We were all in the doleful dumps--at least, all we “young fry” were, and
even the grown-ups were sorry and condescended to take an interest
in our troubles. Pat, our own, dear, frolicsome Paddy, was sick
again--very, very sick.
On Friday he moped and refused his saucer of new milk at milking time.
The next morning he stretched himself down on the platform by Uncle
Roger’s back door, laid his head on his black paws, and refused to take
any notice of anything or anybody. In vain we stroked and entreated and
brought him tidbits. Only when the Story Girl caressed him did he give
one plaintive little mew, as if to ask piteously why she could not do
something for him. At that Cecily and Felicity and Sara Ray all began
crying, and we boys felt choky. Indeed, I caught Peter behind Aunt
Olivia’s dairy later in the day, and if ever a boy had been crying I vow
that boy was Peter. Nor did he deny it when I taxed him with it, but he
would not give in that he was crying about Paddy. Nonsense!
“What were you crying for, then?” I said.
“I’m crying because--because my Aunt Jane is dead,” said Peter
defiantly.
“But your Aunt Jane died two years ago,” I said skeptically.
“Well, ain’t that all the more reason for crying?” retorted Peter. “I’ve
had to do without her for two years, and that’s worse than if it had
just been a few days.”
“I believe you were crying because Pat is so sick,” I said firmly.
“As if I’d cry about a cat!” scoffed Peter. And he marched off
whistling.
Of course we had tried the lard and powder treatment again, smearing
Pat’s paws and sides liberally. But to our dismay, Pat made no effort to
lick it off.
“I tell you he’s a mighty sick cat,” said Peter darkly. “When a cat
don’t care what he looks like he’s pretty far gone.”
“If we only knew what was the matter with him we might do something,”
sobbed the Story Girl, stroking her poor pet’s unresponsive head.
“I could tell you what’s the matter with him, but you’d only laugh at
me,” said Peter.
We all looked at him.
“Peter Craig, what do you mean?” asked Felicity.
“‘Zackly what I say.”
“Then, if you know what is the matter with Paddy, tell us,” commanded
the Story Girl, standing up. She said it quietly; but Peter obeyed. I
think he would have obeyed if she, in that tone and with those eyes, had
ordered him to cast himself into the depths of the sea. I know I should.
“He’s BEWITCHED--that’s what’s the matter with him,” said Peter, half
defiantly, half shamefacedly.
“Bewitched? Nonsense!”
“There now, what did I tell you?” complained Peter.
The Story Girl looked at Peter, at the rest of us, and then at poor Pat.
“How could he be bewitched?” she asked irresolutely, “and who could
bewitch him?”
“I don’t know HOW he was bewitched,” said Peter. “I’d have to be a witch
myself to know that. But Peg Bowen bewitched him.”
“Nonsense!” said the Story Girl again.
“All right,” said Peter. “You don’t have to believe me.”
“If Peg Bowen could bewitch anything--and I don’t believe she could--why
should she bewitch Pat?” asked the Story Girl. “Everybody here and at
Uncle Alec’s is always kind to her.”
“I’ll tell you why,” said Peter. “Thursday afternoon, when you fellows
were all in school, Peg Bowen came here. Your Aunt Olivia gave her a
lunch--a good one. You may laugh at the notion of Peg being a witch,
but I notice your folks are always awful good to her when she comes, and
awful careful never to offend her.”
“Aunt Olivia would be good to any poor creature, and so would mother,”
said Felicity. “And of course nobody wants to offend Peg, because she
is spiteful, and she once set fire to a man’s barn in Markdale when he
offended her. But she isn’t a witch--that’s ridiculous.”
“All right. But wait till I tell you. When Peg Bowen was leaving Pat
stretched out on the steps. She tramped on his tail. You know Pat
doesn’t like to have his tail meddled with. He slewed himself round and
clawed her bare foot. If you’d just seen the look she gave him you’d
know whether she was a witch or not. And she went off down the lane,
muttering and throwing her hands round, just like she did in Lem Hill’s
cow pasture. She put a spell on Pat, that’s what she did. He was sick
the next morning.”
