CHAPTER XXI. PEG¹ BOWEN COMES TO CHURCH

When those of us who are still left of that band of children who played long years ago in the old orchard² and walked the golden road together in joyous³ companionship, foregather now and again in our busy lives and talk over the events of those many merry moons—there are some of our adventures that gleam out more vividly⁴ in memory than the others, and are oftener discussed. The time we bought God’s picture from Jerry Cowan—the time Dan ate the poison berries—the time we heard the ghostly bell ring—the bewitchment of Paddy—the visit of the Governor’s wife—and the night we were lost in the storm—all awaken⁵ reminiscent jest and laughter; but none more than the recollection of the Sunday Peg Bowen came to church and sat in our pew. Though goodness knows, as Felicity would say, we did not think it any matter for laughter at the time—far from it.

It was one Sunday evening in July. Uncle Alec and Aunt Janet, having been out to the morning service, did not attend in the evening, and we small fry walked together down the long hill road, wearing Sunday attire⁶ and trying, more or less successfully, to wear Sunday faces also. Those walks to church, through the golden completeness of the summer evenings, were always very pleasant to us, and we never hurried, though, on the other hand, we were very careful not to be late.

This particular evening was particularly beautiful. It was cool after a hot day, and wheat fields all about us were ripening⁷ to their harvestry. The wind gossiped with the grasses along our way, and over them the buttercups danced, goldenly-glad. Waves of sinuous⁸ shadow went over the ripe hayfields, and plundering⁹ bees sang a freebooting lilt in wayside gardens.

“The world is so lovely tonight,” said the Story Girl. “I just hate the thought of going into the church and shutting all the sunlight and music outside. I wish we could have the service outside in summer.”

“I don’t think that would be very religious,” said Felicity.

“I’d feel ever so much more religious outside than in,” retorted the Story Girl.

“If the service was outside we’d have to sit in the graveyard¹⁰ and that wouldn’t be very cheerful,” said Felix.

“Besides, the music isn’t shut out,” added Felicity. “The choir¹¹ is inside.”

“‘Music has charms to soothe¹² a savage¹³ breast,’” quoted Peter, who was getting into the habit of adorning¹⁴ his conversation with similar gems¹⁵. “That’s in one of Shakespeare’s plays. I’m reading them now, since I got through with the Bible. They’re great.”

“I don’t see when you get time to read them,” said Felicity.

“Oh, I read them Sunday afternoons when I’m home.”

“I don’t believe they’re fit to read on Sundays,” exclaimed Felicity. “Mother says Valeria Montague’s stories ain’t.”

“But Shakespeare’s different from Valeria,” protested Peter.

“I don’t see in what way. He wrote a lot of things that weren’t true, just like Valeria, and he wrote swear words too. Valeria never does that. Her characters all talk in a very refined fashion.”

“Well, I always skip the swear words,” said Peter. “And Mr. Marwood said once that the Bible and Shakespeare would furnish any library well. So you see he put them together, but I’m sure that he would never say that the Bible and Valeria would make a library.”

“Well, all I know is, I shall never read Shakespeare on Sunday,” said Felicity loftily.

“I wonder what kind of a preacher young Mr. Davidson is,” speculated Cecily.

“Well, we’ll know when we hear him tonight,” said the Story Girl. “He ought to be good, for his uncle before him was a fine preacher, though a very absent-minded man. But Uncle Roger says the supply in Mr. Marwood’s vacation never amounts to much. I know an awfully¹⁶ funny story about old Mr. Davidson. He used to be the minister in Baywater, you know, and he had a large family and his children were very mischievous¹⁷. One day his wife was ironing and she ironed a great big nightcap with a frill round it. One of the children took it when she wasn’t looking and hid it in his father’s best beaver¹⁸ hat—the one he wore on Sundays. When Mr. Davidson went to church next Sunday he put the hat on without ever looking into the crown. He walked to church in a brown study and at the door he took off his hat. The nightcap just slipped down on his head, as if it had been put on, and the frill stood out around his face and the string hung down his back. But he never noticed it, because his thoughts were far away, and he walked up the church aisle¹⁹ and into the pulpit, like that. One of his elders had to tiptoe up and tell him what he had on his head. He plucked it off in a dazed fashion, held it up, and looked at it. ‘Bless me, it is Sally’s nightcap!’ he exclaimed mildly. ‘I do not know how I could have got it on.’ Then he just stuffed it into his pocket calmly and went on with the service, and the long strings²⁰ of the nightcap hung down out of his pocket all the time.”

