CHAPTER IV. THE WEDDING VEIL OF THE PROUD PRINCESS
When we had lived for a fortnight in Carlisle we belonged there, and the freedom of all its small fry was conferred on us. With Peter and Dan, with Felicity and Cecily and the Story Girl, with pale, gray-eyed little Sara Ray, we were boon companions. We went to school, of course; and certain home chores were assigned to each of us for the faithful performance of which we were held responsible. But we had long hours for play. Even Peter had plenty of spare time when the planting was over.
We got along very well with each other in the main, in spite of some minor differences of opinion. As for the grown-up denizens of our small world, they suited us also.
We adored Aunt Olivia; she was pretty and merry and kind; and, above all, she had mastered to perfection the rare art of letting children alone. If we kept ourselves tolerably clean, and refrained from quarrelling or talking slang, Aunt Olivia did not worry us. Aunt Janet, on the contrary, gave us so much good advice and was so constantly telling us to do this or not to do the other thing, that we could not remember half her instructions, and did not try.
Uncle Roger was, as we had been informed, quite jolly and fond of teasing. We liked him; but we had an uncomfortable feeling that the meaning of his remarks was not always that which met the ear. Sometimes we believed Uncle Roger was making fun of us, and the deadly seriousness of youth in us resented that.
To Uncle Alec we gave our warmest love. We felt that we always had a friend at court in Uncle Alec, no matter what we did or left undone. And we never had to turn HIS speeches inside out to discover their meaning.
The social life of juvenile Carlisle centred in the day and Sunday Schools. We were especially interested in our Sunday School, for we were fortunate enough to be assigned to a teacher who made our lessons so interesting that we no longer regarded Sunday School attendance as a disagreeable weekly duty; but instead looked forward to it with pleasure, and tried to carry out our teacher’s gentle precepts—at least on Mondays and Tuesdays. I am afraid the remembrance grew a little dim the rest of the week.
She was also deeply interested in missions; and one talk on this subject inspired the Story Girl to do a little home missionary work on her own account. The only thing she could think of, along this line, was to persuade Peter to go to church.
Felicity did not approve of the design, and said so plainly.
“He won’t know how to behave, for he’s never been inside a church door in his life,” she warned the Story Girl. “He’ll likely do something awful, and then you’ll feel ashamed and wish you’d never asked him to go, and we’ll all be disgraced. It’s all right to have our mite boxes for the heathen, and send missionaries to them. They’re far away and we don’t have to associate with them. But I don’t want to have to sit in a pew with a hired boy.”
But the Story Girl undauntedly continued to coax the reluctant Peter. It was not an easy matter. Peter did not come of a churchgoing stock; and besides, he alleged, he had not yet made up his mind whether to be a Presbyterian or a Methodist.
“It isn’t a bit of difference which you are,” pleaded the Story Girl. “They both go to heaven.”
“But one way must be easier or better than the other, or else they’d all be one kind,” argued Peter. “I want to find the easiest way. And I’ve got a hankering after the Methodists. My Aunt Jane was a Methodist.”
“Isn’t she one still?” asked Felicity pertly.
“Well, I don’t know exactly. She’s dead,” said Peter rebukingly. “Do people go on being just the same after they’re dead?”
“No, of course not. They’re angels then—not Methodists or anything, but just angels. That is, if they go to heaven.”
“S’posen they went to the other place?”
But Felicity’s theology broke down at this point. She turned her back on Peter and walked disdainfully away.
The Story Girl returned to the main point with a new argument.
“We have such a lovely minister, Peter. He looks just like the picture of St. John my father sent me, only he is old and his hair is white. I know you’d like him. And even if you are going to be a Methodist it won’t hurt you to go to the Presbyterian church. The nearest Methodist church is six miles away, at Markdale, and you can’t attend there just now. Go to the Presbyterian church until you’re old enough to have a horse.”
“But s’posen I got too fond of being Presbyterian and couldn’t change if I wanted to?” objected Peter.
Altogether, the Story Girl had a hard time of it; but she persevered; and one day she came to us with the announcement that Peter had yielded.
“He’s going to church with us to-morrow,” she said triumphantly.
We were out in Uncle Roger’s hill pasture, sitting on some smooth, round stones under a clump of birches. Behind us was an old gray fence, with violets and dandelions thick in its corners. Below us was the Carlisle valley, with its orchard-embowered homesteads, and fertile meadows. Its upper end was dim with a delicate spring mist. Winds blew up the field like wave upon wave of sweet savour—spice of bracken and balsam.
We were eating little jam “turnovers,” which Felicity had made for us. Felicity’s turnovers were perfection. I looked at her and wondered why it was not enough that she should be so pretty and capable of making such turnovers. If she were only more interesting! Felicity had not a particle of the nameless charm and allurement which hung about every motion of the Story Girl, and made itself manifest in her lightest word and most careless glance. Ah well, one cannot have every good gift! The Story Girl had no dimples at her slim, brown wrists.
