If Diana was ever to have a beau—and she wasn’t at all confident that she would—it would have to be someone else. Fate had already chosen Gilbert for Anne.
The Exposition
The golden September sun had nearly reached its midday peak by the time Mr. Barry’s buggy rolled into Charlottetown. Diana and Anne, seated together in the back seat with their overnight bags resting between their feet, had talked ever on, all the thirty miles from Avonlea, which they had left quite early that morning while the sun was still rising. One would have expected the girls to have lost their voices somewhere back before the Charlottetown city limits, but as Mr. Barry turned into the long, curving lane that led back among a thick stand of beech trees still decked in summer green, and Aunt Josephine’s big brick mansion came into sight, Anne and Diana found their “second wind.” The mansion took its name—Beechwood—from the trees that surrounded it. They made such a thorough screen around the spacious, rolling grounds that Charlottetown was shut from sight.
“What a perfectly elegant place,” Anne sighed, gazing around at the plush lawns, neatly trimmed hedges, and bright spots of color where the faces of dahlias and roses peeped over garden borders. “This is exactly the kind of mansion I imagined Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald would inhabit.”
“Aunt Josephine has very good taste,” Diana agreed. “I’ve been to see her in Charlottetown before, but we only came to have visits and luncheons out in the town, and when we stayed the night it was with other relations, not Aunt Josephine. I’d heard before that Beechwood was magnificent, but this is the first I’ve seen it for myself.”
“This is just like a dream,” Anne said. “Like a fond fancy coming true at last. I feel as if any moment those front doors will open and Lady Cordelia will be revealed, in a white satin gown with a long, sweeping train, and with her black hair spilling in waves down her back, and amethysts clustered at her throat.”
The front doors did swing wide, but it was not Lady Cordelia who greeted them. Aunt Josephine was just as Diana remembered her, small but never frail-looking, her silvery hair swept up in a fashionable yet understated style and her dark eyes sparkling with restrained merriment. She wore a crisp white blouse and a long velvet skirt of a becoming, russet-brown shade, and one of her many pretty cameo necklaces hung below her ruffled collar. She had invited the girls to Beechwood so that she might have their youthful company at the Fall Exhibition in Charlottetown, and neither Diana nor Anne could possibly be any more excited about the adventures that lay ahead of them.
“Diana,” Aunt Josephine called gladly from the top of her long and wide brick steps. “How good to see you, my dear. And Anne Shirley. You’ve come to see me at last, you Anne-girl.”
Mr. Barry carried the girls’ bags up the steps and kissed his aunt dutifully on the cheek.
“Stay for tea, George,” Josephine said.
“I wish I could, Auntie. I must pick up some goods in town and then get back before sunset, if I can. Tomorrow is to be a long day on the farm. We’re beginning the apple harvest already, and it will be an especially big one this year.”
“Then I shall have to settle for the company of these young snippets,” Josephine said with a subtle wink.
Aunt Josephine had a French girl named Marguerite who helped her around the house… and what a lot of house it was! Marguerite took the girls’ bags and carried them off to the spare room where they were to sleep that night. Josephine led the girls into “the green parlor,” a distinction which Diana took as a clear indication that Beechwood contained more than one parlor. The mere thought made her feel dizzy.
“Sit anywhere you please,” Josephine said, indicating the various carved-legged sofas and mahogany chairs arranged around the large room. “I will go fetch our goodies for tea. I may keep a girl to help me maintain this great old cave, but I do all the cooking and baking, you know. Good food is one of the few sure pleasures in this life. I have always believed that one ought to know how to cook well for oneself, and not rely too much on others.”
When Josephine had left, Diana clutched Anne’s hand and turned them both around in a slow circle so that they could take in the full splendor of the green parlor. It certainly was green; the floor was covered by a huge, velvet rug, bearing an intricate pattern of pink and ivory flowers against a deep-green background. The walls bore richly shining wainscoting to waist height, but above, where they soared up to the twelve-foot ceilings, they were papered in soft green with a design of garden vines twisting around gold-leafed trellises. A huge window stretched nearly from the floor to the ceiling, paned in leaded diamonds and curtained by silk drapes of a delicate, mossy hue. A huge fireplace stood against one wall, its sides carved in the fashion of two beech trunks with their branches reaching out to form the mantel piece. Between the beech trunks, the fire alcove was lined with tiles of a high-gloss green. Paintings graced the walls—scenes of forests and fields, with men hunting foxes on horseback and waterfalls spilling down into the quiet, green gloom of a woodland dell.
