In an August orchard six children and a grown-up were sitting around the pulpit stone. The grown-up was Miss Reade, who had been up to give the girls their music lesson and had consented to stay to tea, much to the rapture of the said girls, who continued to worship her with unabated and romantic ardour. To us, over the golden grasses, came the Story Girl, carrying in her hand a single large poppy, like a blood-red chalice filled with the wine of August wizardry. She proffered it to Miss Reade and, as the latter took it into her singularly slender, beautiful hand, I saw a ring on her third finger. I noticed it, because I had heard the girls say that Miss Reade never wore rings, not liking them. It was not a new ring; it was handsome, but of an old-fashioned design and setting, with a glint of diamonds about a central sapphire. Later on, when Miss Reade had gone, I asked the Story Girl if she had noticed the ring. She nodded, but seemed disinclined to say more about it.
“Look here, Sara,” I said, “there’s something about that ring—something you know.”
“I told you once there was a story growing but you would have to wait until it was fully grown,” she answered.
“Is Miss Reade going to marry anybody—anybody we know?” I persisted.
“Curiosity killed a cat,” observed the Story Girl coolly. “Miss Reade hasn’t told me that she was going to marry anybody. You will find out all that is good for you to know in due time.”
When the Story Girl put on grown-up airs I did not like her so well, and I dropped the subject with a dignity that seemed to amuse her mightily.
She had been away for a week, visiting cousins in Markdale, and she had come home with a new treasure-trove of stories, most of which she had heard from the old sailors of Markdale Harbour. She had promised that morning to tell us of “the most tragic event that had ever been known on the north shore,” and we now reminded her of her promise.
“Some call it the ‘Yankee Storm,’ and others the ‘American Gale,’” she began, sitting down by Miss Reade and beaming, because the latter put her arm around her waist. “It happened nearly forty years ago, in October of 1851. Old Mr. Coles at the Harbour told me all about it. He was a young man then and he says he can never forget that dreadful time. You know in those days hundreds of American fishing schooners used to come down to the Gulf every summer to fish mackerel. On one beautiful Saturday night in this October of 1851, more than one hundred of these vessels could be counted from Markdale Capes. By Monday night more than seventy of them had been destroyed. Those which had escaped were mostly those which went into harbour Saturday night, to keep Sunday. Mr. Coles says the rest stayed outside and fished all day Sunday, same as through the week, and HE says the storm was a judgment on them for doing it. But he admits that even some of them got into harbour later on and escaped, so it’s hard to know what to think. But it is certain that on Sunday night there came up a sudden and terrible storm—the worst, Mr. Coles says, that has ever been known on the north shore. It lasted for two days and scores of vessels were driven ashore and completely wrecked. The crews of most of the vessels that went ashore on the sand beaches were saved, but those that struck on the rocks went to pieces and all hands were lost. For weeks after the storm the north shore was strewn with the bodies of drowned men. Think of it! Many of them were unknown and unrecognizable, and they were buried in Markdale graveyard. Mr. Coles says the schoolmaster who was in Markdale then wrote a poem on the storm and Mr. Coles recited the first two verses to me.
“‘Here are the fishers’ hillside graves,The church beside, the woods around,Below, the hollow moaning wavesWhere the poor fishermen were drowned.“‘A sudden tempest the blue welkin tore,The seamen tossed and torn apartRolled with the seaweed to the shoreWhile landsmen gazed with aching heart.’
“Mr. Coles couldn’t remember any more of it. But the saddest of all the stories of the Yankee Storm was the one about the Franklin Dexter. The Franklin Dexter went ashore on the Markdale Capes and all on board perished, the Captain and three of his brothers among them. These four young men were the sons of an old man who lived in Portland, Maine, and when he heard what had happened he came right down to the Island to see if he could find their bodies. They had all come ashore and had been buried in Markdale graveyard; but he was determined to take them up and carry them home for burial. He said he had promised their mother to take her boys home to her and he must do it. So they were taken up and put on board a sailing vessel at Markdale Harbour to be taken back to Maine, while the father himself went home on a passenger steamer. The name of the sailing vessel was the Seth Hall, and the captain’s name was Seth Hall, too. Captain Hall was a dreadfully profane man and used to swear blood-curdling oaths. On the night he sailed out of Markdale Harbour the old sailors warned him that a storm was brewing and that it would catch him if he did not wait until it was over. The captain had become very impatient because of several delays he had already met with, and he was in a furious temper. He swore a wicked oath that he would sail out of Markdale Harbour that night and ‘God Almighty Himself shouldn’t catch him.’ He did sail out of the harbour; and the storm did catch him, and the Seth Hall went down with all hands, the dead and the living finding a watery grave together. So the poor old mother up in Maine never had her boys brought back to her after all. Mr. Coles says it seems as if it were foreordained that they should not rest in a grave, but should lie beneath the waves until the day when the sea gives up its dead.”
“‘They sleep as well beneath that purple tideAs others under turf,’”
quoted Miss Reade softly. “I am very thankful,” she added, “that I am not one of those whose dear ones ‘go down to the sea in ships.’ It seems to me that they have treble their share of this world’s heartache.”
“Uncle Stephen was a sailor and he was drowned,” said Felicity, “and they say it broke Grandmother King’s heart. I don’t see why people can’t be contented on dry land.”
Cecily’s tears had been dropping on the autograph quilt square she was faithfully embroidering. She had been diligently collecting names for it ever since the preceding autumn and had a goodly number; but Kitty Marr had one more and this was certainly a fly in Cecily’s ointment.
“Besides, one I’ve got isn’t paid for—Peg Bowen’s,” she lamented, “and I don’t suppose it ever will be, for I’ll never dare to ask her for it.”
“I wouldn’t put it on at all,” said Felicity.
“Oh, I don’t dare not to. She’d be sure to find out I didn’t and then she’d be very angry. I wish I could get just one more name and then I’d be contented. But I don’t know of a single person who hasn’t been asked already.”
“Except Mr. Campbell,” said Dan.
