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<h2> XIII </h2>
<h3> A Golden Picnic </h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"I was just on my way over to invite you to help me celebrate my birthday
on Saturday," said Anne.</p>
<p>"Your birthday? But your birthday was in March!"</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"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?"</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"How do you know?" gasped Jane, amazed.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"If a kiss could be seen I think it would look like a violet," said
Priscilla.</p>
<p>Anne glowed.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"It would be too hot to hold some folks," quoted Jane sagely.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"What a lot of elephant's ears," exclaimed Diana. "I'm going to pick a big
bunch, they're so pretty."</p>
<p>"How did such graceful feathery things ever come to have such a dreadful
name?" asked Priscilla.</p>
<p>"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!"</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>"HOW sweet!" said Jane.</p>
<p>"Let us dance around it like wood-nymphs," cried Anne, dropping her basket
and extending her hands.</p>
<p>But the dance was not a success for the ground was boggy and Jane's
rubbers came off.</p>
<p>"You can't be a wood-nymph if you have to wear rubbers," was her decision.</p>
<p>"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?"</p>
<p>"Birch Pool," suggested Diana promptly.</p>
<p>"Crystal Lake," said Jane.</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"I'd wish to be tall and slender," said Diana.</p>
<p>"I would wish to be famous," said Priscilla. Anne thought of her hair and
then dismissed the thought as unworthy.</p>
<p>"I'd wish it might be spring all the time and in everybody's heart and all
our lives," she said.</p>
<p>"But that," said Priscilla, "would be just wishing this world were like
heaven."</p>
<p>"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?"</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>"Minnie May asked me the other day if we would wear our best dresses every
day in heaven," laughed Diana.</p>
<p>"And didn't you tell her we would?" asked Anne.</p>
<p>"Mercy, no! I told her we wouldn't be thinking of dresses at all there."</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"Oh, how perfectly lovely!" three of the girls cried. Anne only gazed in
eloquent silence.</p>
<p>"How in the world does it happen that there ever was a garden back here?"
said Priscilla in amazement.</p>
<p>"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?"</p>
<p>"No, but the name seems familiar to me."</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"Oh, what a dear story," sighed Anne, wiping away her tears.</p>
<p>"What became of Jordan?" asked Priscilla.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"I can't understand how she could have wanted to live back here, away from
everything," said Jane.</p>
<p>"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!"</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"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?"</p>
<p>"No . . . only just that she was pretty."</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"Look do you see that poem?" she said suddenly, pointing.</p>
<p>"Where?" Jane and Diana stared, as if expecting to see Runic rhymes on the
birch trees.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"I should rather call it a picture," said Jane. "A poem is lines and
verses."</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"I wonder what a soul . . . a person's soul . . . would look like," said
Priscilla dreamily.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"I read somewhere once that souls were like flowers," said Priscilla.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"And your own is a white violet, with purple streaks in its heart,"
finished Priscilla.</p>
<p>Jane whispered to Diana that she really could not understand what they
were talking about. Could she?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"Well, we have had a lovely time after all," said Diana, as if she had
hardly expected to have it when she set out.</p>
<p>"It has been a truly golden day," said Priscilla.</p>
<p>"I'm really awfully fond of the woods myself," said Jane.</p>
<p>Anne said nothing. She was looking afar into the western sky and thinking
of little Hester Gray.</p>
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