XIII
A Golden Picnic
Anne, on her way to Orchard Slope, met Diana, bound for Green Gables,
just where the mossy old log bridge spanned the brook below the
Haunted Wood, and they sat down by the margin of the Dryad's Bubble,
where tiny ferns were unrolling like curly-headed green pixy folk
wakening up from a nap.
"I was just on my way over to invite you to help me celebrate my
birthday on Saturday," said Anne.
"Your birthday? But your birthday was in March!"
"That wasn't my fault," laughed Anne. "If my parents had consulted
me it would never have happened then. I should have chosen to be
born in spring, of course. It must be delightful to come into the
world with the mayflowers and violets. You would always feel that
you were their foster sister. But since I didn't, the next best
thing is to celebrate my birthday in the spring. Priscilla is
coming over Saturday and Jane will be home. We'll all four start
off to the woods and spend a golden day making the acquaintance of
the spring. We none of us really know her yet, but we'll meet her
back there as we never can anywhere else. I want to explore all
those fields and lonely places anyhow. I have a conviction that
there are scores of beautiful nooks there that have never really
been SEEN although they may have been LOOKED at. We'll make friends
with wind and sky and sun, and bring home the spring in our hearts."
"It SOUNDS awfully nice," said Diana, with some inward distrust of
Anne's magic of words. "But won't it be very damp in some places yet?"
"Oh, we'll wear rubbers," was Anne's concession to practicalities.
"And I want you to come over early Saturday morning and help me
prepare lunch. I'm going to have the daintiest things possible. . .
things that will match the spring, you understand. . .little jelly
tarts and lady fingers, and drop cookies frosted with pink and
yellow icing, and buttercup cake. And we must have sandwiches
too, though they're NOT very poetical."
Saturday proved an ideal day for a picnic. . .a day of breeze and
blue, warm, sunny, with a little rollicking wind blowing across
meadow and orchard. Over every sunlit upland and field was a
delicate, flower-starred green.
Mr. Harrison, harrowing at the back of his farm and feeling some
of the spring witch-work even in his sober, middle-aged blood,
saw four girls, basket laden, tripping across the end of his field
where it joined a fringing woodland of birch and fir. Their blithe
voices and laughter echoed down to him.
"It's so easy to be happy on a day like this, isn't it?" Anne
was saying, with true Anneish philosophy. "Let's try to make this
a really golden day, girls, a day to which we can always look back
with delight. We're to seek for beauty and refuse to see anything else.
`Begone, dull care!' Jane, you are thinking of something that went wrong
in school yesterday."
"How do you know?" gasped Jane, amazed.
"Oh, I know the expression. . .I've felt it often enough on my own
face. But put it out of your mind, there's a dear. It will keep
till Monday. . .or if it doesn't so much the better. Oh, girls,
girls, see that patch of violets! There's something for memory's
picture gallery. When I'm eighty years old. . .if I ever am. . .
I shall shut my eyes and see those violets just as I see them now.
That's the first good gift our day has given us."
"If a kiss could be seen I think it would look like a violet,"
said Priscilla.
Anne glowed.
"I'm so glad you SPOKE that thought, Priscilla, instead of just
thinking it and keeping it to yourself. This world would be a much
more interesting place. . .although it IS very interesting anyhow. . .
if people spoke out their real thoughts."
"It would be too hot to hold some folks," quoted Jane sagely.
"I suppose it might be, but that would be their own faults for
thinking nasty things. Anyhow, we can tell all our thoughts today
because we are going to have nothing but beautiful thoughts.
Everybody can say just what comes into her head. THAT is conversation.
Here's a little path I never saw before. Let's explore it."
The path was a winding one, so narrow that the girls walked in
single file and even then the fir boughs brushed their faces.
Under the firs were velvety cushions of moss, and further on, where
the trees were smaller and fewer, the ground was rich in a variety
of green growing things.
"What a lot of elephant's ears," exclaimed Diana. "I'm going to
pick a big bunch, they're so pretty."
"How did such graceful feathery things ever come to have such a
dreadful name?" asked Priscilla.
"Because the person who first named them either had no imagination
at all or else far too much," said Anne, "Oh, girls, look at that!"
