The Story Girl | Part 1 of 17

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So if you're looking for another great way to ease into a restful night's Samba, then just search Deep Sleep Sounds on your favourite podcast player. I'll see you there, my friends. Welcome to Send Me To Sleep, the place to find relaxing stories for a good night's rest. My name's Andrew, thanks for joining me. Tonight we'll be starting a new book, The Story Girl by L. M. Montgomery. Written in 1911, this formative work from Montgomery tells the tale of a group of imaginative cousins spending their Samba on Prince Edward Island bound together by spellbinding tales of the mysterious story girl. Tonight, I'll be reading Chapter 1, The Home of Our Fathers and Chapter 2, a Queen of Hearts. Before we begin tonight's story, let's get ourselves ready for sleep. Start by taking a deep, relaxing breath and settle your body in whatever way feels most comfortable. Now let any thoughts of the day drift away from your mind and simply follow the sound of my voice. So let your eyes fall heavy and your breath soften as we set them in for a peaceful night's sleep. Chapter 1, The Home of Our Fathers. I tune like a road because you can be always wondering what is at the end of it. The Story Girl said that once upon a time. Felix and I, on the main morning when we left Toronto for Prince Edward Island, had not then heard her say it, and indeed were barely aware of the existence of such a person as the story girl. We did not know her at all under that name. We knew only that a cousin, Sarah Stanley, whose mother, our aunt Felicity, was dead, was living down on the island with Uncle Roger and Darntelivia King on a farm adjoining the old King Homestead in Carlisle. We supposed we should get acquainted with her when we reached there and we had an idea from Aunt Olivia's letters to father that she would be quite a jolly creature. Further than that, we did not think about her. We were more interested in Felicity and Cecilie and Dan who lived on the Homestead and would therefore be our roofmates for a season. But the spirit of the Story Girl's yet unartored remark was thrilling in our hearts that morning as the train pulled out of Toronto. We were fearing forth on a long road and that we had some idea what would be at the end of it. There was enough glamour of the unknown about it to lend a wonderful charm to our speculations concerning it. We were delighted at the thought of seeing fathers old hon and living among the horns of his boyhood. He had talked so much about it to us and described it seen so often and so mimeutely that he had inspired us with some of his own deep-seated affection for it, an affection that had never waned in all his years of exile. We had a vague feeling that we somehow belonged there and that cradle of our family that we had never seen it. We had always looked forward eagerly to the promised day when father would take us down home to the old houses with the spooces behind it and the famous king orchard before it. When we might ramble in Uncle Stevens' walk, drink from the deep well with the Chinese roof over it. We had a grand, on the pulpit stone and he tables from our birthday tree. The time had come sooner than we'd dared hope, but father could not take us after all. His firm asked him to go to Rio de Janeiro that spring to take charge of their new branch there. It was too good a chance to lose, for father was a poor man and had meant promotion and increase of salary, but it also meant the temporary breaking up of our home. Our mother had died before either of us was old enough to remember her. Father could not take us to Rio de Janeiro. In the end, he decided to send us to Uncle Alec and aren't Janet down on the homestead and our housekeeper who belonged to the island and was now returning to it took charge of us on the journey. I fear she had an anxious trip of it, poor woman. She was constantly in a quite justifiable terror, lest we should be lost or curled. She must have felt great relief when we reached Charlotte Town and handed us over to the keeping of Uncle Alec. Indeed, she said as much. The fat one isn't so bad, he isn't so quick to move and get out of your sight while you're winking as the thin one, but the only safe way to travel with those young ones would be to have them both tied to you with a short robe, a mighty short robe. The fat one was Felix, who was very sensitive about his plumpness. He was always taking exercises to make him thin with the dismal result that he became fatten all the time. He vowed that he didn't care, but he did care terribly and he gloured at Mrs. McLaren in a most un-dutiful fashion. He had never liked her since