Diana of Orchard Slope

by Libbie Hawker

  At that revelation, Prissy Andrews sniffled loudly from the back of the classroom. Then she whimpered, a high, keening sound that was so terribly affecting that in short order half the girls in the classroom were wiping their eyes and reaching for their handkerchiefs.

  “But we must not allow regrets to hinder us,” Mr. Phillips went on bravely, although tears had begun to shine in his eyes. “The future unfolds before us all, with surprising and delightful rewards around every corner, if we are only brave enough to venture out and pursue what life has to offer.”

  Diana, dabbing at her cheeks (never would she have expected to find Mr. Phillips’s departure so moving!) glanced across the room to where Anne sat, upright and alert, beside Minnie Andrews. Anne’s lips were pressed into a thin line, and Diana could tell she was struggling to contain her emotions, to resist the urge to weep over the teacher who had often played the role of villain in Anne’s personal dramas. But as the schoolmaster went on in a tone of stoic acceptance, speaking of duty to one another and of the obligation to always do one’s best, Anne’s chin quivered and she swiped quickly at the corner of one eye.

  Finally, Mr. Phillips dismissed the school. Prissy was too distraught to be trusted with the bell, so Gilbert was sent out to ring it, which he did with the fullest enthusiasm. Despite their whimpers and sighs, the girls all gathered up their books and slates and pencils, and the children of Avonlea School scampered out to begin their long-awaited summer.

  As it was a festival day among the town’s small fry, Anne and Diana eschewed their usual private stroll along the Birch Path and the back end of Mr. Bell’s property, and opted instead to accompany the other girls along the main road. None of them could decide whether to feel thrilled that vacation time was finally here, or heartbroken over Mr. Phillips’s departure. Just when some of them would begin to chatter happily about their plans for the summer, Carrie Sloane would sigh, “The time has come for us to part,” and all the girls would lapse into sentimental tears once more, led by Ruby Gillis, who cried the loudest and most determinedly, but always managed to look impossibly pretty while doing it.

  As the group of girls reached the Newbridge crossroad, a smart little buggy pulled by a caramel-colored horse slowed and stopped before them. Inside the buggy rode a young couple, sitting very close together. They were both fresh-faced and eager-eyed, even as the man removed his bowler hat in greeting and leaned down with obvious concern to address the flock of teary-eyed little girls.

  “Good afternoon, ladies,” he said. “Or I hope it is a good afternoon for you, but every one of you is crying. Has something dreadful happened? Do you need help?”

  “No.” Ruby sniffled up at him. “It’s just that our schoolmaster isn’t being renewed and we’ll never see him again and we only just found out about it, and it’s so aw… ful!” She drew out the last word in a long wail, which sent the rest of the girls into fits of noisy crying.

  The man and woman in the carriage exchanged a clandestine smile. Then the woman, who looked like the very picture of summertime with her lovely golden hair, blue puff-sleeved dress, and rose-trimmed hat, gave a delightful little laugh and addressed the girls. “So you are the scholars of this town… the girls, anyway. I have some news that may cheer you up. It certainly cheers me, now that I’ve seen you. I am to be your new Sunday school teacher. And we will have the loveliest time in our classes, too. There, now: Isn’t that something to look forward to?”

  The girls all gazed up at her in an assessing sort of way. Then as one they broke into sunny smiles and dried the day’s tears for good. The woman in the buggy was a very pleasant-seeming lady, with a genuine smile and the warmest twinkle in her eyes… the kind of person any child can’t help but want to know better.

  “I didn’t know we were to get a new Sunday school teacher,” Jane Andrews said.

  “But you know the old minister resigned in February,” Anne said to Jane. Her quick, gray eyes flashed to the man in the buggy, who was returning his hat to his head. “Are you the new minister, then?”

  “I am indeed,” he replied, with a small laugh like the one his wife had given. He had hair of a deep, mousy-gold color, almost blond—and, as Diana and Anne had previously speculated, his whole person did seem ready-made for laughter. He did not make a very sober impression, which was startling in a minister. But Diana thought him very pleasant and charming all the same. “I am Mr. Allan, and this is my wife.” They beamed at one another for a moment, as if having forgotten that the girls existed… that anyone in the world existed, except for one another. “We are newly married. Still on our honeymoon, you might say.”

