The Golden Road E-Book

L.M. Montgomery

• Herausgeber: Skyline
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Once upon a time we all walked on the golden road. It was a fair highway, through the Land of Lost Delight; shadow and sunshine were blessedly mingled, and every turn and dip revealed a fresh charm and a new loveliness to eager hearts and unspoiled eyes. On that road we heard the song of morning stars; we drank in fragrances aerial and sweet as a May mist; we were rich in gossamer fancies and iris hopes; our hearts sought and found the boon of dreams; the years waited beyond and they were very fair; life was a rose-lipped comrade with purple flowers dripping from her fingers. We may long have left the golden road behind, but its memories are the dearest of our eternal possessions; and those who cherish them as such may haply find a pleasure in the pages of this book, whose people are pilgrims on the golden road of youth.

Leseprobe

UUID: 643fcc24-c071-11e7-b496-49fbd00dc2aa

This ebook was created with StreetLib Writehttp://write.streetlib.com

Table of contents

FOREWORD

CHAPTER I. A NEW DEPARTURE

CHAPTER II. A WILL, A WAY AND A WOMAN

CHAPTER III. THE CHRISTMAS HARP

CHAPTER IV. NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

CHAPTER V. THE FIRST NUMBER OF “OUR MAGAZINE”

CHAPTER VI. GREAT-AUNT ELIZA’S VISIT

CHAPTER VII. WE VISIT COUSIN MATTIE’S

CHAPTER VIII. WE VISIT PEG BOWEN

CHAPTER IX. EXTRACTS FROM THE FEBRUARY AND MARCH NUMBERS OF “OUR MAGAZINE”

CHAPTER X. DISAPPEARANCE OF PADDY

CHAPTER XI. THE WITCH’S WISHBONE

CHAPTER XII. FLOWERS O’ MAY

CHAPTER XIII. A SURPRISING ANNOUNCEMENT

CHAPTER XIV. A PRODIGAL RETURNS

CHAPTER XV. THE RAPE OF THE LOCK

CHAPTER XVI. AUNT UNA’S STORY

CHAPTER XVII. AUNT OLIVIA’S WEDDING

CHAPTER XVIII. SARA RAY HELPS OUT

CHAPTER XIX. BY WAY OF THE STARS

CHAPTER XX. EXTRACTS FROM “OUR MAGAZINE”

CHAPTER XXI. PEG BOWEN COMES TO CHURCH

CHAPTER XXII. THE YANKEE STORM

CHAPTER XXIII. A MISSIONARY HEROINE

CHAPTER XXIV. A TANTALIZING REVELATION

CHAPTER XXV. THE LOVE STORY OF THE AWKWARD MAN

CHAPTER XXVI. UNCLE BLAIR COMES HOME

CHAPTER XXVII. THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE PATH TO ARCADY

CHAPTER XXIX. WE LOSE A FRIEND

CHAPTER XXX. PROPHECIES

CHAPTER XXXI. THE LAST NUMBER OF OUR MAGAZINE

CHAPTER XXXII. OUR LAST EVENING TOGETHER

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE STORY GIRL GOES

FOREWORD

Once upon a time we all walked on the golden road. It was a fair highway, through the Land of Lost Delight; shadow and sunshine were blessedly mingled, and every turn and dip revealed a fresh charm and a new loveliness to eager hearts and unspoiled eyes.On that road we heard the song of morning stars; we drank in fragrances aerial and sweet as a May mist; we were rich in gossamer fancies and iris hopes; our hearts sought and found the boon of dreams; the years waited beyond and they were very fair; life was a rose-lipped comrade with purple flowers dripping from her fingers.We may long have left the golden road behind, but its memories are the dearest of our eternal possessions; and those who cherish them as such may haply find a pleasure in the pages of this book, whose people are pilgrims on the golden road of youth.