“It seems to me,” said Peter, amid the laughter with which we greeted the tale, “that a funny story is funnier when it is about a minister than it is about any other man. I wonder why.”

“Sometimes I don’t think it is right to tell funny stories about ministers,” said Felicity. “It certainly isn’t respectful.”

“A good story is a good story—no matter who it’s about,” said the Story Girl with ungrammatical relish²¹.

There was as yet no one in the church when we reached it, so we took our accustomed ramble²² through the graveyard surrounding it. The Story Girl had brought flowers for her mother’s grave as usual, and while she arranged them on it the rest of us read for the hundredth time the epitaph on Great-Grandfather King’s tombstone, which had been composed by Great-Grandmother King. That epitaph was quite famous among the little family traditions that entwine every household with mingled²³ mirth and sorrow, smiles and tears. It had a perennial²⁴ fascination²⁵ for us and we read it over every Sunday. Cut deeply in the upright slab²⁶ of red Island sandstone, the epitaph ran as follows:—

SWEET DEPARTED SPIRIT

Do receive the vows²⁷ a grateful widow pays,

Each future day and night shall hear her speak her Isaac’s praise.

Though thy beloved form must in the grave decay

Yet from her heart thy memory no time, no change shall steal away.

Do thou from mansions²⁸ of eternal bliss²⁹

Remember thy distressed³⁰ relict.

Look on her with an angel’s love—

Soothe her sad life and cheer her end

Through this world’s dangers and its griefs.

Then meet her with thy well-known smiles and welcome

At the last great day.

“Well, I can’t make out what the old lady was driving at,” said Dan.

“That’s a nice way to speak of your great-grandmother,” said Felicity severely³².

“How does The Family Guide say you ought to speak of your great-grandma, sweet one?” asked Dan.

“There is one thing about it that puzzles me,” remarked Cecily. “She calls herself a GRATEFUL widow. Now, what was she grateful for?”

“Because she was rid of him at last,” said graceless Dan.

“Oh, it couldn’t have been that,” protested Cecily seriously. “I’ve always heard that Great-Grandfather and Great-Grandmother were very much attached to each other.”

“Maybe, then, it means she was grateful that she’d had him as long as she did,” suggested Peter.

“She was grateful to him because he had been so kind to her in life, I think,” said Felicity.

“What is a ‘distressed relict’?” asked Felix.

“‘Relict’ is a word I hate,” said the Story Girl. “It sounds so much like relic³¹. Relict means just the same as widow, only a man can be a relict, too.”

“Great-Grandmother seemed to run short of rhymes at the last of the epitaph,” commented Dan.

“Finding rhymes isn’t as easy as you might think,” avowed³³ Peter, out of his own experience.

“I think Grandmother King intended the last of the epitaph to be in blank verse,” said Felicity with dignity.

There was still only a sprinkling of people in the church when we went in and took our places in the old-fashioned, square King pew. We had just got comfortably settled when Felicity said in an agitated³⁴ whisper, “Here is Peg Bowen!”

We all stared at Peg, who was pacing composedly up the aisle. We might be excused for so doing, for seldom were the decorous aisles³⁵ of Carlisle church invaded by such a figure. Peg was dressed in her usual short drugget skirt, rather worn and frayed³⁶ around the bottom, and a waist of brilliant turkey red calico. She wore no hat, and her grizzled black hair streamed in elf locks over her shoulders. Face, arms and feet were bare—and face, arms and feet were liberally powdered with FLOUR. Certainly no one who saw Peg that night could ever forget the apparition³⁷.

Peg’s black eyes, in which shone a more than usually wild and fitful light, roved scrutinizingly over the church, then settled on our pew.

“She’s coming here,” whispered Felicity in horror. “Can’t we spread out and make her think the pew is full?”

But the manoeuvre³⁸ was too late. The only result was that Felicity and the Story Girl in moving over left a vacant space between them and Peg promptly³⁹ plumped down in it.

“Well, I’m here,” she remarked aloud. “I did say once I’d never darken the door of Carlisle church again, but what that boy there”—nodding at Peter—“said last winter set me thinking, and I concluded maybe I’d better come once in a while, to be on the safe side.”