We looked at each other in miserable, perplexed silence. We were only
children--and we believed that there had been such things as witches
once upon a time--and Peg Bowen WAS an eerie creature.
“If that’s so--though I can’t believe it--we can’t do anything,” said
the Story Girl drearily. “Pat must die.”
Cecily began to weep afresh.
“I’d do anything to save Pat’s life,” she said. “I’d BELIEVE anything.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” said Felicity impatiently.
“I suppose,” sobbed Cecily, “we might go to Peg Bowen and ask her to
forgive Pat and take the spell off him. She might, if we apologized real
humble.”
At first we were appalled by the suggestion. We didn’t believe that Peg
Bowen was a witch. But to go to her--to seek her out in that mysterious
woodland retreat of hers which was invested with all the terrors of the
unknown! And that this suggestion should come from timid Cecily, of all
people! But then, there was poor Pat!
“Would it do any good?” said the Story Girl desperately. “Even if she
did make Pat sick I suppose it would only make her crosser if we went
and accused her of bewitching him. Besides, she didn’t do anything of
the sort.”
But there was some uncertainty in the Story Girl’s voice.
“It wouldn’t do any harm to try,” said Cecily. “If she didn’t make him
sick it won’t matter if she is cross.”
“It won’t matter to Pat, but it might to the one who goes to her,”
said Felicity. “She isn’t a witch, but she’s a spiteful old woman, and
goodness knows what she’d do to us if she caught us. I’m scared of Peg
Bowen, and I don’t care who knows it. Ever since I can mind ma’s been
saying, ‘If you’re not good Peg Bowen will catch you.’”
“If I thought she really made Pat sick and could make him better,
I’d try to pacify her somehow,” said the Story Girl decidedly. “I’m
frightened of her, too--but just look at poor, darling Paddy.”
We looked at Paddy who continued to stare fixedly before him with
unwinking eyes. Uncle Roger came out and looked at him also, with what
seemed to us positively brutal unconcern.
“I’m afraid it’s all up with Pat,” he said.
“Uncle Roger,” said Cecily imploringly, “Peter says Peg Bowen has
bewitched Pat for scratching her. Do you think it can be so?”
“Did Pat scratch Peg?” asked Uncle Roger, with a horror-stricken face.
“Dear me! Dear me! That mystery is solved. Poor Pat!”
Uncle Roger nodded his head, as if resigning himself and Pat to the
worst.
“Do you really think Peg Bowen is a witch, Uncle Roger?” demanded the
Story Girl incredulously.
“Do I think Peg Bowen is a witch? My dear Sara, what do YOU think of a
woman who can turn herself into a black cat whenever she likes? Is she a
witch? Or is she not? I leave it to you.”
“Can Peg Bowen turn herself into a black cat?” asked Felix, staring.
“It’s my belief that that is the least of Peg Bowen’s accomplishments,”
answered Uncle Roger. “It’s the easiest thing in the world for a witch
to turn herself into any animal you choose to mention. Yes, Pat is
bewitched--no doubt of that--not the least in the world.”
“What are you telling those children such stuff for?” asked Aunt Olivia,
passing on her way to the well.
“It’s an irresistible temptation,” answered Uncle Roger, strolling over
to carry her pail.
“You can see your Uncle Roger believes Peg is a witch,” said Peter.
“And you can see Aunt Olivia doesn’t,” I said, “and I don’t either.”
“See here,” said the Story Girl resolutely, “I don’t believe it, but
there MAY be something in it. Suppose there is. The question is, what
can we do?”
“I’ll tell you what I’D do,” said Peter. “I’d take a present for Peg,
and ask her to make Pat well. I wouldn’t let on I thought she’d made
him sick. Then she couldn’t be offended--and maybe she’d take the spell
off.”
“I think we’d better all give her something,” said Felicity. “I’m
willing to do that. But who’s going to take the presents to her?”
“We must all go together,” said the Story Girl.
