Paula a nuisance! That self-sacrificing little saint who was positively happy in wearing a shabby, faded dress to church and who knew whole chapters of the Bible by heart. Not the interesting ones, either, but the—the—dull ones like those in Numbers and Leviticus. Who wouldn’t play games—not even jackstones, though she was crazy about them—because it was wrong. Who cried all night about her sins, when she, Marigold, could only squeeze out a few tears and then fall ignominiously asleep. Who never laughed—there was no place in religion for laughter, not even with an Uncle Charlie forever saying things that nearly made you die. Who never did anything she liked to do because if you liked a thing it was a sure sign it was wrong. Marigold was furious with Uncle Charlie.
“It’s lovely here at Aunt Anne’s,” she sighed. “But it’s so hard to be religious. I suppose it’s easier at Paula’s. Her father doesn’t hinder her.”
Marigold knew Paula’s father by this time. She had been to have tea with Paula and stay all night with her—a great privilege which Aunt Anne did not properly appreciate.
Paula lived in a little gray house on the other side of the pond. A tired little house that looked as if it were on the point of lying down. Inside, the blinds were very crooked and the furniture very dusty. There was nothing for supper but nuts, apples, brown bread and some stale, sweet crackers. But that did not matter, for Marigold could not have eaten anyhow, she was in such awe of Mr. Pengelly—a tall old man with long gray hair, a wonderful gray beard, a great hawk nose and eyes that shone in his lined face like a cat’s in the dark. He never spoke a word to her or any one. Paula told her it was because he had one of vows of silence on.
“Sometimes he never says a word for a whole week,” said Paula proudly. “He is such a good man. Once Aunt Em made a pudding for dinner Christmas—a little pudding—and Father grabbed it from the pot and hurled it out of doors. But even he isn’t as good as Great-Uncle Josiah was. He let his nails grow till they were as long as birds’ claws, just to please God.”
Marigold couldn’t help wondering what particular pleasure Uncle Josiah’s nails would give God, but she crushed back the thought rigidly as a sin.
They slept in a stuffy little hall-bedroom that had shabby, faded pink curtains and a broken pane, and was lighted by a lamp that seemed never to have been cleaned.
The head of the funny little old wooden bedstead was just against the rattling window.
“The snow drifts in on my pillow in winter,” said Paula, the fires of martyrdom burning in her eyes as she knelt on peas to say her prayers.
The rain beat against the panes. Marigold half wished she were back in the tower room at Broad Acres. This was not one of the nights Paula lay awake to worry over her sins. She slept like a log. She snored. Marigold did the lying-awake.
Breakfast. No salt in the porridge. Paula had burned the toast. The tablecloth was dirty. And Marigold had a chipped cup. Then she drank avidly. This was certainly a good chance to do something for penance. Penance for certain thoughts she had been thinking. But not about Paula. Paula, in spite of the snores, still shone amid all her shabby surroundings like a star far above the soil and mist of earth—a star for worship and reverence. Marigold worshipped and reverenced. She was strangely happy in all her renunciations and denials. She would give up anything rather than face Paula’s scornful smile. It was all the reward she wanted when Paula said graciously, as a priestess might stoop to approve the acolyte,
“I knew, as soon as I saw you, that you were One of Us.”
Aunt Anne and Uncle Charlie couldn’t understand it.
“That Pengelly imp seems to have a power to bewitch the other girls,” grumbled Uncle Charlie. “Marigold is absolutely infatuated with her and her kididoes. But there’s one thing—if this keeps on after she goes home, old Madam Lesley will make short work of it.”
5
Marigold spent a considerable part of her time doing penance in various small ways for various small misdemeanors. It was not always easy to find a penance to do—something Aunt Anne would let you do. No fasting or kneeling on peas for Aunt Anne. And even when Marigold and Paula between them—Mats bluntly declined to have anything to do with penances—hit on a workable penance, Marigold was apt to discover that she rather liked it—it was int’resting—and Paula had said,
“Just as soon as you like doing a thing it isn’t penance of course.”