the day she had told him he would soon be as broad as he was long. For my own part, I was rather sorry to see her going, and she cried over us and wished us well. But we had forgotten all about her by the time we reached the open country, for having along one on either side of Uncle Alec, when we loved from the moment we saw him. He was a small man, with thin, delicate features, close-cliped grey beard, and large, tired, blue eyes. Father's eyes over again. We knew that Uncle Alec was fond of children, and was heart-glad to welcome Alan's boys. We felt at home with him, and were not afraid to ask him questions on any subject that came up most in our minds. We became very good friends with him on that 24-mile drive. Much to our disappointment, it was dark when we reached Carlyle. Too dark to see anything very distinctively, as we drove up the lane of the Horde King Homestead on the hill. When we heard us, a young moon was hanging over south-western meadows of springtime peace. But all about us, with a soft, moist shadow of May night, we peered eagerly through the gloom. There's the big willow, Bev, whispered Felix excitedly as we turned in at the gate. There it was, in truth, the tree grandfather King had planted when he returned one evening from plowing in the Brookfield and stuck the willow sweets he had used all day in the soft soil by the gate. It had taken root and grown. Our father and our uncles and aunts had played in its shadow, and now it was a massive thing, with a huge girth of trunk and great spreading boughs, each of them has large as a tree itself. I'm going to climb it tomorrow, I said joyfully. Off to the right was a dim, branching place, which we knew was the orchard, and on our left, among sibilant spruces and furs, was the old, wide-washed house, from which presently a light gleamed through an open door, and, aren't Janet, a big, bustling, son-sea woman, with full-blown, peony cheeks came to welcome us. Soon after we were at supper in the kitchen, with its low, dark, rafted ceiling, from which substantial hounds and flinches of bacon were hanging, everything was just as father had described it. We felt that we had come home, leaving exile behind us. Felicity, Cecilie and Dan were sitting opposite us, staring at us when they thought we would be too busy eating to see them. We tried to stare at them when they were eating, and as a result, we were always catching each other out at it, and feeling cheap and embarrassed. Dan was the oldest, he was my age, 13, he was a lean, freckled mellow, with rather long, lank-brown hair, and the shapely king knows. We recognised it at once. This mouth was his own, however, for it was like to know mouth on either the king or the wardside, and nobody would have been anxious to claim it, for it was undeniably ugly, long and narrow and twisted, but it could grin in friendly fashion, and both Felix and I felt that we were going to like Dan. Felicity was 12. She had been called after Aunt Felicity, who was the twin sister of Uncle Felix. Aunt Felicity and Uncle Felix, as father had often told us, had died on the same day, far apart, and were buried side by side in the old Carlyle Graveyard. We had known from Antelibius letters that Felicity was the beauty of the connection, and we had been curious to see her on that account. She fully justified our expectations. She was plump and dimpled, with big, dark, blue, heavy-leaded eyes, soft, feathery, gold curls, and a pink and white skin. The King Complexion. The kings were noted for their noses and complexion. Felicity had also delightful hands and wrists, and every turn of them, a dimple showed itself. It was a pleasure to wonder what her elbows must be like. She was very nicely dressed, in a pink print and a frilled muslin apron, and we understood from something Dan said that she had dressed up in honour of our coming. This made us feel quite important, so far as we knew no feminine creatures had ever gone to the pains of dressing up an account of us before. Cecilie, who was eleven, was pretty also, or would have been, had Felicity not been there. Felicity rather took the colour from another girl's cheeks. She slowly looked pale and thin beside her, but she had dainty little features, smooth brown hair of satin sheen, and mild brown eyes, with just a hint of demeanor seen them mound again. We remembered that Aunt Olivia had written to Father that Cecilie was a true ward. She had no sense of humour. We did not know what this meant, but we thought it was not exactly complementary. Still, we were both inclined to think we would like Cecilie better than Felicity. To be sure, Felicity was a stunning beauty, but with the swift and unhearing intuition of