“I won’t,” cried Sara Ray in terror. “I wouldn’t go near Peg Bowen’s
house for the world, no matter who was with me.”
“I’ve thought of a plan,” said the Story Girl. “Let’s all give her
something, as Felicity says. And let us all go up to her place this
evening, and if we see her outside we’ll just go quietly and set
the things down before her with the letter, and say nothing but come
respectfully away.”
“If she’ll let us,” said Dan significantly.
“Can Peg read a letter?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. Aunt Olivia says she is a good scholar. She went to school and
was a smart girl until she became crazy. We’ll write it very plain.”
“What if we don’t see her?” asked Felicity.
“We’ll put the things on her doorstep then and leave them.”
“She may be miles away over the country by this time,” sighed Cecily,
“and never find them until it’s too late for Pat. But it’s the only
thing to do. What can we give her?”
“We mustn’t offer her any money,” said the Story Girl. “She’s very
indignant when any one does that. She says she isn’t a beggar. But
she’ll take anything else. I shall give her my string of blue beads.
She’s fond of finery.”
“I’ll give her that sponge cake I made this morning,” said Felicity. “I
guess she doesn’t get sponge cake very often.”
“I’ve nothing but the rheumatism ring I got as a premium for selling
needles last winter,” said Peter. “I’ll give her that. Even if she
hasn’t got rheumatism it’s a real handsome ring. It looks like solid
gold.”
“I’ll give her a roll of peppermint candy,” said Felix.
“I’ll give one of those little jars of cherry preserve I made,” said
Cecily.
“I won’t go near her,” quavered Sara Ray, “but I want to do something
for Pat, and I’ll send that piece of apple leaf lace I knit last week.”
I decided to give the redoubtable Peg some apples from my birthday tree,
and Dan declared he would give her a plug of tobacco.
“Oh, won’t she be insulted?” exclaimed Felix, rather horrified.
“Naw,” grinned Dan. “Peg chews tobacco like a man. She’d rather have
it than your rubbishy peppermints, I can tell you. I’ll run down to old
Mrs. Sampson’s and get a plug.”
“Now, we must write the letter and take it and the presents to her right
away, before it gets dark,” said the Story Girl.
We adjourned to the granary to indite the important document, which the
Story Girl was to compose.
“How shall I begin it?” she asked in perplexity. “It would never do to
say, ‘Dear Peg,’ and ‘Dear Miss Bowen’ sounds too ridiculous.”
“Besides, nobody knows whether she is Miss Bowen or not,” said Felicity.
“She went to Boston when she grew up, and some say she was married there
and her husband deserted her, and that’s why she went crazy. If she’s
married, she won’t like being called Miss.”
“Well, how am I to address her?” asked the Story Girl in despair.
Peter again came to the rescue with a practical suggestion.
“Begin it, ‘Respected Madam,’” he said. “Ma has a letter a school
trustee once writ to my Aunt Jane and that’s how it begins.”
“Respected Madam,” wrote the Story Girl. “We want to ask a very great
favour of you and we hope you will kindly grant it if you can. Our
favourite cat, Paddy, is very sick, and we are afraid he is going to
die. Do you think you could cure him? And will you please try? We are
all so fond of him, and he is such a good cat, and has no bad habits. Of
course, if any of us tramps on his tail he will scratch us, but you know
a cat can’t bear to have his tail tramped on. It’s a very tender part
of him, and it’s his only way of preventing it, and he doesn’t mean any
harm. If you can cure Paddy for us we will always be very, very grateful
to you. The accompanying small offerings are a testimonial of our
respect and gratitude, and we entreat you to honour us by accepting
them.
“Very respectfully yours,
“SARA STANLEY.”
“I tell you that last sentence has a fine sound,” said Peter admiringly.
“I didn’t make that up,” admitted the Story Girl honestly. “I read it
somewhere and remembered it.”
“I think it’s TOO fine,” criticized Felicity. “Peg Bowen won’t know the
meaning of such big words.”
But it was decided to leave them in and we all signed the letter.
