Produced by John Hamm
THE GOLDEN ROAD
By L. M. Montgomery
"Life was a rose-lipped comrade With purple flowers dripping from her fingers." --The Author.
TO THE MEMORY OF Aunt Mary Lawson WHO TOLD ME MANY OF THE TALES REPEATED BY THE STORY GIRL
FOREWORD
Once upon a time we all walked on the golden road. It was a fairhighway, through the Land of Lost Delight; shadow and sunshine wereblessedly mingled, and every turn and dip revealed a fresh charm and anew loveliness to eager hearts and unspoiled eyes.
On that road we heard the song of morning stars; we drank in fragrancesaerial and sweet as a May mist; we were rich in gossamer fancies andiris hopes; our hearts sought and found the boon of dreams; the yearswaited beyond and they were very fair; life was a rose-lipped comradewith purple flowers dripping from her fingers.
We may long have left the golden road behind, but its memories are thedearest of our eternal possessions; and those who cherish them as suchmay haply find a pleasure in the pages of this book, whose people arepilgrims on the golden road of youth.
THE GOLDEN ROAD
CHAPTER I. A NEW DEPARTURE
"I've thought of something amusing for the winter," I said as wedrew into a half-circle around the glorious wood-fire in Uncle Alec'skitchen.
It had been a day of wild November wind, closing down into a wet, eerietwilight. Outside, the wind was shrilling at the windows and around theeaves, and the rain was playing on the roof. The old willow at the gatewas 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. Butlittle 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 ouryoung lips.
We had been having a splendid game of Blind-Man's Buff. That is, ithad been splendid at first; but later the fun went out of it because wefound that Peter was, of malice prepense, allowing himself to becaught too easily, in order that he might have the pleasure of catchingFelicity--which he never failed to do, no matter how tightly his eyeswere bound. What remarkable goose said that love is blind? Love can seethrough five folds of closely-woven muffler with ease!
"I'm getting tired," said Cecily, whose breath was coming rather quicklyand whose pale cheeks had bloomed into scarlet. "Let's sit down and getthe Story Girl to tell us a story."
But as we dropped into our places the Story Girl shot a significantglance at me which intimated that this was the psychological moment forintroducing the scheme she and I had been secretly developing for somedays. It was really the Story Girl's idea and none of mine. But she hadinsisted 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, howcontrary she's been lately over anything I mention. And if she goesagainst it Peter will too--the ninny!--and it wouldn't be any fun if weweren't all in it."
"What is it?" asked Felicity, drawing her chair slightly away fromPeter's.
"It is this. Let us get up a newspaper of our own--write it allourselves, and have all we do in it. Don't you think we can get a lot offun out of it?"
Everyone looked rather blank and amazed, except the Story Girl. She knewwhat she had to do, and she did it.
"What a silly idea!" she exclaimed, with a contemptuous toss of her longbrown 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 toknow 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 newsit prints is that some old woman has put a shawl on her head and goneacross the road to have tea with another old woman. I guess we could dobetter than that. You needn't think, Sara Stanley, that nobody but youcan do anything."
"I think it would be great fun," said Peter decidedly. "My Aunt Janehelped edit a paper when she was at Queen's Academy, and she said it wasvery amusing and helped her a great deal."
The Story Girl could hide her delight only by dropping her eyes andfrowning.
"Bev wants to be editor," she said, "and I don't see how he can, with noexperience. 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 haveany experience of being editors, any more than Bev, so that wouldn'tmatter."
"Will it be printed?" asked Dan.
"Oh, no," I said. "We can't have it printed. We'll just have to write itout--we can buy foolscap from the teacher."
"I don't think it will be much of a newspaper if it isn't printed," saidDan 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 turnedagainst our project, "if all the rest of you want it I'll go in for ittoo. I daresay it would be real good fun, now that I come to think ofit. And we'll keep the copies, and when we become famous they'll bequite 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'sjust one of us."
"Well, it's decided, then, that we're to have a newspaper," I resumedbriskly. "The next thing is to choose a name for it. That's a veryimportant 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," saidDan.
"We couldn't have one every week," I explained. "It would be too muchwork."
"Well, that's an argument," admitted Dan. "The less work you can getalong with the better, in my opinion. No, Felicity, you needn't say it.I know exactly what you want to say, so save your breath to cool yourporridge. I agree with you that I never work if I can find anything elseto do."
"'Remember it is harder still To have no work to do,"'
quoted Cecily reprovingly.
"I don't believe THAT," rejoined Dan. "I'm like the Irishman who said hewished the man who begun work had stayed and finished it."
"Well, is it decided that Bev is to be editor?" asked Felix.
"Of course it is," Felicity answered for everybody.
"Then," said Felix, "I move that the name be The King Monthly Magazine."