childhood which feels in a moment what it sometimes takes maturity much time to perceive. She realised that she was rather too well aware of her good looks. In brief, we saw that Felicity was vain. It's a wonder story girl isn't over to see you, said Uncle Anneke. She's been quite wild with excitement about your coming. She hasn't been very well all day, explained cessily. Aunt Olivia wouldn't let her come out in the night air. She made her go to bed instead. The story girl was awfully disappointed. Who is the story girl asked Felix? Oh Sarah, Sarah Stanley. We call her the story girl partly because she's such a hand to tell stories. Oh, I can't begin to describe it. And partly because Sarah Ray, who lives at the foot of the hill, often comes up to play with us and it is awkward to have two girls of the same name in the same crowd. Besides, Sarah Stanley doesn't like her name and she'd rather be called the story girl. Dan speaking for the first time, rather sheepishly, volunteer de-information that Peter had also been intending to come over but had gone home to get some flour to his mother instead. Peter, I questioned. I'd never heard of any Peter. He is your uncle Roger's hand boy, said Uncle Anneke. His name is Peter Craig and he is a really smart chap, but he's got his share of mischief at same lad. He wants to be Felicity's bow, said Dan, slightly. Don't talk silly nonsense, Dan, said Aunt Janet severely. Felicity tossed her golden head and short and unsistfully glance at Dan. I wouldn't be very likely to have a hired boy for a bow she observed. He saw that her anger was real, not affected. Evidently, Peter was not a den by her of whom Felicity was proud. We were very hungry boys and when we'd eaten all we could. And oh, what suppers Aunt Janet would spread. We discovered that we were very tired also, too tired to go out and explore our ancestral domains, as we would have liked to do. Despite the dark, we were quite willing to go to bed. And presently, we found ourselves tucked away upstairs in the very room, looking out eastward into the Spruce Grove, which father had once occupied. Dan shared it with us, sleeping in a bed of his own in the opposite corner. The sheets and pillow slips were fragrant with lavender, and one of Grandmother King's noted a patchwork quilt was over us. The window was open, and we heard the frogs singing down in the swamp of the Brook Meadow. We had heard frogs sing in Ontario, of course, but certainly, Prince Edward Island frogs were more tuneful and mellow. Or was it simply the glamour of old family traditions and tales which was over us, ending its magic, tall sights and sounds around us? This was home, father's home, our home. We'd never lived long enough in any one house to develop a feeling of affection for it, but here, under the roof tree built by great Grandfather King, 90 years ago, that feeling swept into our boyish hearts and souls like a flood of living sweetness and tenderness. Just think, those are the very frogs father listened to when he was a little boy, whispered Felix. They can hardly be the same frogs, I objected doubtfully, not feeling very certain about the possible longevity of frogs. It's twenty years since father left home. Well, they had the descendants of the frogs he heard, say Felix, and they're singing in the same swamp. That's near enough. Our door was open, and in their room across the narrow hall, the girls were preparing for bed, and talking rather more loudly than they might have done, had they realised how far their sweet, shrill voice is carried. What do you think of the boys, asked Cessli? Beverly is handsome, but Felix is too fat, answered Felicity promptly. Felix twitched the quilt rather viciously and grunted, but I began to think I would like Felicity. It might not be altogether her fault that she was vain. How could she help it when she looked in the mirror? I think they're both nice, and nice looking, said Cessli. Dear little song, I wonder what the story girl will think of them, said Felicity, as if after all that was the main thing. Somehow we too felt that it was. We felt that if the story girl did not approve of us, it made little difference who else did or did not. I wonder if the story girl is pretty, said Felix aloud. No, she isn't, said Dan instantly from across the room. But you'll think she is whilst she's talking to you. Everybody does. It's only when you go away from her that you find out she isn't a bit pretty after all. The girl's door shut with a bang. Silence fell over the house. We drifted into the land of sleep, wondering if the story girl would like us. CHAPTER 2 A Queen of Hearts I awakened shortly after sunrise. The pale, May sunshine was