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“Such a lovely day ... made for us,” said Diana. “I’m afraid it’s a pet day, though ... there’ll be rain tomorrow.”
“Never mind. We’ll drink its beauty today, even if its sunshine is gone tomorrow. We’ll enjoy each other’s friendship today even if we are to be parted tomorrow. Look at those long, golden-green hills ... those mist-blue valleys. They’re ours, Diana ... I don’t care if that furthest hill is registered in Abner Sloan’s name ... it’s ours today. There’s a west wind blowing ... I always feel adventurous when a west wind blows ... and we’re going to have a perfect ramble.”
They had. All the old dear spots were revisited: Lover’s Lane, the Haunted Wood, Idlewild, Violet Vale, the Birch Path, Crystal Lake. There were some changes. The little ring of birch saplings in Idlewild, where they had had a playhouse long ago, had grown into big trees; the Birch Path, long untrodden, was matted with bracken; the Crystal Lake had entirely disappeared, leaving only a damp mossy hollow. But Violet Vale was purple with violets and the seedling apple tree Gilbert had once found far back in the woods was a huge tree peppered over with tiny, crimson-tipped blossom-buds.
They walked bareheaded. Annie’s hair still gleamed like polished mahogany in the sunlight and Diana’s was still glossy black. They exchanged gay and understanding, warm and friendly, glances. Sometimes they walked in silence ... Anne always maintained that two people as sympathetic as she and Diana could feel each other’s thoughts. Sometimes they peppered their conversation with do-you-remembers. “Do you remember the day you fell through the Cobb duckhouse on the Tory Road?” ... “Do you remember when we jumped on Aunt Josephine?” ... “Do you remember our Story Club?” ... “Do you remember Mrs. Morgan’s visit when you stained your nose red?” ... “Do you remember how we signalled to each other from our windows with candles?” ... “Do you remember the fun we had at Miss Lavender’s wedding and Charlotta’s blue bows?” ... “Do you remember the Improvement Society?” It almost seemed to them they could hear their old peals of laughter echoing down the years.
The A. V. I. S. was, it seemed, dead. It had petered out soon after Anne’s marriage.
“They just couldn’t keep it up, Anne. The young people in Avonlea now are not what they were in our day.”
“Don’t talk as if ‘our day’ were ended, Diana. We’re only fifteen years old and kindred spirits. The air isn’t just full of light ... it is light. I’m not sure that I haven’t sprouted wings.”
“I feel just that way, too,” said Diana, forgetting that she had tipped the scale at one hundred and fifty-five that morning. “I often feel that I’d love to be turned into a bird for a little while. It must be wonderful to fly.”
Beauty was all around them. Unsuspected tintings glimmered in the dark demesnes of the woods and glowed in their alluring by-ways. The spring sunshine sifted through the young green leaves. Gay trills of song were everywhere. There were little hollows where you felt as if you were bathing in a pool of liquid gold. At every turn some fresh spring scent struck their faces ... spice ferns ... fir balsam ... the wholesome odour of newly ploughed fields. There was a lane curtained with wild-cherry blossoms ... a grassy old field full of tiny spruce trees just starting in life and looking like elvish things that had squatted down among the grasses ... brooks not yet “too broad for leaping” ... star-flowers under the firs ... sheets of curly young ferns ... and a birch tree whence some vandal had torn away the white-skin wrapper in several places, exposing the tints of the bark below. Anne looked at it so long that Diana wondered. She did not see what Anne did ... tints ranging from purest creamy white, through exquisite golden tones, growing deeper and deeper until the inmost layer revealed the deepest richest brown as if to tell that all birches, so maiden-like and cool exteriorly, had yet warm-hued feelings.
“The primeval fire of earth at their hearts,” murmured Anne.
And finally, after traversing a little wood glen full of toadstools, they found Hester Gray’s garden. Not so much changed. It was still very sweet with dear flowers. There were still plenty of June lilies, as Diana called the narcissi. The row of cherry trees had grown older but was a drift of snowy bloom. You could still find the central rose walk, and the old dyke was white with strawberry blossoms and blue with violets and green with baby fern. They ate their picnic supper in a corner of it, sitting on some old mossy stones, with a lilac tree behind them flinging purple banners against a low-hanging sun. Both were hungry and both did justice to their own good cooking.
