"It"s very wrong, and, more than that, it"s so uncomfortable,"
complained Cecily. "It spoils everything."
"Were they ever like this before?" I asked Cecily, as we talked the matter over privately in Uncle Stephen"s Walk.
"Never for so long," said Cecily. "They had a spell like this last summer, and one the summer before, but they only lasted a couple of days."
"And who spoke first?"
"Oh, the Story Girl. She got excited about something and spoke to Felicity before she thought, and then it was all right. But I"m afraid it isn"t going to be like that this time. Don"t you notice how careful the Story Girl is not to get excited? That is such a bad sign."
"We"ve just got to think up something that will excite her, that"s all,"
I said.
"I"m--I"m praying about it," said Cecily in a low voice, her tear-wet lashes trembling against her pale, round cheeks. "Do you suppose it will do any good, Bev?"
"Very likely," I a.s.sured her. "Remember Sara Ray and the money. That came from praying."
"I"m glad you think so," said Cecily tremulously. "Dan said it was no use for me to bother praying about it. He said if they COULDN"T speak G.o.d might do something, but when they just WOULDN"T it wasn"t likely He would interfere. Dan does say such queer things. I"m so afraid he"s going to grow up just like Uncle Robert Ward, who never goes to church, and doesn"t believe more than half the Bible is true."
"Which half does he believe is true?" I inquired with unholy curiosity.
"Oh, just the nice parts. He says there"s a heaven all right, but no--no--h.e.l.l. I don"t want Dan to grow up like that. It isn"t respectable. And you wouldn"t want all kinds of people crowding heaven, now, would you?"
"Well, no, I suppose not," I agreed, thinking of Billy Robinson.
"Of course, I can"t help feeling sorry for those who have to go to THE OTHER PLACE," said Cecily compa.s.sionately. "But I suppose they wouldn"t be very comfortable in heaven either. They wouldn"t feel at home. Andrew Marr said a simply dreadful thing about THE OTHER PLACE one night last fall, when Felicity and I were down to see Kitty, and they were burning the potato stalks. He said he believed THE OTHER PLACE must be lots more interesting than heaven because fires were such jolly things. Now, did you ever hear the like?"
"I guess it depends a good deal on whether you"re inside or outside the fires," I said.
"Oh, Andrew didn"t really mean it, of course. He just said it to sound smart and make us stare. The Marrs are all like that. But anyhow, I"m going to keep on praying that something will happen to excite the Story Girl. I don"t believe there is any use in praying that Felicity will speak first, because I am sure she won"t."
"But don"t you suppose G.o.d could make her?" I said, feeling that it wasn"t quite fair that the Story Girl should always have to speak first.
If she had spoken first the other times it was surely Felicity"s turn this time.
"Well, I believe it would puzzle Him," said Cecily, out of the depths of her experience with Felicity.
Peter, as was to be expected, took Felicity"s part, and said the Story Girl ought to speak first because she was the oldest. That, he said, had always been his Aunt Jane"s rule.
Sara Ray thought Felicity should speak first, because the Story Girl was half an orphan.
Felix tried to make peace between them, and met the usual fate of all peacemakers. The Story Girl loftily told him that he was too young to understand, and Felicity said that fat boys should mind their own business. After that, Felix declared it would serve Felicity right if the Story Girl never spoke to her again.
Dan had no patience with either of the girls, especially Felicity.
"What they both want is a right good spanking," he said.
If only a spanking would mend the matter it was not likely it would ever be mended. Both Felicity and the Story Girl were rather too old to be spanked, and, if they had not been, none of the grown-ups would have thought it worth while to administer so desperate a remedy for what they considered so insignificant a trouble. With the usual levity of grown-ups, they regarded the coldness between the girls as a subject of mirth and jest, and recked not that it was freezing the genial current of our youthful souls, and blighting hours that should have been fair pages in our book of days.
The Story Girl finished her wreath and put it on. The b.u.t.tercups drooped over her high, white brow and played peep with her glowing eyes. A dreamy smile hovered around her poppy-red mouth--a significant smile which, to those of us skilled in its interpretation, betokened the sentence which soon came.
