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"I love you devotedly, Anne," said Diana
stanchly, "and I always will, you may be sure of that."
"And I will always love thee, Diana," said
Anne, solemnly extending her hand. "In
the years to come thy memory will shine like a star over my lonely life, as
that last story we read together says.
Diana, wilt thou give me a lock of thy jet-black tresses in parting
to treasure forevermore?"
"Have you got anything to cut it with?"
queried Diana, wiping away the tears which Anne's affecting accents had
caused to flow afresh, and returning to practicalities.
"Yes. I've
got my patchwork scissors in my apron pocket fortunately," said Anne.
She solemnly clipped one of Diana's curls.
"Fare thee well, my beloved friend.
Henceforth we must be as strangers though living side by side.
But my heart will ever be faithful to thee."
Anne stood and watched Diana out of sight, mournfully
waving her hand to the latter whenever she turned to look back.
Then she returned to the house, not a little consoled for the time
being by this romantic parting.
"It is all over," she informed Marilla.
"I shall never have another friend.
I'm really worse off than ever before, for I haven't Katie Maurice
and Violetta now. And even if I
had it wouldn't be the same. Somehow,
little dream girls are not satisfying after a real friend.
Diana and I had such an affecting farewell down by the spring.
It will be sacred in my memory forever.
I used the most pathetic language I could think of and said `thou'
and `thee.' `Thou' and `thee' seem so much more romantic than `you.'
Diana gave me a lock of her hair and I'm going to sew it up in a
little bag and wear it around my neck all my life.
Please see that it is buried with me, for I don't believe I'll live
very long. Perhaps when she
sees me lying cold and dead before her Mrs. Barry may feel remorse for what
she has done and will let Diana come to my funeral."
"I don't think there is much fear of your dying
of grief as long as you can talk, Anne," said Marilla
unsympathetically.
The following Monday Anne surprised Marilla by coming
down from her room with her basket of books on her arm and hip??? lips
primmed up into a line of determination.
"I'm going back to school," she announced.
"That is all there is left in life for me, now that my friend
has been ruthlessly torn from me. In
school I can look at her and muse over days departed."
"You'd better muse over your lessons and
sums," said Marilla, concealing her delight at this development of the
situation. "If you're
going back to school I hope we'll hear no more of breaking slates over
people's heads and such carryings on. Behave
yourself and do just what your teacher tells you."
"I'll try to be a model pupil," agreed Anne
dolefully. "There won't be
much fun in it, I expect. Mr.
Phillips said Minnie Andrews was a model pupil and there isn't a spark of
imagination or life in her. She
is just dull and poky and never seems to have a good time.
But I feel so depressed that perhaps it will come easy to me now.
I'm going round by the road. I
couldn't bear to go by the Birch Path all alone.
I should weep bitter tears if I did."
Anne was welcomed back to school with open arms.
Her imagination had been sorely missed in games, her voice in the
singing and her dramatic ability in the perusal aloud of books at dinner
hour. Ruby Gillis smuggled three blue plums over to her during testament
reading; Ella May MacPherson gave her an enormous yellow pansy cut from the
covers of a floral catalogue--a species of desk decoration much prized in
Avonlea school. Sophia Sloane
offered to teach her a perfectly elegant new pattern of knit lace, so nice
for trimming aprons. Katie
Boulter gave her a perfume bottle to keep slate water in, and Julia Bell
copied carefully on a piece of pale pink paper scalloped on the edges the
following effusion:
When
twilight drops her curtain down
And pins
it with a star
Remember
that you have a friend
Though
she may wander far.
"It's
so nice to be appreciated," sighed Anne rapturously to Marilla that
night.
The girls were not the only scholars who
"appreciated" her. When
Anne went to her seat after dinner hour--she had been told by Mr. Phillips
to sit with the model Minnie Andrews--she found on her desk a big luscious
"strawberry apple." Anne caught it up all ready to take a bite
when she remembered that the only place in Avonlea where strawberry apples
grew was in the old Blythe orchard on the other side of the Lake of Shining
Waters. Anne dropped the apple
as if it were a red-hot coal and ostentatiously wiped her fingers on her
handkerchief. The apple lay
untouched on her desk until the next morning, when little Timothy Andrews,
who swept the school and kindled the fire, annexed it as one of his
perquisites. Charlie Sloane's slate pencil, gorgeously bedizened with
striped red and yellow paper, costing two cents where ordinary pencils cost
only one, which he sent up to her after dinner hour, met with a more
favorable reception. Anne was
graciously pleased to accept it and rewarded the donor with a smile which
exalted that infatuated youth straightway into the seventh heaven of delight
and caused him to make such fearful errors in his dictation that Mr.