Those poor girls were in an agony. Everybody in the church was looking at our pew and smiling. We all felt that we were terribly disgraced; but we could do nothing. Peg was enjoying herself hugely, beyond all doubt. From where she sat she could see the whole church, including pulpit and gallery, and her black eyes darted⁴⁰ over it with restless glances.

“Bless me, there’s Sam Kinnaird,” she exclaimed, still aloud. “He’s the man that dunned Jacob Marr for four cents on the church steps one Sunday. I heard him. ‘I think, Jacob, you owe me four cents on that cow you bought last fall. Rec’llect you couldn’t make the change?’ Well, you know, ‘twould a-made a cat laugh. The Kinnairds were all mighty⁴¹ close, I can tell you. That’s how they got rich.”

What Sam Kinnaird felt or thought during this speech, which everyone in the church must have heard, I know not. Gossip had it that he changed colour. We wretched occupants of the King pew were concerned only with our own outraged⁴² feelings.

“And there’s Melita Ross,” went on Peg. “She’s got the same bonnet⁴³ on she had last time I was in Carlisle church six years ago. Some folks has the knack⁴⁴ of making things last. But look at the style Mrs. Elmer Brewer⁴⁵ wears, will yez? Yez wouldn’t think her mother died in the poor-house, would yez, now?”

Poor Mrs. Brewer! From the tip of her smart kid shoes to the dainty cluster of ostrich⁴⁶ tips in her bonnet—she was most immaculately and handsomely arrayed; but I venture to think she could have taken small pleasure in her fashionable attire that evening. Some of the unregenerate, including Dan, were shaking with suppressed laughter, but most of the people looked as if they were afraid to smile, lest their turn should come next.

“There’s old Stephen Grant coming in,” exclaimed Peg viciously, shaking her floury fist at him, “and looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. He may be an elder, but he’s a scoundrel just the same. He set fire to his house to get the insurance and then blamed ME for doing it. But I got even with him for it. Oh, yes! He knows that, and so do I! He, he!”

Peg chuckled⁴⁷ quite fiendishly and Stephen Grant tried to look as if nothing had been said.

“Oh, will the minister never come?” moaned Felicity in my ear. “Surely she’ll have to stop then.”

But the minister did not come and Peg had no intention of stopping.

“There’s Maria Dean.” she resumed. “I haven’t seen Maria for years. I never call there for she never seems to have anything to eat in the house. She was a Clayton and the Claytons never could cook. Maria sorter looks as if she’d shrunk in the wash, now, don’t she? And there’s Douglas Nicholson. His brother put rat poison in the family pancakes. Nice little trick that, wasn’t it? They say it was by mistake. I hope it WAS a mistake. His wife is all rigged out in silk. Yez wouldn’t think to look at her she was married in cotton—and mighty thankful to get married in anything, it’s my opinion. There’s Timothy Patterson. He’s the meanest man alive—meaner’n Sam Kinnaird even. Timothy pays his children five cents apiece to go without their suppers, and then steals the cents out of their pockets after they’ve gone to bed. It’s a fact. And when his old father died he wouldn’t let his wife put his best shirt on him. He said his second best was plenty good to be buried in. That’s another fact.”

“I can’t stand much more of this,” wailed⁴⁸ Felicity.

“See here, Miss Bowen, you really oughtn’t to talk like that about people,” expostulated Peter in a low tone, goaded⁴⁹ thereto, despite his awe⁵⁰ of Peg, by Felicity’s anguish⁵¹.

“Bless you, boy,” said Peg good-humouredly, “the only difference between me and other folks is that I say these things out loud and they just think them. If I told yez all the things I know about the people in this congregation you’d be amazed. Have a peppermint⁵²?”

To our horror Peg produced a handful of peppermint lozenges from the pocket of her skirt and offered us one each. We did not dare refuse but we each held our lozenge very gingerly in our hands.

“Eat them,” commanded Peg rather fiercely.

“Mother doesn’t allow us to eat candy in church,” faltered⁵³ Felicity.

“Well, I’ve seen just as fine ladies as your ma give their children lozenges in church,” said Peg loftily. She put a peppermint in her own mouth and sucked it with gusto. We were relieved, for she did not talk during the process; but our relief was of short duration. A bevy⁵⁴ of three very smartly dressed young ladies, sweeping⁵⁵ past our pew, started Peg off again.

