Diana Blythe stretched languidly as she lay back on the warm sweet-smelling grass. Why was it that everything in Rainbow Valley seemed more saturated with colour than other, commonplace places? The grass there was not green, but emerald, the sky above that was studded with fluffy white clouds was not blue but deepest, palest sapphire. The daffodils seemed to be golden drops of sunlight fallen down to earth, the roses in the shadowy pools of the blackly-green pines had heart's of love's own hue. And, thought Di, as she fingered one of her own curls,
"Even my hair seems redder here than it does in any other place."
She had long ago resigned herself to the fact that certain things would always be true, world without end, amen. Jem had been born to be the leader of them all. Nan would always be the 'pretty' one of the Ingleside twins. Walter could not help writing poetry as naturally as breathing, Shirley would always be shy and quiet, and Rilla would be the baby even when she was a grown-up woman of forty or so. Di had accepted these things. But she had never quite resigned herself to her own red hair.
"Do you think it looks a little darker?" she wondered to Walter, who was sprawled on his stomach a little way off, staring dreamily at the horizon, building pink and purple castles full of dreams. "Aunt Leslie said she thought it might be, when last she was here. But I think she was just being polite."
Di sighed; she was nineteen years old and she had not yet become resigned to her red hair. It was really so vivid. If only it was a soft, muted auburn, as Jem's was turning out to be, or ripely, ruddily red, like little Rilla's. If she had not learned to accept her hair for what it was by now, there was not much chance she ever would.
Walter reached over and undid the clasp that held her hair up—it tumbled down over her shoulders.
"This coil'd hair on your head, unroll'd,
Fell down you like a gorgeous snake," he quoted. Walter could not help quoting poetry, any more than he could help writing it. "I've often thought of Browning's words when I look at your pretty russet tresses, Di o'mine."
Di sighed again. Walter never told falsehoods, so if he said he thought her hair pretty, he must mean it. But then, Walter was her brother. Di looked at him from under her lowered lashes. If only they looked more alike! But they couldn't possibly have looked less like brother and sister if they had tried.
Walter was pale and velvety, and the contrast of his dark hair against his moon-pale skin had made many a young Glen girl sigh in admiration. Whereas Di was prone to freckles, and her skin tended to tan if she was out of doors too long, while Walter's never did.
Her eyes were green—not green enough to really be striking, but green like the water of a deep, mossy woodland pool. Walter's were strikingly gray, like the first frost—like molten silver—with the fluid, easy movement of a clear waterfall.
There were only the faintest of purple shadows under those eyes of his. Di would never forget seeing him when he had come home in the spring. Then he had looked so haggard, so ill! She had known he was ill even before father came and told her about the typhoid. Oh, he had been ill for so long and they had thought—they had thought—even now, when he was safe, she uttered a prayer, under her breath and reached for his hand.
That was past, she told herself. Walter was well now, and only last month Di had said good-bye for good to her pupils at the Mowbray Narrows school where she had spent the last year 'reading and 'riting and 'rithmeticing' her heart out. She had loved her time there, but now it was as a chapter closed, and she and Walter had the whole bright summer stretching out ahead of them. Father had said Walter was well enough to partake in their old habit of moonlight rambles. He must not swim or run or over-exert himself, but if he rested, and got plenty of fresh air, he would be well enough to return to Redmond in the fall. And this year, Di would be going with him!
Oh, how they would take the college by storm! Di's eyes danced as she thought of their plans for it. Walter had the idea that they should surround themselves with a group of close, select friends—poets, like Walter, and musicians, like Di, and artists and writers besides! They would sit and talk together at cafés, and think up new ideas for the betterment of society, new ways to bring back beauty into a world which, they both felt, was sorely lacking in the beauty of the olden times. Di and Walter often sat and talked over these ideas themselves—Di looked forward to college because surely there would be other people there, who thought the same way. Walter assured it was so. Oh, she loved the Glen, but how nice it would be to talk with people who cared about things other than if Mrs. Marshall Elliott had finished her umpteenth wedding-ring quilt, or if the minister's whiskers had been properly trimmed!
But at the moment, Di herself was bogged down by too, too mortal cares. "If only I looked more like you, Walter," she mused, "Or more like…"
"Nan!" Walter shook his head sorrowfully. "Di, when will you see that while Nan is very pretty—yes, I can't but admit it—there is more than one way of being beautiful. Nan is lovely with her brown hair and eyes and her sweet face. But there's more to it than that. Nan knows she is well-looking—more's the pity!—and so she carries herself to match it. You're far prettier than Nan, really, Diana."
"Oh, Walter!" it was Di's turn to be sorrowful. Walter sometimes spoke a little harshly of Nan. They did not always behave in the most brotherly and sisterly fashion toward one another. Walter thought Nan proud—"not that she doesn't have a right to be, but she needn't show it off so much"—and Nan sometimes said that Walter's poetic airs were mere pretence. The old family adage that Jem had coined, once, when he was speaking about the long, good-natured feud between the Glen Methodists and Presbyterians, often applied between Nan and Walter: "We love each other, but we don't always understand what the other's all about."
"Oh, unfurrow your brow!" laughed Walter, looking at her worried face. "I love our Nan-girl—though not nearly as much as I love my own Diana. I shan't say anything bad about her. And I shan't compare you again—as Marlowe and mother are fond of saying, 'Comparisions are odious.' I will only tell you, Di, that I think you look like a young maple, when autumn first lays her hands upon it. All slender and golden, with a head of autumnal flame. I think you are a dryad—belonging to a maple tree. I'll write a poem about it, I think: The Dryad of the Maple Tree. Perhaps it will be the poem that finally puts me on the map of great Canadian writers—and you shall be my inspiration, sister dear."
"Oh!" Di clapped her hands. "Will you write it now?"
"I wish I could," he said, standing reluctantly and looking down on her languid form. "But I must be getting back to the house."
"Why? Where are you going?"
"I promised Rilla I would take a little walk with her before supper—she is dying to unload her little heart of its gossip-burden, and I shall pretend to listen interestedly, even if I don't have a burning desire to know all about Hannah Brewster's trousseau. She's desperate to go to the dance at the light tomorrow since all the rest of us are—even Shirley is going—and expects me to speak on her behalf. Susan is dead set against the idea. She still thinks Rilla in swaddling clothes. I know mother would prefer for her to stay home. She hasn't lost hope of instilling some sense of seriousness in Rilla yet."
"She'd better cross her fingers. Rilla is the silliest girl in all of Prince Edward Island. I've given up hope of 'curing' her."
"We were silly, too, when we were her age," said Walter, with the attitude of one who has done and seen very much, and for whom the fire has begun to grow cold—instead of mere boy of twenty-one, whose steps still linger upon the Golden Road. "I think I shall ask mother if she may go the dance—her heart will be broken if she has to stay home and watch us go—and the little kidlet deserves to have some fun. Dad told me she nearly worried herself to death when I was ill."
"We all did." A shadow passed over Di's face.
"I know—but it wasn't for naught. Didn't your prayers pull me through? I'm off, Di—but I shall save some of my energy for one of our late-night moonlight rambles later on. I want to see the moon beating a path on the sea—I want to step into a golden gondola and sail away into it—around it—to see the mystery of the moon's dark side—to hear the waves whispering a strange, ethereal song—to fly around in the stars. We will do all those things—tonight—won't we?"
"Yes—and more besides. Go on to Rilla now." Di waved him off with the contented air of a sister who is best loved by one who has a talent for loving—and more than that—with the sweet, generous air of a sister who loves well in return.