“Oh, of course nobody would ask Mr. Campbell. We all know it would be of no use. He doesn’t believe in missions at all—in fact, he says he detests the very mention of missions—and he never gives one cent to them.”
“All the same, I think he ought to be asked, so that he wouldn’t have the excuse that nobody DID ask him,” declared Dan.
“Do you really think so, Dan?” asked Cecily earnestly.
“Sure,” said Dan, solemnly. Dan liked to tease even Cecily a wee bit now and then.
Cecily relapsed into anxious thought, and care sat visibly on her brow for the rest of the day. Next morning she came to me and said:
“Bev, would you like to go for a walk with me this afternoon?”
“Of course,” I replied. “Any particular where?”
“I’m going to see Mr. Campbell and ask him for his name for my square,” said Cecily resolutely. “I don’t suppose it will do any good. He wouldn’t give anything to the library last summer, you remember, till the Story Girl told him that story about his grandmother. She won’t go with me this time—I don’t know why. I can’t tell a story and I’m frightened to death just to think of going to him. But I believe it is my duty; and besides I would love to get as many names on my square as Kitty Marr has. So if you’ll go with me we’ll go this afternoon. I simply COULDN’T go alone.”
Accordingly, that afternoon we bearded the lion in his den. The road we took was a beautiful one, for we went “cross lots,” and we enjoyed it, in spite of the fact that we did not expect the interview with Mr. Campbell to be a very pleasant one. To be sure, he had been quite civil on the occasion of our last call upon him, but the Story Girl had been with us then and had beguiled him into good-humour and generosity by the magic of her voice and personality. We had no such ally now, and Mr. Campbell was known to be virulently opposed to missions in any shape or form.
“I don’t know whether it would have been any better if I could have put on my good clothes,” said Cecily, with a rueful glance at her print dress, which, though neat and clean, was undeniably faded and RATHER short and tight. “The Story Girl said it would, and I wanted to, but mother wouldn’t let me. She said it was all nonsense, and Mr. Campbell would never notice what I had on.”
“It’s my opinion that Mr. Campbell notices a good deal more than you’d think for,” I said sagely.
“Well, I wish our call was over,” sighed Cecily. “I can’t tell you how I dread it.”
“Now, see here, Sis,” I said cheerfully, “let’s not think about it till we get there. It’ll only spoil our walk and do no good. Let’s just forget it and enjoy ourselves.”
“I’ll try,” agreed Cecily, “but it’s ever so much easier to preach than to practise.”
Our way lay first over a hill top, gallantly plumed with golden rod, where cloud shadows drifted over us like a gypsying crew. Carlisle, in all its ripely tinted length and breadth, lay below us, basking in the August sunshine, that spilled over the brim of the valley to the far-off Markdale Harbour, cupped in its harvest-golden hills.
Then came a little valley overgrown with the pale purple bloom of thistles and elusively haunted with their perfume. You say that thistles have no perfume? Go you to a brook hollow where they grow some late summer twilight at dewfall; and on the still air that rises suddenly to meet you will come a waft of faint, aromatic fragrance, wondrously sweet and evasive, the distillation of that despised thistle bloom.
Beyond this the path wound through a forest of fir, where a wood wind wove its murmurous spell and a wood brook dimpled pellucidly among the shadows—the dear, companionable, elfin shadows—that lurked under the low growing boughs. Along the edges of that winding path grew banks of velvet green moss, starred with clusters of pigeon berries. Pigeon berries are not to be eaten. They are woolly, tasteless things. But they are to be looked at in their glowing scarlet. They are the jewels with which the forest of cone-bearers loves to deck its brown breast. Cecily gathered some and pinned them on hers, but they did not become her. I thought how witching the Story Girl’s brown curls would have looked twined with those brilliant clusters. Perhaps Cecily was thinking of it, too, for she presently said,
“Bev, don’t you think the Story Girl is changing somehow?”
“There are times—just times—when she seems to belong more among the grown-ups than among us,” I said, reluctantly, “especially when she puts on her bridesmaid dress.”
“Well, she’s the oldest of us, and when you come to think of it, she’s fifteen,—that’s almost grown-up,” sighed Cecily. Then she added, with sudden vehemence, “I hate the thought of any of us growing up. Felicity says she just longs to be grown-up, but I don’t, not a bit. I wish I could just stay a little girl for ever—and have you and Felix and all the others for playmates right along. I don’t know how it is—but whenever I think of being grown-up I seem to feel tired.”
Something about Cecily’s speech—or the wistful look that had crept into her sweet brown eyes—made me feel vaguely uncomfortable; I was glad that we were at the end of our journey, with Mr. Campbell’s big house before us, and his dog sitting gravely at the veranda steps.
“Oh, dear,” said Cecily, with a shiver, “I’d been hoping that dog wouldn’t be around.”
“He never bites,” I assured her.
“Perhaps he doesn’t, but he always looks as if he was going to,” rejoined Cecily.
The dog continued to look, and, as we edged gingerly past him and up the veranda steps, he turned his head and kept on looking. What with Mr. Campbell before us and the dog behind, Cecily was trembling with nervousness; but perhaps it was as well that the dour brute was there, else I verily believe she would have turned and fled shamelessly when we heard steps in the hall.
It was Mr. Campbell’s housekeeper who came to the door, however; she ushered us pleasantly into the sitting-room where Mr. Campbell was reading. He laid down his book with a slight frown and said nothing at all in response to our timid “good afternoon.” But after we had sat for a few minutes in wretched silence, wishing ourselves a thousand miles away, he said, with a chuckle,
“Well, is it the school library again?”
Cecily had remarked as we were coming that what she dreaded most of all was introducing the subject; but Mr. Campbell had given her a splendid opening, and she plunged wildly in at once, rattling her explanation off nervously with trembling voice and flushed cheeks.
“No, it’s our Mission Band autograph quilt, Mr. Campbell. There are to be as many squares in it as there are members in the Band. Each one has a square and is collecting names for it. If you want to have your name on the quilt you pay five cents, and if you want to have it right in the round spot in the middle of the square you must pay ten cents. Then when we have got all the names we can we will embroider them on the squares. The money is to go to the little girl our Band is supporting in Korea. I heard that nobody had asked you, so I thought perhaps you would give me your name for my square.”