We all enjoyed our turnovers except Sara Ray. She ate hers but she knew she should not have done so. Her mother did not approve of snacks between meals, or of jam turnovers at any time. Once, when Sara was in a brown study, I asked her what she was thinking of.
“I’m trying to think of something ma hasn’t forbid,” she answered with a sigh.
We were all glad to hear that Peter was going to church, except Felicity. She was full of gloomy forebodings and warnings.
“I’m surprised at you, Felicity King,” said Cecily severely. “You ought to be glad that poor boy is going to get started in the right way.”
“There’s a great big patch on his best pair of trousers,” protested Felicity.
“Well, that’s better than a hole,” said the Story Girl, addressing herself daintily to her turnover. “God won’t notice the patch.”
“No, but the Carlisle people will,” retorted Felicity, in a tone which implied that what the Carlisle people thought was far more important. “And I don’t believe that Peter has got a decent stocking to his name. What will you feel like if he goes to church with the skin of his legs showing through the holes, Miss Story Girl?”
“I’m not a bit afraid,” said the Story Girl staunchly. “Peter knows better than that.”
“Well, all I hope is that he’ll wash behind his ears,” said Felicity resignedly.
“How is Pat to-day?” asked Cecily, by way of changing the conversation.
“Pat isn’t a bit better. He just mopes about the kitchen,” said the Story Girl anxiously. “I went out to the barn and I saw a mouse. I had a stick in my hand and I fetched a swipe at it—so. I killed it stone dead. Then I took it in to Paddy. Will you believe it? He wouldn’t even look at it. I’m so worried. Uncle Roger says he needs a dose of physic. But how is he to be made take it, that’s the question. I mixed a powder in some milk and tried to pour it down his throat while Peter held him. Just look at the scratches I got! And the milk went everywhere except down Pat’s throat.”
“Wouldn’t it be awful if—if anything happened to Pat?” whispered Cecily.
“Well, we could have a jolly funeral, you know,” said Dan.
We looked at him in such horror that Dan hastened to apologize.
“I’d be awful sorry myself if Pat died. But if he DID, we’d have to give him the right kind of a funeral,” he protested. “Why, Paddy just seems like one of the family.”
The Story Girl finished her turnover, and stretched herself out on the grasses, pillowing her chin in her hands and looking at the sky. She was bare headed, as usual, and her scarlet ribbon was bound filletwise about her head. She had twined freshly plucked dandelions around it and the effect was that of a crown of brilliant golden stars on her sleek, brown curls.
“Look at that long, thin, lacy cloud up there,” she said. “What does it make you think of, girls?”
“A wedding veil,” said Cecily.
“That is just what it is—the Wedding Veil of the Proud Princess. I know a story about it. I read it in a book. Once upon a time”—the Story Girl’s eyes grew dreamy, and her accents floated away on the summer air like wind-blown rose petals—“there was a princess who was the most beautiful princess in the world, and kings from all lands came to woo her for a bride. But she was as proud as she was beautiful. She laughed all her suitors to scorn. And when her father urged her to choose one of them as her husband she drew herself up haughtily—so—”
The Story Girl sprang to her feet and for a moment we saw the proud princess of the old tale in all her scornful loveliness—
“and she said,
“‘I will not wed until a king comes who can conquer all kings. Then I shall be the wife of the king of the world and no one can hold herself higher than I.’
“So every king went to war to prove that he could conquer every one else, and there was a great deal of bloodshed and misery. But the proud princess laughed and sang, and she and her maidens worked at a wonderful lace veil which she meant to wear when the king of all kings came. It was a very beautiful veil; but her maidens whispered that a man had died and a woman’s heart had broken for every stitch set in it.
“Just when a king thought he had conquered everybody some other king would come and conquer HIM; and so it went on until it did not seem likely the proud princess would ever get a husband at all. But still her pride was so great that she would not yield, even though everybody except the kings who wanted to marry her, hated her for the suffering she had caused. One day a horn was blown at the palace gate; and there was one tall man in complete armor with his visor down, riding on a white horse. When he said he had come to marry the princess every one laughed, for he had no retinue and no beautiful apparel, and no golden crown.
“‘But I am the king who conquers all kings,’ he said.
“‘You must prove it before I shall marry you,’ said the proud princess. But she trembled and turned pale, for there was something in his voice that frightened her. And when he laughed, his laughter was still more dreadful.
“‘I can easily prove it, beautiful princess,’ he said, ‘but you must go with me to my kingdom for the proof. Marry me now, and you and I and your father and all your court will ride straightway to my kingdom; and if you are not satisfied then that I am the king who conquers all kings you may give me back my ring and return home free of me forever more.’