But one “penance” was an experience that always stood out clearly in Marigold’s memory. At its first conception it looked like a real penance. She had fallen from grace terribly—she and Mats, if Mats could ever have been considered in a state of grace by Paula’s standards. She had been invited to supper at Mats’s; and she couldn’t resist that supper.
Mats’s mother was a notable cook and she had four different kinds of cake. And, alas, every one was a kind of which Marigold was particularly fond. Banana cake with whipped cream—strawberry shortcake—date layer-cake—jelly-roll cake. Marigold took a piece of each and two pieces of the shortcake. She knew she was doing wrong—from Mother’s point of view as well as Paula’s; but with Mats gobbling industriously by her side and Mats’s mother saying reproachfully,
“You haven’t eaten anything, child,”
What was one to do?
And after supper she and Mats had got a big fashion-book and picked out the dresses they’d have when they grew up; and filled their cup of iniquity to overflowing by “boxing” the bed of the hired man in the kitchen loft. At that, he probably slept better than Marigold, who was sick all night and had horrible dreams. Which might have been thought a sufficient penance. But Paula had a different opinion.
Marigold’s conscience gave her no rest until she had confessed everything to Paula.
“You are a Pharisee,” said Paula sorrowfully.
“Oh, I’m not,” wailed Marigold. “It was just—”
Then she stopped. No, she was not going to say,
“Mats and her mother just made me eat.”
That wasn’t altogether true. She had been very willing to eat and she must bear her own iniquities. But had she lost caste forever in Paula’s eyes? Would she no longer be considered One of Us?
“You’ve been very wicked,” said Paula. “Your lamp has almost gone out and you must do a specially hard penance to atone.”
Marigold sighed with relief. So she was not to be cast off. Of course she would do a penance. But what penance—at once severe enough and practicable. Paula thought of it.
“You’re afraid of being alone in the dark. Sleep out all night on the roof of the veranda. That will be a real penance.”
It certainly would. How real, Marigold knew too well. It was true that she was afraid of being alone in the dark. She was never afraid in the dark if anyone was with her, but to be alone in it was terrible. She was becoming very ashamed of this terror. Grandmother said severely that a girl of eleven should not be such a baby and Marigold was sure that Old Grandmother would have scorned her for a coward. But so far she had not been able to conquer her dread of it. And the thought of spending the night alone on the veranda roof appalled her. Nevertheless she agreed to do it.
It was easy enough from one point of view. There was a door in her little tower room opening on the veranda roof and there was a little iron bedstead on it. All Marigold had to do was to slip out of bed as soon as everybody was asleep and drag her bedclothes and mattress out.
She did it—in a cold perspiration—and crept into bed trembling from head to foot.
“I won’t be scared of you,” she gasped gallantly to the night.
But she was. She felt all the primitive, unreasoning fear known to the childhood of the race. The awe of the dark and the shadowy—the shrinking from some unseen menace lurking in the gloom. The night seemed creeping down through the spruce wood behind the house like a living—but not human—thing to pounce on her. Darkness all about her—aro
und—above—below. And in that darkness—what?
She wanted to cover up her head but she would not. That would be shirking part of the penance. She lay there and looked up at the sky—that terrible ocean of stars which Uncle Klon had told her were suns, millions of millions of millions of miles away. There did not seem to be a sound in the whole earth. It was waiting—waiting—for what? Suppose everyone in the world was dead! Suppose she was the only person left alive in that terrible silence!
Then—she could not have told whether it was hours or minutes later—something changed. All at once. She was no longer frightened. She sat up and looked about her. On a world of velvet and shadow and stars. The boughs of the spruces tossed in a sudden wind against the sky. The gulf waters were silver under the rising moon. The trees were whispering in the garden like old friends. The fern scents of a warm summer night drifted down from the hill.
“Why—I like the dark,” Marigold whispered to herself. “It’s nice—and kind—and friendly. I never thought it could be so beautiful.”
