CHAPTER VIII
WE VISIT PEG BOWEN
We left Cousin Mattie's early, for it still looked like a storm,
though no more so than it had in the morning. We intended to go
home by a different path--one leading through cleared land
overgrown with scrub maple, which had the advantage of being
farther away from Peg Bowen's house. We hoped to be home before
it began to storm, but we had hardly reached the hill above the
village when a fine, driving snow began to fall. It would have
been wiser to have turned back even then; but we had already come
a mile and we thought we would have ample time to reach home
before it became really bad. We were sadly mistaken; by the time
we had gone another half-mile we were in the thick of a
bewildering, blinding snowstorm. But it was by now just as far
back to Cousin Mattie's as it was to Uncle Alec's, so we struggled
on, growing more frightened at every step. We could hardly face
the stinging snow, and we could not see ten feet ahead of us. It
had turned bitterly cold and the tempest howled all around us in
white desolation under the fast-darkening night. The narrow path
we were trying to follow soon became entirely obliterated and we
stumbled blindly on, holding to each other, and trying to peer
through the furious whirl that filled the air. Our plight had
come upon us so suddenly that we could not realize it. Presently
Peter, who was leading the van because he was supposed to know the
path best, stopped.
"I can't see the road any longer," he shouted. "I don't know
where we are."
We all stopped and huddled together in a miserable group. Fear
filled our hearts. It seemed ages ago that we had been snug and
safe and warm at Cousin Mattie's. Cecily began to cry with cold.
Dan, in spite of her protests, dragged off his overcoat and made
her put it on.
"We can't stay here," he said. "We'll all freeze to death if we
do. Come on--we've got to keep moving. The snow ain't so deep
yet. Take hold of my hand, Cecily. We must all hold together.
Come, now."
"It won't be nice to be frozen to death, but if we get through
alive think what a story we'll have to tell," said the Story Girl
between her chattering teeth.
In my heart I did not believe we would ever get through alive. It
was almost pitch dark now, and the snow grew deeper every moment.
We were chilled to the heart. I thought how nice it would be to
lie down and rest; but I remembered hearing that that was fatal,
and I endeavoured to stumble on with the others. It was wonderful
how the girls kept up, even Cecily. It occurred to me to be
thankful that Sara Ray was not with us.
But we were wholly lost now. All around us was a horror of great
darkness. Suddenly Felicity fell. We dragged her up, but she
declared she could not go on--she was done out.
"Have you any idea where we are?" shouted Dan to Peter.
"No," Peter shouted back, "the wind is blowing every which way. I
haven't any idea where home is."
Home! Would we ever see it again? We tried to urge Felicity on,
but she only repeated drowsily that she must lie down and rest.
Cecily, too, was reeling against me. The Story Girl still stood
up staunchly and counselled struggling on, but she was numb with
cold and her words were hardly distinguishable. Some wild idea
was in my mind that we must dig a hole in the snow and all creep
into it. I had read somewhere that people had thus saved their
lives in snowstorms. Suddenly Felix gave a shout.
"I see a light," he cried.
"Where? Where?" We all looked but could see nothing.
"I don't see it now but I saw it a moment ago," shouted Felix.
"I'm sure I did. Come on--over in this direction."
Inspired with fresh hope we hurried after him. Soon we all saw
the light--and never shone a fairer beacon. A few more steps and,
coming into the shelter of the woodland on the further side, we
realized where we were.
"That's Peg Bowen's house," exclaimed Peter, stopping short in
dismay.
"I don't care whose house it is," declared Dan. "We've got to go
to it."
"I s'pose so," acquiesced Peter ruefully. "We can't freeze to
death even if she is a witch."
"For goodness' sake don't say anything about witches so close to
her house," gasped Felicity. "I'll be thankful to get in
anywhere."
We reached the house, climbed the flight of steps that led to that
mysterious second story door, and Dan rapped. The door opened
promptly and Peg Bowen stood before us, in what seemed exactly the
same costume she had worn on the memorable day when we had come,
bearing gifts, to propitiate her in the matter of Paddy.
"Behind her was a dim room scantly illumined by the one small
candle that had guided us through the storm; but the old Waterloo
stove was colouring the gloom with tremulous, rose-red whorls of
light, and warm and cosy indeed seemed Peg's retreat to us snow-
covered, frost-chilled, benighted wanderers.
"Gracious goodness, where did yez all come from?" exclaimed Peg.
"Did they turn yez out?"
"We've been over to Baywater, and we got lost in the storm coming
back," explained Dan. "We didn't know where we were till we saw
your light. I guess we'll have to stay here till the storm is
over--if you don't mind."
