On the last night of August, certain select families in Glen St. Mary and the Four Winds District were invited to a performance in Rainbow Valley. Folding chairs had been set up along a grassy swell, facing a pair of old red velvet drapes strung along heavy twine between two slender birch trees. They had erstwhile hung in the Ingleside parlour, and Faith Meredith still destined them for her rag bag. But tonight they would do as a stage-curtain. The drapes parted—a sheaf of red curls stuck out—a shade of red entirely from the stately crimson drapes. "Artie," hissed a voice, and Arthur Golden lifted his violin to his shoulder and began the overture.
The play was A Midsummer Night's Dream and it was put on by the Blythe, Ford and Meredith children and their friends. The curtain went up, and Walt Blythe appeared as Theseus, with a lovely Bess Golden on his arm as Hippolyta. These were not their only roles; Bess would also be Titania, and Walter was to be Quince and Mustard-seed. Only Helen Blythe alone had been allowed one role, on account of her shyness. She was two be the fairy Pease-blossom, with just two lines.
The play progressed. Harry Golden as Lysander quarreled convincingly with Gilbert Ford as Demetrius for love of Sally Blythe, who was Hermia to Claire Meredith's Helena. Claire muddled her part, forgetting that she was supposed to be in love with Gilly and simpering whenever tall, broad-shouldered Lysander appeared on the scene. The littlest Ford cousins, Amy and Selwyn, flitted hither and thither as needed to fill the lesser roles, and Eddie Douglas made a braying, ridiculous Bottom—nobody had suspected his talent when Helen had asked him to join in to make up the requisite number of players. His mother was at once very proud and a little deflated. For if it hadn't been for Cam Blythe, Eddie might have stolen the show.
Cam was rather tame as Egeus, but he shone as Puck. It was a part made for him, full of passion and mischief. His black hair glinted, his green eyes fairly twinkled as he faced the audience and made amends with the shadows that had watched the action steadily from beneath a darkening sky. By the time the final bow had been taken the fireflies were winking in the green gloom between the trees.
The children changed from their costumes, and mingled with their adults for a while round the bonfire Uncles Shirley and Bruce had kindled up. The grownups were full of praise for the performance, and for a while the two factions became one, laughing, singing group of people. But as the music died down, and the fire melted into ash, the children slipped away, in twos and threes, into the darkness, for one last Rainbow Valley ramble before their summer was ended.
"It has been a good summer," said Sally Blythe, linking arms with Bess on one side and Claire on the other. "It has been such a nice summer that I shan't spoil it by regretting that it's over. Tonight there's a chill in the air—it gives me a little, bittersweet pang in my heart. 'The year is dying-let him die!'"
"Oh, Sally!" cried Claire, tossing her long brown hair over her shoulder. "Honestly, the things you say, sometimes! What a perfectly morbid, ugly thought."
"It's not Sally's thought at all, but Lord Tennyson's, and it's a lovely one, I think," said Bess Golden, with a wisdom far beyond her sixteen years. "Beautiful things aren't always pretty, Claire. Oh, I love that poem, Sal..." And Bess repeated it, word for word, in her thrilling voice.
Bess had a voice that made words live—or perhaps it was that her face, along with her voice, told that the speaker 'well those passions read.' Bess seemed to feel things more than most—she often trembled as she spoke some grave pronouncement, be it merely a sad story recounted to her second- or third-hand. When Bess was joyful her eyes beamed and her skin glowed—when Bess laughed, it was the purest sound in the world.
The three girls had reached the brook by the time that Bess had finished her recitation, and they took their seats side-by-side on the mossy bank. Bess hugged her knees. She was still wearing the gossamer wings that her mother had made her for her part as the fairy queen. Someone happening through the valley just then, who had not been privy to the night's revels, would have stopped suddenly, sure he had stumbled into Tir na Nog.