CHAPTER I. A NEW DEPARTURE

“ I’ve thought of something amusing for the winter,” I said as we drew into a half-circle around the glorious wood-fire in Uncle Alec’s kitchen.It had been a day of wild November wind, closing down into a wet, eerie twilight. Outside, the wind was shrilling at the windows and around the eaves, and the rain was playing on the roof. The old willow at the gate was writhing in the storm and the orchard was a place of weird music, born of all the tears and fears that haunt the halls of night. But little we cared for the gloom and the loneliness of the outside world; we kept them at bay with the light of the fire and the laughter of our young lips.We had been having a splendid game of Blind-Man’s Buff. That is, it had been splendid at first; but later the fun went out of it because we found that Peter was, of malice prepense, allowing himself to be caught too easily, in order that he might have the pleasure of catching Felicity—which he never failed to do, no matter how tightly his eyes were bound. What remarkable goose said that love is blind? Love can see through five folds of closely-woven muffler with ease! “ I’m getting tired,” said Cecily, whose breath was coming rather quickly and whose pale cheeks had bloomed into scarlet. “Let’s sit down and get the Story Girl to tell us a story.”But as we dropped into our places the Story Girl shot a significant glance at me which intimated that this was the psychological moment for introducing the scheme she and I had been secretly developing for some days. It was really the Story Girl’s idea and none of mine. But she had insisted that I should make the suggestion as coming wholly from myself. “ If you don’t, Felicity won’t agree to it. You know yourself, Bev, how contrary she’s been lately over anything I mention. And if she goes against it Peter will too—the ninny!—and it wouldn’t be any fun if we weren’t all in it.” “ What is it?” asked Felicity, drawing her chair slightly away from Peter’s. “ It is this. Let us get up a newspaper of our own—write it all ourselves, and have all we do in it. Don’t you think we can get a lot of fun out of it?”Everyone looked rather blank and amazed, except the Story Girl. She knew what she had to do, and she did it. “ What a silly idea!” she exclaimed, with a contemptuous toss of her long brown curls. “Just as if WE could get up a newspaper!”Felicity fired up, exactly as we had hoped. “ I think it’s a splendid idea,” she said enthusiastically. “I’d like to know why we couldn’t get up as good a newspaper as they have in town! Uncle Roger says the Daily Enterprise has gone to the dogs—all the news it prints is that some old woman has put a shawl on her head and gone across the road to have tea with another old woman. I guess we could do better than that. You needn’t think, Sara Stanley, that nobody but you can do anything.” “ I think it would be great fun,” said Peter decidedly. “My Aunt Jane helped edit a paper when she was at Queen’s Academy, and she said it was very amusing and helped her a great deal.”The Story Girl could hide her delight only by dropping her eyes and frowning. “ Bev wants to be editor,” she said, “and I don’t see how he can, with no experience. Anyhow, it would be a lot of trouble.” “ Some people are so afraid of a little bother,” retorted Felicity. “ I think it would be nice,” said Cecily timidly, “and none of us have any experience of being editors, any more than Bev, so that wouldn’t matter.” “ Will it be printed?” asked Dan. “ Oh, no,” I said. “We can’t have it printed. We’ll just have to write it out—we can buy foolscap from the teacher.” “ I don’t think it will be much of a newspaper if it isn’t printed,” said Dan scornfully. “ It doesn’t matter very much what YOU think,” said Felicity. “ Thank you,” retorted Dan. “ Of course,” said the Story Girl hastily, not wishing to have Dan turned against our project, “if all the rest of you want it I’ll go in for it too. I daresay it would be real good fun, now that I come to think of it. And we’ll keep the copies, and when we become famous they’ll be quite valuable.” “ I wonder if any of us ever will be famous,” said Felix. “ The Story Girl will be,” I said. “ I don’t see how she can be,” said Felicity skeptically. “Why, she’s just one of us.” “ Well, it’s decided, then, that we’re to have a newspaper,” I resumed briskly. “The next thing is to choose a name for it. That’s a very important thing.” “ How often are you going to publish it?” asked Felix. “ Once a month.” “ I thought newspapers came out every day, or every week at least,” said Dan. “ We couldn’t have one every week,” I explained. “It would be too much work.” “ Well, that’s an argument,” admitted Dan. “The less work you can get along with the better, in my opinion. No, Felicity, you needn’t say it. I know exactly what you want to say, so save your breath to cool your porridge. I agree with you that I never work if I can find anything else to do.” “‘ Remember it is harder still To have no work to do,”’quoted Cecily reprovingly. “ I don’t believe THAT,” rejoined Dan. “I’m like the Irishman who said he wished the man who begun work had stayed and finished it.” “ Well, is it decided that Bev is to be editor?” asked Felix. “ Of course it is,” Felicity answered for everybody. “ Then,” said Felix, “I move that the name be The King Monthly Magazine.” “ That sounds fine,” said