"And if it won't inconvenience you," said Cecily timidly.
"Oh, it's no inconvenience to speak of. Come in. Well, yez HAVE
got some snow on yez. Let me get a broom. You boys stomp your
feet well and shake your coats. You girls give me your things and
I'll hang them up. Guess yez are most froze. Well, sit up to the
stove and git het up."
Peg bustled away to gather up a dubious assortment of chairs, with
backs and rungs missing, and in a few minutes we were in a circle
around her roaring stove, getting dried and thawed out. In our
wildest flights of fancy we had never pictured ourselves as guests
at the witch's hearth-stone. Yet here we were; and the witch
herself was actually brewing a jorum of ginger tea for Cecily, who
continued to shiver long after the rest of us were roasted to the
marrow. Poor Sis drank that scalding draught, being in too great
awe of Peg to do aught else.
"That'll soon fix your shivers," said our hostess kindly. "And
now I'll get yez all some tea."
"Oh, please don't trouble," said the Story Girl hastily.
"'Tain't any trouble," said Peg briskly; then, with one of the
sudden changes to fierceness which made her such a terrifying
personage, "Do yez think my vittels ain't clean?"
"Oh, no, no," cried Felicity quickly, before the Story Girl could
speak, "none of us would ever think THAT. Sara only meant she
didn't want you to go to any bother on our account."
"It ain't any bother," said Peg, mollified. "I'm spry as a
cricket this winter, though I have the realagy sometimes. Many a
good bite I've had in your ma's kitchen. I owe yez a meal."
No more protests were made. We sat in awed silence, gazing with
timid curiosity about the room, the stained, plastered walls of
which were well-nigh covered with a motley assortment of pictures,
chromos, and advertisements, pasted on without much regard for
order or character.
We had heard much of Peg's pets and now we saw them. Six cats
occupied various cosy corners; one of them, the black goblin which
had so terrified us in the summer, blinked satirically at us from
the centre of Peg's bed. Another, a dilapidated, striped beastie,
with both ears and one eye gone, glared at us from the sofa in the
corner. A dog, with only three legs, lay behind the stove; a crow
sat on a roost above our heads, in company with a matronly old
hen; and on the clock shelf were a stuffed monkey and a grinning
skull. We had heard that a sailor had given Peg the monkey. But
where had she got the skull? And whose was it? I could not help
puzzling over these gruesome questions.
Presently tea was ready and we gathered around the festal board--a
board literally as well as figuratively, for Peg's table was the
work of her own unskilled hands. The less said about the viands
of that meal, and the dishes they were served in, the better. But
we ate them--bless you, yes!--as we would have eaten any witch's
banquet set before us. Peg might or might not be a witch--common
sense said not; but we knew she was quite capable of turning every
one of us out of doors in one of her sudden fierce fits if we
offended her; and we had no mind to trust ourselves again to that
wild forest where we had fought a losing fight with the demon
forces of night and storm.
But it was not an agreeable meal in more ways than one. Peg was
not at all careful of anybody's feelings. She hurt Felix's
cruelly as she passed him his cup of tea.
"You've gone too much to flesh, boy. So the magic seed didn't
work, hey?"
How in the world had Peg found out about that magic seed? Felix
looked uncommonly foolish.
"If you'd come to me in the first place I'd soon have told you how
to get thin," said Peg, nodding wisely.
"Won't you tell me now?" asked Felix eagerly, his desire to melt
his too solid flesh overcoming his dread and shame.
"No, I don't like being second fiddle," answered Peg with a crafty
smile. "Sara, you're too scrawny and pale--not much like your ma.
I knew her well. She was counted a beauty, but she made no great
things of a match. Your father had some money but he was a tramp
like meself. Where is he now?"
"In Rome," said the Story Girl rather shortly.
"People thought your ma was crazy when she took him. But she'd a
right to please herself. Folks is too ready to call other folks
crazy. There's people who say I'M not in my right mind. Did yez
ever"--Peg fixed Felicity with a piercing glance--"hear anything
so ridiculous?"
"Never," said Felicity, white to the lips.
"I wish everybody was as sane as I am," said Peg scornfully. Then
she looked poor Felicity over critically. "You're good-looking
but proud. And your complexion won't wear. It'll be like your
ma's yet--too much red in it."
"Well, that's better than being the colour of mud," muttered
Peter, who wasn't going to hear his lady traduced, even by a
witch. All the thanks he got was a furious look from Felicity,
but Peg had not heard him and now she turned her attention to
Cecily.