showering through the spluces, and a chill and spying wind was tossing the bowels about. Felix, wake up, I whispered shaking him. What's the matter? Emmermered reluctantly. It's morning. Let's get up and go down and out. I can't wait another minute to see the place his father has told us of. We slipped out of bed and dressed, without arousing Dan, who was still slumbering soundly, with his mouth wide open, and his bedcoats kicked off on the floor. I had hard work to keep Felix from trying to see if he could shy a marble into the tempting open mouth. I told him it would awaken Dan, who would then likely insist on getting up and accompanying us, and it would be so much nicer to go by ourselves for the first time. Everything was still as we kept downstairs. Out in the kitchen we heard someone, presumably unglug, nighting the fire, but the heart of the house had not yet begun to beat for the day. The pause to moment in the hall, to look at the big, grand father clock. It was not going, but it seemed like an old, familiar acquaintance to us, with the guilt balls on its three peaks, the little dial and pointer which would indicate the changes of the moon, and the very Dan, thin it's wooden door, which father had made, when he was a boy, by kicking it in a fit of naughtiness. Then we opened the front door and stepped out, ratcha swelling in our bosom. There was a rare breeze from the south blowing to meet us. The shadows of the spooces were long and clear-cut. Exquisite skies of early morning, blue and wind-winnowed were over us, away to the west beyond the Brookfield, with a long valley and a hill purple with furs and laced with still-leafless breeches and maples. Behind the house was a grove of fur and spruce, a dim, core place, with a winds were fond of purring, and where there was always a resinous woodsy odour. From the further side of it was a thick plantation of slender silver birches and whispering poplars, and beyond it was Uncle Roger's house. Right before us, girt about with its trim spruce hedges was the famous king orchard, the history of which was woven into our earliest recollections. We knew all about it from father's descriptions, and in fancy we had eroned in it many a time and off. It was now nearly sixty years since it had its beginning, when Grandfather King brought his bride home. Before the wedding he had fenced off the big south meadow that sloped to the sun. It was the finest, most fertile field on the farm, and the neighbours told young eaves of the abrum king that he would raise many a fine crop of wheat in that meadow. Abrum king smiled, and being a man of few words said nothing, but in his mind he had a vision of the years to be, and in that vision he saw not rippling acres of harvest gold, but great leafy avenues of widespreading trees, laden with fruit to glade in the eyes of children and grandchildren yet unborn. It was a vision to develop slowly into fulfilment. Grandfather King was in no hurry. He did not set his whole orchard out at once, for he wished it to grow with his life and his history, and to be bound up with all of good and joy that should come to his household. So the morning after he had brought his young wife home, they went together to the south meadow and planted their bride or tree. These trees were no longer living, but they had been when father was a boy, and every spring he bedecked themselves in blossom as delicately tinted as Elizabeth King's face when she walked through the old south meadow in the morn of her life and love. When her son was born to abrum and Elizabeth, a tree was planted in the orchard for him. They had 14 children in all, and each children had its birth tree. Every family festival was commemorated in like fashion, and every beloved visitor who spent a night under their roof was expected to plant a tree in the orchard. So it came to pass that every tree in it was a fair green monument to some love or delight of the vanishing years. And each grandchild had its tree there also set out by grandfather when the tidings of its birth reached him. Not always an apple tree, perhaps it was a plum or a cherry or a pear, but it was always known by the name of the person for whom or by whom it was planted. And Felix and I knew as much about aunt Felicity's pears and aunt Julius cherries and Uncle Alex apples and the reverend Mr. Scott's plums as if we had been born and bred among them. And now we had come to the orchard, it was before us. We had only to open that little white washed gate in the hedge, and we might find ourselves in its storied domain. But before we reached to the gate, we glanced to our left and on the grassy, spruce-sported lane which led over to Uncle Rogers. And at the