Anne Of Avonlea - Chapter 13

"Anne of Avonlea" was written by L. M. Montgomery and published in 1909, following the enormous success of Anne of Green Gables the prior year.

In this second book, Anne Shirley is sixteen years old and working in Avonlea as the local schoolteacher, determined to be sensible, responsible and worthy of the life she’s been given...

Chapter 13 follows Anne and her friends on a spring picnic that becomes a delightful celebration of beauty, imagination and friendship...

Wandering off the beaten path, they discover forgotten places, shared dreams and a story that lingers long after the day ends...turning an ordinary outing into something golden-ly unforgettable...

Find the full playlist for "Anne of Avonlea"

Transcript

Hello there,

Thank you so much for joining me for this continued reading of Anne of Avonlea,

The much-loved sequel to Anne of Green Gables.

This book was published in 1909 by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery.

If you've been following along with the story already,

You know we're hearing about the orphaned Anne Shirley at the ripe old age of 16 as the community school teacher and working to improve the town that she lives in.

If you haven't heard the preceding parts of this book yet and you'd like to,

You can certainly look for the playlist for Anne of Avonlea and you'll find everything there in order.

But for now,

Let's just take a moment here to have a nice deep exhale,

Letting go of the day,

Letting go of whichever baggage we might be bringing along with us into this moment.

For right now,

There's nowhere else we have to go and nothing else we have to be doing.

So we can just relax,

Get ourselves comfortable and enjoy the ongoing quaint old tale of Anne of Avonlea.

Chapter 13.

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 pixie 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 ladyfingers 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 witchwork,

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 Anne-ish 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.

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 80 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 furbells brushed their faces.

Under the furs 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 elephants is,

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 centre 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?

Birchpool 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 Fairy's Mirror.

The names were written on strips of birchbark with a pencil Schoolmarm 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 Sloan'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.

Sloan'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 sprucewood 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,

Raymont 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 lissom 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 backfields 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 tumble-down stone dyke,

Overgrown with mosses and grass,

Surrounded it.

Along the eastern side ran 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 Grey'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 Grey,

Aged 22?

Jordan Grey 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 30 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 Grey.

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 Lynn 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 Grey 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 Lynn.

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 Jabbers Sloan 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 Grey 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.

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 positivity.

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 words myself,

Said Jane.

Anne said nothing.

She was looking afar into the western sky,

And thinking of little Hester Gray.