"You look delicate. I daresay you'll never live to grow up."
Cecily's lip trembled and Dan's face turned crimson.
"Shut up," he said to Peg. "You've no business to say such things
to people."
I think my jaw dropped. I know Peter's and Felix's did. Felicity
broke in wildly.
"Oh, don't mind him, Miss Bowen. He's got SUCH a temper--that's
just the way he talks to us all at home. PLEASE excuse him."
"Bless you, I don't mind him," said Peg, from whom the unexpected
seemed to be the thing to expect. "I like a lad of spurrit. And
so your father run away, did he, Peter? He used to be a beau of
mine--he seen me home three times from singing school when we was
young. Some folks said he did it for a dare. There's such a lot
of jealousy in the world, ain't there? Do you know where he is
now?"
"No," said Peter.
"Well, he's coming home before long," said Peg mysteriously.
"Who told you that?" cried Peter in amazement.
"Better not ask," responded Peg, looking up at the skull.
If she meant to make the flesh creep on our bones she succeeded.
But now, much to our relief, the meal was over and Peg invited us
to draw our chairs up to the stove again.
"Make yourselves at home," she said, producing her pipe from her
pocket. "I ain't one of the kind who thinks their houses too good
to live in. Guess I won't bother washing the dishes. They'll do
yez for breakfast if yez don't forget your places. I s'pose none
of yez smokes."
"No," said Felicity, rather primly.
"Then yez don't know what's good for yez," retorted Peg, rather
grumpily. But a few whiffs of her pipe placated her and,
observing Cecily sigh, she asked her kindly what was the matter.
"I'm thinking how worried they'll be at home about us," explained
Cecily.
"Bless you, dearie, don't be worrying over that. I'll send them
word that yez are all snug and safe here."
"But how can you?" cried amazed Cecily.
"Better not ask," said Peg again, with another glance at the
skull.
An uncomfortable silence followed, finally broken by Peg, who
introduced her pets to us and told how she had come by them. The
black cat was her favourite.
"That cat knows more than I do, if yez'll believe it," she said
proudly. "I've got a rat too, but he's a bit shy when strangers
is round. Your cat got all right again that time, didn't he?"
"Yes," said the Story Girl.
"Thought he would," said Peg, nodding sagely. "I seen to that.
Now, don't yez all be staring at the hole in my dress."
"We weren't," was our chorus of protest.
"Looked as if yez were. I tore that yesterday but I didn't mend
it. I was brought up to believe that a hole was an accident but a
patch was a disgrace. And so your Aunt Olivia is going to be
married after all?"
This was news to us. We felt and looked dazed.
"I never heard anything of it," said the Story Girl.
"Oh, it's true enough. She's a great fool. I've no faith in
husbands. But one good thing is she ain't going to marry that
Henry Jacobs of Markdale. He wants her bad enough. Just like his
presumption,--thinking himself good enough for a King. His father
is the worst man alive. He chased me off his place with his dog
once. But I'll get even with him yet."
Peg looked very savage, and visions of burned barns floated
through our minds.
"He'll be punished in hell, you know," said Peter timidly.
"But I won't be there to see that," rejoined Peg. "Some folks say
I'll go there because I don't go to church oftener. But I don't
believe it."
"Why don't you go?" asked Peter, with a temerity that bordered on
rashness.
"Well, I've got so sunburned I'm afraid folks might take me for an
Injun," explained Peg, quite seriously. "Besides, your minister
makes such awful long prayers. Why does he do it?"
"I suppose he finds it easier to talk to God than to people,"
suggested Peter reflectively.
"Well, anyway, I belong to the round church," said Peg
comfortably, "and so the devil can't catch ME at the corners. I
haven't been to Carlisle church for over three years. I thought
I'd a-died laughing the last time I was there. Old Elder Marr
took up the collection that day. He'd on a pair of new boots and
they squeaked all the way up and down the aisles. And every time
the boots squeaked the elder made a face, like he had toothache.
It was awful funny. How's your missionary quilt coming on,
Cecily?"
Was there anything Peg didn't know?
"Very well," said Cecily.
"You can put my name on it, if you want to."
"Oh, thank you. Which section--the five-cent one or the ten-cent
one?" asked Cecily timidly.
"The ten-cent one, of course. The best is none too good for me.
I'll give you the ten cents another time. I'm short of change
just now--not being as rich as Queen Victory. There's her picture
up there--the one with the blue sash and diamint crown and the
lace curting on her head. Can any of yez tell me this--is Queen
Victory a married woman?"