"That" was a shallow woodland pool in the center of a little open
glade where the path ended. Later on in the season it would be dried
up and its place filled with a rank growth of ferns; but now it was
a glimmering placid sheet, round as a saucer and clear as crystal.
A ring of slender young birches encircled it and little ferns
fringed its margin.
"HOW sweet!" said Jane.
"Let us dance around it like wood-nymphs," cried Anne, dropping her
basket and extending her hands.
But the dance was not a success for the ground was boggy and Jane's
rubbers came off.
"You can't be a wood-nymph if you have to wear rubbers,"
was her decision.
"Well, we must name this place before we leave it,"
said Anne, yielding to the indisputable logic of facts.
"Everybody suggest a name and we'll draw lots. Diana?"
"Birch Pool," suggested Diana promptly.
"Crystal Lake," said Jane.
Anne, standing behind them, implored Priscilla with her eyes not to
perpetrate another such name and Priscilla rose to the occasion
with "Glimmer-glass." Anne's selection was "The Fairies' Mirror."
The names were written on strips of birch bark with a pencil
Schoolma'am Jane produced from her pocket, and placed in Anne's
hat. Then Priscilla shut her eyes and drew one. "Crystal Lake,"
read Jane triumphantly. Crystal Lake it was, and if Anne thought
that chance had played the pool a shabby trick she did not say so.
Pushing through the undergrowth beyond, the girls came out to the
young green seclusion of Mr. Silas Sloane's back pasture. Across it
they found the entrance to a lane striking up through the woods and
voted to explore it also. It rewarded their quest with a succession
of pretty surprises. First, skirting Mr. Sloane's pasture, came an
archway of wild cherry trees all in bloom. The girls swung their hats
on their arms and wreathed their hair with the creamy, fluffy blossoms.
Then the lane turned at right angles and plunged into a spruce wood
so thick and dark that they walked in a gloom as of twilight, with
not a glimpse of sky or sunlight to be seen.
"This is where the bad wood elves dwell," whispered Anne. "They
are impish and malicious but they can't harm us, because they are
not allowed to do evil in the spring. There was one peeping at us
around that old twisted fir; and didn't you see a group of them on
that big freckly toadstool we just passed? The good fairies always
dwell in the sunshiny places."
"I wish there really were fairies," said Jane. "Wouldn't it
be nice to have three wishes granted you. . .or even only one?
What would you wish for, girls, if you could have a wish granted?
I'd wish to be rich and beautiful and clever."
"I'd wish to be tall and slender," said Diana.
"I would wish to be famous," said Priscilla. Anne thought of her
hair and then dismissed the thought as unworthy.
"I'd wish it might be spring all the time and in everybody's heart
and all our lives," she said.
"But that," said Priscilla, "would be just wishing this world
were like heaven."
"Only like a part of heaven. In the other parts there would be
summer and autumn. . .yes, and a bit of winter, too. I think I
want glittering snowy fields and white frosts in heaven sometimes.
Don't you, Jane?"
"I. . .I don't know," said Jane uncomfortably. Jane was a good girl,
a member of the church, who tried conscientiously to live up to her
profession and believed everything she had been taught. But she
never thought about heaven any more than she could help, for all that.
"Minnie May asked me the other day if we would wear our best
dresses every day in heaven," laughed Diana.
"And didn't you tell her we would?" asked Anne.
"Mercy, no! I told her we wouldn't be thinking of dresses at all there."
"Oh, I think we will. . .a LITTLE," said Anne earnestly.
"There'll be plenty of time in all eternity for it without
neglecting more important things. I believe we'll all wear
beautiful dresses. . .or I suppose RAIMENT would be a more
suitable way of speaking. I shall want to wear pink for a few
centuries at firSt. . .it would take me that long to get tired of it,
I feel sure. I do love pink so and I can never wear it in THIS world."
Past the spruces the lane dipped down into a sunny little open
where a log bridge spanned a brook; and then came the glory of a
sunlit beechwood where the air was like transparent golden wine,
and the leaves fresh and green, and the wood floor a mosaic of
tremulous sunshine. Then more wild cherries, and a little valley
of lissome firs, and then a hill so steep that the girls lost their
breath climbing it; but when they reached the top and came out into
the open the prettiest surprise of all awaited them.