"Tonight marks an epoch in my life, as your Grandmother would say, girls." Bess laid her cheek against her knee, pensively, but her contentedness was evident in her tone. "I shall always remember this night, August 31, 1936, as the day when I made my debut—not at one of those fusty cotillions back home—but upon the stage. It is something I have dreamt of ever since I was a little girl. To think that those small grassy steps might lead to something great—to the Globe Theatre—to Carnegie Hall—to the sawdusted floor of a movie set. I have proved to myself tonight something that I was never quite sure of—I can act—and now that I know I can, I shall do it, or keep trying to do it, my whole life."
"You will do it," Sally said, certainly and lovingly. "And when you are famous, Bess, we shall say that we knew you first—that we shared the stage with you, even. And people will be so impressed with us."
"I wouldn't want to be even Jean Harlow if it meant kissing Eddie Douglas." Claire wrinkled her nose, delicately. "Wearing a stupid donkey's head, no less."
"Claire!" Bess sat up, full of exasperation. "It wasn't Eddie Douglas that I kissed. It was Bottom the Weaver. And I wasn't myself—I was Titania, Queen of the Fairies. And at least," Bess added, pure naughtiness sparkling her grey eyes, "I'm not in danger of being 'sweet sixteen and never been kissed.'"
This was an especially pointed jab, as Claire was deathly afraid of this Fate befalling her. It was her worst fear. It was one of Sally's, too, but for other reasons. For if Claire did get kissed, sometime in the next year, then Sally would be the odd one out. More worrisomely, Sally was not sure she wanted to be kissed. She could not imagine how it would feel, to have some strange boy press his lips to her own. The very idea filled her with a strange horror. Underneath that she was aware of a longing, but it was more of a longing not to be left out—not to be kept mired in girlishness while the ones she loved stepped forward into womanhood without her.
Bess smiled and put her arm around Sally's freckled shoulders. Sally staunchly loved Bess and Claire with equal passion—it would not do to favor one of her friends over the other—but it was Bess that knew Sally's secret fears and hopes. In the past few years, Claire had developed a habit of being a little dismissive with her cousin, whom she considered hopelessly immature. Claire's dream was to be pretty and popular, and be pinned by as many boys at St. John's High as her mother would allow. Sally did not sneer at her cousin's hopes, but she was conscious that she wanted more than that from life—oh, she wanted everything that life could offer her!
"I didn't get onto the school paper this year," she confessed suddenly to her chums. "They hardly ever take freshies, though, so I didn't really expect they'd take me."
"Yes, you did," Bess reminded her, gently. "But there is nothing wrong with hoping for the best, Sally, even in the face of great odds."
"Still," said Sally, a little more miserably than before. For the first time since she had gotten the letter two days ago, she had confessed her disappointment out loud. But instead of making her feel better, it made her feel worse to hear it put so baldly and bluntly. Her shoulders sagged. "The truth of the matter is that I'm not going to get the experience I need to grow in my writing career. This year will be a waste. Instead of learning how to be a reporter, I'll be puttering around, writing little fairy stories that no one reads."
"I read your stories," Claire said, a little offended at being called a 'nobody.'
"So do I," said Bess. "I love your fairy stories, Sally."
Sally shifted on her mossy seat. "It's easy to write about things that are pretend, but it's hard to stick to the facts."
"Remember your 'epic' you wrote years ago! That was all real, Sally—it was really our family's history."
"I was just a baby then, though, Claire. That wasn't real writing of the kind that will ever impress an editor. I need newspaper experience for that."
Bess Golden clapped her hands on her knees. "All right," she said decidedly. "Then we'll start our own paper!"
The other girls looked at her, waiting for her to explain. Bess obliged them. "We write dozens of letters to each other during the school year—the same thing over and over, pretty much, so that everybody's in the know. If we could all be responsible for contributing one letter about what's going on in our lives, it would be much easier. Then we could circulate the paper among us. Sally, you could be news editor—and features writer—we'll all have to do double duty, like we did tonight. I'll cover the arts section—if no one else wants it. Claire, you can write the fashion update each month. Walter could write an advice column—he'd be perfect for it—we're always writing him for help, anyway. Cam could write about sports. We'll all submit our articles by a certain date, Sally can edit them, and then send them to Gilly in Toronto. Your Uncle Ken would print it up at his office if we asked him nicely and chipped in a little of our pocket money to cover costs. I'm sure he would."