Anne was struck almost dumb with awe. “It’s… it’s too magnificent for words. And just think, Diana: This is only the parlor!”
“One parlor. Isn’t it just like a palace? I had no idea Aunt Josephine’s house was so grand. I just wish Julia Bell could see this. She puts on such airs about her mother’s parlor.”
“Velvet carpet,” Anne sighed, bending to feel the rug with a trembling hand. “And silk curtains! I’ve dreamed of such things, Diana. But do you know… I don’t believe I feel very comfortable with them after all. There are so many things in this room and all so splendid that there is no scope for imagination. That is one consolation when you are poor: there are so many things you can imagine about.”
“Give yourself time,” Diana laughed, leading Anne to one of a pair of sofas. “Don’t say ‘no’ to life in a mansion just yet. We’ve only just arrived!”
“Do you think you could really feel comfortable living in a place like this?” Anne asked, wide-eyed. “After living at dear, sweet old Orchard Slope?”
“Yes, I do,” Diana said. “Avonlea is nice, and Orchard Slope is pretty enough, I suppose, but it’s nothing like this place. Why, I feel like a queen! That’s a feeling I could get used to, Anne. Oh, look at this tea table! The bottom edge is all carved with lion’s heads. Isn’t that clever?”
Aunt Josephine appeared with a silver tray, which bore a delicate white porcelain teapot with steam ribboning up from its narrow mouth, and several plates full of tempting delicacies—egg salad sandwiches, smoked salmon, real chocolate bonbons, and tiny square cakes dusted with fine sugar. Josephine called them “petits fours”; Diana thought they looked like cakes fit for a fairy’s wedding. She set the tray on the lion-carved table and began serving up tea with as much grave deference as if Anne and Diana were honored dignitaries or members of some famous and well-heeled family.
Diana felt satisfaction warm her belly along with the tea as she sipped and conversed with her great-aunt as elegantly as she could manage. “This is indeed the life for me,” she thought. “I’m so glad I decided.” For you see, after the incident of the lily maid, when Anne had been rescued from drowning by Gilbert Blythe, Diana had made up her mind about her future. She had vowed from that point on to ignore boys altogether—to never think about them, and to avoid speaking to them unless the occasion positively demanded it. She had settled on a life of glorious old-maidhood; her highest ambition was to make herself just like Aunt Josephine, and live out her life doing just what she pleased whenever she liked, without the bother of a husband. And that was before she’d seen Beechwood. Now that she knew exactly how wonderful Aunt Josephine’s life was, Diana was certain she had made the right choice.
“I’ll never marry,” Diana decided, biting into one of the tiny fairy cakes and relishing its sweetness. “After all, Aunt Josephine never married, and look how well she has done for herself. No, never—and won’t that just stick it in everybody’s eye! Mother’s and Gilbert’s and Josi
e Pye’s, and… everybody’s!”
The following morning, the girls set off with Aunt Josephine for the Exhibition. They rode in her coupe carriage, driven by a real liveried groom, with the window curtains pulled back so the girls could watch Charlottetown go by.
“And so Charlottetown can watch us go by,” Diana added. “I wonder if we’ll pass anyone from Avonlea. The Exhibition is a big affair, after all. Lots of our school mates have entered for prizes. Wouldn’t it be grand if the Pye girls saw us driving in this coupe, Anne? They’d turn green as peas from envy!”
The Exhibition was held on a big ground kept especially for the purpose, as it was one of the most important annual events on Prince Edward Island. There were rows of barns and pens to house livestock, and all manner of halls where the island’s best sewing, preserves, baked goods, wood carvings, and more were on display. Aunt Josephine professed a lifelong love of the Exhibition, though, she said, “It never has been so enjoyable as it was when I was a young girl. That’s why I wanted you two especially this year. Let’s take it all in with wonder and delight, and I think I’ll feel just like I’m thirteen again, too.”