"Oh, yes, but her husband is dead," answered the Story Girl.
"Well, I s'pose they couldn't have called her an old maid, seeing
she was a queen, even if she'd never got married. Sometimes I sez
to myself, 'Peg, would you like to be Queen Victory?' But I never
know what to answer. In summer, when I can roam anywhere in the
woods and the sunshine--I wouldn't be Queen Victory for anything.
But when it's winter and cold and I can't git nowheres--I feel as
if I wouldn't mind changing places with her."
Peg put her pipe back in her mouth and began to smoke fiercely.
The candle wick burned long, and was topped by a little cap of
fiery red that seemed to wink at us like an impish gnome. The
most grotesque shadow of Peg flickered over the wall behind her.
The one-eyed cat remitted his grim watch and went to sleep.
Outside the wind screamed like a ravening beast at the window.
Suddenly Peg removed her pipe from her mouth, bent forward,
gripped my wrist with her sinewy fingers until I almost cried out
with pain, and gazed straight into my face. I felt horribly
frightened of her. She seemed an entirely different creature. A
wild light was in her eyes, a furtive, animal-like expression was
on her face. When she spoke it was in a different voice and in
different language.
"Do you hear the wind?" she asked in a thrilling whisper. "What
IS the wind? What IS the wind?"
"I--I--don't know," I stammered.
"No more do I," said Peg, "and nobody knows. Nobody knows what
the wind is. I wish I could find out. I mightn't be so afraid of
the wind if I knew what it was. I am afraid of it. When the
blasts come like that I want to crouch down and hide me. But I
can tell you one thing about the wind--it's the only free thing in
the world--THE--ONLY--FREE--THING. Everything else is subject to
some law, but the wind is FREE. It bloweth where it listeth and
no man can tame it. It's free--that's why I love it, though I'm
afraid of it. It's a grand thing to be free--free free--free!"
Peg's voice rose almost to a shriek. We were dreadfully
frightened, for we knew there were times when she was quite crazy
and we feared one of her "spells" was coming on her. But with a
swift movement she turned the man's coat she wore up over her
shoulders and head like a hood, completely hiding her face. Then
she crouched forward, elbows on knees, and relapsed into silence.
None of us dared speak or move. We sat thus for half an hour.
Then Peg jumped up and said briskly in her usual tone,
"Well, I guess yez are all sleepy and ready for bed. You girls
can sleep in my bed over there, and I'll take the sofy. Yez can
put the cat off if yez like, though he won't hurt yez. You boys
can go downstairs. There's a big pile of straw there that'll do
yez for a bed, if yez put your coats on. I'll light yez down, but
I ain't going to leave yez a light for fear yez'd set fire to the
place."
Saying good-night to the girls, who looked as if they thought
their last hour was come, we went to the lower room. It was quite
empty, save for a pile of fire wood and another of clean straw.
Casting a stealthy glance around, ere Peg withdrew the light, I
was relieved to see that there were no skulls in sight. We four
boys snuggled down in the straw. We did not expect to sleep, but
we were very tired and before we knew it our eyes were shut, to
open no more till morning. The poor girls were not so fortunate.
They always averred they never closed an eye. Four things
prevented them from sleeping. In the first place Peg snored
loudly; in the second place the fitful gleams of firelight kept
flickering over the skull for half the night and making gruesome
effects on it; in the third place Peg's pillows and bedclothes
smelled rankly of tobacco smoke; and in the fourth place they were
afraid the rat Peg had spoken of might come out to make their
acquaintance. Indeed, they were sure they heard him skirmishing
about several times.
When we wakened in the morning the storm was over and a young
morning was looking through rosy eyelids across a white world.
The little clearing around Peg's cabin was heaped with dazzling
drifts, and we boys fell to and shovelled out a road to her well.
She gave us breakfast--stiff oatmeal porridge without milk, and a
boiled egg apiece. Cecily could NOT eat her porridge; she
declared she had such a bad cold that she had no appetite; a cold
she certainly had; the rest of us choked our messes down and after
we had done so Peg asked us if we had noticed a soapy taste.
"The soap fell into the porridge while I was making it," she said.
"But,"--smacking her lips,--"I'm going to make yez an Irish stew
for dinner. It'll be fine."
An Irish stew concocted by Peg! No wonder Dan said hastily,
"You are very kind but we'll have to go right home."
"Yez can't walk," said Peg.
"Oh, yes, we can. The drifts are so hard they'll carry, and the
snow will be pretty well blown off the middle of the fields. It's
only three-quarters of a mile. We boys will go home and get a
pung and come back for you girls."