Peter, hitching his chair a little nearer Felicity’s. “ But,” said Cecily timidly, “that will leave out Peter and the Story Girl and Sara Ray, just as if they didn’t have a share in it. I don’t think that would be fair.” “ You name it then, Cecily,” I suggested. “ Oh!” Cecily threw a deprecating glance at the Story Girl and Felicity. Then, meeting the contempt in the latter’s gaze, she raised her head with unusual spirit. “ I think it would be nice just to call it Our Magazine,” she said. “Then we’d all feel as if we had a share in it.” “ Our Magazine it will be, then,” I said. “And as for having a share in it, you bet we’ll all have a share in it. If I’m to be editor you’ll all have to be sub-editors, and have charge of a department.” “ Oh, I couldn’t,” protested Cecily. “ You must,” I said inexorably. “‘England expects everyone to do his duty.’ That’s our motto—only we’ll put Prince Edward Island in place of England. There must be no shirking. Now, what departments will we have? We must make it as much like a real newspaper as we can.” “ Well, we ought to have an etiquette department, then,” said Felicity. “The Family Guide has one.” “ Of course we’ll have one,” I said, “and Dan will edit it.” “ Dan!” exclaimed Felicity, who had fondly expected to be asked to edit it herself. “ I can run an etiquette column as well as that idiot in the Family Guide, anyhow,” said Dan defiantly. “But you can’t have an etiquette department unless questions are asked. What am I to do if nobody asks any?” “ You must make some up,” said the Story Girl. “Uncle Roger says that is what the Family Guide man does. He says it is impossible that there can be as many hopeless fools in the world as that column would stand for otherwise.” “ We want you to edit the household department, Felicity,” I said, seeing a cloud lowering on that fair lady’s brow. “Nobody can do that as well as you. Felix will edit the jokes and the Information Bureau, and Cecily must be fashion editor. Yes, you must, Sis. It’s easy as wink. And the Story Girl will attend to the personals. They’re very important. Anyone can contribute a personal, but the Story Girl is to see there are some in every issue, even if she has to make them up, like Dan with the etiquette.” “ Bev will run the scrap book department, besides the editorials,” said the Story Girl, seeing that I was too modest to say it myself. “ Aren’t you going to have a story page?” asked Peter. “ We will, if you’ll be fiction and poetry editor,” I said.Peter, in his secret soul, was dismayed, but he would not blanch before Felicity. “ All right,” he said, recklessly. “ We can put anything we like in the scrap book department,” I explained, “but all the other contributions must be original, and all must have the name of the writer signed to them, except the personals. We must all do our best. Our Magazine is to be ‘a feast of reason and flow of soul.”’I felt that I had worked in two quotations with striking effect. The others, with the exception of the Story Girl, looked suitably impressed. “ But,” said Cecily, reproachfully, “haven’t you anything for Sara Ray to do? She’ll feel awful bad if she is left out.”I had forgotten Sara Ray. Nobody, except Cecily, ever did remember Sara Ray unless she was on the spot. But we decided to put her in as advertising manager. That sounded well and really meant very little. “ Well, we’ll go ahead then,” I said, with a sigh of relief that the project had been so easily launched. “We’ll get the first issue out about the first of January. And whatever else we do we mustn’t let Uncle Roger get hold of it. He’d make such fearful fun of it.” “ I hope we can make a success of it,” said Peter moodily. He had been moody ever since he was entrapped into being fiction editor. “ It will be a success if we are determined to succeed,” I said. “‘Where there is a will there is always a way.’” “ That’s just what Ursula Townley said when her father locked her in her room the night she was going to run away with Kenneth MacNair,” said the Story Girl.We pricked up our ears, scenting a story. “ Who were Ursula Townley and Kenneth MacNair?” I asked. “ Kenneth MacNair was a first cousin of the Awkward Man’s grandfather, and Ursula Townley was the belle of the Island in her day. Who do you suppose told me the story—no, read it to me, out of his brown book?” “ Never the Awkward Man himself!” I exclaimed incredulously. “ Yes, he did,” said the Story Girl triumphantly. “I met him one day last week back in the maple woods when I was looking for ferns. He was sitting by the spring, writing in his brown book. He hid it when he saw me and looked real silly; but after I had talked to him awhile I just asked him about it, and told him that the gossips said he wrote poetry in it, and if he did would he tell me, because I was dying to know. He said he wrote a little of everything in it; and then I begged him to read me something out of it, and he read me the story of Ursula and Kenneth.” “ I don’t see how you ever had the face,” said Felicity; and even Cecily looked as if she thought the Story Girl had gone rather far. “ Never mind that,” cried Felix, “but tell us the story. That’s the main thing.” “ I’ll tell it just as the Awkward Man read it, as far as I can,” said the Story Girl, “but I can’t put all his nice poetical touches in, because I can’t remember them all, though he read it over twice for me.”