Mr. Campbell drew his black brows together in a scowl.
“Stuff and nonsense!” he exclaimed angrily. “I don’t believe in Foreign Missions—don’t believe in them at all. I never give a cent to them.”
“Five cents isn’t a very large sum,” said Cecily earnestly.
Mr. Campbell’s scowl disappeared and he laughed.
“It wouldn’t break me,” he admitted, “but it’s the principle of the thing. And as for that Mission Band of yours, if it wasn’t for the fun you get out of it, catch one of you belonging. You don’t really care a rap more for the heathen than I do.”
“Oh, we do,” protested Cecily. “We do think of all the poor little children in Korea, and we like to think we are helping them, if it’s ever so little. We ARE in earnest, Mr. Campbell—indeed we are.”
“Don’t believe it—don’t believe a word of it,” said Mr. Campbell impolitely. “You’ll do things that are nice and interesting. You’ll get up concerts, and chase people about for autographs and give money your parents give you and that doesn’t cost you either time or labour. But you wouldn’t do anything you disliked for the heathen children—you wouldn’t make any real sacrifice for them—catch you!”
“Indeed we would,” cried Cecily, forgetting her timidity in her zeal. “I just wish I had a chance to prove it to you.”
“You do, eh? Come, now, I’ll take you at your word. I’ll test you. Tomorrow is Communion Sunday and the church will be full of folks and they’ll all have their best clothes on. If you go to church tomorrow in the very costume you have on at present, without telling anyone why you do so, until it is all over, I’ll give you—why, I vow I’ll give you five dollars for that quilt of yours.”
Poor Cecily! To go to church in a faded print dress, with a shabby little old sun-hat and worn shoes! It was very cruel of Mr. Campbell.
“I—I don’t think mother would let me,” she faltered.
Her tormentor smiled grimly.
“It’s not hard to find some excuse,” he said sarcastically.
Cecily crimsoned and sat up facing Mr. Campbell spunkily.
“It’s NOT an excuse,” she said. “If mother will let me go to church like this I’ll go. But I’ll have to tell HER why, Mr. Campbell, because I’m certain she’d never let me if I didn’t.”
“Oh, you can tell all your own family,” said Mr. Campbell, “but remember, none of them must tell it outside until Sunday is over. If they do, I’ll be sure to find it out and then our bargain is off. If I see you in church tomorrow, dressed as you are now, I’ll give you my name and five dollars. But I won’t see you. You’ll shrink when you’ve had time to think it over.”
“I sha’n’t,” said Cecily resolutely.
“Well, we’ll see. And now come out to the barn with me. I’ve got the prettiest little drove of calves out there you ever saw. I want you to see them.”
Mr. Campbell took us all over his barns and was very affable. He had beautiful horses, cows and sheep, and I enjoyed seeing them. I don’t think Cecily did, however. She was very quiet and even Mr. Campbell’s handsome new span of dappled grays failed to arouse any enthusiasm in her. She was already in bitter anticipation living over the martyrdom of the morrow. On the way home she asked me seriously if I thought Mr. Campbell would go to heaven when he died.
“Of course he will,” I said. “Isn’t he a member of the church?”
“Oh, yes, but I can’t imagine him fitting into heaven. You know he isn’t really fond of anything but live stock.”
“He’s fond of teasing people, I guess,” I responded. “Are you really going to church to-morrow in that dress, Sis?”
“If mother’ll let me I’ll have to,” said poor Cecily. “I won’t let Mr. Campbell triumph over me. And I DO want to have as many names as Kitty has. And I DO want to help the poor little Korean children. But it will be simply dreadful. I don’t know whether I hope mother will or not.”
I did not believe she would, but Aunt Janet sometimes could be depended on for the unexpected. She laughed and told Cecily she could please herself. Felicity was in a rage over it, and declared SHE wouldn’t go to church if Cecily went in such a rig. Dan sarcastically inquired if all she went to church for was to show off her fine clothes and look at other people’s; then they quarrelled and didn’t speak to each other for two days, much to Cecily’s distress.
I suspect poor Sis wished devoutly that it might rain the next day; but it was gloriously fine. We were all waiting in the orchard for the Story Girl who had not begun to dress for church until Cecily and Felicity were ready. Felicity was her prettiest in flower-trimmed hat, crisp muslin, floating ribbons and trim black slippers. Poor Cecily stood beside her mute and pale, in her faded school garb and heavy copper-toed boots. But her face, if pale, was very determined. Cecily, having put her hand to the plough, was not of those who turn back.
“You do look just awful,” said Felicity. “I don’t care—I’m going to sit in Uncle James’ pew. I WON’T sit with you. There will be so many strangers there, and all the Markdale people, and what will they think of you? Some of them will never know the reason, either.”
“I wish the Story Girl would hurry,” was all poor Cecily said. “We’re going to be late. It wouldn’t have been quite so hard if I could have got there before anyone and slipped quietly into our pew.”
“Here she comes at last,” said Dan. “Why—what’s she got on?”
The Story Girl joined us with a quizzical smile on her face. Dan whistled. Cecily’s pale cheeks flushed with understanding and gratitude. The Story Girl wore her school print dress and hat also, and was gloveless and heavy shod.
“You’re not going to have to go through this all alone, Cecily,” she said.
“Oh, it won’t be half so hard now,” said Cecily, with a long breath of relief.
I fancy it was hard enough even then. The Story Girl did not care a whit, but Cecily rather squirmed under the curious glances that were cast at her. She afterwards told me that she really did not think she could have endured it if she had been alone.
Mr. Campbell met us under the elms in the churchyard, with a twinkle in his eye.
“Well, you did it, Miss,” he said to Cecily, “but you should have been alone. That was what I meant. I suppose you think you’ve cheated me nicely.”