“It was a strange wooing and the friends of the princess begged her to refuse. But her pride whispered that it would be such a wonderful thing to be the queen of the king of the world; so she consented; and her maidens dressed her, and put on the long lace veil that had been so many years a-making. Then they were married at once, but the bridegroom never lifted his visor and no one saw his face. The proud princess held herself more proudly than ever, but she was as white as her veil. And there was no laughter or merry-making, such as should be at a wedding, and every one looked at every one else with fear in his eyes.
“After the wedding the bridegroom lifted his bride before him on his white horse, and her father and all the members of his court mounted, too, and rode after them. On and on they rode, and the skies grew darker and the wind blew and wailed, and the shades of evening came down. And just in the twilight they rode into a dark valley, filled with tombs and graves.
“‘Why have you brought me here?’ cried the proud princess angrily.
“‘This is my kingdom,’ he answered. ‘These are the tombs of the kings I have conquered. Behold me, beautiful princess. I am Death!’
“He lifted his visor. All saw his awful face. The proud princess shrieked.
“‘Come to my arms, my bride,’ he cried. ‘I have won you fairly. I am the king who conquers all kings!’
“He clasped her fainting form to his breast and spurred his white horse to the tombs. A tempest of rain broke over the valley and blotted them from sight. Very sadly the old king and courtiers rode home, and never, never again did human eye behold the proud princess. But when those long, white clouds sweep across the sky, the country people in the land where she lived say, ‘Look you, there is the Wedding Veil of the Proud Princess.’”
The weird spell of the tale rested on us for some moments after the Story Girl had finished. We had walked with her in the place of death and grown cold with the horror that chilled the heart of the poor princess. Dan presently broke the spell.
“You see it doesn’t do to be too proud, Felicity,” he remarked, giving her a poke. “You’d better not say too much about Peter’s patches.”
CHAPTER V. PETER GOES TO CHURCH
There was no Sunday School the next afternoon, as superintendent and teachers wished to attend a communion service at Markdale. The Carlisle service was in the evening, and at sunset we were waiting at Uncle Alec’s front door for Peter and the Story Girl.
None of the grown-ups were going to church. Aunt Olivia had a sick headache and Uncle Roger stayed home with her. Aunt Janet and Uncle Alec had gone to the Markdale service and had not yet returned.
Felicity and Cecily were wearing their new summer muslins for the first time—and were acutely conscious of the fact. Felicity, her pink and white face shadowed by her drooping, forget-me-not-wreathed, leghorn hat, was as beautiful as usual; but Cecily, having tortured her hair with curl papers all night, had a rampant bush of curls all about her head which quite destroyed the sweet, nun-like expression of her little features. Cecily cherished a grudge against fate because she had not been given naturally curly hair as had the other two girls. But she attained the desire of her heart on Sundays at least, and was quite well satisfied. It was impossible to convince her that the satin smooth lustre of her week-day tresses was much more becoming to her.
Presently Peter and the Story Girl appeared, and we were all more or less relieved to see that Peter looked quite respectable, despite the indisputable patch on his trousers. His face was rosy, his thick black curls were smoothly combed, and his tie was neatly bowed; but it was his legs which we scrutinized most anxiously. At first glance they seemed well enough; but closer inspection revealed something not altogether customary.
“What is the matter with your stockings, Peter?” asked Dan bluntly.
“Oh, I hadn’t a pair without holes in the legs,” answered Peter easily, “because ma hadn’t time to darn them this week. So I put on two pairs. The holes don’t come in the same places, and you’d never notice them unless you looked right close.”
“Have you got a cent for collection?” demanded Felicity.
“I’ve got a Yankee cent. I s’pose it will do, won’t it?”
Felicity shook her head vehemently.
“Oh, no, no. It may be all right to pass a Yankee cent on a store keeper or an egg peddler, but it would never do for church.”
“I’ll have to go without any, then,” said Peter. “I haven’t another cent. I only get fifty cents a week and I give it all to ma last night.”
But Peter must have a cent. Felicity would have given him one herself—and she was none too lavish of her coppers—rather than have him go without one. Dan, however, lent him one, on the distinct understanding that it was to be repaid the next week.
Uncle Roger wandered by at this moment and, beholding Peter, said,
“‘Is Saul also among the prophets?’ What can have induced you to turn church-goer, Peter, when all Olivia’s gentle persuasions were of no avail? The old, old argument I suppose—‘beauty draws us with a single hair.’”
Uncle Roger looked quizzically at Felicity. We did not know what his quotations meant, but we understood he thought Peter was going to church because of Felicity. Felicity tossed her head.
“It isn’t my fault that he’s going to church,” she said snappishly. “It’s the Story Girl’s doings.”
Uncle Roger sat down on the doorstep, and gave himself over to one of the silent, inward paroxysms of laughter we all found so very aggravating. He shook his big, blond head, shut his eyes, and murmured,
“Not her fault! Oh, Felicity, Felicity, you’ll be the death of your dear Uncle yet if you don’t watch out.”