All day, they walked from one barn or hall to the next. They watched the ponies in competition, with glossy coats and braided manes, being put through their high-stepping paces in a big arena. They wandered starry-eyed through rows of cut flowers, breathing in the perfume as if it were the breath of Heaven itself. They swelled with pride to find Avonlea names among the winners of the sewing and lace-making and baking competitions. Mr. Harmon Andrews won second place for his Gravenstein apples (said Diana, “If Father had entered our apples this year, Orchard Slope would surely have won!”) And who should have won the coveted first-prize ribbon in both the butter and cheese contests, but Mrs. Rachel Lynde?
They inspected rows of roosters in identical cages. The birds’ feathers glittered with reds and greens and topaz-gold as if their wings and tails were bejeweled. In the next barn over, they found that Mr. Bell had won first prize with one of his big Old Spot hogs.
“Did you ever?” Diana said, aghast. “Mr. Bell is the Sunday school superintendent!”
“I don’t see why that should disqualify him from showing his hogs at Exhibition,” Anne said.
“I’ll never be able to listen to him praying again! As solemn as he is… you know. All I’ll think about is his blue-ribbon pig, and how proud he is about it. You know what the Bells are like, Anne.”
“I do suppose the sin of pride extends even to prize-winning pigs,” Anne answered thoughtfully.
Aunt Josephine threw back her silvery head and laughed. “It was the best idea I ever had, to bring you girls out for Exhibition!”
They climbed high up into the grandstand to watch the horse races, with Aunt Josephine hooting and cheering beside them. And after the races, a hot-air balloon was brought onto the field. They watched in wonder as the balloon was filled and billowed up against its tie-ropes, straining toward the sky. Then a man climbed into its basket and the crowd said, “Oooh!” with one voice as he rose gracefully into the air.
Late afternoon found them all quite hungry, so they wandered the grounds until they found a pie seller whose wares looked especially tempting. Aunt Josephine pledged to hold their place in the long line, and slipped the girls ten cents each so that they could amuse themselves until their pies were ready. Diana and Anne skipped off, hand in hand, to seek out their next adventure.
They found it in the form of a booth draped with silk cloths of many colors. A man with a pointed little beard stood behind the booth, feeding peanuts to a small, green parrot that perched on his shoulder. Behind man and parrot was a big sign, painted with fancy script: Fortunes Told Here, Ten Cents.
“Oh, look, Diana,” Anne said. “Let’s have our fortunes told!”
Diana looked doubtfully at the man with the parrot. There was something rather roguish about him. “I don’t know. Isn’t divination wicked?”
“According to Rachel Lynde,” Anne said. “But everything is wicked, according to Mrs. Lynde.”
“Well, all right. If you think we ought to.”
Diana and Anne approached the fortune booth. “Ah,” the man said, taking his parrot down from his shoulder. “Two delightful young ladies come seeking a glimpse of the future. What is your heart’s desire? What do you seek to know? No, no—don’t tell me. Let my little friend here read the fates for you.”
The girls laid their ten cents apiece on the table, and the man set his bird on the rim of a big brass bowl. The bird’s bright head dipped into the bowl; it came up holding a tiny scroll of paper, tied with a green thread, in its beak. The man handed the first to Anne. Then the bird extracted another fortune from the depths of the bowl, which was Diana’s.
“You read yours first,” Anne said excitedly.
“No, you must. I’m too much afraid. What if I don’t like mine?”
“Very well; I’ll go first.” Anne slipped the green thread from her scroll and unrolled the slip of paper. She read it once silently, then, with glowing face, read it aloud for Diana. “‘You will marry a dark-complected stranger who is very wealthy, and go across water to live.’ Oh, Diana, that sounds so romantic. What does yours say?”
Diana unrolled her scroll, gripped by a sudden shiver of excitement. What would her future hold, after all? Had the little bird predicted a mansion like Beechwood? A life of freedom and luxury, as Aunt Josephine enjoyed?
When she read the words on her paper, Diana felt quite dismayed. “‘You will marry one who is known to you, have many children, and stay close to home.’”
Anne set to work at once, speculating wildly about which Avonlea boy was to make Diana his bride. Diana crumpled up the paper and stuffed it into the pocket of her skirt. “Marry!” she thought petulantly. “And stay close to home!”