“No, she doesn’t,” spoke up the Story Girl undauntedly. “She was all dressed and ready to come before she knew I was going to dress the same way. So she kept her bargain faithfully, Mr. Campbell, and I think you were cruel to make her do it.”
“You do, eh? Well, well, I hope you’ll forgive me. I didn’t think she’d do it—I was sure feminine vanity would win the day over missionary zeal. It seems it didn’t—though how much was pure missionary zeal and how much just plain King spunk I’m doubtful. I’ll keep my promise, Miss. You shall have your five dollars, and mind you put my name in the round space. No five-cent corners for me.”
“I shall have something to tell you in the orchard this evening,” said the Story Girl at breakfast one morning. Her eyes were very bright and excited. She looked as if she had not slept a great deal. She had spent the previous evening with Miss Reade and had not returned until the rest of us were in bed. Miss Reade had finished giving music lessons and was going home in a few days. Cecily and Felicity were in despair over this and mourned as those without comfort. But the Story Girl, who had been even more devoted to Miss Reade than either of them, had not, as I noticed, expressed any regret and seemed to be very cheerful over the whole matter.
“Why can’t you tell it now?” asked Felicity.
“Because the evening is the nicest time to tell things in. I only mentioned it now so that you would have something interesting to look forward to all day.”
“Is it about Miss Reade?” asked Cecily.
“Never mind.”
“I’ll bet she’s going to be married,” I exclaimed, remembering the ring.
“Is she?” cried Felicity and Cecily together.
The Story Girl threw an annoyed glance at me. She did not like to have her dramatic announcements forestalled.
“I don’t say that it is about Miss Reade or that it isn’t. You must just wait till the evening.”
“I wonder what it is,” speculated Cecily, as the Story Girl left the room.
“I don’t believe it’s much of anything,” said Felicity, beginning to clear away the breakfast dishes. “The Story Girl always likes to make so much out of so little. Anyhow, I don’t believe Miss Reade is going to be married. She hasn’t any beaus around here and Mrs. Armstrong says she’s sure she doesn’t correspond with anybody. Besides, if she was she wouldn’t be likely to tell the Story Girl.”
“Oh, she might. They’re such friends, you know,” said Cecily.
“Miss Reade is no better friends with her than she is with me and you,” retorted Felicity.
“No, but sometimes it seems to me that she’s a different kind of friend with the Story Girl than she is with me and you,” reflected Cecily. “I can’t just explain what I mean.”
“No wonder. Such nonsense,” sniffed Felicity. “It’s only some girl’s secret, anyway,” said Dan, loftily. “I don’t feel much interest in it.”
But he was on hand with the rest of us that evening, interest or no interest, in Uncle Stephen’s Walk, where the ripening apples were beginning to glow like jewels among the boughs.
“Now, are you going to tell us your news?” asked Felicity impatiently.
“Miss Reade IS going to be married,” said the Story Girl. “She told me so last night. She is going to be married in a fortnight’s time.”
“Who to?” exclaimed the girls.
“To”—the Story Girl threw a defiant glance at me as if to say, “You can’t spoil the surprise of THIS, anyway,”—“to—the Awkward Man.”
For a few moments amazement literally held us dumb.
“You’re not in earnest, Sara Stanley?” gasped Felicity at last.
“Indeed I am. I thought you’d be astonished. But I wasn’t. I’ve suspected it all summer, from little things I’ve noticed. Don’t you remember that evening last spring when I went a piece with Miss Reade and told you when I came back that a story was growing? I guessed it from the way the Awkward Man looked at her when I stopped to speak to him over his garden fence.”
“But—the Awkward Man!” said Felicity helplessly. “It doesn’t seem possible. Did Miss Reade tell you HERSELF?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose it must be true then. But how did it ever come about? He’s SO shy and awkward. How did he ever manage to get up enough spunk to ask her to marry him?”
“Maybe she asked him,” suggested Dan.
The Story Girl looked as if she might tell if she would.
“I believe that WAS the way of it,” I said, to draw her on.
“Not exactly,” she said reluctantly. “I know all about it but I can’t tell you. I guessed part from things I’ve seen—and Miss Reade told me a good deal—and the Awkward Man himself told me his side of it as we came home last night. I met him just as I left Mr. Armstrong’s and we were together as far as his house. It was dark and he just talked on as if he were talking to himself—I think he forgot I was there at all, once he got started. He has never been shy or awkward with me, but he never talked as he did last night.”
“You might tell us what he said,” urged Cecily. “We’d never tell.”
The Story Girl shook her head.
“No, I can’t. You wouldn’t understand. Besides, I couldn’t tell it just right. It’s one of the things that are hardest to tell. I’d spoil it if I told it—now. Perhaps some day I’ll be able to tell it properly. It’s very beautiful—but it might sound very ridiculous if it wasn’t told just exactly the right way.”
“I don’t know what you mean, and I don’t believe you know yourself,” said Felicity pettishly. “All that I can make out is that Miss Reade is going to marry Jasper Dale, and I don’t like the idea one bit. She is so beautiful and sweet. I thought she’d marry some dashing young man. Jasper Dale must be nearly twenty years older than her—and he’s so queer and shy—and such a hermit.”
“Miss Reade is perfectly happy,” said the Story Girl. “She thinks the Awkward Man is lovely—and so he is. You don’t know him, but I do.”
“Well, you needn’t put on such airs about it,” sniffed Felicity.
“I am not putting on any airs. But it’s true. Miss Reade and I are the only people in Carlisle who really know the Awkward Man. Nobody else ever got behind his shyness to find out just what sort of a man he is.”
“When are they to be married?” asked Felicity.
“In a fortnight’s time. And then they are coming right back to live at Golden Milestone. Won’t it be lovely to have Miss Reade always so near us?”
“I wonder what she’ll think about the mystery of Golden Milestone,” remarked Felicity.
Golden Milestone was the beautiful name the Awkward Man had given his home; and there was a mystery about it, as readers of the first volume of these chronicles will recall.
“She knows all about the mystery and thinks it perfectly lovely—and so do I,” said the Story Girl.