Phillips kept him in after school to rewrite it.
But as,
The
Caesar's pageant shorn of Brutus' bust
Did but
of Rome's best son remind her more.
so the
marked absence of any tribute or recognition from Diana Barry who was
sitting with Gertie Pye embittered Anne's little triumph.
"Diana might just have smiled at me once, I
think," she mourned to Marilla that night. But the next morning a note most fearfully and wonderfully
twisted and folded, and a small parcel were passed across to Anne.
Dear Anne (ran the former)
Mother says I'm not to play with you or talk to you
even in school. It isn't my
fault and don't be cross at me, because I love you as much as ever.
I miss you awfully to tell all my secrets to and I don't like Gertie
Pye one bit. I made you one of
the new bookmarkers out of red tissue paper.
They are awfully fashionable now and only three girls in school know
how to make them. When you look
at it remember
Your true friend
Diana
Barry.
Anne
read the note, kissed the bookmark, and dispatched a prompt reply back to
the other side of the school.
My own
darling Diana:--
Of course I am not cross at you because you have to
obey your mother. Our spirits
can commune. I shall keep your
lovely present forever. Minnie
Andrews is a very nice little girl--although she has no imagination--but
after having been Diana's busum friend I cannot be Minnie's.
Please excuse mistakes because my spelling isn't very good yet,
although much improoved.
Yours until death us do part
Anne or Cordelia Shirley.
P.S.
I shall sleep with your letter under my pillow tonight. A. OR C.S.
Marilla pessimistically expected more trouble since
Anne had again begun to go to school. But
none developed. Perhaps Anne
caught something of the "model" spirit from Minnie Andrews; at
least she got on very well with Mr. Phillips thenceforth.
She flung herself into her studies heart and soul, determined not to
be outdone in any class by Gilbert Blythe.
The rivalry between them was soon apparent; it was entirely good
natured on Gilbert's side; but it is much to be feared that the same thing
cannot be said of Anne, who had certainly an unpraiseworthy tenacity for
holding grudges. She was as
intense in her hatreds as in her loves.
She would not stoop to admit that she meant to rival Gilbert in
schoolwork, because that would have been to acknowledge his existence which
Anne persistently ignored; but the rivalry was there and honors fluctuated
between them. Now Gilbert was
head of the spelling class; now Anne, with a toss of her long red braids,
spelled him down. One morning
Gilbert had all his sums done correctly and had his name written on the
blackboard on the roll of honor; the next morning Anne, having wrestled
wildly with decimals the entire evening before, would be first.
One awful day they were ties and their names were written up
together. It was almost as bad
as a take-notice and Anne's mortification was as evident as Gilbert's
satisfaction. When the written
examinations at the end of each month were held the suspense was terrible.
The first month Gilbert came out three marks ahead.
The second Anne beat him by five.
But her triumph was marred by the fact that Gilbert congratulated her
heartily before the whole school. It
would have been ever so much sweeter to her if he had felt the sting of his
defeat.
Mr. Phillips might not be a very good teacher; but a
pupil so inflexibly determined on learning as Anne was could hardly escape
making progress under any kind of teacher.
By the end of the term Anne and Gilbert were both promoted into the
fifth class and allowed to begin studying the elements of "the
branches"--by which Latin, geometry, French, and algebra were meant.
In geometry Anne met her Waterloo.
"It's perfectly awful stuff, Marilla," she
groaned. "I'm sure I'll
never be able to make head or tail of it.
There is no scope for imagination in it at all.
Mr. Phillips says I'm the worst dunce he ever saw at it.
And Gil--I mean some of the others are so smart at it.
It is extremely mortifying, Marilla.
Even Diana gets along better than I do.
But I don't mind being beaten by Diana.
Even although we meet as strangers now I still love her with an
INEXTINGUISHABLE love. It makes
me very sad at times to think about her.
But really, Marilla, one can't stay sad very long in such an
interesting world, can one?"
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