Felicity started off indignantly, and we followed, picking up Sara Ray at the foot of the hill.
The Carlisle church was a very old-fashioned one, with a square, ivy-hung tower. It was shaded by tall elms, and the graveyard surrounded it completely, many of the graves being directly under its windows. We always took the corner path through it, passing the King plot where our kindred of four generations slept in a green solitude of wavering light and shadow.
There was Great-grandfather King’s flat tombstone of rough Island sandstone, so overgrown with ivy that we could hardly read its lengthy inscription, recording his whole history in brief, and finishing with eight lines of original verse composed by his widow. I do not think that poetry was Great-grandmother King’s strong point. When Felix read it, on our first Sunday in Carlisle, he remarked dubiously that it LOOKED like poetry but didn’t SOUND like it.
There, too, slept the Emily whose faithful spirit was supposed to haunt the orchard; but Edith who had kissed the poet lay not with her kindred. She had died in a far, foreign land, and the murmur of an alien sea sounded about her grave.
White marble tablets, ornamented with weeping willow trees, marked where Grandfather and Grandmother King were buried, and a single shaft of red Scotch granite stood between the graves of Aunt Felicity and Uncle Felix. The Story Girl lingered to lay a bunch of wild violets, misty blue and faintly sweet, on her mother’s grave; and then she read aloud the verse on the stone.
“‘They were lovely and pleasant in their lives and in their death they were not divided.’”
The tones of her voice brought out the poignant and immortal beauty and pathos of that wonderful old lament. The girls wiped their eyes; and we boys felt as if we might have done so, too, had nobody been looking. What better epitaph could any one wish than to have it said that he was lovely and pleasant in his life? When I heard the Story Girl read it I made a secret compact with myself that I would try to deserve such an epitaph.
“I wish I had a family plot,” said Peter, rather wistfully. “I haven’t ANYTHING you fellows have. The Craigs are just buried anywhere they happen to die.”
“I’d like to be buried here when I die,” said Felix. “But I hope it won’t be for a good while yet,” he added in a livelier tone, as we moved onward to the church.
The interior of the church was as old-fashioned as its exterior. It was furnished with square box pews; the pulpit was a “wine-glass” one, and was reached by a steep, narrow flight of steps. Uncle Alec’s pew was at the top of the church, quite near the pulpit.
Peter’s appearance did not attract as much attention as we had fondly expected. Indeed, nobody seemed to notice him at all. The lamps were not yet lighted and the church was filled with a soft twilight and hush. Outside, the sky was purple and gold and silvery green, with a delicate tangle of rosy cloud above the elms.
“Isn’t it awful nice and holy in here?” whispered Peter reverently. “I didn’t know church was like this. It’s nice.”
Felicity frowned at him, and the Story Girl touched her with her slippered foot to remind him that he must not talk in church. Peter stiffened up and sat at attention during the service. Nobody could have behaved better. But when the sermon was over and the collection was being taken up, he made the sensation which his entrance had not produced.
Elder Frewen, a tall, pale man, with long, sandy side-whiskers, appeared at the door of our pew with the collection plate. We knew Elder Frewen quite well and liked him; he was Aunt Janet’s cousin and often visited her. The contrast between his week-day jollity and the unearthly solemnity of his countenance on Sundays always struck us as very funny. It seemed so to strike Peter; for as Peter dropped his cent into the plate he laughed aloud!
Everybody looked at our pew. I have always wondered why Felicity did not die of mortification on the spot. The Story Girl turned white, and Cecily turned red. As for that poor, unlucky Peter, the shame of his countenance was pitiful to behold. He never lifted his head for the remainder of the service; and he followed us down the aisle and across the graveyard like a beaten dog. None of us uttered a word until we reached the road, lying in the white moonshine of the May night. Then Felicity broke the tense silence by remarking to the Story Girl,
“I told you so!”
The Story Girl made no response. Peter sidled up to her.
“I’m awful sorry,” he said contritely. “I never meant to laugh. It just happened before I could stop myself. It was this way—”
“Don’t you ever speak to me again,” said the Story Girl, in a tone of cold concentrated fury. “Go and be a Methodist, or a Mohammedan, or ANYTHING! I don’t care what you are! You have HUMILIATED me!”
She marched off with Sara Ray, and Peter dropped back to us with a frightened face.
“What is it I’ve done to her?” he whispered. “What does that big word mean?”
“Oh, never mind,” I said crossly—for I felt that Peter HAD disgraced us—“She’s just mad—and no wonder. Whatever made you act so crazy, Peter?”
“Well, I didn’t mean to. And I wanted to laugh twice before that and DIDN’T. It was the Story Girl’s stories made me want to laugh, so I don’t think it’s fair for her to be mad at me. She hadn’t ought to tell me stories about people if she don’t want me to laugh when I see them. When I looked at Samuel Ward I thought of him getting up in meeting one night, and praying that he might be guided in his upsetting and downrising. I remembered the way she took him off, and I wanted to laugh. And then I looked at the pulpit and thought of the story she told about the old Scotch minister who was too fat to get in at the door of it, and had to h’ist himself by his two hands over it, and then whispered to the other minister so that everybody heard him.