Beyond were the "back fields" of the farms that ran out to the
upper Carmody road. Just before them, hemmed in by beeches and
firs but open to the south, was a little corner and in it a garden
. . .or what had once been a garden. A tumbledown stone dyke,
overgrown with mosses and grass, surrounded it. Along the eastern
side ran a row of garden cherry trees, white as a snowdrift.
There were traces of old paths still and a double line of rosebushes
through the middle; but all the rest of the space was a sheet of
yellow and white narcissi, in their airiest, most lavish, wind-swayed
bloom above the lush green grasses.
"Oh, how perfectly lovely!" three of the girls cried. Anne only
gazed in eloquent silence.
"How in the world does it happen that there ever was a garden back here?"
said Priscilla in amazement.
"It must be Hester Gray's garden," said Diana. "I've heard mother
speak of it but I never saw it before, and I wouldn't have supposed
that it could be in existence still. You've heard the story, Anne?"
"No, but the name seems familiar to me."
"Oh, you've seen it in the graveyard. She is buried down there in
the poplar corner. You know the little brown stone with the
opening gates carved on it and `Sacred to the memory of Hester
Gray, aged twenty-two.' Jordan Gray is buried right beside her
but there's no stone to him. It's a wonder Marilla never told
you about it, Anne. To be sure, it happened thirty years ago
and everybody has forgotten."
"Well, if there's a story we must have it," said Anne. "Let's sit
right down here among the narcissi and Diana will tell it. Why, girls,
there are hundreds of them. . .they've spread over everything.
It looks as if the garden were carpeted with moonshine and
sunshine combined. This is a discovery worth making.
To think that I've lived within a mile of this place for
six years and have never seen it before! Now, Diana."
"Long ago," began Diana, "this farm belonged to old Mr. David Gray.
He didn't live on it. . .he lived where Silas Sloane lives now.
He had one son, Jordan, and he went up to Boston one winter to work
and while he was there he fell in love with a girl named Hester Murray.
She was working in a store and she hated it. She'd been brought up
in the country and she always wanted to get back. When Jordan asked
her to marry him she said she would if he'd take her away to some
quiet spot where she'd see nothing but fields and trees. So he
brought her to Avonlea. Mrs. Lynde said he was taking a fearful
risk in marrying a Yankee, and it's certain that Hester was very
delicate and a very poor housekeeper; but mother says she was
very pretty and sweet and Jordan just worshipped the ground
she walked on. Well, Mr. Gray gave Jordan this farm and he built
a little house back here and Jordan and Hester lived in it for
four years. She never went out much and hardly anybody went
to see her except mother and Mrs. Lynde. Jordan made her this
garden and she was crazy about it and spent most of her time in it.
She wasn't much of a housekeeper but she had a knack with flowers.
And then she got sick. Mother says she thinks she was in consumption
before she ever came here. She never really laid up but just grew
weaker and weaker all the time. Jordan wouldn't have anybody to
wait on her. He did it all himself and mother says he was as
tender and gentle as a woman. Every day he'd wrap her in a shawl
and carry her out to the garden and she'd lie there on a bench
quite happy. They say she used to make Jordan kneel down by her
every night and morning and pray with her that she might die out in
the garden when the time came. And her prayer was answered. One
day Jordan carried her out to the bench and then he picked all the
roses that were out and heaped them over her; and she just smiled
up at him. . .and closed her eyes. . .and that," concluded Diana softly,
"was the end."
"Oh, what a dear story," sighed Anne, wiping away her tears.
"What became of Jordan?" asked Priscilla.
"He sold the farm after Hester died and went back to Boston.
Mr. Jabez Sloane bought the farm and hauled the little house
out to the road. Jordan died about ten years after and he was
brought home and buried beside Hester."
"I can't understand how she could have wanted to live back here,
away from everything," said Jane.
