. There were certainly more important things in this world. Diana was determined to focus on what truly mattered from that moment on.
Their struggle with Minnie May stretched on for hours. Anne administered the ipecac every quarter of an hour, and the poor little creature who moaned and shivered beneath the blankets often retched miserably into the flannel cloths Diana held up to her chin… but the phlegm in her chest remained stubbornly in place. As the hours stretched on, Minnie May’s breathing grew ever more terrible to hear, rasping and grating and often seizing her with coughing fits that left her so weak and breathless she couldn’t even hold up her head.
“She’s getting worse,” Diana murmured once, clutching Anne’s hand in a tight, fearful grip.
But Anne smiled at Diana with perfect placidity. “Don’t fret, Diana. I’ve seen this all before. Now, Mary Joe, bring us that kettle. It’s time for another steam treatment.”
Diana propped Minnie May up and held her over the billowing steam while Mary Joe, mittened with thick pads of wool, proffered the boiling kettle with her stout, strong, farm-girl arms. Anne fanned the steam into Minnie May’s face until it had all died away. She glanced at the clock on the Barrys’ dressing table. Diana followed her gaze, and realized to her astonishment that it was nearly three o’clock in the morning. Neither Matthew nor the doctor had appeared. Diana, Anne, and Mary Joe had been at it all through the night, yet Minnie May was no closer to relief… and each spasm of coughing seemed to drain more of her life away.
“Anne,” Diana whispered fearfully.
“Give me the ipecac bottle, Di,” Anne said, stoic and calm.
“It’s nearly empty, Anne. There isn’t more than a spoonful
left.”
“And down her throat it will go.”
Anne made good on her word. When the last of the ipecac was gone, she sat back on her bedside stool with a long, drawn-out sigh. Diana could see how weary Anne was; hollows hung below her gray eyes and her lips were pale as she pressed them together. “She’s as worried as I am,” Diana realized, “but she hates to show it.”
Suddenly, Minnie May lurched up with a surge of her fading strength. She gave one loud, desperate choke, and then Anne was on her feet, sweeping Minnie May out across the bed so that she hung chest-down.
“The cloths, Diana,” Anne directed.
Diana placed the last of their flannel cloths below Minnie May’s face. The little girl heaved and sputtered and with one tremendous cough she spat out an impossibly large ball of phlegm.
Diana stared at Anne in wonder and delight. Anne eased Minnie May back onto the pillows and pulled the covers up to her chin. The little darling fell asleep almost at once, wrung out by her terrible ordeal… but her breathing was peaceful and clear.
Anne found a kerchief in the night-stand and gently brushed beads of sweat from Minnie May’s brow. “She’ll be all right now, I dare say.”
“Anne! Anne, you were wonderful!” Diana caught her friend in a tight embrace, weeping with exhaustion and relief against Anne’s shoulder.
“And so were you, dearest Di. You were so brave… just like a heroine from one of Charlotte Morgan’s stories!”
Diana of Orchard Slope Page 14