“I see,” Mrs. Barry said.
Diana’s heart sank. She could tell by the way her mother said those two simple words that she was not favorably disposed to the idea.
“Diana is very bright,” Miss Stacy said. “And what’s more, she has an excellent way with younger children. I see a dedication and perseverance in Diana that is rare in a child of fourteen. She has all the qualities that make a successful schoolmistress. I do hope you will allow her to join the Queen’s class. Anne Shirley will be in it; I know how much Anne and Diana enjoy doing their lessons together.”
Mr. and Mrs. Barry shared a long look, during which Diana had the feeling that whole volumes of conversation were exchanged… but silently, so that neither she nor Miss Stacy could protest.
At last Mr. Barry—Father, who had always been on Diana’s side!—cleared his throat in a regretful way. “I’m afraid not, Miss Stacy. You see, we may only be farmers, but still we feel as if our family has a certain… er… reputation to maintain. I hope you will not take offense… you, being a teacher yourself.”
Miss Stacy smiled graciously. “I take no offense, Mr. Barry, I assure you. But Diana—”
“Diana must marry,” Mrs. Barry said firmly. “That way lies her best hope for the future.”
“Of course,” Miss Stacy said. “Women who teach are not required to remain unmarried forever. Many work for a year or two, to earn money for more schooling, and then, when they’ve finished their studies… a B.A., for example… they marry.”
“I wonder,” Mrs. Barry said, tilting her head with curiosity, “what is the point of attaining a B.A. if one plans to marry? What is the point for a woman, I mean. A wife and mother has no need of advanced schooling. Wouldn’t her time and money be put to more sensible uses? Oughtn’t she to get started on the business of being a wife and a mother sooner, and leave the B.A.s to the men, who will actually use them?”
“Some would say that knowledge is its own reward,” Miss Stacy said, floundering, “and that the pursuit of knowledge is a worthy occupation of one’s time, regardless of whether one is a man or a woman.”
Mrs. Barry smiled tightly. “I’m afraid my Diana is not destined for a B.A., Miss Stacy. Nor even for Queen’s. It is perfectly respectable to marry and keep a home.” She added that last with an emphasis that said she considered marriage and housekeeping the only respectable occupations for womankind.
Miss Stacy rose and pulled on her gloves. “I understand. Thank you for your hospitality.” She turned to Diana with a smile, but Diana could see her own bitter disappointment reflected in Miss Stacy’s eyes. “Good evening, Diana. I’ll see you on Monday.”
Tears filled Diana’s eyes as her parents showed Miss Stacy to the door. When they returned to the parlor, Mrs. Barry gazed at the weeping Diana in dumbfounded silence, as if she were truly shocked to her core that Diana could feel such agony over being denied the Queen’s class.
“Diana,” Mrs. Barry finally managed, her voice faint with surprise.
Diana sprang to her feet. “Oh, how could you, Mother? And you, Father? You of all people!”
“Diana, stop this at once,” Mrs. Barry commanded.
“No, I won’t stop it! I want to be a teacher… I’ve never wanted a thing before so badly in all my life. And you ruined my one and only chance!”
“You will not be a teacher, Diana Barry. I won’t hear such nonsense out of your mouth again. You will marry someday, when the time is right… and marry well. We may be farmers, but that doesn’t mean you can’t marry well.”
“Oh, why is it so important to you whether or not I marry?”
“Because marriage is a woman’s best hope for happiness, Diana,” Mrs. Barry said sternly. “I know you admire Miss Stacy, but imagine what her life must be like. Living in boarding houses, without a home to call her own… being shuffled from one town to the next as the school boards see fit, never able to put down roots… and being dedicated to her work, Diana! That’s the worst of it. Teachers, of a necessity, cannot also be wives or mothers. A person cannot divide their minds and hearts in such a way. Every teacher has chosen to devote herself to the school. To a nomad’s life, sleeping in damp boarding rooms, and constantly toiling! It’s no life for a daughter of mine, Diana, I can tell you that.”