CHAPTER II. A WILL, A WAY AND A WOMAN

“ One day, over a hundred years ago, Ursula Townley was waiting for Kenneth MacNair in a great beechwood, where brown nuts were falling and an October wind was making the leaves dance on the ground like pixy-people.”

“ What are pixy-people?” demanded Peter, forgetting the Story Girl’s dislike of interruptions.

“ Hush,” whispered Cecily. “That is only one of the Awkward Man’s poetical touches, I guess.”

“ There were cultivated fields between the grove and the dark blue gulf; but far behind and on each side were woods, for Prince Edward Island a hundred years ago was not what it is today. The settlements were few and scattered, and the population so scanty that old Hugh Townley boasted that he knew every man, woman and child in it.

“ Old Hugh was quite a noted man in his day. He was noted for several things—he was rich, he was hospitable, he was proud, he was masterful—and he had for daughter the handsomest young woman in Prince Edward Island.

“ Of course, the young men were not blind to her good looks, and she had so many lovers that all the other girls hated her—”

“ You bet!” said Dan, aside—

“ But the only one who found favour in her eyes was the very last man she should have pitched her fancy on, at least if old Hugh were the judge. Kenneth MacNair was a dark-eyed young sea-captain of the next settlement, and it was to meet him that Ursula stole to the beechwood on that autumn day of crisp wind and ripe sunshine. Old Hugh had forbidden his house to the young man, making such a scene of fury about it that even Ursula’s high spirit quailed. Old Hugh had really nothing against Kenneth himself; but years before either Kenneth or Ursula was born, Kenneth’s father had beaten Hugh Townley in a hotly contested election. Political feeling ran high in those days, and old Hugh had never forgiven the MacNair his victory. The feud between the families dated from that tempest in the provincial teapot, and the surplus of votes on the wrong side was the reason why, thirty years after, Ursula had to meet her lover by stealth if she met him at all.”

“ Was the MacNair a Conservative or a Grit?” asked Felicity.

“ It doesn’t make any difference what he was,” said the Story Girl impatiently. “Even a Tory would be romantic a hundred years ago. Well, Ursula couldn’t see Kenneth very often, for Kenneth lived fifteen miles away and was often absent from home in his vessel. On this particular day it was nearly three months since they had met.

“ The Sunday before, young Sandy MacNair had been in Carlyle church. He had risen at dawn that morning, walked bare-footed for eight miles along the shore, carrying his shoes, hired a harbour fisherman to row him over the channel, and then walked eight miles more to the church at Carlyle, less, it is to be feared, from a zeal for holy things than that he might do an errand for his adored brother, Kenneth. He carried a letter which he contrived to pass into Ursula’s hand in the crowd as the people came out. This letter asked Ursula to meet Kenneth in the beechwood the next afternoon, and so she stole away there when suspicious father and watchful stepmother thought she was spinning in the granary loft.”

“ It was very wrong of her to deceive her parents,” said Felicity primly.

The Story Girl couldn’t deny this, so she evaded the ethical side of the question skilfully.

“ I am not telling you what Ursula Townley ought to have done,” she said loftily. “I am only telling you what she DID do. If you don’t want to hear it you needn’t listen, of course. There wouldn’t be many stories to tell if nobody ever did anything she shouldn’t do.

“ Well, when Kenneth came, the meeting was just what might have been expected between two lovers who had taken their last kiss three months before. So it was a good half-hour before Ursula said,

“‘ Oh, Kenneth, I cannot stay long—I shall be missed. You said in your letter that you had something important to talk of. What is it?’

“‘ My news is this, Ursula. Next Saturday morning my vessel, The Fair Lady, with her captain on board, sails at dawn from Charlottetown harbour, bound for Buenos Ayres. At this season this means a safe and sure return—next May.’

“‘ Kenneth!’ cried Ursula. She turned pale and burst into tears. ‘How can you think of leaving me? Oh, you are cruel!’

“‘ Why, no, sweetheart,’ laughed Kenneth. ‘The captain of The Fair Lady will take his bride with him. We’ll spend our honeymoon on the high seas, Ursula, and the cold Canadian winter under southern palms.’

“‘ You want me to run away with you, Kenneth?’ exclaimed Ursula.

“‘ Indeed, dear girl, there’s nothing else to do!’

“‘ Oh, I cannot!’ she protested. ‘My father would—’

“‘ We’ll not consult him—until afterward. Come, Ursula, you know there’s no other way. We’ve always known it must come to this. YOUR father will never forgive me for MY father. You won’t fail me now. Think of the long parting if you send me away alone on such a voyage. Pluck up your courage, and we’ll let Townleys and MacNairs whistle their mouldy feuds down the wind while we sail southward in The Fair Lady. I have a plan.’

“‘ Let me hear it,’ said Ursula, beginning to get back her breath.

“‘ There is to be a dance at The Springs Friday night. Are you invited, Ursula?’

“‘ Yes.’

“‘ Good. I am not—but I shall be there—in the fir grove behind the house, with two horses. When the dancing is at its height you’ll steal out to meet me. Then ‘tis but a fifteen mile ride to Charlottetown, where a good minister, who is a friend of mine, will be ready to marry us. By the time the dancers have tired their heels you and I will be on our vessel, able to snap our fingers at fate.’

“‘ And what if I do not meet you in the fir grove?’ said Ursula, a little impertinently.

“‘ If you do not, I’ll sail for South America the next morning, and many a long year will pass ere Kenneth MacNair comes home again.’

“ Perhaps Kenneth didn’t mean that, but Ursula thought he did, and it decided her. She agreed to run away with him. Yes, of course that was wrong, too, Felicity. She ought to have said, ‘No, I shall be married respectably from home, and have a wedding and a silk dress and bridesmaids and lots of presents.’ But she didn’t. She wasn’t as prudent as Felicity King would have been.”

“ She was a shameless hussy,” said Felicity, venting on the long-dead Ursula that anger she dare not visit on the Story Girl.