“‘This pulpit door was made for speerits’—and I wanted to laugh. And then Mr. Frewen come—and I thought of her story about his sidewhiskers—how when his first wife died of information of the lungs he went courting Celia Ward, and Celia told him she wouldn’t marry him unless he shaved them whiskers off. And he wouldn’t, just to be stubborn. And one day one of them caught fire, when he was burning brush, and burned off, and every one thought he’d HAVE to shave the other off then. But he didn’t and just went round with one whisker till the burned one grew out. And then Celia gave in and took him, because she saw there wasn’t no hope of HIM ever giving in. I just remembered that story, and I thought I could see him, taking up the cents so solemn, with one long whisker; and the laugh just laughed itself before I could help it.”
We all exploded with laughter on the spot, much to the horror of Mrs. Abraham Ward, who was just driving past, and who came up the next day and told Aunt Janet we had “acted scandalous” on the road home from church. We felt ashamed ourselves, because we knew people should conduct themselves decently and in order on Sunday farings-forth. But, as with Peter, it “had laughed itself.”
Even Felicity laughed. Felicity was not nearly so angry with Peter as might have been expected. She even walked beside him and let him carry her Bible. They talked quite confidentially. Perhaps she forgave him the more easily, because he had justified her in her predictions, and thus afforded her a decided triumph over the Story Girl.
“I’m going to keep on going to church,” Peter told her. “I like it. Sermons are more int’resting than I thought, and I like the singing. I wish I could make up my mind whether to be a Presbyterian or a Methodist. I s’pose I might ask the ministers about it.”
“Oh, no, no, don’t do that,” said Felicity in alarm. “Ministers wouldn’t want to be bothered with such questions.”
“Why not? What are ministers for if they ain’t to tell people how to get to heaven?”
“Oh, well, it’s all right for grown-ups to ask them things, of course. But it isn’t respectful for little boys—especially hired boys.”
“I don’t see why. But anyhow, I s’pose it wouldn’t be much use, because if he was a Presbyterian minister he’d say I ought to be a Presbyterian, and if he was a Methodist he’d tell me to be one, too. Look here, Felicity, what IS the difference between them?”
“I—I don’t know,” said Felicity reluctantly. “I s’pose children can’t understand such things. There must be a great deal of difference, of course, if we only knew what it was. Anyhow, I am a Presbyterian, and I’m glad of it.”
We walked on in silence for a time, thinking our own young thoughts. Presently they were scattered by an abrupt and startling question from Peter.
“What does God look like?” he said.
It appeared that none of us had any idea.
“The Story Girl would prob’ly know,” said Cecily.
“I wish I knew,” said Peter gravely. “I wish I could see a picture of God. It would make Him seem lots more real.”
“I’ve often wondered myself what he looks like,” said Felicity in a burst of confidence. Even in Felicity, so it would seem, there were depths of thought unplumbed.
“I’ve seen pictures of Jesus,” said Felix meditatively. “He looks just like a man, only better and kinder. But now that I come to think of it, I’ve never seen a picture of God.”
“Well, if there isn’t one in Toronto it isn’t likely there’s one anywhere,” said Peter disappointedly. “I saw a picture of the devil once,” he added. “It was in a book my Aunt Jane had. She got it for a prize in school. My Aunt Jane was clever.”
“It couldn’t have been a very good book if there was such a picture in it,” said Felicity.
“It was a real good book. My Aunt Jane wouldn’t have a book that wasn’t good,” retorted Peter sulkily.
He refused to discuss the subject further, somewhat to our disappointment. For we had never seen a picture of the person referred to, and we were rather curious regarding it.
“We’ll ask Peter to describe it sometime when he’s in a better humour,” whispered Felix.
Sara Ray having turned in at her own gate, I ran ahead to join the Story Girl, and we walked up the hill together. She had recovered her calmness of mind, but she made no reference to Peter. When we reached our lane and passed under Grandfather King’s big willow the fragrance of the orchard struck us in the face like a wave. We could see the long rows of trees, a white gladness in the moonshine. It seemed to us that there was in the orchard something different from other orchards that we had known. We were too young to analyze the vague sensation. In later years we were to understand that it was because the orchard blossomed not only apple blossoms but all the love, faith, joy, pure happiness and pure sorrow of those who had made it and walked there.
“The orchard doesn’t seem the same place by moonlight at all,” said the Story Girl dreamily. “It’s lovely, but it’s different. When I was very small I used to believe the fairies danced in it on moonlight nights. I would like to believe it now but I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, it’s so hard to believe things you know are not true. It was Uncle Edward who told me there were no such things as fairies. I was just seven. He is a minister, so of course I knew he spoke the truth. It was his duty to tell me, and I do not blame him, but I have never felt quite the same to Uncle Edward since.”
