As I remember, the spring came late that year in Carlisle. It was May
before the weather began to satisfy the grown-ups. But we children were
more easily pleased, and we thought April a splendid month because the
snow all went early and left gray, firm, frozen ground for our rambles
and games. As the days slipped by they grew more gracious; the hillsides
began to look as if they were thinking of mayflowers; the old orchard
was washed in a bath of tingling sunshine and the sap stirred in the
big trees; by day the sky was veiled with delicate cloud drift, fine and
filmy as woven mist; in the evenings a full, low moon looked over the
valleys, as pallid and holy as some aureoled saint; a sound of laughter
and dream was on the wind and the world grew young with the mirth of
April breezes.
“It’s so nice to be alive in the spring,” said the Story Girl one
twilight as we swung on the boughs of Uncle Stephen’s walk.
“It’s nice to be alive any time,” said Felicity, complacently.
“But it’s nicer in the spring,” insisted the Story Girl. “When I’m dead
I think I’ll FEEL dead all the rest of the year, but when spring comes
I’m sure I’ll feel like getting up and being alive again.”
“You do say such queer things,” complained Felicity. “You won’t be
really dead any time. You’ll be in the next world. And I think it’s
horrid to talk about people being dead anyhow.”
“We’ve all got to die,” said Sara Ray solemnly, but with a certain
relish. It was as if she enjoyed looking forward to something in which
nothing, neither an unsympathetic mother, nor the cruel fate which had
made her a colourless little nonentity, could prevent her from being the
chief performer.
“I sometimes think,” said Cecily, rather wearily, “that it isn’t so
dreadful to die young as I used to suppose.”
She prefaced her remark with a slight cough, as she had been all too apt
to do of late, for the remnants of the cold she had caught the night we
were lost in the storm still clung to her.
“Don’t talk such nonsense, Cecily,” cried the Story Girl with unwonted
sharpness, a sharpness we all understood. All of us, in our hearts,
though we never spoke of it to each other, thought Cecily was not as
well as she ought to be that spring, and we hated to hear anything said
which seemed in any way to touch or acknowledge the tiny, faint shadow
which now and again showed itself dimly athwart our sunshine.
“Well, it was you began talking of being dead,” said Felicity angrily.
“I don’t think it’s right to talk of such things. Cecily, are you sure
your feet ain’t damp? We ought to go in anyhow--it’s too chilly out here
for you.”
“You girls had better go,” said Dan, “but I ain’t going in till old
Isaac Frewen goes. I’ve no use for him.”
“I hate him, too,” said Felicity, agreeing with Dan for once in her
life. “He chews tobacco all the time and spits on the floor--the horrid
pig!”
“And yet his brother is an elder in the church,” said Sara Ray
wonderingly.
“I know a story about Isaac Frewen,” said the Story Girl. “When he was
young he went by the name of Oatmeal Frewen and he got it this way. He
was noted for doing outlandish things. He lived at Markdale then and he
was a great, overgrown, awkward fellow, six feet tall. He drove over to
Baywater one Saturday to visit his uncle there and came home the next
afternoon, and although it was Sunday he brought a big bag of oatmeal in
the wagon with him. When he came to Carlisle church he saw that service
was going on there, and he concluded to stop and go in. But he didn’t
like to leave his oatmeal outside for fear something would happen to it,
because there were always mischievous boys around, so he hoisted the bag
on his back and walked into church with it and right to the top of the
aisle to Grandfather King’s pew. Grandfather King used to say he
would never forget it to his dying day. The minister was preaching and
everything was quiet and solemn when he heard a snicker behind him.
Grandfather King turned around with a terrible frown--for you know in
those days it was thought a dreadful thing to laugh in church--to rebuke
the offender; and what did he see but that great, hulking young Isaac
stalking up the aisle, bending a little forward under the weight of a
big bag of oatmeal? Grandfather King was so amazed he couldn’t laugh,
but almost everyone else in the church was laughing, and grandfather
said he never blamed them, for no funnier sight was ever seen. Young
Isaac turned into grandfather’s pew and thumped the bag of oatmeal down
on the seat with a thud that cracked it. Then he plumped down beside
it, took off his hat, wiped his face, and settled back to listen to the
sermon, just as if it was all a matter of course. When the service was
over he hoisted his bag up again, marched out of church, and drove home.
He could never understand why it made so much talk; but he was known by
the name of Oatmeal Frewen for years.”
Our laughter, as we separated, rang sweetly through the old orchard and
across the far, dim meadows. Felicity and Cecily went into the house
and Sara Ray and the Story Girl went home, but Peter decoyed me into the
granary to ask advice.
“You know Felicity has a birthday next week,” he said, “and I want to
write her an ode.”
“A--a what?” I gasped.
“An ode,” repeated Peter, gravely. “It’s poetry, you know. I’ll put it
in Our Magazine.”
“But you can’t write poetry, Peter,” I protested.
“I’m going to try,” said Peter stoutly. “That is, if you think she won’t
be offended at me.”
“She ought to feel flattered,” I replied.
“You never can tell how she’ll take things,” said Peter gloomily. “Of
course I ain’t going to sign my name, and if she ain’t pleased I won’t
tell her I wrote it. Don’t you let on.”
I promised I wouldn’t and Peter went off with a light heart. He said he
meant to write two lines every day till he got it done.