“But it’s the life I want,” Diana wailed. “Mother, Father, I want to work. I want to care for myself and go live in a city and make my own way. I don’t want to marry well… or marry at all!”
Mrs. Barry’s shocked gasp could have sucked the clouds from the sky, had there been any.
“Besides,” Diana went on bitterly, “all the boys in Avonlea hate me! So no one will want to marry me anyhow.”
That, of course, was not true. It was only Gilbert who wouldn’t pay any more mind to Diana than he did to his boy chums. The rest of the boys liked Diana quite well, and in her less bitter moments she was willing to acknowledge that fact (privately, so as not to be accused of being “too big for her britches.”) But now, with all the unfairnesses of life throwing their weight upon her, she thought she might as well pull the heaviness of Gilbert down upon her heart, too.
“Stop this crying at once,” Mrs. Barry said sharply. “You are carrying on like a fool. No sensible girl wants to teach. You heard Miss Stacy; for girls, teaching is a last resort—a way to deal with money troubles. We aren’t so poor that we can’t provide for you, Diana, and see you into the kind of life you ought to have.”
“The kind of life I ought to have?” Diana scoffed. “But what of the kind of life I want? I don’t care what you say, Mother! I do want to teach. And it’s awful cruel of you to not let me do it.”
Mr. Barry stepped between his wife and his daughter, for Mrs. Barry had begun to bristle alarmingly. “Now, now,” he said soothingly. “Try and get used to the idea, darling. Your mother and I know what’s best for you. Go up to your room and cool off a bit. You’ll feel better about things by and by.”
Diana did run stormily up to her room and slammed the door behind her with a satisfying thud. She flew to the table by her window and struck a match with trembling fingers… but just before she touched its flame to the lamp wick, she thought better of it. She had wanted to signal for Anne—had wanted to run down to the brook and weep bitterly in her friend’s arms, and spill out onto Anne’s shoulder how unfair her parents were, how unfair life itself was.
“But Anne will be in the Queen’s class,” Diana thought, and felt a tightness in her chest. “She won’t understand how I feel. She gets to take the extra lessons, and prepare for college, and go on to the exams… and she gets to teach, too.”
Diana blew out the match. The smell of sulfur smoke filled her room. She gazed out across the Haunted Wood to Green Gables… to the eastern window, where a golden light was flashing against the royal-blue autumn dusk. Flashing five times, with an exuberant rhythm.
“Anne wants to see me,” she realized dully. “And she’s so happy; I can tell already. She wants to tell me all about the Queen’s class… but how can I stand to listen to her gladness now?”
Diana sighed and sank onto her chair, then dropped her head on her arms and wept afresh. “Oh, Anne. You have everything now. The love of all our friends at school, and Gilbert’s affection, and now… now… even this.”
Anne even had the bright, happy, self-determined future Diana so longed for.
“How can I love a person so much as I love you, Anne,” Diana wondered, “when I also feel so bitter toward you?”
Miss Stacy Offers Advice
The year turned slowly for Diana. In February she turned fifteen, and although the celebrations with her friends were gay and delightful, she couldn’t help but feel a faint, almost imperceptible dissatisfaction. It didn’t feel right, to be fifteen—which was only two years away from being a grown woman—and yet to feel as if one’s life had reached a dead end. What real pleasure was there in concerts and games and pretty dresses, if she could never hope to attain the grand, independent l
ife she wanted?
Although her envy of Anne, whose brilliant future seemed all but assured, was still painfully near the surface of Diana’s heart, she drew closer to her bosom friend than ever before. Anne never put on airs about being a member of the Queen’s class. She seemed to sense Diana’s disappointment, and offered only sympathy when it was needed—in the times when Diana cried or railed against her mother for being so unfair—and the simple comfort of good friendship when it was not. The girls were older now. Naturally they played less, laying their flights of fancy and games of the imagination sweetly to rest in the lavender of cherished memory. But they spent as much time in one another’s company as they ever had before, talking of subjects both serious and flippant, helping one another through the new, strange, heart-rending thickets of circumstance that seemed to spring up all around them at every turn.