“How nice things taste out of doors!” sighed Diana comfortably. “That chocolate cake of yours, Anne ... well, words fail me, but I must get the recipe. Fred would adore it. He can eat anything and stay thin. I’m always saying I’m not going to eat any more cake ... because I’m getting fatter every year. I’ve such a horror of getting like great-aunt Sarah ... she was so fat she always had to be pulled up when she had sat down. But when I see a cake like that ... and last night at the reception ... well, they would all have been so offended if I didn’t eat.”
“Did you have a nice time?”
“Oh, yes, in a way. But I fell into Fred’s Cousin Henrietta’s clutches ... and it’s such a delight to her to tell all about her operations and her sensations while going through them and how soon her appendix would have burst if she hadn’t had it out. ‘I had fifteen stitches put in it. Oh, Diana, the agony I suffered!’ Well, she enjoyed it if I didn’t. And she has suffered, so why shouldn’t she have the fun of talking about it now? Jim was so funny ... I don’t know if Mary Alice liked it altogether.... Well, just one teeny piece ... may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, I suppose ... a mere sliver can’t make much difference.... One thing he said ... that the very night before the wedding he was so scared he felt he’d have to take the boat-train. He said all grooms felt just the same if they’d be honest about it. You don’t suppose Gilbert and Fred felt like that, do you, Anne?”
“I’m sure they didn’t.”
“That’s what Fred said when I asked him. He said all he was scared of was that I’d change my mind at the last moment like Rose Spencer. But you can never really tell what a man may be thinking. Well, there’s no use worrying over it now. What a lovely time we’ve had this afternoon! We seem to have lived so many old happinesses over. I wish you didn’t have to go tomorrow, Anne.”
“Can’t you come down for a visit to Ingleside sometime this summer, Diana? Before ... well, before I’ll not be wanting visitors for a while.”
“I’d love to. But it seems impossible to get away from home in the summer. There’s always so much to do.”
“Rebecca Dew is coming at long last, of which I’m glad ... and I’m afraid Aunt Mary Maria is, too. She hinted as much to Gilbert. He doesn’t want her any more than I do ... but she is ‘a relation’ and so his latchstring must be always out for her.”
“Perhaps I’ll get down in the winter. I’d love to see Ingleside again. You have a lovely home, Anne ... and a lovely family.”
“Ingleside is nice ... and I do love it now. I once thought I would never love it. I hated it when we went there first ... hated it for its very virtues. They were an insult to my dear House of Dreams. I remember saying piteously to Gilbert when we left it, ‘We’ve been so happy here. We’ll never be so happy anywhere else.’ I revelled in a luxury of homesickness for a while. Then ... I found little rootlets of affection for Ingleside beginning to sprout out. I fought against it ... I really did ... but at last I had to give in and admit I loved it. And I’ve loved it better every year since. It isn’t too old a house ... too old houses are sad. And it isn’t too young ... too young houses are crude. It’s just mellow. I love every room in it. Every one has some fault but also some virtue ... something that distinguishes it from all the others ... gives it a personality. I love all those magnificent trees on the lawn. I don’t know who planted them but every time I go upstairs I stop on the landing ... you know that quaint window on the landing with the broad deep seat ... and sit there looking out for a moment and say, ‘God bless the man who planted those trees whoever he was.’ We’ve really too many trees about the house but we wouldn’t give up one.”
“That’s just like Fred. He worships that big willow south of the house. It spoils the view from the parlour windows, as I’ve told him again and again, but he only says, ‘Would you cut a lovely thing like that down even if it does shut out the view?’ So the willow stays ... and it is lovely. That’s why we’ve called our place Lone Willow Farm. I love the name Ingleside. It’s such a nice, homey name.”
“That’s what Gilbert said. We had quite a time deciding on a name. We tried out several but they didn’t seem to belong. But when we thought of Ingleside we knew it was the right one. I’m glad we have a nice big roomy house ... we need it with our family. The children love it, too, small as they are.”
“They’re such darlings.” Diana slyly cut herself another “sliver” of the chocolate cake. “I think my own are pretty nice ... but there’s really something about yours ... and your twins!That I do envy you. I’ve always wanted twins.”