Just when she had settled on the grandest future she could ever imagine, cruel fate made its contrary plans known.
A Dream Denied
November was soft and warm that year—at least, compared to Novembers past. The snows were delayed, leaving fields of stubble and bare furrows to wear jackets of crisp silver. Along the Birch Path, leafless twigs cut enchanting dark patterns against ice-blue skies, and along the edges of the Haunted Wood the last of the autumn’s white mushrooms peeked up amid fallen leaves that were edged in pearly margins of frost. Dancing little mists spilled out of woods and hollows in the mornings and lingered almost until the afternoon. And the sky was full of the cries of geese as they winged their way south at the closing of every day.
On one such bright November day, a Saturday, Diana came inside after a long and delightful romp with Anne. They had spent the daylight hours looking for edible mushrooms along the Newbridge Road. They had found none, but the day had been glorious all the same. Now, with the sun sinking lower and tinting the cloudless sky rosy-gold, Diana looked forward to the warmth of the kitchen and a good bowl of Mrs. Barry’s venison stew for supper.
Rosy-cheeked and out of breath from her run up from the brook, Diana flung herself eagerly through the kitchen door and tossed her cap, scarf, and coat onto the hooks beside the stove. “Mother,” she called merrily, “I’m home!”
The kitchen was empty. “Diana, dear,” Mrs. Barry called from the parlor, “why don’t you come in here?”
Diana went to the parlor… and froze on its threshold. Miss Stacy was seated comfortably on the sofa, beaming up at Diana in that warm, pleasant way she had. Mr. Barry was there along with Diana’s mother. All of them looked perfectly pleasant and not the least bit riled, but still, Diana felt anxious. It usually is not a good sign, whenever a pupil’s schoolmistress appears in her home to talk to both her parents.
Diana entered rather cautiously. She sat in a chair beside the fire. “Good afternoon, Miss Stacy,” she said carefully.
“Your schoolmistress only just arrived,” Mrs. Barry said. “Do tell us what brings you here, Miss Stacy. I hope Diana has not been a disappointment to you.”
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“No, on the contrary,” Miss Stacy said, laughing a little. “Diana is one of my very best students, Mrs. Barry. I want you to know that. I am very pleased with her conduct and her work.”
“Well, naturally we are delighted to visit with you any time,” Mrs. Barry said smoothly. “But do tell us what has brought you today.”
Miss Stacy hesitated only briefly. Her eyes flickered as she took in the sight of upright, prim Mrs. Barry, and Diana’s father, who was stroking his mustache and watching her with obvious curiosity. Diana had the impression that Miss Stacy felt rather uncertain of her errand… but a moment later she began to speak, and Diana could think of nothing but Miss Stacy’s words.
“I have decided, Mr. and Mrs. Barry, to organize a special class for my advanced students, seventh reader and up. This class would be preparatory in nature—for students who would like to take the entrance exam at Queen’s College.”
Diana’s eyes widened. Her heart thumped so hard in her chest she felt sure her mother must hear it from across the parlor… but she dared not shift in her seat, nor even gasp in surprise. She bit her lip to keep herself still and watched her mother from the corner of her eye.
“Queen’s has a very good program for teachers, you know, and teaching can open many doors to good students in a town like Avonlea. I know how difficult it can be to pay for one’s child to carry on with education. My own family faced that challenge. By opening up the avenue of teaching, we may provide our better students here in Avonlea with a means to see themselves through several years’ more education.”
Teaching! Diana had never thought of it before, but now that the opportunity presented itself—indeed, now that it spread before her like a brilliant and beautiful vista—she knew she wanted nothing else for her life. Teaching—working for herself—would provide the surest path to the kind of life she wanted. As a teacher, she could work her way into Charlottetown… or maybe to a bigger city, on the mainland. She might prove herself worthy of a position as a principal, or even a superintendent. There were some women superintendents, Diana knew, though not many, to be sure. “Why, I could live on my own in a city if I were a teacher,” Diana thought excitedly. “And the longer I did it, the more money I saved, the more like Aunt Josephine I could be!”
Diana of Orchard Slope Page 24