“Let us put the clock on half an hour,” said the Story Girl. “The clock in the hall isn’t going, so no one will know the difference.”
We all looked at each other.
“I wouldn’t dare,” said Felicity irresolutely.
“Oh, if that’s all, I’ll do it,” said the Story Girl.
When ten o’clock struck Aunt Janet came into the kitchen, remarking innocently that it hadn’t seemed anytime since nine. We must have looked horribly guilty, but none of the grown-ups suspected anything. Uncle Alec brought in the axe, and pried off the cover of the old blue chest, while everybody stood around in silence.
Then came the unpacking. It was certainly an interesting performance. Aunt Janet and Aunt Olivia took everything out and laid it on the kitchen table. We children were forbidden to touch anything, but fortunately we were not forbidden the use of our eyes and tongues.
“There are the pink and gold vases Grandmother King gave her,” said Felicity, as Aunt Olivia unwrapped from their tissue paper swathings a pair of slender, old-fashioned, twisted vases of pink glass, over which little gold leaves were scattered. “Aren’t they handsome?”
“And oh,” exclaimed Cecily in delight, “there’s the china fruit basket with the apple on the handle. Doesn’t it look real? I’ve thought so much about it. Oh, mother, please let me hold it for a minute. I’ll be as careful as careful.”
“There comes the china set Grandfather King gave her,” said the Story Girl wistfully. “Oh, it makes me feel sad. Think of all the hopes that Rachel Ward must have put away in this chest with all her pretty things.”
Following these, came a quaint little candlestick of blue china, and the two jugs which were to be sent to James’ wife.
“They ARE handsome,” said Aunt Janet rather enviously. “They must be a hundred years old. Aunt Sara Ward gave them to Rachel, and she had them for at least fifty years. I should have thought one would have been enough for James’ wife. But of course we must do just as Rachel wished. I declare, here’s a dozen tin patty pans!”
“Tin patty pans aren’t very romantic,” said the Story Girl discontentedly.
“I notice that you are as fond as any one of what is baked in them,” said Aunt Janet. “I’ve heard of those patty pans. An old servant Grandmother King had gave them to Rachel. Now we are coming to the linen. That was Uncle Edward Ward’s present. How yellow it has grown.”
We children were not greatly interested in the sheets and tablecloths and pillow-cases which now came out of the capacious depths of the old blue chest. But Aunt Olivia was quite enraptured over them.
“What sewing!” she said. “Look, Janet, you’d almost need a magnifying glass to see the stitches. And the dear, old-fashioned pillow-slips with buttons on them!”
“Here are a dozen handkerchiefs,” said Aunt Janet. “Look at the initial in the corner of each. Rachel learned that stitch from a nun in Montreal. It looks as if it was woven into the material.”
“Here are her quilts,” said Aunt Olivia. “Yes, there is the blue and white counterpane Grandmother Ward gave her — and the Rising Sun quilt her Aunt Nancy made for her — and the braided rug. The colours are not faded one bit. I want that rug, Janet.”
Underneath the linen were Rachel Ward’s wedding clothes. The excitement of the girls waxed red hot over these. There was a Paisley shawl in the wrappings in which it had come from the store, and a wide scarf of some yellowed lace. There was the embroidered petticoat which had cost Felicity such painful blushes, and a dozen beautifully worked sets of the fine muslin “undersleeves” which had been the fashion in Rachel Ward’s youth.
“This was to have been her appearing out dress,” said Aunt
Olivia, lifting out a shot green silk. “It is all cut to
pieces — but what a pretty soft shade it was! Look at the skirt,
Janet. How many yards must it measure around?”
“Hoopskirts were in then,” said Aunt Janet. “I don’t see her wedding hat here. I was always told that she packed it away, too.”
“So was I. But she couldn’t have. It certainly isn’t here. I have heard that the white plume on it cost a small fortune. Here is her black silk mantle. It seems like sacrilege to meddle with these clothes.”
“Don’t be foolish, Olivia. They must be unpacked at least. And they must all be burned since they have cut so badly. This purple cloth dress is quite good, however. It can be made over nicely, and it would become you very well, Olivia.”
“No, thank you,” said Aunt Olivia, with a little shudder. “I should feel like a ghost. Make it over for yourself, Janet.”
“Well, I will, if you don’t want it. I am not troubled with fancies. That seems to be all except this box. I suppose the wedding dress is in it.”
“Oh,” breathed the girls, crowding about Aunt Olivia, as she lifted out the box and cut the cord around it. Inside was lying a dress of soft silk, that had once been white but was now yellowed with age, and, enfolding it like a mist, a long, white bridal veil, redolent with some strange, old-time perfume that had kept its sweetness through all the years.
“Poor Rachel Ward,” said Aunt Olivia softly. “Here is her point lace handkerchief. She made it herself. It is like a spider’s web. Here are the letters Will Montague wrote her. And here,” she added, taking up a crimson velvet case with a tarnished gilt clasp, “are their photographs — his and hers.”
We looked eagerly at the daguerreotypes in the old case.
