Anne cut her off by dashing to the window. The panes were frosted with delicate stars of ice, but they did not prevent Anne from seeing the magnificent, six-seat pung sleigh as it swept up the hill and into the yard below. “Oh, Diana! Your cousins are here. I’ve never ridden in a sleigh before… well, except for Matthew’s old one, but it hardly counts because it’s just a farm sleigh and there is nothing fancy about it. I’m so nervous!”
“There’s nothing to be nervous about, you dear, silly thing!”
“I don’t feel grand enough to deserve such an honor.” Anne did seem honestly vexed by the sudden confrontation of the sleigh. Her face was as pale as her white-wool dress, and she had the tinge of greenish-blue about her mouth that always meant she was harrowed up inside.
Diana linked her arm through Anne’s. “Come on, you goose. I’ll be with you the whole time. And you look real nice, Anne. Nobody will think you don’t belong.”
Downstairs, the girls dressed in their coats and hats, accepted a kiss on the cheek each from Mrs. Barry, and then headed outside to greet the cousins from Newbridge. They were a merry group, though all of them were older than Diana and Anne. Still, they made the young girls feel welcome and made ample room for them in the sleigh.
Diana and Anne bundled up warmly in fur robes, and then Cousin Jeremy, who was driving, cracked his whip in the air. The horse was fresh and eager, despite having come all the way from Newbridge; when the sleigh reached the flat, smooth, open road, the whip cracked again and the horse sprang into a flying trot. The sleigh skimmed over the snow as easily as a fish through water. The Avonlea Road climbed the easy slope of the northern hills and the gulf was revealed below, a deep curve of brilliant blue just beginning to reflect a fiery sunset. Snow-covered hills warmed with the blush of the sinking sun, and the air was full of the rhythmic, dancing chimes of the sleigh bells. It was one of the prettiest evenings Diana had ever beheld… and was all the more special because it was her birthday, and her dearest friend was by her side.
In time, they arrived at the hall. The girls all clambered out while Cousin Jeremy took the sleigh away to tend to his frisky horse. Anne gasped and clutched Diana’s hand at sight of the hall—and what a lovely sight it was. A walkway had been cleared through the snow, down which ladies and gentlemen drifted arm in arm, neat in their winter coats with frosty breath rising in clouds all around them. The walk was lined with paper luminarias, glowing softly in shades of pink, orange, and blue, casting their small spheres of fairy-light on the gentle breast of the snow.
The girls found seats as close as they could get to the podium where their peers and neighbors would perform. At last the show began, and truly the island’s residents had saved their finest recitations for this night. Every poem and song, every Shakespearean monologue, was as grand and moving as one could hope to see in the finest concert halls of the mainland. Each piece seemed the height of all thrills, until the next performer proved himself or herself just as adept as the one who had gone before.
When Mr. Phillips finished his rendition of Mark Antony’s great speech—not the love poem Diana had predicted—Diana and Anne peeked at their shared program to see who would be next to mount the stage.
“Gilbert Blythe is next,” Diana said. “I don’t know he’s going to recite.”
Anne sniffed loudly. She turned to Rhoda Murray, seated beside her, and indicated the little book of recipes that lay at Rhoda’s feet. “May I?” she asked sweetly. Rhoda gave Anne a queer look, but nodded. Anne lifted the book up in front of her face so she could not see the podium.
“Oh, honestly, Anne,” Diana said in exasperation.
“There’s no use talking me out of it,” Anne muttered, so only Diana could hear. “I won’t even look at that person, as you well know. It’s bad enough that I shall have to hear his hateful voice. Now please, Diana, leave me to the comfort of oblivion.”
Gilbert took the stage with a confident, almost jaunty step. He looked exceedingly smart, in new wool trousers and suspenders with shiny clips. His dark, curly hair was oiled and combed in a way Diana had never seen it before. Its arcing wave over his brow seemed to accentuate the twinkle in his laughing, hazel eyes and the slow, easy curve of his smile. Despite her firm decision not to have her good sense muddled up by a boy ever again, Diana’s heart skipped several beats as he struck his recitation pose and began to speak in a clear, carrying, terribly moving voice.