Ah, do we ever “feel quite the same” towards people who destroy our illusions? Shall I ever be able to forgive the brutal creature who first told me there was no such person as Santa Claus? He was a boy, three years older than myself; and he may now, for aught I know, be a most useful and respectable member of society, beloved by his kind. But I know what he must ever seem to me!
We waited at Uncle Alec’s door for the others to come up. Peter was by way of skulking shamefacedly past into the shadows; but the Story Girl’s brief, bitter anger had vanished.
“Wait for me, Peter,” she called.
She went over to him and held out her hand.
“I forgive you,” she said graciously.
Felix and I felt that it would really be worth while to offend her, just to be forgiven in such an adorable voice. Peter eagerly grasped her hand.
“I tell you what, Story Girl, I’m awfully sorry I laughed in church, but you needn’t be afraid I ever will again. No, sir! And I’m going to church and Sunday School regular, and I’ll say my prayers every night. I want to be like the rest of you. And look here! I’ve thought of the way my Aunt Jane used to give medicine to a cat. You mix the powder in lard, and spread it on his paws and his sides and he’ll lick it off, ‘cause a cat can’t stand being messy. If Paddy isn’t any better to-morrow, we’ll do that.”
They went away together hand in hand, children-wise, up the lane of spruces crossed with bars of moonlight. And there was peace over all that fresh and flowery land, and peace in our little hearts.
CHAPTER VI. THE MYSTERY OF GOLDEN MILESTONE
Paddy was smeared with medicated lard the next day, all of us assisting at the rite, although the Story Girl was high priestess. Then, out of regard for mats and cushions, he was kept in durance vile in the granary until he had licked his fur clean. This treatment being repeated every day for a week, Pat recovered his usual health and spirits, and our minds were set at rest to enjoy the next excitement—collecting for a school library fund.
Our teacher thought it would be an excellent thing to have a library in connection with the school; and he suggested that each of the pupils should try to see how much money he or she could raise for the project during the month of June. We might earn it by honest toil, or gather it in by contributions levied on our friends.
The result was a determined rivalry as to which pupil should collect the largest sum; and this rivalry was especially intense in our home coterie.
Our relatives started us with a quarter apiece. For the rest, we knew we must depend on our own exertions. Peter was handicapped at the beginning by the fact that he had no family friend to finance him.
“If my Aunt Jane’d been living she’d have given me something,” he remarked. “And if my father hadn’t run away he might have given me something too. But I’m going to do the best I can anyhow. Your Aunt Olivia says I can have the job of gathering the eggs, and I’m to have one egg out of every dozen to sell for myself.”
Felicity made a similar bargain with her mother. The Story Girl and Cecily were each to be paid ten cents a week for washing dishes in their respective homes. Felix and Dan contracted to keep the gardens free from weeds. I caught brook trout in the westering valley of spruces and sold them for a cent apiece.
Sara Ray was the only unhappy one among us. She could do nothing. She had no relatives in Carlisle except her mother, and her mother did not approve of the school library project, and would not give Sara a cent, or put her in any way of earning one. To Sara, this was humiliation indescribable. She felt herself an outcast and an alien to our busy little circle, where each member counted every day, with miserly delight, his slowly increasing hoard of small cash.
“I’m just going to pray to God to send me some money,” she announced desperately at last.
“I don’t believe that will do any good,” said Dan. “He gives lots of things, but he doesn’t give money, because people can earn that for themselves.”
“I can’t,” said Sara, with passionate defiance. “I think He ought to take that into account.”
“Don’t worry, dear,” said Cecily, who always poured balm. “If you can’t collect any money everybody will know it isn’t your fault.”
“I won’t ever feel like reading a single book in the library if I can’t give something to it,” mourned Sara.
Dan and the girls and I were sitting in a row on Aunt Olivia’s garden fence, watching Felix weed. Felix worked well, although he did not like weeding—“fat boys never do,” Felicity informed him. Felix pretended not to hear her, but I knew he did, because his ears grew red. Felix’s face never blushed, but his ears always gave him away. As for Felicity, she did not say things like that out of malice prepense. It never occurred to her that Felix did not like to be called fat.
“I always feel so sorry for the poor weeds,” said the Story Girl dreamily. “It must be very hard to be rooted up.”
“They shouldn’t grow in the wrong place,” said Felicity mercilessly.
“When weeds go to heaven I suppose they will be flowers,” continued the Story Girl.
“You do think such queer things,” said Felicity.
“A rich man in Toronto has a floral clock in his garden,” I said. “It looks just like the face of a clock, and there are flowers in it that open at every hour, so that you can always tell the time.”
“Oh, I wish we had one here,” exclaimed Cecily.