“ Oh, no, Felicity dear, she was just a lass of spirit. I’d have done the same. And when Friday night came she began to dress for the dance with a brave heart. She was to go to The Springs with her uncle and aunt, who were coming on horseback that afternoon, and would then go on to The Springs in old Hugh’s carriage, which was the only one in Carlyle then. They were to leave in time to reach The Springs before nightfall, for the October nights were dark and the wooded roads rough for travelling.

“ When Ursula was ready she looked at herself in the glass with a good deal of satisfaction. Yes, Felicity, she was a vain baggage, that same Ursula, but that kind didn’t all die out a hundred years ago. And she had good reason for being vain. She wore the sea-green silk which had been brought out from England a year before and worn but once—at the Christmas ball at Government House. A fine, stiff, rustling silk it was, and over it shone Ursula’s crimson cheeks and gleaming eyes, and masses of nut brown hair.

“ As she turned from the glass she heard her father’s voice below, loud and angry. Growing very pale, she ran out into the hall. Her father was already half way upstairs, his face red with fury. In the hall below Ursula saw her step-mother, looking troubled and vexed. At the door stood Malcolm Ramsay, a homely neighbour youth who had been courting Ursula in his clumsy way ever since she grew up. Ursula had always hated him.

“‘ Ursula!’ shouted old Hugh, ‘come here and tell this scoundrel he lies. He says that you met Kenneth MacNair in the beechgrove last Tuesday. Tell him he lies! Tell him he lies!’

“ Ursula was no coward. She looked scornfully at poor Ramsay.

“‘ The creature is a spy and a tale-bearer,’ she said, ‘but in this he does not lie. I DID meet Kenneth MacNair last Tuesday.’

“‘ And you dare to tell me this to my face!’ roared old Hugh. ‘Back to your room, girl! Back to your room and stay there! Take off that finery. You go to no more dances. You shall stay in that room until I choose to let you out. No, not a word! I’ll put you there if you don’t go. In with you—ay, and take your knitting with you. Occupy yourself with that this evening instead of kicking your heels at The Springs!’

“ He snatched a roll of gray stocking from the hall table and flung it into Ursula’s room. Ursula knew she would have to follow it, or be picked up and carried in like a naughty child. So she gave the miserable Ramsay a look that made him cringe, and swept into her room with her head in the air. The next moment she heard the door locked behind her. Her first proceeding was to have a cry of anger and shame and disappointment. That did no good, and then she took to marching up and down her room. It did not calm her to hear the rumble of the carriage out of the gate as her uncle and aunt departed.

“‘ Oh, what’s to be done?’ she sobbed. ‘Kenneth will be furious. He will think I have failed him and he will go away hot with anger against me. If I could only send a word of explanation I know he would not leave me. But there seems to be no way at all—though I have heard that there’s always a way when there’s a will. Oh, I shall go mad! If the window were not so high I would jump out of it. But to break my legs or my neck would not mend the matter.’

“ The afternoon passed on. At sunset Ursula heard hoof-beats and ran to the window. Andrew Kinnear of The Springs was tying his horse at the door. He was a dashing young fellow, and a political crony of old Hugh. No doubt he would be at the dance that night. Oh, if she could get speech for but a moment with him!

“ When he had gone into the house, Ursula, turning impatiently from the window, tripped and almost fell over the big ball of homespun yarn her father had flung on the floor. For a moment she gazed at it resentfully—then, with a gay little laugh, she pounced on it. The next moment she was at her table, writing a brief note to Kenneth MacNair. When it was written, Ursula unwound the gray ball to a considerable depth, pinned the note on it, and rewound the yarn over it. A gray ball, the color of the twilight, might escape observation, where a white missive fluttering down from an upper window would surely be seen by someone. Then she softly opened her window and waited.

“ It was dusk when Andrew went away. Fortunately old Hugh did not come to the door with him. As Andrew untied his horse Ursula threw the ball with such good aim that it struck him, as she had meant it to do, squarely on the head. Andrew looked up at her window. She leaned out, put her finger warningly on her lips, pointed to the ball, and nodded. Andrew, looking somewhat puzzled, picked up the ball, sprang to his saddle, and galloped off.

“ So far, well, thought Ursula. But would Andrew understand? Would he have wit enough to think of exploring the big, knobby ball for its delicate secret? And would he be at the dance after all?

“ The evening dragged by. Time had never seemed so long to Ursula. She could not rest or sleep. It was midnight before she heard the patter of a handful of gravel on her window-panes. In a trice she was leaning out. Below in the darkness stood Kenneth MacNair.

“‘ Oh, Kenneth, did you get my letter? And is it safe for you to be here?’

“‘ Safe enough. Your father is in bed. I’ve waited two hours down the road for his light to go out, and an extra half-hour to put him to sleep. The horses are there. Slip down and out, Ursula. We’ll make Charlottetown by dawn yet.’