“Do YOU know the secret of the locked room?” cried Cecily.
“Yes, the Awkward Man told me all about it last night. I told you I’d find out the mystery some time.”
“And what is it?”
“I can’t tell you that either.”
“I think you’re hateful and mean,” exclaimed Felicity. “It hasn’t anything to do with Miss Reade, so I think you might tell us.”
“It has something to do with Miss Reade. It’s all about her.”
“Well, I don’t see how that can be when the Awkward Man never saw or heard of Miss Reade until she came to Carlisle in the spring,” said Felicity incredulously, “and he’s had that locked room for years.”
“I can’t explain it to you—but it’s just as I’ve said,” responded the Story Girl.
“Well, it’s a very queer thing,” retorted Felicity.
“The name in the books in the room was Alice—and Miss Reade’s name is Alice,” marvelled Cecily. “Did he know her before she came here?”
“Mrs. Griggs says that room has been locked for ten years. Ten years ago Miss Reade was just a little girl of ten. SHE couldn’t be the Alice of the books,” argued Felicity.
“I wonder if she’ll wear the blue silk dress,” said Sara Ray.
“And what will she do about the picture, if it isn’t hers?” added Cecily.
“The picture couldn’t be hers, or Mrs. Griggs would have known her for the same when she came to Carlisle,” said Felix.
“I’m going to stop wondering about it,” exclaimed Felicity crossly, aggravated by the amused smile with which the Story Girl was listening to the various speculations. “I think Sara is just as mean as mean when she won’t tell us.”
“I can’t,” repeated the Story Girl patiently.
“You said one time you had an idea who ‘Alice’ was,” I said. “Was your idea anything like the truth?”
“Yes, I guessed pretty nearly right.”
“Do you suppose they’ll keep the room locked after they are married?” asked Cecily.
“Oh, no. I can tell you that much. It is to be Miss Reade’s own particular sitting room.”
“Why, then, perhaps we’ll see it some time ourselves, when we go to see Miss Reade,” cried Cecily.
“I’d be frightened to go into it,” confessed Sara Ray. “I hate things with mysteries. They always make me nervous.”
“I love them. They’re so exciting,” said the Story Girl.
“Just think, this will be the second wedding of people we know,” reflected Cecily. “Isn’t that interesting?”
“I only hope the next thing won’t be a funeral,” remarked Sara Ray gloomily. “There were three lighted lamps on our kitchen table last night, and Judy Pineau says that’s a sure sign of a funeral.”
“Well, there are funerals going on all the time,” said Dan.
“But it means the funeral of somebody you know. I don’t believe in it—MUCH—but Judy says she’s seen it come true time and again. I hope if it does it won’t be anybody we know very well. But I hope it’ll be somebody I know a LITTLE, because then I might get to the funeral. I’d just love to go to a funeral.”
“That’s a dreadful thing to say,” commented Felicity in a shocked tone.
Sara Ray looked bewildered.
“I don’t see what is dreadful in it,” she protested.
“People don’t go to funerals for the fun of it,” said Felicity severely. “And you just as good as said you hoped somebody you knew would die so you’d get to the funeral.”
“No, no, I didn’t. I didn’t mean that AT ALL, Felicity. I don’t want anybody to die; but what I meant was, if anybody I knew HAD to die there might be a chance to go to the funeral. I’ve never been to a single funeral yet, and it must be so interesting.”
“Well, don’t mix up talk about funerals with talk about weddings,” said Felicity. “It isn’t lucky. I think Miss Reade is simply throwing herself away, but I hope she’ll be happy. And I hope the Awkward Man will manage to get married without making some awful blunder, but it’s more than I expect.”
“The ceremony is to be very private,” said the Story Girl.
“I’d like to see them the day they appear out in church,” chuckled Dan. “How’ll he ever manage to bring her in and show her into the pew? I’ll bet he’ll go in first—or tramp on her dress—or fall over his feet.”
“Maybe he won’t go to church at all the first Sunday and she’ll have to go alone,” said Peter. “That happened in Markdale. A man was too bashful to go to church the first time after getting married, and his wife went alone till he got used to the idea.”
“They may do things like that in Markdale but that is not the way people behave in Carlisle,” said Felicity loftily.
Seeing the Story Girl slipping away with a disapproving face I joined her.
“What is the matter, Sara?” I asked.
“I hate to hear them talking like that about Miss Reade and Mr. Dale,” she answered vehemently. “It’s really all so beautiful—but they make it seem silly and absurd, somehow.”
“You might tell me all about it, Sara,” I insinuated. “I wouldn’t tell—and I’d understand.”
“Yes, I think you would,” she said thoughtfully. “But I can’t tell it even to you because I can’t tell it well enough yet. I’ve a feeling that there’s only one way to tell it—and I don’t know the way yet. Some day I’ll know it—and then I’ll tell you, Bev.”
Long, long after she kept her word. Forty years later I wrote to her, across the leagues of land and sea that divided us, and told her that Jasper Dale was dead; and I reminded her of her old promise and asked its fulfilment. In reply she sent me the written love story of Jasper Dale and Alice Reade. Now, when Alice sleeps under the whispering elms of the old Carlisle churchyard, beside the husband of her youth, that story may be given, in all its old-time sweetness, to the world.
Jasper Dale lived alone in the old homestead which he had named Golden Milestone. In Carlisle this giving one’s farm a name was looked upon as a piece of affectation; but if a place must be named why not give it a sensible name with some meaning to it? Why Golden Milestone, when Pinewood or Hillslope or, if you wanted to be very fanciful, Ivy Lodge, might be had for the taking?
He had lived alone at Golden Milestone since his mother’s death; he had been twenty then and he was close upon forty now, though he did not look it. But neither could it be said that he looked young; he had never at any time looked young with common youth; there had always been something in his appearance that stamped him as different from the ordinary run of men, and, apart from his shyness, built up an intangible, invisible barrier between him and his kind. He had lived all his life in Carlisle; and all the Carlisle people knew of or about him—although they thought they knew everything—was that he was painfully, abnormally shy. He never went anywhere except to church; he never took part in Carlisle’s simple social life; even with most men he was distant and reserved; as for women, he never spoke to or looked at them; if one spoke to him, even if she were a matronly old mother in Israel, he was at once in an agony of painful blushes. He had no friends in the sense of companions; to all outward appearance his life was solitary and devoid of any human interest.