"That means that Gilly would have to be editor-in-chief," Claire pointed out.
"I don't mind," said Sally quickly. There was the beginning of a swelling of excitement in her chest—the first true excitement she had felt over anything since getting that horrid letter from the Glen High Grenadier. "We could call our paper The Spirit—because it will help us all be together in spirit."
"The Blythe Spirit," Bess murmured.
"But you and Harry and Artie aren't Blythes!"
"It doesn't matter. Enough of you are to make it count. Besides," Bess grinned her enchanting crooked grin, "It sounds better that way. We should all strive to be Blythe in spirit, always. Some of you are Blythe by name, but all of us should be Blythe by nature."
Sally's head was spinning with ideas. "Artie could write about music—Helen would write a gardening column if we cajole her—and Harry can write about books."
Claire laughed, and pinched Sally softly. "Harry isn't going to want to write for our paper. Don't be silly, Sal."
"Of course he would! Why wouldn't he?"
"He'll be away at Harvard, too busy chasing Radcliffe girls to mess around in our little doings. Didn't you see tonight how Harry stayed back with the grownups when we went off? He's one of them, now—he's eighteen—and we're still kids. Face facts, Sally. For Pete's sake!"
Sally stared at Claire for a full minute, digesting what she'd said. Could Harry—their Harry—be growing up and away from them? The others in the group might have always gone to Walt for advice, but Harry had been Sally's helpmeet since that sunny summer afternoon when they had met in the Middle Grafton woods four summers ago. They wrote to each other nearly every week, and sometimes between, and called each other long distance when something very important came up. Now, if Harry was grown up, and Sally was still a kid, perhaps he would not want to do that anymore. Perhaps he would not want anything to do with someone so babyish as herself.
Bess, so good at reading others' emotions, reached out and clasped Sally's hand. "Harry is a great big oaf of kid and will be when he's fifty," she said gently. "But he did promise Mother that he would be good this year, and not let his social life get in the way of his studies. He'll contribute regularly to our paper—but maybe not every month."
Sally still felt crestfallen, despite her friend's words. She felt very young and farther than ever from the silver door that led out of childhood into the world beyond. Suddenly, she thought that she would make this year—between fifteen and sixteen—the year in which she caught up to her peers—the year in which she would hurry forward on the golden road. She was fourteen now. By this time next year she would be nearly sixteen. And when she was sixteen, Sally decided, she would be grown up. She would no longer be little Sally Blythe, who wore denim chambray shorts and Keds, with her curly hair wound in pigtails, or in a coronet of braids around her head. She would be Cecilia Blythe-Cecilia Rose Blythe-and she would wear slim skirts and sweater sets, and she would even ask Aunt Irene for help in setting her hair in silky waves around her face.
The moonlit spell of the little glen by the river seemed broken, and the girls got up silently and made their way back to the bonfire. When they reached it, Harry Golden got up from where he had been sitting, brushing the grass from his knees as he stood. His eyes twinkled with good humor. Wordlessly he held his arm out to Sally, that they might go for a ramble on their own. Wordlessly, she took it. But as they walked, Sally could not help stealing glances up into Harry's square-chinned face. His dark curls flopped down into his eyes as they had always done. Could he be growing apart from her, even in this moment?
"I wish for everything to stay the same between us always," Sally thought, surprising herself with the ferventness of her desire.
"I wish I could see my name in print, like a real actress," thought Bess, wistfully, taking her place by the fire.
"I wish Harry Golden had asked me to walk with him," thought Claire, thinking very bitter thoughts about some girls, who had all the luck.