"I know a story about a man who always had his own opinion--"
The Story Girl got no further. We never heard the story of the man who always had his own opinion. Felix came tearing up the lane, with a newspaper in his hand. When a boy as fat as Felix runs at full speed on a broiling August forenoon, he has something to run for--as Felicity remarked.
"He must have got some bad news at the office," said Sara Ray.
"Oh, I hope nothing has happened to father," I exclaimed, springing anxiously to my feet, a sick, horrible feeling of fear running over me like a cool, rippling wave.
"It"s just as likely to be good news he is running for as bad," said the Story Girl, who was no believer in meeting trouble half way.
"He wouldn"t be running so fast for good news," said Dan cynically.
We were not left long in doubt. The orchard gate flew open and Felix was among us. One glimpse of his face told us that he was no bearer of glad tidings. He had been running hard and should have been rubicund.
Instead, he was "as pale as are the dead." I could not have asked him what was the matter had my life depended on it. It was Felicity who demanded impatiently of my shaking, voiceless brother:
"Felix King, what has scared you?"
Felix held out the newspaper--it was the Charlottetown _Daily Enterprise_.
"It"s there," he gasped. "Look--read--oh, do you--think it"s--true?
The--end of--the world--is coming to-morrow--at two--o"clock--in the afternoon!"
Crash! Felicity had dropped the cup of clouded blue, which had pa.s.sed unscathed through so many changing years, and now at last lay shattered on the stone of the well curb. At any other time we should all have been aghast over such a catastrophe, but it pa.s.sed unnoticed now. What mattered it that all the cups in the world be broken to-day if the crack o" doom must sound to-morrow?
"Oh, Sara Stanley, do you believe it? DO you?" gasped Felicity, clutching the Story Girl"s hand. Cecily"s prayer had been answered.
Excitement had come with a vengeance, and under its stress Felicity had spoken first. But this, like the breaking of the cup, had no significance for us at the moment.
The Story Girl s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper and read the announcement to a group on which sudden, tense silence had fallen. Under a sensational headline, "The Last Trump will sound at Two O"clock To-morrow," was a paragraph to the effect that the leader of a certain noted sect in the United States had predicted that August twelfth would be the Judgment Day, and that all his numerous followers were preparing for the dread event by prayer, fasting, and the making of appropriate white garments for ascension robes.
I laugh at the remembrance now--until I recall the real horror of fear that enwrapped us in that sunny orchard that August morning of long ago; and then I laugh no more. We were only children, be it remembered, with a very firm and simple faith that grown people knew much more than we did, and a rooted conviction that whatever you read in a newspaper must be true. If the _Daily Enterprise_ said that August twelfth was to be the Judgment Day how were you going to get around it?
"Do you believe it, Sara Stanley?" persisted Felicity. "DO you?"
"No--no, I don"t believe a word of it," said the Story Girl.
But for once her voice failed to carry conviction--or, rather, it carried conviction of the very opposite kind. It was borne in upon our miserable minds that if the Story Girl did not altogether believe it was true she believed it might be true; and the possibility was almost as dreadful as the certainty.
"It CAN"T be true," said Sara Ray, seeking refuge, as usual, in tears.
"Why, everything looks just the same. Things COULDN"T look the same if the Judgment Day was going to be to-morrow."
"But that"s just the way it"s to come," I said uncomfortably. "It tells you in the Bible. It"s to come just like a thief in the night."
"But it tells you another thing in the Bible, too," said Cecily eagerly.
"It says n.o.body knows when the Judgment Day is to come--not even the angels in heaven. Now, if the angels in heaven don"t know it, do you suppose the editor of the _Enterprise_ can know it--and him a Grit, too?"
"I guess he knows as much about it as a Tory would," retorted the Story Girl. Uncle Roger was a Liberal and Uncle Alec a Conservative, and the girls held fast to the political traditions of their respective households. "But it isn"t really the _Enterprise_ editor at all who is saying it--it"s a man in the States who claims to be a prophet. If he IS a prophet perhaps he has found out somehow."
"And it"s in the paper, too, and that"s printed as well as the Bible,"
said Dan.