Then we got our “testimonials,” and started on our reluctant journey
to the domains of the witch. Sara Ray would not go, of course, but she
volunteered to stay with Pat while we were away. We did not think
it necessary to inform the grown-ups of our errand, or its nature.
Grown-ups had such peculiar views. They might forbid our going at
all--and they would certainly laugh at us.
Peg Bowen’s house was nearly a mile away, even by the short cut past the
swamp and up the wooded hill. We went down through the brook field and
over the little plank bridge in the hollow, half lost in its surrounding
sea of farewell summers. When we reached the green gloom of the woods
beyond we began to feel frightened, but nobody would admit it. We
walked very closely together, and we did not talk. When you are near the
retreat of witches and folk of that ilk the less you say the better, for
their feelings are so notoriously touchy. Of course, Peg wasn’t a witch,
but it was best to be on the safe side.
Finally we came to the lane which led directly to her abode. We were all
very pale now, and our hearts were beating. The red September sun hung
low between the tall spruces to the west. It did not look to me just
right for a sun. In fact, everything looked uncanny. I wished our errand
were well over.
A sudden bend in the lane brought us out to the little clearing where
Peg’s house was before we were half ready to see it. In spite of my fear
I looked at it with some curiosity. It was a small, shaky building with
a sagging roof, set amid a perfect jungle of weeds. To our eyes, the odd
thing about it was that there was no entrance on the ground floor, as
there should be in any respectable house. The only door was in the upper
story, and was reached by a flight of rickety steps. There was no sign
of life about the place except--sight of ill omen--a large black cat,
sitting on the topmost step. We thought of Uncle Roger’s gruesome hints.
Could that black cat be Peg? Nonsense! But still--it didn’t look like
an ordinary cat. It was so large--and had such green, malicious eyes!
Plainly, there was something out of the common about the beastie!
In a tense, breathless silence the Story Girl placed our parcels on
the lowest step, and laid her letter on the top of the pile. Her brown
fingers trembled and her face was very pale.
Suddenly the door above us opened, and Peg Bowen herself appeared on the
threshold. She was a tall, sinewy old woman, wearing a short, ragged,
drugget skirt which reached scantly below her knees, a scarlet print
blouse, and a man’s hat. Her feet, arms, and neck were bare, and she had
a battered old clay pipe in her mouth. Her brown face was seamed with a
hundred wrinkles, and her tangled, grizzled hair fell unkemptly over
her shoulders. She was scowling, and her flashing black eyes held no
friendly light.
We had borne up bravely enough hitherto, in spite of our inward,
unconfessed quakings. But now our strained nerves gave way, and sheer
panic seized us. Peter gave a little yelp of pure terror. We turned and
fled across the clearing and into the woods. Down the long hill we tore,
like mad, hunted creatures, firmly convinced that Peg Bowen was after
us. Wild was that scamper, as nightmare-like as any recorded in our
dream books. The Story Girl was in front of me, and I can recall the
tremendous leaps she made over fallen logs and little spruce bushes,
with her long brown curls streaming out behind her from their scarlet
fillet. Cecily, behind me, kept gasping out the contradictory sentences,
“Oh, Bev, wait for me,” and “Oh, Bev, hurry, hurry!” More by blind
instinct than anything else we kept together and found our way out of
the woods. Presently we were in the field beyond the brook. Over us was
a dainty sky of shell pink, placid cows were pasturing around us; the
farewell summers nodded to us in the friendly breezes. We halted, with a
glad realization that we were back in our own haunts and that Peg Bowen
had not caught us.
“Oh, wasn’t that an awful experience?” gasped Cecily, shuddering. “I
wouldn’t go through it again--I couldn’t, not even for Pat.”
“It come on a fellow so suddent,” said Peter shamefacedly. “I think I
could a-stood my ground if I’d known she was going to come out. But when
she popped out like that I thought I was done for.”
“We shouldn’t have run,” said Felicity gloomily. “It showed we were
afraid of her, and that always makes her awful cross. She won’t do a
thing for Pat now.”