He had no housekeeper; but his old house, furnished as it had been in his mother’s lifetime, was cleanly and daintily kept. The quaint rooms were as free from dust and disorder as a woman could have had them. This was known, because Jasper Dale occasionally had his hired man’s wife, Mrs. Griggs, in to scrub for him. On the morning she was expected he betook himself to woods and fields, returning only at night-fall. During his absence Mrs. Griggs was frankly wont to explore the house from cellar to attic, and her report of its condition was always the same—“neat as wax.” To be sure, there was one room that was always locked against her, the west gable, looking out on the garden and the hill of pines beyond. But Mrs. Griggs knew that in the lifetime of Jasper Dale’s mother it had been unfurnished. She supposed it still remained so, and felt no especial curiosity concerning it, though she always tried the door.
Jasper Dale had a good farm, well cultivated; he had a large garden where he worked most of his spare time in summer; it was supposed that he read a great deal, since the postmistress declared that he was always getting books and magazines by mail. He seemed well contented with his existence and people let him alone, since that was the greatest kindness they could do him. It was unsupposable that he would ever marry; nobody ever had supposed it.
“Jasper Dale never so much as THOUGHT about a woman,” Carlisle oracles declared. Oracles, however, are not always to be trusted.
One day Mrs. Griggs went away from the Dale place with a very curious story, which she diligently spread far and wide. It made a good deal of talk, but people, although they listened eagerly, and wondered and questioned, were rather incredulous about it. They thought Mrs. Griggs must be drawing considerably upon her imagination; there were not lacking those who declared that she had invented the whole account, since her reputation for strict veracity was not wholly unquestioned.
Mrs. Griggs’s story was as follows:—
One day she found the door of the west gable unlocked. She went in, expecting to see bare walls and a collection of odds and ends. Instead she found herself in a finely furnished room. Delicate lace curtains hung before the small, square, broad-silled windows. The walls were adorned with pictures in much finer taste than Mrs. Griggs could appreciate. There was a bookcase between the windows filled with choicely bound books. Beside it stood a little table with a very dainty work-basket on it. By the basket Mrs. Griggs saw a pair of tiny scissors and a silver thimble. A wicker rocker, comfortable with silk cushions, was near it. Above the bookcase a woman’s picture hung—a water-colour, if Mrs. Griggs had but known it—representing a pale, very sweet face, with large, dark eyes and a wistful expression under loose masses of black, lustrous hair. Just beneath the picture, on the top shelf of the bookcase, was a vaseful of flowers. Another vaseful stood on the table beside the basket.
All this was astonishing enough. But what puzzled Mrs. Griggs completely was the fact that a woman’s dress was hanging over a chair before the mirror—a pale blue, silken affair. And on the floor beside it were two little blue satin slippers!
Good Mrs. Griggs did not leave the room until she had thoroughly explored it, even to shaking out the blue dress and discovering it to be a tea-gown—wrapper, she called it. But she found nothing to throw any light on the mystery. The fact that the simple name “Alice” was written on the fly-leaves of all the books only deepened it, for it was a name unknown in the Dale family. In this puzzled state she was obliged to depart, nor did she ever find the door unlocked again; and, discovering that people thought she was romancing when she talked about the mysterious west gable at Golden Milestone, she indignantly held her peace concerning the whole affair.
But Mrs. Griggs had told no more than the simple truth. Jasper Dale, under all his shyness and aloofness, possessed a nature full of delicate romance and poesy, which, denied expression in the common ways of life, bloomed out in the realm of fancy and imagination. Left alone, just when the boy’s nature was deepening into the man’s, he turned to this ideal kingdom for all he believed the real world could never give him. Love—a strange, almost mystical love—played its part here for him. He shadowed forth to himself the vision of a woman, loving and beloved; he cherished it until it became almost as real to him as his own personality and he gave this dream woman the name he liked best—Alice. In fancy he walked and talked with her, spoke words of love to her, and heard words of love in return. When he came from work at the close of day she met him at his threshold in the twilight—a strange, fair, starry shape, as elusive and spiritual as a blossom reflected in a pool by moonlight—with welcome on her lips and in her eyes.
One day, when he was in Charlottetown on business, he had been struck by a picture in the window of a store. It was strangely like the woman of his dream love. He went in, awkward and embarrassed, and bought it. When he took it home he did not know where to put it. It was out of place among the dim old engravings of bewigged portraits and conventional landscapes on the walls of Golden Milestone. As he pondered the matter in his garden that evening he had an inspiration. The sunset, flaming on the windows of the west gable, kindled them into burning rose. Amid the splendour he fancied Alice’s fair face peeping archly down at him from the room. The inspiration came then. It should be her room; he would fit it up for her; and her picture should hang there.
He was all summer carrying out his plan. Nobody must know or suspect, so he must go slowly and secretly. One by one the furnishings were purchased and brought home under cover of darkness. He arranged them with his own hands. He bought the books he thought she would like best and wrote her name in them; he got the little feminine knick-knacks of basket and thimble. Finally he saw in a store a pale blue tea-gown and the satin slippers. He had always fancied her as dressed in blue. He bought them and took them home to her room. Thereafter it was sacred to her; he always knocked on its door before he entered; he kept it sweet with fresh flowers; he sat there in the purple summer evenings and talked aloud to her or read his favourite books to her. In his fancy she sat opposite to him in her rocker, clad in the trailing blue gown, with her head leaning on one slender hand, as white as a twilight star.
But Carlisle people knew nothing of this—would have thought him tinged with mild lunacy if they had known. To them, he was just the shy, simple farmer he appeared. They never knew or guessed at the real Jasper Dale.
