Felix and I shivered. We felt suddenly that we had escaped a dreadful danger--the danger of having been born somebody else. But it took the Story Girl to make us realize just how dreadful it was and what a terrible risk we had run years before we, or our parents either, had existed.
"Who lives over there?" I asked, pointing to a house across the fields.
"Oh, that belongs to the Awkward Man. His name is Jasper Dale, but everybody calls him the Awkward Man. And they do say he writes poetry.
He calls his place Golden Milestone. I know why, because I"ve read Longfellow"s poems. He never goes into society because he is so awkward.
The girls laugh at him and he doesn"t like it. I know a story about him and I"ll tell it to you sometime."
"And who lives in that other house?" asked Felix, looking over the westering valley where a little gray roof was visible among the trees.
"Old Peg Bowen. She"s very queer. She lives there with a lot of pet animals in winter, and in summer she roams over the country and begs her meals. They say she is crazy. People have always tried to frighten us children into good behaviour by telling us that Peg Bowen would catch us if we didn"t behave. I"m not so frightened of her as I once was, but I don"t think I would like to be caught by her. Sara Ray is dreadfully scared of her. Peter Craig says she is a witch and that he bets she"s at the bottom of it when the b.u.t.ter won"t come. But I don"t believe THAT.
Witches are so scarce nowadays. There may be some somewhere in the world, but it"s not likely there are any here right in Prince Edward Island. They used to be very plenty long ago. I know some splendid witch stories I"ll tell you some day. They"ll just make your blood freeze in your veins."
We hadn"t a doubt of it. If anybody could freeze the blood in our veins this girl with the wonderful voice could. But it was a May morning, and our young blood was running blithely in our veins. We suggested a visit to the orchard would be more agreeable.
"All right. I know stories about it, too," she said, as we walked across the yard, followed by Paddy of the waving tail. "Oh, aren"t you glad it is spring? The beauty of winter is that it makes you appreciate spring."
The latch of the gate clicked under the Story Girl"s hand, and the next moment we were in the King orchard.
CHAPTER III. LEGENDS OF THE OLD ORCHARD
Outside of the orchard the gra.s.s was only beginning to grow green; but here, sheltered by the spruce hedges from uncertain winds and sloping to southern suns, it was already like a wonderful velvet carpet; the leaves on the trees were beginning to come out in woolly, grayish cl.u.s.ters; and there were purple-pencilled white violets at the base of the Pulpit Stone.
"It"s all just as father described it," said Felix with a blissful sigh, "and there"s the well with the Chinese roof."
We hurried over to it, treading on the spears of mint that were beginning to shoot up about it. It was a very deep well, and the curb was of rough, undressed stones. Over it, the queer, paG.o.da-like roof, built by Uncle Stephen on his return from a voyage to China, was covered with yet leafless vines.
"It"s so pretty, when the vines leaf out and hang down in long festoons," said the Story Girl. "The birds build their nests in it. A pair of wild canaries come here every summer. And ferns grow out between the stones of the well as far down as you can see. The water is lovely.
Uncle Edward preached his finest sermon about the Bethlehem well where David"s soldiers went to get him water, and he ill.u.s.trated it by describing his old well at the homestead--this very well--and how in foreign lands he had longed for its sparkling water. So you see it is quite famous."
"There"s a cup just like the one that used to be here in father"s time,"
exclaimed Felix, pointing to an old-fashioned shallow cup of clouded blue ware on a little shelf inside the curb.
"It is the very same cup," said the Story Girl impressively. "Isn"t it an amazing thing? That cup has been here for forty years, and hundreds of people have drunk from it, and it has never been broken. Aunt Julia dropped it down the well once, but they fished it up, not hurt a bit except for that little nick in the rim. I think it is bound up with the fortunes of the King family, like the Luck of Edenhall in Longfellow"s poem. It is the last cup of Grandmother King"s second best set. Her best set is still complete. Aunt Olivia has it. You must get her to show it to you. It"s so pretty, with red berries all over it, and the funniest little pot-bellied cream jug. Aunt Olivia never uses it except on a family anniversary."
We took a drink from the blue cup and then went to find our birthday trees. We were rather disappointed to find them quite large, st.u.r.dy ones. It seemed to us that they should still be in the sapling stage corresponding to our boyhood.
"Your apples are lovely to eat," the Story Girl said to me, "but Felix"s are only good for pies. Those two big trees behind them are the twins"
trees--my mother and Uncle Felix, you know. The apples are so dead sweet that n.o.body but us children and the French boys can eat them. And that tall, slender tree over there, with the branches all growing straight up, is a seedling that came up of itself, and n.o.bODY can eat its apples, they are so sour and bitter. Even the pigs won"t eat them. Aunt Janet tried to make pies of them once, because she said she hated to see them going to waste. But she never tried again. She said it was better to waste apples alone than apples and sugar too. And then she tried giving them away to the French hired men, but they wouldn"t even carry them home."
The Story Girl"s words fell on the morning air like pearls and diamonds.
Even her prepositions and conjunctions had untold charm, hinting at mystery and laughter and magic bound up in everything she mentioned.
Apple pies and sour seedlings and pigs became straightway invested with a glamour of romance.
"I like to hear you talk," said Felix in his grave, stodgy way.
"Everybody does," said the Story Girl coolly. "I"m glad you like the way I talk. But I want you to like ME, too--AS WELL as you like Felicity and Cecily. Not BETTER. I wanted that once but I"ve got over it. I found out in Sunday School, the day the minister taught our cla.s.s, that it was selfish. But I want you to like me AS WELL."
"Well, I will, for one," said Felix emphatically. I think he was remembering that Felicity had called him fat.