“Why, Rachel Ward wasn’t a bit pretty!” exclaimed the Story Girl in poignant disappointment.
No, Rachel Ward was not pretty, that had to be admitted. The picture showed a fresh young face, with strongly marked, irregular features, large black eyes, and black curls hanging around the shoulders in old-time style.
“Rachel wasn’t pretty,” said Uncle Alec, “but she had a lovely colour, and a beautiful smile. She looks far too sober in that picture.”
“She has a beautiful neck and bust,” said Aunt Olivia critically.
“Anyhow, Will Montague was really handsome,” said the Story Girl.
“A handsome rogue,” growled Uncle Alec. “I never liked him. I was only a little chap of ten but I saw through him. Rachel Ward was far too good for him.”
We would dearly have liked to get a peep into the letters, too. But Aunt Olivia would not allow that. They must be burned unread, she declared. She took the wedding dress and veil, the picture case, and the letters away with her. The rest of the things were put back into the chest, pending their ultimate distribution. Aunt Janet gave each of us boys a handkerchief. The Story Girl got the blue candlestick, and Felicity and Cecily each got a pink and gold vase. Even Sara Ray was made happy by the gift of a little china plate, with a loudly coloured picture of Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh in the middle of it. Moses wore a scarlet cloak, while Aaron disported himself in bright blue. Pharaoh was arrayed in yellow. The plate had a scalloped border with a wreath of green leaves around it.
“I shall never use it to eat off,” said Sara rapturously. “I’ll put it up on the parlour mantelpiece.”
“I don’t see much use in having a plate just for ornament,” said
Felicity.
“It’s nice to have something interesting to look at,” retorted Sara, who felt that the soul must have food as well as the body.
“I’m going to get a candle for my candlestick, and use it every night to go to bed with,” said the Story Girl. “And I’ll never light it without thinking of poor Rachel Ward. But I DO wish she had been pretty.”
“Well,” said Felicity, with a glance at the clock, “it’s all over, and it has been very interesting. But that clock has got to be put back to the right time some time through the day. I don’t want bedtime coming a whole half-hour before it ought to.”
In the afternoon, when Aunt Janet was over at Uncle Roger’s, seeing him and Aunt Olivia off to town, the clock was righted. The Story Girl and Peter came over to stay all night with us, and we mad
e taffy in the kitchen, which the grown-ups kindly gave over to us for that purpose.
“Of course it was very interesting to see the old chest unpacked,” said the Story Girl as she stirred the contents of a saucepan vigorously. “But now that it is over I believe I am sorry that it is opened. It isn’t mysterious any longer. We know all about it now, and we can never imagine what things are in it any more.”
“It’s better to know than to imagine,” said Felicity.
“Oh, no, it isn’t,” said the Story Girl quickly. “When you know things you have to go by facts. But when you just dream about things there’s nothing to hold you down.”
“You’re letting the taffy scorch, and THAT’S a fact you’d better go by,” said Felicity sniffing. “Haven’t you got a nose?”
When we went to bed, that wonderful white enchantress, the moon, was making an elf-land of the snow-misted world outside. From where I lay I could see the sharp tops of the spruces against the silvery sky. The frost was abroad, and the winds were still and the land lay in glamour.
Across the hall, the Story Girl was telling Felicity and Cecily the old, old tale of Argive Helen and “evil-hearted Paris.”
“But that’s a bad story,” said Felicity when the tale was ended.
“She left her husband and run away with another man.”
“I suppose it was bad four thousand years ago,” admitted the Story Girl. “But by this time the bad must have all gone out of it. It’s only the good that could last so long.”
Our summer was over. It had been a beautiful one. We had known the sweetness of common joys, the delight of dawns, the dream and glamour of noontides, the long, purple peace of carefree nights. We had had the pleasure of bird song, of silver rain on greening fields, of storm among the trees, of blossoming meadows, and of the converse of whispering leaves. We had had brotherhood with wind and star, with books and tales, and hearth fires of autumn. Ours had been the little, loving tasks of every day, blithe companionship, shared thoughts, and adventuring. Rich were we in the memory of those opulent months that had gone from us — richer than we then knew or suspected. And before us was the dream of spring. It is always safe to dream of spring. For it is sure to come; and if it be not just as we have pictured it, it will be infinitely sweeter.
THE END
THE GOLDEN ROAD
The Golden Road appeared in 1913, two years after its companion, The Story Girl, also published by McClelland & Stewart. It was the first novel that Montgomery wrote after leaving Prince Edward Island for Leaskdale, Ontario, and shows her already keen feelings of nostalgia for her former home. Once again the eight young cousins enjoy living together and sharing adventures on the King family farm in Carlisle on Prince Edward Island. Sara Stanley, the “Story Girl” thrills them with lively and exciting tales, as relayed by one of the children, Beverly King, many years later. Among other activities, the children put together their own newspaper, entitled Our Magazine. Because more time passes during this sequel, more changes occur as the characters grow and begin to come into their own.
Kevin Sullivan adapted his 1990’s Canadian television series, Road to Avonlea (shortened to Avonlea in the U.S.), in part from The Golden Road and its prequel, The Story Girl.