He gave “Bingen on the Rhine,” a poem which Diana had always found wrenching in the best possible way. But she had never heard it delivered quite like this before. She had seen Gilbert recite a few times, and of course she’d heard him read aloud in class, but she had never before seen him like this. He seemed to pour every last drop of his soul into the poem, baring a vulnerability that Diana found oddly attractive.
And if a comrade seek her love
Gilbert said, with grand sweeping gestures toward his own heart,
I ask her in my name,
To listen to him kindly, without regret or shame,
And to hang the old sword in its place (my father’s sword and mine),
For the honor of old Bingen—dear Bingen on the Rhine.
Gilbert hesitated in the rhythm of his poem, a pause just long enough that everyone in the hall sat suddenly forward on their seats, waiting. Everyone save for one audience member, who was still engrossed in the recipe book.
There’s another—not a sister,
Gilbert went on. And he looked straight at Anne—or rather, at the spine of the recipe book, which was all he could see of Anne from the stage.
In the happy days gone by,
You’d have known her by the merriment that sparkled in her eye…
Poor Gilbert got no reaction whatsoever from Anne, but when he finished the poem and struck his final pose, the hall erupted in applause and cheers. Diana clapped loudly enough that she might as well have been applauding for herself and Anne at the same time.
It was eleven by the time the girls came home, creeping in on tip-toes so as not to wake the whole house. But they whispered excitedly as they went down the darkened hall of Orchard Slope to the parlor. Anne was to stay the night as a special birthday treat for Diana, and that meant they were to have the use of the spare room, which had a bed large enough for two. Anne was nearly as thrilled and intimidated over the spare room as she had been over the sleigh.
Embers still glowed in the parlor hearth; the room was furrily warm and perfectly cozy. At one end of the parlor, the door to the spare room stood open and ready to receive them.
“Let’s not go up to my room to undress,” Diana said. “Let’s just do it here, and sleep in our shifts. We can put our dresses here on the sofa. It’s so cold on the stairway at night, but it’s just perfectly warm and pleasant here in the parlor.”
“Hasn’t it been a delightful time?” Anne whispered. “It must be splendid to get up there and recite. Do you think we will ever be asked to do it?”
“Certainly, someday. They’re always wanting the older scholars to recite. I guess it reflects well on the school and proves we’re learning something worthwhile. Gilbert Blythe recites a lot, and he’s only two years older than us.”
At mention of that name, Anne turned sharply away, folding her thin arms across the front of her shift.
“Oh, Anne,” Diana pleaded in a strained whisper, “how could you pretend not to listen to him? When he came to the line, ‘There’s another, not a sister,’ he looked right down at you.”
Anne shook her head with weary resolve. “Diana, you are my bosom friend, but I cannot allow even you to speak to me of that person.” Suddenly she brightened. “Are you ready for bed?”
Diana nodded.
“Good. Let’s run a race and see who’ll get to the bed first.”
Diana counted down from three and the girls were off, running down the length of the parlor, bursting through the spare-room door at the same instant, and flinging themselves onto the bed.
Dian
a knew at once that something was terribly wrong. Instead of the softness of the feather mattress, she landed full force on a long, hard, positively bony object—an object which gave a startled cry and then sat up beneath the quilts.
“Merciful goodness!” came the distinctive voice, half grating, half shrill.
Even in the dark of the unlit spare room, Diana knew exactly who it was. Only one person in Diana’s world sounded that way: Aunt Josephine.
Anne Tames Aunt Josephine
Aunt Josephine did not appear at breakfast the next morning, preferring to remain stiffly sequestered in the spare room—this time with the door firmly closed. Anne scampered back over the snowy fields to Green Gables, and Diana was left alone with the little knot of mischief and anxiety in her stomach.
The old lady did not emerge from her den until late in the morning, whereupon she complained loudly of the poor sleep she’d had and then gestured to her bags—all of them packed, though the Barrys had expected her to stay for a month at least.