“Oh, I couldn’t get away from twins ... they’re my destiny. But I’m disappointed mine don’t look alike ... not one bit alike. Nan’s pretty, though, with her brown hair and eyes and her lovely complexion. Di is her father’s favourite, because she has green eyes and red hair ... red hair with a swirl to it. Shirley is the apple of Susan’s eye ... I was ill so long after he was born and she looked after him till I really believe she thinks he is her own. She calls him her ‘little brown boy’ and spoils him shamefully.”
“And he’s still so small you can creep in to find if he has kicked off the clothes and tuck him in again,” said Diana enviously. “Jack’s nine, you know, and he doesn’t want me to do that now. He says he’s too big. And I loved so to do it! Oh, I wish children didn’t grow up so soon.”
“None of mine have got to that stage yet ... though I’ve noticed that since Jem began to go to school he doesn’t want to hold my hand any more when we walk through the village,” said Anne with a sigh. “But he and Walter and Shirley all want me to tuck them in yet. Walter sometimes makes quite a ritual of it.”
“And you don’t have to worry yet over what they’re going to be. Now, Jack is crazy to be a soldier when he grows up ... a soldier! Just fancy!”
“I wouldn’t worry over that. He’ll forget about it when another fancy seizes him. War is a thing of the past. Jem imagines he is going to be a sailor ... like Captain Jim ... and Walter is by way of being a poet. He isn’t like any of the others. But they all love trees and they all love playing in ‘the Hollow,’ as it’s called--a little valley just below Ingleside with fairy paths and a brook. A very ordinary place ... just ‘the Hollow’ to others but to them fairyland. They’ve all got their faults ... but they’re not such a bad little gang ... and luckily there’s always enough love to go round. Oh, I’m glad to think that this time tomorrow night I’ll be back at Ingleside, telling my babies stories at bedtime and giving Susan’s calceolarias and ferns their meed of praise. Susan has ‘luck’ with ferns. No one can grow them like her. I can praise her ferns honestly ... but the calceolarias, Diana! They don’t look like flowers to me at all. But I never hurt Susan’s feeling by telling her so. I always get around it somehow. Providence has never failed yet. Susan is such a duck ... I can’t imagine what I’d do without her. And I remember once calling her ‘an outsider.’ Yes, it’s lovely to think of going home and yet I’m sad to leave Green Gables, too. It’s so beautiful here ... with Marilla ... and you. Our friendship has always been a very lovely thing, Diana.”
“Yes ... and we’ve always ... I mean ... I never could say things like you, Anne ... but we have kept our old ‘solemn vow and promise,’ haven’t we?”
“Always ... and always will.”
Anne’s hand found its way into Diana’s. They sat for a long time in a silence too sweet for words. Long, still evening shadows fell over the grasses and the flowers and the green reaches of the meadows beyond. The sun went down ... grey-pink shades of sky deepened and paled behind the pensive trees ... the spring twilight took possession of Hester Gray’s garden where nobody ever walked now. Robins were sprinkling the evening air with flute-like whistles. A great star came out over the white cherry trees.
“The first star is always a miracle,” said Anne dreamily.
“I could sit here forever,” said Diana. “I hate the thought of leaving it.”
“So do I ... but after all we’ve only been pretending to be fifteen. We’ve got to remember our family cares. How those lilacs smell! Has it ever occurred to you, Diana, that there is something not quite ... chaste ... in the scent of lilac blossoms? Gilbert laughs at such a notion ... he loves them ... but to me they always seem to be remembering some secret, too-sweet thing.”
“They’re too heavy for the house, I always think,” said Diana. She picked up the plate which held the remainder of the chocolate cake ... looked at it longingly ... shook her head and packed it in the basket with an expression of great nobility and self-denial on her face.
“Wouldn’t it be fun, Diana, if now, as we went home, we were to meet our old selves running along Lover’s Lane?”
Diana gave a little shiver.
“No-o-o, I don’t think that would be funny, Anne. I hadn’t noticed it was getting so dark. It’s all right to fancy things in daylight, but ...”
They went quietly, silently, lovingly home together, with the sunset glory burning on the old hills behind them and their old unforgotten love burning in their hearts.