She stretched out her arms to it. It seemed a Presence, hovering, loving, enfolding. She lay down again in its shadow and surrendered herself utterly to its charm, letting her thoughts run out into it far beyond the Milky Way. She did not want to sleep—but after a time she slept. And wakened in the pale, windless morning just as a new dawn came creeping across Broad Acres. The dreamy dunes along the shore were lilac and blue and gold. Above her were high and lovely clouds just touched by sunrise. Below in the garden the dews were silver in the hearts of unblown roses. Uncle Charlie’s sheep in the brook pasture looked amazingly white and pearly and plump in the misty morning light. The world had a look Marigold had never seen it wear before—an expectant, untouched look as if it were a morning in Eden. She sighed with delight. A mystic happiness possessed her.
Paula was over soon after breakfast to find out if Marigold really had stuck it out on the veranda all night.
“You look too happy about it,” she said reproachfully.
“It was a penance for a little while at first and then I enjoyed it,” said Marigold honestly.
“You enjoy too many things,” said Paula despairingly. “A penance isn’t a penance if you enjoy it.”
“I can’t help liking things and I’m glad I do,” said Marigold in a sudden accession of common sense. “It makes life so much more int’resting.”
6
Marigold was going to the post office to mail a letter for Aunt Anne. It was a lovely afternoon. Never had the world seemed so beautiful, in spite of the hundreds of millions of sinful people living in it. When she passed Mats’s gate, Mats was playing by herself at jackstones under the big apple-tree. Mats had backslidden sadly of late and had returned to her wallowing in jackstones—thereby proving conclusively that she was not One of Us. She beckoned a gay invitation to Marigold, but Marigold shook her head and walked righteously on.
A little further down there was a sharp turn in the red road and Miss Lula Jacobs’s little white house was in the angle. And Miss Lula’s famous delphiniums were holding up their gleaming blue torches by the white paling. Marigold stopped for a moment to admire them. She would have gone in, for she and Miss Lula were very good friends, but she knew Miss Lula was not home, being in fact at Broad Acres with Aunt Anne at that very moment.
Marigold could see the pantry-window through the delphinium-stalks. And she saw something else. A dark-brown head popped out of the window, looked around, then disappeared. The next moment Paula Pengelly slipped nimbly over the sill to the ground and marched off through the spruce-bush behind Miss Lula’s house. And Paula held in her hands a cake—a whole cake—which she was devouring in rapid mouthfuls.
Marigold stood as if turned to stone, in that terrible moment of disillusion. That was the cake Miss Lula had made for the Ladies’ Aid social on the morrow—a very special cake with nut and raisin filling and caramel icing. She had heard Miss Lula telling Aunt Anne all about it just before she came away.
And Paula had stolen it!
Paula the Lighted Lamp—Paula the consecrated, Paula the rigid devotee of fasts and self-immolation, Paula the hearer of unearthly voices. Paula had stolen it and was gobbling it up all by herself.
Marigold went on to the post-office, torn between the anguish of disillusionment and the anger of the disillusioned. Nothing was quite the same—never could be again, she thought gloomily. The sun was not so bright, the sky so blue, the flowers so flowery. The west wind, purring in the grass, and the mad merry dance of the aspen-leaves hurt her.
An ideal had been shattered. She had believed so in Paula. She had believed in her vigils and her denials. Marigold thought bitterly of all those untaken second helpings.
Mats was not in when Marigold returned, but Marigold went home to Broad Acres and played jackstones by herself. And let herself go in a mad orgy of pretending, after all these weeks when, swallowed up in a passion of sacrifice, she had not even allowed herself to think of her world of fancy. Also she remembered with considerable satisfaction that Aunt Anne was making an apple-cake for supper.
Paula found her there and looked at her reproachfully—with purple-ringed eyes which, Marigold reflected scornfully, certainly did not come from fasting this time. Indigestion more likely.
“Is this how you, the possessor of an immortal soul, are wasting your precious time?” she asked rebukingly.
“Never mind my soul,” cried Marigold stormily. “Just you think of poor Miss Lula’s cake.”
