A Peddler
A day or two after Ruby Gillis's funeral, Carmilla and I lounged in the orchard, plucking cherries and feeding one another until our lips ran red with the sticky juice. Father and the hired man were away in the fields and Mother had gone down to visit Mrs. Lynde, leaving our maid to the washing and us to our diversions.
About mid-morning, a peddler appeared at the gate to Orchard Slope. Mother had warned me often enough not to speak to peddlers, but Carmilla was enchanted with this exotic personage, and I could not say her nay.
He wore a pointed black beard and a broad grin above his many-colored coat. He had a fiddle, an enormous pack, and a rough spare dog that followed at his heels, but stopped short, suspiciously at the gate, and in a little while began to howl dismally.
The peddler paid his compliments to us and, taking his fiddle, began to scrape a lively air to which he sang with a merry discord, dancing with ludicrous airs and activity, that made me laugh, in spite of the dog's howling.
When he was finished, he bowed as low as any courtier and was rewarded with our delighted applause.
"Thank ye, kind ladies," he said. "I bring you the finest treasures this bright day."
From his pack, he drew a card of satin ribbons and held one up to my hair.
"For you, my beauty," he crooned. "The finest silk from distant China, as pink as the roses in your lovely cheeks, to adorn your midnight tresses."
I could not help but smile at his blandishments, but his words seemed to vex Carmilla unaccountably.
"Leave off, knave," she cried, swatting his hand away from me.
"Ah," said the peddler, turning his attention to Carmilla. "You do not like ribbons, m'lady? I can see that you are a lady of finer feeling than is commonly found in these parts. Perhaps I can offer you something that I do not ordinarily display among your coarser fellows."
He drew a small silver box from the mysterious recesses of his pack and lingered over its complex lock until Carmilla and I leaned over it, breathless in our anticipation. When the mechanism sprung at last, we beheld several oblong slips of vellum, with cabalistic ciphers and diagrams upon them.
"What are they?" I asked.
The peddler smiled. "They are charms, m'lady. To ward off evil of all sorts. Ghosts and ghouls are their ordinary foes, but they are likewise protection against the fiercer fiend that has lately begun to stalk these forests."
Carmilla instantly purchased one, and so did I.
Perhaps if the peddler had left then, we might have passed the rest of the afternoon in pleasure, but he did not. Instead, he pulled a small bottle from an unseen pocket and brandished it with a flourish. "A gift for you, m'lady," he said, offering it to Carmilla. "The most excellent dye in all the world, guaranteed to turn your hair a deep and permanent black as dark and lovely as your friend's."
Carmilla flushed with indignation, but she did not have time to vent her spleen upon the hapless peddler.
"No!" I cried, knocking the bottle from his grasp and sending it skittering across the grass. "Oh, dear Carmilla, never alter your flaming beauty! Bright star, with your splendour hung aloft in night, stedfast and unchangeable!"*
My friend clasped my hand to her breast, where I could feel its soft fall and swell, the sweet unrest dearer to me than all the luxuries of the fabled East.
"Oh, Diana," she gasped. "Never will I alter even the smallest thing that is a delight to you!"
Hanging on her every breath, I had nearly forgotten the presence of the peddler until he spoke.
"If you are determined to keep your hair as it is," he said, turning a piercing black eye upon us, "perhaps you will at least engage my services as a dentist. I perceive that the young lady has the sharpest tooth — long, thin, pointed, like an awl, like a needle. I will make it round and blunt, if her ladyship pleases; no longer the tooth of a fish, but of a beautiful young lady as she is. Hey? Is the young lady displeased? Have I been too bold? Have I offended her?"
The young lady, indeed, looked very angry, her fury mounting with every second. With one leap she crossed to the gate and stood before the peddler, her face scarlet with anger, her lips quivering, and her whole slender form trembling from head to foot.
"I hate you," she cried in a choked voice, stamping her foot on the floor. "I hate you — I hate you — I hate you —" a louder stamp with every assertion of hatred.
"How dares that mountebank insult me so? Where is your father, Diana? I shall demand redress from him. I would have the wretch tied up to the pump, and flogged with a cart whip, and burnt to the bones with the cattle brand!"
The peddler, seeing that he had gone too far, absconded forthwith, his cur still howling at his heels. I put my arm around Carmilla's waist and drew her back into the shade of the orchard, soothing and gentling her as I would an injured horse. After many kisses and caresses, her wrath subsided as suddenly as it had risen, and she gradually recovered her usual tone, and seemed to forget the little peddler and his follies.
That evening, my father was unusually grave. On coming in, he told us that there had been another case very similar to Ruby's. Josie Pye, my schoolmate, had been very ill, attacked very nearly in the same way, and was now slowly but steadily sinking.
Of course, Carmilla and I had overheard so much at the funeral, but I had not realized that Josie hovered so near death.
"Did she . . ." I hesitated, worrying that my father would find me foolish. But I had to know. "Did Josie . . . see a ghost?"
"Josie's case is very sad," said my father, "but it is strictly referable to natural causes. Still, people infect one another with their superstitions. I have heard enough of ghosts and fiends, but Avonlea seems bent on repeating these images of terror. The truth is terrible enough without embellishment."
"We are in God's hands," said Mother. "Nothing can happen without his permission, and all will end well for those who love him. He is our faithful creator; He has made us all, and will take care of us."
"I met Dr. Blair at the post office," Father continued. "He was on his way to see Jane Andrews, who seems to suffer from a similar affliction. I asked him to take his supper here on his way home. I want to know what he thinks about it, and what he thinks we had better do."
We left my parents then, and sought refuge in the spare room, where we might speak freely without surveillance.
"Doctors never did me any good," said Carmilla.
"Then you have been ill?" I asked.
"More ill than ever you were," she answered.
"Long ago?"
"Yes, a long time. I suffered from this very illness; but I forget all but my pain and weakness, and they were not so bad as are suffered in other diseases."
"You were very young then?"
"I dare say, let us talk no more of it. You would not wound a friend?"
She looked languidly in my eyes, and passed her arm round my waist lovingly.
"Why does your father like to frighten us?" said the pretty girl with a sigh and a little shudder.
"He doesn't, dear Carmilla, it is the very furthest thing from his mind."
"Are you afraid, dearest?" she asked, stroking my cheek with her pale hand.
"I should be very much if I fancied there was any real danger of my being attacked as Ruby and Josie and Jane have been."
"You are afraid to die?"
"Yes, every one is."
Carmilla held me close and sought my eyes with hers. When she spoke, caressing me, her voice was as low and sweet as ever.
"But to die as lovers may — to die together, so that they may live together . . . girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don't you see . . ."
I did not see, not then. Or rather, what I saw was only Carmilla's beloved face, smiling into mine, and the flashing of her gray-green eyes.
Later, the doctor came, and was closeted with my father for some time.
I had always liked Dr. Blair. He was a cheerful man, about father's age, with gray in his hair and his pale face shaved smooth as a pumpkin. He and papa emerged from the room together, and I heard Father laugh, and say as they came out:
"Well, I do wonder at a wise man like you. What do you say to hippogriffs and dragons?"
The doctor was smiling, and made answer, shaking his head. "Nevertheless life and death are mysterious states, George, and we know little of the resources of either."
And so they walked on, and I heard no more. I did not then know what the doctor had been broaching, but I think I guess it now.
*Keats, "Bright Star"