“Yez needn’t be so stuck up,” she said, loudly and derisively⁵⁶. “Yez was all of yez rocked in a flour barrel. And there’s old Henry Frewen, still above ground. I called my parrot after him because their noses were exactly alike. Look at Caroline Marr, will yez? That’s a woman who’d like pretty well to get married, And there’s Alexander Marr. He’s a real Christian⁵⁷, anyhow, and so’s his dog. I can always size up what a man’s religion amounts to by the kind of dog he keeps. Alexander Marr is a good man.”

It was a relief to hear Peg speak well of somebody; but that was the only exception she made.

“Look at Dave Fraser strutting⁵⁸ in,” she went on. “That man has thanked God so often that he isn’t like other people that it’s come to be true. He isn’t! And there’s Susan Frewen. She’s jealous of everybody. She’s even jealous of Old Man Rogers because he’s buried in the best spot in the graveyard. Seth Erskine has the same look he was born with. They say the Lord made everybody but I believe the devil made all the Erskines.”

“She’s getting worse all the time. What WILL she say next?” whispered poor Felicity.

But her martyrdom was over at last. The minister appeared in the pulpit and Peg subsided⁵⁹ into silence. She folded her bare, floury arms over her breast and fastened her black eyes on the young CHAPTER XXII. THE YANKEE STORM

In an August orchard six children and a grown-up were sitting around the pulpit stone. The grown-up was Miss Reade, who had been up to give the girls their music lesson and had consented to stay to tea, much to the rapture⁶⁰ of the said girls, who continued to worship her with unabated and romantic ardour. To us, over the golden grasses, came the Story Girl, carrying in her hand a single large poppy, like a blood-red chalice⁶¹ filled with the wine of August wizardry. She proffered⁶² it to Miss Reade and, as the latter took it into her singularly slender, beautiful hand, I saw a ring on her third finger. I noticed it, because I had heard the girls say that Miss Reade never wore rings, not liking⁶³ them. It was not a new ring; it was handsome, but of an old-fashioned design and setting, with a glint of diamonds about a central sapphire⁶⁴. Later on, when Miss Reade had gone, I asked the Story Girl if she had noticed the ring. She nodded, but seemed disinclined to say more about it.

“Look here, Sara,” I said, “there’s something about that ring—something you know.”

“I told you once there was a story growing but you would have to wait until it was fully grown,” she answered.

“Is Miss Reade going to marry anybody—anybody we know?” I persisted.

“Curiosity killed a cat,” observed the Story Girl coolly. “Miss Reade hasn’t told me that she was going to marry anybody. You will find out all that is good for you to know in due time.”

When the Story Girl put on grown-up airs I did not like her so well, and I dropped the subject with a dignity that seemed to amuse her mightily⁶⁵.

She had been away for a week, visiting cousins in Markdale, and she had come home with a new treasure-trove of stories, most of which she had heard from the old sailors of Markdale Harbour. She had promised that morning to tell us of “the most tragic⁶⁶ event that had ever been known on the north shore,” and we now reminded her of her promise.

“Some call it the ‘Yankee Storm,’ and others the ‘American Gale,’” she began, sitting down by Miss Reade and beaming, because the latter put her arm around her waist. “It happened nearly forty years ago, in October of 1851. Old Mr. Coles at the Harbour told me all about it. He was a young man then and he says he can never forget that dreadful time. You know in those days hundreds of American fishing schooners⁶⁷ used to come down to the Gulf⁶⁸ every summer to fish mackerel. On one beautiful Saturday night in this October of 1851, more than one hundred of these vessels⁶⁹ could be counted from Markdale Capes⁷¹. By Monday night more than seventy of them had been destroyed. Those which had escaped were mostly those which went into harbour Saturday night, to keep Sunday. Mr. Coles says the rest stayed outside and fished all day Sunday, same as through the week, and HE says the storm was a judgment⁷² on them for doing it. But he admits that even some of them got into harbour later on and escaped, so it’s hard to know what to think. But it is certain that on Sunday night there came up a sudden and terrible storm—the worst, Mr. Coles says, that has ever been known on the north shore. It lasted for two days and scores of vessels were driven ashore⁷³ and completely wrecked⁷⁴. The crews of most of the vessels that went ashore on the sand beaches were saved, but those that struck on the rocks went to pieces and all hands were lost. For weeks after the storm the north shore was strewn with the bodies of drowned men. Think of it! Many of them were unknown and unrecognizable, and they were buried in Markdale graveyard. Mr. Coles says the schoolmaster who was in Markdale then wrote a poem on the storm and Mr. Coles recited the first two verses to me.