“But we were so looking forward to your visit,” Mrs. Barry said, trying to soothe the old lady’s temper.
“I won’t stay another day. I’m going right back to town tomorrow, even if it is the Sabbath. I’d leave today, this very minute, except George must take the buggy to Carmody and by the time he’s back it will be too late to catch the train to Charlottetown. Too late, I tell you!”
“But whatever is the matter?” Mrs. Barry said, honestly perplexed.
Aunt Josephine’s dark, peevish eye fell sharply on Diana, who stood with her head ducked, shuffling her feet just behind her mother. “You’d better ask that daughter of yours.”
“Diana?” Mrs. Barry turned to Diana with a clear note of warning in her voice.
“We… that is, I…” She took a deep breath, then let it all out in one contrite rush. “I jumped on the spare-room bed last night while she was sleeping in it. Oh, Aunt Josephine, I didn’t mean to! I didn’t know you were there. I thought you weren’t to come until Monday, so I didn’t expect you to be lying in the bed when we jumped on it. Honest, I never would have done it if I knew you were asleep in the bed!”
“Well!” Mrs. Barry exclaimed, her face going pale. “This is shocking, Diana. Shocking. How many times have I admonished you to behave like a lady?”
“Like a lady?” Aunt Josephine gave a rough snort, which, it must be said, was not particularly ladylike. “This child of yours is a regular tomboy, Rebecca Barry.”
Both Diana and her mother blushed at that accusation.
“I was going to offer to pay for her music lessons,” Aunt Josephine went on, rather acidly, “but rest assured, I shan’t waste the funds on a little hellion. She needs proper bringing up before she’s ready for any kind of refinement. I’m afraid she’s simply not there yet. Perhaps in three or four more years…” she added in a dark, trailing way that suggested she really entertained no hope for Diana’s refinement.
Mrs. Barry rounded on Diana, thrust her hand through the latter’s black curls, and gave her ear a sound pinch. Diana bit back a squeal of pain and surprise.
“This really is the limit, Diana, the very limit! March up to your bedroom and do not come out again until suppertime.”
“But I didn’t mean it,” Diana pleaded in vain. “I’m ever so sorry, Aunt Josephine!”
“I said, march!”
Diana did ascend to her bedroom, and considered giving the door a satisfying slam behind her. But she checked herself in time. Slamming doors was unladylike, after all; it wouldn’t help her case and would only set Aunt Josephine and her mother more firmly against her. Through the floor boards she could hear the back-and-forth murmur of her mother and her great-aunt in urgent conversation, but she could make out not words. Throwing up her hands in despair, Diana fell face-first across her bed and lay there, fuming into her pillow.
“Oh, why do I have to be a lady all the time?” she wondered helplessly. “Won’t it ever be enough to just be me? It seems I must always put on a show for somebody or other… must always pretend to be someone I’m not.”
In the afternoon, Diana was summoned down from her confinement, but not to appease Aunt Josephine. That affronted lady was holed up once more in the spare bedroom. Instead, Diana was set to her most hated of all tasks: peeling potatoes. Her mother worked over the stove in frosty silence, and Diana did her best to work efficiently so that she would draw no more of her family’s ire. But she felt terribly rebellious over the whole affair, and often cast her mother narrow-eyed glares when she was sure Mrs. Barry wasn’t looking.
When the last of the potatoes was peeled and soaking in a cool bath, Diana rose from her work stool and picked up her pail. “I’ll just go throw the peels to the pigs,” she said, and stepped out the kitchen door.
To Diana’s surprise, there was Anne in the garden, making her way toward the farmhouse. Diana hooked her arm hurriedly through Anne’s and pulled her along to the pigpen before Mrs. Barry could see.
