Hello there,
Thank you so much for joining me for this ongoing reading of The Golden Road,
The charming novel from 1913 by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery.
We've been following along with the continued adventures of this group of cousins and young friends on Prince Edward Island in Canada.
Perhaps you've heard the preceding parts,
If you haven't,
You can certainly look for the playlist for The Golden Road and you'll find everything there in order.
But for now,
Let's just take a moment here to have a nice deep exhale,
Letting go of the day,
Letting go of whichever baggage we might be bringing along with us into this moment.
For right now,
There's nowhere else we have to go and nothing else we have to be doing.
So we can just relax,
Get ourselves comfortable and enjoy the continuing story of The Golden Road.
Chapter 19,
By Way of the Stars.
But for two of us,
The adventures of the night were not yet over.
Silence settled down over the old house,
The eerie,
Whisperful,
Creeping silence of night.
Felix and Anne were already sound asleep.
I was drifting near the coast of dreams when I was aroused by a light tap on the door.
Bev,
Are you asleep?
Came in the story girl's whisper.
No,
What is it?
Shh,
Get up and dress and come out.
I want you.
With a good deal of curiosity and some misgiving,
I obeyed.
What was in the wind now?
Outside in the hall,
I found the story girl with a candle in her hand and her hat and jacket.
Where are you going?
I whispered in amazement.
Hush,
I've got to go to the school and you must come with me.
I left my coral necklace there.
The clasp came loose and I was so afraid I'd lose it that I took it off and put it in the bookcase.
I was feeling so upset when the concert was over that I forgot all about it.
The coral necklace was a very handsome one,
Which had belonged to the story girl's mother.
She had never been permitted to wear it before,
And it had only been by dint of much coaxing that she had induced Aunt Janet to let her wear it to the concert.
But there's no sense in going for it in the dead of night,
I objected.
It will be quite safe.
You can go for it in the morning.
Lizzie Paxton and her daughter are going to clean the school tomorrow and I heard Lizzie say tonight she meant to be at it by five o'clock to get through before the heat of the day.
You know perfectly well what Liz Paxton's reputation is.
If she finds that necklace,
I'll never see it again.
Besides,
If I wait till the morning Aunt Janet may find out that I left it there and she'd never let me wear it again.
No,
I'm going for it now.
If you're afraid,
Added the story girl with delicate scorn,
Of course you needn't come.
Afraid?
I'd show her.
Come on,
I said.
We slipped out of the house noiselessly and found ourselves in the unutterable solemnity and strangeness of a dark night.
It was a new experience and our hearts thrilled and our nerves tingled to the charm of it.
Never had we been abroad before at such an hour.
The world around us was not the world of daylight.
It was an alien place full of weird,
Evasive enchantment and magickry.
Only in the country can one become truly acquainted with the night.
There it has the solemn calm of the infinite.
The dim,
Wide fields lie in silence,
Wrapped in the holy mystery of darkness.
A wind,
Loosened from wild places far away,
Steals out to blow over dewy,
Starlit,
Immemorial hills.
The air in the pastures is sweet with the hush of dreams and one may rest here like a child on its mother's breast.
Isn't it wonderful?
Breathed the story girl as we went down the long hill.
Do you know,
I can forgive Sarah Ray now.
I thought tonight I never could,
But now it doesn't matter anymore.
I can even see how funny it was.
Oh,
Wasn't it funny?
Dead in that squeaky little voice of Sarah's.
I'll just behave to her tomorrow as if nothing had happened.
It seems so long ago now here in the night.
Neither of us ever forgot the subtle delight of that stolen walk.
A spell of glamour was over us.
The breezes whispered strange secrets of elf haunted glens and the hollows where the ferns grew were brimmed with mystery and romance.
Ghost-like scents crept out of the meadows to meet us and the fir wood before we came to the church was a living sweetness of June Bells growing in abundance.
June Bells have another and more scientific name,
Of course,
But who could desire a better name than June Bells?
They are so perfect in their way that they seem to epitomise the very scent and charm of the forest,
As if the old wood's daintiest thoughts had materialised in blossom.
And not all the roses by Bendermere's stream are as fragrant as a shallow sheet of June Bells under the boughs of fir.
There were fireflies abroad that night too,
Increasing the grimmery of it.
There is certainly something a little supernatural about fireflies.
Nobody pretends to understand them.
They are akin to the tribes of Faerie,
Survivals of the elder time when the woods and hills swarmed with the little green folk.
It is still very easy to believe in Faeries when you see those goblin lanterns glimmering among the fir tassels.
Isn't it beautiful,
Said the story girl in rapture?
I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
I'm glad I left my necklace.
And I'm glad you are with me,
Bev.
The others wouldn't understand so well.
I like you because I don't have to talk to you all the time.
It's so nice to walk with someone you don't have to talk to.
Here is the graveyard.
Are you frightened to pass it,
Bev?
No,
I don't think I'm frightened,
I answered slowly.
But I have a queer feeling.
So have I.
But it isn't fear.
I don't know what it is.
I feel as if something was reaching out of the graveyard to hold me.
Something that wanted life.
I don't like it.
Let's hurry.
But isn't it strange to think of all the dead people in there who were once alive,
Like you and me.
I don't feel as if I could ever die.
Do you?
No,
But everybody must.
Of course,
We go on living afterwards just the same.
Don't let's talk of such things here,
I said hurriedly.
When we reached the school,
I contrived to open a window.
We scrambled in,
Lighted a lamp and found the missing necklace.
The story girl stood on the platform and gave an imitation of the catastrophe of the evening that made me shout with laughter.
We prowled around for sheer delight over being there at an unearthly hour when everybody supposed we were sound asleep in our beds.
It was with regret that we left and we walked home as slowly as we could to prolong the adventure.
Let's never tell anyone,
Said the story girl as we reached home.
Let's just have it as a secret between us forever and ever.
Something that nobody else knows a thing about but you and me.
We'd better keep it a secret from Aunt Janet anyhow,
I whispered laughing.
She'd think we were both crazy.
It's real jolly to be crazy once in a while,
Said the story girl.