“‘ That’s easier said than done, lad. I’m locked in. But do you go out behind the new barn and bring the ladder you will find there.’

“ Five minutes later, Miss Ursula, hooded and cloaked, scrambled soundlessly down the ladder, and in five more minutes she and Kenneth were riding along the road.

“‘ There’s a stiff gallop before us, Ursula,’ said Kenneth.

“‘ I would ride to the world’s end with you, Kenneth MacNair,’ said Ursula. Oh, of course she shouldn’t have said anything of the sort, Felicity. But you see people had no etiquette departments in those days. And when the red sunlight of a fair October dawn was shining over the gray sea The Fair Lady sailed out of Charlottetown harbour. On her deck stood Kenneth and Ursula MacNair, and in her hand, as a most precious treasure, the bride carried a ball of gray homespun yarn.”

“ Well,” said Dan, yawning, “I like that kind of a story. Nobody goes and dies in it, that’s one good thing.”

“ Did old Hugh forgive Ursula?” I asked.

“ The story stopped there in the brown book,” said the Story Girl, “but the Awkward Man says he did, after awhile.”

“ It must be rather romantic to be run away with,” remarked Cecily, wistfully.

“ Don’t you get such silly notions in your head, Cecily King,” said Felicity, severely.

CHAPTER III. THE CHRISTMAS HARP

Great was the excitement in the houses of King as Christmas drew nigh. The air was simply charged with secrets. Everybody was very penurious for weeks beforehand and hoards were counted scrutinizingly every day. Mysterious pieces of handiwork were smuggled in and out of sight, and whispered consultations were held, about which nobody thought of being jealous, as might have happened at any other time. Felicity was in her element, for she and her mother were deep in preparations for the day. Cecily and the Story Girl were excluded from these doings with indifference on Aunt Janet’s part and what seemed ostentatious complacency on Felicity’s. Cecily took this to heart and complained to me about it.

“ I’m one of this family just as much as Felicity is,” she said, with as much indignation as Cecily could feel, “and I don’t think she need shut me out of everything. When I wanted to stone the raisins for the mince-meat she said, no, she would do it herself, because Christmas mince-meat was very particular—as if I couldn’t stone raisins right! The airs Felicity puts on about her cooking just make me sick,” concluded Cecily wrathfully.

“ It’s a pity she doesn’t make a mistake in cooking once in a while herself,” I said. “Then maybe she wouldn’t think she knew so much more than other people.”

All parcels that came in the mail from distant friends were taken charge of by Aunts Janet and Olivia, not to be opened until the great day of the feast itself. How slowly the last week passed! But even watched pots will boil in the fulness of time, and finally Christmas day came, gray and dour and frost-bitten without, but full of revelry and rose-red mirth within. Uncle Roger and Aunt Olivia and the Story Girl came over early for the day; and Peter came too, with his shining, morning face, to be hailed with joy, for we had been afraid that Peter would not be able to spend Christmas with us. His mother had wanted him home with her.

“ Of course I ought to go,” Peter had told me mournfully, “but we won’t have turkey for dinner, because ma can’t afford it. And ma always cries on holidays because she says they make her think of father. Of course she can’t help it, but it ain’t cheerful. Aunt Jane wouldn’t have cried. Aunt Jane used to say she never saw the man who was worth spoiling her eyes for. But I guess I’ll have to spend Christmas at home.”

At the last moment, however, a cousin of Mrs. Craig’s in Charlottetown invited her for Christmas, and Peter, being given his choice of going or staying, joyfully elected to stay. So we were all together, except Sara Ray, who had been invited but whose mother wouldn’t let her come.

“ Sara Ray’s mother is a nuisance,” snapped the Story Girl. “She just lives to make that poor child miserable, and she won’t let her go to the party tonight, either.”

“ It is just breaking Sara’s heart that she can’t,” said Cecily compassionately. “I’m almost afraid I won’t enjoy myself for thinking of her, home there alone, most likely reading the Bible, while we’re at the party.”

“ She might be worse occupied than reading the Bible,” said Felicity rebukingly.

“ But Mrs. Ray makes her read it as a punishment,” protested Cecily. “Whenever Sara cries to go anywhere—and of course she’ll cry tonight—Mrs. Ray makes her read seven chapters in the Bible. I wouldn’t think that would make her very fond of it. And I’ll not be able to talk the party over with Sara afterwards—and that’s half the fun gone.”

“ You can tell her all about it,” comforted Felix.

“ Telling isn’t a bit like talking it over,” retorted Cecily. “It’s too one-sided.”

We had an exciting time opening our presents. Some of us had more than others, but we all received enough to make us feel comfortably that we were not unduly neglected in the matter. The contents of the box which the Story Girl’s father had sent her from Paris made our eyes stick out. It was full of beautiful things, among them another red silk dress—not the bright, flame-hued tint of her old one, but a rich, dark crimson, with the most distracting flounces and bows and ruffles; and with it were little red satin slippers with gold buckles, and heels that made Aunt Janet hold up her hands in horror. Felicity remarked scornfully that she would have thought the Story Girl would get tired wearing red so much, and even Cecily commented apart to me that she thought when you got so many things all at once you didn’t appreciate them as much as when you only got a few.

