Chapter 31 On the Edge of Light and Dark — The Story Girl by Lucy Montgomery
We celebrated the November day when Peter was permitted to rejoin us by a picnic in the orchard. Sara Ray was also allowed to come, under protest; and her joy over being among us once more was almost pathetic. She and Cecily cried in one another’s arms as if they had been parted for years.
We had a beautiful day for our picnic. November dreamed that it was May. The air was soft and mellow, with pale, aerial mists in the valleys and over the leafless beeches on the western hill. The sere stubble fields brooded in glamour, and the sky was pearly blue. The leaves were still thick on the apple trees, though they were russet hued, and the after-growth of grass was richly green, unharmed as yet by the nipping frosts of previous nights. The wind made a sweet, drowsy murmur in the boughs, as of bees among apple blossoms.
“It’s just like spring, isn’t it?” asked Felicity.
The Story Girl shook her head.
“No, not quite. It looks like spring, but it isn’t spring. It’s as if everything was resting—getting ready to sleep. In spring they’re getting ready to grow. Can’t you FEEL the difference?”
“I think it’s just like spring,” insisted Felicity.
In the sun-sweet place before the Pulpit Stone we boys had put up a board table. Aunt Janet allowed us to cover it with an old tablecloth, the worn places in which the girls artfully concealed with frost-whitened ferns. We had the kitchen dishes, and the table was gaily decorated with Cecily’s three scarlet geraniums and maple leaves in the cherry vase. As for the viands, they were fit for the gods on high Olympus. Felicity had spent the whole previous day and the forenoon of the picnic day in concocting them. Her crowning achievement was a rich little plum cake, on the white frosting of which the words “Welcome Back” were lettered in pink candies. This was put before Peter’s place, and almost overcame him.
“To think that you’d go to so much trouble for me!” he said, with a glance of adoring gratitude at Felicity. Felicity got all the gratitude, although the Story Girl had originated the idea and seeded the raisins and beaten the eggs, while Cecily had trudged all the way to Mrs. Jameson’s little shop below the church to buy the pink candies. But that is the way of the world.
“We ought to have grace,” said Felicity, as we sat down at the festal board. “Will any one say it?”
She looked at me, but I blushed to the roots of my hair and shook my head sheepishly. An awkward pause ensued; it looked as if we would have to proceed without grace, when Felix suddenly shut his eyes, bent his head, and said a very good grace without any appearance of embarrassment. We looked at him when it was over with an increase of respect.
“Where on earth did you learn that, Felix?” I asked.
“It’s the grace Uncle Alec says at every meal,” answered Felix.
We felt rather ashamed of ourselves. Was it possible that we had paid so little attention to Uncle Alec’s grace that we did not recognize it when we heard it on other lips?
“Now,” said Felicity jubilantly, “let’s eat everything up.”
In truth, it was a merry little feast. We had gone without our dinners, in order to “save our appetites,” and we did ample justice to Felicity’s good things. Paddy sat on the Pulpit Stone and watched us with great yellow eyes, knowing that tidbits would come his way later on. Many witty things were said—or at least we thought them witty—and uproarious was the laughter. Never had the old King orchard known a blither merrymaking or lighter hearts.
The picnic over, we played games until the early falling dusk, and then we went with Uncle Alec to the back field to burn the potato stalks—the crowning delight of the day.
The stalks were in heaps all over the field, and we were allowed the privilege of setting fire to them. ‘Twas glorious! In a few minutes the field was alight with blazing bonfires, over which rolled great, pungent clouds of smoke. From pile to pile we ran, shrieking with delight, to poke each up with a long stick and watch the gush of rose-red sparks stream off into the night. In what a whirl of smoke and firelight and wild, fantastic, hurtling shadows we were!
When we grew tired of our sport we went to the windward side of the field and perched ourselves on the high pole fence that skirted a dark spruce wood, full of strange, furtive sounds. Over us was a great, dark sky, blossoming with silver stars, and all around lay dusky, mysterious reaches of meadow and wood in the soft, empurpled night. Away to the east a shimmering silveryness beneath a palace of aerial cloud foretokened moonrise. But directly before us the potato field, with its wreathing smoke and sullen flames, the gigantic shadow of Uncle Alec crossing and recrossing it, reminded us of Peter’s famous description of the bad place, and probably suggested the Story Girl’s remark.
“I know a story,” she said, infusing just the right shade of weirdness into her voice, “about a man who saw the devil. Now, what’s the matter, Felicity?”