“What would be the use of it?” asked the Story Girl a little disdainfully. “Nobody ever wants to know the time in a garden.”
I slipped away at this point, suddenly remembering that it was time to take a dose of magic seed. I had bought it from Billy Robinson three days before in school. Billy had assured me that it would make me grow fast.
I was beginning to feel secretly worried because I did not grow. I had overheard Aunt Janet say I was going to be short, like Uncle Alec. Now, I loved Uncle Alec, but I wanted to be taller than he was. So when Billy confided to me, under solemn promise of secrecy, that he had some “magic seed,” which would make boys grow, and would sell me a box of it for ten cents, I jumped at the offer. Billy was taller than any boy of his age in Carlisle, and he assured me it all came from taking magic seed.
“I was a regular runt before I begun,” he said, “and look at me now. I got it from Peg Bowen. She’s a witch, you know. I wouldn’t go near her again for a bushel of magic seed. It was an awful experience. I haven’t much left, but I guess I’ve enough to do me till I’m as tall as I want to be. You must take a pinch of the seed every three hours, walking backward, and you must never tell a soul you’re taking it, or it won’t work. I wouldn’t spare any of it to any one but you.”
I felt deeply grateful to Billy, and sorry that I had not liked him better. Somehow, nobody did like Billy Robinson over and above. But I vowed I WOULD like him in future. I paid him the ten cents cheerfully and took the magic seed as directed, measuring myself carefully every day by a mark on the hall door. I could not see any advance in growth yet, but then I had been taking it only three days.
One day the Story Girl had an inspiration.
“Let us go and ask the Awkward Man and Mr. Campbell for a contribution to the library fund,” she said. “I am sure no one else has asked them, because nobody in Carlisle is related to them. Let us all go, and if they give us anything we’ll divide it equally among us.”
It was a daring proposition, for both Mr. Campbell and the Awkward Man were regarded as eccentric personages; and Mr. Campbell was supposed to detest children. But where the Story Girl led we would follow to the death. The next day being Saturday, we started out in the afternoon.
We took a short cut to Golden Milestone, over a long, green, dewy land full of placid meadows, where sunshine had fallen asleep. At first all was not harmonious. Felicity was in an ill humour; she had wanted to wear her second best dress, but Aunt Janet had decreed that her school clothes were good enough to go “traipsing about in the dust.” Then the Story Girl arrived, arrayed not in any second best but in her very best dress and hat, which her father had sent her from Paris—a dress of soft, crimson silk, and a white leghorn hat encircled by flame-red poppies. Neither Felicity nor Cecily could have worn it; but it became the Story Girl perfectly. In it she was a thing of fire and laughter and glow, as if the singular charm of her temperament were visible and tangible in its vivid colouring and silken texture.
“I shouldn’t think you’d put on your best clothes to go begging for the library in,” said Felicity cuttingly.
“Aunt Olivia says that when you are going to have an important interview with a man you ought to look your very best,” said the Story Girl, giving her skirt a lustrous swirl and enjoying the effect.
“Aunt Olivia spoils you,” said Felicity.
“She doesn’t either, Felicity King! Aunt Olivia is just sweet. She kisses me good-night every night, and your mother NEVER kisses you.”
“My mother doesn’t make kisses so common,” retorted Felicity. “But she gives us pie for dinner every day.”
“So does Aunt Olivia.”
“Yes, but look at the difference in the size of the pieces! And Aunt Olivia only gives you skim milk. My mother gives us cream.”
“Aunt Olivia’s skim milk is as good as your mother’s cream,” cried the Story Girl hotly.
“Oh, girls, don’t fight,” said Cecily, the peacemaker. “It’s such a nice day, and we’ll have a nice time if you don’t spoil it by fighting.”
“We’re NOT fighting,” said Felicity. “And I like Aunt Olivia. But my mother is just as good as Aunt Olivia, there now!”
“Of course she is. Aunt Janet is splendid,” agreed the Story Girl.
They smiled at each other amicably. Felicity and the Story Girl were really quite fond of each other, under the queer surface friction that commonly resulted from their intercourse.
“You said once you knew a story about the Awkward Man,” said Felix. “You might tell it to us.”
“All right,” agreed the Story Girl. “The only trouble is, I don’t know the whole story. But I’ll tell you all I do know. I call it ‘The Mystery of the Golden Milestone.’”
“Oh, I don’t believe that story is true,” said Felicity. “I believe Mrs. Griggs was just romancing. She DOES romance, mother says.”