“I’ve just been to see Mrs. Lynde,” Anne said. “Your mother spoke to her earlier today, and oh, Diana, your Aunt Josephine is very cross, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Diana said with a little laugh. She flung the slops over the fence and glanced uneasily at the house. The spare room window looked out over this section of the farm, and Diana was afraid Aunt Josephine might even now be peering out through the curtains at her, dark-faced with malice. “She was fairly dancing with rage. Oh, how she scolded! She all but said I was the worst-behaved girl she ever saw and that Mother and Father ought to be ashamed of the way they brought me up. She says she won’t stay, and I’m sure I don’t care. But Father and Mother do… Mother especially.” Aunt Josephine’s fortune was important to Mrs. Barry. It represented the kind of life she might have had for herself, if she had only married better.
Anne gazed at Diana in bewilderment. “Why didn’t you tell them it was my fault?”
“It’s likely I’d do such a thing, isn’t it? I’m no telltale, Anne Shirley. And anyhow, I’m just as much to blame as you.”
Anne started toward the kitchen door. “I’m going in to tell her myself.”
“You’d never! Why, she’ll eat you alive!”
Anne turned to look at Diana over her shoulder, and Diana could see that she was shivering a little. But she never stopped walking. “Don’t frighten me any more than I am frightened. I’d rather walk up to a cannon’s mouth. But it was my fault, and I’ve got to confess. Fortunately I have had practice at confessing.”
Diana followed Anne inside—Mrs. Barry had gone off to another room, so she wasn’t there to see the two girls slinking through the house—and went with her as far as the sitting-room door.
“This is where I leave you,” Diana whispered ominously. She pressed herself against the paneled wall while Anne knocked timidly on the door.
Aunt Josephine admitted Anne with a sharp command. Diana listened breathlessly while Anne introduced herself in rather weak and shivery tones, then claimed it was she who’d had the idea of jumping on the spare-room bed. That was true, but Diana knew she herself was fully complicit, and she felt more than a little guilty at allowing Anne to face the heat of Aunt Josephine’s ire.
“Diana is a very ladylike girl, Miss Barry,” Anne said with firming confidence. “So you must see how unjust it is to blame her.”
“Oh, I must, hey?”
Diana blinked in astonishment. Was that a hint of amusement she detected in the old lady’s voice?
“I rather think Diana did her share of the jumping, at least,” Josephine went on. “Such carryings on in a respectable house!”
Anne continued to plead her case in ever more moving tones.
“I don’t think it is any excuse for you, that you were just in fun,” Josephine insisted. “Little girls never indulged in that kind of fun when I was young.”
Diana stifled a giggle at that. The idea of Aunt Josephine as a young girl was just too much.
“You don’t know what it
is to be awakened out of a sound sleep, after a long and arduous journey, by two great girls coming bounce down on you.”
“I don’t know,” Anne said at once, “but I can imagine. Have you any imagination, Miss Barry?”
At this, Diana gasped nearly loud enough to be heard inside the spare room. It was an audacious thing to say to the grand and dignified old lady. Diana fully expected Aunt Josephine to unleash her fury.
“If you have,” Anne said, “just put yourself in our place. We didn’t know there was anybody in that bed. You nearly scared us to death. And then we couldn’t sleep in the spare room after being promised. I suppose you are used to sleeping in spare rooms, but just imagine what you would feel like if you were an orphan girl who had never had such an honor.”
Diana shook her head, caught somewhere between wonder and fear. Any moment now, Aunt Josephine’s temper would burst.
But then the queerest thing happened. Diana heard a sound she’d never heard before—a low, gravelly, grudging sound, that somehow had the bubble of merriment in it. Astonished, she realized that Aunt Josephine was laughing. The next moment, she implored Anne to sit down for a friendly chat. “Can that be the same Aunt Josephine I’ve always known?” Diana wondered, feeling rather faint and disoriented.
“I am very sorry I can’t stay to talk,” Anne said. “I would like to, because you seem like an interesting lady, and you might even be a kindred spirit, although you don’t look very much like it.”
Again the rough laughter sounded from the spare room.
Anne hurriedly told of Marilla and Matthew, and explained her duties to those two good souls. She had already been away from Green Gables for too long. “But before I go,” Anne added, “I do wish you would tell me if you will forgive Diana and stay just as long as you meant to in Avonlea.”
Diana of Orchard Slope Page 16