Anne stayed late at school with the other Queen’s students, so that Diana had to walk home alone. Sometimes she welcomed the chance to be private and thoughtful, and used her walks down the Birch Path and along the edge of the Haunted Wood to work out the mystery of her own thoughts and feelings. And now, in her fifteenth year, Diana’s feelings were a mystery to her as they never had been before. More often, though, Diana missed Anne terribly in the afternoons. What she wouldn’t have given to hear Anne’s happy chatter all the way home from school, to laugh fondly at her friend’s grand declarations and wild ideas, to simply hold her hand and know that no matter how life came to resemble a howling wilderness, she always had a kindred spirit beside her.
Of course, the girls still cherished their time together on mornings and weekends, and made the most of it. Anne told Diana all about the Queen’s class, sharing every detail candidly, unless a fleeting expression of pain crossed Diana’s features—and then Anne would tactfully change the subject, for the exuberant redhead was learning to read others’ reactions and to temper her tongue accordingly. Most of the time, though, Diana liked to hear about the class.
“The geometry is dreadful,” Anne moaned. “I fear I am the worst dunce at it. If I don’t get into Queen’s after all, it will be geometry’s fault. No—it will be my fault. I heard Miss Stacy correct herself yesterday and own that she had made a mistake, and I thought it was so good and noble of her. I aim to do the same all the time now. So I must bravely admit that if I don’t get in… and I think it entirely possible that I won’t, Diana… it will be no one’s fault but my own. Geometry is my Achilles’ heel, though. I just don’t understand it one bit. It feels like wading through a dense jungle of vines and shadows and lurking beasts every time I open my mathematics book.
“Reading is all right, though. Miss Stacy has us finishing the tenth reader, and expects us to get through it before the end of this school year. The tenth! I never thought I would be two readers ahead of our age group, and if I had a say in the matter, I wouldn’t be. I love reading, as you well know, but it is so abysmally hard when you’re reading ahead of your age group. I suppose it’s for the best, though. If I’m to teach others someday, I must know how to handle everything up to the twelfth level. But it seems ridiculous to think of myself, at fifteen, ever being a grown-up eighteen-year-old teaching in a school! Can you imagine?”
“No,” said Diana, who had been able to think of nothing but teaching for months now. “The classes sound terribly hard, Anne. I guess I’m glad Mother wouldn’t let me take them after all. I’m not quick enough to do the tenth reader, and I’m pretty good at geometry, but probably not good enough to satisfy the Queen’s class.”
Diana stifled a sigh, for she knew what she said wasn’t true. She could have handled the work, and would have reveled in the challenge. But it made the disappointment easier to bear, if she pretended otherwise.
“You could have handled it,” Anne said. She meant the encouragement in a friendly way, but the confirmation of Diana’s inner suspicions only made Diana’s stomach sour and her eyes sting with momentary tears, quickly blinked away. “You’re ever so bright, Diana. I still think your mother has perpetrated a grave injustice. I would never forgive her, except that she forgave me for accidentally making you drunk, so I feel as if I ought to remain favorably disposed toward her, just on principle.”
“Well, I must forgive her, I guess,” Diana said glumly, “for I have to live with her and believe me, it’s easier to live with Mother when you aren’t at odds with her. She is a positive dragon when she wants to be, Anne!”
Anne, for once, said nothing, but squeezed Diana’s hand sympathetically.
“Tell me more about the tenth reader,” Diana prompted, with more gaiety in her voice than she felt in her heart. “Is the poetry in it very good? Are there any especially romantic lines? I want to know.”
And with that, Anne was off again, recounting every detail she could recall of the latest poem the Queen’s class had read. Diana stifled her wistful sighs and did her best to listen without nurturing her secret resentment.