“ I’d never get tired of red,” said the Story Girl. “I just love it—it’s so rich and glowing. When I’m dressed in red I always feel ever so much cleverer than in any other colour. Thoughts just crowd into my brain one after the other. Oh, you darling dress—you dear, sheeny, red-rosy, glistening, silky thing!”

She flung it over her shoulder and danced around the kitchen.

“ Don’t be silly, Sara,” said Aunt Janet, a little stimy. She was a good soul, that Aunt Janet, and had a kind, loving heart in her ample bosom. But I fancy there were times when she thought it rather hard that the daughter of a roving adventurer—as she considered him—like Blair Stanley should disport herself in silk dresses, while her own daughters must go clad in gingham and muslin—for those were the days when a feminine creature got one silk dress in her lifetime, and seldom more than one.

The Story Girl also got a present from the Awkward Man—a little, shabby, worn volume with a great many marks on the leaves.

“ Why, it isn’t new—it’s an old book!” exclaimed Felicity. “I didn’t think the Awkward Man was mean, whatever else he was.”

“ Oh, you don’t understand, Felicity,” said the Story Girl patiently. “And I don’t suppose I can make you understand. But I’ll try. I’d ten times rather have this than a new book. It’s one of his own, don’t you see—one that he has read a hundred times and loved and made a friend of. A new book, just out of a shop, wouldn’t be the same thing at all. It wouldn’t MEAN anything. I consider it a great compliment that he has given me this book. I’m prouder of it than of anything else I’ve got.”

“ Well, you’re welcome to it,” said Felicity. “I don’t understand and I don’t want to. I wouldn’t give anybody a Christmas present that wasn’t new, and I wouldn’t thank anybody who gave me one.”

Peter was in the seventh heaven because Felicity had given him a present—and, moreover, one that she had made herself. It was a bookmark of perforated cardboard, with a gorgeous red and yellow worsted goblet worked on it, and below, in green letters, the solemn warning, “Touch Not The Cup.” As Peter was not addicted to habits of intemperance, not even to looking on dandelion wine when it was pale yellow, we did not exactly see why Felicity should have selected such a device. But Peter was perfectly satisfied, so nobody cast any blight on his happiness by carping criticism. Later on Felicity told me she had worked the bookmark for him because his father used to drink before he ran away.

“ I thought Peter ought to be warned in time,” she said.

Even Pat had a ribbon of blue, which he clawed off and lost half an hour after it was tied on him. Pat did not care for vain adornments of the body.

We had a glorious Christmas dinner, fit for the halls of Lucullus, and ate far more than was good for us, none daring to make us afraid on that one day of the year. And in the evening—oh, rapture and delight!—we went to Kitty Marr’s party.

It was a fine December evening; the sharp air of morning had mellowed until it was as mild as autumn. There had been no snow, and the long fields, sloping down from the homestead, were brown and mellow. A weird, dreamy stillness had fallen on the purple earth, the dark fir woods, the valley rims, the sere meadows. Nature seemed to have folded satisfied hands to rest, knowing that her long wintry slumber was coming upon her.

At first, when the invitations to the party had come, Aunt Janet had said we could not go; but Uncle Alec interceded in our favour, perhaps influenced thereto by Cecily’s wistful eyes. If Uncle Alec had a favourite among his children it was Cecily, and he had grown even more indulgent towards her of late. Now and then I saw him looking at her intently, and, following his eyes and thought, I had, somehow, seen that Cecily was paler and thinner than she had been in the summer, and that her soft eyes seemed larger, and that over her little face in moments of repose there was a certain languor and weariness that made it very sweet and pathetic. And I heard him tell Aunt Janet that he did not like to see the child getting so much the look of her Aunt Felicity.

“ Cecily is perfectly well,” said Aunt Janet sharply. “She’s only growing very fast. Don’t be foolish, Alec.”

But after that Cecily had cups of cream where the rest of us got only milk; and Aunt Janet was very particular to see that she had her rubbers on whenever she went out.

On this merry Christmas evening, however, no fears or dim foreshadowings of any coming event clouded our hearts or faces. Cecily looked brighter and prettier than I had ever seen her, with her softly shining eyes and the nut brown gloss of her hair. Felicity was too beautiful for words; and even the Story Girl, between excitement and the crimson silk array, blossomed out with a charm and allurement more potent than any regular loveliness—and this in spite of the fact that Aunt Olivia had tabooed the red satin slippers and mercilessly decreed that stout shoes should be worn.