"Oh, I can easily understand THAT," said Anne thoughtfully. "I
wouldn't want it myself for a steady thing, because, although I
love the fields and woods, I love people too. But I can understand
it in Hester. She was tired to death of the noise of the big city
and the crowds of people always coming and going and caring nothing
for her. She just wanted to escape from it all to some still, green,
friendly place where she could reSt. And she got just what she wanted,
which is something very few people do, I believe. She had four
beautiful years before she died. . .four years of perfect happiness,
so I think she was to be envied more than pitied. And then to shut
your eyes and fall asleep among roses, with the one you loved best
on earth smiling down at you. . .oh, I think it was beautiful!"
"She set out those cherry trees over there," said Diana. "She told
mother she'd never live to eat their fruit, but she wanted to think
that something she had planted would go on living and helping to
make the world beautiful after she was dead."
"I'm so glad we came this way," said Anne, the shining-eyed.
"This is my adopted birthday, you know, and this garden and
its story is the birthday gift it has given me. Did your mother
ever tell you what Hester Gray looked like, Diana?"
"No. . .only just that she was pretty."
"I'm rather glad of that, because I can imagine what she looked like,
without being hampered by facts. I think she was very slight and small,
with softly curling dark hair and big, sweet, timid brown eyes, and a
little wistful, pale face."
The girls left their baskets in Hester's garden and spent the rest
of the afternoon rambling in the woods and fields surrounding it,
discovering many pretty nooks and lanes. When they got hungry they
had lunch in the prettiest spot of all. . .on the steep bank of a
gurgling brook where white birches shot up out of long feathery
grasses. The girls sat down by the roots and did full justice to
Anne's dainties, even the unpoetical sandwiches being greatly
appreciated by hearty, unspoiled appetites sharpened by all the
fresh air and exercise they had enjoyed. Anne had brought glasses
and lemonade for her guests, but for her own part drank cold brook
water from a cup fashioned out of birch bark. The cup leaked,
and the water tasted of earth, as brook water is apt to do in spring;
but Anne thought it more appropriate to the occasion than lemonade.
"Look do you see that poem?" she said suddenly, pointing.
"Where?" Jane and Diana stared, as if expecting to see Runic rhymes
on the birch trees.
"There. . .down in the brook. . .that old green, mossy log with
the water flowing over it in those smooth ripples that look as if
they'd been combed, and that single shaft of sunshine falling right
athwart it, far down into the pool. Oh, it's the most beautiful
poem I ever saw."
"I should rather call it a picture," said Jane. "A poem is lines
and verses."
"Oh dear me, no." Anne shook her head with its fluffy wild cherry
coronal positively. "The lines and verses are only the outward
garments of the poem and are no more really it than your ruffles
and flounces are YOU, Jane. The real poem is the soul within them
. . .and that beautiful bit is the soul of an unwritten poem.
It is not every day one sees a soul. . .even of a poem."
"I wonder what a soul. . .a person's soul. . .would look like,"
said Priscilla dreamily.
"Like that, I should think," answered Anne, pointing to a radiance
of sifted sunlight streaming through a birch tree. "Only with shape
and features of course. I like to fancy souls as being made of light.
And some are all shot through with rosy stains and quivers. . .and
some have a soft glitter like moonlight on the sea. . .and some are
pale and transparent like mist at dawn."
"I read somewhere once that souls were like flowers," said Priscilla.
"Then your soul is a golden narcissus," said Anne, "and Diana's is like
a red, red rose. Jane's is an apple blossom, pink and wholesome and sweet."
"And your own is a white violet, with purple streaks in its heart,"
finished Priscilla.
Jane whispered to Diana that she really could not understand what
they were talking about. Could she?
The girls went home by the light of a calm golden sunset, their
baskets filled with narcissus blossoms from Hester's garden,
some of which Anne carried to the cemetery next day and laid
upon Hester's grave. Minstrel robins were whistling in the firs
and the frogs were singing in the marshes. All the basins among
the hills were brimmed with topaz and emerald light.
"Well, we have had a lovely time after all," said Diana, as if she
had hardly expected to have it when she set out.
"It has been a truly golden day," said Priscilla.
"I'm really awfully fond of the woods myself," said Jane.
Anne said nothing. She was looking afar into the western sky and
thinking of little Hester Gray.