In due time, the autumn came again, touching the land with the colors of fire and filling the air with the rich smell of dry grass and wood smoke. For most of the Avonlea School pupils, the new school year opened as it did all the years before. But for Miss Stacy’s preparatory class, this year was an especially important one. The pressure was on to attain their best marks yet, for when the summer came again, those select students would take their entrance exams at the academy in Charlottetown. That happy and dreaded day was month in the future, but every one of the Queen’s students felt the pressure building. Expectations were high—from parents, from Miss Stacy, and from the students themselves. Never before had Avonlea School known such dedication to learning. The focus and determination of the Queen’s students seemed to spill over and anoint the rest of Miss Stacy’s scholars, so that everyone worked with a zeal that nearly put paid to the usual pranks and tomfooleries that marked the school day.
One student at Avonlea School, though, seemed wearied and worn. Diana Barry often slouched in her seat, and sighed gustily, and spent more time gazing out the window toward the Lake of Shining Waters than focusing on her lessons. Her marks were beginning to slip—a fact that did not alarm Diana in the least, though it should have.
Miss Stacy, observant and caring as she was, had certainly noticed the change in Diana. That good lady determined to nip Diana’s moodiness in the bud, before it could flower into any sort of degeneration. On a crisp Friday afternoon in windy October, she dismissed the class but called Diana back just before the girl could slip out the door.
“Diana,” Miss Stacy said, “I would like it very much if you would have lunch with me. Do you think your mother would permit it?”
“I… I suppose so,” Diana said uncertainly. She had never been asked to lunch at Miss Stacy’s before, and worried that it portended something terrible. But she liked the schoolmistress, and in any case a lunch at Miss Stacy’s meant a welcome change from the monotony of her daily routine.
“Good. Why don’t you come over tomorrow at noon?” Miss Stacy wrote her address on a little slip of paper and handed it to Diana. “I hope you like fruit cake. My landlady is a sweet old woman who likes baking rather too well. There is more fruit cake than I know what to do with.”
Diana smiled. “I do like it, ever so much. I’ll see you tomorrow, Miss Stacy.”
It happened that Miss Stacy lived very near the Avonlea post office, which was walking distance from Orchard Slope… at least if you enjoyed a good, long walk with plenty of time for quiet musing, as Diana did. The day was fine, too, though a little brisk, and Diana enjoyed the stroll down the red-earth roads with the bright fall leaves skittering past and the birds singing happily in the weak autumn sunshine.
Miss Stacy happened to be the only boarder at her house, which was a darling little cottage with a white picket fence and gnarled old lilac trees in the front yard. The owner of the house had gone off to Carmody for the day, so Miss Stacy herself answered the door when Diana knocked. The schoolmistress looked smart and professio
nal in a navy-blue dress with modestly puffed-out sleeves. She shook Diana’s hand in a way that made Diana feel quite grown-up and serious.
“I’m so glad you could join me,” Miss Stacy said, leading Diana into the kitchen.
“Are any other girls coming?”
“No, Diana, it will be just you and I. Does that suit you?”
“Oh… yes, of course. But I thought perhaps you were hosting a tea for several different girls at once. Mrs. Allan, the minister’s wife, does that sometimes, you know… to stay in touch with us and to give us a chance to talk to her about things we feel we can’t bring up in Sunday school.”
“Mrs. Allan is very wise, I think.” Miss Stacy and Diana sat at the kitchen table, close beside the warm stove. “And very caring. I have noticed—and I suppose Mrs. Allan has, too—that girls of your age often feel the need to talk about certain subjects, and often those subjects are hard to broach.”
Diana sensed that this was the very reason why Miss Stacy had invited her to tea. She sipped thoughtfully from her cup and waited for Miss Stacy to pour a cup of her own, then said carefully, “Is that why you’ve asked me here, then? So that we can talk about a hard subject?”
“Perhaps.” Miss Stacy smiled. “Though I don’t know whether the subject is hard or not. I suppose that depends on you… on how you feel. But I have noticed, Diana, that you are losing interest in school. That has me rather worried for you.”
Diana of Orchard Slope Page 25