entrance of that lane we saw a girl standing with a grey cat at her feet. She lifted her hand and beckoned to blithe lit to us. And the orchard forgotten, we followed her summons. For we knew that this must be the story girl. And in that happy and graceful gesture was an allurement not to be gainsaid or denied. We looked at her as we drew mere with such interest that we forgot to feel shy. No, she was not pretty. She was tall for her 14 years. Slim and straight around her long, wide face. Her too long and too white fell sleek dark brown curls tied above either ear with rosette of scarlet ribbon. Her large curving mouth was as red as a poppy, and she had brilliant almond-shaped hazel eyes. Then she spoke. She said, good morning. Never had we heard a voice like hers. Never, in all my life since have I heard such a voice. I cannot describe it. I might say it was clear. I might say it was sweet. I might say it was vibrant and far reaching and bell-like. All this would be true, but it would give no real idea of the peculiar quality which made the story girl's voice what it was. If voices had colour, hers would have been like a rainbow. It made words live. Whatever she said became a breathing entity, not only a verbal statement or utterance. Felix and I were too young to understand or analyse the impression it made upon us, but we instantly felt that her greeting that it was a good morning, a surpassingly good morning, the very best morning that had ever happened in this most excellent of worlds. You are Felix and Beverly. She went on, shaking our hands with an air of frank, comrade chip, which was very different from the shy, feminine advances of felicity and cessily. From that moment we were as good friends as if we had known each other for a hundred years. I'm glad to see. I was so disappointed I couldn't go over last night. I got up early this morning though, for I felt sure you'd be up early too, and that you'd like to have me tell you about things. I can tell things so much better than felicity or cessily. Do you think felicity is very pretty? She's the prettiest girl I ever saw, I said enthusiastically, remembering that felicity had called me handsome. The boy's all thinks so, said the story girl, not I fancied quite well pleased, and I suppose she is. She is a splendid cook too, though she's only twelve. I can't cook. I'm trying to learn, but I don't make much progress. Antelivia says I haven't enough natural gumpture never to be a cook, but I'd love to be able to make as good cakes and pies as felicity can make. But then felicity is stupid. It's not in on nature of me to say the cheers, it's just the truth, and you soon find it out for yourself. I like felicity very well, but she is stupid. Cessily is ever so much cleverer. Cessily is a dear, so is Uncle Alec, and Aunt Janet is pretty nice too. What is Antelivia like, asked Felix? Antelivia is very pretty. He's just like a pansy, all velvety, and purply, and goldy. Felix and I saw somewhere inside our heads a velvet and purple and gold pansy woman, just as the story girl spoke. But is she nice, I asked? That was the main question about grownups, their looks mattered little to us. She is lovely, but she is 29, you know. That's pretty old. She doesn't bother me much. Aunt Janet says that I'd have no bringing up at all if it wasn't for her. Antelivia says that children should just be let come up, that everything else is settled for them before they are born. I don't understand that. The you. No, we did not. It was our experience that grownups had a habit of saying things hard to understand. What is Uncle Roger like, was our next question? Well, I like Uncle Roger, said the story girl meditatively. He is big and jolly, but he teases people too much. You ask him a serious question, and you get a ridiculous answer. He hardly ever scolds or gets crossed on, and that is something. He is an old bachelor. Doesn't he ever mean to get married, asked Felix? I don't know. Aunt Olivia wishes he would, because she is tired of keeping house for him, and she wants to go to Aunt Julia in California, but she says he will never get married, because he is looking for perfection. And when he finds her, she won't have him. By this time, we were all sitting down on the narrowed roots of the spruces, and the big grey cat came over and made friends with us also. He was a lordly animal, with a silver grey coat beautifully marked with darker stripes. With such coloring, most cats would have had white or silver feet, but he had four black paws and a black nose. Such points gave him an air of distinction, and marked him out as quite different from the common or garden variety of cats. He seemed to be a cat with a