The Complete Works of L M Montgomery, page 401
“Great-aunt Eliza? Nonsense,” said Aunt Janet. “Aunt Eliza was in town today. She had tea with us at Aunt Louisa’s. But wasn’t Mrs. Governor Lesley here? We met her on her way back to Charlottetown and she told us she was. She said she was visiting a friend in Carlisle and thought she’d call to see father for old acquaintance sake. What in the world are all you children staring like that for? Your eyes are like saucers.”
“There was a lady here to tea,” said Felicity miserably, “but we thought it was Great-aunt Eliza — she never SAID she wasn’t — I thought she acted queer — and we all yelled at her as if she was deaf — and said things to each other about her nose — and Pat running over her clothes—”
“She must have heard all you said while I was showing her the photographs, Dan,” cried Cecily.
“And about the Governor at tea time,” chuckled unrepentant Dan.
“I want to know what all this means,” said Aunt Janet sternly.
She knew in due time, after she had pieced the story together from our disjointed accounts. She was horrified, and Uncle Alec was mildly disturbed, but Uncle Roger roared with laughter and Aunt Olivia echoed it.
“To think you should have so little sense!” said Aunt Janet in a disgusted tone.
“I think it was real mean of her to pretend she was deaf,” said Felicity, almost on the verge of tears.
“That was Agnes Clark all over,” chuckled Uncle Roger. “How she must have enjoyed this afternoon!”
She had enjoyed it, as we learned the next day, when a letter came from her.
“Dear Cecily and all the rest of you,” wrote the Governor’s wife, “I want to ask you to forgive me for pretending to be Aunt Eliza. I suspect it was a little horrid of me, but really I couldn’t resist the temptation, and if you will forgive me for it I will forgive you for the things you said about the Governor, and we will all be good friends. You know the Governor is a very nice man, though he has the misfortune not to be handsome.
“I had just a splendid time at your place, and I envy your Aunt Eliza her nephews and nieces. You were all so nice to me, and I didn’t dare to be a bit nice to you lest I should give myself away. But I’ll make up for that when you come to see me at Government House, as you all must the very next time you come to town. I’m so sorry I didn’t see Paddy, for I love pussy cats, even if they do track molasses over my clothes. And, Cecily, thank you ever so much for that little bag of pot-pourri. It smells like a hundred rose gardens, and I have put it between the sheets for my very sparest room bed, where you shall sleep when you come to see me, you dear thing. And the Governor wants you to put his name on the quilt square, too, in the ten-cent section.
“Tell Dan I enjoyed his comments on the photographs very much. They were quite a refreshing contrast to the usual explanations of ‘who’s who.’ And Felicity, your rusks were perfection. Do send me your recipe for them, there’s a darling.
“Yours most cordially,
AGNES CLARK LESLEY.
“Well, it was decent of her to apologize, anyhow,” commented Dan.
“If we only hadn’t said that about the Governor,” moaned Felicity.
“How did you make your rusks?” asked Aunt Janet. “There was no baking-powder in the house, and I never could get them right with soda and cream of tartar.”
“There was plenty of baking-powder in the pantry,” said Felicity.
“No, there wasn’t a particle. I used the last making those cookies Thursday morning.”
“But I found another can nearly full, away back on the top shelf, ma, — the one with the yellow label. I guess you forgot it was there.”
Aunt Janet stared at her pretty daughter blankly. Then amazement gave place to horror.
“Felicity King!” she exclaimed. “You don’t mean to tell me that you raised those rusks with the stuff that was in that old yellow can?”
“Yes, I did,” faltered Felicity, beginning to look scared. “Why, ma, what was the matter with it?”
“Matter! That stuff was TOOTH-POWDER, that’s what it was. Your Cousin Myra broke the bottle her tooth-powder was in when she was here last winter and I gave her that old can to keep it in. She forgot to take it when she went away and I put it on that top shelf. I declare you must all have been bewitched yesterday.”
Poor, poor Felicity! If she had not always been so horribly vain over her cooking and so scornfully contemptuous of other people’s aspirations and mistakes along that line, I could have found it in my heart to pity her.