One spring Alice Reade came to teach music in Carlisle. Her pupils worshipped her, but the grown people thought she was rather too distant and reserved. They had been used to merry, jolly girls who joined eagerly in the social life of the place. Alice Reade held herself aloof from it—not disdainfully, but as one to whom these things were of small importance. She was very fond of books and solitary rambles; she was not at all shy but she was as sensitive as a flower; and after a time Carlisle people were content to let her live her own life and no longer resented her unlikeness to themselves.
She boarded with the Armstrongs, who lived beyond Golden Milestone around the hill of pines. Until the snow disappeared she went out to the main road by the long Armstrong lane; but when spring came she was wont to take a shorter way, down the pine hill, across the brook, past Jasper Dale’s garden, and out through his lane. And one day, as she went by, Jasper Dale was working in his garden.
He was on his knees in a corner, setting out a bunch of roots—an unsightly little tangle of rainbow possibilities. It was a still spring morning; the world was green with young leaves; a little wind blew down from the pines and lost itself willingly among the budding delights of the garden. The grass opened eyes of blue violets. The sky was high and cloudless, turquoise-blue, shading off into milkiness on the far horizons. Birds were singing along the brook valley. Rollicking robins were whistling joyously in the pines. Jasper Dale’s heart was filled to over-flowing with a realization of all the virgin loveliness around him; the feeling in his soul had the sacredness of a prayer. At this moment he looked up and saw Alice Reade.
She was standing outside the garden fence, in the shadow of a great pine tree, looking not at him, for she was unaware of his presence, but at the virginal bloom of the plum trees in a far corner, with all her delight in it outblossoming freely in her face. For a moment Jasper Dale believed that his dream love had taken visible form before him. She was like—so like; not in feature, perhaps, but in grace and colouring—the grace of a slender, lissome form and the colouring of cloudy hair and wistful, dark gray eyes, and curving red mouth; and more than all, she was like her in expression—in the subtle revelation of personality exhaling from her like perfume from a flower. It was as if his own had come to him at last and his whole soul suddenly leaped out to meet and welcome her.
Then her eyes fell upon him and the spell was broken. Jasper remained kneeling mutely there, shy man once more, crimson with blushes, a strange, almost pitiful creature in his abject confusion. A little smile flickered about the delicate corners of her mouth, but she turned and walked swiftly away down the lane.
Jasper looked after her with a new, painful sense of loss and loveliness. It had been agony to feel her conscious eyes upon him, but he realized now that there had been a strange sweetness in it, too. It was still greater pain to watch her going from him.
He thought she must be the new music teacher but he did not even know her name. She had been dressed in blue, too—a pale, dainty blue; but that was of course; he had known she must wear it; and he was sure her name must be Alice. When, later on, he discovered that it was, he felt no surprise.
He carried some mayflowers up to the west gable and put them under the picture. But the charm had gone out of the tribute; and looking at the picture, he thought how scant was the justice it did her. Her face was so much sweeter, her eyes so much softer, her hair so much more lustrous. The soul of his love had gone from the room and from the picture and from his dreams. When he tried to think of the Alice he loved he saw, not the shadowy spirit occupant of the west gable, but the young girl who had stood under the pine, beautiful with the beauty of moonlight, of starshine on still water, of white, wind-swayed flowers growing in silent, shadowy places. He did not then realize what this meant: had he realized it he would have suffered bitterly; as it was he felt only a vague discomfort—a curious sense of loss and gain commingled.
He saw her again that afternoon on her way home. She did not pause by the garden but walked swiftly past. Thereafter, every day for a week he watched unseen to see her pass his home. Once a little child was with her, clinging to her hand. No child had ever before had any part in the shy man’s dream life. But that night in the twilight the vision of the rocking-chair was a girl in a blue print dress, with a little, golden-haired shape at her knee—a shape that lisped and prattled and called her “mother;” and both of them were his.
It was the next day that he failed for the first time to put flowers in the west gable. Instead, he cut a loose handful of daffodils and, looking furtively about him as if committing a crime, he laid them across the footpath under the pine. She must pass that way; her feet would crush them if she failed to see them. Then he slipped back into his garden, half exultant, half repentant. From a safe retreat he saw her pass by and stoop to lift his flowers. Thereafter he put some in the same place every day.
When Alice Reade saw the flowers she knew at once who had put them there, and divined that they were for her. She lifted them tenderly in much surprise and pleasure. She had heard all about Jasper Dale and his shyness; but before she had heard about him she had seen him in church and liked him. She thought his face and his dark blue eyes beautiful; she even liked the long brown hair that Carlisle people laughed at. That he was quite different from other people she had understood at once, but she thought the difference in his favour. Perhaps her sensitive nature divined and responded to the beauty in his. At least, in her eyes Jasper Dale was never a ridiculous figure.
When she heard the story of the west gable, which most people disbelieved, she believed it, although she did not understand it. It invested the shy man with interest and romance. She felt that she would have liked, out of no impertinent curiosity, to solve the mystery; she believed that it contained the key to his character.
Thereafter, every day she found flowers under the pine tree; she wished to see Jasper to thank him, unaware that he watched her daily from the screen of shrubbery in his garden; but it was some time before she found the opportunity. One evening she passed when he, not expecting her, was leaning against his garden fence with a book in his hand. She stopped under the pine.
“Mr. Dale,” she said softly, “I want to thank you for your flowers.”
Jasper, startled, wished that he might sink into the ground. His anguish of embarrassment made her smile a little. He could not speak, so she went on gently.
“It has been so good of you. They have given me so much pleasure—I wish you could know how much.”
“It was nothing—nothing,” stammered Jasper. His book had fallen on the ground at her feet, and she picked it up and held it out to him.
“So you like Ruskin,” she said. “I do, too. But I haven’t read this.”
“If you—would care—to read it—you may have it,” Jasper contrived to say.