  The crowd of Avonlea schoolgirls fluttered and sighed at that unbearably romantic news. And then, having satisfied themselves that all was more or less well with the little girls, the Allans said farewell and drove on toward the manse, which was to be their home while Mr. Allan was in residence.

  “She’s awfully pretty,” Ruby said with an admiring sigh as the couple drove away.

  “Did you see her dress?” Josie Pye said. “Those sleeves were splendid!”

  “And her hair,” Julie Bell added. “Why, I think it’s at least as pretty as Ruby’s.”

  “She was dazzling,” Anne said. “Like a sapphire set in a golden crown. She must come from some far-off city, the scioness of a noble line, who married a poor minister purely for love, because the least thought of greed has never troubled her worthy brow. I’d bet Avonlea has never seen such a grand lady as that Mrs. Allan.”

  “Honestly, Anne,” Gertie complained, “you’d better stop making up words, because it’s just as bad as telling a falsehood. Nobody has ever heard of a ‘scioness’ before.”

  “Maybe you haven’t,” Diana said loyally, even though she had never heard the word before, either.

  “And anyway,” Josie added snappishly, “it’s a sin to gamble, so you’d better not let anyone hear you talking about placing bets on anything. Especially not on a minister’s wife. That just isn’t holy.”

  Anne was already walking away from the crossroads, leaving the gathering of girls behind her to disperse toward their family farms. Diana ran to catch up with her, and saw that Anne wasn’t stalking away in an angry huff. Rather, she wandered with starry, distant gaze, her mind already spinning rainbow fancies around the arrival of Mrs. Allan in Avonlea.

  More than a week later, Diana and Anne were playing together in the fields, their day’s chores well behind them. A long, drawn-out, violet-soft twilight was lingering over the island, the kind of gentle grading into night that only comes in the summer, with warm breezes whispering in the birches, silver stars gleaming palely in a sky that still holds a cupful of lingering light, and the intermittent music of distant bells on the necks of sleepy, homeward-bound cattle. The girls were sprawling on the flat rocks that surrounded the Dryad’s Bubble, listening to the chorus of frogs and crickets and dipping twigs covered in balsam into the water to make rainbows in the night’s vestiges of light.

  Anne had been enchanted by Mrs. Allan ever since meeting her at the crossroads on the last day of school; the infatuation had only grown after learning what a good teacher Mrs. Allan was during the previous weekend’s Sunday school. Marilla had asked the Allans to come to Green Gables for tea, so that she might have a chance to weigh their merits for herself, free from the restricted environment of the church pew. Everyone was dubious of a pastor as young as Mr. Allan—everyone save Anne, who could scarcely contain her excitement.

  “They’re to come over tomorrow afternoon,” she said rapturously as she coated another twig in balsam. “I do hope Mrs. Allan wears another dress with puff sleeves. I suppose if she does, it will most probably be the same blue one we already saw her in, for it wouldn’t be seemly for a minister’s wife to have a lot of nice clothes. Ministers are supposed to live modestly, after all, as Our Lord did. I wonder if it was hard for Mrs. Allan to give up all her finery when she married her poor, modest husband, or if she did it with a glad heart because
she’s so good and has such high ideals.”

  “You don’t have any way of knowing whether Mrs. Allan came from a rich family, Anne Shirley,” Diana said stoutly. “Not unless you ask her, and it would be a terribly forward thing to ask. You’re just making up daydreams about her to satisfy your own imagination.”

  Anne wrinkled up her nose and gave Diana the strangest look through the veil of twilight. Diana couldn’t quite decide whether Anne looked incredulous or hurt. But the expression was gone a moment later, as Anne recited a litany of all the delights she and Marilla were to prepare for the much-anticipated tea. Anne was to make a layer cake, the thought of which was giving her cold terrors, even though Anne had made many cakes before and was by now quite good at it.

  “Your cake will be good, all right,” Diana said warmly. “We had a piece of one you made for lunch two weeks ago at Idlewild, and it was perfectly elegant.”