The Story Girl would have been more than human if she had not betrayed a little triumphant amusement, but Peter stood up for his lady manfully.
“The rusks were splendid, anyhow, so what difference does it make what they were raised with?”
Dan, however, began to taunt Felicity with her tooth-powder rusks, and kept it up for the rest of his natural life.
“Don’t forget to send the Governor’s wife the recipe for them,” he said.
Felicity, with eyes tearful and cheeks crimson from mortification, rushed from the room, but never, never did the Governor’s wife get the recipe for those rusks.
CHAPTER VII.
WE VISIT COUSIN MATTIE’S
One Saturday in March we walked over to Baywater, for a long-talked-of visit to Cousin Mattie Dilke. By the road, Baywater was six miles away, but there was a short cut across hills and fields and woods which was scantly three. We did not look forward to our visit with any particular delight, for there was nobody at Cousin Mattie’s except grown-ups who had been grown up so long that it was rather hard for them to remember they had ever been children. But, as Felicity told us, it was necessary to visit Cousin Mattie at least once a year, or else she would be “huffed,” so we concluded we might as well go and have it over.
“Anyhow, we’ll get a splendiferous dinner,” said Dan. “Cousin Mattie’s a great cook and there’s nothing stingy about her.”
“You are always thinking of your stomach,” said Felicity pleasantly.
“Well, you know I couldn’t get along very well without it, darling,” responded Dan who, since New Year’s, had adopted a new method of dealing with Felicity — whether by way of keeping his resolution or because he had discovered that it annoyed Felicity far more than angry retorts, deponent sayeth not. He invariably met her criticisms with a good-natured grin and a flippant remark with some tender epithet tagged on to it. Poor Felicity used to get hopelessly furious over it.
Uncle Alec was dubious about our going that day. He looked abroad on the general dourness of gray earth and gray air and gray sky, and said a storm was brewing. But Cousin Mattie had been sent word that we were coming, and she did not like to be disappointed, so he let us go, warning us to stay with Cousin Mattie all night if the storm came on while we were there.
We enjoyed our walk — even Felix enjoyed it, although he had been appointed to write up the visit for Our Magazine and was rather weighed down by the responsibility of it. What mattered it though the world were gray and wintry? We walked the golden road and carried spring time in our hearts, and we beguiled our way with laughter and jest, and the tales the Story Girl told us — myths and legends of elder time.
The walking was good, for there had lately been a thaw and everything was frozen. We went over fields, crossed by spidery trails of gray fences, where the withered grasses stuck forlornly up through the snow; we lingered for a time in a group of hill pines, great, majestic tree-creatures, friends of evening stars; and finally struck into the belt of fir and maple which intervened between Carlisle and Baywater. It was in this locality that Peg Bowen lived, and our way lay near her house though not directly in sight of it. We hoped we would not meet her, for since the affair of the bewitchment of Paddy we did not know quite what to think of Peg; the boldest of us held his breath as we passed her haunts, and drew it again with a sigh of relief when they were safely left behind.
The woods were full of the brooding stillness that often precedes a storm, and the wind crept along their white, cone-sprinkled floors with a low, wailing cry. Around us were solitudes of snow, arcades picked out in pearl and silver, long avenues of untrodden marble whence sprang the cathedral columns of the firs. We were all sorry when we were through the woods and found ourselves looking down into the snug, commonplace, farmstead-dotted settlement of Baywater.
“There’s Cousin Mattie’s house — that big white one at the turn of the road,” said the Story Girl. “I hope she has that dinner ready, Dan. I’m hungry as a wolf after our walk.”
“I wish Cousin Mattie’s husband was still alive,” said Dan. “He was an awful nice old man. He always had his pockets full of nuts and apples. I used to like going there better when he was alive. Too many old women don’t suit me.”
“Oh, Dan, Cousin Mattie and her sisters-in-law are just as nice and kind as they can be,” reproached Cecily.
“Oh, they’re kind enough, but they never seem to see that a fellow gets over being five years old if he only lives long enough,” retorted Dan.
“I know a story about Cousin Mattie’s husband,” said the Story Girl. “His name was Ebenezer, you know—”
“Is it any wonder he was thin and stunted looking?” said Dan.