terribly good opinion of himself, and his response to our advances was slightly tinged with condescension. This isn't topsy, is it? I asked. I knew at once that the question was a foolish one. Topsy, the cat of which father had talked, had flourished thirty years before, and all her nine lives could scarcely have lasted so long. No, but its topsy's great, great, great, great, great grandson said the story girl gravely. This name is Paddy, and he is my own particular cat. We have barn cats, but Paddy never associates with them. I'm very good friends with all cats. They are so sleek and comfortable and dignified, and is so easy to make them happy. Oh, I'm so glad you boys have come to live here. Nothing ever happens here. Except days, so we have to make our own good times. Do a sort of boys before, only down in Peter to four girls. Four girls? Oh, yes, Sarah Ray, Felicity mentioned her. What is she like? Where does she live? Just down the hill, you can't see the house for the spruce bush. Sarah is a nice girl. She's only eleven, and her mother is dreadfully stripped. She never allows Sarah to read a single story, just you fancy. Sarah's conscience is always travelling her for doing things she saw her mother wouldn't approve of, but it never prevents her from doing them. It only spoils her fun. Uncle Roger says that her mother who won't let her do anything, and a conscience that won't let you enjoy anything, is an awful combination, and it doesn't wander Sarah's pale and thin, and nervous. But between you and me, I believe the real reason is that her mother doesn't give her half enough to eat. Not that she's mean, you know, but she thinks it isn't healthy for children to eat too much, or anything but certain things. Isn't it fortunate we weren't born into that sort of family? I think it's awfully lucky we were all born into the same family, Felix from art. Isn't it? I've often thought so, and I've often thought what a dreadful thing it would have been if grandfather and grandmother king had never got married to each other. I don't suppose there would have been a single one of us children here at all, or if we were, we would be part of somebody else, and that would be almost as bad. When I think it all over, I can't feel too thankful that grandfather and grandmother king happened to marry each other when there were so many other people they might have married. Felix and I shivered. We felt suddenly that we had escaped a dreadful danger, the danger of having been born somebody else. But it took the story girl to make us realize just how dreadful it was, and what a terrible risk we had run years before we or our parents either had existed. Who lives over there, I asked pointing to a house across the fields. Oh, that belongs to the awkward man. His name is Jasper Dale, but everybody calls him the awkward man, and they do say he writes poetry. He calls his place Golden Milestone. I know why, because I've read the long fellow's poems. He never goes into society because he is so awkward. The girls laugh at him, and he doesn't like it. I know a story about him, and I'll tell you it sometime. And who lives in that other house, asked Felix, looking over the Western Valley, where a little grey roof was visible among the trees. Old peg bone, she's very strange. She lives there with a lot of pet animals in winter, and in summer she roams over the country and begs for her meals. They say she's crazy. People have always tried to frighten us children into good behaviour by telling us that peg bone would catch us if we didn't behave. I'm not so frightened of her as I once was, but I don't think I would like to be caught by her. Sarah Ray is dreadfully scared of her. Peter Gray says she's a witch, and that he bets she's at the bottom of it when the butter won't come. But I don't believe that. Which is so scarce nowadays. There may be some somewhere in the world, but it's not likely that there are any right here on Prince Edward Island. They used to be very plenty long ago. I know some splendid witch stories, I'll tell you someday too. They'll just make your blood reez in your veins. We hadn't a doubt of it. If anybody could freeze the blood in our veins, this girl with the wonderful voice could. But it was a main morning, and our young blood was running blight for in our veins. We suggested a visit to the orchard would be more agreeable. Alright, I know stories about the orchard too, she said, as we walked across the yard, followed by a paddy of the waving tail. Oh, aren't you glad it's spring? The beauty of winter is that it makes you appreciate spring. The latch of the gate clicked under the story girl's hand, and the next moment we were in the king's orchard.