“I can never get used to the way you mention the—the—that name,” complained Felicity. “To hear you speak of the Old Scratch any one would think he was just a common person.”
“Never mind. Tell us the story,” I said curiously.
“It is about Mrs. John Martin’s uncle at Markdale,” said the Story Girl. “I heard Uncle Roger telling it the other night. He didn’t know I was sitting on the cellar hatch outside the window, or I don’t suppose he would have told it. Mrs. Martin’s uncle’s name was William Cowan, and he has been dead for twenty years; but sixty years ago he was a young man, and a very wild, wicked young man. He did everything bad he could think of, and never went to church, and he laughed at everything religious, even the devil. He didn’t believe there was a devil at all. One beautiful summer Sunday evening his mother pleaded with him to go to church with her, but he would not. He told her that he was going fishing instead, and when church time came he swaggered past the church, with his fishing rod over his shoulder, singing a godless song. Half way between the church and the harbour there was a thick spruce wood, and the path ran through it. When William Cowan was half way through it SOMETHING came out of the wood and walked beside him.”
I have never heard anything more horribly suggestive than that innocent word “something,” as enunciated by the Story Girl. I felt Cecily’s hand, icy cold, clutching mine.
“What—what—was IT like?” whispered Felix, curiosity getting the better of his terror.
“IT was tall, and black, and hairy,” said the Story Girl, her eyes glowing with uncanny intensity in the red glare of the fires, “and IT lifted one great, hairy hand, with claws on the end of it, and clapped William Cowan, first on one shoulder and then on the other, and said, ‘Good sport to you, brother.’ William Cowan gave a horrible scream and fell on his face right there in the wood. Some of the men around the church door heard the scream, and they rushed down to the wood. They saw nothing but William Cowan, lying like a dead man on the path. They took him up and carried him home; and when they undressed him to put him to bed, there, on each shoulder, was the mark of a big hand, BURNED INTO THE FLESH. It was weeks before the burns healed, and the scars never went away. Always, as long as William Cowan lived, he carried on his shoulders the prints of the devil’s hand.”
I really do not know how we should ever have got home, had we been left to our own devices. We were cold with fright. How could we turn our backs on the eerie spruce wood, out of which SOMETHING might pop at any moment? How cross those long, shadowy fields between us and our rooftree? How venture through the darkly mysterious bracken hollow?
Fortunately, Uncle Alec came along at this crisis and said he thought we’d better come home now, since the fires were nearly out. We slid down from the fence and started, taking care to keep close together and in front of Uncle Alec.
“I don’t believe a word of that yarn,” said Dan, trying to speak with his usual incredulity.
“I don’t see how you can help believing it,” said Cecily. “It isn’t as if it was something we’d read of, or that happened far away. It happened just down at Markdale, and I’ve seen that very spruce wood myself.”
“Oh, I suppose William Cowan got a fright of some kind,” conceded Dan, “but I don’t believe he saw the devil.”
“Old Mr. Morrison at Lower Markdale was one of the men who undressed him, and he remembers seeing the marks,” said the Story Girl triumphantly.
“How did William Cowan behave afterwards?” I asked.
“He was a changed man,” said the Story Girl solemnly. “Too much changed. He never was known to laugh again, or even smile. He became a very religious man, which was a good thing, but he was dreadfully gloomy and thought everything pleasant sinful. He wouldn’t even eat any more than was actually necessary to keep him alive. Uncle Roger says that if he had been a Roman Catholic he would have become a monk, but, as he was a Presbyterian, all he could do was to turn into a crank.”
“Yes, but your Uncle Roger was never clapped on the shoulder and called brother by the devil,” said Peter. “If he had, he mightn’t have been so precious jolly afterwards himself.”
“I do wish to goodness,” said Felicity in exasperation, “that you’d stop talking of the—the—of such subjects in the dark. I’m so scared now that I keep thinking father’s steps behind us are SOMETHING’S. Just think, my own father!”
The Story Girl slipped her arm through Felicity’s.
“Never mind,” she said soothingly. “I’ll tell you another story—such a beautiful story that you’ll forget all about the devil.”
She told us one of Hans Andersen’s most exquisite tales; and the magic of her voice charmed away all our fear, so that when we reached the bracken hollow, a lake of shadow surrounded by the silver shore of moonlit fields, we all went through it without a thought of His Satanic Majesty at all. And beyond us, on the hill, the homelight was glowing from the farmhouse window like a beacon of old loves.