“Ebenezer is just as nice a name as Daniel,” said Felicity.
“Do you REALLY think so, my angel?” inquired Dan, in honey-sweet tones.
“Go on. Remember your second resolution,” I whispered to the Story Girl, who was stalking along with an outraged expression.
The Story Girl swallowed something and went on.
“Cousin Ebenezer had a horror of borrowing. He thought it was simply a dreadful disgrace to borrow ANYTHING. Well, you know he and Cousin Mattie used to live in Carlisle, where the Rays now live. This was when Grandfather King was alive. One day Cousin Ebenezer came up the hill and into the kitchen where all the family were. Uncle Roger said he looked as if he had been stealing sheep. He sat for a whole hour in the kitchen and hardly spoke a word, but just looked miserable. At last he got up and said in a desperate sort of way, ‘Uncle Abraham, can I speak with you in private for a minute?’ ‘Oh, certainly,’ said grandfather, and took him into the parlour. Cousin Ebenezer shut the door, looked all around him and then said imploringly, ‘MORE PRIVATE STILL.’ So grandfather took him into the spare room and shut that door. He was getting frightened. He thought something terrible must have happened Cousin Ebenezer. Cousin Ebenezer came right up to grandfather, took hold of the lapel of his coat, and said in a whisper, ‘Uncle Abraham, CAN — YOU — LEND — ME — AN — AXE?’”
“He needn’t have made such a mystery about it,” said Cecily, who had missed the point entirely, and couldn’t see why the rest of us were laughing. But Cecily was such a darling that we did not mind her lack of a sense of humour.
“It’s kind of mean to tell stories like that about people who are dead,” said Felicity.
“Sometimes it’s safer than when they’re alive though, sweetheart,” commented Dan.
We had our expected good dinner at Cousin Mattie’s — may it be counted unto her for righteousness. She and her sisters-in-law, Miss Louisa Jane and Miss Caroline, were very kind to us. We had quite a nice time, although I understood why Dan objected to them when they patted us all on the head and told us whom we resembled and gave us peppermint lozenges.
CHAPTER VIII.
WE VISIT PEG BOWEN
We left Cousin Mattie’s early, for it still looked like a storm, though no more so than it had in the morning. We intended to go home by a different path — one leading through cleared land overgrown with scrub maple, which had the advantage of being farther away from Peg Bowen’s house. We hoped to be home before it began to storm, but we had hardly reached the hill above the village when a fine, driving snow began to fall. It would have been wiser to have turned back even then; but we had already come a mile and we thought we would have ample time to reach home before it became really bad. We were sadly mistaken; by the time we had gone another half-mile we were in the thick of a bewildering, blinding snowstorm. But it was by now just as far back to Cousin Mattie’s as it was to Uncle Alec’s, so we struggled on, growing more frightened at every step. We could hardly face the stinging snow, and we could not see ten feet ahead of us. It had turned bitterly cold and the tempest howled all around us in white desolation under the fast-darkening night. The narrow path we were trying to follow soon became entirely obliterated and we stumbled blindly on, holding to each other, and trying to peer through the furious whirl that filled the air. Our plight had come upon us so suddenly that we could not realize it. Presently Peter, who was leading the van because he was supposed to know the path best, stopped.
“I can’t see the road any longer,” he shouted. “I don’t know where we are.”
We all stopped and huddled together in a miserable group. Fear filled our hearts. It seemed ages ago that we had been snug and safe and warm at Cousin Mattie’s. Cecily began to cry with cold. Dan, in spite of her protests, dragged off his overcoat and made her put it on.
“We can’t stay here,” he said. “We’ll all freeze to death if we do. Come on — we’ve got to keep moving. The snow ain’t so deep yet. Take hold of my hand, Cecily. We must all hold together. Come, now.”
“It won’t be nice to be frozen to death, but if we get through alive think what a story we’ll have to tell,” said the Story Girl between her chattering teeth.