“‘Here are the fishers’ hillside graves,

The church beside, the woods around,

Below, the hollow moaning waves

Where the poor fishermen were drowned.

“‘A sudden tempest the blue welkin tore,

The seamen⁷⁵ tossed and torn apart

Rolled with the seaweed to the shore

While landsmen gazed with aching heart.’

“Mr. Coles couldn’t remember any more of it. But the saddest of all the stories of the Yankee Storm was the one about the Franklin Dexter. The Franklin Dexter went ashore on the Markdale Capes and all on board perished, the Captain and three of his brothers among them. These four young men were the sons of an old man who lived in Portland, Maine, and when he heard what had happened he came right down to the Island to see if he could find their bodies. They had all come ashore and had been buried in Markdale graveyard; but he was determined⁷⁶ to take them up and carry them home for burial. He said he had promised their mother to take her boys home to her and he must do it. So they were taken up and put on board a sailing vessel⁷⁰ at Markdale Harbour to be taken back to Maine, while the father himself went home on a passenger steamer. The name of the sailing vessel was the Seth Hall, and the captain’s name was Seth Hall, too. Captain Hall was a dreadfully profane⁷⁷ man and used to swear blood-curdling oaths. On the night he sailed out of Markdale Harbour the old sailors warned him that a storm was brewing⁷⁸ and that it would catch him if he did not wait until it was over. The captain had become very impatient because of several delays he had already met with, and he was in a furious temper. He swore a wicked oath that he would sail out of Markdale Harbour that night and ‘God Almighty⁷⁹ Himself shouldn’t catch him.’ He did sail out of the harbour; and the storm did catch him, and the Seth Hall went down with all hands, the dead and the living finding a watery⁸⁰ grave together. So the poor old mother up in Maine never had her boys brought back to her after all. Mr. Coles says it seems as if it were foreordained that they should not rest in a grave, but should lie beneath the waves until the day when the sea gives up its dead.”

“‘They sleep as well beneath that purple tide

As others under turf,’”

quoted Miss Reade softly. “I am very thankful,” she added, “that I am not one of those whose dear ones ‘go down to the sea in ships.’ It seems to me that they have treble their share of this world’s heartache.”

“Uncle Stephen was a sailor and he was drowned,” said Felicity, “and they say it broke Grandmother King’s heart. I don’t see why people can’t be contented⁸¹ on dry land.”

Cecily’s tears had been dropping on the autograph quilt square she was faithfully embroidering⁸². She had been diligently⁸³ collecting names for it ever since the preceding autumn and had a goodly number; but Kitty Marr had one more and this was certainly a fly in Cecily’s ointment⁸⁴.

“Besides, one I’ve got isn’t paid for—Peg Bowen’s,” she lamented⁸⁵, “and I don’t suppose it ever will be, for I’ll never dare to ask her for it.”

“I wouldn’t put it on at all,” said Felicity.

“Oh, I don’t dare not to. She’d be sure to find out I didn’t and then she’d be very angry. I wish I could get just one more name and then I’d be contented. But I don’t know of a single person who hasn’t been asked already.”

“Except Mr. Campbell,” said Dan.

“Oh, of course nobody would ask Mr. Campbell. We all know it would be of no use. He doesn’t believe in missions at all—in fact, he says he detests⁸⁶ the very mention of missions—and he never gives one cent to them.”

“All the same, I think he ought to be asked, so that he wouldn’t have the excuse that nobody DID ask him,” declared Dan.

“Do you really think so, Dan?” asked Cecily earnestly.

“Sure,” said Dan, solemnly. Dan liked to tease even Cecily a wee bit now and then.

Cecily relapsed into anxious thought, and care sat visibly on her brow for the rest of the day. Next morning she came to me and said:

“Bev, would you like to go for a walk with me this afternoon?”

“Of course,” I replied. “Any particular where?”

“I’m going to see Mr. Campbell and ask him for his name for my square,” said Cecily resolutely⁸⁷. “I don’t suppose it will do any good. He wouldn’t give anything to the library last summer, you remember, till the Story Girl told him that story about his grandmother. She won’t go with me this time—I don’t know why. I can’t tell a story and I’m frightened to death just to think of going to him. But I believe it is my duty; and besides I would love to get as many names on my square as Kitty Marr has. So if you’ll go with me we’ll go this afternoon. I simply COULDN’T go alone.”