"That sounds fine," said Peter, hitching his chair a little nearerFelicity's.
"But," said Cecily timidly, "that will leave out Peter and the StoryGirl and Sara Ray, just as if they didn't have a share in it. I don'tthink that would be fair."
"You name it then, Cecily," I suggested.
"Oh!" Cecily threw a deprecating glance at the Story Girl and Felicity.Then, meeting the contempt in the latter's gaze, she raised her headwith unusual spirit.
"I think it would be nice just to call it Our Magazine," she said. "Thenwe'd all feel as if we had a share in it."
"Our Magazine it will be, then," I said. "And as for having a share init, you bet we'll all have a share in it. If I'm to be editor you'll allhave to be sub-editors, and have charge of a department."
"Oh, I couldn't," protested Cecily.
"You must," I said inexorably. "'England expects everyone to do hisduty.' That's our motto--only we'll put Prince Edward Island in place ofEngland. There must be no shirking. Now, what departments will we have?We must make it as much like a real newspaper as we can."
"Well, we ought to have an etiquette department,
then," said Felicity."The Family Guide has one."
"Of course we'll have one," I said, "and Dan will edit it."
"Dan!" exclaimed Felicity, who had fondly expected to be asked to editit herself.
"I can run an etiquette column as well as that idiot in the FamilyGuide, anyhow," said Dan defiantly. "But you can't have an etiquettedepartment unless questions are asked. What am I to do if nobody asksany?"
"You must make some up," said the Story Girl. "Uncle Roger says that iswhat the Family Guide man does. He says it is impossible that there canbe as many hopeless fools in the world as that column would stand forotherwise."
"We want you to edit the household department, Felicity," I said, seeinga cloud lowering on that fair lady's brow. "Nobody can do that as wellas you. Felix will edit the jokes and the Information Bureau, and Cecilymust be fashion editor. Yes, you must, Sis. It's easy as wink. And theStory Girl will attend to the personals. They're very important. Anyonecan contribute a personal, but the Story Girl is to see there are somein every issue, even if she has to make them up, like Dan with theetiquette."
"Bev will run the scrap book department, besides the editorials," saidthe Story Girl, seeing that I was too modest to say it myself.
"Aren't you going to have a story page?" asked Peter.
"We will, if you'll be fiction and poetry editor," I said.
Peter, in his secret soul, was dismayed, but he would not blanch beforeFelicity.
"All right," he said, recklessly.
"We can put anything we like in the scrap book department," I explained,"but all the other contributions must be original, and all must have thename of the writer signed to them, except the personals. We must all doour best. Our Magazine is to be 'a feast of reason and flow of soul."'
I felt that I had worked in two quotations with striking effect. Theothers, with the exception of the Story Girl, looked suitably impressed.
"But," said Cecily, reproachfully, "haven't you anything for Sara Ray todo? She'll feel awful bad if she is left out."
I had forgotten Sara Ray. Nobody, except Cecily, ever did rememberSara Ray unless she was on the spot. But we decided to put her in asadvertising manager. That sounded well and really meant very little.
"Well, we'll go ahead then," I said, with a sigh of relief that theproject had been so easily launched. "We'll get the first issue outabout the first of January. And whatever else we do we mustn't let UncleRoger get hold of it. He'd make such fearful fun of it."
"I hope we can make a success of it," said Peter moodily. He had beenmoody ever since he was entrapped into being fiction editor.
"It will be a success if we are determined to succeed," I said. "'Wherethere is a will there is always a way.'"
"That's just what Ursula Townley said when her father locked her in herroom the night she was going to run away with Kenneth MacNair," said theStory Girl.
We pricked up our ears, scenting a story.
"Who were Ursula Townley and Kenneth MacNair?" I asked.
"Kenneth MacNair was a first cousin of the Awkward Man's grandfather,and Ursula Townley was the belle of the Island in her day. Who do yousuppose told me the story--no, read it to me, out of his brown book?"
"Never the Awkward Man himself!" I exclaimed incredulously.
"Yes, he did," said the Story Girl triumphantly. "I met him one daylast week back in the maple woods when I was looking for ferns. He wassitting by the spring, writing in his brown book. He hid it when he sawme and looked real silly; but after I had talked to him awhile I justasked him about it, and told him that the gossips said he wrote poetryin it, and if he did would he tell me, because I was dying to know. Hesaid he wrote a little of everything in it; and then I begged him toread me something out of it, and he read me the story of Ursula andKenneth."
"I don't see how you ever had the face," said Felicity; and even Cecilylooked as if she thought the Story Girl had gone rather far.
"Never mind that," cried Felix, "but tell us the story. That's the mainthing."
"I'll tell it just as the Awkward Man read it, as far as I can," saidthe Story Girl, "but I can't put all his nice poetical touches in,because I can't remember them all, though he read it over twice for me."