  “Yes, but cakes have a terrible habit of turning out bad just when you especially want them to be good. I suppose I shall just have to trust to Providence and be careful to put in the flour. Oh, look, Diana,” Anne said, sitting up abruptly and gazing with wonder down at the rippling water, “what a lovely rainbow! Do you suppose the Dryad will come out after we go away and take it for a scarf?”

  Diana stifled a sigh. “You know there is no such thing as a dryad.” The incident of the forest shortcut, with its lurking terrors and drifting white things, had left a real impression on Diana. She and Anne had named the place the Haunted Wood, and after that day Diana couldn’t look at the dense spruces without a shudder of fear. Nightmares had plagued her for weeks after venturing into the Haunted Wood, and Diana was firmly resolved to keep her head in the practical world instead of following Anne on her wild flights of fancy.

  After all, Diana had told herself practically more than once since then, it was best to leave Anne to Anne. She, Diana, would never be like her friend, in form or in personality, no matter how much she might secretly long to be… no matter how she might ache for Anne’s popularity, her sharp wit, her rustically charming good looks. Oh, Diana loved Anne as much as ever, to be sure. But she was beginning to understand that there would always exist between them a gulf of difference. Something essential yet difficult to define would separate them for all time, no matter how they cared for one another. Anne was shaped by Providence for a specific world, a particular life, a certain kind of future, while Diana was made for an entirely different life. She did her best not to meditate on whether Anne’s or her own predestined world was better, more appealing, more satisfying. She felt instinctively that only unhappiness and dissatisfaction would come from knowing.

  Anne looked stricken. “But it’s so easy to imagine there is a dryad,” she pleaded. “Every night before I go to bed, I look out my window and wonder if the dryad is really sitting here, combing her locks with the spring for a mirror.”

  Diana gave an uncomfortable little giggle and tossed another balsam-dipped twig into the water so she would not have to look at Anne’s beseeching eyes. The truth was, Diana did still want to believe in the dryad, deep down in her heart. The dryad, the richness of Idlewild, the fairies that lived in Violet Vale… yes, even the headless man and the white lady in the Haunted Wood. All the delicate, implied magics of childhood still called to her in a voice that was impossible to resist. Yet resist them she must, or risk looking like a fool when the life that was Anne’s inheritance by right—a life of passions and prisms, of glories and gold—was barred and denied forever to plain, simple, country-girl Diana.

  “Sometimes I look for her footprints in the dew in the morning,” Anne murmured. Then she took Diana’s hand with a sudden swell of heartbroken longing. “Oh, Diana, don’t give up your faith in the dryad!”

  “You dear, silly thing,” Diana said, rising and pulling Anne to her feet. “I had best get up to bed, and you had better, too. You’ll need a good sleep if you’re going to make the most important cake of your life in the morning.”

  The girls embraced and parted ways. As Diana went up through the orchard, she could hear Anne singing softly to herself, though little by little her voice faded as she crossed the foot bridge and vanished into the twilight fields of Green Gables. Diana only looked back once, to the flat stones of the Dryad’s Bubble. But the stones were empty. No fairy queen had come out to take up the rainbows that drifted on the waters. The woods and fields were empty as far as Diana could see.

  As Anne was fearfully occupied with her preparations for tea with the Allans, Diana had no one to play with that Wednesday. Thanks to pure boredom, she completed all her chores at Orchard Slope shortly after breakfast, working with the kind of efficiency and focus that is rare in girls who are tempted by balmy summer days. Her father noticed her “dangling at a loose end,” as he liked to say, and took her aside before the lunch hour.

  “The Blythes are having a picnic over at their place. Why don’t you go?”

  For answer, Diana blushed to what she feared was an atrocious shade of scarlet.

  The significance of her reaction was not lost on Mr. Barry. He was not a blind man; he’d seen what a handsome lad young Gilbert was now, and though he was reluctant for his daughter to grow up, he was wise enough to understand that the day would eventually come.

  “There will be many children there,” he said, “other than just the Blythes, I mean.”