She carried the book away with her. He did not again hide when she passed, and when she brought the book back they talked a little about it over the fence. He lent her others, and got some from her in return; they fell into the habit of discussing them. Jasper did not find it hard to talk to her now; it seemed as if he were talking to his dream Alice, and it came strangely natural to him. He did not talk volubly, but Alice thought what he did say was worth while. His words lingered in her memory and made music. She always found his flowers under the pine, and she always wore some of them, but she did not know if he noticed this or not.
One evening Jasper walked shyly with her from his gate up the pine hill. After that he always walked that far with her. She would have missed him much if he had failed to do so; yet it did not occur to her that she was learning to love him. She would have laughed with girlish scorn at the idea. She liked him very much; she thought his nature beautiful in its simplicity and purity; in spite of his shyness she felt more delightfully at home in his society than in that of any other person she had ever met. He was one of those rare souls whose friendship is at once a pleasure and a benediction, showering light from their own crystal clearness into all the dark corners in the souls of others, until, for the time being at least, they reflected his own nobility. But she never thought of love. Like other girls she had her dreams of a possible Prince Charming, young and handsome and debonair. It never occurred to her that he might be found in the shy, dreamy recluse of Golden Milestone.
In August came a day of gold and blue. Alice Reade, coming through the trees, with the wind blowing her little dark love-locks tricksily about under her wide blue hat, found a fragrant heap of mignonette under the pine. She lifted it and buried her face in it, drinking in the wholesome, modest perfume.
She had hoped Jasper would be in his garden, since she wished to ask him for a book she greatly desired to read. But she saw him sitting on the rustic seat at the further side. His back was towards her, and he was partially screened by a copse of lilacs.
Alice, blushing slightly, unlatched the garden gate, and went down the path. She had never been in the garden before, and she found her heart beating in a strange fashion.
He did not hear her footsteps, and she was close behind him when she heard his voice, and realized that he was talking to himself, in a low, dreamy tone. As the meaning of his words dawned on her consciousness she started and grew crimson. She could not move or speak; as one in a dream she stood and listened to the shy man’s reverie, guiltless of any thought of eavesdropping.
“How much I love you, Alice,” Jasper Dale was saying, unafraid, with no shyness in voice or manner. “I wonder what you would say if you knew. You would laugh at me—sweet as you are, you would laugh in mockery. I can never tell you. I can only dream of telling you. In my dream you are standing here by me, dear. I can see you very plainly, my sweet lady, so tall and gracious, with your dark hair and your maiden eyes. I can dream that I tell you my love; that—maddest, sweetest dream of all—that you love me in return. Everything is possible in dreams, you know, dear. My dreams are all I have, so I go far in them, even to dreaming that you are my wife. I dream how I shall fix up my dull old house for you. One room will need nothing more—it is your room, dear, and has been ready for you a long time—long before that day I saw you under the pine. Your books and your chair and your picture are there, dear—only the picture is not half lovely enough. But the other rooms of the house must be made to bloom out freshly for you. What a delight it is thus to dream of what I would do for you! Then I would bring you home, dear, and lead you through my garden and into my house as its mistress. I would see you standing beside me in the old mirror at the end of the hall—a bride, in your pale blue dress, with a blush on your face. I would lead you through all the rooms made ready for your coming, and then to your own. I would see you sitting in your own chair and all my dreams would find rich fulfilment in that royal moment. Oh, Alice, we would have a beautiful life together! It’s sweet to make believe about it. You will sing to me in the twilight, and we will gather early flowers together in the spring days. When I come home from work, tired, you will put your arms about me and lay your head on my shoulder. I will stroke it—so—that bonny, glossy head of yours. Alice, my Alice—all mine in my dream—never to be mine in real life—how I love you!”
The Alice behind him could bear no more. She gave a little choking cry that betrayed her presence. Jasper Dale sprang up and gazed upon her. He saw her standing there, amid the languorous shadows of August, pale with feeling, wide-eyed, trembling.
For a moment shyness wrung him. Then every trace of it was banished by a sudden, strange, fierce anger that swept over him. He felt outraged and hurt to the death; he felt as if he had been cheated out of something incalculably precious—as if sacrilege had been done to his most holy sanctuary of emotion. White, tense with his anger, he looked at her and spoke, his lips as pale as if his fiery words scathed them.
“How dare you? You have spied on me—you have crept in and listened! How dare you? Do you know what you have done, girl? You have destroyed all that made life worth while to me. My dream is dead. It could not live when it was betrayed. And it was all I had. Oh, laugh at me—mock me! I know that I am ridiculous! What of it? It never could have hurt you! Why must you creep in like this to hear me and put me to shame? Oh, I love you—I will say it, laugh as you will. Is it such a strange thing that I should have a heart like other men? This will make sport for you! I, who love you better than my life, better than any other man in the world can love you, will be a jest to you all your life. I love you—and yet I think I could hate you—you have destroyed my dream—you have done me deadly wrong.”
“Jasper! Jasper!” cried Alice, finding her voice. His anger hurt her with a pain she could not endure. It was unbearable that Jasper should be angry with her. In that moment she realized that she loved him—that the words he had spoken when unconscious of her presence were the sweetest she had ever heard, or ever could hear. Nothing mattered at all, save that he loved her and was angry with her.
“Don’t say such dreadful things to me,” she stammered, “I did not mean to listen. I could not help it. I shall never laugh at you. Oh, Jasper”—she looked bravely at him and the fine soul of her shone through the flesh like an illuminating lamp—“I am glad that you love me! and I am glad I chanced to overhear you, since you would never have had the courage to tell me otherwise. Glad—glad! Do you understand, Jasper?”
Jasper looked at her with the eyes of one who, looking through pain, sees rapture beyond.
“Is it possible?” he said, wonderingly. “Alice—I am so much older than you—and they call me the Awkward Man—they say I am unlike other people”—
“You ARE unlike other people,” she said softly, “and that is why I love you. I know now that I must have loved you ever since I saw you.”
“I loved you long before I saw you,” said Jasper.
He came close to her and drew her into his arms, tenderly and reverently, all his shyness and awkwardness swallowed up in the grace of his great happiness. In the old garden he kissed her lips and Alice entered into her own.