A First edition, first impression copy of The Golden Road
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER XXX.
CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XXXII.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
First Australian edition, Angus & Robertson, 1938
FOREWORD
Once upon a time we all walked on the golden road. It was a fair highway, through the Land of Lost Delight; shadow and sunshine were blessedly mingled, and every turn and dip revealed a fresh charm and a new loveliness to eager hearts and unspoiled eyes.
On that road we heard the song of morning stars; we drank in fragrances aerial and sweet as a May mist; we were rich in gossamer fancies and iris hopes; our hearts sought and found the boon of dreams; the years waited beyond and they were very fair; life was a rose-lipped comrade with purple flowers dripping from her fingers.
We may long have left the golden road behind, but its memories are the dearest of our eternal possessions; and those who cherish them as such may haply find a pleasure in the pages of this book, whose people are pilgrims on the golden road of youth.
CHAPTER I.
A NEW DEPARTURE
“I’ve thought of something amusing for the winter,” I said as we drew into a half-circle around the glorious wood-fire in Uncle Alec’s kitchen.
It had been a day of wild November wind, closing down into a wet, eerie twilight. Outside, the wind was shrilling at the windows and around the eaves, and the rain was playing on the roof. The old willow at the gate was writhing in the storm and the orchard was a place of weird music, born of all the tears and fears that haunt the halls of night. But little we cared for the gloom and the loneliness of the outside world; we kept them at bay with the light of the fire and the laughter of our young lips.
We had been having a splendid game of Blind-Man’s Buff. That is, it had been splendid at first; but later the fun went out of it because we found that Peter was, of malice prepense, allowing himself to be caught too easily, in order that he might have the pleasure of catching Felicity — which he never failed to do, no matter how tightly his eyes were bound. What remarkable goose said that love is blind? Love can see through five folds of closely-woven muffler with ease!
“I’m getting tired,” said Cecily, whose breath was coming rather quickly and whose pale cheeks had bloomed into scarlet. “Let’s sit down and get the Story Girl to tell us a story.”
But as we dropped into our places the Story Girl shot a significant glance at me which intimated that this was the psychological moment for introducing the scheme she and I had been secretly developing for some days. It was really the Story Girl’s idea and none of mine. But she had insisted that I should make the suggestion as coming wholly from myself.
“If you don’t, Felicity won’t agree to it. You know yourself, Bev, how contrary she’s been lately over anything I mention. And if she goes against it Peter will too — the ninny! — and it wouldn’t be any fun if we weren’t all in it.”
“What is it?” asked Felicity, drawing her chair slightly away from Peter’s.
“It is this. Let us get up a newspaper of our own — write it all ourselves, and have all we do in it. Don’t you think we can get a lot of fun out of it?”
Everyone looked rather blank and amazed, except the Story Girl. She knew what she had to do, and she did it.
“What a silly idea!” she exclaimed, with a contemptuous toss of her long brown curls. “Just as if WE could get up a newspaper!”
Felicity fired up, exactly as we had hoped.
“I think it’s a splendid idea,” she said enthusiastically. “I’d like to know why we couldn’t get up as good a newspaper as they have in town! Uncle Roger says the Daily Enterprise has gone to the dogs — all the news it prints is that some old woman has put a shawl on her head and gone across the road to have tea with another old woman. I guess we could do better than that. You needn’t think,
Sara Stanley, that nobody but you can do anything.”
“I think it would be great fun,” said Peter decidedly. “My Aunt Jane helped edit a paper when she was at Queen’s Academy, and she said it was very amusing and helped her a great deal.”
The Story Girl could hide her delight only by dropping her eyes and frowning.
“Bev wants to be editor,” she said, “and I don’t see how he can, with no experience. Anyhow, it would be a lot of trouble.”
“Some people are so afraid of a little bother,” retorted Felicity.
“I think it would be nice,” said Cecily timidly, “and none of us have any experience of being editors, any more than Bev, so that wouldn’t matter.”
“Will it be printed?” asked Dan.
“Oh, no,” I said. “We can’t have it printed. We’ll just have to write it out — we can buy foolscap from the teacher.”
“I don’t think it will be much of a newspaper if it isn’t printed,” said Dan scornfully.
“It doesn’t matter very much what YOU think,” said Felicity.
“Thank you,” retorted Dan.
“Of course,” said the Story Girl hastily, not wishing to have Dan turned against our project, “if all the rest of you want it I’ll go in for it too. I daresay it would be real good fun, now that I come to think of it. And we’ll keep the copies, and when we become famous they’ll be quite valuable.”
“I wonder if any of us ever will be famous,” said Felix.
“The Story Girl will be,” I said.
“I don’t see how she can be,” said Felicity skeptically. “Why, she’s just one of us.”
“Well, it’s decided, then, that we’re to have a newspaper,” I resumed briskly. “The next thing is to choose a name for it. That’s a very important thing.”
“How often are you going to publish it?” asked Felix.
“Once a month.”
“I thought newspapers came out every day, or every week at least,” said Dan.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 395