“I don’t believe she could do anything, anyway,” said the Story Girl. “I
think we’ve just been a lot of geese.”
We were all, except Peter, more or less inclined to agree with her. And
the conviction of our folly deepened when we reached the granary and
found that Pat, watched over by the faithful Sara Ray, was no better.
The Story Girl announced that she would take him into the kitchen and
sit up all night with him.
“He sha’n’t die alone, anyway,” she said miserably, gathering his limp
body up in her arms.
We did not think Aunt Olivia would give her permission to stay up; but
Aunt Olivia did. Aunt Olivia really was a duck. We wanted to stay with
her also, but Aunt Janet wouldn’t hear of such a thing. She ordered us
off to bed, saying that it was positively sinful in us to be so worked
up over a cat. Five heart-broken children, who knew that there are many
worse friends than dumb, furry folk, climbed Uncle Alec’s stairs to bed
that night.
“There’s nothing we can do now, except pray God to make Pat better,”
said Cecily.
I must candidly say that her tone savoured strongly of a last resort;
but this was owing more to early training than to any lack of faith on
Cecily’s part. She knew and we knew, that prayer was a solemn rite, not
to be lightly held, nor degraded to common uses. Felicity voiced this
conviction when she said,
“I don’t believe it would be right to pray about a cat.”
“I’d like to know why not,” retorted Cecily, “God made Paddy just as
much as He made you, Felicity King, though perhaps He didn’t go to
so much trouble. And I’m sure He’s abler to help him than Peg Bowen.
Anyhow, I’m going to pray for Pat with all my might and main, and I’d
like to see you try to stop me. Of course I won’t mix it up with more
important things. I’ll just tack it on after I’ve finished asking the
blessings, but before I say amen.”
More petitions than Cecily’s were offered up that night on behalf of
Paddy. I distinctly heard Felix--who always said his prayers in a loud
whisper, owing to some lasting conviction of early life that God could
not hear him if he did not pray audibly--mutter pleadingly, after the
“important” part of his devotions was over, “Oh, God, please make Pat
better by the morning. PLEASE do.”
And I, even in these late years of irreverence for the dreams of youth,
am not in the least ashamed to confess that when I knelt down to say my
boyish prayer, I thought of our little furry comrade in his extremity,
and prayed as reverently as I knew how for his healing. Then I went to
sleep, comforted by the simple hope that the Great Father would, after
“important things” were all attended to, remember poor Pat.
As soon as we were up the next morning we rushed off to Uncle Roger’s.
But we met Peter and the Story Girl in the lane, and their faces were as
the faces of those who bring glad tidings upon the mountains.
“Pat’s better,” cried the Story Girl, blithe, triumphant. “Last night,
just at twelve, he began to lick his paws. Then he licked himself all
over and went to sleep, too, on the sofa. When I woke Pat was washing
his face, and he has taken a whole saucerful of milk. Oh, isn’t it
splendid?”
“You see Peg Bowen did put a spell on him,” said Peter, “and then she
took it off.”
“I guess Cecily’s prayer had more to do with Pat’s getting better than
Peg Bowen,” said Felicity. “She prayed for Pat over and over again. That
is why he’s better.”
“Oh, all right,” said Peter, “but I’d advise Pat not to scratch Peg
Bowen again, that’s all.”
“I wish I knew whether it was the praying or Peg Bowen that cured Pat,”
said Felix in perplexity.
“I don’t believe it was either of them,” said Dan. “Pat just got sick
and got better again of his own accord.”
“I’m going to believe that it was the praying,” said Cecily decidedly.
“It’s so much nicer to believe that God cured Pat than that Peg Bowen
did.”
“But you oughtn’t to believe a thing just ‘cause it would be more
comfortable,” objected Peter. “Mind you, I ain’t saying God couldn’t
cure Pat. But nothing and nobody can’t ever make me believe that Peg
Bowen wasn’t at the bottom of it all.”
Thus faith, superstition, and incredulity strove together amongst us, as
in all history.