“ I know just how you feel about it, you daughter of Eve,” she said, with gay sympathy, “but December roads are damp, and if you are going to walk to Marrs’ you are not going to do it in those frivolous Parisian concoctions, even with overboots on; so be brave, dear heart, and show that you have a soul above little red satin shoes.”

“ Anyhow,” said Uncle Roger, “that red silk dress will break the hearts of all the feminine small fry at the party. You’d break their spirits, too, if you wore the slippers. Don’t do it, Sara. Leave them one wee loophole of enjoyment.”

“ What does Uncle Roger mean?” whispered Felicity.

“ He means you girls are all dying of jealousy because of the Story Girl’s dress,” said Dan.

“ I am not of a jealous disposition,” said Felicity loftily, “and she’s entirely welcome to the dress—with a complexion like that.”

But we enjoyed that party hugely, every one of us. And we enjoyed the walk home afterwards, through dim, enshadowed fields where silvery star-beams lay, while Orion trod his stately march above us, and a red moon climbed up the black horizon’s rim. A brook went with us part of the way, singing to us through the dark—a gay, irresponsible vagabond of valley and wilderness.

Felicity and Peter walked not with us. Peter’s cup must surely have brimmed over that Christmas night. When we left the Marr house, he had boldly said to Felicity, “May I see you home?” And Felicity, much to our amazement, had taken his arm and marched off with him. The primness of her was indescribable, and was not at all ruffled by Dan’s hoot of derision. As for me, I was consumed by a secret and burning desire to ask the Story Girl if I might see HER home; but I could not screw my courage to the sticking point. How I envied Peter his easy, insouciant manner! I could not emulate him, so Dan and Felix and Cecily and the Story Girl and I all walked hand in hand, huddling a little closer together as we went through James Frewen’s woods—for there are strange harps in a fir grove, and who shall say what fingers sweep them? Mighty and sonorous was the music above our heads as the winds of the night stirred the great boughs tossing athwart the starlit sky. Perhaps it was that aeolian harmony which recalled to the Story Girl a legend of elder days.

“ I read such a pretty story in one of Aunt Olivia’s books last night,” she said. “It was called ‘The Christmas Harp.’ Would you like to hear it? It seems to me it would just suit this part of the road.”

“ There isn’t anything about—about ghosts in it, is there?” said Cecily timidly.

“ Oh, no, I wouldn’t tell a ghost story here for anything. I’d frighten myself too much. This story is about one of the shepherds who saw the angels on the first Christmas night. He was just a youth, and he loved music with all his heart, and he longed to be able to express the melody that was in his soul. But he could not; he had a harp and he often tried to play on it; but his clumsy fingers only made such discord that his companions laughed at him and mocked him, and called him a madman because he would not give it up, but would rather sit apart by himself, with his arms about his harp, looking up into the sky, while they gathered around their fire and told tales to wile away their long night vigils as they watched their sheep on the hills. But to him the thoughts that came out of the great silence were far sweeter than their mirth; and he never gave up the hope, which sometimes left his lips as a prayer, that some day he might be able to express those thoughts in music to the tired, weary, forgetful world. On the first Christmas night he was out with his fellow shepherds on the hills. It was chill and dark, and all, except him, were glad to gather around the fire. He sat, as usual, by himself, with his harp on his knee and a great longing in his heart. And there came a marvellous light in the sky and over the hills, as if the darkness of the night had suddenly blossomed into a wonderful meadow of flowery flame; and all the shepherds saw the angels and heard them sing. And as they sang, the harp that the young shepherd held began to play softly by itself, and as he listened to it he realized that it was playing the same music that the angels sang and that all his secret longings and aspirations and strivings were expressed in it. From that night, whenever he took the harp in his hands, it played the same music; and he wandered all over the world carrying it; wherever the sound of its music was heard hate and discord fled away and peace and good-will reigned. No one who heard it could think an evil thought; no one could feel hopeless or despairing or bitter or angry. When a man had once heard that music it entered into his soul and heart and life and became a part of him for ever. Years went by; the shepherd grew old and bent and feeble; but still he roamed over land and sea, that his harp might carry the message of the Christmas night and the angel song to all mankind. At last his strength failed him and he fell by the wayside in the darkness; but his harp played as his spirit passed; and it seemed to him that a Shining One stood by him, with wonderful starry eyes, and said to him, ‘Lo, the music thy harp has played for so many years has been but the echo of the love and sympathy and purity and beauty in thine own soul; and if at any time in the wanderings thou hadst opened the door of that soul to evil or envy or selfishness thy harp would have ceased to play. Now thy life is ended; but what thou hast given to mankind has no end; and as long as the world lasts, so long will the heavenly music of the Christmas harp ring in the ears of men.’ When the sun rose the old shepherd lay dead by the roadside, with a smile on his face; and in his hands was a harp with all its strings broken.”

We left the fir woods as the tale was ended, and on the opposite hill was home. A dim light in the kitchen window betokened that Aunt Janet had no idea of going to bed until all her young fry were safely housed [...]