But the girls wouldn't listen to this. They must go with us, even
Cecily.
"Seems to me yez weren't in such a hurry to leave last night,"
observed Peg sarcastically.
"Oh, it's only because they'll be so anxious about us at home, and
it's Sunday and we don't want to miss Sunday School," explained
Felicity.
"Well, I hope your Sunday School will do yez good," said Peg,
rather grumpily. But she relented again at the last and gave
Cecily a wishbone.
"Whatever you wish on that will come true," she said. "But you
only have the one wish, so don't waste it."
"We're so much obliged to you for all your trouble," said the
Story Girl politely.
"Never mind the trouble. The expense is the thing," retorted Peg
grimly.
"Oh!" Felicity hesitated. "If you would let us pay you--give you
something--"
"No, thank yez," responded Peg loftily. "There is people who take
money for their hospitality, I've heerd, but I'm thankful to say I
don't associate with that class. Yez are welcome to all yez have
had here, if yez ARE in a big hurry to get away."
She shut the door behind us with something of a slam, and her
black cat followed us so far, with stealthy, furtive footsteps,
that we were frightened of it. Eventually it turned back; then,
and not till then, did we feel free to discuss our adventure.
"Well, I'm thankful we're out of THAT," said Felicity, drawing a
long breath. "Hasn't it just been an awful experience?"
"We might all have been found frozen stark and stiff this
morning," remarked the Story Girl with apparent relish.
"I tell you, it was a lucky thing we got to Peg Bowen's," said
Dan.
"Miss Marwood says there is no such thing as luck," protested
Cecily. "We ought to say it was Providence instead."
"Well, Peg and Providence don't seem to go together very well,
somehow," retorted Dan. "If Peg is a witch it must be the Other
One she's in co. with."
"Dan, it's getting to be simply scandalous the way you talk," said
Felicity. "I just wish ma could hear you."
"Is soap in porridge any worse than tooth-powder in rusks, lovely
creature?" asked Dan.
"Dan, Dan," admonished Cecily, between her coughs, "remember it's
Sunday."
"It seems hard to remember that," said Peter. "It doesn't seem a
mite like Sunday and it seems awful long since yesterday."
"Cecily, you've got a dreadful cold," said the Story Girl
anxiously.
"In spite of Peg's ginger tea," added Felix.
"Oh, that ginger tea was AWFUL," exclaimed poor Cecily. "I
thought I'd never get it down--it was so hot with ginger--and
there was so much of it! But I was so frightened of offending Peg
I'd have tried to drink it all if there had been a bucketful. Oh,
yes, it's very easy for you all to laugh! You didn't have to drink
it."
"We had to eat two meals, though," said Felicity with a shiver.
"And I don't know when those dishes of hers were washed. I just
shut my eyes and took gulps."
"Did you notice the soapy taste in the porridge?" asked the Story Girl.
"Oh, there were so many queer tastes about it I didn't notice one
more than another," answered Felicity wearily.
"What bothers me," remarked Peter absently, "is that skull. Do
you suppose Peg really finds things out by it?"
"Nonsense! How could she?" scoffed Felix, bold as a lion in daylight.
"She didn't SAY she did, you know," I said cautiously.
"Well, we'll know in time if the things she said were going to
happen do," mused Peter.
"Do you suppose your father is really coming home?" queried Felicity.
"I hope not," answered Peter decidedly.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Felicity severely.
"No, I oughtn't. Father got drunk all the time he was home, and
wouldn't work and was bad to mother," said Peter defiantly. "She
had to support him as well as herself and me. I don't want to see
any father coming home, and you'd better believe it. Of course,
if he was the right sort of a father it'd be different."
"What I would like to know is if Aunt Olivia is going to be
married," said the Story Girl absently. "I can hardly believe it.
But now that I think of it--Uncle Roger has been teasing her ever
since she was in Halifax last summer."
"If she does get married you'll have to come and live with us,"
said Cecily delightedly.
Felicity did not betray so much delight and the Story Girl
remarked with a weary little sigh that she hoped Aunt Olivia
wouldn't. We all felt rather weary, somehow. Peg's predictions
had been unsettling, and our nerves had all been more or less
strained during our sojourn under her roof. We were glad when we
found ourselves at home.
The folks had not been at all troubled about us, but it was
because they were sure the storm had come up before we would think
of leaving Cousin Mattie's and not because they had received any
mysterious message from Peg's skull. We were relieved at this,
but on the whole, our adventure had not done much towards clearing
up the vexed question of Peg's witchcraft.