Cupid was playing his world-old tricks with others than poor Peter that
spring. Allusion has been made in these chronicles to one, Cyrus Brisk,
and to the fact that our brown-haired, soft-voiced Cecily had found
favour in the eyes of the said Cyrus. Cecily did not regard her conquest
with any pride. On the contrary, it annoyed her terribly to be teased
about Cyrus. She declared she hated both him and his name. She was as
uncivil to him as sweet Cecily could be to anyone, but the gallant Cyrus
was nothing daunted. He laid determined siege to Cecily’s young heart by
all the methods known to love-lorn swains. He placed delicate tributes
of spruce gum, molasses taffy, “conversation” candies and decorated
slate pencils on her desk; he persistently “chose” her in all school
games calling for a partner; he entreated to be allowed to carry her
basket from school; he offered to work her sums for her; and rumour had
it that he had made a wild statement to the effect that he meant to
ask if he might see her home some night from prayer meeting. Cecily was
quite frightened that he would; she confided to me that she would rather
die than walk home with him, but that if he asked her she would be too
bashful to say no. So far, however, Cyrus had not molested her out of
school, nor had he as yet thumped Willy Fraser--who was reported to be
very low in his spirits over the whole affair.
And now Cyrus had written Cecily a letter--a love letter, mark you.
Moreover, he had sent it through the post-office, with a real stamp
on it. Its arrival made a sensation among us. Dan brought it from the
office and, recognizing the handwriting of Cyrus, gave Cecily no peace
until she showed us the letter. It was a very sentimental and rather
ill-spelled epistle in which the inflammable Cyrus reproached her in
heart-rending words for her coldness, and begged her to answer his
letter, saying that if she did he would keep the secret “in violets.”
Cyrus probably meant “inviolate” but Cecily thought it was intended for
a poetical touch. He signed himself “your troo lover, Cyrus Brisk” and
added in a postcript that he couldn’t eat or sleep for thinking of her.
“Are you going to answer it?” asked Dan.
“Certainly not,” said Cecily with dignity.
“Cyrus Brisk wants to be kicked,” growled Felix, who never seemed to be
any particular friend of Willy Fraser’s either. “He’d better learn how
to spell before he takes to writing love letters.”
“Maybe Cyrus will starve to death if you don’t,” suggested Sara Ray.
“I hope he will,” said Cecily cruelly. She was truly vexed over the
letter; and yet, so contradictory a thing is the feminine heart, even at
twelve years old, I think she was a little flattered by it also. It was
her first love letter and she confided to me that it gives you a very
queer feeling to get it. At all events--the letter, though unanswered,
was not torn up. I feel sure Cecily preserved it. But she walked past
Cyrus next morning at school with a frozen countenance, evincing not the
slightest pity for his pangs of unrequited affection. Cecily winced when
Pat caught a mouse, visited a school chum the day the pigs were killed
that she might not hear their squealing, and would not have stepped on a
caterpillar for anything; yet she did not care at all how much she made
the brisk Cyrus suffer.
Then, suddenly, all our spring gladness and Maytime hopes were blighted
as by a killing frost. Sorrow and anxiety pervaded our days and
embittered our dreams by night. Grim tragedy held sway in our lives for
the next fortnight.
Paddy disappeared. One night he lapped his new milk as usual at Uncle
Roger’s dairy door and then sat blandly on the flat stone before it,
giving the world assurance of a cat, sleek sides glistening, plumy tail
gracefully folded around his paws, brilliant eyes watching the stir and
flicker of bare willow boughs in the twilight air above him. That was
the last seen of him. In the morning he was not.
At first we were not seriously alarmed. Paddy was no roving Thomas,
but occasionally he vanished for a day or so. But when two days passed
without his return we became anxious, the third day worried us greatly,
and the fourth found us distracted.
“Something has happened to Pat,” the Story Girl declared miserably. “He
never stayed away from home more than two days in his life.”
“What could have happened to him?” asked Felix.
“He’s been poisoned--or a dog has killed him,” answered the Story Girl
in tragic tones.
Cecily began to cry at this; but tears were of no avail. Neither was
anything else, apparently. We searched every nook and cranny of barns
and out-buildings and woods on both the King farms; we inquired far and
wide; we roved over Carlisle meadows calling Paddy’s name, until Aunt
Janet grew exasperated and declared we must stop making such exhibitions
of ourselves. But we found and heard no trace of our lost pet. The Story
Girl moped and refused to be comforted; Cecily declared she could not
sleep at night for thinking of poor Paddy dying miserably in some corner
to which he had dragged his failing body, or lying somewhere mangled and
torn by a dog. We hated every dog we saw on the ground that he might be
the guilty one.
“It’s the suspense that’s so hard,” sobbed the Story Girl. “If I just
knew what had happened to him it wouldn’t be QUITE so hard. But I don’t
know whether he’s dead or alive. He may be living and suffering, and
every night I dream that he has come home and when I wake up and find
it’s only a dream it just breaks my heart.”
“It’s ever so much worse than when he was so sick last fall,” said
Cecily drearily. “Then we knew that everything was done for him that
could be done.”
We could not appeal to Peg Bowen this time. In our desperation we would
have done it, but Peg was far away. With the first breath of spring she
was up and off, answering to the lure of the long road. She had not
been seen in her accustomed haunts for many a day. Her pets were gaining
their own living in the woods and her house was locked up.