  That prospect fortified Diana’s nerves. She put on a clean dress and neatened her hair, and allowed her father to drive her down to the Blythes’ place, all the while silently admonishing herself to stop feeling so tied up in knots over it—it was just a picnic, after all.

  The Blythe farm was small but picturesque. A tall, rather narrow farmhouse of pale, mossy green stood between two neat rows of Lombardy poplars. Beyond the trees lay the potato fields and the orchard, where grew the famed strawberry apples. The picnic was already in progress on the grassy area in front of the Blythes’ whitewashed milking barn. Several families had spread blankets and were sharing baskets of goodies, while children ran in the spaces between blankets, throwing balls to one another or playing games of chase.

  “I’ll come back for you in three hours,” Mr. Barry promised as Diana climbed shakily down into the yard.

  But she was distracted from her misgivings almost at once by a happy shout from Jane Andrews. Jane and her brother Billy had only recently arrived, too; Diana eagerly joined them on their picnic blanket and was glad to share in the tarts and ham they had packed.

  “Isn’t this a splendid time?” Jane said.

  No one would ever say she was as pretty as Ruby Gillis, for her hair was a plain, dull-brown color and hung rather limply despite her best efforts to curl it. However, with her open, honest ways and naturally kind demeanor, Jane was very pleasant company any day of the week. Diana was glad to be with such a settling and steadfast companion when she felt so positively shaken up.

  “It’s awfully nice of the Blythes to have everyone over. Is there a special occasion?”

  “No,” said Jane’s older brother, Billy. “Except that Mrs. Blythe likes to put on a big gathering, and I guess the nice weather was excuse enough to do it. She didn’t give much warning about it, though.”

  “We only heard about the picnic this morning,” Jane said. “But early everyone from school is here. It’s jolly to see everyone again, even though I don’t like nearly any of the boys.”

  “Well, we don’t like you, either,” Billy teased. Having eaten all the ham and tarts he could comfortably hold, he clambered up from the blanket and wandered away to seek out some fun with the other boys.

  “I suppose he’s going off to play ball,” said Jane. “I don’t want to play ball, but we could find some more girls and see what they’ve got up to. It’s sure to be better than what the boys are doing. I saw Carrie Sloane and the Pyes when we first arrived, but I would rather not waste a perfectly nice picnic in the Pyes’ company. I know it’s dreadful mean of me to say so, but it is true, Diana.”
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br />   Diana laughed. “I agree, Jane. Gertie and Josie would only spoil a perfectly good summer day. Let’s walk around the farm together. I’m sure we’ll find out where the rest of the girls are hiding. I suppose they’re off in the orchard, even though the strawberry apples won’t be ripe yet.”

  Diana and Jane talked together quite happily as they wandered across the Blythe acres. Jane lacked all the bright imagination and heart-thrilling fancies of Anne Shirley, but she was such an agreeable friend that Diana didn’t mind. As they skirted the edge of the hay field and rounded a corner of the orchard, the girls suddenly came face to face with some of their schoolmates… but not the ones they’d been seeking. Some of the older boys were dividing themselves up for a ball game, and there in their midst, tall and confident, brash as the corsair of Diana’s fondest dreams, was Gilbert. He gave a little start as Diana and Jane halted some distance away, as if some unseen force had alerted him to the girls’ presence. He turned away from the boys’ squabbling conversation, caught sight of Diana at once, and offered her a wink and a slow smile. Her knees immediately felt as wobbly as a custard.

  “Gilbert Blythe,” Jane said appreciatively. “You know, I think he’s terribly handsome.”

  “So do I,” Diana admitted.

  On the instant, a surge of guilt swept up through her middle and nearly overwhelmed her. It was the kind of secret she should only share with Anne, her one and only, solemnly sworn bosom friend… yet Anne had strictly forbidden her to speak of Gilbert. How could Diana tell her dearest friend how she felt about that boy?

  “But he’s so roguish,” Jane went on, as if roguishness were an undesirable quality. “He likes to joke and make mischief too much. I think it will get him in trouble someday. Maybe he’ll even grow up to be a criminal.”

  “Or a pirate,” Diana said, heart pounding.

  “What?” Jane turned to her with an openly puzzled expression.