Cecily now joined us. It appeared that it was Felicity"s morning to help prepare breakfast, therefore she could not come. We all went to Uncle Stephen"s Walk.
This was a double row of apple trees, running down the western side of the orchard. Uncle Stephen was the first born of Abraham and Elizabeth King. He had none of grandfather"s abiding love for woods and meadows and the kindly ways of the warm red earth. Grandmother King had been a Ward, and in Uncle Stephen the blood of the seafaring race claimed its own. To sea he must go, despite the pleadings and tears of a reluctant mother; and it was from the sea he came to set out his avenue in the orchard with trees brought from a foreign land.
Then he sailed away again--and the ship was never heard of more. The gray first came in grandmother"s brown hair in those months of waiting.
The, for the first time, the orchard heard the sound of weeping and was consecrated by a sorrow.
"When the blossoms come out it"s wonderful to walk here," said the Story Girl. "It"s like a dream of fairyland--as if you were walking in a king"s palace. The apples are delicious, and in winter it"s a splendid place for coasting."
From the Walk we went to the Pulpit Stone--a huge gray boulder, as high as a man"s head, in the southeastern corner. It was straight and smooth in front, but sloped down in natural steps behind, with a ledge midway on which one could stand. It had played an important part in the games of our uncles and aunts, being fortified castle, Indian ambush, throne, pulpit, or concert platform, as occasion required. Uncle Edward had preached his first sermon at the age of eight from that old gray boulder; and Aunt Julia, whose voice was to delight thousands, sang her earliest madrigals there.
The Story Girl mounted to the ledge, sat on the rim, and looked at us.
Pat sat gravely at its base and daintily washed his face with his black paws.
"Now for your stories about the orchard," said I.
"There are two important ones," said the Story Girl. "The story of the Poet Who Was Kissed, and the Tale of the Family Ghost. Which one shall I tell?"
"Tell them both," said Felix greedily, "but tell the ghost one first."
"I don"t know." The Story Girl looked dubious. "That sort of story ought to be told in the twilight among the shadows. Then it would frighten the souls out of your bodies."
We thought it might be more agreeable not to have the souls frightened out of our bodies, and we voted for the Family Ghost.
"Ghost stories are more comfortable in daytime," said Felix.
The Story Girl began it and we listened avidly. Cecily, who had heard it many times before, listened just as eagerly as we did. She declared to me afterwards that no matter how often the Story Girl told a story it always seemed as new and exciting as if you had just heard it for the first time.
"Long, long ago," began the Story Girl, her voice giving us an impression of remote antiquity, "even before Grandfather King was born, an orphan cousin of his lived here with his parents. Her name was Emily King. She was very small and very sweet. She had soft brown eyes that were too timid to look straight at anybody--like Cecily"s there--and long, sleek, brown curls--like mine; and she had a tiny birthmark like a pink b.u.t.terfly on one cheek--right here.
"Of course, there was no orchard here then. It was just a field; but there was a clump of white birches in it, right where that big, spreading tree of Uncle Alec"s is now, and Emily liked to sit among the ferns under the birches and read or sew. She had a lover. His name was Malcolm Ward and he was as handsome as a prince. She loved him with all her heart and he loved her the same; but they had never spoken about it. They used to meet under the birches and talk about everything except love. One day he told her he was coming the next day to ask A VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION, and he wanted to find her under the birches when he came. Emily promised to meet him there. I am sure she stayed awake that night, thinking about it, and wondering what the important question would be, although she knew perfectly well. I would have. And the next day she dressed herself beautifully in her best pale blue muslin and sleeked her curls and went smiling to the birches. And while she was waiting there, thinking such lovely thoughts, a neighbour"s boy came running up--a boy who didn"t know about her romance--and cried out that Malcolm Ward had been killed by his gun going off accidentally. Emily just put her hands to her heart--so--and fell, all white and broken among the ferns. And when she came back to life she never cried or lamented. She was CHANGED. She was never, never like herself again; and she was never contented unless she was dressed in her blue muslin and waiting under the birches. She got paler and paler every day, but the pink b.u.t.terfly grew redder, until it looked just like a stain of blood on her white cheek. When the winter came she died. But next spring"--the Story Girl dropped her voice to a whisper that was as audible and thrilling as her louder tones--"people began to tell that Emily was sometimes seen waiting under the birches still. n.o.body knew just who told it first. But more than one person saw her. Grandfather saw her when he was a little boy. And my mother saw her once."
"Did YOU ever see her?" asked Felix skeptically.
"No, but I shall some day, if I keep on believing in her," said the Story Girl confidently.
"I wouldn"t like to see her. I"d be afraid," said Cecily with a shiver.
"There wouldn"t be anything to be afraid of," said the Story Girl rea.s.suringly. "It"s not as if it were a strange ghost. It"s our own family ghost, so of course it wouldn"t hurt us."
We were not so sure of this. Ghosts were unchancy folk, even if they were our family ghosts. The Story Girl had made the tale very real to us. We were glad we had not heard it in the evening. How could we ever have got back to the house through the shadows and swaying branches of a darkening orchard? As it was, we were almost afraid to look up it, lest we should see the waiting, blue-clad Emily under Uncle Alec"s tree.
But all we saw was Felicity, tearing over the green sward, her curls streaming behind her in a golden cloud.
"Felicity"s afraid she"s missed something," remarked the Story Girl in a tone of quiet amus.e.m.e.nt. "Is your breakfast ready, Felicity, or have I time to tell the boys the Story of the Poet Who Was Kissed?"
"Breakfast is ready, but we can"t have it till father is through attending to the sick cow, so you will likely have time," answered Felicity.