“Yes; but I don’t believe she could ever have thought of such a thing as this herself, so I believe it must be true,” said the Story Girl. “Anyway, this is the story, boys. You know the Awkward Man has lived alone ever since his mother died, ten years ago. Abel Griggs is his hired man, and he and his wife live in a little house down the Awkward Man’s lane. Mrs. Griggs makes his bread for him, and she cleans up his house now and then. She says he keeps it very neat. But till last fall there was one room she never saw. It was always locked—the west one, looking out over his garden. One day last fall the Awkward Man went to Summerside, and Mrs. Griggs scrubbed his kitchen. Then she went over the whole house and she tried the door of the west room. Mrs. Griggs is a VERY curious woman. Uncle Roger says all women have as much curiosity as is good for them, but Mrs. Griggs has more. She expected to find the door locked as usual. It was NOT locked. She opened it and went in. What do you suppose she found?”
“Something like—like Bluebeard’s chamber?” suggested Felix in a scared tone.
“Oh, no, NO! Nothing like THAT could happen in Prince Edward Island. But if there HAD been beautiful wives hanging up by their hair all round the walls I don’t believe Mrs. Griggs could have been much more astonished. The room had never been furnished in his mother’s time, but now it was ELEGANTLY furnished, though Mrs. Griggs says SHE doesn’t know when or how that furniture was brought there. She says she never saw a room like it in a country farmhouse. It was like a bed-room and sitting-room combined. The floor was covered with a carpet like green velvet. There were fine lace curtains at the windows and beautiful pictures on the walls. There was a little white bed, and a dressing-table, a bookcase full of books, a stand with a work basket on it, and a rocking-chair. There was a woman’s picture above the bookcase. Mrs. Griggs says she thinks it was a coloured photograph, but she didn’t know who it was. Anyway, it was a very pretty girl. But the most amazing thing of all was that A WOMAN’S DRESS was hanging over a chair by the table. Mrs. Griggs says it NEVER belonged to Jasper Dale’s mother, for she thought it a sin to wear anything but print and drugget; and this dress was of PALE BLUE silk. Besides that, there was a pair of blue satin slippers on the floor beside it—HIGH-HEELED slippers. And on the fly-leaves of the books the name ‘Alice’ was written. Now, there never was an Alice in the Dale connection and nobody ever heard of the Awkward Man having a sweetheart. There, isn’t that a lovely mystery?”
“It’s a pretty queer yarn,” said Felix. “I wonder if it is true—and what it means.”
“I intend to find out what it means,” said the Story Girl. “I am going to get acquainted with the Awkward Man sometime, and then I’ll find out his Alice-secret.”
“I don’t see how you’ll ever get acquainted with him,” said Felicity. “He never goes anywhere except to church. He just stays home and reads books when he isn’t working. Mother says he is a perfect hermit.”
“I’ll manage it somehow,” said the Story Girl—and we had no doubt that she would. “But I must wait until I’m a little older, for he wouldn’t tell the secret of the west room to a little girl. And I mustn’t wait till I’m TOO old, for he is frightened of grown-up girls, because he thinks they laugh at his awkwardness. I know I will like him. He has such a nice face, even if he is awkward. He looks like a man you could tell things to.”
“Well, I’d like a man who could move around without falling over his own feet,” said Felicity. “And then the look of him! Uncle Roger says he is long, lank, lean, narrow, and contracted.”
“Things always sound worse than they are when Uncle Roger says them,” said the Story Girl. “Uncle Edward says Jasper Dale is a very clever man and it’s a great pity he wasn’t able to finish his college course. He went to college two years, you know. Then his father died, and he stayed home with his mother because she was very delicate. I call him a hero. I wonder if it is true that he writes poetry. Mrs. Griggs says it is. She says she has seen him writing it in a brown book. She said she couldn’t get near enough to read it, but she knew it was poetry by the shape of it.”
“Very likely. If that blue silk dress story is true, I’d believe ANYTHING of him,” said Felicity.
We were near Golden Milestone now. The house was a big, weather-gray structure, overgrown with vines and climbing roses. Something about the three square windows in the second story gave it an appearance of winking at us in a friendly fashion through its vines—at least, so the Story Girl said; and, indeed, we could see it for ourselves after she had once pointed it out to us.
We did not get into the house, however. We met the Awkward man in his yard, and he gave us a quarter apiece for our library. He did not seem awkward or shy; but then we were only children, and his foot was on his native heath.
He was a tall, slender man, who did not look his forty years, so unwrinkled was his high, white forehead, so clear and lustrous his large, dark-blue eyes, so free from silver threads his rather long black hair. He had large hands and feet, and walked with a slight stoop. I am afraid we stared at him rather rudely while the Story Girl talked to him. But was not an Awkward Man, who was also a hermit and kept blue silk dresses in a locked room, and possibly wrote poetry, a legitimate object of curiosity? I leave it to you.
When we got away we compared notes, and found that we all liked him—and this, although he had said little and had appeared somewhat glad to get rid of us.
“He gave us the money like a gentleman,” said the Story Girl. “I felt he didn’t grudge it. And now for Mr. Campbell. It was on HIS account I put on my red silk. I don’t suppose the Awkward Man noticed it at all, but Mr. Campbell will, or I’m much mistaken.”