In my heart I did not believe we would ever get through alive. It was almost pitch dark now, and the snow grew deeper every moment. We were chilled to the heart. I thought how nice it would be to lie down and rest; but I remembered hearing that that was fatal, and I endeavoured to stumble on with the others. It was wonderful how the girls kept up, even Cecily. It occurred to me to be thankful that Sara Ray was not with us.
But we were wholly lost now. All around us was a horror of great darkness. Suddenly Felicity fell. We dragged her up, but she declared she could not go on — she was done out.
“Have you any idea where we are?” shouted Dan to Peter.
“No,” Peter shouted back, “the wind is blowing every which way. I haven’t any idea where home is.”
Home! Would we ever see it again? We tried to urge Felicity on, but she only repeated drowsily that she must lie down and rest. Cecily, too, was reeling against me. The Story Girl still stood up staunchly and counselled struggling on, but she was numb with cold and her words were hardly distinguishable. Some wild idea was in my mind that we must dig a hole in the snow and all creep into it. I had read somewhere that people had thus saved their lives in snowstorms. Suddenly Felix gave a shout.
“I see a light,” he cried.
“Where? Where?” We all looked but could see nothing.
“I don’t see it now but I saw it a moment ago,” shouted Felix. “I’m sure I did. Come on — over in this direction.”
Inspired with fresh hope we hurried after him. Soon we all saw the light — and never shone a fairer beacon. A few more steps and, coming into the shelter of the woodland on the further side, we realized where we were.
“That’s Peg Bowen’s house,” exclaimed Peter, stopping short in dismay.
“I don’t care whose house it is,” declared Dan. “We’ve got to go to it.”
“I s’pose so,” acquiesced Peter ruefully. “We can’t freeze to death even if she is a witch.”
“For goodness’ sake don’t say anything about witches so close to her house,” gasped Felicity. “I’ll be thankful to get in anywhere.”
We reached the house, climbed the flight of steps that led to that mysterious second story door, and Dan rapped. The door opened promptly and Peg Bowen stood before us, in what seemed exactly the same costume she had worn on the memorable day when we had come, bearing gifts, to propitiate her in the matter of Paddy.
“Behind her was a dim room scantly illumined by the one small candle that had guided us through the storm; but the old Waterloo stove was colouring the gloom with tremulous, rose-red whorls of light, and warm and cosy indeed seemed Peg’s retreat to us snow-covered, frost-chilled, benighted wanderers.
“Gracious goodness, where did yez all come from?” exclaimed Peg. “Did they turn yez out?”
“We’ve been over to Baywater, and we got lost in the storm coming back,” explained Dan. “We didn’t know where we were till we saw your light. I guess we’ll have to stay here till the storm is over — if you don’t mind.”
“And if it won’t inconvenience you,” said Cecily timidly.
“Oh, it’s no inconvenience to speak of. Come in. Well, yez HAVE got some snow on yez. Let me get a broom. You boys stomp your feet well and shake your coats. You girls give me your things and I’ll hang them up. Guess yez are most froze. Well, sit up to the stove and git het up.”
Peg bustled away to gather up a dubious assortment of chairs, with backs and rungs missing, and in a few minutes we were in a circle around her roaring stove, getting dried and thawed out. In our wildest flights of fancy we had never pictured ourselves as guests at the witch’s hearth-stone. Yet here we were; and the witch herself was actually brewing a jorum of ginger tea for Cecily, who continued to shiver long after the rest of us were roasted to the marrow. Poor Sis drank that scalding draught, being in too great awe of Peg to do aught else.
“That’ll soon fix your shivers,” said our hostess kindly. “And now I’ll get yez all some tea.”
“Oh, please don’t trouble,” said the Story Girl hastily.
“‘Tain’t any trouble,” said Peg briskly; then, with one of the sudden changes to fierceness which made her such a terrifying personage, “Do yez think my vittels ain’t clean?”
“Oh, no, no,” cried Felicity quickly, before the Story Girl could speak, “none of us would ever think THAT. Sara only meant she didn’t want you to go to any bother on our account.”
“It ain’t any bother,” said Peg, mollified. “I’m spry as a cricket this winter, though I have the realagy sometimes. Many a good bite I’ve had in your ma’s kitchen. I owe yez a meal.”