Paula bounced up, her pale face for once crimson.
“What do you mean?” she cried.
“I saw you,” said Marigold.
“Do you want your nose pulled?” shrieked Paula.
“Try it,” said Marigold superbly.
Suddenly Paula collapsed on the gray stone and burst into tears.
“You needn’t make—such a fuss—over a trifle,” she sobbed.
“Trifle. You stole it.”
“I—I was so hungry for a piece of cake. I never get any—Father won’t let Aunt Em make any. Nothing but porridge and nuts for breakfast and dinner and supper, day in and day out. And that cake looked so scrumptious. You’d have taken it yourself. Miss Lula has heaps of them. She loves making cake.”
Marigold looked at Paula, all the anger and contempt gone out of her eyes. Little sinning, human Paula, like herself. Marigold no longer worshipped her but she suddenly loved her.
“Never mind,” she said softly. “I—guess I understand. But—I can’t be a Lighted Lamp any longer, Paula.”
Paula wiped away her tears briskly.
“Don’t knows I care. I was getting awfully tired of being so religious, anyhow.”
“I—I think we didn’t go the right way about being religious,” said Marigold timidly. “Aunt Marigold says religion is just loving God and people and things.”
“Maybe,” said Paula—going down on her knees—but not to pray. “Anyhow I got all the cake I wanted for once. Let’s have a game of jacks before Mats shows up. She always spoils everything with her jabber. She isn’t really One of Us.”
CHAPTER 17
Not by Bread Alone
1
Salome had gone to Charlottetown for the day—rather unwillingly, for she had had a horrible dream of fourteen people coming to supper and nothing in the house for them to eat but cold boiled potatoes.
“And there’s more truth than poetry in that, ma’am,” she said, “for there isn’t a thing baked except the raisin-bread. I assure you I don’t dream dreams like that for nothing. And there’s the Witch of Endor polishing her face out by the apple-barn.”
It was an inflexible Cloud of Spruce tradition that there must always be cake in the pantry—fresh, flawless cake—lest unexpected company come to tea. No company had ever found Cloud of Spruce cakeless. Grandmother and Mother would both have died of horror on the spot if
such a thing had happened. Kingdoms of Europe might rise and fall—famines might ravage India and revolutions sweep China—Liberals and Conservatives, Republicans and Democrats might crash down to defeat, but so long as cake-box and cookie-jar were filled there was balm in Gilead.
Yet this unthinkable thing had actually occurred. The evening before three car-loads of visitors had come out from Summerside and found cake in the pantry—but left none. No wonder Salome was upset.
“I have made cake before now,” said Grandmother rather sarcastically. Every once in so long Salome had to be snubbed. “And so has Mrs. Leander.”
When Grandmother called Lorraine Mrs. Leander before Salome, Salome knew she was snubbed.
“I am well aware,” she said with meek stateliness, “that I am not the only cook at Cloud of Spruce. I merely thought, ma’am, that seeing it was my duty to keep the pantry well filled, I ought not to neglect it for the sake of my own pleasure. I am not like my sister-in-law Rose John, ma’am. She hasn’t any sense of shame. When unexpected company comes to tea she just runs out and borrows a cake from a neighbor. Whatever John saw in her enough to marry her I have never been able to imagine.”
“Go and enjoy your holiday, Salome,” said Lorraine kindly, knowing that if Salome once fairly embarked on the delinquencies of Rose John there was no telling when she would stop. “You deserve it. Grandmother and I will soon fill up the pantry.”
Alas! Mother had got only as far as getting out her mixing-bowl when Uncle Jack’s Jim arrived. “… bloody with spurring, fiery red with haste,”—or the modern equivalent for it. Great-Uncle William Lesley was dying at the Head of the Bay, or thought he was. And he wanted to see Grandmother and Leander’s wife. They must lose no time if they were to get there before he died.
It was a tragedy.
“I have never,” said Grandmother in a tone of anguish as she tied on her bonnet, “gone away from home and left absolutely no cake in the house.”
Magic for Marigold Page 24